by Lisa Carter
Darcy drifted onto the screened porch, stuffing her bare feet into the flip-flops she’d left there last night. Easing the screen door shut behind her, she plodded toward the tree house.
Underneath the massive oak, the swing moved idly in the desultory breeze blowing in from the harbor. Hand on the railing, she climbed past the lower platform. The wooden steps wound around the tree trunk, and she ascended to her favorite spot on the higher second level. Rising out of the tree canopy, the perch provided a bird’s-eye view of the entire village.
She settled into one of the lawn chairs she kept there. Not that anyone but her had been here for a long time. The Pruitts had outgrown the tree house. Just as, one by one, they’d each outgrown the need for home. And her.
How pathetic was it that she still came up here? Almost thirty, she still lived at home. No boyfriend—or prospects for one—and no real life of her own. What did she have to show for the last fourteen years of her life?
Yet every morning she climbed the tree house stairs. Here, God felt very near. Almost near enough to touch. Almost as close as the clouds overhead. And at night, this was the perfect spot to view God’s starry handiwork.
She’d spent hours here as a child. Vicariously enjoying the noise, laughter and life emanating from the house next door. But she’d been too shy to venture over, until the day Jax stood at the bottom of the tree and invited her to come play with his little sister.
“Anna’s always bothering me and Ben,” Jax had called up. “You’d be doing us a favor.”
Coaxed out, she’d kept a wary eye on the oldest Pruitt boy as she climbed down from the branches. Even from a distance, she knew him to be a charming handful to his mother and his Sunday-school teachers.
On that sultry summer day she never forgot, the Pruitt kids had smiled at her, their mouths stained purple, red, orange and blue.
Jax had handed her a slushy freezer pop. “You look like lime-green would be your favorite.”
Oh so grateful to be included, she took it from him. Thereafter, when the Pruitts broke out freezer pops, the lime-green was forever hers.
Darcy closed her eyes, remembering. The breeze rustled the leaves of the tree. If only she could recapture those days. Before she’d known about the other family. When she felt loved and chosen, blissfully unaware of her father’s heartache.
Things between her and Jax had changed his senior year in high school. Under the basketball net at the end of the Pruitt driveway, he’d gotten all over Will, who’d accidentally knocked her down. Jax had never cared before if anyone wiped the concrete with her.
At youth group, he’d looked at her differently. He would flush when she caught him staring. Drop his eyes. Scuff the toe of his sneaker in the dirt. Awkward, un-Jax-like.
Then after dinner that spring, he took to climbing into the tree house. They’d sit in silence—again, very un-Jax-like. Watching the fireflies blink around them. Watching the stars wink overhead.
Small talk at first. Had she seen the game on TV? What did she think about their chances for beating the church league team in nearby Onley next week? Gradually, he’d told her how he wanted to serve his country like his grandfather. How he wanted to see the world and live life without reservations, on the edge.
He’d painted an irresistible picture of adventure. The kind of adventure she secretly longed for. Living life to the fullest, though part of her shied away from the prospect of leaving everyone and everything behind. Her ideal life would be a balance of the two—home and adventure.
She’d believed Jax Pruitt was the bravest boy she’d ever known. The most handsome. The most everything.
A late bloomer, Darcy found that boys didn’t give her much attention. They respected her athletic ability. Admired her tough, never-say-die spirit. But when it came time for the prom, she wasn’t the girl they asked.
She was flattered, frankly, that Jax Pruitt spent so many of his evenings in the treetop with her. They never held hands or anything like that. He never touched her. They never kissed. Skittish as she was, she would’ve probably decked him if he’d tried. Not that he would’ve tried anything. She was the PK, after all.
But things between them definitely altered. Beyond the tree house, they’d spent an enormous amount of time together working at his aunt Shirley’s shop that summer. And Darcy had loved every minute of it.
As a very sheltered, immature sixteen-year-old, she’d had feelings she didn’t know what to do with. She’d dreaded the day Jax would report to Basic at summer’s end.
Knowing something was coming didn’t always make it better. Like watching a hurricane offshore creep ever closer. Understanding the devastation the day would bring and yet unable to stop it from happening.
“Wait for me in the tree,” Jax had told her in his husky voice. The voice he used with her. “I’ll be there first thing in the morning to say goodbye.” He’d also promised to write.
She didn’t sleep that night. She got up early to wait for him in the tree house. He never showed.
The house next door lay strangely quiet. The Pruitt car had already gone from the driveway. And Jax Pruitt never wrote her. Not once. The old ache resurfaced.
Returning to the present, Darcy exhaled. Ironic that Jax’s return to Kiptohanock meant that, ready or not, her own adventures were about to begin. It was probably good she didn’t have to see Jax or his beguiling son today. Monday couldn’t have been more perfectly timed.
“Darcy?” Her mother stood on the bottom step, peering through the branches. “What in the world are you doing up there so early, sweetie?”
She sighed. “Thinking.”
Praying. Trying to gather the courage to reach for a life full of the adventures she’d once dreamed about. But she didn’t say that to her mom. She couldn’t. PKs didn’t do that sort of thing, after all.
“Your father said something about going to Assateague today. You want to join us?”
