The Mailbox

by Marybeth Whalen

  Lindsey secured the towel around her body and stepped into the bedroom to dress, running smack into Grant as she did. He put his arms around her and kissed her forehead before she could push away from him. She noticed the closed bedroom door and was grateful to be away from the children so she could speak her mind, yet she also didn’t like the assumption he had made by closing the door behind him. He scanned her body up and down with an appreciative look on his face. She attempted to pull the towel tighter around herself, as if that were possible.

  “Grant, you have no right to be in here,” she scolded him, not liking the way his eyes proprietarily lingered on her body.

  He laughed. “No right? I’m with my family on vacation.” He reached out for her again, playfully attempting to grab the towel from her body, just like he would have done if things were normal. As if nothing had changed, when everything had.

  “Grant, no. This isn’t right. We are divorced, in case you forgot. And you’re confusing the kids by being here.” She looked at him and narrowed her eyes. “Why are you here, anyway?”

  He gave her a puppy-dog look that had worked many times in the past but no longer affected her. The realization was a shock.

  “I missed you guys,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. He sat down on the bed, the bed they’d shared during every beach vacation since they’d married. How many nights did she sleep next to him in that bed? How many times had they made love there, giggling and whispering so the kids didn’t hear? She shook those thoughts from her head and attempted to steel herself from the emotion, from going backward. “I wanted to see my family. I wanted to see you,” he continued. He chuckled to himself and stared at her as though the towel was not there. “I have to admit I didn’t think you had it in you to do this trip with the kids without me here to help. And then, when you did, well, I started feeling left out. Like you guys had forgotten all about me.”

  “That’s generally the idea when you walk out on your family, Grant. They tend to go on without you. What did you think we would do, stop living?”

  He hung his head in what she knew was mock humiliation. “I guess I did,” he said to the floor.

  She noticed a bag by the door of the bedroom. The same duffel she bought for him ten years ago at a discount store, so proud of the bargain she had found for him. That duffel, she thought, will last longer than we have. She pointed at the bag. “You can’t stay here with me, Grant.”

  He stood and began to move toward her again. “And why not?” He put his index finger under her chin, raising her eyes to his. He looked sad and broken and entirely trustworthy. “Let’s be a family. Let’s make memories here, this year, together.”

  He spoke words her heart had longed to hear for a year. But as he spoke, it wasn’t his face that filled her mind. She saw Campbell on the pier the night before, listening to her, smiling at her. Then she saw the pile of her letters in his room. She backed away from Grant and sat down on the bed, her head in her hands. Grant came over and put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him. She stiffened even as she allowed him to be so close.

  “I need time to think,” she said into his shoulder. He wore a golf shirt in a hideous green hue that she would never choose, evidence of another life apart from her. Evidence of another person who had perhaps picked out his clothes, shared his bed, felt his touch. She sat up. “Don’t think that you can just waltz back in here and the last year is gone—” she snapped her fingers—“just like that.”

  He nodded. “Baby, I know that. I do. I didn’t think.… To tell you the truth, I didn’t really even know I was coming here today.” He smiled. “I just started driving and ended up here. It’s where I belong. I hope you will see that.”

  She willed herself not to smile, not to be sucked in by his charm. But even as she hardened herself on the inside, she felt her heart flutter with hope. In her heart this was still her husband. Their children were outside. The family was together again in a beach house that was chock-full of family memories. And with all the tears she’d cried over the end of their marriage, what she had begged God for was exactly what was happening. She just hadn’t expected Campbell to come back into her life before Grant did. She didn’t think it was possible to love anyone else besides Grant—even Campbell, who had seemed a lost cause for so many years. Her rational side said that what she felt for Campbell couldn’t already be love anyway. That it would be foolishness to send Grant—her husband—away over some guy she used to know, some guy she used to love. She recalled the pile of letters on the floor, and a rush of betrayal rose up within her all over again.

  “How about I take the kids out to the beach for a while? They’ve been begging to go since I got here and it would give you a break.” He patted her head like a child, like his child. “It would give you the time you need to think,” he added.

  She nodded, choking back the tears that had suddenly collected in her throat. His small act of kindness, of gentleness, so welcomed she wanted to weep with relief. She didn’t realize how much she had missed the little things he used to do. Making him a monster in her mind—overlooking the side of Grant that was what made her love him—was easier than admitting what she had lost: his goodness. His potential to be the husband she desired. What if she said no to him this time around? Would she be making a huge mistake? What if the biggest fool in all of this turned out to be her?

  “I’d like to take you and the kids to dinner tonight,” he said. “You know, like we used to do. Go to Calabash.” He chuckled. “Gorge ourselves on fried shrimp and hush puppies.” He reached out to tickle her as she clutched at the towel to keep it from falling off. “Will you think about it?”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  “That’s all I can ask,” he said, smiling like the Cheshire Cat.

  Immediately after he left the bedroom, she heard his voice calling out to the children to get ready for the beach, followed by excited whoops of joy. For a moment it felt like it always had between them. Her challenge was to decide if that was a good thing.

