When Light Breaks (26 page)

Old want; old story—only the ache of remembering when I had been adored, adorable and adored.

I pointed to the far side of the room. “The soundboard will be set up over there; the tables will be eight-person rounds arranged in an oval pattern.” I pulled the papers from my folder, held them out.

“I don’t need to see the table configuration. I just need to see the room, the acoustics. Will there be anything besides tables?”

“Yes,” I said, felt my heart go back to its regular, businesslike rhythm. “Palm trees, gardenia bushes at the edges, centerpieces . . .” I stopped as he walked across the space, ran his hand over the cedar posts in the center of the room.

“Great acoustics in here. This will work out perfect. That’s all I needed to see.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he said. He walked toward me and pointed to the grandfather clock in the far corner. “You have half an hour. Would you do me a huge favor?”

I nodded.

“Will you show me around town? I hate to admit I don’t know how to get around anymore . . . but I’d love to see it.”

“It’s not that complicated.” I pulled my file close to my chest. “Palmetto Pointe hasn’t changed all that much. Main Street down the middle, numbered streets off to the sides. Bay Street running along the water. Come on, Jack, you can’t be that confused.” I suppressed a grin.

“Okay, now who’s the smart ass?” He tapped my nose. “Come on, I just want to see it again—with you. Please.”

I rolled my eyes and said, “Yes,” with a rising spirit of laughter hiding just below my chest.

 

Words poured out of my mouth faster than the engine beneath Jack’s truck hood as we drove down every street in town. I told him who lived where now, who’d married, who’d divorced. I explained which buildings had been torn down and which ones had been renovated.

“So,” he said, turning a corner onto Bay Street. “How is the family taking it that the youngest is getting married?”

“Everyone loves Peyton . . . they’re thrilled. They think it’s the perfect . . .” I paused. “They’re happy about it.”

He nodded, stared straight ahead through the windshield. “What do
you
think?”

“The same, of course.”

“Of course,” he said.

We drove past the elementary school, then he stopped in the parking lot of Palmetto Pointe Middle School, got out of the car.

I followed him to the playground. “What are you doing?”

“I remember,” he said.

“Remember what?”

He looked at me, and the old pain I last saw that summer morning he left returned to his face; he was fourteen, broken in spirit. “That morning.”

“You’d forgotten?” I touched his cheek, jerked my hand away.

“Yes. At first on purpose, then even when I tried to remember, I couldn’t. All I could see was the truck, and then you on the ground. Now I remember it all: Dad hitting you, Mom waking us and telling us to take anything we loved, throwing things in boxes, filling what we could into the back of a truck in the middle of the night, knowing we’d never see the house or our other stuff or your family again—ever.”

My tears rose, but words did not. I wrapped my arms around Jack, buried my face against his chest and listened to his torn breath.

He released me, sat on a swing. “I don’t need sympathy, Kara. I just remembered, that’s all.”

I swallowed hard and wiped furiously at my face. “I wasn’t giving sympathy, just empathy. It was terrible for everyone.”

“No, it wasn’t. No one gave a shit that we were gone. One less problem in Palmetto Pointe.”

“I gave a shit,” I said, and sat on the swing next to him. “Doesn’t that count?”

He pushed his feet against the ground to lift his swing into the air. He pushed higher and higher until he was flying so high I thought the swing would wrap itself around the pole and flip him over.

Then he stopped, planted his feet firmly on the ground. “That you cared was all that counted.”

He stood and walked toward the parking lot, then stopped, looked at me, and waved his hand toward the middle school. “You know, this is probably as far as we’d have gone—even if I stayed. This is as far as we’d have gone.”

I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “You mean you wouldn’t have gone to high school? Damn, Jack, you were the best athlete in the school. You would’ve been the star in everything by tenth grade.”

“No, I mean us. We wouldn’t have made it past middle school. Too different, you know? All the things you would’ve wanted, the life I couldn’t have given you.”

My shoulders slumped. “Why am I taking this as an insult?”

“Don’t. I’m a different kind of man than the kind you’ve chosen to spend your life with.”

“And what kind of man are you, Jack?”

“A wandering soul who doesn’t care how old the house is, who used to live in it, where the family silver came from, whether the wedding guests are from the right families. That kind of man.”

“And you think I’m that kind of woman? You don’t think I’m anything like the girl you knew?”

“That’s not bad, Kara. It’s not an insult, I swear to God, it’s not. We all change with time. You are still beautiful and kind and—”

I held up my hand. “Stop.”

“Just the facts,” he said.

Damn. He didn’t believe in who I was anymore—at all. I wasn’t even sure I knew who I was anymore. And suddenly it seemed infinitely important that we both believed in this young Kara, beyond the facts of my wedding, my job, my pressed linen suit.

“Okay,” I said, “I don’t blame you for thinking that I’ve changed so dramatically that I’m nothing like the girl you gave the Claddagh ring to. So, now take us up Bay Street to Fifth, take a left to the dead end.”

“What?”

“Just listen to me.”

“Okay, boss. Whatever you say. But aren’t you late for an appointment?”

“The wedding shoes . . . they’ll wait.”

Jack drove us to the end of Fifth Street in less than five minutes. I jumped out of the car, pointed to the small, slanted house behind the bluff. “Brian’s house,” I said.

“Man, how is he?”

“Good. I’m sure he’s at work right now. We’re not here to see him, just his kayaks.”

Jack squinted at me. “You’re kidding, right?”

“You don’t believe I’m still that girl, that I can’t beat you in a kayak race along Silver Creek?”

Jack pointed to my suit. “You aren’t exactly dressed for it.”