Assateague meant the beach, climbing the redbrick lighthouse again, and at the Island Creamery, eating the best ice cream on the peninsula. “Coming.”
She hurried down the stairs. A perfect day spent with those she loved most. She loved Mondays.
* * *
Pulling into the driveway, Jax immediately glanced next door. Darcy’s SUV was parked there, but her father’s compact car was missing. No signs of life at the bungalow.
But it was Monday, of course. Darcy’s favorite day. His lips curved, and his gaze skirted to the backyard oak, its branches visible above the roof of the house.
“Gwandma?” Brody piped from his car seat.
Jax’s mother stepped onto the porch and waved. He’d spent the day fleshing out his ideas for expanding the business, while Brody sat in front of the television set.
He unhooked Brody’s harness. Not good parenting, but when he’d tried initiating a game of catch, his son had refused. Without Darcy, Jax remained a no-go with Brody.
When his grandfather came outside, Brody went ballistic with sheer joy. The toddler was glad to see everyone—anyone—but his dad. The optimism Jax had felt only last night faded.
He had a long way to go before he earned Brody’s trust. Jax’s gaze flitted toward the tree house again. A long way before he regained Darcy’s trust, too.
Throughout dinner, his attention wandered. Anna, her husband, Ryan, and their baby daughter had also come for the impromptu cookout. The backyard buzzed with the soft, fluted tones of his mother, sister and Charlie’s wife, Evy.
Grandpa Everett had a surprise gift for Brody. His tanned little legs pumping the pedals, Brody rode the new Big Wheel along the brick path. Baby Ruby happily rocked in the baby swing Evy kept for her. Charlie and their dad speculated which pitcher would lead the Nationals to a victorious season.
Jax’s thoughts were next door as they’d often been the last summer he lived here. When car lights swept
the Parks’s driveway, he swallowed against a rush of feeling, refusing to give in to the clamoring of his pulse.
He rested his hands on his stomach, his feet crossed at the ankles, a picture of nonchalance. But he didn’t fool his mother. He never had.
Anna’s family left soon after. Charlie and his dad went inside to watch the last inning of the game. And Evy begged for the honor of giving Brody a bath before putting him in the Spider-Man pajamas Jax had brought, anticipating a late night out.
No skin off his nose if she wanted to grapple with his son in the bathtub. But Brody would probably be a perfect child for everyone except his father.
Jax started to help his mother clear the table, but she shooed him away. “I got this.” Her gaze slid next door. “I’m sure you can think of something to do with yourself for a little while.”
It was his mom who’d asked him to go invite the little girl next door to join them for freezer pops that long-ago day. The lime-green had been Jax’s personal favorite, but thereafter, he’d given it up for Darcy.
His mother stacked a few plates. “Probably lots to discuss. Among other things.” She gave him a sweet smile. “You two were thick as thieves, especially that last summer.”
Jax flushed. His mother had known about that, too? He’d been eager to take on the world. Yet despite his outward bravado, he’d been inwardly conflicted about leaving home. Not unlike most eighteen-year-olds, he supposed.
His mother nudged him. “Back where you began. Best place to start.”
Maybe she was right. Maybe if he really hoped to start over, he had to begin where he’d left off. Where everything had unknowingly derailed for him.
Bypassing the abandoned Big Wheel, he stuffed his hands in his pockets as he tromped across the grass. Darcy didn’t give herself enough credit. With her get-over-yourself common sense, he’d felt safe confiding his secret fears and aspirations.
He’d told Darcy things he’d never understood about himself until he heard the words coming out of his mouth. She was a good listener, easy to be with and fun.
Still a girl, though, and other than the dude Anna constantly hung out with in those days, his sister’s best friend. Anna had eventually found happiness with that dude, Ryan Savage, but only after intense heartache due to the too-young death of her first husband.
Jax wended his way through the stand of crepe myrtles between the driveways. A hint of magnolia perfumed the night air as he stopped at the tree house steps. Widowed like him, Anna had returned home. Unlike him, she’d mourned a truly wonderful marriage.
Guilt struck Jax, shrouding him with the familiar feeling of helpless failure. He stared up into the branches. What he wouldn’t give to turn back the clock to the morning he’d reported to basic training. Would his life have been different, if instead of heading out at the crack of dawn, he’d kept his promise? Gone to the tree house? Told Darcy...
He kicked the bottom step, forgetting he wore flip-flops. Pain ricocheted through his big toe.
“Who’s there?” Darcy called, her voice sharp.
“Me.” Like she’d recognize who “me” was after all these years?
But her head popped over the railing. “What do you want, Jax?”
You...
He sucked in a breath. That couldn’t be true. It had been an emotional day, seeing his mom and dad again, after the fiasco with Adrienne’s parents. Meeting his little niece, Ruby. Facing the ongoing breach with his son.
“I want...” He cleared his throat. “I want to talk. Can I come up?”
He’d never felt he needed her permission before. Yet now...they weren’t the same kids they’d been. He wasn’t sure of anything when it came to adult Darcy.
Darcy’s lips twisted. “At your own peril, Pruitt.” Her head disappeared from view.
