“Get comfortable,” he said, nodding to the seat beside him.
I sat, and then he smiled, and we shot forward into the water so fast and hard I screamed. He slowed down, and we began to cruise to Salem.
Salem, I thought. I recalled Daddy talking about witches when Ava was reading The Crucible by Arthur Miller for her college class. I knew the play well. Of course, Daddy did, too. He knew more about books, theater, and film than anyone I had ever met.
“They feed on their own fear,” Daddy had said. “What they don’t understand they condemn or denounce so they can keep their power and wealth. Remember this, my darlings, you can use fear as a tool to protect you. They can only use it as poison to weaken and defeat them. You are the beautiful, the perfect, as long as you are one of us.”
“Hey,” Liam said. “Don’t you love the scenery, the ride? You look so damn serious.”
“Of course,” I said. “I was just thinking of where I was not so long ago, how unhappy I was, and how amazing life can be.”
He smiled. “Come over here and steer, get the feel of it,” he said. “C’mon. Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m hardly that,” I said, and slipped in front of him to take the wheel. It was exhilarating. I was so into it that I didn’t realize he was still behind me, his hands on my arms, his face close to my cheek and my neck, his lips finding my ears and moving along my neck to the curve into my shoulders. “You’re distracting me,” I complained, but not forcefully.
“I love this spot on your body. It’s so soft.”
With his right hand, he pulled the lever that slowed us down, but the waves, as calm as the ocean was, lifted and bounced us. He turned me around to kiss me.
“I thought you might never have been kissed on the Atlantic Ocean,” he said. “Wanted to be sure it happened.”
“You did all this just for me? Thank you,” I said, laughing.
“What a wise-ass.”
He accelerated again, and we went bouncing hard over the waves, the spray finding its way to my hair and my face. None of it was unpleasant.
Ava would never enjoy this as much as I am, I thought. She might pretend she did in order to draw in her prey, but to go out simply for the joy of it wasn’t something she ever did or mentioned. Everything I’m doing reassures me that I’m different, I concluded, buoying up my courage and determination.
We docked in Salem and, holding hands, walked up the street to the restaurant he had described. It was a replica of what an old colonial pub might be, with the waitresses and waiters in costume, the menu describing foods the way they would have been described in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While we were eating, a town crier entered to announce the daily news, describing an upcoming wedding and the arrivals of ships.
“Sometimes the news is real,” Liam said.
Afterward, we stopped at a shop, and he bought me an old-fashioned rag doll.
“I don’t think Julia has this one,” he said, and then he did something that I thought was very nice. Despite all of the dolls Julia had, he bought her one, too. On the way back to the boat, we stopped for some homemade ice cream cones. As I licked mine, I recalled how forbidden sweets had been to us, how adamant Mrs. Fennel had been about our not eating candy and ice cream. I used to think of it as poison, and if I did stray, I’d wait to be thrown into some dire condition and hear all of the “I told you so’s,” but that had never happened, and it wasn’t going to happen now.
What I realized was that Mrs. Fennel would forbid things that would make us crave a different existence. Taste the world beyond, and we might start to wish we were in it, she surely thought. She had been the keeper of our souls until we made the ultimate sacrifices for Daddy and then determined that any change, any diversion, any escape, was not only forbidden but impossible. Full of defiance and new joy, I wanted to embrace this life fully and make it impossible to return to my prior existence.
We took a beautiful ride back, slowing down and stopping occasionally when we were in calmer waters. Liam sat with his arm around me, and we watched all the other water activity going on. He talked about boats, some of the other places he had been that were very beautiful, but mostly, I sensed how much he really loved where he lived, loved where we were.
“My great-aunt’s kooky sometimes,” he said, “but she’s not all wrong about heritage. I feel like I’m part of this, part of the history. Don’t tell her I said that. She’ll pile books in my arms and send me to museums galore.”
We kissed. We held each other, and I felt strengthened, hopeful, and ready to deal with any darkness that awaited. But anyone could easily say, “That’s because you haven’t done it yet.”
After we tied up the boat, we drove back to the Dolan mansion. Now that I was seeing it in daylight, I could really appreciate its size, the beauty of the grounds, and the acreage it included. Liam pulled up to the front rather than bring his car to the garage.
“You can use one of the guest suites to shower and change,” he said. “Remember, we’re staying casual.”
“That’s all I have, casual clothes.”
I saw about a half-dozen grounds people working on the bushes, flowers, and lawns.
“I used to do some of that,” Liam said, seeing where I was looking. “We had a great head gardener in those days, Pepe Rosario. I thought of him as my Latino grandfather. He retired and returned to Venezuela.”
“What about your real grandparents?”
“My mother’s family disappeared along with her, and my father’s mother died when I was fifteen. My grandfather is in an adult residence in Boston. They had my father late in their marriage. No other children. So I really only have my great-aunt Amelia, my grandmother’s sister. I’m about as poor when it comes to family as you are,” he said.