I back away from the window when he turns the glasses in my direction but still, before he sails off into the open bay, he waves, as if he's sure I'm watching.
He repeats his visit the next day, disappears for almost a week, then visits us again, this time with the Morton woman on board. It becomes a pattern, a few times each week for him to sail around us-sometimes alone, sometimes with the woman. At each circumnavigation of the island he sails closer, always staring at the land, studying the house.
October passes, then November. During that time my pregnant bride's body progresses from slightly rounded to moderately swollen. Elizabeth complains about her human form, insists on buying new clothes each week. She gives up driving her Corvette and switches to the more comfortable seating of my Mercedes. Our lovemaking, once a daily affair, diminishes to random, occasional couplings. Elizabeth spends less time in her garden, asks less often to go to the mainland and, when we do go, complains that bumping across the bay jostles her too much.
Food, always important to her, becomes her primary interest. While we continue to hunt and feed each evening, it no longer suffices for her. I begin to defrost steaks each afternoon. Elizabeth accepts them without uttering a single complaint.
No matter the weather, Santos manages to continue to visit the waters around us at least once each week. Elizabeth ignores his presence completely. When I point out his boat to her, she says, "It's in your power to stop him."
It is. Arturo wants to eliminate him, requests I let him do it each time we speak. Unable to get my permission for that, he offers to have the Marine Patrol harass him or to arrange for the police to arrest him again for DUI. "I finally had the opportunity to talk to the manager at Joe's," he tells me. "The man assured me that for the right sum of money, Santos will be fired any time we request it. And one of the governor's aides has promised me the state will be glad to offer him a ranger's job at the Castillo San Marcos in Saint Augustine in the event he needs a new job. If you want"-Arturo grins, obviously proud of his ability to manipulate events-"we can get the Herald to transfer Casey Morton to their Jacksonville office too."
I refuse all of it. "He's harmless," I tell Arturo. And I repeat to Elizabeth, "Nothing's happened since October. If the man could do anything, he would have done it by now. If he wants to serve his dead sister by sailing around my island a few times each week, so be it."
Still, whenever his boat arrives, I stop whatever activity occupies me and turn my attention to his movements. Some days, when the wind and water collude to provide safe passage for him, I envy his time on the boat. I've sailed Hobie Cats myself and know the pleasure of skimming across the water before a stiff breeze.
On the days that the weather turns bad, the wind punishing Santos with its gusts and shifts, the waves leaping around him, threatening to engulf him, I wonder at his perseverance, wonder if I would be so constant, so willing to risk injury for a lost cause.
"I admire him," I say to Elizabeth when she refuses to look at the catamaran cruising off the island's shore.
"Why give the fool any recognition?" She shakes her head. "What he does accomplishes nothing. One day he'll realize that and go away."
She harumphs and walks from me when I say, "At least he'll be able to tell himself, he tried his best for his sister."
Chapter 22
Elizabeth's appetite amazes me. By mid-December, she takes to consuming her human prey each evening, as well as two twenty-four-ounce steaks upon awakening and another two each afternoon. She catches and eats so many of our younger dogs that I have to ask her to stop, lest our pack declines so much it no longer represents a threat to outsiders.
"The child must be fed," she says. "I have to maintain our strength."
I nod and take my swollen bride in my arms, smile when she accepts and returns my embrace, holding me longer than she used to. Pregnancy has softened her, made her more needful of my affection. I find I like her wanting more from me than sex and food. We often spend hours sitting side by side in the great room, watching the waters outside, silently enjoying the warmth of each other's company. Other days we walk on the island's beaches, holding hands, discussing our future.
Elizabeth provides no argument about the child's first name. "Henri," she says, "is a fine name, a strong name. Could we give him my father's name too?"
"Of course." I smile at the weight of such a name-Henri Charles DelaSangre-for such a small, yet-unborn presence. I wish he could be born sooner. I possess no doubt that Elizabeth will be a good mother. Already she has begun to prepare a birthing chamber in one of the other bedrooms, helping me scrub down the walls and floors, reminding me again and again that we'll need fresh hay when her time nears.
I no longer wonder about our relationship. "If you demand perfection from your mate," Father taught me, "then you must learn to expect loneliness in your life."
As much as I would like Elizabeth to share more of my likes and dislikes, I find myself cherishing the time we spend together. She may not care for books, but she seems to enjoy sitting at my side while I read them. She may not love music, but she tolerates my listening to the stereo. We both smile at each other's presence, both reach out to touch each other whenever we're near and, I think, if it never gets any better, it still can be more than enough for me.
Even Santos no longer seems to bother her. When his boat conies into view, she no longer leaves my side. We discuss the water conditions and his sailing technique. "After the baby's born, I'd like to learn to sail a boat like that," she says. "Will you buy me one?"
"Sure," I tell her.
The first true winds of winter arrive a few days before Christmas. For the first time since summer, the sun fails to warm the midday air. Outside, the wind beats against our closed windows, moans when it can't force its admittance. I take one look at the gray skies, the frenzied, frigid waves leaping on the bay and call the office, tell Emily to cancel my weekly meeting with Gomez and Tindall. Then I build a fire in the great room for Elizabeth and me. "This is Florida," I say. "It's not supposed to get this cold."
Elizabeth grins, shakes her head at my discomfort. "The weatherman says it's only sixty degrees. At home it grows colder than this every night," she says. "You're acting as if a blizzard has attacked us when we both know it will be warm again in a few days."
I leave her laughing in the great room while I go below to light a fire in our bedroom. Elizabeth mindspeaks to me a few minutes later. "He's here again."
"Santos?" I say. "In this weather?"
Elizabeth joins me at the window, watches with me as the sailboat fights its way through the water, one hull rising and lowering with each wind gust, the boat almost going airborne as it races from wave to wave. "He's crazy," I say.
"They're both crazy," Elizabeth says and I nod when she points out Casey Morton standing, busy working the jib lines, helping keep the boat from flipping by leaning out away from the Hobie, supported only by her feet against the trampoline and a wire suspended from the top of the mast, connected to a canvas sling beneath her rear.
"It's called being out on a trapeze," I say to Elizabeth, pointing to the other wire that supports Santos in the same way.
In their full black wetsuits, they look to me like two shadows sailing. "No life jackets," I say, shaking my head. But I have to admire his control, the Hobie leaping and bucking, slicing the tops off waves as it overtakes them.
Santos amazes me by turning and zigzagging north, battling the vicious north wind until he finally reaches the channel between my island and Wayward Key. The boat turns toward the channel, slows for a moment, wallows in the rough sea, then shoots forward. Santos and Morton lean back, away from the boat as the windward hull rises, Morton shifting position, her left foot slipping.