Chapter 6: The Visitor in the Rain
In late April, when the wild beach plums were blooming in delicate white clouds along the Rhode Island shore, a cold nor’easter swept over Narragansett Bay.
A battered taxi drove slowly down the gravel driveway of the Bristol boatyard, stopping near the slipway.
Vanessa stepped out into the pouring rain.
She was unrecognizable from the enraged bride who had lunged across the foyer in Newport. She wore a simple dark wool coat, flat leather walking boots, and no jewelry. Her blonde hair was tied back in a plain ponytail, her face thin, pale, and lined with the deep, exhausting grief of a woman whose world had been dismantled down to the bare earth.
She walked toward the open double doors of the boat shop, where the warm glow of incandescent work lamps and the rhythmic chime of shipwrights' mallets echoed into the grey day.
Clara was standing on a timber staging scaffold, caulking an oak hull seam with cotton and natural pitch.
She saw Vanessa standing at the threshold, set down her caulking iron, wiped her hands on a clean cotton towel, and climbed down the wooden ladder.
""Hello, Vanessa,"" Clara said quietly.
May you like
Vanessa stopped five paces away, her hands trembling inside her coat pockets, her eyes welling with tears that she did not attempt to wipe away.
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