Summer Light: A Novel

by Rice, Luanne

  “It’s a Porsche,” he told her.

  “Yes,” Kylie said, feeling the wind blow her hair out behind her. She had never been in a car with the top down before, and she had to agree: It was a lot like a porch. Like sitting out under the stars with her mother and Aunt Enid, the crickets singing in the tall grasses, the stars coming out above. “I like your porch,” she said.

  “I’m glad,” he said with a wide smile.

  “My mother’s prettier than any bride,” she said.

  He glanced over, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Any bride that ever was,” Kylie said.

  The restaurant was dim and romantic, halfway down a country road behind the old stone abbey. Salt breezes blew though the open windows, the warm night air enveloping them like a silken shawl. No one seemed to recognize Martin. Perhaps it was because they were so far from Boston, or perhaps it was the type of place he had chosen—too quaint and old-fashioned to be frequented by serious hockey fans. He had found it listed in a guide of shoreline restaurants.

  They ate filet of sole with tiny spring peas and white truffle pasta, and they drank water instead of wine because Martin was in training. They seemed nervous together, and neither had yet mentioned last night’s phone call. May told herself he’d been kidding, that his words hadn’t meant anything. This was just a first or maybe only date, nothing at all extraordinary.

  But her body was saying otherwise: her heart was racing, and her cheeks felt hot. Her hands wouldn’t stay still, and every time she looked into Martin’s eyes, she had butterflies in her stomach.

  “I’m glad you were free tonight,” he said.

  “So am I,” she said. “Did you have a good time last night?”

  “Maybe a little too good.” He sounded embarrassed. “The team went out to celebrate.”

  “Sounds fun,” she said.

  They told each other the basic facts of their lives: that May was single and Martin’s marriage had been annulled, that she lived in Black Hall and he had a town house in Boston, that she planned weddings and he had played hockey since he was a child.

  “Did you grow up on that farm?” he asked.

  “Yes and no,” she said. “Yes, I grew up there, but it was never a farm. My grandmother built the barn to house her business—she was a wedding planner. One of the first, she always said. She considered herself an artist, and I guess I do, too. She always said it takes creativity to plan the perfect weddings, even more to make a marriage last.”

  “So, you’re wedding-planning artists?”

  “She said so. And Black Hall is home to lots of artists.”

  “Why would you need a barn for that profession?” he asked. “A store, I can imagine. Or an office.”

  She smiled, sipping ice water. “You think we just help people pick out dresses.”

  “No, I don’t know,” he said. Then he smiled, as if she’d caught him. “Yes, I guess I do. Pick out dresses, the cake, things like that. But I suppose that’s like thinking hockey’s just a game.”

  “It isn’t?” she asked innocently.

  He shook his head, ready to explain, then saw she was kidding him. She liked the feeling of teasing each other, as if they were talking around their real reason for having dinner together. It felt half like a game, half like a mystery they weren’t ready to solve yet.

  “Tell me about the barn,” he said.

  “We grow our own herbs,” May said. “Our own roses.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s why we’re having dinner tonight, isn’t it?” she asked, laughing. “Because my roses brought you luck, and you want me to give you more.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe that’s why. But keep talking. Tell me more.”

  May told him about making beeswax candles from the bees they raised, about drying herbs and making sachets and perfumed oils, about supplying the brides with homemade products for love and luck, how she still had her grandmother’s tattered book of potions and recipes.

  “We like the big space for designing ceremonies, rehearsing processions, trying on gowns. My mother collected old gowns, and once a year we hang them from the rafters, every one—” May loved the tradition; it was one of her favorites. She could tell Martin was really listening, hanging on every word, and she suddenly felt embarrassed.

  “Do you like barns?” she asked.

  “Yes. I grew up on a farm in Canada, and we had plenty of barns. My grandfather flooded one once, and we had the first indoor rink in my part of the province. So we both had innovative grandparents….”

