by Marie Landry
We parked on the street between the general store and the Angel Diner, and went to the take-out window. After ordering a couple of burgers, fries, and milkshakes, we took our food and cut down an alley that came out at a little park by the water.
Ezra claimed a picnic table, and we sat across from each other. While we ate, we talked—not about anything important, but it was nice to have someone to talk to, someone who didn’t know all I’d been through in the last year and didn’t look at me like I would break if he said the wrong thing.
“I’m kind of surprised how many stores and restaurants there are around here,” I commented. “I’ve been to some of the larger islands around here and they don’t have half as much.”
“The island has a bigger population than most people think,” Ezra said. “It looks like a lot of farmland and scattered houses, and it is, but there are a ton of permanent residents here along with the tourists. The general store and a few other places have been there for decades, but shortly before I was born a bunch of islanders got together and decided they didn’t want to have to go to the mainland every time they wanted to buy something special or go out to eat. They got funding from somewhere and built the place up. Created a whole bunch of jobs, and increased our standing as a tourist island.”
I thought about that as I sipped my milkshake. “So, since you don’t really need to go to the mainland, do you go often?”
“Nah.” He shook his head and popped a couple of fries into his mouth. “I did when I was younger and still in school. Bunch of friends and I would head over most weekends to catch a movie or go to a concert. Now I don’t really have time for that stuff.” He cocked his head to the side and regarded me with a little smile. “I’ll take you anytime you want to go, though.”
“I wasn’t fishing or anything,” I said quickly, and couldn’t help but smile when he shook his head and laughed. “But I might take you up on that eventually. I actually really like it here. I thought I’d feel trapped, but…it’s so peaceful, and so beautiful.”
“It’s early yet,” he pointed out. “You’ve only been here a few days. Give it time and you’ll probably miss going to the mall or the movies or whatever.”
“Do I really look like the kind of girl who spends her time hanging out at the mall?”
He chuckled and held up his hands. “I dunno, I guess I don’t know you well enough yet to know what kind of girl you are. But you’re right, you don’t seem like the type of girl to hang out at the mall, so…museum? The arts centre? A fascinating exhibition of some sort?”
I swatted at his arm. “All of those things are fine, but I’m happy wandering around a bookstore.”
“A bookstore, huh? Hmm.” He seemed to contemplate that for a few seconds. “Do you usually do that alone or with friends? Or, you know, maybe a boyfriend?”
He didn’t look at me as he said that last part, and I wondered if he’d been trying to sound casual. I hid a smile by taking a bite of my burger. “No boyfriend,” I told him. “Haven’t had one for awhile. And no friends either, really. They all…well…”
He looked at me expectantly, then understanding dawned on his features. “Took off when things got rough, huh?”
“Pretty much.” I tried to shrug it off like it was no big deal, but I knew by his expression that he wasn’t buying it. “It was mostly just Mom and me the last little while. I left school and did correspondence so I could stay home and take care of her. She didn’t want to go to hospice, and she didn’t want to hire a stranger, but she needed someone around.”
Ezra lowered his eyes, examining the rest of his burger like it was the most interesting thing in the world. “I knew…s-someone who went through something similar,” he said quietly. “It’s a shitty deal for everyone involved. I’m sorry you had to go through it.” He raised his head and when those blue-green eyes—so serious and intense—met mine, I knew he understood.
He looked as if he was about to say something else when a guy with shaggy blond hair and disheveled clothes walked by and stopped when he saw Ezra. “Hey, Ezra, man,” the guy called, loping over to our table and shaking Ezra’s hand, clapping his other hand on Ezra’s back. “Thanks again for last night, man. I owe you one. Well, more than one since it wasn’t the first time you—”
“Adam, this is Charlotte,” Ezra interrupted loudly. “Charlotte, this is an old buddy of mine, Adam. We went to school together.”
