The Guest Book (20 page)

T
here wasn’t much food to put in the cooler as they packed up to leave. The car would be lighter than when they’d come, but their hearts would be heavier with the weight of saying good-bye to Sunset Beach. They each moved slower, not wanting to finish loading the car, which would declare the vacation officially over. Macy glanced around, noting how empty the house looked without Emma’s stray flip-flop cast aside in the den, Brenda’s ongoing novel turned upside down on the coffee table, Max’s random half-filled mugs of coffee left in various locations. She thought about the guest book, tucked back in its hiding place in her closet. A small part of her wondered if the artist would ever come looking for it. She smiled at the thought of returning next year to find a new picture. It could happen, she thought. But she didn’t need it to
anymore. That hadn’t stopped her from drawing one last picture. She smiled at the thought of what she’d left behind, just in case. Nate had challenged her to believe in the fairy tale. That picture was one small way of continuing to do so. She could believe in miracles, even when they didn’t come the way she expected or when she wanted.

“Emma, go make sure you got all your bathing suits off the back porch,” she told her daughter, who was pouting on the stairs.

Emma crossed her arms and stuck out her bottom lip. “I. Don’t. Want. To. Leave.” She punctuated her statement with an angry stomp of a foot.

Macy sat down beside her and pulled her close. “Oh, Emma Lou, neither do I.” She pointed at Max, who was coming in from carrying down the heavy stuff, sweat dripping down his face. He grimaced at them. “And neither does Max.” She glanced around the room for her mom but didn’t see her. She was probably next door with Buzz. “And wherever Grandma is, she doesn’t want to either.”

“Then why can’t we stay?”

“Because this isn’t our home. We have a home to go back to. This is a vacation, and you can’t stay on vacation forever.”

“I wish we could,” Emma said with a sigh.

Macy planted a kiss on top of her head. “Me too, baby. Me too.”

“Grandma says she’s going to come back and visit Buzz and maybe I can come. Do you think I can?”

Macy laughed. If she knew her mom, she knew she’d be
planning another trip very soon. Something special was happening between her and Buzz. There was no denying that. “Sure. You can be their chaperone.”

“What’s a shap-roam?” Emma asked.

With a laugh, she waved in the direction of the porch, where two bathing suits that had been hung up to dry were waving in the ocean breeze. “Nothing. Bathing suits. That way.”

As they packed the rest of the things and finished loading the car, Macy thought about the name of the house. She wished she could save time in a bottle, save every day to spend it with the ones she loved just like they had the past two weeks. Too bad life didn’t work that way. At some point, you had to go home. One more stop and they’d be on their way.

Macy held tightly to Emma’s hand as they made their way through the crowd to get a better vantage point. The crowd was so thick, she kept bumping into people, mumbling, “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me,” over and over. She couldn’t believe this many people had shown up for the unveiling of some statue. She looked around for Brenda and Buzz, who had been swallowed up by the crowd when Buzz had gone to join the panel of “Special Guests” seated across the makeshift platform Wyatt had built. The platform was situated just behind what Macy guessed was the mysterious sculpture, though it was covered by a sheet. The wind caught the sheet and almost blew it off, but
a woman jumped up and caught it, holding it down. She stood there with an embarrassed grin.

“Hey.” Wyatt came up behind her and patted her shoulder, looking shy and uncertain. She smiled at him, glad she could see him once more before they left. Last night had been an indication that things weren’t going to be as easy as she’d hoped. But she wanted to at least smooth things over so she could leave on a good note. She couldn’t help but wonder, if Wyatt had turned out to be the one who’d drawn the pictures, would she have been so casual about things not working out?

She pushed the thought aside and concentrated on the action taking place. The panel of local dignitaries was assembled, and she saw Buzz waving at them from his seat of honor. Nate was also seated on the row of folding chairs, so Macy gave him a little wave too. A woman got up to speak, but Macy could barely hear her above the people talking in the crowd and the wind blowing. The best she could tell, the woman was saying something about the artist who created the sculpture.

Finally the woman holding the sheet yanked on it. It fell away, revealing a beautiful metal sculpture of a little girl with her arms stretched out, reaching for seagulls as they swooped over her head. Emma clapped her hands together, delighted. Macy realized Emma probably thought the sculpture was of her, and she imagined all little girls must feel that way. Though she feared life would teach her differently, she wanted Emma to always have that innate sense of worth. She would do her best to instill it in her while she had the opportunity.

“Hey,” Wyatt said, nudging her out of her thoughts, “that
sculpture looks just like the picture from the guest book. The one of you feeding the birds.”

