The Edge of the Earth by Christina Schwarz

contained my coral necklace, as well as a page torn roughly from one of Oskar’s notebooks.
    Dearest Trudy,
    It is not my right to call you that, but you are my Dearest Trudy. I dare to say it because you have a good and true heart, the best I’ve ever known, and you won’t laugh at my poor self but be sorry to have caused such feelings in me when of course you cannot return them. Believe me when I say I’ve fought against this idiocy—I’ve sat my feelings down and given them a stern talking-to and even licked ’em once or twice until they bled—but they only laugh at me. They know what they want and will not be dissuaded by anyone so trifling as me. And so I’m writing to tell you that I plan to leave for California at once. I would not hurt my cousin nor cause you embarrassment. I will, however, love you always.
    Yours without hope,
    Oskar
    P.S. I’m sorry that I took your necklace. I so desired the thing that had lain against your beautiful skin that I couldn’t help myself. I’m sorry I stole your necklace, but you’ve done far worse. You’ve stolen my heart.
    I was powerfully moved by the idea that he planned to sacrifice himself. (Even while I recognized that his claim of hopelessness was merely proper modesty, for what was the letter itself if not hope?) I was enraptured by the notion of a love so fierce it would not be extinguished. I was nineteen, after all, too newly hatched into womanhood to have grown any protective carapace against the pressure of ardency. I don’t accuse him of guile. I believe he produced these sentiments in the same spirit in which I craved them. That is ever the story of love.
    I needed no more than the passion I saw in this letter to refine the clay he’d presented me into a finely molded figure. I admired his intensity of focus, his determination to do something in the world—qualities I wished for myself but feared I lacked either by virtue of my temperament or because I was not a man. The criticisms I’d heard of him were nothing except the fears of those who had neither dreams nor daring. I saw that he had superior understanding, and with it he saw me as no one else did, as someone different, even—dare I say?—better than others had supposed. I believed that he might make my life into something I couldn’t even picture, because it was so far beyond my experience that I had not the imagination to conjure it.
    And so, as my mother said, I ruined everything.

CHAPTER 7
    O UR FIRST BREAKFAST at Point Lucia was pilot bread, which turned out to be hard enough to break a tooth on. Dipping it in coffee would have helped, but the beans Mrs. Crawley had given me were green, and even supposing I’d had the stove lit and could figure out which apparatus was meant to be a roaster, I’d not have had them browned, ground, and boiled before noon.
    “I’m afraid it’s not a very good first meal.”
    “Never mind.” Oskar swallowed his down. “You’ll figure it out.” And then he was standing again, pushing his hat onto his head. “Best not be late.”
    I followed him to the door. I didn’t want to call him back; I believed that I’d a duty not to, but I felt a sort of panic rise in my throat and couldn’t help myself. “Oskar!”
    “Yes?”
    “But . . . well . . . what should I do today?”
    “Oh.” He smiled. “I’m sure you’ll find something.” He kissed me cheerfully, stepped into the cold, damp air, and was gone.
    The dawn had just begun to gray the kitchen. I knew the place needed cleaning badly, but it was too dark to attempt it. I turned down the lamp and went back up the stairs, aware with every chilly step that I now lived in a pile of stone, perched at the top of a rock, hanging over the sea. The pulse of the ocean penetrated the windows—or it may have been my heart sounding in my ears—and in time to it, I found myself repeating Mrs. Crawley’s words: “No one comes here. No one comes here.” How different this morning would have been