Play of Light

by Debra Doxer

  Spencer was so hard to read sometimes, and so difficult to feel close to. Just when I thought I understood him, he’d shutter his thoughts and isolate himself. I was afraid that hadn’t changed. As much as I was afraid to trust what I thought I saw in his expression.

  “I give,” I said. Then I stepped back, and Spencer loosened his arms. I could sense him leaning down, trying to see my face, but I pretended to wipe away more water as I moved out of his grasp, still not looking at him, while I turned and trudged out of the ocean.

  “I’ll get you something dry to wear,” he said, walking beside me. Drops of water darkened the sand beneath his feet where my eyes were trained. “You look cold,” he added. Then his hand smoothed over the wet skin on my forearm before he took the lead, speeding up to open the sliding door at the back of his cottage.

  Following him inside, I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. I was quiet, watching while he moved from what looked like a common room with a gray couch, wooden coffee table, and a TV, to a hallway that probably led to the bedrooms. On the far wall, where I was standing, there was a galley kitchen with all the appliances lined up together. The air inside was warm and musty, as if they didn’t spend much time here. On the coffee table was a phone that kept sounding a message alert.

  Spencer soon returned, already changed himself, and handed me a T-shirt and gym shorts. “These will have to do. No sexy sundresses in my closet.”

  Sexy? His smile cleared my thoughts. Was he referring to the ones I usually wore? He thought they were sexy? I grinned back at him. “So you’re not a cross-dresser in your spare time?”

  “Sorry, no. Disappointed?”

  I shrugged. “It would have been an interesting development.”

  Spencer’s lips twitched. “You can change in my room.”

  The fact that there were no readily available girls’ clothes in his closet made me unreasonably happy. Neither Annabelle nor any other girl stayed with Spencer often enough to keep their things here. Of course if they did, would he offer them to me? Probably not.

  He turned back the way he came, and I followed him down the short hall to an open door at the end. When I walked past him to go inside, his lips turned up hesitantly before he walked away to give me privacy.

  With Spencer’s clothes gripped tightly in my hands, I went inside his bedroom. Looking around curiously, hoping for glimpse into his life, I was surprised to find the room practically bare. It held an unmade bed, two guitars leaned up against the wall, a dresser with some items laid on top, a comb, a watch, and loose change. Other than that, there was nothing of him in here, not even his smell, which I realized was clean like soap with an undertone of mint.

  I peeled off my wet clothes, pulled on his dry ones, and finger-combed my hair, which was already starting to curl up. I resisted the urge to smooth my hands down his blue T-shirt with the band name, Deftones, scrawled across the chest in fancy script. The gym shorts were a slippery rayon material that I had to fold over twice at the waist. I looked ridiculous, but I liked the feel of his clothes against my skin.

  Once I was dressed, I bunched my wet clothing in my arms and found Spencer in the kitchen with his back to me.

  “All set,” I said.

  When he heard my voice, he paused in the middle of lifting a glass of water to his lips and tapping on his phone. Turning around, he placed the water on the counter. Then he took me in with a look that was very similar to the one he gave me in the water earlier. This time I reacted with an involuntary tightening low in my belly.

  “Do you want something to drink?” he asked. Glancing at his glass, he laughed quietly. “You can have anything you want as long as it’s water. That’s all we’ve got.”

  Behind him, his phone alerted again. I knew he probably had other things to do today before Riley called him in a panic about me. We’d had our talk, one he abruptly ended by throwing me in the ocean. Even though I was still floored by what he’d said, I felt the need to flee. I wanted to go before the air thickened again, and I did or said something I’d regret.

  “No thanks,” I said. “I’ve put you out enough for one day. You can take me back, or I can call a cab or something.”

  I waited, but he said nothing, although I could sense words poised on his lips as his shoulders sank by a fraction. Did he say all he’d wanted to? Was there more? I had more questions for him, mostly about that night and the promise he’d broken, but based on how he’d just halted our last conversation, I wasn’t eager to ask them.

