by C. E. Case
"Stay," she said, before Meredith could say goodnight.
Meredith closed her eyes. Natalie reached out and brushed a final stray tear from Meredith's jaw.
"We're going to the beach tomorrow," Meredith said. "Our last weekend."
"Finally."
"We'll see the ocean. It'll be nice."
Natalie put her hand on Meredith's arm. "Our problems will seem small in front of the ocean."
# #
Chapter Twenty-Three
Natalie woke up before Meredith. The sunlight, blinding and orange, shone on them. Natalie slept on her back, with Meredith still curled up on her side. The stiffness in her body brought agony, but Natalie knew how to work through it.
Slowly.
She rotated her ankles and then rubbed her shoulder with her good hand. Turning her neck to gaze at Meredith resulted in satisfying cracks. The sunlight, too, made her limber.
Meredith stirred.
Natalie held her breath and settled down against her pillow. She thought about pretending to be asleep, but she kept her eyes open, staring at the yellow ceiling as Meredith sat up.
"Did I wake you?" Meredith asked.
"No. I was awake."
"Just lying there?"
"Trying to move."
"Are you all right?"
Meredith's face appeared above her, concerned. Natalie laughed. "It's fine. It just takes a while to stretch out the muscles again."
"Right. You should have a nurse or something."
Natalie tried to protest, but Meredith, nimble and healthy, cupped Natalie's neck in both of her hands. She massaged, lifting Natalie's head enough to roll back, and there were more painful crunches traveling down her vertebrae. Natalie sank back and rubbed her shoulders, working the muscles.
"Lift your arms," Meredith said.
"Oh, come on."
Meredith took Natalie's wrists and raised them upward. Natalie grunted. Meredith pulled, stretching her, and when she let go, Natalie felt looser.
"Thank you. Are you always this chipper in the morning?"
"I think it's kind of an anticipatory energy to deal with the boys. Wait until I have to send them to school--" she paused, and sadness went through her, making her whole form shrink.
Natalie, with newly invigorated limbs, reached for Meredith. "You will."
"Maybe," Meredith studied Natalie's face with a serious expression. "At least I want to, now."
Natalie nodded.
Meredith touched Natalie's cheek and leaned down, pressing her lips to Natalie's forehead. Natalie tilted her head back, trying to see Meredith, and Meredith took that as an invitation. She kissed Natalie's lips, briefly. Then straightened.
"I'm going to need your help at the beach," Meredith said.
"Do I have to carry chairs and coolers? Frisbees?"
Meredith slid off the bed and walked around to the foot. Her robe, though wrinkled, flowed with her steps. She looked radiant in the morning, and Natalie's own self-image--sweaty, broken, slug-like, and immobile, diminished. She scoffed. Undaunted, Meredith took Natalie's left calf in both hands.
"No," Natalie said.
"Hush. It'll help." Meredith slid one hand up to cup her knee.
"It'll hurt."
"Big baby."
Meredith lifted until Natalie's leg bent, guided by gravity and professional skill. Natalie groaned with pain. Meredith straightened out her leg. Natalie exhaled.
"Again," Meredith said.
Whatever Paul of Tarsus had to say about spending too much time with the wrong people, there was absolutely nothing sexy about physical therapy, even in a bed lit by the morning sunlight. Even with Meredith in a robe like that.
#
Bundling two boys into the car took a long time, even when they were eager to get to the beach. Forgetfulness plagued them, and laziness, so Meredith carried everything for four people. They'd intended to pack sandwiches, but Natalie suggested KFC. The boys dissolved into giggles.
Meredith just shook her head.
They finally left. Meredith drove and Natalie sat beside her, leaning against the window, trying to ignore the boys as they wrestled and shouted in the back of the station wagon.
"Isn't it unsafe?" she asked.
"There are degrees of unsafe. They're four. And they're boys. As long as they aren't poking at us we can consider ourselves blessed."
"Okay. I consider myself blessed."