  Chapter 30

  Sunset Beach

  Summer 2004

  Campbell did not go straight to Lindsey. He started to head in her direction, then realized that he simply could not see her until he had time to think about what he would say, to determine the right way to explain what she had found. Instead of running toward her house, he detoured to the pier, jogging past the grizzled fishermen and families who had gathered in hopes of seeing one of the fishermen pull in a big catch.

  As a child he had spent hours on the pier as his dad taught him how to fish. He had great memories of the hours spent with his father out there, away from his mom, away from his dad’s work. He remembered what it felt like to be the sole focus of his father’s attention as he helped him bait the hook and carefully cast it out to sea. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they just sat in silence. What Campbell would have given to have his father there now. To ask him, “What would you do?”

  He imagined his father’s response. “Well, boy, I wouldn’t have been foolish enough to land myself in this predicament in the first place.” His father, who fell in love with his mother in high school and married her right after graduation, never understood the pain of letting the love of his life slip away because of his own stupidity. He had loved one woman his whole life, never veering from the course set before him. His greatest disappointment, though he never talked about it, was not being able to have more children. Campbell’s parents, he knew, had planned to have a houseful. Several miscarriages into the marriage, they had Campbell. They had hoped their trouble was behind them after he was born, but more miscarriages followed. Though they were satisfied—even grateful—for their life as a family, it always seemed there was someone missing. Campbell knew if he felt it, his father did too.

  Campbell made his way to the end of the pier and found an empty spot to stand and take
in the waves, the sky, the seagulls. A crane flew low over the waves for a moment before plucking a fish from the water in an effortless, graceful swoop. Campbell closed his eyes and tried to rehearse the words he needed to say to win her trust, to convince her he was not who she thought he was. Words ran through his mind: stalker, creep, deviant. He prayed they were not the same words that were running through her mind. Lifting his eyes to the sky, he wondered what God thought of him, what He would say about that moment in his life. That he deserved it? That he mismanaged everything He had ever given him? That he had lived his life as a coward, never once doing the right thing at the right time, always recklessly allowing things to unfold and pushing the blame on others?

  If that’s how God saw him, then God was right.

  Campbell spotted a ship out on the horizon and foolishly, instinctively, wished he was on it, bound for someplace far, far away. That he would stumble upon a way to escape having to face her, having to see her disappointment in him etched on her face. But once again, he knew it was time to stop running.

  “Sounds like you gotta be the man here,” he could hear his father say, the same thing he had said when Campbell broke the news of Ellie’s pregnancy. Campbell turned and began walking back, praying the simplest prayer. It was just one word, repeated over and over: Please. Please. Please.

  w

  It was time for Lindsey to write the letter she had put off since they arrived. She had composed so many different versions in her head, the pendulum swinging from despair and desperation to hope and happiness and back again. Lindsey took a pad of paper out on the porch and propped it on her lap to write. Normally she’d write at the beach, but she just couldn’t deal with the trek. Plus, her entire experience with the mailbox seemed anything but normal to her now.

  The words came in staccato phrases, alternating between anger and affection. The letter, she knew, would sound choppy and disjointed, would reflect the confusion she felt as she sat and tried to get the words from her head to the paper. The flow didn’t come as it had in years past. Writing that letter wasn’t as natural as breathing. It was as hard as labor, as hard as exercise, as hard as staying in a marriage that had died long ago.

  A rare breeze blew through the screen, ruffling the papers at the edges and cooling her skin. She lifted her chin, closed her eyes, and let the breeze caress her face, pretending it was Campbell, come to say good-bye. When she opened her eyes, she saw him standing on the tiny strip of lawn in front of her uncle’s house as if she had conjured him.

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the next; his eyes were the saddest she had ever seen. For the second time that day, she willed herself to feel nothing, pretended her heart was made of steel and not flesh. She watched as he approached the stairs hesitantly, intending to join her on the porch.

  Before he could climb the first step, she rose from her chair and headed down the stairs to meet him. Something about him being so close to the house felt wrong with Grant around. She met him on the grass, carefully avoiding the sand spurs that lurked there, threatening her bare feet. They stared at each other, neither one of them sure what to say first. “I’m sorry,” he said, “about the letters.”

  She put her hand up in the space between them and shook her head. “You have to leave,” she told him, even though it was not, she discovered, what she wanted to say.

  “If you’d just let me explain—” he started to argue.

  “Campbell,” she said. It hurt to say his name out loud. “Grant came back. He was here when I came home earlier today. He wants to work on things. With us. He’s gone with the kids right now, but they could come back at any time. So I would really like it if you’d go. I don’t want—”

  “You don’t want what?” he interrupted. “You don’t want him to see me? You don’t want him to know? Why? Have you forgotten he walked out on you? What gives him the right to waltz in here and expect you to give up everything—”

  “Campbell, it’s not like there’s anything to give up. You and I went on one date. And with what I found earlier, well, I think it’s best if I just keep things simple right now. Grant and I have children to consider. We have something that’s worth saving.”

