“But, Nik, we only went on one measly date.”
“Dad, come on. You and I both know it meant much more than one measly date.” She paused, seeming to ponder whether to say more before continuing. “Do you know what has helped me most to work through this whole ordeal?”
He shook his head. “Counseling? Being near the ocean?”
“Sure, those have been super helpful. But mostly it was opening my eyes in that hospital and realizing you came all that way to rescue me. I didn’t know until I saw you there how much I needed you to come after me.” She straightened up, shaking her index finger in his direction, grinning as she reversed their roles. “Now, Grandma and I are going to be gone all day and you have nothing better to do than to go find her. Give it one more chance. If it doesn’t work this time, I’ll leave you alone about it. But I can’t believe that Lindsey wants to be away from you any more than you want to be away from her. So go try to talk to her again.”
“You sound a lot like your grandmother,” he said and rolled his eyes.
“I will take that as a compliment,” she said. “Did Grandma tell you she’s sitting in on my counseling session today? And then we’re going to have lunch and drive to Myrtle Beach to shop. I might even go with her to her turtle-watch meeting tonight,” she said, her words coming out in an excited rush. “So, do you think I have a future as a turtle lady?” she asked.
He laughed at the image of Nikki wearing a turtle T-shirt, wandering down the beach surrounded by little old ladies in visors. “You have a future as anything you want,” he told his daughter.
“Dad?” she asked.
“Yeah?”
“So do you.”
He turned to say something smart-alecky back to her but was silenced as he saw that she was wearing the red flip-flops. His heart lifted, and for a second he let himself believe that the future was open with possibility. Maybe he would take his daughter’s advice.
Chapter 35
Sunset Beach
Summer 2004
The morning after Grant left, Lindsey decided to go for a run before the kids woke up. This time she decided to run on the beach instead of the road, hoping that being near the water would clear her head and help her process all that had happened in a few short days. While her decision about Grant had been made, she still wasn’t clear about Campbell. She could see him standing in the yard the day she found the letters, the way his eyes bored into her, imploring her to give him another chance. She couldn’t get his face out of her mind.
She ran toward the pier, enjoying how deserted the beach was at that time of day. Only a few beachcombers—avid shell collectors and old men with metal detectors—populated the coast. She forced herself to smile at them when she ran past. It was Sunday after all, a day for goodwill. As she ran, she talked to God: Show me what to do, she prayed silently. Please speak to me. I need to hear from You, Father. She thanked God for answering Holly’s prayer that she would see Grant for who he really was, but reminded Him that she didn’t have her answer about Campbell.
When she reached the pier, she saw a small crowd gathering beside the pilings. Worried that something was wrong, she decided to check out whatever it was they were paying attention to. Perhaps they had found a turtle nest or someone injured—a surfer trying to catch some early-morning waves. She quietly approached the edge of the crowd and waited for her breathing to return to normal. It was too late by the time she discovered that the crowd wasn’t gathered for a turtle or an injury. They had gathered for the sunrise service, a weekly tradition held at the base of the Sunset Beach pier. Several pairs of eyes turned to look at her, and she felt trapped. Only a heathen would walk away now.
The cluster of people listened as the preacher greeted them, their eyes at half-mast, many sipping coffee from travel mugs. She wished for one of those travel mugs filled with steaming hot coffee. When everyone else bowed their heads, she caught herself scanning the faces in the crowd for Campbell, scolding herself for wanting to see him. Did she want to see him? What if she did? What then? Questions followed each other like cars on a train. She quieted her thoughts and concentrated on the hymn they sang next, even if she didn’t know the words or the tune very well. In that crowd, neither seemed to matter.
The minister, a young man who hardly looked old enough to drive, announced that he would be speaking on Psalm 139 that morning. He cleared his throat and began to read the familiar words, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he spoke. She had heard the psalm so many times before that she almost stopped listening. But her ears perked up as the minister said, “This psalm shows us that God knows us intimately but loves us anyway.” He read the verses that spoke of how deeply God knows His creation—the words thought before spoken, the secrets. The preacher said that even though He knows the ugliness, the embarrassing stuff, the parts no one else sees, He doesn’t turn away. In fact, He loves people all the more. Lindsey’s eyes filled with tears as the feeling set in. She thought again of Campbell standing in her front yard. The minister’s words echoed in her mind: “He knows us intimately but loves us anyway.” Without warning, God had provided her with the life verse she had forgotten to find.
After the service was over and the people wandered away, Lindsey took a seat on the sand, wrapping her arms around herself to break some of the cool breeze. Her thoughts were as turbulent as the waves, one after another, each one crashing in on the next. Campbell had no right. He had violated her trust. He knew so many things about her that no one else knew. And yet, he had begged her for another chance. He knew her intimately but loved her anyway.
w
Lindsey found it more than fitting that Campbell found her on the beach only minutes after the service. Even as he flopped down beside her, she still had no idea what to say to him. They sat quietly for a few minutes, their bodies nearly touching. She held her breath; waiting, she realized, for an explanation that would make everything all right again. An explanation that would make her laugh with relief. The Kindred Spirit had delivered the letters to him each year like a miracle, she hoped he would say. Please, she thought, let me be wrong about this.