Meredith grinned, the corner of her mouth twitching upward. She turned back to the road.
Natalie, too, watched the expanse of highway open up in front of them. On either side of the road were only wetlands and farmland, low and flat and a verdant, invigorating green. Scrub brush joined the landscape as they got closer. The car traveled easily on the open road. Here in the daylight, Natalie's accident seemed silly. How, on such a benign highway, had she nearly died?
Around a bend, and nearly immediately, the traffic pattern changed from heavy highway travel to a full stop. Meredith slowed deftly while Natalie was still recoiling from the vision of hundreds of cars, red brake lights blinding, winding through the lowlands.
"Did you know to expect that?" Natalie asked.
Meredith grinned. "Tourists."
"From where? There aren't this many people in Tarpley, are there?"
Meredith shrugged. "From Charlotte, mostly. Columbia. Greensboro. Raleigh. People coming down for the weekend. They won't all be at the beach. There's fishing, and golf, and the boardwalk. And I guarantee they'll all be gone by noon when the tide comes in. Isn't much beach left."
"Erosion," Merritt said.
Natalie nodded. They crept along. Meredith turned on the radio to listen to the traffic report, but all she found was country and beach music. She settled on the beach music, and that was the setting for Natalie when the car rounded another curve, and behind a grove of ordinary trees growing out of the grassland, she saw a palm tree.
"Oh, wow," she said.
"What?" Meredith glanced at her, and then stomped on the brakes as the car in front of her stopped unexpectedly. She narrowed her eyes.
"The beach. It's close."
"It's close enough to feel," Meredith said.
Natalie tried not to sniffle at the stupid tree and started to wonder how well her walker was going to work in the sand. She should have switched to crutches.
Beau climbed toward the front seat. He poked Natalie.
"Ow. Stop."
He poked her again.
She hissed.
"And so it begins," Meredith said. "Who wants to play the license plate game?"
"Me!" Merritt said.
Beau scowled.
A month ago, Natalie, upon witnessing these boys in the grocery store or on the sidewalk, cavorting as they were, loud and obnoxious and motivated by absurdist self-involvement, would have dark thoughts. Though she would not have acted on any desires of violence, she would have gone out of her way to avoid children. She would have crossed the street, turned around and driven home, maybe even stopped shopping at that store.
Whatever it took.
Her senses must have dulled because she barely noticed they had increased their racket, and they were so cute, the way Merritt squeaked at cars and Beau kicked the side of the door whenever he got beaten, that she could only smile.
#
The first thing Natalie saw upon closing the car door and convincing Meredith she could, in fact, handle a walker, a backpack, and a chair, as long as she moved along at a slow pace, was the giant sand dune. The ocean roared from somewhere nearby, unrelenting. The smell of salt had been with her since the highway.
Meredith had rolled down the windows as soon as they'd gotten close to Wilmington, before she'd veered south and took them down the coastal highway, past tiny hamlets and big billboards proclaiming beach after beach. She'd only seen trees and stoplights and more billboards until they'd turned left, across traffic, and then it was over a bridge and to this tiny strip of brush and sand and houses on sti
lts.
And the dunes. Seaweed grew like cattails, and there were picket fences and barbed wire around each dune, and a staircase, wooden and weathered, in the middle of it all, the boys bounded up, and Natalie inched toward.
"Is this China Beach?" she asked Meredith.
"What?"
"The dunes."
"It's for erosion. The barbed wire is there to protect the sea turtles."
"There are sea turtles?"
"Welcome to the wild coast."
Natalie crept forward.
"Boys. I want you to stay at the bottom of the stairs. If you go near the ocean, I'll drag you back into the car and we'll go home," Meredith said.
A chorus of giggles came from the other side of the dune. Natalie reached the steps. She wanted to be with them. She wanted to see the delight on their faces. She hadn't dealt with stairs since the accident. They were like a wall in front of her, and the walkway, precarious and holed, started above her head. She felt dizzy.