Macy took a second look at the sculpture and her heart clenched. Sure enough, the sculpture was exactly like the picture. “I think it is,” she said. She had spent so much time on this trip looking back through the guest book, memorizing each picture—both his and hers. She scanned the faces of the people on the panel, trying to discern who had created the sculpture, wondering if one of them had been the artist she’d been looking for all this time. None of this made sense. Was it just coincidence that this sculpture was exactly like her picture? Maybe it was — plenty of little girls fed seagulls. She was about to laugh it off when she noticed Buzz waving a man up to the stage.

She blinked in shock as Dockery humbly walked onto the stage, holding Rebecca’s hand. Rebecca was positively glowing with pride, but Dockery looked as though he’d rather be anywhere else. She saw him scan the crowd, looking everywhere but at the sculpture. She kept her eyes on his every movement, knowing what this all meant, yet unable to make sense of it.

Dockery had been the artist all along, yet he’d denied it when she asked. He’d been so mysterious the whole time — finagling time with her, yet evading her at the same time. And then his sculpture—their sculpture—was unveiled while he held another woman’s hand. His eyes found hers and she looked at him, confusion and hurt etched on her face. Still holding Rebecca’s hand, he held up his palm and pressed his lips into a thin line as if to say, “Oh, well.”

She thought of him on her porch that day, teasing her about the seagulls. He’d known exactly what he was doing, exactly what feeding the seagulls meant to both of them. So why hadn’t he admitted it?

“That’s Dockery!” Emma exclaimed. She let go of Macy’s hand and began weaving her way through the crowd to get closer to the platform.

“Emma!” Macy yelled—not just because she was afraid of losing her in the crowd but because she really just wanted to get out of there, not move closer to
him.
It was time to stop all this madness. Once and for all, she had to put the guest book in its place and the artist—Dockery—with it. She had to stop holding onto things that weren’t real.

Her eyes moved to the large sculpture that thousands of tourists would see each year as they entered Ocean Isle Beach. That was real. A part of what she and Dockery had shared was now evident for all the world to see. Was that what he’d wanted? She pushed her way through the crowd —Wyatt following—trying to catch up to Emma, who’d made it to the platform in record time. The crowd began to break up, and the panel rose to their feet just as Dockery pulled Emma up to join him.

“Mom, look!” Emma said, unfazed, as Macy finally reached her. “Dockery made the statue! He’s a real artist like you!”

She thought of that day on the beach when he’d told her he worked in his family business. And when she’d asked him about the guest book, he’d only said he couldn’t help her with it. He hadn’t lied, but he hadn’t told her the truth either.

“Isn’t he a good artist, Mommy?” Emma asked, dancing around on the platform as Macy stood on the ground, coaxing her to come down.

“Yes,” she said, not looking at Dockery. “He’s a good artist. I’m sure he’s been practicing all his life.” She couldn’t resist the reference to their shared past, the acknowledgment of what hung between them. She thought of the afternoon on the beach, the night at the miniature golf course, the moment she’d run into him on the front porch. It had been right there, right in front of her. “Now we’ve got to go home, so come on down please.”

She heard Dockery, in a soft voice, say, “Sure, run home like you always do.” She ignored his words but knew exactly what he was referring to, his own acknowledgment.

“You’re leaving today?” Rebecca asked. Macy didn’t miss the look of relief on her face.

“Yes,” Macy said politely. She turned to go. Wyatt had disappeared, and she hoped it wasn’t because he had figured out what was going on. She wanted to tell him good-bye, to keep her promise to see what would happen between them. Dockery’s revelation, she told herself, didn’t change a thing.

Emma flung herself into Macy’s arms, nearly knocking them both down. Macy tried to find her mother, but she couldn’t see her in the crowd and decided her best bet was to walk back to the car and hope her mom would do the same.

“Wait!” she heard Dockery say as she and Emma began to walk away.

Emma planted her heels in the ground like a stubborn
mule. “Dockery’s calling us, Mommy! Don’t you hear him? He wants to say good-bye!”

Macy stopped trying to get away and rolled her eyes. It seemed a confrontation was coming. The trouble was, she didn’t know what to say. She turned to face him as he came toward them. “I wanted to tell you before but … I lost my nerve. You were with him, and I was with her, so I —”

“Lied,” she finished for him.

“I guess if that’s what you want to call it, I don’t blame you.”

“Is that what that day on the beach was about? And the time you came by?” she managed.

He nodded. “As soon as I knew for sure it was you, I —” He looked back at Rebecca, who was still on the platform watching them, her features not nearly as composed as usual and her look of pride completely gone. He gestured in her direction. “She wants me to marry her. And I was about to. Then you came back … after all these years. It’s been so long. I never thought you would.”

