From these events, Sarah wondered about her own frailty in the face of it all. Her home, and the security she had felt here, had been forever changed. Could she ever find that again? And her inner being had been assaulted as well, she knew. As strong as she believed herself to be, she foresaw herself over the next few years likely ebbing, doubting from time to time, fraying a bit, surprising the framed image of tranquility, an emulation of her mother’s behavior, which she wished to project and protect for herself, like when a stone is dropped into the still pond that a modest person should rely upon as one’s only mirror. She would keep guard for that.
She wondered what Jacob would see when looking there with her, while waiting for the return to soft reflections off tranquil water — if, indeed, that ever came. She wondered, with all that had occurred, whether he would avoid ever again letting go of the security he would certainly now need, holding on tightly to those precious little things she had found and preserved to help bring him back.
And would he come back?
It would take time, she decided. It would take time.
Chapter Forty-Two
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Pickett and Emmy
The shelling from the two Brit frigates began at six o’clock in the morning, just as Pickett had sat down for his breakfast with his staff. The incoming shells, striking the beach 500 yards east of his camp, reverberated with enough force that coffee mugs flew from their laps and set a few younger officers into a frantic tizzy.
Pickett did not lose his composure, however. He had been under fire many times, in Mexico and then from Apache and Kiowa small arms in the badlands of Texas. He had the well-proportioned and measured understanding of danger that can only develop when one is being targeted for death.
He watched the earth spraying up, following each report, and realized immediately that the Brits were simply attempting to intimidate him with their gunnery exercise. So he sat back down, ordered his coffee mug to be refilled, and waited for their range practice to cease.
It kept up for an hour, finishing dramatically with a full barrage from the HBMS Tribune’s and the HBMS Satellite’s port eight-pounders, all twenty of them. And then he heard the Brit marines’ laughter from both ships, rolling across the water as a mocking peripety to their display.
It made him furious at the bastards.
The next morning, the barrage started again and continued every day for the next few days, not on the clock but rather on cue with the pouring of his staff ’s breakfast coffee.
Pickett knew they would be tested by the Brits like this in the same manner as he had seen schoolyard bullies taunt smaller children into flight or futile fight. So he waited calmly for three more days, and then, on the fourth, moved his camp with as much solemn dignity as he could display over to the windy south side of the long spit, out of reach from their sneering morning provocation.
It was on that day that he received the note. It was from Mrs. Emmy Evers. She had chartered a passage to the island and was waiting for him twelve miles away at the harbor they called Roche. Would he meet her there the next day to receive a package she wished to personally deliver?
He did not sleep that night at all, and, as he lay awake in the tent, blustered about by a heavy southerner gale, he tried to reconstruct his feelings the last time they had seen each other. How was she?
He had read in a Victoria newspaper two months ago that a woman, who had preferred to keep her anonymity, had survived an arduous journey and had succeeded in rescuing her son from a band of vicious Northerner aborigines. Word of that feat had spread down the coast, and he had speculated it could only have been Emmy.
But there had been no word from her, and the silence had convinced him he was sadly mistaken. She must have perished.
But now that he knew she was alive, he realized it could only have been her! What would she say? What would she be like?
He needed to know. He was up at five the next morning and waited for another cannonade. But none came. So at nine o’clock, containing himself no longer, he ordered his mount and rode west unaccompanied by an orderly.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Upon her arrival, Emmy had booked lodging for one day with an American couple who maintained a small house overlooking a protected cove shared by two other families, one British and the other loyal to neither country.
As she awaited Pickett, she wondered if he would respond, and when she found herself hoping, she thought again about the propriety of this encounter, curious as to what family and friends might think.
But she reminded herself that she had finally decided she did not really care what anyone thought. Something had compulsively drawn her to Pickett, and she still did not know what it was.
She needed his counsel, she told herself. And she wanted to finish a conversation that had been initiated on the day they had inspected cattle together on Whidbey.
As she watched Pickett ride up in the distance on his strong gray mare, with swelling happiness she thought about the freeing finality of her situation.
The week after she had arrived home with Jacob, she had arranged for a quiet ceremony at Isaac’s grave. Attended only by Jim Thomas who dug into the grave and his wife Princess Susan who sang a quiet dirge, Emmy buried Isaac’s remains—the mask she had stripped from Anah—with the rest of his poor body.
And then it was finished.
She stopped dreaming about him that week, and when word came down about the confrontation on San Juan one week later, she decided she would make this trip. And she decided it was nobody’s
