by Mary Carter
Bailey finally opened the letter that she’d stolen from Brad’s desk, praying it would be a heartfelt apology, something she could hold on to, something that would help her forgive him. She opened it, and prayed.
Dear Bailey,
I’m a coward.
I love you,
Brad
That was it? That was his big apology? She felt guilty for stealing that? It was a good thing he never gave it to her. Instead of helping her process her anger, it just made her more depressed. She tore the letter into tiny pieces and threw them away. She never wanted to get out of bed.
On the third day of Brad bringing her ice packs, and meals in bed, and cups of coffee or tea, and flowers, and paperback books, Bailey finally let it out in the open. Brad had just come to take away her breakfast tray. She stopped him. He sat on the bed and just looked at her.
“You have a son,” she said. It was difficult to say the words; they felt thick in her mouth.
“Yes,” Brad said. She winced. She couldn’t believe how much it hurt, how terribly shocking it all was. She had been holding out hope that somehow it wasn’t true, just a fabrication designed to talk Thomas down from the ledge.
“Do you remember the summer you graduated from high school?” Brad said.
“Cynthia Hargrave,” Bailey said. Brad wasn’t expecting the name to come out of her mouth. It took him several seconds to recover.
“You knew?”
Bailey laughed, even though it wasn’t funny. How could he not remember the yard sale? Bailey was the one who’d pushed them to go, mainly because she was dying to see Cynthia’s house. Her father was a surgeon. They had a mansion, and horses, and an in-ground pool. Bailey didn’t know people like that had yard sales. Bailey was busy checking out the clothes Cynthia had for sale, which were way nicer than anything Bailey owned new. Brad was looking through a stack of college textbooks that belonged to Cynthia’s older brother. Brad bought one of the books—Sexual Deviancy. Cynthia followed Brad around the yard that day in her little white shorts and sparkling gold bikini top. She laughed loudly at everything he said and flipped her hair so many times it was a wonder she wasn’t bald by the time they left. She wouldn’t even take money from Brad for the book. And just as they were leaving, she grabbed it away from him, took a red marker out of her white shorts, stuck it in her mouth, pulled it out (still chewing seductively on the cap), and wrote something in the book.
Bailey had kept her jealousy in check because Cynthia Hargrave, who had been the most popular girl in school, liked her boyfriend. Bailey reached for the book, but Cynthia snatched it away and made Brad take it.
“For your eyes only,” she said with a wink. Bailey silently wished she would choke on the cap to the marker. But she held it together. She simply linked arms with Brad and pretended it didn’t bother her. That is, until they were safely down the enormous driveway and way out of earshot. Then Bailey let Brad have it. At first, Brad seemed amused and doubly flattered. First by the attention from Cynthia, then by Bailey’s jealousy. But when she wouldn’t give up her sour mood, and he wouldn’t admit to flirting back, it disintegrated into a fight that led to their first breakup. Later, when they were at Brad’s house and he was in the shower, Bailey snuck a peek at the book.
Brad,
Come to my bed and be a sexual deviant with me.
Love,
Cindy
Bailey wanted to rip it out. She wondered now if events would have changed if she had. Instead, she confronted Brad with it, as if he were responsible for writing it himself, as if he had already slipped into the sheets with Cynthia. She even blamed him for buying the book in the first place, although it was exactly the type of book Brad would have picked up and read. The second half of the fight was a doozy. They broke up for the rest of the summer.
“But how did you know I slept with her?” Brad said after Bailey recounted the story.
“I didn’t for sure,” Bailey said. “But come on. Do you really think I expected you to never sleep with anybody but me?”
“We were so young,” Brad said. “Not that that’s an excuse.”
“It’s no excuse for doing it with her,” Bailey said. “But I never wanted the burden of being the only one for your entire adult male life. Believe me.”
“Thus your first year of college,” Brad said.
“Thus my first year of college,” Bailey agreed. That was their second breakup. When Bailey was seized with panic that she would never sleep with another man besides Brad. She told him they both needed their freedom. It lasted six months. Long enough for Bailey to experience that she wasn’t really missing anything.
“So tell me everything,” Bailey said. It wasn’t a new story, or even a particularly surprising one. A pregnant teenage daughter didn’t sit well with the Hargraves. Her father was so enraged he threatened to press statutory rape charges against Brad. Cynthia had been a month from turning eighteen. Later, Brad would realize Dr. Hargrave’s threats wouldn’t have landed him in jail at all. The age of consent in Massachusetts is sixteen. At the time, however, Brad had no clue what they could or couldn’t do to him, but he believed Dr. Hargrave was capable of getting his way. He believed he’d do serious jail time. So Dr. Hargrave offered Brad an alternative. He could avoid jail if he gave up all parental rights. Soon after, the Hargraves moved out of the state. Bailey couldn’t believe she hadn’t put it together sooner, but she spent the rest of that summer in New York City with Aunt Faye. When she did come back, all she knew was that Cynthia and her family had moved.
“When did you find out she had a boy?” Bailey asked.
“Remember the older brother?” Brad asked.