He looked down at the sand spread out below them like a soft gray blanket, ran his fingertips over it as though he just had to see what it felt like, even though the feel of sand beneath his fingers had to be as familiar to him as the feel of his own skin.
“Where’s your family?” he asked her tentatively, breaking the silence.
“The kids are back at the house watching TV. They didn’t want to come out here, but I needed to.”
He nodded. “And your husband?” His voice cracked like an adolescent’s.
She turned to him and suppressed a smile. “I asked him to leave when I got back from the mailbox yesterday.” She took Campbell’s letter from her pocket. “I overheard him talking to another woman when he thought I was gone.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry.”
She looked away from him, focusing on a ship far out at sea, making its way across the horizon. “I’m not. It helped clear things up for me without dragging out some sort of false reconciliation. He knew about you. That’s what this was all about.” She grimaced as he shook his head at Grant’s audacity. She took a deep breath before plunging ahead. “But I don’t really want to talk about Grant. I need you to help me understand this, Campbell,” she said, shaking the letter a little for emphasis.
He took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. “Look, I never meant for it to happen like this. Any of it. You have to know that I was going to tell you about the letters. I really was.”
“But when? Why didn’t you tell me when we went out? It’s not like there wasn’t opportunity.”
“Well, in hindsight that would have been best.” He closed his mouth. Opened it. Closed it again. “I wish I had told you then. But I wanted to give us time.”
“Time for what?�
��
He brushed the hair away from her face and looked at her so intently a shiver ran the length of her body. “Time for us to remember what we once had. I didn’t want to wreck that possibility by telling you something that could make you run from me.”
She shook her head. “So tell me now.” Families were beginning to crowd around them, the noise and commotion of another day on the beach impeding their conversation. She wanted to be alone with him to talk. As a nearby child began to cry, she stood. “But tell me while we walk,” she said, willing him to get up and follow her.
They fell into an easy rhythm, walking close enough to the shoreline that the waves splashed against their toes, their feet sinking into the wet sand. As he began to speak, she braced herself. “Okay, so the year you wrote that first letter at the mailbox, I couldn’t wait to see what you wrote about me. So I went back the next day and got it out. I just had to have it. It was wrong, and I knew it. The fact is, I could probably just have asked you and you would have given me the letter. But instead I snuck around behind you.” He stopped speaking and looked at her face, to gauge her reaction. “And then the next year I did the same thing again. Things had been so strained between us that summer. I figured you’d tell the truth in that letter about how you were feeling about us. Which, of course, you did.”
Lindsey once again felt naked, exposed. “I always told the truth in my letters. But I could do that because no one was supposed to see them.” She paused and corrected herself. “Well, I mean, no one I actually knew.” The incoming tide caused a wave to splash them a little too forcefully, and she darted away from Campbell. He quickly closed the gap she’d created and attempted to grab her hand. She pulled away, crossing her arms over her chest, as he continued his explanation.
“So then everything happened with Ellie and—you have to know—that year was just hell for me. All of a sudden it was like I had made a wrong turn and ended up in someone else’s life. Who was this girl? Where was the girl I really loved? How was I married? How was I someone’s father? Yet, I had this sense of what I thought was honor, of doing the right thing.
“This summer I’ve learned that I need to take responsibility for my part in all of it. For my daughter’s sake. For yours. But back then I didn’t want any of it, so I just got through it as best I could. And what got me through was hoping that the next summer you would come back to the mailbox and I would be able to hear how you were. I had the idea to continue reading your letters when I wrote you the letter saying I had married Ellie. I felt like I was losing you, and I was desperate to hang on to you somehow.” He smiled. “I thought I knew you well enough to guess that you’d come back. And I was right.”
“So, I’m predictable is what you’re saying,” she said with a small smile that she couldn’t contain.
“Only to me.” He smiled back.
“Continue.”
“So, every year after that, I knew to look for a letter in the mailbox the last week of July. I didn’t follow you or anything. So don’t think I’m some kind of crazy stalker. I just knew when you usually went. You are,” he said, reaching up to brush a strand of hair from her face, “a creature of habit. I would usually go on a Saturday evening and there it would be, waiting for me like a promise that you were still around. I might have lost you, but with those letters you weren’t gone.” He looked up at the sky, pausing to watch a large heron swoop down and land on the beach with a kind of reverence, before speaking again. “I had to hold on to those letters so I could hold on to a piece of you.”
“But those letters were private … and personal. They weren’t yours to have. No one’s supposed to know all of that stuff about me.”
“Except the Kindred Spirit, right? You didn’t mind the Kindred Spirit knowing all that you wrote.”
She looked away in embarrassment, but he put his hand under her chin to face him.
“Lindsey,” he said, “you wrote those letters to the Kindred Spirit, right?”