  “You lived with your grandfather?”

  “My mother, and my father’s parents, yes. After my father left.”

  “He left?”

  “To play pro hockey,” Martin said. “He was a great player. A great role model for me, when all I wanted to do…He taught me to skate before I could walk. But that was a long time ago.”

  “He’s still alive?”

  “Yeah, but we don’t speak. Never mind about him. What about you? You lived with your grandmother?”

  “Yes,” May said. “My parents died when I was twelve. A truck hit their car. Moving so fast they never saw it coming. At least, that’s what my grandmother told me, what I’ve always wanted to think…”

  “Things happen fast.” Martin covered her hand with his when he saw the tears in her eyes. His own face was filled with emotion, as if all his features were connected straight to his heart: his eyes, his mouth, his jaw.

  “They missed out on seeing a great girl grow up,” Martin said, holding her hand.

  “Thank you. That’s what my friend always says.”

  “Your friend?”

  “Tobin Chadwick. We were inseparable then, and she’s still my best friend. She knew my parents well; I can’t explain why that means so much to me.”

  “You don’t have to. I have a friend like that—Ray Gardner. He’s like my brother, always has been. He knows the whole story, inside and out. I don’t even have to talk—he just knows. We’re teammates now.”

  May touched her glass of water, felt the icy drops with her hand. She saw the shadow pass across his eyes, the darkness she had seen that first time.

  “I lost my daughter, just as you lost your father,” he said. “I have many regrets myself.”

  “You can tell me.” May was watching his eyes.

  “I have the feeling I can.”

  May waited.

  “Some things are meant to be,” he said steadily, using the words he’d said on the phone last night.

  Her hands were trembling, and she didn’t reply.

  “There was a connection I can’t explain,” he said. “I looked back and saw you. And then your daughter came over, spoke to me. She knew about Natalie.”

  “Natalie?”

  “My daughter.”

  “Kylie’s very imaginative,” May said, not wanting him to have the wrong idea. “She’s extremely sensitive; she picks up on things. Maybe she overheard you talking about Natalie.”

  “I don’t talk about her.”

  “Or maybe she saw you looking at a picture…”

  Martin pulled out his wallet. He placed a photo on the table between them, a color snapshot of a bright, smiling little girl with curly hair and one tooth missing in front.

  “Did you have it out on the plane?” May asked. “Even for a second?”

  “Someone gave me a business card,” Martin said, frowning. “I might have put it in my wallet.”

  “Kylie probably saw Natalie’s picture.” May gazed at the girl’s face. “She’s beautiful.”

  “Merci bien.”

  “I don’t want to disappoint you,” May said. “If you’ve been thinking Kylie has some connection to your daughter. She’s very sensitive—she sees things other people don’t. I’ve been taking her to some psychologists in Toronto. See, we had this traumatic thing happen once. We found a body on a nature hike.”

  “A body?”

  “A man who had hanged h
imself. She’s very curious about death,” May added.

  “She knew the plane was going down,” Martin said. “She asked me to help you.”

  The waitress came over to clear their plates away. May’s heart was beating so loud she was afraid Martin and the waitress would hear. For reasons no one understood, her daughter saw angels. How could she give him the alternate explanation: that Kylie hadn’t known about the crash, that she had just been looking for a suitable father-figure, that she’d wanted a father her whole life, that May had never quite managed to provide her with one?

  “I think she just liked the way you looked,” May said. “She probably wanted you to help us with our bags.”

  Martin laughed. He stared at his daughter’s picture for a moment longer, then replaced it in his wallet. “Carrying your bags would have been easier,” he said. “Would you still have given me those rose petals?”

  “Yes, I probably would have,” May said, glad to stop talking about Kylie.

  “They brought me luck, those petals. I want to thank you, but I also want to ask you for a favor.” He grinned, as if he wanted May to think he was kidding, but she could see he was completely serious. May kept her expression steady. She felt shaken up by their time together—by a million strange emotions racing inside. She was close to the edge, and she didn’t know what she’d see if she leaned a little closer.

