One Summer

by David Baldacci

  wound up and tossed the rope. It fell far short. He pulled it back and tried again. Closer, but still not close enough.

  “Sammy,” he screamed. “Wait until the waves push us toward the beach, and then toss it.”

  Sammy nodded, timed it, and threw the rope. Just a few feet short now. One more time. Jack lunged for the buoy and snagged it. But a monster wave crashed down on them, and Mikki was ripped from him.

  He caught a mouthful of water and spit it out. As he looked down, he felt Mikki sliding past him and away from shore, out to sea. Everything was moving in slow motion, reduced to milliseconds of passing time.

  “No!” screamed Jack.

  He shot his hand down and grabbed his daughter’s hair an instant before she was past him and gone forever. Sammy and Liam pulled with all their strength on the rope. Slowly, father and daughter were pulled to shore.

  As soon as he hit solid earth, Jack carried Mikki well away from the pounding waves. His daughter was completely limp, her eyes closed.

  As Jack bent down, he could see that Mikki was also not breathing. He immediately began to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He pinched Mikki’s nose and blew air into her lungs. He flipped her over and pushed against her back, trying to expand her lungs, forcing the water out.

  Sammy called 911 while Jack continued to frantically work on his daughter and was now doing CPR.

  A minute later, Jack sat up, his breaths coming in jerks. He looked down at Mikki. She wasn’t moving; her skin was instead turning blue. His daughter was dead.

  He’d lost her. Failed her.

  A crack of lightning pierced the night sky, and Jack looked up, perhaps to that solitary spot his wife had tried to find all those years ago. With a sob he screamed, “Help me, Lizzie, help me. Please.”

  He looked down. No more miracles left. He’d used the only one he would ever have on himself.

  Liam knelt next to Mikki, tears streaming down his face. He touched Mikki’s hair and then put his face in his hands and sobbed.

  Suddenly Jack felt a force at the back of his neck. At first he thought that Sammy was trying to pull him away from his dead child. But the force wasn’t pulling; it was pushing him back to her. Jack bent down, took an enormous breath, held it, put his mouth over Mikki’s, and blew with all the strength he had left in his body.

  As the air fell away from him and into Mikki, everything for Jack stopped, and the storm was gone. It was like he had envisioned dying to be. Quiet, peaceful, isolated, alone. As that breath rushed from him, the events of the last year also raced through his mind.

  And now, this; Mikki. Gone.

  Jack felt himself drifting away, as though over calm water, propelled to another place, he had no idea where. But he was alone. Lizzie and now Mikki were gone. He no longer wanted to live. It didn’t matter anymore. There was peace. But there was also nothing else because he was alone.

  The water hitting him in his face brought him back. The thoughts of the past retreated, and he was once more in the present. It was still raining. But that’s not what had struck him.

  He looked down as Mikki gave another shudder and coughed up the water that had been buried deeply in her lungs. Her eyes opened, fluttered, opened again, and stayed that way. Her pupils focused, and she saw her dad hovering above her. Mikki put out her arms, gripped her father’s neck tightly.

  “Daddy?” she said in a tiny voice.

  Jack sank down and held her. “I’m here, baby. I’m here.”

  67

  The ambulance took Mikki and Jack to the hospital to be checked out. Sammy followed in his van with Liam, while Jenna stayed with the boys at the Palace. Jenna had made hot tea for Bonnie, who had watched Jack’s heroic rescue of his daughter from the top of the lighthouse. Now she just sat small and stooped on the edge of the couch, a sob escaping her lips every few seconds.

  Jenna had tried to comfort her, while Fred just sat in another chair and stared at his hands. When Sammy called from the hospital and told them they would be home shortly and that everyone was okay, Jenna had finally broken down and wept.

  Afterward, Jenna had ventured into Jack’s room; she wasn’t sure why. As her gaze swept the space, it settled on the letters, which were still lying on the bed. She went over, sat down, picked them up, and started reading.

  She emerged from the room ten minutes later, her eyes red with fresh tears. She walked over to Bonnie and tapped her gently on the shoulder. When Bonnie looked up, Jenna said, “I think you need to read these, Mrs. O’Toole.”