“Hey, yeah, nice to meet you.” Adam shook my hand quickly. His heavy-lidded eyes swept over me, and he gave me a wide, slightly dopey smile. “You’re Gabriella’s sister, right?”
Did everybody on the island already know my sister? “Right. Nice to meet you, too.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt.” Adam waved a hand between the two of us. “Just wanted to say hey. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again soon. Maybe both of you.”
Ezra forced a smile and shifted uncomfortably as Adam jogged off toward the diner.
“Last night?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“Uh, yeah…” Ezra rubbed the back of his neck, cringing slightly when he touched the burned skin. “I helped him out with something. It was no big deal.”
My mind instantly went to the thought I’d been trying to avoid since Adam had approached our table: Ezra was a drug dealer. That must be it. I knew he worked several odd jobs around the island, but how could that be enough to live in a big beach house on his own? He had disappeared three nights in a row after getting a call or text, and I didn’t imagine he was being called to do construction work that late at night. And then there was Adam—he seemed nice enough, but he kind of reminded me of one of the stoners from the movie Clueless.
I could feel the weight of Ezra’s gaze on my face, but I was having trouble meeting his eyes.
After a long stretch of silence, he said, “I guess we’d better head home. I need to get back to work. I should have the rest of the porch down today and be able to start building the new one tomorrow.”
We gathered up our trash and threw it in the garbage at the end of our picnic table. As we walked side-by-side back to his car, I tried to ignore Ezra’s closeness, but our hands kept brushing.
“If you want to hold my hand, all you have to do is ask.” Ezra sent me a sidelong glance. His lips were curved upward, and although I knew he was joking I wondered what he’d do if I actually took his hand.
He might be a drug dealer, a voice whispered in my head. I knew it was ridiculous to jump to conclusions, but what if I was right? I couldn’t be around someone who was into something like that…no matter how cute he was, or how many times he sent my pulse racing with a simple smile. Or how much he made me forget about the hollow ache in my chest.
He gripped my wrist and pulled me to a stop, stepping in front of me. “Are you okay? Did I…do something?”
“No.” It wasn’t exactly a lie—he hadn’t actually done anything, and it wasn’t like I could just come right out and ask him if he was a drug dealer. “Just…talking about my mom made me miss her, I guess. Sometimes it hits me all over again that she’s really gone, and it sends me for a loop.” That much was true, anyway.
“We don’t have to talk about her anymore,” he offered, his brows drawn together in concern.
How could I not like him? “No. I like talking about her, even though it’s hard sometimes. It helps. And you’re pretty much the only person who will listen.”
He gripped my shoulders, his thumbs rubbing slow circles over my bare skin. “I’ll listen anytime you want to talk, Charlotte. I don’t know exactly what you’re going through, but I understand better than you may think.”
I nodded, unable to speak through the lump in my throat. He was being cryptic again, but in that moment, I didn’t care. The way he was looking at me made everything else temporarily fade away—the ever-present pain in my heart, the voices that drifted from the front of Carrington Street, the sun beating down on the top of my head.
The only things I was conscious of were
Ezra’s Caribbean Sea eyes staring into mine, and the warm weight of his hands on my shoulders.
“We have to go.” He said the words, but it didn’t seem like he meant them. He didn’t take his gaze off mine or remove his hands from my shoulders.
The sound of a horn blaring from the street made us jump apart, and we both laughed nervously.
“Guess you’re not the only jumpy one,” Ezra said. “Come on, let’s go.”
He ushered me back to the car with his hand at the small of my back. When we returned home, I thanked him for lunch and he got back to work while I went inside. I raced up to my room and turned my floor fan on, sitting directly in front of it until my skin no longer burned.
I was determined to find out Ezra’s secret, even if it made me hate him. I’d rather know than spend the next two months wondering. I hoped I was wrong. I really needed a friend I could count on. Even if he was a friend who made my skin prickle with heat and made me feel like I could melt like ice cream in the sun.