  Finally, Spencer sighed and picked up his keys. When he moved toward the door, I could feel disappointment in the air. At first I thought it was wholly mine, but his slumped shoulders made me wonder if he felt it too.

  I was sitting by the open window in the living room when Riley came in. “Thank God,” she said, throwing her purse down by the door. “Were you trying to give me a heart attack?”

  My eyes rounded at her question.

  “Your phone. Did you lose it? Because if you didn’t, you were purposely ignoring my calls and texts, which is seriously rude. Spencer hasn’t bothered to answer his phone either. I’ve been worried about you all day.”

  Was that why Spencer’s phone was getting so many messages?

  Riley wasn’t kidding. She looked truly upset. I’d been sitting here all afternoon, letting my thoughts spin and dip in different directions, because I knew exactly where I’d left my phone and my bag with my wallet. I couldn’t do much without them. “My phone is in your car. I think I left it on vibrate.”

  Her lips pressed into a line before she started laughing. “Fuck me. So I’ve been calling my own car all day?”

  “Sorry, I should have called from here. I wasn’t thinking.”

  Her faced smoothed out as she approached me. She sat down on the wide windowsill and let the breeze ripple through her short hair. I could smell the fried food she’d been surrounded by all day.

  “How are you doing?”

  I picked at my chipped nail polish, finding it hard to meet the sympathy in her eyes. “I’m fine. Sorry I didn’t tell you everything sooner.”

  “It’s okay. I can still hardly believe it, though. I’ve been thinking about it all day. And the way Spencer acted when I called him, like he knew what really happened there before I even told him where we were. Did he know?”

  I nodded. It felt strange to acknowledge it. “He’s always known. I talked to him before we left. We were friends back then. We used to meet at the dunes across the street from my house. Neither of us ever told anyone.”

  She tilted her head curiously. “You were secret friends?” Then her eyebrows nearly shot up to her hairline. “Is that all you were?”

  Smiling indulgently at her, I nodded.

  “Why keep it a secret then?”

  After a sigh, I gave her the only answer I had. “He would confide things to me about his uncle and his parents. They were painful things, and I knew he wasn’t telling them to anyone else. It would have been a betrayal to talk about him to anyone.”

  “So you know what used to happen to him in that house. I don’t know why he never ran away.” She swallowed and looked out the window. “He’s been through a lot. I’m glad he had you to talk to because he never said a word to any of us. Not until there was no way to hide it.”

  I gripped my hands together in my lap. It was still so hard to think about. I never wondered why Spencer didn’t run away because I thought I knew the answer. He didn’t believe he deserved any better. He didn’t think he was worth the effort.

  “You may have been friends with Spencer, but you liked him as more than a friend,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “That didn’t matter, though.”

  Riley looked at me. “You never told him?”

  “What? How I felt? No. But he knew.” And he felt something for me too. I knew that now.

  “So many secrets,” she said thoughtfully. “Are you sure you’re okay? Because I couldn’t get you to budge off
that road. You really scared me.”

  The look on her face tugged at me. “I’m sorry.” I pulled her into a hug. “I won’t do it again.”

  She hugged me back. Then she offered to make me something to eat or to order a movie so we could hang out, but I turned down both. When she went to take a shower, I walked outside to her car. It took a few seconds of rooting around under the seat before I found my bag with my phone in it. Once I did, I pressed the CALL button on my mom’s name.

  I gripped the phone as it began to ring. I really needed to hear her voice today, but I was afraid she wouldn’t want to talk to me.

  “Sarah?”

  “Hi,” I answered, relieved that she’d picked up.

  There was a long silence. As much as I wanted to talk to her, I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,” she said in a tight voice. It sounded like she was crying.

  I pressed the phone against my ear. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  She breathed out. “I shouldn’t have let you go there alone. I should have come with you.”

  She didn’t seem angry anymore. I felt pressure build behind my eyes and I gritted my teeth, not wanting to cry. “It’s okay. I think you should only come when you’re ready.”