She looked at the sculpture of the little girl —of her — reaching for the seagulls. “And this sculpture is what? A good-bye gesture?”

His smile was a thin line. “It was the one last thing I had to do. I figured wherever you were, whenever you did come back, you’d see it. And you’d know. You’d remember. And maybe you’d see that I never forgot either. No matter what happened to both of us, we’d always have what we had then. I could hold on to the little girl I lost.”

She shook her head. “I waited years to find out who you were.” Tears filled her eyes. “So now I know. I guess I should thank you.” She made a mental note to register her complaint with God as to how this particular miracle unfolded.

“I don’t want you to thank me. I want you to stay. Help me figure this out. Please don’t run away again.”

His words stung, touching on her biggest regret, the question always in her mind: What would have been different if she’d gone to the gazebo that day ten years ago?

Macy watched as Rebecca jumped down from the platform and started heading their way. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s what I do.” She turned, grabbed Emma’s hand, and walked away from him, grateful the crowd was nearly gone so she could make a speedy exit.

M
ax was waiting by the car when she got there. “Mom says to go back to Buzz’s.” Macy looked around them. They were some of the last to leave. She hoped she’d spot Wyatt, but he’d disappeared. Macy was sure he knew who her mystery artist was. If anyone knew the guest book as well as she and Dockery, it was Wyatt. She hoped she’d find him at Buzz’s.

“I thought we were leaving from here,” she said.

Max shrugged. “Guess not. You know me, just along for the ride.” He buckled Emma into the backseat before walking around to get in on the passenger side while Macy fumed.

When Macy steered the car in the direction of Sunset and not toward the highway, Emma began to clap. “We’re not leaving!” she chirped.

“Oh, we’re leaving. We’ve just got a detour first,” she told her daughter. Funny how her hesitancy to go had turned into resolve to flee as quickly as possible. She needed some distance between her and Sunset. Between her and Dockery. Her mind raced back to the few times they’d spent together, the missed opportunities he’d had to tell her who he was. Why hadn’t he told her? And should she ever give him a chance to explain? She thought of Rebecca’s territorial hand on his shoulder when she’d reached them. The way she’d smiled when she’d heard Macy was leaving. No. It was best that Macy leave Rebecca and Dockery to whatever it was they’d had before she’d come along.

She swung her mother’s car into Buzz’s drive, and Macy noticed with a mixture of dread and joy that Wyatt’s car was parked beside Buzz’s. She snuck a look at Time in a Bottle as they all climbed out of the car. Emma looked at the house too. “Hey, there’s people there!” she yelled.

“Yes,” Macy replied. “They’re the cleaning crew. They come clean up after we leave so the next people have a clean place to stay.” Macy thought it was like leaving a funeral before they lowered the casket. There were some parts of life you shouldn’t see. She didn’t want to see people scrubbing away all the traces of them that were in that house. Perhaps they would return next year, and all of the feelings she was currently dealing with would be scrubbed away too.

Emma nodded soberly. Macy knew she was sad that other people were in “her” house. That was something a person never outgrew. She put her hand on Emma’s shoulder, and
together, they walked into Buzz’s house. Brenda and Buzz were sitting at the table underneath the butterfly shells picture, their hands linked. In the back of the house, she heard Wyatt’s radio playing. She forced a smile for her mom and sank into a chair beside her. Brenda patted her hand, pulled Emma toward her, and said, “Emma, would you like to go for one last walk on the beach with Buzz?”

“Sure!” Emma jumped into the air, thrilled with this unexpected offer. That morning she had begged to see the beach “just one more time,” but between packing the car and getting ready for the unveiling, Macy had refused.

“Mom,” she said, “we really should be getting on the road.” She raised her eyebrows at her mother, hoping she’d understand that Macy wasn’t excited about waiting for her daughter to walk on the beach. If she got back home before the store closed, she could go and apologize to Hank, claim temporary insanity brought on by too much sun, and beg Hank not to fire her.

Brenda met her eyes with a level gaze that told Macy there was a reason Buzz was taking Emma out of the room. “Have fun with Buzz,” Macy said to her daughter as Buzz stood up, took Emma’s hand, and led her out of the house, leaving just Macy and Max alone to talk with their mother.

She could hear Wyatt working in the back. She thought of kissing him in this room and ducked her head. She’d hoped that Wyatt was the one, and when he’d turned out not to be, though she’d told herself it didn’t matter, it had. All the hope she’d felt the last time she’d been in this room had been based
on a supposition that hadn’t been fair to him. If she got the chance, she’d tell him that. She could at least apologize to him for her mistake.