Meredith appeared and trotted down the stairs. Like a mountain goat, Natalie thought. She squelched the jealousy and the fear when Meredith touched her arm and studied her with concern.
"You can do this," Meredith said.
"There's so many of them."
"Eight."
"You counted? There has to be more than eight."
"I counted. Give me the chair."
Natalie handed it over.
"And the walker."
"Merry, I can't walk."
"There's a railing."
"I'll get a splinter."
"Hush. Now let go."
Natalie raised her hands and gave Meredith a dirty look. "You'll feel guilty when I fall over."
"Sure I will." Meredith hefted the walker over her shoulder and went back up the stairs, shouting, "Boys, what did I tell you?"
"We didn't do anything," Beau shouted. "Where's Nat?"
She took a deep breath and put her foot attached to her good leg on the first step. Her bad leg, holding more of her weight, protested, and she leaned forward, squatting, and clung to the railing. She pushed with her foot. She rose up, precariously balanced, more used to pulling than to standing with one foot, but her shoulder hurt too much to take more on.
Maybe Meredith would give her some Percocet, just to get up the stairs.
Meredith re-appeared, with Beau and Merritt lingering on the walkway. She came down and put her arm around Natalie's waist.
"Come on, hurry," Beau said.
"Cute kid," Natalie said.
"Darling, isn't he. Put your arm around me." Natalie put her free arm around Meredith's back, unable to quite reach her shoulders, and clung to the railing with her other hand.
"Okay, you're not going to like this, but lean on me when you take your next step."
"Merry, I can't--"
"I told you. Now try."
Natalie put her foot on the next step, and leaned into Meredith, who balanced her and held her up.
Merritt giggled.
Meredith kept a death grip on her own railing. "On the count of three. One, two, three." They heaved, and Natalie toppled onto the next step.
She was embarrassed. Her face was hot, and she was starting to sweat from the exertion and the heat.
"Again," Meredith said.
By the eighth step, they were getting the hang of it. On the walkway, Natalie leaned over the railing and panted with relief. Meredith kept her hand on Natalie's back.
Merritt and Beau ran past them and back down to the beach.
"No throwing sand in anyone's eyes. Especially people you don't know," Meredith said.
"This might have been more trouble than it was worth."
"That's what the ocean's all about, isn't it? Come on. We get to go down now."
"Oh, no."
"Come on." Meredith took her elbow.
Natalie let herself be dragged along. The ocean lay before her, greenish and calm, with a hazy horizon and a paler, golden sky above. She grinned, moving forward with greater ease until the tide itself came into view, rolling onto the sand, leaving its wet imprint, trying again. Higher and higher.
People bobbed in the surf, specks even at this proximity. The beach was sparsely populated with families and umbrellas and kids. There was a volleyball net down the beach and farther the curve of the land, jutting out to sea, creating a destination.
Down the beach the other way was the pier, which went a long way out into the water, farther than anyone could swim. In the haze, it seemed to shimmer.
"Smells like fish at the end," Meredith said.
"It seems so romantic from here."
"So does the water, until it gets up your nose and stings your eyes and your bathing suit is soaked with sand and you get stung by a jellyfish."
"Were you always like this?"
"I'm a nurse. It's all about applying pragmatism to foolish notions."
"Did you bring me here just to force me to exercise?"
"That's why I brought your physical therapist."
"I don't care what you say, it's beautiful. I wonder--" Her throat got choked up, and she swallowed hard to regain her voice. "I wonder if it would have been this beautiful, six weeks ago."
"Of course it would have," Meredith said. She put her hand on Natalie's back. "You would have seen it at night, with the moon and the stars reflecting on the water, and the lights of the pier, and the comforting darkness and the deafening sound of the waves that could almost swallow you up, but the hotel lights in the distance remind you that at the long, invisible cord connects you to the world, there are still other people."
"Now who's romantic," Natalie said. A tear escaped her eye and rolled down her nose. She turned to Meredith.
