Message in a Bottle

Moira held the thin wisps of paper gently between her fingertips. They rustled with age in the breeze that had picked up on the shore and now explored her porch. She set them down on her lap again and allowed the salty air to cool the tears on her hot cheeks.

The stranger seemed quite content to allow her all the time in the world to sit, crumpled against the weight of those three sheets of foolscap. How like his father he was. The way his auburn hair was graying in distinguished, peppered, flecks in his sideburns, and the way his hazel eyes were lazily hooded against the low, bright, Irish autumn sky.

"Thank you," was all she felt she could say. Her throat had dried and her voice sounded old, feeble and cracked. Like she was.

He sighed and moved the porch chair closer to hers before reaching behind her and draping her favorite shawl about her shoulders.

"When I read it, I knew you had a right to know." He spoke softly with that confident American lilt that she'd loved to listen to on the radio plays. "I'm so sorry, Mrs Howerd. I really am, but he made me promise on his death bed and, well, when I read it...."

He was halted by the wounded gaze she held him in and then by the softness that followed an instant behind it.

"No. It was good of you to come," she smiled, weakly at him. "All this way to deliver a message in a bottle. So soon after the funeral too. It was very kind of you. You must be all over the place, yourself?"

Jon guffawed, sagged and ran a hand through his hair.

"Oh, yeah," he conceded. "At least my mom wasn't around to find out."

He checked himself, wary of any extra hurt he inadvertently caused her. She was the victim here, after all. Well, one of them, he comforted himself.

"I never knew," he continued. "Sure, there were times we were out on the Point and I'd find him looking out to sea, looking sad, carefully not talking about Ireland."

He reached forward for the rapidly cooling coffee she had made him prior to reading the letter. He caught a glimpse of the young wife that his father had abandoned reflected in it's milky surface.

"I thought he was dead." Was all she felt able to say. She was numbed by it all and began to re-roll the letter to put it back in the little glass coffin of the coke bottle.

"Kept it on his desk for as long as I can remember." He nodded toward it. "I asked him once, who it was from. Know what he said? 'A long dead sailor with a woman in every port'."

He saw Moira blanched and he reached out to clasp the frail hand in front of him. "Oh, I 'm sorry, Mrs. Howerd. I guess I am all over the place. You were his first wife. Heck, you were his legal wife.."

They had managed to avoid the bigamy issue until now. One glance at each other reassured them both that it was a subject that would never warrant an airing.

"Well, like I said; thank you, Jon." She rose awkwardly and allowed him to help her.

His taxi had arrived to take him back to the airport. He'd be back on his business schedule in London tomorrow and he knew he'd never return to Ireland. Taking one last look at the familiar bottle, held so delicately in this woman's hands, he placed his hat back on his head and turned the collar up on his coat. He didn't look back and neither did she.

(623 wds)