Once the door closed behind Buzz and Emma, Brenda took a deep breath, then said, “I’m going to take you two home, pack some things, and come back here.”

“You’re staying here with Buzz?” Max asked, his voice louder than normal.

“I’m not that kind of girl!” their mom teased.

“Then what?” Max asked.

Macy couldn’t speak, she was so filled with envy for what her mom had found.

“I’m staying at the Sunset Inn for a bit. Buzz surprised me this morning with the offer of paying for a room — he’d like us to spend more time together, figure out what we’ve got here. He says if I—” Her eyes drifted away from her children, down to her hands. Macy noticed her mom’s fingernails were painted. She hadn’t seen her mother spend time fixing herself up for so many years she’d stopped noticing her mother was a woman at all. When her mother looked up, her eyes fell on Macy. “He wants to try now and not put it off even a minute longer.”

“So how long will you be here?” Max asked.

Her mother smiled. “Buzz says as long as it takes. He’s got nothing but money and time.”

“Must be nice,” Max grumbled.

“Emma will miss you,” Macy said.

“Well, that’s why I wanted her out of the room. I’d like you
to bring her back here in a couple of weeks, if you would. Buzz has a rental house on Azalea Avenue, near Twin Lakes. He’s having Wyatt fix it up, and it should be ready in a few weeks, just in time for you to bring Emma back to let her stay with me. You can stay, too, Macy, if you’d like.”

At the mention of Wyatt’s name, a sick feeling coursed through Macy’s veins. If things went the way they seemed to be going with Brenda and Buzz, Macy was going to be seeing Wyatt a lot for the remainder of her life. She wanted to crawl back into bed and start this day —this trip —all over again. “Mom, I don’t even know what I’m going to be doing tomorrow, much less weeks from now. I probably don’t have a job anymore.”

Her mother reached over and brushed Macy’s hair away from her face like she used to do when she was a little girl. The gesture made Macy feel taken care of, and she closed her eyes, savoring it. “We’ve got a few weeks to figure it out. I just need to know you’re open to the idea.”

Her mother stood up and went to Buzz’s kitchen like she belonged there, taking out glasses and pouring iced tea into them. She set two glasses in front of Max and Macy. “Might as well have a glass of tea,” she said. “It might be a while before Buzz and Emma get back.”

Max took his tea out to the back deck and sat down without saying another word. Brenda looked perplexed as she stood, frozen, watching him go, her glass of tea still in her hand, the glass beginning to sweat.

“Do you think he’s upset with me?” Brenda asked.

Macy thought about it. “I think he’s got a lot on his mind—

his court date is coming up soon. It might not be about what you told us. Maybe it’s a combination of things.” She looked at her brother again. Based on the way he was sitting, he could be praying.

“I better see what’s eating him,” Brenda said. She slipped out to the deck while Macy took a sip of her tea, cold and sweet, the ice cubes knocking against her teeth.

She sat at the table, debating whether she should walk in the direction of the music she heard coming from one of the bedrooms. But fear kept her rooted in her seat. She kept telling herself she’d get up and face him, but she never moved. Occasionally she would look out the window at her mother and Max on the deck and wonder what they were talking about. She was ready for Emma to come back so they could all just get out of there.

Wyatt came into the room, whistling, as she was watching her mother and Max, trying to read their lips. She turned from the window, and their eyes met as she saw him register that she was still there. In a flash, she remembered their first meeting, when he was nothing more to her than a cocky construction worker. He hadn’t had a name, a past, a connection to her. Their connection went much deeper than their parents’ interest in each other. It had grown into something real the moment she learned he knew about the guest book. Sometimes she feared he could see straight through her.

He looked at her for a moment, and she shifted under his gaze. “Mom asked us here,” she said.

“Ah. I guess they told you their plan.” He spun the wrench he was holding, nearly whacking the lamp he was standing beside.

She smiled as he stilled the wrench. “Yes. I’m happy for them. She’s happier than I’ve seen her in years.”

He nodded. “My dad too. I guess it just goes to show what can happen when you carry a torch for someone long enough.” Macy tried to gauge if the look he gave her was meaningful or not. “So I guess you might end up being my stepsister.”

She laughed in spite of herself. Put in those terms, her memory of his kiss sounded downright icky. “Umm. I hadn’t thought about it that way but … yes, I guess that sounds like a very real possibility.” All of a sudden she could feel that something had changed between them. Even before he’d uttered the words aloud, a shift had taken place that involved last night and the unveiling of the sculpture today and their parents. And all those things added up to … nothing. “So that means whatever we had, or have, or however you want to put it … well. I mean, it can’t happen. Agreed? It would just be too weird?”

