Chapter 37
FRIDAY
nnie’s attempt to keep her lips moist and
youthful using Vaseline backfired big time. As it turned out,
slathering her lips with petroleum jelly before undergoing five
hours of ultraviolet light was akin to basting a roasting turkey
with butter. She awoke to lips that were sunburned and swollen to
twice their normal size.
“You look like a porn star,” Mel said, when she saw her. Sara raised her eyebrows in alarm and Lola laughed and clamped her hand over her mouth. They were sitting on the porch drinking their coffee. It was late morning, and the sunlight falling across the back deck was so fierce it had driven them beneath the porch roof.
“You poor thing,” Lola said. “Does it hurt?”
As a matter of fact, it did hurt. Annie did her best to sip her lukewarm coffee and finally gave up. They watched her with varying degrees of concern and amusement on their faces. “What?” she asked finally.
“It’s just that you look so different” Sara said. “And in a strange way, attractive.”
Annie thought so, too. She’d stood in front of the bathroom mirror turning her head back and forth. She’d always had thin lips as a girl, and they’d become wafer-thin as she aged. But now she looked like a different woman, someone she didn’t recognize. The effect was both thrilling and terrifying.
“We’re trying to decide what to do tonight,” Mel said, pushing a chair out for Annie. “What about you, Kitten with a Whip? Any ideas?”
“Don’t call me that.” She wondered what Mitchell would say if he could see her now. She thought, for the first time in a long time, of the girl she had once been, small and slim and full of self-confidence. She would give anything if she could be that girl again, if she could go back and undo all the mistakes she’d made.
“Have you ever thought what your name would be if you were a porn star?” Lola asked dreamily.
“No, Lola, that’s something I’ve never honestly thought about,” Sara said.
“I’d be Luscious Lola.”
“I’m kind of partial to Kitty LaFox,” Mel said. “Or maybe Kandy Kleevage.”
“Y’all are disgusting.”
Cicadas hummed in the trees. A sultry breeze blew from the sea, bringing with it the scent of fish and mudflats. Along the low cedar fence separating the house from the dunes, a riotous mass of wild grape grew.
“What are our options?” Annie asked. They all looked at her. “For tonight.”
“It’s our next to the last night on the island,” Mel said. “Let’s do something crazy.”
“Somehow I knew you’d say that.”
“We could take the boat across to Wilmington,” Lola said. “There’s this bar called the Pirate Shack.”
“That sounds perfect,” Mel said.
“It’s usually pretty crowded, but I know the doorman, Dark Steven.”
“Now, Lola, that doesn’t sound very politically correct.”
“No, silly, I call him Dark Steven because he’s prone to depression. His aura’s pretty dark.”
Annie scratched irritably at her leg. She’d been listening to Lola’s weird pronouncements all week and it was getting more and more frustrating. She sometimes felt like she was doing a field study of some strange, primitive person, someone who didn’t speak her language. It was as if Lola was trying to tell them something, but she wasn’t sure what. Annie liked things set forth in black and white, while Lola seemed to prefer the swirling colors of the rainbow. “Ridiculous,” Annie said.
Lola stared at her sadly, as if she was reading Annie’s aura and found it defective.
Annie put her leg down. “Let’s go to the beach.”
“I think you’d better keep your lips out of the sand today, Cherry Poppins,” Mel said.
“Don’t call me that,” Annie said.
“She’s right,” Sara said. “Any more sun on those lips and they might explode.”
“Y’all are real funny,” Annie said. “You two should start a comedy routine.” Why hadn’t she ever considered collagen or Botox? she wondered, fingering her swollen lips. Maybe she could make herself over from head to foot, turn back the hands of time until she was once more a girl, shiny-new and full of promise.
“I think you look pretty,” Lola said.
“Thanks.” Annie touched her swollen lips gently. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple. No matter what she did to her face, no matter how many surgical enhancements she underwent, she could never go back to being a girl. She could never be innocent again. Paul Ballard had seen to that. She had seen to that.
“I say we go over to the mainland and drink with the locals,” Mel said.