A quote they’d borrowed from a movie they’d watched in the days before the cinema on the square closed.
His heart thundering, he took the curving steps two at a time. Stopping at the top, he felt his chest heave. “Hey.”
Sunk in a collapsible lawn chair with her bare legs updrawn, Darcy looked at him.
“Y’all have a good outing today?” Sensing that if he waited, he’d never be asked, Jax moved to the empty chair beside her. “I know how you love Mondays.”
Abruptly, her feet plunked on the wooden boards. “You wanted to talk, so talk.”
Elbows propped on his knees, he knotted his hands. “How ’bout them Nats?”
By the light of the waxing moon, Jax saw her lip curl. He tried again. “About what you said the other day?”
“I say a lot of things, Jax.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” he grunted. “But I’m talking about your assessment of the Pruitt brothers.”
“How Charlie is the best looking?” Incredulity laced her voice. “You came over here to talk to me about that?”
“Among other things.” His words were an unconscious echo of his mom’s. “For the record, Charlie’s Clark Kent good looks are so last century.”
“Are they now?” She turned toward the sliver of harbor visible from their perch. “In your humble opinion?”
“In my humble but accurate opinion.”
As she stared out over the moon-dappled water, her lips twitched. “What about Ben?”
Jax wrinkled his nose. “Squid Boy?”
“What’s not to like about a Navy SEAL?”
He shrugged. “Way overrated.”
She swatted at a mosquito. “Unlike Green Berets?”
He grinned.
“There’s always Will.” She quirked an eyebrow. “What woman doesn’t love a firefighter?”
“Helmet Head?” He rolled his eyes. “Who can tell beneath the turnout gear?”
A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “You’re as impossible as ever, Jax Pruitt. And just as conceited.”
“One of the reasons you like me so much.”
“You wish.” She glared. “What other reasons?”
He settled into the chair with a contented sigh. This was exactly like old times. “For one thing, I make you laugh.”
At her very unladylike hoot of derision, his grin slipped.
“I’m not laughing with you, Jaxon. I’m laughing at you.”
He planted his palms on the armrests of the chair. “Whatever it takes to keep you talking to me, Darce.”
She scowled. “Try whatever it takes to keep me from punching you. ’Cause you’re overdue, Pruitt.”
He offered his cheek. “Go ahead and wallop me one. I deserve it. Get it out of your system.”
“Not that you don’t deserve it, Jax, but for once let’s pretend to be grown-ups.”
“I should’ve written you like I said I would.” His voice dropped.
Except for the thrumming of the cicadas, silence stretched between them. His palms began to sweat.
Finally, “Why didn’t you write, Jax?”
The easier of his promises to explain. Both of them were desperately dancing around his other broken promise to her on that long-ago morning.
He wiped his hands on his shorts. “It wasn’t like the war stories Grandpa told about his army career.”
Stories Jax realized now had been highly redacted versions of what his grandfather must’ve experienced at D-day and on the Korean Peninsula.
He took a deep breath. “Boot camp took everything I had to remain focused. The sergeant did his best to break us.”
She studied his face. “And you, being Jax, were determined not to be broken.”
But like the rest, he’d broken eventually. So Uncle Sam could rebuild them into soldiers who could survive what lay ahead.
“And then I deployed.”
“But still you never wrote.” Her voice grew pensive. “Do you know I’ve spent fourteen years not watching the evening
news, Jax?”
How could he make sense of this for her? How could he make sense of this for himself? “You didn’t belong to that world, Darce.”
A world as far removed from the peaceful oasis of Kiptohanock as the earth from the stars overhead. The world that ultimately took Adrienne’s life. A world that needed to remain separate from the one that mattered to him. The real him.
When Darcy touched his arm, he jumped.
“Jax?”
And like that, she recalled him from the edge of the emptiness he’d felt since losing his wife.
“If you ever want to tell someone, I’ll listen.”
“If I could ever tell anyone...” His voice wobbled. “I’d tell you.”
For the space of a heartbeat, he feared she’d insist he come clean, but instead she threw him a lifeline. “What else did you want to discuss, Jax?”
On stable footing once more, he outlined his idea to reach out to disabled veterans with a kayaking program designed to overcome their disabilities.
“Not a bad idea, Jaxon Pruitt. It has real possibilities.”
“I knew a guy once...” He blew out a breath.
Somehow, they’d ventured onto dangerous terrain again.
“Is he okay?”
Jax shifted. “After his injury, he lost the will to live. He didn’t make it.”
“I’m sorry, Jax.” She didn’t press him for details.
“A day out on the water once in a while might’ve given him the courage to live another day.”
She squeezed his hand. “With the VA hospital across the bay, I think your program stands a good chance of succeeding.”
He held on to her hand.
Frowning, she pulled away. “Glad we could come to a meeting of the minds.”
Whereas he would like to come to a meeting of so much more. Namely, her lips.
He nearly gasped out loud. Where had that come from? This was Darcy. As if he needed reminding. Which, judging from his pounding heart, he did.
Something in his expression must’ve changed because her eyes widened. He took a moment to drown in the blue-green of her gaze. And without intending to, he leaned closer. Her lips parted.