  “What would you like?” she asked calmly.

  “A few more,” he said. “Don’t tell my teammates; they’d have me on the bench so fast…but I’m an old man in the NHL, and this might be my last real shot at the Stanley Cup. It’s crazy, I know.”

  “Crazy?” May laughed. “I work in a world where standard operating procedure is something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. I meet with doctors who study the supernatural. A few rose petals don’t seem weird to me at all.”

  “So you’ll give me some?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I have some back at the barn. I’ll give them to you when you drop me off.”

  “D’accord,” he said. “That’s a deal.”

  An hour later, after taking the long way back, Martin followed her into the old barn. He felt intoxicated by the smells of hay, lavender, honeysuckle, and roses. He had thought the scent was coming from the countryside, but when May stopped short, he realized it was coming from her neck. She led him through the darkness with owls and nighthawks calling from the rafters above.

  “Do the owls scare the brides?” he asked.

  “The birds are quiet during the day,” May said. “And the brides almost never look up. Sometimes I find piles of fur, shells, and bones on the floor, and I make them into little wedding amulets to bring the brides luck.”

  “Owl throw-up,” Martin said. “Very romantic, non?”

  “I’ll give you one.” May opened a heavy glass door and led him into a dark, humid greenhouse. Grow-lights glowed darkly over rows of new shoots. “For luck.”

  Martin tried to control his breathing. He wasn’t known for the sensitivity he showed to people, especially women, but in talking about his mother and grandfather earlier, he had felt something ancient awakening in him, the part of him that knew and cared how people felt. Then the conversation had started veering too close to Natalie, and Martin had felt the ice come sliding down.

  But this time, he felt something different: He wanted to tell May more. He had the feeling he could trust her, that he would be telling her things for a long time to come. Walking beside her, he wondered whether she could read his mind. Maybe clairvoyance—or whatever she wanted to call it—ran in her family.

  “Here are our off-season roses,” May said, standing among the pots. “We have a beautiful garden outside, but it doesn’t bloom till June. My grandmother was a great gardener. She experimented with different varieties, and we all have our favorites.” Crouching down, she took shears and snipped off a very full and perfect bud.

  “ ‘We all’?” Martin asked.

  “My grandmother, mother, great-aunt, Kylie, and I.”

  “Whose favorite is that one?”

  “Kylie’s,” May said.

  He nodded, but she wasn’t looking. He watched her peel the petals from the rose one by one. She laid them on a rough wood table, and then she took two small silver trays from a pile on a high shelf. Uncorking a blue bottle, she poured a small amount of oil onto one tray. Martin smelled the oil, and it made him think of being lost in a deep forest. It reminded him of being a child, of hiking dense mountain trails, of mulched leaves, new grass, life, and death. The bones around his eye sockets ached and the arthritis in his ankle throbbed, and he could hear May breathing.

  She worked in the dark, in the purple glow of the grow-lights and the sparkle of starlight coming through the glass hothouse roof. He took a step closer, standing nearer to her body, but she gave a sharp look over her shoulder.

  “Pardon,” he said.

  “I have to concentrate,” she said. “I want my hands to be steady.”

  Using an instrument that looked like ivory forceps, May lifted each rose petal, carefully rolled it in the oil, then set it on the second silver tray to dry. Martin’s mother was a good photographer, and watching May reminded Martin of the darkroom, how his mother would use tongs to move the negatives from the vat to the drying rack.

  A clock chimed ten, and Martin checked his watch: In nine hours, he would be on a plane to Edmonton. The Porsche would get him to Boston in less than two hours, but he should already be home, if not in bed then watching training tapes of the Oilers. What was he doing in this woman’s greenhouse, watching her dip rose petals in oil? What did any of this have to do with hockey, with the Stanley Cup?