  “Russ called. He said how good it was to see you.”

  “It was good to see him too. His girlfriend seems nice.”

  There was another pause before she asked, “Did you see the house?”

  “Not yet.” Chewing on my lip, I said, “I went to the service road today.”

  I could hear her inhale. “Oh, Sarah,” she whispered.

  “I felt Dad there, like he was with me. I’ve felt him at other times too, like a part of him is still here.”

  She was crying loudly now. “I wish I could feel him. I miss him so much.”

  “Maybe you could visit me at school in the fall and we could come back together.”

  “Maybe,” she said. Then I heard her moving and the familiar sound of the chair scraping across the kitchen floor, then tissues being pulled from the box. “I wish you were coming home before school started. I need to see that you’re all right.”

  The pressure to be all right was there in each word she spoke. I was all right, but she could easily undo that. As much as I needed to talk to her, I couldn’t let her pull me back to that place again. “I’m good, Mom. I promise. I’ll call you again before I leave.”

  I could hear her sniffle quietly. “Okay, honey. I love you.”

  “Love you too.” I ended the call and just sat there on the curb, upset that I’d made her cry. Here I was, making progress and finally feeling hopeful, while she was still stuck in darkness back in Michigan. I wished I could make her better somehow, but after years of trying, I didn’t know what to do.

  When my phone beeped in my hand, I saw I had ten unread text messages. I knew most of those were from Riley. I only opened the most recent one. It was from Tessa.

  TESSA: OMG! The boxing gym down the road made a deal to get members swim passes. Are muscles buoyant, or will those boys sink like rocks? If they do, I’ll have to save them!

  I smiled. I could always count on Tessa to cheer me up.

  ME: I don’t think you’re supposed to hope swimmers drown. It’s against the lifeguard code or something.

  TESSA: You’re just jealous. Don’t worry. I’ll take plenty of pics.

  I rolled my eyes. She probably would.

  “Get the lobster. Don’t worry about the price. How often do I get to see you?”

  I smiled awkwardly at Uncle Russ. It was just him and me sitting at a table outside with a view of Buzzard’s Bay in the distance. The sky was darkening as the sun slipped down toward the horizon. He’d told me Hannah was at a bridal shower tonight, but that she would have rather come out to dinner with us. I wished she were here too. Other than a pat on the head or the obvious questions about school, I’d never really talked to Russ before. He was around a lot growing up because he was Dad’s best friend, but I had no idea what to say to him now.

  “I’ll just stick with the pasta, I think.” I closed the menu and set it down. I couldn’t imagine trying to tear into a lobster in front of him.

  He closed his menu too and looked up at me. “So tell me what you’ve done since you’ve been here.”

  “Riley’s kept me pretty busy. We’ve gone out a couple of times, and she threw a party for her boyfriend.”

  He watched me and waited. I turned my attention to my ice water.

  “Your mom said you went out to the service road.”

  I figured she would. Sighing, I nodded.

  “That couldn’t have been easy.”

  “It wasn’t, but the thought of seeing the house is harder.” I glanced at him, not sure why I’d confided that. I guess I thought he might understand.

  His full attention was on me when the waitress appeared. The atmosphere lifted for a moment as we ordered. When she was gone again, he said, “Tell me why seeing the house is harder.”

  “That’s where the good memories are. What if I see the house and it looks different from how I remember? What if those differences make me start to forget?”

  Uncle Russ shook his head, dismissing the idea. “You won’t forget. I wouldn’t worry about that.”

  I smiled politely and sipped my water. Maybe he couldn’t understand.

  “Your father will never be forgotten. We still talk about that summer he caught the bank robber. Idiot robbed the same bank twice. We couldn’t believe it when the chief made us watch that place for days after. I mean, who would have thought he’d come back? I was practically snoring when your dad called it in and ran inside. He was a good cop. No one could deny that.”

