Jo couldn’t enjoy the bounty, however. Her savings had run completely out, and once again, as the bank had predicted, she’d fallen behind on the payments. Whit had made good on his word, too. He did have friends at Harbor Bank, and as bad luck would have it, they agreed with Whit’s view of the situation.
“You have a reasonable offer on the property, Miss Gilly,” Mr. Monaghy had said through the telephone two days after her latest letter from them. “It is our honest advice that you take it. To tell you the truth, we don’t really want the property, but we’re beholden to follow the rules of the loan. We view this offer as a win-win situation for all parties involved.”
“I wasn’t aware that this was a game,” Jo had snapped. “The answer is no.” And she’d slammed down the phone.
Jo gazed out toward the horizon now, at a point that should have been mysterious and vast but which, down low in the belly of the marsh, was merely a dot of unrealized potential. She turned her face back to the salt ponds. If she was going to dig her way out of her hole of debt, she was going to have to pay attention to the resources at hand. This spot of earth could be fertile in the right circumstances, Jo knew. In fact, the outer banks of the Cape had once been famous for their salt. Now her farm was just the last ghost of that fecundity. Put like that, Jo thought, the marsh seemed less a historical relic than an undiscovered treasure. Funny how perspective worked, she mused, climbing over a crumbling levee and lowering herself even further into the bog. It wasn’t until you were on the verge of losing something that you saw it for what it really was.
“It looks like snow.” Dee was balanced on a narrow levee, blinking against the late-afternoon sun, her belly fully swollen in the last stage of her pregnancy. Jo thought she’d never seen anyone so pregnant, and in fact she hadn’t.
Claire had been furious when she’d found out how far along Dee was in her pregnancy, but Jo wasn’t surprised a bit. A child built like Dee could probably keep a huge amount under her belt, Jo thought, before it would start to show. She wondered what else Dee hadn’t told them about. With her it could be almost anything. Once Jo had caught Dee coming out of Claire’s room.
“I was… I was just looking to see if I could borrow an old blouse,” she’d stammered, but hadn’t Jo just given her a pile of extra clothes the day before?
“Better take one of mine,” Jo had said. “And if I were you, I’d give my sister a wide berth.” Even though Claire was civil enough to Dee, greeting her with cold nods or single words, Jo still couldn’t be sure she wasn’t cooking up a plan for revenge along with all her sweeter confections. Jo sighed now and wiped her brow, regarding the basin in front of her.
“Are you sure I should be doing this?” Dee asked her. “It feels like I’m going to pop any second.”
Jo continued to rake. “This is the best crust of the year so far.” Her voice grew softer. “Once there were salt works all up and down this coast. Did you know that? When I was little, there were even some of the old vats left. They were empty and half rotten, of course, but still there.”
Jo dipped her finger into the bowl of flakes she was accumulating and offered a pinch to Dee. She waited for Dee to put it in her mouth, and then she decided to give the girl a test. “Quick,” she said, “without thinking, tell me your first memory.”
Dee closed her eyes, and a smile crept over her round face. “My mother singing before I fell asleep.”
“Who do you love?” Jo asked, praying that Dee wouldn’t say Whit and sighing with relief when her hands simply circled her belly. So far Dee’s heart seemed pure, but Jo had covered only the past and the present. The future was open to interpretation.
“What did you think you’d find here?” she asked, and with that, Dee’s eyes flew open, hooded and suspicious.
“What do you mean?” she said, but the salt’s spell was broken, Jo saw. Dee wasn’t going to tell her more. Jo handed her a wide wooden bowl. If she couldn’t get answers out of Dee, at least she could get some help. “Hold this steady,” she said.
Dee couldn’t possibly screw that up, she thought. Right after the spring flood, Jo had tried showing Dee how to work the sluices, but she and Claire had ended up hauling her out of one of the inundation pools by her armpits. When Dee had attempted the process again in early May, she’d come back to the barn bleeding from her thumb, one of her boots covered entirely in mud. Jo never did figure out what had happened that time. It was astonishing, really. She’d never met anyone so clumsy. When the baby was born, Jo thought, she and Claire might have to string up a safety net under its tiny little bones.