“Of course,” Bailey said. She held him responsible too. He was the one selling the textbook.
“I contacted him,” Brad said.
“When?”
“When we got back from Europe,” Brad said. Bailey cringed. While his son was being born, Brad was traveling through Europe with her.
“He told me it was a boy. Warned me to stay away. Said everyone was fine.”
“So that was it?” Bailey said.
“No,” Brad said. “Five years later I contacted him again.” This time, Cynthia was married to a doctor. The man had legally adopted Brad’s son. “That was the last time I ever made contact,” Brad said. “My son was healthy. He had a father. What was I supposed to do?”
“Tell me,” Bailey said. “That’s what you were supposed to do.”
Bailey spent several days just trying to breathe. She felt an enormous sadness. A son had missed out on his father. A father had missed out on his son. She had been living with a man she thought she knew inside and out, and yet he had this larger-than-life secret. She wanted all those years back so they could do it right. She was furious with the Hargraves for threatening a seventeen-year-old kid with jail. Especially one without a family support system. Even if she could go back, there was probably little that could have been done to change that aspect of it. She wondered what Cynthia was like now, wondered if Cynthia ever felt bad that her son had missed out on his real father.
Did the boy look like Brad? Have his dimples? Was he impulsive and energetic? Handsome? Every new round of thoughts brought fresh tears. In the days following the revelation, Bailey’s tears could have filled the Hudson. Because even if she could see the impossible situation Brad had been in at the time, what about now? Bailey had stuck by his side through thick and thin for the past twenty-six years. All that time and she had no idea that his unpredictable moods, inability to stay in one place, and fear of having children had a source. And even if Bailey couldn’t blame everything on this secret, it had undoubtedly played a huge role in every aspect of their lives. And maybe Brad got some kind of relief out of punishing himself by not having any more children, but what about Bailey? What had she done to deserve it? After several days of barely speaking to Brad, she confronted him. He was working on the pier, trying to patch up a few broken boards before winter hit. Bailey stoo
d over him, watching until he looked up. He saw her red eyes, evidence of more tears, and even though she hated to see how pained he was to see her cry, she remained steely.
“Are you going to try and find him?” Bailey said.
“No,” Brad said.
“Why not?” Brad turned away, began to hammer. “Why not?”
“It’s too late,” he said without looking at her.
“He’s twenty-one,” Bailey said. “Why don’t you let him decide for himself?” Brad didn’t answer. Bailey watched him take his anger out on the boardwalk for a few minutes longer, then she turned to go on one of many solitary walks along the river.
PLEASE SIGN OUR GUEST BOOK!
What a glorious fall day. We so enjoyed the rowboat, the walks along the river, and the roaring fires in the evening. We never expected asparagus in our omelets and cranberries in our pancakes, and now we don’t know how we shall live without it. And the quiet! It’s nice to see a couple enjoy each other without having to talk. We have four children, and in our house this kind of silence would mean that something had gone horribly wrong. It was nice to be reminded how precious silence can be. It was the best gift you could have ever given us. We hear there is a ferryboat and grocery store for sale. If we didn’t have those darn kids, we might buy them ourselves! We will definitely be back!
In between ignoring the occasional guest, Bailey and Brad threw themselves into setting up the museum. Bailey gathered articles about lighthouses, which she framed and mounted on the wall. She even became somewhat crafty, using shells, and bits of worn glass, and driftwood she’d plucked from the river to decorate the frames. Brad built a display case for the original Fresnel lens, and even set up a kerosene lamp with a silver bucket next to it that they labeled WHALEO IL. During this time he held several board meetings through Skype, all of which Bailey refused to attend, although she did read the minutes afterward. The board was excited about the lens, of course, and was taking precautions to get it insured.
They stocked the little gift shop as well. They would sell miniature lighthouses, postcards, and candles for a start. Bailey wasn’t thinking about her future; rather she threw herself into the projects so she wouldn’t have to think. Winter would soon be upon them, and lately by early afternoon, the horizon would turn into an endless gray, an on-the-verge-of-a-storm gloom, and in the mornings the ground would be covered with frost, and besides Captain Jack taking off, all anyone in town could talk about was the winter, wondering how bad the river would freeze this year.
Bailey wished she could enjoy it more. They had holidays looming, Thanksgiving and Christmas. She wanted to be happy. She wanted a big turkey and a table full of guests, and a Christmas tree, and Christmas carols, and roaring fires. She even wanted Captain Jack back. She wanted to see his ferry decked in lights, she wanted to buy overpriced eggnog from Island Supplies. She probably would have forgiven the old captain if he stayed. Sure, he would have been brought up on trespassing charges—other than that, what else could they have charged him with? Impersonating a ghost? Jake had certainly destroyed quite a bit of their property while searching for the lens, and of course had charged them for his contracting work in the meantime, but Bailey still thought she and Brad would have gone pretty easy on them. Unfortunately, sometimes people just didn’t give you a chance to be the bigger person. The biggest wedge between Bailey and Brad was no longer the past, but the present. Bailey wanted Brad to find his son. He adamantly refused. So the two of them mirrored what the river was soon to become. Bailey was frozen, and Brad was immovable. Bailey even missed the days of Olivia. After Thomas almost destroyed the urn a second time, it had quietly disappeared from the Crow’s Nest. Brad didn’t tell her what he did with it, and Bailey didn’t ask.
