Passing Through Paradise

by Susan Wiggs

  Dad didn’t look too happy about wading through the frigid water, but he and Sandra came ashore, holding hands.

  “So this is where you and your friends used to hang out,” she said.

  He got a faraway look in his eyes as he regarded the boathouse. “Sometimes,” he said. “Last time I came here was prom night, 1982.”

  “Why would anyone come here on prom night?” Kevin asked.

  “You’ll figure it out when you get older.”

  “What did you use to do?” Kevin said. “I bet you did bad stuff!”

  Her dad grinned. “Stupid stuff.”

  “Did you smoke cigarettes and drink beer?” Kevin wanted to know. “Did you bring girls here?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” Dad and Sandra looked at each other, their mouths tight like they were trying not to laugh.

  Zeke went inside first, skittering around, sniffing like a professional hound dog. He gave a couple of short, loud barks.

  Kevin ran after him, thumping around in the creaky wooden structure. “Yech,” he called. “Spiderwebs.”

  The barnacle-crusted wood felt rotten and squishy beneath their feet as they stepped into gloomy emptiness. Zeke scrabbled around, growling. The fur on the back of his neck bristled, and Mary Margaret figured he’d sniffed out a critter of some sort.

  She tried to picture her dad here, hanging out with his friends. She’d seen pictures of him from high school — he’d been a jock with big shoulders and a friendly smile, the kind who walked through the halls without a care in the world, while every dork and dweeb in the school wondered how to be exactly like him. She knew, because things in school never really changed. She knew, because she was one of those dorks, wishing she could be like the popular kids.

  She wondered why she never seemed to fit into the “in” crowd, and did her dad know? Was he ashamed of her because she wasn’t popular and good at sports? Oh, how she wanted to be. All the cool girls played tennis or became cheerleaders. The jocks all seemed to go everywhere together in a big, giggling nebula. Sometimes, she imagined herself a part of them, and it was like being in a movie—glorious, fun, with a theme song playing in the background.

  “Look at all this stuff carved in the wall.” Kevin poked a finger at a crude heart surrounding the initials “LC + GV” and the message, “2-nite and 4-ever.” “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Mary Margaret had a pretty good idea, but she pretended she didn’t.

  “Hey, MPM— is that you, Dad?” Kevin demanded. He didn’t seem to notice that no one had answered his previous question.

  Dad got a faraway look in his eyes. “I think it probably was, a long time ago.” He wobbled an old wooden railing with his hand. “There used to be a fishing dory in here. Nobody knew who it belonged to, so my friends and I named it the Robert Chance, and we’d take it out sometimes. We almost drowned in a storm once.”

  “Why the Robert Chance?” asked Mary Margaret.

  “He was a local fisherman from down at the Galilee docks in the thirties, right after the Great Depression. They say he went out for bluefish one day, and was never seen again, so everyone assumed he drowned. The name became famous because, years after he was gone, locals kept hearing about Robert Chance popping up all over the world—on Prince Edward Isle, in Chicago, California . . . but no one ever actually saw him again.”

  Sandra winced, like someone had poked her.

  “Anyway, it’s just a story. We’d better weigh anchor,” Dad said after a few minutes. “We’ve got fresh lobster to fix for dinner.”

  They left the boathouse. Mary Margaret couldn’t help noticing that her dad stayed back for a minute, studying the carvings on the wall.

  Journal Entry—February 16—Saturday

  Ten Things I Worry About

  1. Finishing my History Day project.

  2. Getting fat on lobster with butter sauce.

  3. The pimple on my forehead.

  4. Getting my period during school.

  5. Getting my period in the middle of the night.

  6. Getting my period when I’m staying with Dad.

  7. Not getting my period, ever—

  “Almost time for lights-out, Princess,” Dad whispered from the doorway.

  With a guilty start, Mary Margaret slid her new note-book under the quilt of the upper bunk. “It’s the weekend,” she whispered back, propping herself on her elbow. In the snug stateroom, her head nearly touched the ceiling. “Lights-out doesn’t apply.”

  “Yeah?” He leaned his shoulder against the edge of the door. “Since when?”

  Since Mom and Carmine said I was big enough to choose my own bedtime. She bit her lip, refusing to say it aloud. The family counselor said it was a bad idea to compare house rules, and sometimes Ms. Birkenstocks-and-Yanni was right.

  “Since I’m almost thirteen,” she said.

  He shook his head. “When’d that happen? Seems like I was just reading you Babar books yesterday.” Ducking his head, he stepped into the room and bent low, gently disengaging Kevin’s hands from the latest Harry Potter adventure. Her brother stayed fast asleep, his arm encircling a blissful Zeke.