“Why does everything you propose always involve alcohol?” Annie asked irritably. No matter how hard she tried, no matter how many lists she wrote, how many rules she followed, how many times she went to church, she couldn’t get it back. How do you believe, in goodness and mercy, when you’d done what she’d done?
“Because we’re on vacation, Little Oral Annie. You got any better ideas?”
Annie gave her a hard look. She wondered if she would have liked herself better if she’d gone off with Paul Ballard her senior year of college, if she’d stayed the spontaneous, devil-may-care girl she’d pretended to be for him. And what would Mel, Sara, and Lola say if they knew about Paul Ballard—would they use the same condescending manner they used with her now? Maybe she’d tell them just to see the looks on their faces. Just to teach them that you can’t always judge a book by its cover. She fingered her swollen lips and imagined the words rolling around on her tongue like something cool and sweet.
But she couldn’t tell them; she couldn’t pull her finger out of the dyke because if she told them even one small thing the rest might come flooding out. Everything.
She pushed herself up suddenly and looked around the table. “I want to do something,” she said. “Something I’ve never done before. That’s what I wrote on my note. The one we put in the little box and buried under the deck. Do something I’ve never done before.”
“Hey, we need to dig those up,” Mel said. She sipped her coffee and stretched her feet out on an empty chaise longue, watching Annie with an amused look. “So I’m curious, Annie. What’s your idea of doing something you’ve never done before?”
“I know you think I’m just an old stick-in-the-mud, Mel, but I’ve done lots of wild and crazy things in my life. I’ve done all sorts of spontaneous things.”
“Oh, really, Wendy Whoppers? Name one.”
“Don’t call me that.” Annie gave her a severe look and then said, “Once I took the boys to school in my pajamas.”
“Shocking!”
Sara frowned, running her finger along the rim of her coffee cup. “Did you actually get out of the car and go in or just drive there and let them out? Because I’ve done that a hundred times.”
It was a stupid example. Annie didn’t know why she’d used it. She could see that they weren’t impressed. “I was wearing leopard-print pajamas and I got into a car accident and had to stand along the side of the road while everyone I knew drove slowly past. It was humiliating. It was the first and only time I ever wore leopard-print pajamas. Mitchell gave them to me for Christmas.”
“Now that’s funny,” Mel said.
Annie didn’t tell them that she was hit from behind by a guy in an old van hand-painted with strange quotes that read like Bible verses. It looked like a hippie van from the ’60s, only instead of peace signs there were crude drawings of what appeared to be the devil, loading people into hell on the prongs of a pitchfork. The driver of the van was tall and thin with matted hair and a long beard. He wore a purple jumpsuit with “Save Jesus” emblazoned across the back. Not “Jesus Saves,” but “Save Jesus.” That should have been a tip-off to his mental state, Annie realized later. “Jesus Saves” was comforting, whereas “Save Jesus” implied a bound and gagged Savior with a gun to his temple. Annie found the image disturbing.
What was more disturbing was the way the crazy guy looked at her as if he knew her. He stood there beside the strange van while she checked her car for damage. He lifted a crooked finger and pointed at her while behind his head a line of utility poles stood against the sky like crucifixes on Golgotha. “Blessed are those whose sins the Lord will never count against them,” he said in a nasal, high-pitched voice.
Annie had stared at him uneasily, then shivered and climbed back into her car. Later, she tried not to take the whole incident as an omen. Moses at the burning bush. Saul on the road to Damascus.
“So you were spontaneous once and it didn’t work out,” Mel said. “You shouldn’t give up. Wild and crazy didn’t work the first time, so try it again.”
Annie gave her a sullen look. “What do you have in mind?”
“Let’s dye your hair.”
Annie sighed. “Fine,” she said.
Mel paused for a moment, as if she hadn’t heard her clearly. Then she leaned forward and slapped the table. “Now you’re talking.”
“Are you sure?” Sara asked doubtfully.
“And I’ll do your makeup,” Lola said, clapping her hands in excitement.
Mel said, “When we’re through with you, even your own mother won’t recognize you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Annie said.
“Hey, Lola, where’d you bury that box?”
