When Light Breaks (23 page)

Daddy approved of Peyton.

The thought caught me by surprise, like realizing the tide has come in and washed over your feet, swept away your beach towel and book. I wanted to rebel against this need inside of me, this desire to earn my daddy’s approval.

Jack was almost out the door; I went to him, grabbed his arm. “Stay,” I said.

Daddy made a noise that sounded like a grunt, and turned his face from me, then walked from the room. Jack and I watched him leave, then he came to me, touched my arm. “Are you sure?”

“Sit,” I said, and made a motion toward the leather club chair.

Jack sat, lifted his glass of wine. “Wow, he still doesn’t like me after all these years.”

“I’ve never understood it, Jack, and I’m sorry.” I sat in my chair.

“It’s not that complicated. He knows, and always has, that I’m not good enough for you.”

“That is not true.”

“True or not, it is what he believes.”

I sighed, leaned back. “Sometimes it just doesn’t matter if it’s true, does it?” A chill ran through me and a single name burst forward: O’Leary. I bit down on it; tucked it into my heart to look at later.

“You know what?” he said. “You look almost exactly the same. Especially when you’re curled up in that chair. I almost expect to see a Nancy Drew novel on your lap, or cross-stitch on the table next to you.”

“Talk about remembering odd details.”

“Yeah, but not until now. I could never give you a life . . . like this. One that your daddy gives you, one your fiancé will give you.”

“Don’t say that . . . you make me sound so shallow, as if material comfort is all that matters to me.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think that’s all that matters to you. It’s just an observation. My life is nomadic at best. And look what you have here.” He gestured with his hand. “I don’t have the . . . means for this style of life. I travel, move around. I don’t even have a place I call home.”

“But you want one, right?”

“Yes, but not if it’s filled with nonsense and busyness, not meaningful in any way.”

“Are you saying my life—”

“No,” he interrupted me. “I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that I need my life to be meaningful—I need to contribute somehow. And right now that means I have no place to call home.”

“Jack . . .”

He held up his hand. “Just the facts.” He tilted his head at me as footsteps echoed in the hallway. We glanced toward the doors. “I really think I need to be going,” he said, and stood.

I nodded and rose with him, staring directly at his face. I moved toward him, touched his arm. “Thanks for . . . everything. Really. Are you sure this gig isn’t a hardship on the band?”

“No. We’d love to do it.” He took my hand and squeezed it.

I dropped my hand from his. “We probably can’t afford you.” “Ah, hell, whatever your budget is, we’ll do it.”

“Why?”

“Because—it’s you. And exposure is exposure.”

I let out a whoop and threw my arms around his neck. Someone coughed; I turned to stare at Peyton. I released Jack. Peyton stood at the threshold of the library, his mouth straight, the muscles in his cheek clenching and unclenching.

I moved toward him. “Hi, honey,” I said.

He nodded at me.

I reached his side. “This is Jack, Jack Sullivan. He used to live next door. He’s the songwriter for the Unknown Souls. Anyway, he stopped by to tell me they can play the tour benefit.”

Peyton nodded again. He was beginning to look like an angry bobble-head statue.

Jack walked toward him, held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Peyton. Congratulations on your engagement and on winning the BellSouth tournament. That chip out of the sand trap on five was magnificent.”

Peyton smiled, held out his hand. “Thank you. Nice to meet you too. Thank you so much for being willing to play the benefit. Your band should draw a huge crowd.”

Jack glanced toward the door. “Well, I best be going.”

“Yes,” Peyton said, “thanks for stopping by.”

I opened my mouth, closed it. What could I say now?

Jack nodded at both of us and closed the door behind him. Peyton and I stood in the hallway. “What the hell was that about?” He backed away from me.

“Just what I said it was about.”

“I come here to tell you I’m sorry, to try and find a way to talk to you about what happened at the restaurant, and I find you in the arms of another man. And why are you soaking wet?”

I looked down at my pants streaked with mud, my wet blouse. “Got caught in the thunderstorm. . . .”

“What did you do?” He touched my shirtsleeve. “Roll around in the mud?”

“Peyton, please . . . he stopped by . . .” I stuttered, stumbled on my words.

“A phone call wouldn’t have sufficed?”

“He was looking at his old house. Look, why don’t we just discuss us, what happened at the restaurant?”

“I’m not in the mood now.” Peyton turned away from me.

“Please don’t be this way. I want to find a way to talk all this out, be able to discuss what is important between us.”

“No secrets, right, Kara? Isn’t that what you asked for the other night? No secrets. Seems like you have some of your own.”

“Jack is not a secret—he’s an old neighbor.”

Peyton sat down on the bottom step of the staircase, dropped his head in his hands. “Tonight, about the photography, I just meant you should give some thought to what you want to do, not run impulsively after it.”

“Okay, I will. I will give it more thought. But we could talk about it.” I touched his clenched fist. “Maybe now isn’t a good time, but maybe you could listen to why I want to try.”

He took my hand, stroked my palm. “I’m sorry, Kara. I’m just under a lot of pressure, and when you said you wanted to leave . . .”

“I didn’t say I wanted to leave. I said I wanted to consider photography school, that I wanted to explore my options.”

“I’m a schmuck,” he said, and drew me toward him.

I fell against his chest.

“Kara, I need to ask you one more question.”