  Bonnie looked confused, but she accepted the letters from Jenna, slipped on her reading glasses, and unfolded the first one.

  The storm, its fury rapidly spent after fully hitting land, had largely passed by the time they returned from the hospital. An exhausted Mikki was laid in her bed with Cory and Liam watching over her like guardian angels, counting each one of her breaths.

  Jack told everyone that Mikki had suffered no permanent damage and should be as good as new.

  “The doctor said she was one strong lady,” added Sammy.

  “Like her mother,” said Jack as he looked at Bonnie.

  He passed through the house and went outside and up to the top of the lighthouse. He stared out now at the clearing sky, the sun coming up in the east. He bent down and saw the wires he had spliced the night before. It was a miracle that he had finally spotted the trouble that had befuddled him for so long. Yet a miracle, thought Jack, was somehow what he, however irrationally, had been counting on.

  He leaned against the wall of glass and stared out at what looked to be the start of a beautiful late-summer day.

  He turned when he heard her.

  Bonnie, wheezing slightly, appeared at the opening for the room. He helped her through, and they stood side by side looking at each other.

  “Thank God for what you did last night, Jack.”

  Jack turned and looked back out the window. “It was Lizzie, you know.”

  “What?” Bonnie moved even closer to him.

  Jack said, “I’d given up. Mikki was dead. I didn’t have any breath left. She was dead, Bonnie. And I asked Lizzie to help me.” He turned to her. “I looked up to the sky and I asked Lizzie to help me.” A sob broke from his throat. “And she did. She did. She saved Mikki, not me.”

  Bonnie nodded slowly. “It was both of you, Jack. You and Lizzie. The match made in Heaven. Two people meant for each other if ever there was.”

  He stared at her, surprised by the woman’s blunt words.

  From her pocket she drew out the letters. “I think these belong to you.” She handed them back to him and reached out and touched his face. “Sometimes people can’t see what’s right in front of them, Jack. It’s strange how that works. How often it happens. And how often it hurts people we’re supposed to love.” She paused. “I do love you, son. I guess I always have. And one thing I know for certain is that you loved my daughter. And she loved you. That should have been enough for me.” She paused again. “And now, it is.”

  They exchanged a hug, and she turned to go.

  “Bonnie?”

  She looked back.

  “The kids?” he said in a small voice.

  “They’re right where they should be, Jack. With their father.”

  68

  When Mikki opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was her dad. Right after that she saw Liam, peering anxiously over Jack’s shoulder.

  “I’m really okay, guys,” she said a little groggily.

  Jack smiled and looked at Liam. “Give us a minute, will you?”

  Liam nodded, flashed Mikki a reassuring grin, and left the room.

  Jack gripped her hand, and she squeezed back. Mikki said, “Sorry for all the excitement I caused. It was really dumb.”

  “Yes, it was,” he agreed. “But we were all under a lot of pressure.”

  “So the lighthouse finally worked?”

  He let out a long breath. “Yeah. If it hadn’t…” His voice trailed off, and
father and daughter started to weep together, each clutching the other, their bodies shaking with the strain.

  “I can’t believe how close I came to losing you, baby.”

  “I know, Dad, I know,” she said in a hushed voice.

  They finally drew apart.

  “So what now? We still go with Grandma?”

  “No, you’re staying right here with me.”

  Mikki screamed with joy and hugged him again.

  “Does Liam know?” she said excitedly.

  “No, I thought I’d leave that to you.” He rose. “I’ll go get him.”

  As he turned she said, “Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “No matter what happens in my life, you’ll always be my hero.”

  He bent down and touched her cheek. “Thanks… Michelle.”

  Later, as he stood by the doorway watching the two teens excitedly talking and hugging, Jack first smiled, then teared up, and then smiled again. She was clearly not a little girl anymore. And Jack could easily see how fast her life, and his, would change in the next few years.

  Later, as Jack walked along the beach, a voice called out, “I’m going to miss you Armstrongs when you go back to Ohio.” He turned to see Jenna walking toward him.

  “No, you won’t,” said Jack, “because we’re staying right here.”

  She drew next to him. “Are you sure?”

  He smiled. “No, but we’re still staying.”

  She slipped an arm around him. “I’m glad things have worked out.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “You’re way too generous with your praise.”

