The Boatman's Wife(16)

Lily wanted to ask her father more questions. Every detail of each last moment before Connor had gone over, but a doctor came in and said they should let him sleep.

‘Go home, get some rest,’ she and her mom were told.

They lingered out in the hospital corridor.

‘Shall we go see Ryan, see how he’s doing?’ her mom asked her gently.

‘Sure,’ Lily said, though all she wanted was to lie on the clean hospital floor and scream like a small child with a tantrum: I want my husband back!



Cherie, Lou and Angie were grouped around Ryan’s bed. Her cousin was sleeping, and still attached to all the machines. All three of the women got up as soon as they walked in, and huddled around Lily. She felt herself falling into the circle of women, shaking with her grief and shock. Their tears were falling, words between them few, as the five Smyth women clung on to each other. Aunt Cherie took her hands, squeezing them tight.

‘I’m here for you, Lily,’ she said. ‘We all are.’

But her words didn’t make Lily feel any better.

All the long drive home in the car, she kept asking her mom what she thought had happened. But her mom couldn’t answer her.

‘You heard your daddy,’ she told Lily. ‘He got caught up in the lobster trap line.’

‘But why wasn’t it put away in the barrel?’ Lily said. ‘What were the traps doing set up to go out, when they should have been on their way home?’

‘I don’t know, Lily,’ her mom said, her voice tense and tired.

‘But I want him back!’ she began to wail.

Her mom looked a little frightened. She’d never seen Lily like this before. Even as a little girl, she’d been stoic.

‘It should have been me,’ Lily said. Though they both knew, Lily would have never got caught up in the lobster trap rope.



As her mom pulled into their drive, flakes of snow fluttered in the light from the headlamps. The wind had dropped again, and after the violence of the storm, everything seemed so quiet and hushed. Lily looked across the front garden to the unlit windows of her and Connor’s house, and her stomach felt tight with dread. How could she ever walk back through its front door?

‘Why don’t you stay in your old bedroom, with me?’ her mom suggested.

‘Okay,’ Lily said. Her head was all over the place ‘But I need to get my wash things.’

‘They can wait, honey,’ her mom said, taking her daughter’s hand and leading her through their yard.

The house was as they’d left it when Lily had rushed off to Cherie’s with her mom in tow. The TV and coffee maker had both been left switched on, the residue of coffee a hard brown stain in the bottom of the pot.

Lily stood swaying in front of the fireplace, staring at a picture of herself and Connor with her parents, taken the summer before at the Lobster Boat Races. Big smiles plastered on their faces. Oblivious of the tragedy that lay in wait for them just a few months down the line.

‘You want anything to eat?’ her mom asked, looking at her with concern. Lily could see how desperately her mom wanted to take her loss for her. But there was nothing she could do, so she’d switched to her default. Cooking, just like Connor always did. Connor. His name felt like a rock in the pit of her belly.

Lily shook her head. She felt like she’d never want to eat again.

‘No,’ she said, her voice sounding out of herself. ‘I just want to go to bed.’

She stumbled into her childhood bedroom and fell onto her old bed, still dressed in her damp clothes. She didn’t care if she got a cold. Cared about nothing. The wall was hung with photographs of her dad, Ryan and herself on fishing trips when she and her cousin had been thirteen. One of her grandfather’s old buoys, painted in stripes of the Smyth colours – blue, red, white and green – leaned up in the corner of the room. Seashells were lined up on the windowsill, and trophies of all the competitions she’d won stood on the shelves.

In darkness, tears streamed down her face, until exhaustion pushed her into unconsciousness.



Lily woke up with a jolt. Where was she? Not in her and Connor’s bed. The room smelt different. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she recognised the outline of her childhood dressing table. She was at home, in her old bed. What was she doing here?

The truth slammed into her, made her gasp in her horror. No. It couldn’t be true.

She got out of bed and ran across the hallway into her parents’ bedroom. She could see the single hump of her mom in the bed.

‘Mom!’ she called out. ‘Mom!’

Her mom sat up in the bed, leant over and turned on the beside lamp, pushing her hair out of her face.

‘It’s not true, is it? Mom, tell me it’s not true.’

Her mother’s face folded like a small child’s.

‘Oh, Lily,’ she said.

‘No, Mom, no!’ Lily wailed, climbing onto the bed, and clinging on to her mom. It couldn’t be true.

Her mom wrapped her arms around Lily and she clung on to her, but it didn’t make her feel any better. She prayed to God, asked him to send her a miracle. Make time go backwards. Start today all over again. She would have held on to Connor’s hand. Told him to stay in bed with her.



She must have fallen asleep again, because next thing she felt sunlight on her face, and her mom’s phone ringing. Her mom leant across her to answer it.