Chapter 37
Keeper’s Log
Brad Jordan
You’re not supposed to meet the love of your life at ten years old. But if you do, like I did, you’re not supposed to sleep with other women. But if you do, like I did, you’re supposed to be a stand-up guy. I wasn’t. I gave up all parental rights to my son. Signed a document and everything. Then I kept it from the woman I love more than life itself. Sure, I was young, and stupid, and scared. And I was probably a little bit relieved at the time too. Relieved that someone else was taking the decision out of my hands, relieved that I could convince myself there was nothing else I could have done, relieved that I was just able to walk away, bury that one night of my life that would come to follow me the rest of my days.
If I had it to do over, I pray I would be a stand-up guy. Although Hargrave certainly had the money to hire the best attorneys. And if I had to do it all over, I still would’ve believed his lies that I was going to do serious jail time. I should’ve said, ‘Bring it on,’ but of course I didn’t. But I do know that if I could take it all back, I would have told Bailey. Right? I probably would have lost her. She would’ve walked away. Who would she be now? Would she be happier? Would she have children? Would she have lived all her life in one place that she could call home instead of being dragged all over the place?
I really did buy this lighthouse so that I could give her a home. I wanted her to have a safe port in the storm. Bailey is still in shock, I can tell by the way she moves, how she holds her body, how difficult it is for her to look me in the eye. But she’s still here, isn’t she? We’re working on the museum, and the gift shop, and she’s even trying out new recipes on the few guests we’ve had since the incident.
Bailey wants me to contact him. She says my son is a grown man and he has a right to decide whether or not he wants to meet me. And I could tell him how I thought about him every single day. On his birthday, holidays, every time I passed a kid that would be around his age. I know Bailey is right, but something holds me back. Is it fear? Or am I still the same old selfish son of a—
Oh God. Bailey’s right. This is a fucking diary.
Bailey woke up one morning to find a bedraggled, bloated blond woman in the kitchen. Bailey didn’t even have time to speak before the woman launched herself from her seat at the head of the dining table and reached out to her.
“Money means shit,” she said. “Fame means shit.” Bailey nodded slowly, backing up while trying to remember which drawer held the sharp knives. She should never have started watching that zombie series with Brad. “We bought the penthouse despite that dorky chocolate-chip-scented candle and slide show of the Frick museum!”
“Allissa?” Bailey said. It was her voice, but it definitely wasn’t her body. Wow, people really did let themselves go when they found true love.
“Like I don’t already have a million pictures of where I got married!”
“But didn’t the scent of chocolate chips make you feel warm and cozy?”
“No. I don’t eat chocolate chips.” You didn’t then, Bailey thought. But it certainly looks like you do now. She was mature enough not to say it. Besides, Allissa didn’t look fat by any means, she just wasn’t her previous skeletal state. She looked better, but between the weight gain and black mascara running down her face, Bailey wouldn’t have recognized her in a million years. It was then that Bailey noticed Allissa came with baggage. Four large Louis Vuittons, to be exact.
“How did you get here?” Bailey said. “The ferry is no longer in service.”
Allissa gestured out the window. “I came in one of our smaller yachts,” she said.
“Of course you did.” Bailey gestured for Allissa to sit while she shuffled over to the coffeemaker.
“All he does is work, work, work!” Allissa whined.
“Greg?”
“Of course, Greg. Who else? Our yacht captain?” And if she hadn’t already, Bailey would have recognized Allissa’s sarcasm anywhere.
“Bear with me,” Bailey said. “Just starting the coffee.”
“We have some made on the yacht if you’d like me to have someone bring it. Speaking of which, where should Manuel put my luggage?” Upon mention of the name, a short middle-aged man wearing a
tux and white gloves entered the kitchen and stood at attention. Apparently, he’d been listening and waiting on the other side of the door. For some reason, he looked familiar.
“Allissa,” Bailey said. “You didn’t make a reservation.” Not that they had any other guests, but Bailey wasn’t really in the mood for any, especially someone as high maintenance as Allissa. Allissa gestured at Manuel, who immediately pulled a checkbook out of his breast pocket.
“I’m staying at least a month,” Allissa said. “Will fifty thousand do? Consider the extra a donation to your sad little gift shop museum thingy you have going on in there. You don’t even have blankets or chocolates, for God’s sakes.” Blankets and chocolates. They actually weren’t a bad idea.
“Upstairs, first room on the left, Manuel.” He smiled at her, and recognition dawned.
“Carlos?” Bailey said. “Is that you?”
“His name is Manuel now,” Allissa said.
“But you’re Carlos, right? With the shopping cart and the megaphone, and the end of the world?”
“Allissa offered me employment,” Carlos said.
“Don’t say I never give to the homeless!” Allissa said.