“More than you are,” I said and pulled off my heels and jacket and threw them in the open back of Jack’s truck. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

I ran into my brother’s house and put on a pair of tattered shorts and a T-shirt I had left there the last time I’d come to kayak.

I came out onto the porch, motioned toward the water. “Come on.”

“You asked for it,” he said.

We yanked two single-man kayaks out from under Brian’s house, then pulled them over the boardwalk to the mud bank. I rolled my pants up and zipped a life jacket over my T-shirt.

“You’re insane,” Jack said. He pushed us both off into the creek. We settled into our kayaks and he came alongside me. “Okay, same rules. From here to Broad River, then back.”

“You got it.”

We began the back-and-forth paddling of our double-bladed oars, synchronizing our actions to the movement of the kayaks. Jack pushed two lengths ahead of me and I strained to catch up, but couldn’t. When we rounded the bend to return, my kayak came next to his and we pulled into the bank simultaneously.

I collapsed backward on the bow. “You let me catch up.”

“But I didn’t let you win,” he said, jumped out of the boat and pulled mine up on the bank.

I swung my legs around, stepped out of the kayak and let the mud squish beneath my toes. Sweat dripped down my chest; my shirt clung and my hair stuck to my face. I tasted the salt air and my own sweat in an intoxicating mixture.

“Come on,” I said, “we’ll steal some of Brian’s Coronas and cool off on his porch.”

In silence, Jack and I sat in the rocking chairs, cold beers in our hands at four o’clock on a workday. Guilt prodded at me; I glanced at him. “I wanted to beat you,” I said.

He laughed. “I know. I just couldn’t let you.”

“I remember, once, you let me win the star game,” I said.

“I did?”

“I know you did—it’s how I knew you loved—” I stopped, placed my palm over my mouth.

Jack leaned close, wiped my hair off my face. “I sure did love you then.”

I nodded, heard and understood the word “then.” “I probably need to go back to work now.”

“Like that?” He grinned and pointed to my disheveled condition.

“Maybe not,” I said, stared out over the water, to the edges of the shore, and thought of Maeve.

Then we talked, Jack and I, about everything we could remember, and everything he’d wanted to forget.

When light dwindled to the farther corners of the creek and the frogs began their evening song, Brian came home. When he saw Jack he let out a holler and offered him a large hug.

“Man, I thought I’d never see you again. What’s up?” Brian asked.

“Bailing your sister out of trouble, as usual.” Jack lifted his beer to me.

“Oh?” Brian raised his eyebrows at me.

“His band is playing the tour benefit,” I said. “That’s all.”

Brian pointed at me, then looked at Jack. “What in the hell have y’all been doing? You’re a mess.”

“Kayak race,” I said, pulling my shirt out from my body.

“Who won?” Brian looked back and forth between us.

“Tie,” I said.

“Yeah, right.” Brian punched Jack’s side. “Y’all stay here and let me get a beer. I’ll be right back.”

The three of us sat with cold Coronas and watched the remainder of the day descend into the edges of spartina and cord grass, lighting them like the tips of sparklers. Brian and Jack talked over each other, their words and laughter echoing across the porch.

I closed my eyes, leaned my head back on the rocking chair and disappeared into the warm haze of this place, of my brother and Jack Sullivan. I floated above them, beyond them, as their words blurred together in a benediction. Then it was quiet, the air still and hot like someone had wrapped a blanket around me. A thrumming noise echoed across the black night—my eyes jerked open.

Jack and Brian were gone—I was alone.

The warmth fell away from me like a waterfall. I jumped up, glanced around. They’d left me. Panic, the irrational sort that brings numb toes and tingling fingers, cold mist around the throat, overcame me. Abandoned. Alone: these words twisted across the porch like mist.

“Brian,” I called out, but my feet didn’t move.

“I’m right here.” He came up the side steps. “You woke up.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“A good hour,” he said, then pointed toward the driveway. “Jack just left.”

A place inside me, directly above my middle but below my heart, which had been filled since our encounter in the ballroom, emptied in one final rush of air.

I slumped down into the chair. “I can’t believe I fell asleep like that.”

“Sis?”

“Yeah?” I looked up.

“He said to give these to you.” Brian handed me my shoes and jacket. “He didn’t want to leave.”

“What?”

“He knew he should leave—and he did.”

I released a long breath. “All the things we should do. So many damn things we should do.” I stood. “I need a ride to my car at the club.”

“I think I can handle that,” he said, and wrapped his arm around me.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

T
he two weeks before the tournament—advance weeks—were so completely full that there was no room for si lence or for wondering about my life. Peyton was enthralled with the prospect of winning his hometown tournament. His anger at me that I hadn’t gone to the last tournament with him dissipated in his desire to win the Palmetto Pointe Open.

I sat in Charlotte’s passenger seat and stared out the windshield at the spring day—sunlight pierced through the air with cut-glass clarity. I slid my sunglasses over my eyes.

Charlotte turned down the radio. “Whatcha thinking about?”

“That I have no business going to meet this makeup artist when the tournament is this weekend.”

“You’re the one who made the appointment. Relax. You’ve trained Caroline well enough . . . it’s all under control. Of course it is of the utmost importance that you decide which shades of makeup to wear on your wedding day. Whether to use brown or black mascara, whether to use silver or blue on your eyelids.” Charlotte slapped the steering wheel and laughed. “I just crack myself up.”

“Please just take me back to work, Charlotte. Even you think this is a joke.”

“Old pal, I don’t think it’s a joke—I’m just trying to lighten the mood. You’re very sullen today.” She pouted her lips.

“I don’t know what is wrong with me . . . let’s talk about you. How’s your latest article about influential women in Palmetto Pointe coming along?”