She nodded.
“Every year you poured your heart out to this Kindred Spirit that you so desperately wanted to believe was out there for you. And I was right there, reading every word. What I’ve always thought as I read them is that you were always writing to me, whether you knew it or not. I think deep down you knew it, here.” He rapped lightly on his own chest, just above his heart. “What you didn’t know is that you were my Kindred Spirit too.”
She looked at him with furrowed brows. “I was?”
“I wouldn’t have sought God without reading your letters and seeing your faith grow every year, Lindsey.” He paused. “It was you who ultimately made me believe that God really did care, that He really did love me … the messed-up coward that I was.”
She stopped and looked at him. “I thought—” She shook her head. “I thought that you got close to God when Ellie left. That’s what your mom—”
“Yes, I went to church when Ellie left. That was the beginning. But it was watching you battle your doubts and come to trust God that made me want to trust Him too. You made Him real for me.”
He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. Kissing the knuckles of her hand with his warm lips, he looked at her with all the love in the world and not a trace of deception in his soft, kind eyes.
“I almost didn’t come here, to try again with you. I didn’t think I had the right to ask. But you said it was a summer for second chances, and I’m learning that even a guy like me might have a shot.” He grinned. “So I was hoping you’d find it in your heart to forgive me for reading your letters. I promise that all I ever wanted was to tell you the truth and give you the letters back. They’re a part of you, and they belong with you.” He pulled her into a hug and whispered in her ear, “And so do I.”
Chapter 36
Sunset Beach
Summer 2004
Campbell and Lindsey walked back to the beach house hand in hand. His grip was so tight she had to pull her hand away and rub it to get the circulation going again. “I’m sorry,” he said and winced as he watched her massage her hand.
She grinned at him and took his hand again. “Don’t be sorry,” she said and looked at him, catching his eye. “Don’t be sorry,” she said, louder and firmer.
He nodded, understanding that she meant more. They walked a little farther in silence. As they reached the driveway of the house, she turned toward him. “So, let me ask you a question,” she said.
“Shoot.”
“So you’re not the Kindred Spirit … but do you know who is?” Her voice was teasing.
He laughed. “No.”
She narrowed her eyes as though she doubted him.
He held up his free hand, laughing. “I promise! I have no idea who the real Kindred Spirit is!”
She smiled warmly, and he thought about the inroads he still would need to make with both Lindsey and Nikki. He was up for the challenge. Created for it, in fact.
“Okay, I have one more question for you,” she said.
“Anything,” he said, though his heart beat a bit faster with the way she posed the question.
“Who painted that picture in your room? Of the girl sitting by the mailbox? I mean, I think I might know where it came from, but it just seems impossible that you of all people ended up with it.”
He smiled and looked off down the beach, not realizing she was going to hit him with that question—and searching for a way to answer it. He let out a long breath before he started. “I had taken Nikki to a fair up in Wilmington. I was letting her walk around the craft booths, though I was thoroughly bored, I might add. She liked looking at all the T-shirts and begging me for junk. You know.”
Lindsey nodded.
“So I found this booth with this guy selling prints of the beach. Some of them were pretty spectacular. I saw that he had done one of the mailbox, and I asked him if he had
any more. The one he had was in black and white, but I wanted one in color.”
A little boy pedaled by on a bicycle, and Campbell stopped talking as he waited for the boy to pass. “So,” he resumed, “the guy gets this funny look on his face and says in this British accent, ‘Well, I do have one other, but it’s not quite ready to sell. But I suppose I could let you see it.’ So he goes and digs around in his things and comes back with this photo—just an ordinary print from a camera.”
She looked at him without blinking. “So, I look at the picture and there you are, sitting there, writing a letter that I would eventually go and get. I couldn’t believe it.” He reached out and stroked her face. “Lindsey, I swear to you in that moment it felt like a sign. That I was meant to do what I was doing. That I was supposed to be connected to you.” He looked at her hard. “I mean, what are the odds?”
“Roderick Shaw,” she blurted out. She shook her head, amazed.
“Yes! That was his name! I asked him if he knew you, how he knew you. He told me he met you at the mailbox. So I bought the print from him right there. Then I paid him a lot of money not to sell that picture to anyone. Ever.” He laughed. “I didn’t want anyone else to have it. It was my picture. So he sold me the negative. He said that he could tell you were very special to me and that he would pray for us.” He laughed. “And then I bought Nikki a bag of cotton candy.”
“And the painting?” she asked.
His face reddened. “I paid a local artist to recreate the print for me.” He shrugged. “It made me feel closer to you to have it on my wall where I could see it every day.”
Just then, Jake came out to stand on the porch. “Mom?” he called. She held up one finger.
“I better go,” she said.
“I’d like to take you out tonight,” he told her. She started to argue with him, but he held up his hand. “Nikki said she’d come and watch your kids.” He paused, knowing the implication of what he was about to say. “She really likes your kids. I think that’s a good sign, don’t you?”
The Mailbox Page 22