“Don’t he, though?” Myrtle says with a little kick in her voice.
Kat looks from one of us to the other. “Did I miss something?”
“No,” I say quickly. “Did you finish up your schoolwork?”
“I did,” she says, keeping her gaze on me.
“Why don’t we go to town for a pizza?” I say, eager to divert the conversation.
“Or we could see that new movie and have popcorn for dinner instead.”
“Child, what kind of dinner is that?”
Kat laughs. “A good one.”
Myrtle looks at me and shakes her head.
“I know,” I say. “I’m a total pushover.”
“When it comes to her, you are,” she says.
I kiss Kat on the top of her head. “Popcorn and a movie it is.”
The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.
~ Andre Maurois
Sam
The night is a restless one in which I sleep in fits and starts, finally giving up altogether around four o’clock. Downstairs, I make coffee and read a few cardiology journals I’ve been meaning to get to for a while. Articles I’d once read to help me maintain my edge as a sought-after physician.
I’m halfway through the second one when it occurs to me that I might not ever get the chance to use whatever knowledge I gain here. That maybe it’s just a waste of time to add another speck of information to what I know.
It’s not as if I haven’t thought it before. But here, in this place where I was once so full of life and hope for the future, I grab hold of the anger that flashes through me like lightning and make myself finish the article before closing the journal and putting it away. I get dressed and head out for the local minute market, determined to focus on the day ahead and nothing beyond that.
I’m the first customer, rolling my cart down the aisles and looking for items I think either Gabby or Kat will like. I end up with enough food to feed a dozen people. I put a few things back, so I’m left with what looks like a more reasonable offering, big red Florida-grown tomatoes, a fresh-baked loaf of bread, and mayo to make up the main meal. I haven’t eaten tomato sandwiches in too many years to count and remember them as a staple of summer lunches here when I was a boy. I add a bag of Fritos and cans of Grape Crush to the cart, aware that I’m not going to win any nutrition points from Gabby for my efforts.
I head back home with my purchases and put the lunch together way too early, so that I’m left with nothing to do but think about the journal I’d been reading earlier, and the feeling of futility about whether there was even a point to it. I begin to wonder then if I am wrong to interfere in Gabby’s life. To start something I might not be able to finish.
Short of calling her and canceling, there is nothing to do but follow through. I lower the boat from its slip around 11:30 and motor towards the marina at a speed that allows me to pull in just short of noon.
Kat is waiting on the dock, waving when she spots me. “Hello,” she calls out.
“Ahoy there,” I call back.
She smiles as if I’m the corniest man she’s ever met. “Mama’s coming in a minute.”
“How are you?” I ask, sidling up to the dock and jumping off, tying the ropes at the front and back.
“Good. Pretty day for a picnic,” she says.
“It absolutely is,” I agree.
Just then, Gabby comes out of the cafe, Myrtle behind her with a basket. They both call out hello to me and then Myrtle adds, “Made you all a pie for your lunch. Strawberry.”
“That sounds amazing,” I say. “Thank you, Myrtle.”
“I’m just glad to see you getting these two out of here for a bit, so they can do something other than work.”
“Myrtle—” Gabby begins.
“Well, it’s the stone-cold truth. Been trying to get you to take a day off since Lincoln was shot.”
Gabby shakes her head and gives Myrtle a look with which I suspect the older woman is well familiar.
“Can I leave my chair here, Mama?” Kat asks Gabby.
“Sure, honey. If you think the boat seats won’t hurt your back.”
“I’ll be fine,” she says, a stoic note in her voice.
“Okay,” Gabby says, and then glancing at me, “Ready?”
“Yep,” I say, taking the basket from Myrtle and giving it an appreciative once-over.
“Now y’all just take the afternoon and relax. Timmy and I have got this place covered.”
“We will,” Kat says, and I can see Gabby’s getting ready to argue, but Myrtle waves and hurries back inside.
A few minutes later, we’re cruising up the cove and away from the marina. Kat is propped on the cushioned back seat and has popped in earbuds for her iPhone. I avoid any waves and drive slow enough not to bounce for fear of causing her pain.
I risk a sideways glance at Gabby in jean shorts and a T-shirt, both of which she wore with the same appeal when she was seventeen. She catches me looking, and I jerk my gaze away.
“Any particular place you two like to go?” I ask.
Gabby points toward the mountain. “Anywhere along there is nice.”
I aim the boat in that direction, and we motor over in an awkward kind of silence. When we get closer, Kat pulls out an earbud and says, “Are we going to swim?”
“The water’s still cool,” Gabby says, looking at me with a smile of chagrin.
“I like it that way.”
“We’ll see after we eat.”
And then Kat’s back to her music.
“What is it you wanted to talk to me about?” Gabby asks, the breeze slightly lifting her hair so my eyes are drawn to the curve of her neck.
I glance away, focusing on Kat who is swaying to a tune we can’t hear. “I hope I haven’t overstepped my boundaries, but I made a call to an old friend of mine. David Lanning. He’s a pediatric surgeon at Duke who specializes in bone diseases. We went to school together in London.”