The bowl wobbled and tipped in Dee’s arms, and Jo righted it. She couldn’t afford to lose this load, her most expensive commodity, the one that the tourists hungry for any scrap of Cape Cod authenticity had started to snap up recently like greedy dogs. She imagined the women and men who bought it back at home in their designer kitchens, sprinkling the flakes on thick slabs of steak with the intensity of chemists. Did they even taste it, she wondered, the way the people of Prospect used to when they would add it to their cakes and pies, knowing that all the sweet in the world was useless without a little snap to set it off?
Dee trailed behind her across the patchwork spine of levees, cradling the bowl as Jo had shown her to, stumbling once or twice. “Should I carry the kid like this once it’s born?” she joked, and Jo winced, for Dee had no idea, of course, that Jo’s mother had done just that, lining a giant salt bowl and nestling Jo and her twin brother in its broad curve. Claire, too. Jo remembered rocking Claire to sleep in such a bowl and then carrying the whole thing over near the hearth to keep her sister warm while she slept.
I must get some soft blankets, she thought. And linen squares. We’re going to need diapers, and pacifiers, and bibs. And what was that lullaby Mama used to sing? Jo stopped short, and Dee almost plowed into her.
What’s happening to me? Jo scolded herself. She sounded like Mother Goose. She knew that the choice of bringing this child into the marsh wasn’t hers to make, especially if it turned out to be a boy who might fall victim to the salt’s bad luck. Only Dee could decide that. Sooner or later Jo was going to have to have a talk with her.
Dee puffed out her cheeks and put the bowl at her feet. It wasn’t heavy, just bulky. Jo didn’t think it would cause any harm for Dee to carry it, but still. She didn’t really know.
Dee eyed her uneasily. “Did I say something wrong? I was only kidding about hauling the baby around in the bowl.”
Jo traded her for the paddle, turned around, and started walking again. As they neared the house, a faint smell of something sweet in the oven tinged the air. Jo regarded the clapboard house she’d lived in all her life. It was a little weed-ridden, okay, but also weather-tight, breezy in the summer, and stuffed with an interesting history. Maybe it wasn’t the best place to raise a baby, but it wasn’t the worst either.
They reached the porch steps, and Jo turned to Dee. She’s a child having a child, she thought. She’s going to need some guidance. Jo wasn’t a mother, but hadn’t she grown up looking after Claire? Her advice had to be better than nothing, and besides, it was currently all Dee had.
The longer Dee stayed on Salt Creek Farm, the more Jo was starting to feel as if the child really belonged there. Even now Jo could tell that Dee knew where to step on the porch to avoid the soft spots. Dee remembered that the screen door could be left to slam because Jo had added the spring to catch it at the last second. Jo watched her step out of her canvas tennis shoes and throw them into the corner of the hall with Claire’s same impatience. Dee knew that they kept the truck keys in a bowl on top of the tuneless hall piano; she knew which cupboard had rice and which one held cereal, and how long the water had to run before it turned hot, then scalding, then cooled again.
She was learning the nuts and bolts of Salt Creek Farm—she was even learning to distinguish the types of salt—but when it came to the secret of the marsh’s history, its pulsing heart, Jo worried that Dee was still blind.
But maybe that was the best thing for now, Jo decided. Some things were better left alone.
Claire had gone into town, but there was a note from her on the kitchen table: “Cinnamon cake in the oven. Timer is on. Let cool before slicing. Back by five. C.”
Jo emptied the pile of salt she’d collected into a glass jar and set it aside for Claire. Lately Claire had taken to adding all kinds of crazy things to the salt: vanilla pods, sprigs of lavender, rose petals. And the things she then went and put the salt into were even more unusual: puddings, ice cream, every sort of bread. Jo wasn’t sure she’d be able to sell any of the doctored salt, but Claire had streamlined the labels for the bags Jo used and reassured her she could charge double. “Now it’s not just a handmade local product—it’s a gourmet handmade local product,” she’d said, swiping a hank of red hair out of her eyes. “Trust me, the tourists will go bananas over it. I’ve already phoned three stores in Hyannis, and they can’t wait to stock this.”