Meredith met her eyes, and they gazed at each other rather than the ocean until Beau yelled.
"One step at a time," Meredith said.
Natalie turned back to the descending staircase. She gripped the railing with her hand, and leaned forward bravely. Then she paused. "Which foot do I start on?"
"Reach out your good leg." Meredith went down two steps, and then said, "Put your hand on my shoulder."
Natalie did so, and took the first step. She nearly toppled over, but Meredith caught her by the waist and held her until she regained her balance.
"Good," Meredith said, looking flushed and a little frightened. "Maybe we could--"
"Excuse me ladies."
At the bottom of a staircase was a tall, dark man wearing only swim trunks. "I mean no offense, but I would be happy to help--if I can," he said.
Natalie opened her mouth, but Meredith shushed her.
"Would you mind carrying her down the stairs? She's a bit heavy for me."
Natalie opened her mouth again.
"I'd be happy to." He trotted up the stairs and before Natalie could protest, he'd stopped at roughly chest level, and wrapped one arm around her legs, propelling him against her shoulder. She hung down his back.
"Really, this isn't necessary," she said.
He was already backing down the stairs, very carefully, and holding on only to her good leg, letting the other dangle as it would. Her shoulder strained, but the trip was short, and he planted her on the sand easily.
"Um. Thank you," she said.
Meredith offered him a drink. He declined and jogged off down the beach.
"Nice guy," Meredith said.
Natalie looked agape at her.
"Take off your shoes," Meredith said.
Too in shock to argue, Natalie numbly kicked off her flip-flops. The sand under bare feet sent warmth from her toes to her ankles. She wriggled her toes and sank down into the sand.
Meredith bent easily and picked up her flip-flops. Natalie took them.
"Want your walker?" Meredith asked.
The boys parked it about fifty feet down the beach, along with a blanket and cooler and chairs they abandoned in favor of chasing a seagull.
"Hope they don't catch the poor bird," Meredith said.
"I th
ink I can manage. Natalie straightened up. "If you'll--"
Meredith glanced away from the boys and back at her.
"Help?" Natalie asked.
Meredith slipped her arm around Natalie's waist. "Of course."
"This was a good idea."
A breeze blew across them, bringing with it salt and a faintly fishy smell.
"Wait until you see it at night."
# #
Chapter Twenty-Four
For lunch, they went into town. Natalie was getting better at climbing up the walkway from the sheer panic she'd be stranded. The boys had played in the surf and with strangers' dogs and with the Frisbee and then made it through lunch. Now they were asleep in the back of the station wagon. The dash clock read one o'clock, but sun-stroked and exhausted, Natalie felt like she'd been at the beach all week.
"What's next?" Natalie asked. "Are we going home?"
"We're staying at a condo overnight. It's a surprise. It's near the beach, but not 'on' the beach. Still, it's near the coastal waterway. The boys will love it."
They'd gone over the bridge and back to the mainland where the restaurants were and weren't going back the way they came. Natalie furrowed her brow.
"Trust me," Meredith said.
"Oh, I trust you." She glanced out the window. Another bridge, another neighborhood of stilt-houses and palm trees and scrub grass, and then they were pulling into a concrete driveway and pulling up under the stilts.
"Is this safe?" Natalie asked.
"Well, if the flood comes it'll wash away the car. But we'll be fine."
Natalie got out of the car and glanced at the house. It seemed grand and looming. Then the side door opened and Jake came running down to see them.
"Hey!"
"This is Jake's place?"
"It is," Jake said. "My partner's a banker, you know. Investment. Though with the ocean washing away, I think he's cra-zy. And the mortgage is killing us. You wouldn't believe. So! Happy homecoming."
Natalie accepted his hug, and then he went to scoop up a sleeping Beau while Meredith grabbed Merritt. Merritt protested and dug his fingers into Meredith's shoulder.
"Can I help?" Natalie asked.
"I think your job is to get up the stairs."
"Geez. I'm calling the ADA about this whole place."