Gabby’s gaze is fully on me, her eyes wide with surprise. When she says nothing, I go on, faster now, maybe a little afraid she’ll cut me off. “He’s agreed to see Kat and review her case, if you would like for him to.”
Gabby’s look is one of utter surprise, and it’s clear this is not what she expected at all. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“I know I should have asked you first—”
“No. I mean, thank you.” Tears spring to her eyes, and she turns her face into the wind, blinking hard. And then she looks at me again, “Why would you?”
“I’d like to help,” I say. “That’s all.”
She says nothing for a stretch of silence, and since I don’t know what she’s thinking, I remain quiet, too.
“It’s been so hard,” she says, “hearing over and over again how she’ll just have to live with this.”
“David might agree,” I say, not wanting to get her hopes up.
When she looks back at me, I see the gratitude in her eyes, and I think I understand for the first time the weight of the responsibility she has been carrying. “Thank you,” she says again. “I don’t know what else to say.”
“Nothing is needed,” I tell her, and our gazes lock and hold for a moment, before I force mine back to the water ahead.
We pick a spot at the base of the mountain where a strip of sand allows us to beach the boat. I help Kat out and set up three folding chairs at the edge of the water. She walks along the edge for a minute or two and then sits, a hand at the base of her spine.
“Is the pain constant?” I ask Gabby as we carry the picnic food to the blankets we’ve spread out on a grassy spot.
“If she’s standing, it’s nearly constant,” Gabby says.
And I can only imagine how hard it would be at Kat’s age to know you couldn’t run and play like other children. “She doesn’t question it, though, does she?” I say, setting down the basket.
Gabby shakes her head. “I’ve never known anyone so determined to ma
ke the best of what they have. But that’s Kat.”
“Do you think that comes from her early childhood?”
“Maybe. At some point, she decided she was okay with the hand she got dealt, that she would make the best of it, I guess. She wants to be a doctor—she says she thinks she’ll be able to help her patients because she can understand how they feel.”
“And I believe she will.”
“I do think she was shaped by some of what happened to her before her life here. Not that she remembers much of it. But she has an appreciation for the simple stuff that goes beyond what I see in most children.”
We empty the basket, spreading out the food on one of the blankets. I move a fold-up chair over closer for Kat, and she pulls out her earbuds, thanks me and sits down.
“This looks awesome,” she says, glancing at the tomato sandwiches.
“I think Myrtle might have topped my menu with that pie.”
“May I say the blessing?” Kat asks, and we bow our heads to her simple thanks for the food and the day.
I’m surprised by her initiative, and I think how many years it has been since I heard my own children pray.
We take our time eating, and I think we could not have ordered a more picture-perfect afternoon.
“May I use the float for a little bit?” Kat asks once she’s done, pointing at the one I’d thrown in the back of the boat.
“If it’s okay with your mom.”
“As long as you wear a lifejacket.”
Kat and I head for the boat where I hand her the jacket and pull out the float. She climbs on, flat on her back and paddles outs, earbuds in place.
“Thanks,” Gabby says, when I sit back down on the quilt.
“No problem.”
“You’ve been a good father, haven’t you?”
The question surprises me, but I try to answer honestly. “Not perfect by any means. I probably should have worked less when they were young, but I did try to make time for doing the things they liked to do. I’m afraid they were a bit spoiled. Analise, my daughter, is in the throes of teenage rebellion.”
“That must be hard.”
“It’s sort of like you have to batten the hatches and wait for the storm to pass.”
“And it will,” she says.
“I just hope soon enough,” I say. The thought is out before I can censor it, and Gabby looks at me, curious.
“What do you mean?” she says.
I struggle with a response, but finally add, “Before she forgets she once loved me, I guess.”
“She won’t,” Gabby says, convincingly. “In fact, her love for you will probably be even stronger.”
“I would like to think it’s true. But it’s hard. We were once so close. I could do no wrong. Now I can do no right.”
“It’s the cruelest phase of parenting, I think,” she says. “They have to pull away to become independent. It would be nice though if the bandage didn’t have to be ripped off.”
“That’s pretty much what it feels like.”
“I can’t imagine Kat reaching that point. But I know that she will. I did. As much as I loved my parents, we had a few rough spots.”
“That’s hard to believe. You were so close to them.”
“I was. But after you left—” She stops there.
“After I left, what?”
She doesn’t answer for a bit, and when she does, she looks at me directly. “I went a little wild, I guess.”
I try not to think about what exactly that could mean. “I’m sorry, Gabby.”
“For which part?” she asks, meeting my gaze.
“All of it.”
“Me too,” she says.
Regret surrounds us like suddenly descending gray clouds. “Gabby,” I say softly, “if I could change—”
“You can’t,” she interrupts with an edge to her voice. “We can’t.”
“I know,” I concede.