  “What do they do?” he asked. “You said you give them to people for luck. How do they work?”

  “They just do,” she said, continuing the ritual.

  “It’s late,” he said, feeling increasingly nervous, wondering what he’d gotten himself into. “I believe they work, they did already, but—”

  “But how?” she asked.

  “Yes. That’s what I want to know. I should get going. I have a plane to catch—”

  May opened a creaky drawer and removed a small leather pouch. In it she inserted the white rose petals, along with a small ball of fur, claws, and a tiny backbone. “Owl throw-up,” she said, grinning as she used his phrase.

  “Merci.” His heart was racing, as if he were already late.

  “How it works…” she said. “Well, it’s simple. My grandmother grew this rose, I picked it, and it’s Kylie’s favorite. The owl pellet is to remind you that life is very short, that you must shoot for the stars every chance you get. The leather pouch is…more masculine than lace. So the guys won’t laugh at you.” She smiled, and Martin tried to laugh.

  They stood close together, the grow-lights under the tables casting shadows upward into their faces. Martin’s heart was pounding, and he forgot about the roses, the greenhouse, tomorrow’s game, the guys on his team. He took May into his arms, and kissed her hard. He saw stars as he held her body close, feeling her respond as she kissed him back.

  “What were you saying?” he asked after a long time, when she stood holding him tight and gazing up with eyes that made him feel he was melting at his core. He felt like a teenager, someone who hadn’t kissed a thousand women, who had never before fallen in love.

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  “Do you mind if I kiss you again?”

  “Not very much at all.”

  This time he leaned against the rough wood bench, pulling her into his body. He felt passion unlike anything he’d ever experienced before, and he heard the words come out of his mouth: “You know how I asked you if you believe certain things are meant to be?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “How could we know?”

  “Because I have proof.”

  “Proof?”

  “Yes.” Martin said,
holding her closer. “It’s happening right now, to us.”

  “We’re meant to be?” May asked.

  “We’re supposed to get to know each other. I’m supposed to court you, and we’re supposed to figure out what we have in common.”

  “Looking at it that way, it doesn’t make sense,” May said. “I hardly know anything about hockey, and you don’t seem like the flower garden type. I’m raising my daughter on a farm in Connecticut, and you’re a jet-setting sports star in Boston.”

  Martin held her tighter, shaking his head. “None of that makes any difference,” he said.

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because this is meant to be. I took one look at you on the plane, and I knew.”

  “Knew what?” she asked softly, as if her mouth were too dry to quite say the words.

  “That you’re the one.”

  “But how can you know?”

  “The same way you do,” he said. “Because it’s true.”

  Chapter 4

  WITH GAME 1 OF THE Stanley Cup finals about to be played on the fast ice of Edmonton, Martin sat in the locker room of Northlands Coliseum. The trainer had just finished taping Martin’s ankles, knees, and wrists, and he was distractedly thinking about May and when he’d see her again when Coach Dafoe walked over. Hands in his pockets, he stood by the bench.

  The coach had an easygoing demeanor, calling the team “his boys,” inviting some of them home for Sunday dinners with his wife and kids, but he was also the most focused coach in the NHL. He had known both of Martin’s parents, having played with Serge Cartier on the Montreal Canadiens when they were both young men. Balding and paunchy now, Coach Dafoe had dark eyes that reminded Martin of a shark’s—they never blinked, and they missed nothing.

  Clearing his throat, he looked Martin straight in the eye.

  “This is it, Martin.”

  “I know,” Martin said.

  “We’ve asked a lot of you all season, and we’re going to do that again tonight.”

  Martin nodded, but he didn’t speak. He had been playing hockey a long time, and it was every player’s dream to make it to the finals. This year he and the Bruins had taken each other all the way. He knew he was their “star,” that expectations were higher for him than anyone. His stomach jolted, and when he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine it was his father standing before him instead of Coach Dafoe.