Lola got up and walked around to the deck. While she was gone, Mel said, “So it’s settled then? We’ll stay in tonight, get drunk, and give Annie a makeover. Well, maybe not in that order.”
“Definitely not in that order,” Annie said.
When Lola came back a few minutes later she was carrying the box in her hands. It was covered in damp sand, and as she opened the lid, the little strips of paper fluttered gaily in the breeze. She picked one up and read it.
“This one says Do something I’ve never done before. Okay, we know who wrote that. This one says Renew our friendship.” They looked at one another and grinned. Lola smiled shyly and held a strip above her head. “This one says Smoke some weed.”
They all looked at Mel.
“I did not write that,” she said.
Annie’s eyes widened above her porn-star lips. Mel wagged one finger back and forth. “You’re a very naughty girl, Luscious Lola.”
“You’re kidding,” Sara said. “Right?”
“I never did it in college,” Lola said, “and I always wanted to. At least once.”
“I’m not doing something illegal just so you can relive the youth you never had,” Sara said.
“That’s not very generous of you,” Mel said.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Where would we even get some? How do you go about getting it these days?”
Sara said, “Like I said, I’m not doing anything illegal.”
“How about if we do it offshore? How about if we take the boat out into international waters?”
“I’m not boating two hundred miles out to sea to smoke a doobie.”
“I’ll take my chances with maritime law. It’s bound to be less stringent.”
Sara hooted. “Oh, so you’re a lawyer now?”
“Stop being so paranoid. No one’s going to catch us.”
“I’ll bet the Coast Guard hears that a lot.”
The fact that Sara was so against it made it irresistible to Mel. She turned her head and looked at Lola. “Seriously, Lo, where can we get some?”
Lola tapped her nose with one finger. “Leave that to me,” she said. She smiled mysteriously and picked up the last slip of paper. “This one says Fuck Captain Mike.”
“I wonder who wrote that.”
Mel giggled.
Sara said flatly, “We all know that’s not going to happen.”
“Hey,” Mel said. “A girl can dream.”
Sara went with Mel to the store to pick up the Miss Clairol and on the way back they drove through the maritime forest. Sunlight filtered through the overhanging trees. Exotic birds sang in the greenery. From time to time they passed another cart, ambling along from the opposite direction, and Mel raised her hand and waved. Sara sat quietly beside her, looking out at the landscape.
“You’re quiet this morning,” Mel said. “Hungover?”
“I should be, after this week. But I’m not.”
“Everything all right at home?”
Sara didn’t want to talk about home. At least not with Mel. “Sure. Everything’s fine.” She stared at the distant marsh, flat and shimmering beneath the wide blue sky.
Mel picked up the box of Miss Clairol lying on the seat between them and said, “I wonder what got into Annie.”
“Us probably. We always were a bad influence.” Sara looked at her and grinned slowly, and Mel grinned back.
“I’d like to see her get a little outside herself,” Mel said. “She’s grown so rigid over the years.”
“She was always rigid,” Sara said.
“Was she? I don’t remember.”
“Well, maybe not so bad as now.”
Tom had called while they were in the store buying the Miss Clairol and Sara had gone outside to take the call. He sounded tired. “Only two more days,” he’d said, “and then you’ll be home. We miss you.” Something in the way he said we alerted her and she said quickly, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Something’s wrong. I can hear it in your voice.”
“We don’t have to talk about it now. Enjoy the rest of your vacation. We’ll talk about it when you get home.”
Sometimes a marriage, even a good one, reaches a stalemate. They had been married for seventeen years, long enough to have accepted each other’s faults, long enough for their relationship to have deepened into something else. She had always felt that her life with Tom was a series of stages; one ended and the next began on its heels. But then why suddenly did it feel as if they had stopped moving forward? Why did it feel sometimes as if they were treading the same dark water?
“I won’t hang up until you tell me.”
He sighed. “It’s no big deal. Really.”