I glance out at the float where Kat is lying face to the sun, one foot dancing in time to her silent music.
“At one point in my life,” Gabby says softly, “I would have given anything to reverse the clock, go back and have a chance to live the life we thought we would live. But now, I can’t wish for any of it to be different because if it had been, I wouldn’t have her. And you wouldn’t have your children.”
“Kind of hard to know how to think about it,” I say.
“It is,” she says, tracing a finger in the sand. She makes a tic-tac toe board, puts an X in the top left corner.
I write an O in another spot, and in silence, we play out the game we used to play on summer days on the sandy beach next to my parents’ dock. Gabby wins, drawing a line through her row of Xs.
I place my hand on top of hers, my heart jolting in remembered connection. We sit like that for several long moments, and then she turns her hand so that our palms are facing. Our fingers link together, and we hold on tight. I close my eyes and absorb her touch, instantly realizing that I’ve lived my life convinced that what we once felt for each other couldn’t possibly still exist. Only now I realize it’s just been dormant, never actually extinguished, but simply waiting for the right conditions to reignite.
Happiness floods through me, just this wash of pure emotion that I haven’t felt in so long. But right behind it is guilt. I don’t have the right to reopen any of this with Gabby. I’ve already hurt her once. I can’t do that again.
I remove my hand from hers, aware of her questioning gaze even as I do. We sit for several moments, not saying anything, me unwilling to meet her eyes, because I’m afraid of what I’ll give away.
She’s the one to finally speak first, her voice neutral of any physical awareness. “Are your parents still living?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “My dad was killed in a car wreck about ten years ago. My mom died of a stroke two years later.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I should have asked you sooner.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry you lost them so close together.”
“She was miserable without him. To be honest, I’m surprised she lived as long as she did after he died.”
“It’s pretty great when people love each other like that, though.”
We’re on awkward ground again, and I can’t look at her because I can’t hide the fact that this is the kind of love I felt for her. “It is,” I say, keeping my gaze on the water where Kat is floating in what appears to be utter contentment.
“Why are you here, Sam?”
The question is out of nowhere, and I find myself without an automatic response. “It’s complicated,” I say.
“I already guessed that.” She keeps her gaze on Kat, still floating and waving her arms to music only she can hear.
“Why would you come back after all this time?”
“I needed to,” I say, and this is true. “Loose ends, I guess.”
“With me?”
“That’s one part of it.”
“Surely you know it’s way too late to fix any of that.” The response is a little harsh and edged with hurt.
“I don’t expect to fix it. I just want you to know I’m sorry.”
She pulls her knees to her chest, wraps her arms around her legs, as if she’s trying to keep herself together. “This doesn’t make any sense, Sam. I don’t want to dig it all up again. I made peace with us a long time ago.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
She looks at me then, and I see a storm of confusion in her eyes. “Maybe we should head back,” she says.
“Gabby,” I say, putting my hand on her arm.
She stands and calls loudly across the water to Kat.
Kat pulls off her headset and rises on one elbow.
“It’s time to go,” Gabby says.
Kat looks disappointed, but paddles in. “Anything wrong?” she asks, looking at us both.
“We just need to get back,” Gabby says, her voice now neutral.
“Aww,”
Kat says. “It’s so nice here.”
Gabby starts gathering the picnic things, and we reload the boat in silence. And the entire time, I am asking myself what had made me ever think we could get past the past.
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
~ Confucius
Gabby
It feels as if we’ll never get back to the marina.
The air between Sam and me is now heavy with awkwardness. I don’t know what to say to him, and he doesn’t know what to say to me.
Sam pulls the boat up alongside the dock, and I start to gather our things, when Kat lets out a startled cry.
I drop the quilts in my arms and run to her. “What’s wrong? Are you okay, honey?”
She’s white as snow, and her gaze is on something beyond the cafe. I look up and spot her wheelchair hanging from the limb of the old oak tree that stands just up the hill. I feel as if someone has pushed all the air from my lungs. I instantly pull Kat to me, my heart breaking when she starts to cry.
Sam has now seen it too, and he quickly finishes tying up the boat, then jogs to the tree and untangles the chair from the bungee cords holding it up. He lowers it to the ground and rolls it back to the dock.
But Kat wants nothing to do with it. She thanks Sam for getting it down in a polite voice and disappears into the cafe.
“Who would do that?” Sam asks, looking at me with anger in his eyes.
I sigh heavily and run my hand through my hair. “Probably a couple of boys who live down the road. I don’t know why, but they’ve made Kat the target of their pranks. A while back, they put a frog in her purse at church. Before that, they left a black snake in the mailbox.”
Sam frowns. “How old are they?”
“Thirteen.”
“Sounds like they’re getting more brazen.”
I nod, the worry nagging inside me inching up a notch. “At first, it seemed pretty harmless. But now,” I say, glancing at Kat’s rescued wheelchair.
“You mind if I get in on this?”
“Sam, you don’t have to do that.”
“I want to.”
“And do what?”
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