She thought of all the things she’d been prepared to say to him about the guest book and Dockery, all the explanations and versions of breaking it to him gently that she’d been rehearsing. And none of it was going to be necessary. She nearly sighed with relief.

“So … that sculpture today. That was of you, right?”

She looked down at the table and busied herself with wiping up the ring of water her glass had left. “Yes.”

“And the guy from the mini-golf place—Dockery—he was the sculptor?”

Finished with the water ring, she moved on to wiping off all the condensation on the glass. “Yes.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“For a minute. He was swarmed with people, and it was … crazy. I had to leave. I thought we needed to get on the road.” She looked at him. “And you disappeared.”

He looked back, not avoiding her pointed gaze at all. “I was giving you room to say what you needed to say.”

She thought back to the day Wyatt had sung the John Mayer song. She knew now that he’d had some things he needed to say, and she wondered if he had let the music fill him with the courage to do just that. With a pang, she wondered what might have been between her and Wyatt had things been different.

“I don’t say what I need to say nearly often enough,” she said. She hoped he found the regret hidden in her statement. That was all she could manage, seeing how things were turning out.

“Well, I think you should.”

“That’s a great idea in theory. In practice it sounds …”

“Risky? Daring? Scary?” He smiled, and she saw the glint in his eye that told her he was teasing her and enjoying it. Something about the way he looked at her took her back to the moment they’d met, to a place where things were still safe and playful and not laden with meaning.

She smiled. “All of the above.”

He walked over and took the tea pitcher out of the fridge,
pouring a glass for himself before placing the pitcher back in the fridge. He took a long drink, draining half the glass. “Is the sculptor the guy who’s been drawing pictures for you all these years?” He turned to face her. “The guy you hoped I was?”

“I didn’t—”

He held his hand up. “Look, siblings are honest with each other. If you can’t be honest with your future stepbrother, it’s all over for you.” He drained the last of the tea in his glass.

She gave him a sheepish half smile. “Then I’ll just say yes.”

He put the empty glass on the counter and took the tea pitcher from the fridge again to refill it. As he poured, he started to sing the words to the song she’d just been thinking about. “Say what you need to say,” he sang, winking at her as he walked back to wherever he had come from. “Say what you need to say.” The front door opened before she could say anything, and she heard Emma’s voice.

Emma flew into her arms, talking a mile a minute. “Guess who’s at our old house?” she asked, her cheeks red from the heat, her skin smelling like sunshine.

Macy inhaled her daughter’s scent. “Who?” she asked absentmindedly, thinking instead of how ready she was to leave. Almost as ready as she’d been the year after her dad died.

“Dockery! Buzz is outside talking to him!” She pulled on Macy’s arm. “Come see him!” Before she knew it, Macy was on her feet, traveling toward a conversation she wasn’t ready to have. But this was an opportunity to say what she needed to say. And she only had a few feet to figure out exactly what that was.

She crossed the yard with Emma pulling her every step of the way. “Here’s my mom! I told you I’d get her!” She was hollering at Dockery as they walked. Macy felt as though she were moving underwater, her movement slowed by the resistance of her own pride and conflicted emotions, everything appearing hazy and surreal. She saw Buzz and Dockery talking on the front porch of Time in a Bottle. She wondered if he’d come there to find her, but he must’ve known she wouldn’t be there. She couldn’t figure out what was happening, or why. For once she didn’t dwell on it. She let herself get pulled along by life instead of fighting against the current. She didn’t know what she needed to say, but she trusted the words to be there when she opened her mouth.
Just jump.

Dockery turned and waved at her, the corners of his lips turned up into a resigned smile.

She climbed the stairs, passing Buzz, who was on the way down. Buzz took Emma’s hand and winked at Macy. “Emma, let’s go show Grandma those shells we found.”

“Yeah!” Emma cheered. She stopped suddenly and looked up at Dockery. “But don’t you leave without saying good-bye.” She waggled her finger at him like a teacher scolding a naughty child.

He held up his hands. “I promise,” he said.

Macy stood in front of him and watched them go. She couldn’t believe she was back here, back at Time in a Bottle, coming full circle to finally stand in this place with this person. She thought of her prayer on the beach. She’d tried to excuse it, to dismiss it, to believe that it wasn’t real—or that the answers
that followed weren’t possible. And yet, here she was. God was not a genie in a bottle. But sometimes, miraculously, He was able to bring about the most amazing set of circumstances. She took a deep breath, savoring the moment, not wanting their talking to ruin it. They’d never needed words before.