Jo had just shrugged. Claire floated in the wider world more lightly than she did, what with her former membership to the country club in Wellfleet, and her dressage competitions, and living all those years in big, fancy Turner House. Out by Salt Creek Farm, the coast was still wild and plain. Still, much as Jo knew she couldn’t really count on Claire, a little kernel of hope began to glow deep down in her. Maybe, with the extra hands and some new ideas, the farm could be saved after all. Jo lit the stove and put on the kettle for tea.
Dee rubbed a palm over her belly and gazed out the kitchen windows. “The marsh has changed so much just since I’ve been here. And who knows what will happen after this guy comes out?”
Jo sat forward, terribly alert. “You think it’s a boy?”
Dee pressed her lips tight, but she couldn’t contain her smile. Jo’s heart started pounding.
“Oh, I don’t know. I just have a feeling.”
Jo crossed her legs, trying not to show any anxiety. “How much have you told Whit about this baby?”
“Nothing. Only that it’s coming. Why?”
Jo surveyed Dee. The girl’s eyes were widened, a sign of innocence, but the corners of her mouth were tense, like she was awaiting bad news, and the innocent were never expecting bad news, Jo knew. It was what made them innocent.
“Dee,” Jo said slowly and a little too loudly, as if speaking to a slow-witted foreigner, “you must promise, I mean promise, that you won’t contact Whit, that you won’t tell him anything about this child. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“You sound just like Claire.”
Jo’s nose twitched. She remembered seeing Dee and Claire on Easter, walking step in step across the marsh, as if they were stamping down a secret together. “Why? What did my sister say?” And there it was again, the curtain lowering on Dee’s face—the clenched jaw, the eyes maybe now a little too wide. What does she know that she’s not telling me? Jo wondered, stirring her tea. This was the disadvantage to letting other people—even family—onto Salt Creek Farm. More and more things would start unraveling at the edges, Jo suspected, where she had no hope of seeing them, until something terrible finally shook loose. And what would everyone do then? Ask Jo for help, was what.
She sighed and ran a hand over her face. “You know, Whit and I used to be very good friends.”
Dee nodded, and Jo kept speaking, the words burning her throat like too-hot coffee. Half of Jo hoped Dee would run and repeat them to Claire, just as the other half of her knew that the girl wouldn’t dare. “I can’t believe it myself, but it’s true. This is an odd story—I don’t even know why I’m telling you, really—but the summer I was fifteen, Whit tried to give me something as a keepsake. Same thing he gave you, as a matter of fact. That locket carved with a W. I didn’t dare keep it, though. I was too scared Ida Turner might find out about it and choke the life out of me. There’s no love lost between the Turners and the Gillys, you know.”
Dee nodded, so Jo kept talking, her voice straining with unaccustomed use. “Anyway, I think Ida did find out about it, because later, when I was delivering a loaf of bread to Father Flynn at St. Agnes, I stumbled on a letter laid out in front of the Virgin.”
Dee leaned forward. “From whom?”
Jo paused. “Ida.”
“Did you read it?”
Jo nodded. She’d never told anyone this before.
“What did it say?” Dee asked.
Jo’s voice came out distant. “The last line’s what stuck with me most. ‘Magna est veritas, et praevalibet.’ ”
Dee frowned. “What the heck does that mean?”
Jo translated. “Truth is great and it will prevail. It’s from the Vulgate, the old Latin version of the Bible. I asked Father Flynn to tell me what it meant once. He always said he preferred the old Latin Mass.” It was a sentiment Jo understood. There were times, she supposed, when a person might need to approach God not as a vessel brimming with human understanding but as a hollow one, ready to be filled. A stray gust of wind rattled the kitchen’s window sashes. Evening was gathering.
Jo stood up and clattered the cups together, then dangled her hands by her sides, letting all her regrets bear down on her as sure and unstoppable as a millstone about to crush bone. The afternoon was wrung out and limp. It seemed as good a time as any for confessions. Jo turned around again.