I drew back. “Okay.”

“Where did you say you stayed in Savannah when you went to check out the band for the tournament?”

“The Courtyard Savannah. I told you that already.”

“Then why don’t they have you in the register?”

I pushed away from him. “You checked?”

“Obviously I needed to. No secrets? Shit.” He stood, kicked the edge of the stairwell.

“I never lied. I told you I stayed there . . . I didn’t say I had my own room.”

He leaned down and put his hands on both my shoulders. “That, Kara, is no different from me not telling you I’d been engaged before. You spent the night in some guy’s hotel room.”

“On the couch.”

“Oh, what a gentleman.” He rolled his eyes. Peyton stood up straight and fought for control. I’d seen this struggle before, on the golf course. He stood taller, looked ahead, and his nostrils flared as he took a couple of deep breaths.

The next words that came out of my mouth were unbidden. “I’m not a bad shot.”

“What?” He focused in on me.

“You’re acting like you just had a bad shot on sixteen while you’re two strokes behind.”

“You’re very perceptive, Kara, because that is exactly how I feel. Except right now I’m on eighteen and it’s a golf course I’ve never played before and it’s sudden death for the championship. Something is going on with you and you’re just not acting like yourself. I think I need to go home before this descends into a fight we regret.”

“I agree.”

Peyton kissed me. “I love you. I really do. I’m sorry about this night. Let’s wake up tomorrow and start all over, okay?”

“Good deal.”

He walked out the door, and I sat back in the chair, picked up my glass and let the wine spill warmly all the way down to the knot in my stomach.

No, I wasn’t acting like myself at all. At least not the self I’d grown accustomed to being over the past few years.

I reached for the words Mama had told Daddy. Listen to the hints of your heart. Should a wish from the past influence today? Should an old woman’s story change the present? I didn’t know, but I thought I was about to find out.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

M
y head spun in a thousand directions, like a multicol ored pinwheel in the wind, while I waited in the kitchen for Daddy to come get his coffee the next morning. I’d been up most of the night, tossing from the left to the right in my bed while trying to find a comfortable spot on my down pillow. Daddy walked in rubbing the stubble on his chin.

“Good morning,” I said, attempting a smile.

He nodded at me, then glanced away. He grabbed his coffee mug, poured himself a cup.

A palpable tension shimmered between us, and I knew only one way to make it disappear, to diminish this loneliness—I needed to tell Daddy I was sorry for being disrespectful, that Jack meant nothing to me. I opened my mouth to try, but the words wouldn’t come.

Sunlight streaked through the window at that moment, casting a sharp yellow glow on Daddy’s face. His wrinkles were set deeper, his stubble now gray, and my heart reverberated with love.

He turned away from me, then walked out of the kitchen without saying a word. I called after him. “Daddy, don’t be mad at me.” I sounded like a child, like a desperate child.

He returned. “It is all well and good to listen to your heart, as your mother said, but you must also have integrity and character. Kara, my biggest fear was that if I ever told you all what your mother said before she died, it would do more harm than good.”

“Don’t let that be a fear, Daddy. That is not what that wish means to me. I think she just meant that I need to think about what I’m doing, about who I am.” I took a long breath, and with the new day coming through the window, soft and full, I found words that I didn’t even realize I’d hidden in the safer part of my heart. “I . . . have been afraid to think about what I really want because it might not be what other people want.”

Daddy nodded.

“I feel like you gave me a gift—Mama’s words before I get married.”

He wrapped his hands around his mug and stared at me, but didn’t speak.

I moved toward him. “Do you think you could ever love again?”

His face blanched, his hands gripping his mug tighter. “Kara Margarite, that would not be any of your business.”

“She would want you to love again, Daddy. She would.”

He turned around and walked from the room without speaking. My stomach knotted like a rope pulled tighter and tighter.

Daddy and Peyton: wanting and needing only the Kara they knew. A sob began to rise from the back of my throat, but I held it tight, let it dissolve before I moved, ran up the stairs to my room and grabbed several rolls of undeveloped film.

I stood in the Palmetto Pointe Photography Studio’s darkroom with only the developing pictures beneath my fingers, beneath the fluid in the pan. Clarisse, who managed the studio, had taught me years ago how to develop my own pictures, and she rented me the space when I needed it. There were at least fifty photographs on the rolls of film. I watched the pictures appear one by one, taking my time, focusing only on the pictures, not on my fatigued and shadowed thoughts. I focused on the skill of developing, on creating the right light contrast for each photo.

I knew exactly how to fix the rift between Daddy and me, between Peyton and me. I could just say, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring Jack Sullivan back into this house. I’m sorry. I didn’t really mean I would leave and go to photography school.” And I’d probably still say these things, smooth the rougher edges of our relationships with my words, but now I stared at the developing photos below the water.

One of my favorite things about seeing the pictures was that often I forgot what was on the film, what I’d taken pictures of. This roll held mostly landscapes of the Palmetto Pointe golf course and the river behind it at Peyton’s house. I’d become enchanted with the way in which the sun—from the rising dawn to the fading evening—played with the river, tossed its light and shadows across the water, around the edges. The hummocks were exposed during low tide, then covered with the thick ribbon of blue-black water during high tide, with the spartina swaying behind the water in sage-gray contrast. I could taste the air when I’d taken this last shot right before the rain came.