And The Sea Called Her Name Read Online Free PDF

stand
the way she looked at me. “Did you find out what we’re having?” I
asked, hating the weakness in my voice.
    “No. The baby’s healthy,” she said, then
paused. “I think you should sleep down here tonight.” She placed
one hand over her belly and hesitated for only a heartbeat before
leaving me on the veranda. I fell back into my chair and listened
to the sounds of her preparing for bed. Sounds I should’ve been
making right beside her in our small bathroom. Soon there was only
silence, except for the steady beat of the waves on the shore. I
stretched out on the davenport below the window and stared up at
the whitewashed ceiling. Something was slipping away from between
us. Inexplicably and surely, my wife was changing. A part of my
mind tried to take on a reassuring stance by telling me it was a
phase. The second half of the pregnancy might be this way and it
might become something else very soon. I needed to be patient and
kind, and maybe give her some distance.
    A little hope flared briefly for me in the
dark as I slipped into sleep, the house creaking around me like a
lullaby played by the wind.
     
    ~
     
    The next two weeks flowed by in an uneasy
truce of sorts. We would pass one another in the hall or rooms, say
the necessary things for a couple to co-exist, and go about our
days with the wedge of unspoken frost between us. I was patient,
something she always mentioned she admired about me, keeping all of
my replies and questions to her short and polite. She did the same,
and the time passed.
    The barrier broke in the afternoon on a day
so clear and bright, it was tempting to keep your sunglasses on
even while inside. The wind was coming from the west, something I
realized only years later as to what may have caused the change,
and the air was redolent of fall. I’d quit early that day, hoping
to send in a job application for a managerial position at a local
bank via email before their offices closed. It was the last day
they were accepting submissions and I’d learned of the opening only
the day before. When I entered the house, Del was waiting in the
kitchen and immediately I could tell something was different.
    “Hi,” she said as I set my gear down inside
the front entry.
    “Hi.”
    She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’ve been
wanting to say that for the last week but couldn’t find the right
time or way to do it.”
    I stepped forward into the kitchen and she
rose, pushing herself up with one hand on the table. Her stomach
looked so large in the dress she wore.
    “I’m sorry too,” I began, but she shook her
head and smiled but I could see tears in her eyes, almost ready to
drop free onto her face.
    “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. I
don’t know what came over me in the last few months. I’ve been
really cold and distant. But I was telling the truth that night on
the porch. There’s no one else, there could never be.”
    I tried to say something, but there were no
words that could convey the relief I felt. I stepped forward and
held her, kissing her with everything I’d been holding back over
the months. The worry, the heartache, the longing, the jealousy,
everything poured out in that single moment, and I was refilled
with the love for her that hadn’t ever truly departed. She kissed
me back and seconds later we were on the floor, groping at one
another’s clothing, peeling it away like the barriers that had
fallen from the gap between us.
    We made love there on the hardwood, our
caresses long and gentle, and when it was through, we held each
other until evening crept in with placid shadows.
    I cooked her lobster that night. I’d brought
two home thinking that I’d be eating alone again on the back porch.
Del devoured the entire meal with a gusto I hadn’t witnessed in
weeks. When she began to playfully pick at the last few bites of my
lobster tail, I slid the plate to her.
    “You need it more than I do.”
    She smiled. “I’ve had such a craving