“You let me be the judge of that.” She dragged it out of him like she always did. Because she’d grown into a chronic worrier and no matter how small the problem she could turn it into something large and dismal. His words. He told her in a strained, clipped voice. Nicky had been stood up by her new boyfriend, who was already seeing another girl, and she was in mourning, refusing to eat. Adam had had a fit at school when he couldn’t get the lid back on his glue bottle and Tom had been called in for a conference. Listening to his weary voice, she’d felt a chill fall over the sunny landscape. The sky seemed less brilliant now, marred by a series of distant clouds. No matter how many good things happened in her own life, it would never be enough. She would never be free from worrying about her children, not even when they were grown and she was an old, old woman.
“Let’s make one stop,” Mel said. They passed the lighthouse and without warning, she braked and swung into the narrow road leading to the museum. In the distance, through the screen of live oaks, they could see the glistening marsh. The post office, museum, and nondenominational church looked deserted. In the grassy clearing between the buildings, a mother sat watching her two children twirl in circles. At the edge of the marsh, the old lighthouse towered against the wide sky.
Mel pulled into the sandy parking area and parked.
“What are we doing here?” Sara asked, looking around the deserted square. The museum door opened and a young man walked out, studying a map. The children cried, “Daddy!” and ran to him.
Mel took the key out of the ignition. “It’s our next to the last day on the island.”
“So?”
“In another couple of days we’ll be flying back to our real lives.”
Sara rolled her shoulders and regarded Mel warily. “I’m not going up in that lighthouse,” she said stiffly.
Mel shrugged. “I’m not asking you to.” She leaned over and checked herself in the rearview mirror, smoothing her hair with her hands.
“You know I’m afraid of heights.”
“You can tour the museum. I won’t be long. It won’t take me a minute to get to the top.”
“That thing was built in 1802. It probably hasn’t been repaired in two hundred years. It’s stupid to go up there.”
Mel grinned like an imbecile. “Stupid is as stupid does,” she said.
“Forrest Gump wouldn’t climb those stairs.”
“He might.”
“Well, he had an IQ of seventy-five, so go ahead, knock yourself out.”
“You didn’t used to be such a chickenshit.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve always been a chickenshit.”
“You used to be fearless. But that’s okay. People change as they get older.”
“That’s right. They get smarter.”
“Okay, I’m going.” Mel stood up and walked off.
“Don’t let go of the rail!” Sara shouted gaily. “Don’t fall fifty feet to your death!” She watched as Mel pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped inside. The young couple gathered their children and climbed back into their golf cart. High above the marsh a hawk circled endlessly. Sara sighed and looked at her feet.
After a minute, she got up and followed Mel.
Inside the lighthouse it was cool and damp. A faint odor of smoke and rotted wood hung in the air, and the stone floor smelled of wet earth. Mel sat on the stairs, waiting for her. She looked up and grinned when she saw Sara. “I knew you’d come,” she said. Light slanted through the high windows and fell in wide swaths around her.
“If I fall, I blame you.”
“Just remember, life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.”
“Shut up and move so I can grab the rail.”
The stairs were narrow and made of tabby. They seemed sturdy but the rickety wooden railing seemed less so. Sara found that by flattening her back against the wall as she climbed, she could see very little of the floor beneath her. Round and round they went, climbing slowly, Mel in front and Sara behind. She tried not to look down. She felt dizzy and sick to her stomach. Why had she let Mel talk her into this? Why, after all these years, was she still letting Mel push her into doing things she didn’t want to do?
The brick wall, covered in whitewashed plaster, was cold against her back. The stairs were worn in the middle from the measured treads of ancient feet. Of long-dead climbers. She wondered what the children and Tom would say if they could see her now. They wouldn’t believe it. Mom, the worrier, the one who saw danger in every situation, who warned constantly of broken bones, cavities, head injuries, and E. coli. Whose favorite refrain was, Don’t do that, don’t touch that, don’t eat that.
When they got to the top, Mel laughed and said, “Doesn’t this place remind you of that Hitchcock movie, Vertigo?” She stood at a narrow window, looking out.
Sara clung to the wall, trying not to look down. Once she’d been fearless and unafraid of life. What had happened to her? “Vertigo,” she said. “Is that about the woman who assumes another woman’s identity after she’s killed by her husband?”