  “Seriously, Jenna, you helped in a lot of ways. A lot.”

  “So what are we going to do about the budding romance?”

  “What?” he said in a startled voice.

  “Between our kids.”

  “Oh.”

  She laughed, and he grinned sheepishly.

  “I think we take it one day at a time.” He looked directly at her. “Does that sound okay, Jenna?”

  “That sounds very okay, Jack.”

  Epilogue

  A little over two years later, Jack sat on the beach in almost the exact spot he and Mikki had occupied the night he’d realized he had so much to live for. The house was quieter now. Mikki and Liam had just left for college. She’d aced her last two years in high school and gone out to Berkeley on a scholarship. Liam the drummer had cut off his hair and was at West Point. Though they were a continent apart, the two remained the best of friends.

  Cory was working part-time at the Play House and learning the ropes of theater management from Ned Parker. Jackie had started talking full-blast one morning about a year ago and had never stopped since. Although, Jack noted with some measure of fatherly pride, his favorite toy was still the monster truck.

  He got up and made his way to the top of the lighthouse. He hadn’t been up here since the morning after almost losing Mikki. He stepped out onto the catwalk and looked toward the sea. His eyes gravitated to the spot where father and daughter had fought so hard for their lives. Then he looked away and up to a clear, blue summer sky.

  Lizzie’s Lighthouse. It worked when I needed it to.

  Jack had two very important things to do today. And the first one was waiting for him down the beach. He left the lighthouse and set off along the sand. His hands rode in his pockets; the words he would say slipped through his mind. As he drew closer, Jack realized that he had just traveled over a half mile by beach and a lifetime by every other measure.

  She was there waiting for him by prearrangement. He slipped his arms around Jenna and kissed her. And much like he had done two decades before, Jack knelt down and asked a woman he loved if she would do him the honor of becoming his wife.

  Jenna cried and allowed him to slip the ring over her shaky finger. After that they held each other for a long time on that South Carolina beach as a gentle breeze rippled across them.

  “Sammy’s going to be the best man,” Jack said.

  “And Liam will be giving me away,” Jenna replied. “I love you, Jack.”

  “I love you too, Jenna.”

  They kissed again and visited for a while, discussing plans. Then Jack walked back to the Palace. His pace this way was not quite as brisk. The distance seemed a lot longer going back. There was a reason for this.

  The first trek had been to create a bridge for his future.

  This trip involved him making a painful separation from the past.

  He reached the beach in front of his house and sat down in the sand. He pulled out a photo of Lizzie and held it in front of him. It was still nearly impossible for him to believe that she had been gone nearly three years. It just couldn’t be. But it was.

  He traced the curve of her smile with his finger while he stared into those beautiful green eyes that he always believed would be the last thing he would see in life before passing on. While Jack had just asked another woman to marry him, and this seemed fitting and right in so many ways, he knew that a significant part of him would always love Lizzie. And that this too was fitting and right in so many ways.

  Bonnie had been correct about that. Lizzie and Jack had been meant to be together forever if ever two people were. Only sometimes life doesn’t match what should be. It just is. And people have to accept it, no matter how hard it may be.

  You should respect the past. You should never forget the past. But you can’t live there.

  And now he had something else to finish. Something very important.

  From his windbreaker he pulled out a single piece of paper and a pen. His hand shaking slightly and the tears already sliding down his face, Jack Armstrong touched the pen to the paper and began to write.

  Dear Lizzie,

  A lot has happened that I need to tell you about.

  An hour later he finished the letter with, as always,

  Love,

  Jack

  He sat there for a while, allowing the sun and breeze to dry his tears because for some reason he did not want to wipe them away by hand. He folded the letter carefully and placed it in an envelope marked with the number seven. He put the envelope and the photo of Lizzie in his pocket and walked toward the house.

  When he reached the grass, he turned and looked upward. His mouth eased to a smile when he realized what he was looking at. Today, he’d finally found it, after all this time searching.

  Right there was the little piece of the sky that contained Heaven. He somehow knew this for certain. Ironically, like so many complexities in life, the answer had been right in front of him the whole time.

  “Pop-pop!”

  He turned to see Jackie flying toward him. The boy gave a leap,