“There’s something you have to know if you’re going to stay here.”
Dee sat forward, unusually somber.
“I’m sure you’ve heard all the stories in town. This land’s not so kind to boys.” Jo hesitated. “I’m not saying I believe it, but stone doesn’t lie. The only bones buried out here are male.”
Dee was silent at this, so Jo took a deep breath and made another small confession.
“I think my mother might have tried to change that when my brother and I were born. Before she died, she told me a story about Our Lady. She did something terrible, but I can’t say what.”
Dee’s eyes were saucers. “And did it work?”
Jo paused, knowing she was lingering at a dangerous crossroad, but she couldn’t think of any good way to frame the rest of her story. She considered Dee’s question. Had her mother changed their luck? Unknowingly, Dee had stabbed right into the heart of the matter.
“Yes and no,” Jo finally said. “She didn’t save my brother, but she did find something else that night.”
Dee narrowed her eyes. “What?”
Jo shook her head. “That secret’s not mine alone to tell.”
“Does Claire know it?” Dee asked, and Jo shook her head again. How could she when Claire had spent the past decade perched on Plover Hill like a hawk in a tree?
Jo glanced out the window. A pair of gulls were squabbling over something they’d dug up, flapping their wings and squawking. “Look at that,” she said. “The two of them fighting over one rotten piece of fish when there’s thousands more in the sea. I guess secrets are like that, too. If you have one, you have many.”
“But Gilly secrets aren’t so easy to come by, are they?” Dee asked, and Jo gazed at her. It was so strange for Jo to have a young woman around the house, eager to unearth old truths better left unsaid. Dee didn’t understand yet that a story needed someone to fall in order for it to go forward, just as it required someone to do the casting-out.
Is it better to be fallen than evil? Jo wondered. She had always thought so. Now she wasn’t so sure. Perhaps that was just the way she’d chosen to justify the past to herself. But what if sin were something one inherited? Who would the villain in her tale be then? She wiped the counter and set the rag back in the sink.
“I guess the thing about this family’s secrets is that they’re right out in the open,” she said at last, “if only you know where to look.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Summer on the Cape had never felt quite real to Claire. It was the same sensation she’d had in the heady early days of her marriage whenever she’d gone to a country-club gala with Whit, swathed in one of Id
a’s old satin gowns, a tiny jeweled purse clutched in one hand. She was a fictional version of herself at those events, a woman with the same hair, the same eyes and nose, but nothing else in common with the person who shoveled out Icicle’s stall, licked ice cream from the bottom of the bowl before she put it in the sink, and daydreamed her way through Mass.
Likewise, summer wasn’t Prospect’s natural season. The town grew too full too quickly. Lines developed at Mr. Upton’s market, the library ran out of all its current novels, and even the Lighthouse stools were all occupied. The locals, torn between contempt for the soft-bellied tourists and appreciation of their money, closed ranks around themselves while the tourists, frisky and eager as puppies, stuck their noses in places they didn’t belong. Every now and then, a few of them even stumbled onto Salt Creek Farm, blinking in confusion at the heaps of salt and the muddy ditches before backing away slowly from the wooden rake Jo brandished in their direction.
“We should show them around,” Claire urged. “We could charge them for tours, and you could teach them about the salt.” This year there were more tourists than ever, and Claire knew that a large part of it had to do with Whit’s new developments around town. He owned beach cottages and markets, hotels and inns, but still his balance sheet was a long way from even. If he had it his way, Claire suspected, Whit would make summer last all year long.
“You teach them,” Jo sniffed. “I have too much else to do.” But it wouldn’t be the same, Claire knew. She didn’t have a feel for the salt the way Jo did. She could scrape it and pile it just fine, but in her hands it might as well have been sand. It was only when Jo’s rake twirled through the brine that the stuff drew life and became the famous Gilly salt. Only Jo could put a pinch on her tongue and know if there was too much silt in it, and only Jo knew the exact moment when the flakes were dry enough to collect. She even used to be able sometimes to predict which batches would flare red and which would smoke blue when they were burned on December’s Eve.