“That’s right.” Mel was standing above her, leaning precariously against the railing and peering down into the shadowy depths. “You know, I could throw you down this staircase and say it was an accident.”
“Then you could assume my life.”
Mel looked at her. She shook the railing slightly. “What makes you think I want your life?”
Sara shrank down on the steps, her back against the wall, her white-knuckled fingers clasping the railing. She tried to imagine Mel faithful to the same man for seventeen years, saddled with two children whose lives would always overshadow her own, but she couldn’t. She tried to imagine herself living the life of a bohemian artist, unencumbered by loyalty and responsibility, but she couldn’t. She and Mel had made their own choices. It was too late to start second-guessing it all now.
Mel gave her a curious look and stopped shaking the railing. She came slowly down the stairs, and, stepping over Sara, she stopped a couple of steps below her. “Here,” she said. “Hold onto the wall with one hand and my shoulder with the other. I’ll lead you down.”
“I can’t let go,” Sara said.
“Yes, you can. Here.” She pried Sara’s hands gently off the railing, putting one against the wall and the other on her shoulder. “Face the wall. Look at the wall as we climb down.”
“Go slowly.”
“I will.”
Mel led her carefully back down the staircase. It seemed to take an eternity, their footsteps echoing in the murky darkness. Bands of sunlight striped the plaster walls. When they reached the bottom, Sara sank down onto the steps, her head resting on her knees. She felt weak with relief, sweaty and light-headed, and curiously detached from her body.
Mel said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made you do something like that.”
Sara sat with her head on her knees, still fighting a feeling of dizziness. She was reminded suddenly of a long-ago trip she had taken with her family. It was not long after Adam’s diagnosis and they were driving from Atlanta to North Carolina to visit Tom’s parents. It was a gray and rainy day, approaching dusk. Outside the sky was dark and rain-swept but inside the car was cozy and dimly lit. The children were in the backseat, sleeping. Sara turned around to look at them. In sleep, Adam looked perfect, beautiful, a mirror image of Tom. She turned again to face the road, her mind caught up in its usual endless loop: Would Adam ever have a normal life? Would he ever have a girlfriend, go to college, know the joys of fatherhood? All the little things we take for granted in our bustling, hurried lives. Overcome by a deep feeling of sadness, her eyes fixed on the yellow lines of the highway, she experienced a sudden profound shift in perception. It was like falling abruptly, like slipping between drops of rain. It was as if her emotions, attached to her thoughts, had suddenly let go. She was alone, floating free in a moment of perfect stillness. She thought, This is what it feels like to die.
It happened in less time than it took the car to hurtle past an abandoned house, in less time than it took the loop of negativity to start again in her head like an endless clang of straining winches and rusty gears. And yet for one profound moment she had glimpsed the possibility of a world without attachment, without pain, and she clung to that feeling as they hurtled through the darkness, weary travelers on an unknown road.
“Are you okay?” Mel asked, lightly touching her shoulder.
Sara stood up. Dust motes swirled in the slash of sunlight. “I need a drink,” she said.
Everyone was stunned by Annie’s transformation. Even Captain Mike did a double take when he saw her. They had worked on her all afternoon, and now she stood in the middle of the great room, waiting for the reveal. She was dressed in a low-cut blouse and a pair of white capri slacks that made her look slim and youthful. With her hair colored and her face made up, she looked ten years younger. Standing at the great room mirror admiring herself, Annie wished the snotty mothers in her sons’ preschool class could see her now. She was pretty sure no one would call her Q-Tip.
“You look fantastic,” Sara said.
“I told you hair color would make all the difference,” Mel said.
“Just like Cinderella,” Lola said, clapping her hands. She jumped up and down like a cheerleader.
Captain Mike was in the kitchen helping April with supper. He looked up at Lola’s clapping, and smiled.
“What do you think, Captain Mike?” Mel asked, eyeing him boldly. “What do you think of our little Eliza Doolittle?”
He shook his head and grinned so deeply his dimply showed. “Wow,” he said.