CHAPTER NINE
My second week on Angel Island was much like the first. I spent at least six hours sleeping during the day—sometimes broken up into short naps rather than all at once—then did things around the house, read several books, and took bike rides, venturing a little further each time. I still wasn’t exactly comfortable being alone—too much time to think, to get buried in memories, worry about Dad and Ella and my future—but I knew it was something I’d have to get used to, whether I liked it or not.
I’d never been a solitary person, except when it came to reading. I could escape in a book and spend hours immersed in a world of someone else’s creation, but other than that I liked being around people. At least until Mom got sick. Before that, Bianca, Alexis, and I spent almost every weekend together, and hung out most weeknights too. Even when Mom was sick and my friends drifted away, I’d still had Mom to keep me company.
Things with Dad and Ella remained the same. Ella was now ‘seeing’ a different guy than the one she’d been with the first week we arrived. She’d done the same thing at home, changing guys on a regular basis. She had been staying out of my way, so I did my part to stay out of hers. As much as I told myself I shouldn’t worry about her, it didn’t stop me from actually worrying. There was nothing I could do though, so I just kept my mouth shut and prayed she was at least being careful. I wasn’t ready to be an aunt any more than she was ready to be a mother.
Ezra got the rest of the porch torn down, and started work on the new one. He was a tireless worker—he didn’t seem to observe weekends as a time to relax; he showed up to work like any other day of the week. When I asked him about it, he said he couldn’t afford to take a day off, not this summer anyway. I kept him company on the days I was out of bed on time, and we started meeting up on the swing between our houses for lunch.
My new evening ritual was to go out on the beach around sunset, park myself in my favourite spot, and watch the beach fill up with kids. Ezra would come out an hour or so after dark and sit with me. Sometimes we talked, other times we just stared out at the water, sitting with our sides pressed together. Almost every night he got a call or text and would leave immediately. He still hadn’t explained to me what was going on, and I hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask.
One night about two weeks after I’d been on the island, I went out to my usual spot before sunset. This was the one time of day I didn’t really mind being alone. Sitting on the beach watching the sun sink toward the water in a riot of colours made me feel at peace. And that peace, for some reason, made me feel closer to my mom.
“Looks like rain.”
I swiveled my head around and stared up at Ezra. In the two weeks I’d been here, I’d rarely seen him in the hours between mid-afternoon and post-sunset. “This is new,” I commented.
“The rain? I know. It’s been weeks.” He sank down in the sand beside me.
“Not the rain. You being here this time of night.”
“Ahh, right. Well, I finished up what I was doing earlier than usual, and thought I’d come join you. I see you coming out here every night around this time, but I haven’t been able to make it out before.” He leaned into me and pulled two cold cans of Pepsi from the pockets of his cargo shorts.
“Thanks.” He’d seen me? Every night? What did he do every night? I realized suddenly that he’d never invited me over. But then he hadn’t been inside my house much either except for the night I made him dinner. We usually spent our time together outside. Still…
I looked back at the sky and remembered what he’d said when he sat down. “It doesn’t look like rain.”
“Sure it does. See those clouds over there?” He pointed toward a mass of blue and gray clouds to the south that was shot through with rays of crimson, amber, and violet light from the sunset. They looked like normal clouds to me. “When you’ve lived here your whole life like I have, you recognize the signs. See how they’re light on the top and get darker near the bottom? A sure sign of rain.”
I studied the clouds. “I hope it does rain.”
“You like the rain?” Ezra popped the top on his drink then switched it with mine and popped that one open, too.
“I never did until a few weeks ago…” I paused, mentally weighing my words and trying to decide how much to tell him. I didn’t want him to think I was crazy, but I’d told him so many other personal things already and he hadn’t judged me. “You know how there’s been pretty much no rain the last month or so? Well, it’s the same back home. We got a decent amount in April and May, but come June, there was nothing. Everything started to dry up, early crops were damaged, and there was no sign of rain in the forecast.
