Daylight drifted in under the door, enough to read her words.
I think about you sometimes at night, she confessed. And in the day. I think about coming to your bed in an unsteady sea. I think about kissing your lips while the rocking of the ship tries to tear us apart, about finding a rhythm with you when the world is rough around us. I think about how you would have the superior pace from years of being at sea—how you would establish a rhythm that would allow us to ride the waves as I rode you.
He felt his entire body flush. My God. She hadn’t told him she’d included letters that were downright pornographic. He was tired to his bones, but he felt himself grow hard at the thought of her here. Of her riding him.
Of their bodies coming together. He shut his eyes and thought of the storm he had just been through, of mastering not the paying out of cable but the intricacies of her voice, her body.
His release was sweet comfort. He cleaned himself up and finally fell asleep.
Many hours later, after a much-needed rest, Lightfoot nodded at him. “Is it to be T74S602G again tonight, sir?”
“Not tonight.” Grayson clasped his hands behind his back. “Tonight, it’s T74S412G.”
“You seem to be in fine fettle.”
Grayson bit back a smile. “Just send the message.”
Shore grew closer, and he started to encounter sea-birds. Early one morning, with the final connection on the islands dotting the coasts of British Columbia a day or so distant, he counted seven gray and white terns playing above him.
Seven was a clipping from an older English newspaper that must have made its way across the ocean through the usual winding paths. The article was about a display in New York—a complete skeleton of some prehistoric creature.
Amelia had supplied her own sketched version of what the beast must have looked like back when it was enfleshed: a large creature walking on two legs, cropping at plants. She had sketched a little stick figure next to it, one wearing a captain’s jacket and a hat that looked suspiciously like his own.
Don’t worry, she’d scrawled. It has the teeth of an herbivore! Likely it would only stampede you flat if you disturbed its young. Even more luckily, the species is entirely extinct, so you should have no difficulty avoiding even that unlikely fate.
Grayson smiled and set the envelope back in his drawer. It had been a month since he’d seen her; it would be many more months before he would see her again.
But Moresby Island was close at hand. Once the shore line was laid, he’d be able to send a real message. A longer one.
He was no closer to fulfilling her wish than he had been before. He would have to think of what to say.
Amelia had put off one of the tasks she had set herself for far too long.
When she’d first arrived in Hong Kong, she’d sent her brother a letter letting him know that she was here. She’d given him a direction, even, and told him she understood he might not want to see her at present, but here she was. Close. So close.
She’d received no response to any of her inquiries.
Never before in her years of knowing Leland had she received no response. They’d been separated before, but they’d traded letters back and forth for years—week after week, without cessation, and while the mail would sometimes fail her, Leland never had.
It had been months since she’d last heard from him, months since he’d told her the story of her mother with a waxen face after being sick outside her home. It had been so long since he’d taken his leave in Shanghai, and Amelia didn’t know why he wasn’t writing to her.
She’d avoided finding out for the weeks she was there. She was busy. He would come to her, she was sure. Whatever it was that was keeping him away… He would come.
He had not come.
Finally, with her departure imminent, she made her way to his door. She knocked and waited, heart thumping in her throat so wildly that she could taste her own nerves.
The door opened, revealing her brother. His eyes met hers, widened, and then he paled. He looked like he might be sick again.
He looked as if he’d never stopped being sick.
“Amelia.” He took a step back. “Or should I say, Mrs. Smith?”
It hurt to have him speak to her with that tense air of formality. “Amelia,” she told him, appalled. “Why would you not call me Amelia?”
He swallowed and looked away, guilt painting his features. And he did not answer.
She bulled on ahead. “Leland.” She didn’t understand this. Not one bit of it. People were often strange and horrible, but…not Leland. Never Leland.
Yet here they were.
She gritted her teeth and dove in. “I know you don’t want to talk to me right now. I can imagine reasons why that might be.”
Her imagination had been eating away at her.
“But I have need of counsel, and you are the only one who will understand the particulars. Leland. Please. I need you.” She tilted her head, biting back tears. The truth of the statement had not hit her until she’d said it. She needed her big brother.
He let out a long, slow exhale. “Amelia.” He stepped aside. “Of course. If you need me. Of course. Anything you need. Come in.”
His abode was small and sparse. She sat in the spare straight-backed chair he indicated and looked at him.
It felt awkward, and things had never been awkward between them. He lit a range, bit back something that might have been a curse, and boiled water. She waited until the tea was before them, trying to figure out where to start… But it was no use because he started first.
“Amelia,” he said in a low voice. “I’m so dreadfully sorry.”
“For not writing?”
He grimaced. “I keep looking back over everything in our childhood. I was older than you. I should have known better. I should have understood what was happening. I keep thinking of my own culpability, of every excuse I made to myself. I just wanted to make things easy on myself. Think of my own comfort. I should have questioned what I was doing.”
She couldn’t make any sense of this. She stared at him. “Leland. Precisely what are you apologizing for?”
“Everything,” he said in a rush. “I cannot think of what happened when you were a child with fondness anymore. I participated in it. Amelia, I participated.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She told you, you weren’t allowed to speak anything but English,” Leland said, his voice breaking, “and I helped her do it. She called you by another name, and I didn’t ask for your real one. She gave me a story and even if I thought you didn’t want to know, I knew. I knew your Chinese mother was there. I knew she wanted you. And I didn’t say anything.”
“Leland. You were…” She calculated rapidly. “You were twelve when this started. I couldn’t blame you.”
“Old enough to understand when things weren’t right. Old enough to know right from wrong. But I didn’t want to know. There were too many things I didn’t want to know, so I didn’t ask. I have spent too long not asking because it’s comfortable. Because it’s easy. I don’t know if I ever would have asked, were it not—” He cut himself off. “I can’t ask you to forgive me. What I did—it’s unforgivable. But Amelia, please understand. I’m sorry.” He looked over at her. Misery was etched in every line of his face. “I’m so dreadfully sorry.”