Under his close appraisal, Annie felt her face flush. She stared at herself in the mirror, smoothing her Vixen Brown hair with one hand, noting the way it brought out her eyes, the way it framed her face. Amazing how so simple a change could make such a big difference. She wondered what Mitchell would say.
“And that blouse, too,” Mel said. “You have a nice figure. You should show some cleavage more often.”
The blouse was Mel’s, of course, and she had insisted that Annie wear it. It wasn’t something Annie would have ever picked out for herself but somehow, with the new hair and lips and makeup, it worked. Standing in front of the long mirror, perusing the strange creature who peered back at her in the glass, she was amazed and oddly elated. She looked like a new woman.
“If you girls are ready, you should probably get going,” Captain Mike said. It was after dinner, and he and April were in the kitchen finishing up the dishes. The women had decided to take a drive in the moonlight, on this, their last night on the island. Tomorrow they would spend the night on the yacht, moored in some magical place Lola had yet to show them, and the following morning Captain Mike would motor them over to the ferry landing so they could catch the limo to the airport.
The sun was setting as they set out on the golf cart. The sky was a deep purple, streaked with red, and the sea breeze was warm and steady. They took the maritime forest road. Mel drove with Lola in the front with her. Annie and Sara sat in the back.
Long shadows fell across the forest road. Crickets sang in the dense underbrush. Out in the tidal creeks skirting the marsh, a group of herons stood like old men on a street corner.
“What’s the name of this place where we’re going?” Mel asked Lola.
“Runaway Hill,” Lola said.
“Why do they call it that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.” She was wearing a denim miniskirt, a white lace top, and a pair of strappy sandals, and she looked like a young girl. “I’ve been there lots of times!” she added.
“By yourself?”
Lola smiled faintly. “Sometimes,” she said.
The climb up the ridge was a steep one, and Annie and Sara finally climbed off the back of the cart and walked up. The asphalt trail meandered up the side of the dune and ended in a small parking lot overlooking the sea. Halfway down the ridge on the other side, two dilapidated cottages stood, facing the sea.
“What are those?” Mel asked Lola, pointing. They sat on the cart in the gathering darkness, waiting for Sara and Annie to climb the ridge.
“The old caretakers’ cottages. Back before the civil war the lighthouse keeper and his family lived there. Back before the island was developed.”
It took Annie and Sara several minutes to reach the summit, and when they did, they threw themselves down onto the back of the golf cart.
“That was a climb,” Sara said breathlessly. Evening was falling swiftly, the light glimmering along the dunes and the distant rim of beach. To the north and east stretched the wide Atlantic, an immense darkness along the horizon. To the south stretched a long expanse of deserted beach and windswept dunes. There were no lights except for the distant glimmer of the lighthouse, visible just above the tree line.
It was a lonely place. Annie shuddered, wishing now that she’d worn a sweater over Mel’s flimsy blouse.
“Remember when we used to go to Myrtle Beach for spring break?” Sara asked.
“I remember,” Mel said.
“It seems like only yesterday.”
The four of them would load up the car with beer and beach towels and take turns driving from Bedford to Myrtle Beach. They’d gone their sophomore year and Annie had been so embarrassed because Mitchell had followed her there, showing up at three o’clock in the morning at their hotel door with a cooler full of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. It was a girls’ trip, and boyfriends weren’t supposed to come. Mel had told J.T. Radford he couldn’t come and he’d gone off someplace else with a bunch of his buddies but Mitchell hadn’t wanted male companionship; he’d wanted her. It was embarrassing hearing all the girls talk about how sweet and “crazy in love” Mitchell was. He didn’t have any money, of course, so he’d spent the night sleeping on the floor of their hotel room. He made himself at home, and by the end of the week he was just one of the girls, laughing and drinking with the rest of them, letting them paint his fingernails and do his hair because that was Mitchell’s way. He liked people and they liked him back. At the time it had pissed Annie off. She’d felt like there was something wrong with him, loving her the way he did. No one else’s boyfriend was like that. Well, maybe J.T., but he pretty much did what Mel told him to do. If she’d told him to worship her from afar, he’d have done it. Annie could tell Mitchell to leave her alone and he’d just laugh and ask her what she wanted for dinner.