“The night my mom died, I was at home alone with her. I was used to being alone with her, but Dad had been trying to stick close to home because the doctors warned us it was only a matter of time. He was out though—some ceremony at the university he had to attend. I told him we’d be fine, but…” I sighed and closed my eyes, but the memory began playing like a movie against my eyelids, so I opened them again and stared out at the water.
“Anyway, Ella was gone too, so I was there alone. I knew something was wrong. Even Mom knew there was something wrong. She was paler than usual and her eyes kept shifting in and out of focus. She was muttering things, strange things that I realized later was her way of trying to say goodbye, trying to tell me everything she thought I should know.”
My voice wavered, and I paused again. I felt pressure on my hand and looked down to see Ezra’s fingers linked with mine. I hadn’t even felt him take my hand, but I held onto him now like a lifeline. I drew in a shaky breath and continued. “She died, and I was all alone in the house with her. For weeks, I’d been bracing myself for that day, but when the moment actually came…I…I just crawled into bed with her and held her. I don’t know how long I stayed like that, but then all of a sudden I heard rain pounding on the roof, and I left her and went outside.
“I know it’s ridiculous, but it seemed like the heavens had opened up and were mirroring everything I felt inside. We weren’t supposed to have rain for at least another week, and that was if we were lucky. It just seemed so…fitting. It poured so hard I couldn’t see three feet in front of my face. I just stood on the lawn in my pajamas, letting it soak me through, and even when it started to storm, I stayed out there. There was lightning flashing all around me, and it even hit a spot on the ground not too from me, but I didn’t care. I probably would have stayed out there all night if Dad hadn’t come home and found me.”
Ezra touched my face, and his fingers came away wet. Just as I hadn’t been conscious of him taking my hand, I hadn’t been aware of shedding tears. As much as I’d felt like crying in the last couple weeks, it was rare that I actually did. I had thought I must be all cried out.
“So I’ve been waiting for rain,” I said quietly. “I don’t really know why. Sometimes I have so many emotions swirling around in me I feel like I’m going to burst. Like my body can’t contain it all,
and I shouldn’t expect it to. Then there are other times when I feel so incredibly numb, I’d almost rather have that torrent of emotion. Now there’s something about the rain…I’ve been waiting for it since that night, that unexpected storm that reflected everything I was feeling.”
“You want to wash it all away,” Ezra said, his voice barely audible. “Hope that the rain and the violence of the storm will just…carry it all away.”
I stared at him with wide eyes. “Yes. Exactly.”
His mouth turned up slightly, but his eyes were sad. “I told you I understood better than you could imagine.”
“Two peas in a pod,” I murmured. What had happened in Ezra’s life to bring that haunted look into his eyes? He worked so hard that sometimes I thought he tried to stay busy not just for the money, but also to keep his mind occupied. There were times when I’d watched him work and he’d be intent on the job at hand, but his eyes would be distant, his jaw tight.
“A pair of tortured souls,” he joked lightly, squeezing my hand. I expected him to release it then, but he didn’t, and we sat like that until the sun was long gone and the sand underneath us began to cool.
When his phone beeped, he tensed beside me, and I knew my reaction mirrored his. He cast me a rueful glance as he pulled out his phone and checked it briefly before stuffing it back in his pocket. “I’m really sorry…”
I waved him off. “Don’t be. I’m used to it by now.”
He looked almost hurt by my words. “I hate to leave you, especially tonight. I…I know it couldn’t have been easy for you to tell me about your mom’s death.”
He was right; it wasn’t. He was the only person I’d told. Even Dad thought I’d just been waiting for him to return home. He didn’t seem to think it was strange that I was waiting outside in the middle of a raging storm, but then he’d had more important things on his mind at that moment.
“I wouldn’t leave if I didn’t have to.” Ezra’s eyes were pleading, as if begging me to understand that he didn’t want to leave, he had to. Even though he wouldn’t tell me why.