  Emotion bubbled up in me as I listened. The way Uncle Russ reminisced about my father felt off in light of what he and all the other officers had done. “Maybe that’s what got him killed,” I said in a small voice. “He was too good. He wouldn’t give anyone who broke the law a pass.”

  Uncle Russ’s expression darkened. “It still gets me. The whole thing was a tragedy. But your dad would be glad to know his family is doing so well.”

  I couldn’t help the miserable laugh that came out. “Is that what my mother’s been telling you? That we’re all doing so well?”

  He sat back and frowned. “You are doing well.” When I said nothing in response, he continued. “When a tragedy like that happens, it changes you. But you move on. You have no other choice. Since you won a full scholarship to school, I’d say you’re doing very well, Sarah.”

  Seeing his confident demeanor, I couldn’t hold back. “It didn’t happen to you. So how would you know how it changes you? I think we’d be doing better if we’d stayed here instead of running away.”

  Uncle Russ leaned forward over the table. “Your mother said she explained this to you. If you’d stayed here, you might not be doing anything at all now.” His expression seemed almost angry. “We did what we had to. We did what your father would have wanted us to do.”

  It was the same excuse I’d gotten before, and I still didn’t believe it. By then the salads had arrived and Uncle Russ dug in, seeming relieved for the distraction. He acted different after that. He didn’t share any more memories of my father. Instead he talked about how the town had changed, and the fact that it was filled with too many tourists.

  I wanted to ask him why he was so sure my father would have wanted us to run. I wanted to know why he and everyone else would never stand up to Jackson. I wanted to tell him what I planned to do for my father while I was here. But in the end, I didn’t. I couldn’t put the words together, and his closed-off expression didn’t invite more than small talk.

  We made it through dinner and afterward Uncle Russ took me home. Before I got out of his car, he reached over and touched my arm.

  “It’s fine to have doubts. It’s normal. But if your dad could see you now, he’d be proud of you. You can trust me on that.”

  I gave him a small smile. I wanted to believe it.
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br />   “If you need me for anything at all, you call. And Sarah.” His voice stopped me as I reached for the door handle. “If you decide you don’t want to see the house, don’t beat yourself up about it. There’s no reason to upset yourself.”

  I thanked him, and when I got out of the car, I felt the same way I had so long ago as I sat in our old living room and understood what was happening.

  I felt small and powerless.

  It was four in the morning when I threw off the covers and sat up. The things Uncle Russ had said at dinner ran on a loop in my head, fueling my restlessness. What I intended to do before I left South Seaport gnawed at me. Tell the truth. It was right, I knew that, but I was still scared and doubts were creeping in.

  I slipped out of bed, took off Spencer’s Deftones T-shirt that I’d shamelessly slept in, and pulled on some shorts and a shirt of my own. The need to move drove me out of the apartment and onto the street. It was that quiet time just before sunrise when the air was cool and wet, and even the birds were still asleep.

  It was a two-mile walk to Sandy Neck Lane and the dunes that were just down the road. I had this uncontrollable urge to be there when the sun came up. It had always been my favorite place to think, even before Spencer moved to town. But I didn’t have much time, so I ran. My sandals slapped against the asphalt as my breath came in quick puffs. I wasn’t much of a runner, and it didn’t take long for a cramp to hit, but I couldn’t stop. I had to see the sun rise over our little beach the way I’d watched it set so many times. It suddenly felt like everything depended on it.

  Sweat dripped into my eyes and trickled down my back. The streets were deserted, so I ran in the road since the sidewalks were broken and uneven. I ran blindly, not realizing I’d reached the corner until I was almost on top of it. Then I turned and followed the path that wound through a small parking lot. This was a shortcut to the dunes, and it wouldn’t take me past my old house. I was still saving that view for another time.

  The cool sand poured into my sandals, slowing me down. I stopped long enough to pull them off, letting them dangle from my fingers. Sounds of the ocean filled my ears. The moon was gone by now and the sky was just brightening over the water in the east, when I turned the corner and stopped.