“Remember that time Mitchell showed up?” Mel said.
“That was the best trip.”
“He was so much fun. I’m only sorry he wasn’t there for all our trips.”
“He drove all that way just to be with Annie,” Lola said.
“Wait until he gets a look at her now,” Sara said.
Annie smiled shyly. Listening to them talk, a funny thing happened. It started small, a pinpoint of emptiness in the pit of her stomach that swelled and grew slowly to a hollow feeling just beneath her breastbone. She thought at first it might be heartburn, before she recognized it for what it was. Homesickness. Loneliness. She missed Mitchell.
They were quiet for a moment, enjoying the view. There was no sound but the steady crashing of the surf and the low roar of the wind coming up the ridge.
Annie wondered what Mitchell was doing right now. Funny how you could become accustomed to the sound of one man’s voice, the touch of one man’s arms around your waist. She and Mitchell had known each other for thirty years. They had been through a lot. They’d built a business and raised two fine boys and suffered the death of a baby. A miscarriage, twenty-six weeks after Carleton’s birth. Annie had felt like she could never be happy until she’d held a daughter in her arms but after the miscarriage she’d changed her mind. She’d been afraid then to try again, afraid the Lord was giving her a sign that she was, in some way, unworthy. Or at least that’s how it had felt to her at the time, lost in her guilt and grief.
“I’ve had a lot of fun on this trip but I’m looking forward to going home,” Sara said quietly.
“Yes,” Annie said.
She pictured Mitchell slumped in front of the TV in his favorite recliner, his stockinged feet pointed at the screen, his one glass of red wine, carefully poured out and measured according to the doctor’s instructions, resting on a side table. Things that had once annoyed her about Mitchell, seen now in the gentle light of missing him, seemed incredibly dear. His snoring, his dirty laundry left on the bathroom floor, his loud honks and gags as he cleared his throat every morning. In the movies, love was always loud and passionate; it was always unrelenting and tragic. She had had a taste of that kind of love with Paul Ballard. But there was a different kind too, a slow, quiet contentment that built gradually over time, a feeling based on trust and fortitude, on the shared experiences of raising children, on grief and hardship and joy. That was the love Annie felt for Mitchell. She had never, until this moment, realized it so clearly. She loved Mitchell, and yet she had come so incredibly close to losing him.
“We should do this again,” Mel said.
“Every year,” Sara said.
“Yes,” Annie said.
She had come close to losing him through her own fault. Things that had seemed beyond her control at the time, situations that had caused her pain, had worked out for the best. Well, most of them had anyway; there were some things you could never explain or do over, you just had to accept them. Maybe that’s what grace was. Maybe you had to reach a certain age before you could look back and see it at work in your life.
Annie put her head back and stared up at the starry sky. A bright yellow moon rose over the sea, bathing the ridge in a clear, luminous light. One thing was certain, though. When she got back to Nashville, she was introducing Mitchell to Agnes Grace.
A phone rang suddenly, startling them with its insistent chirping. Sara pulled her cell out of her purse and checked the display. “It’s my husband,” she said, rising.
“Talk about timely,” Mel said.
Sara walked a little ways down the ridge. When she came back, a short while later, she was smiling.
“Does he miss you?” Annie asked, wondering if it was too late to call Mitchell.
Sara grinned. “Is the pope Catholic?” she said.
“How are Tom and the kids anyway?”
Mel groaned. “Haven’t we talked enough about the husband and kids? Christ, that’s all I’ve heard all week.”
“He’s fine,” Sara said to Annie. “They’re fine.” She cut her eyes over to Mel and then back to Annie. “Thanks for asking.”
Mel raised her hands apologetically. “It’s not that I don’t care,” she said. “It’s just that I figure J.T. has his hands full, what with taking care of the kids while you’re gone.”
“Don’t call him that,” Sara said. “No one’s called him that since college.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Radford.”
“His name is Tom,” she said, shoving the phone back into her purse. “That’s the name he goes by now.”