  He looked at her with sad eyes she had to fight to resist. “And we don’t? That’s what you’re saying?”

  She shook her head and turned away from his stare, looking off in the direction where Grant and the kids would be walking back, guarding those few moments she had alone with Campbell. “I’m saying that I learned not to trust you a long time ago. To think that’s changed since then was foolish of me. I don’t know what you were doing with my letters and I don’t even want to know. When I got home and found Grant here, everything changed.”

  “Including us?” he challenged, grabbing her arm so that she would be forced to look at him, his blue eyes flashing, sending unspoken signals to her heart, a kind of Morse code that had always, she realized, existed between them. “You’re really ready to let go of us that easily?” His eyes pleaded with her.

  She looked away again. “You need to go now,” she said. Even though his leaving was the last thing she wanted. Even though staying with Grant frightened her, she knew what she had to do. She had a chance to give her children their father. What kind of mother would pass that up to stay with a man who had never done anything but betray her? What kind of woman gives up her family for a silly childhood wish?

  Campbell didn’t move. She fought the urge to wrap her arms around him, even as she turned to walk back up to the porch where her letter waited to be written. “Please, Campbell. Just leave. We made a mistake by thinking we could rewrite the past and expect a different ending.”

  She climbed the stairs resolutely, listening for the sound of his retreating footsteps, his truck engine cranking up and driving away. She did not turn around until she heard him go. She did not trust herself to stay strong if she looked at him again.

  Chapter 31

  Sunset Beach

  Summer 2004

  After Lindsey sent Campbell away, he headed home. Thankfully, his mom and Nikki were gone when he arrived. He couldn’t handle his mom’s prying eyes or Nikki’s questions. He guessed that his mom treated Nikki to dinner somewhere and, though he knew that he should be thinking about finding some dinner himself, he couldn’t imagine eating and didn’t feel the slightest bit hungry. As he passed by the kitchen, he pictured Anna’s and Jake’s faces as he loaded them down with Minerva’s junk food. He imagined them eating the Oreos and Popsicles with Grant on the same porch he had seen Lindsey, and he felt inexplicably cheated on, replaced. How foolish he was to let Lindsey and her children into his heart so quickly, to envision them as part of his life for much longer than a few days at the beach. He had moved too fast, wanted too much. Just like always.

  He climbed the stairs to his room and flopped down on the bed, forcing himself not to look at the letters scattered on the floor. He pictured Lindsey flinging them to the four corners of the room in anger just before she ran from the room. He thought of the moment when Nikki knocked them down and he didn’t stop to put them back in the place they had occupied for years. Just putting away the letters might have changed the way his whole life had turned out. He tried not to think about it. The last time he stood in his room, everything seemed so hopeful, so possible—Nikki’s progress, Lindsey’s presence in his life. He foolishly believed that nothing could change that. And yet one moment, one decision had altered everything. It was a lesson he would keep learning over and over until he got it, he supposed.

  Oh God, what have I done? Help me. Please.

  He began to gather up the letters, putting them in order of years, just as he had always kept them. Whether it was obsessive behavior or a romantic notion, he couldn’t just leave her letters flung all over the room like trash. He bent down to retrieve them and wondered idly just how many times he had read each one. Some he
had memorized—especially one. Should he have revealed the identity of the Kindred Spirit she faithfully wrote to all these years? That it wasn’t the same Kindred Spirit that tended the mailbox for everyone else, that Lindsey had her own personal Kindred Spirit? Better yet, should he have left her letters alone?

  There were times he thought about going there to wait for her so he could tell her. She was such a creature of habit that he could usually time her arrival at the mailbox to the hour. He used to imagine sitting down on the bench in the sand and waiting as long as it took until he saw her approaching. He even thought about what he might say, what it would feel like to see her face again, to have her stand in front of him.

  But he always chickened out, reasoning that she wouldn’t want to see him, that she surely hated him and the letters were the only bit of her he could ever hope to have. He feared if she knew about him, she would stop writing her letters, that in his admission he would steal the magic of the mailbox from her. He didn’t want to be the one to take that away from her. Most of all, though it was hard to admit, he was scared of what would happen to him if he didn’t have her letters to look forward to each year. Telling her the truth might have resulted in the end of what was the highlight of each passing year: reading Lindsey’s latest letter, gaining a glimpse into her life, her heart, knowing her in a way that no one else did, having her in part when he couldn’t have her in whole.

  You didn’t fight for her. He felt the insistent tug on his heart for the second time that week. He had let Lindsey slip away in a haze of bad decisions and misplaced allegiance a long time ago, back when he didn’t understand about listening to God’s voice in his life, when he didn’t know that God cared about giving a guy like him a second chance. He couldn’t go back in time and change the course of their lives, but he could stand up, be a man, and fight for what he wanted now. He didn’t have to bow out quietly again.