  “Okay, so try to get some sleep,” he said, cupping his hand over her head in a way that made her inexplicably sad. “Your mom wants you home early tomorrow.”

  “All right. Can I just finish my book?”

  “Sandy’s book.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So what do you think? Of her, not the book.”

  Mary Margaret twirled a finger in her hair. “She’s okay, I guess.” Even though she had a million other thoughts about Sandra, she refused to say another word. But her father kept watching her, waiting, so she finally said, “I can’t like somebody just because she’s your girl friend, Dad.”

  A look of hurt shadowed his face, and Mary Margaret wanted to cry. She hated it that her father could be hurt. She wanted him to be invincible. Taking a deep breath, she said, “She writes good books, and she’s sort of weird, and I guess I like her okay.”

  He bent down, kissed her forehead. “You’re sort of weird yourself,” he whispered. “But I like you okay.”

  “Night, Daddy-O.”

  “Night, Princess. I love you.”

  He let her keep the dim reading light on, and she opened Sandra’s book. She could hear her father in the saloon, his computer modem crackling as he went on-line. Before falling asleep, she wondered what he was searching for.

  Chapter 26

  On Sunday evening, Mike went to the house on Blue Moon Beach. By now, the work on the old place had progressed far enough to be obvious even to the untrained eye. The dormers and sagging porch were now as straight as the horizon; a landscaping crew had begun cleaning out and pruning the beds. Shutters had been carted off for refinishing; the ghastly corrugated tin carport was gone. The house resembled an accident victim who was halfway on the mend.

  As he got out of the truck, holding the door for Zeke, he wondered who would live here when Sandra was gone. A young family, kids running around in the yard and leaping over the dunes? An older couple, wearing knitted mufflers, walking arm in arm on the beach? A pair of yuppies, installing a Sub-Zero fridge and Viking range to fix gourmet meals for their dinner parties?

  He adjusted the bill of his cap, trying not to think so hard. He concentrated on checking the property lines, com paring the tiny flag markers with the plat information on his clipboard. Nothing seemed to match, but that didn’t surprise him. The shifting dunes and wild vegetation had a will of their own. No one had bothered with the boundaries here since a survey done in the 1920s.

  Sandra wasn’t expecting him; they hadn’t learned the rhythms and patterns of each other’s lives—not yet. He didn’t know how he fit into her life, or she into his. He didn’t even know if “fitting together” was what they were after. Every time one of them drew a line, the other seemed to push at it until it was in a different place.

  Initially, their functional worki
ng relationship had been clear—he was the contractor; she was the client. But their lives kept interweaving back and forth across the lines. She had vaulted over it completely when she’d barged into his boat. . . and then into his arms.

  He’d loved every single moment of that.

  He kept trying to tell himself that the long absence of a woman from his life accounted for his intense, ravenous need for her. But the fact was, his feelings grew and strengthened with each passing day. And he knew those feelings wouldn’t simply disappear when she left Paradise. It was a little scary, finding out at this stage of his life that he could love with such abandon. He’d always blamed Angela for the divorce, but maybe she hadn’t been the only problem. With Angela, he had never felt the things he felt for Sandra, the fierce passion, the consuming tenderness, the mind-blowing lust.

  Angela, with uncanny instinct, already knew something was going on, something was different; she’d said nothing when she picked up the kids, but he’d read it in her face. His ex-wife saw something powerful happening, and he could tell it bothered her. She didn’t want him to have anyone else, and it would make her insane to realize how hard he’d fallen for Sandra—it scared her, somehow.

  He didn’t give a shit about Ange’s opinion, but he’d been nervous about bringing Sandy together with his kids. Still was. Mary Margaret and Kevin owned his heart, and he wasn’t sure how a woman fit into the picture. He tried to pretend it wasn’t a crucial issue for him. But it was. It would kill him to lose Sandy now, but he had to face facts. She was set on leaving, and he had to stay close to his kids.

  Despite their new intimacy, some boundaries remained intact. It went without saying that Sandra would not stay on the boat when Mike’s kids were there. Nor had she gone with him to drive Mary Margaret and Kevin back to their mother in Newport. There was an unwritten code about this sort of thing. Even Carmine respected the invisible borders when it came to the kids. He knew Mike would break his face if he messed with them.

  Mike made some notes for the survey crew that was scheduled to come in the morning, then went and knocked at the door. He was about to push past another barrier. She would resist, of course. She might even tell him to get lost. But then again, she might draw even closer to him.

  She didn’t answer the door. He swore under his breath and dug in his pocket for his key. Zeke let out a bark. At the edge of the dunes, he imitated an experienced pointer, one paw raised, nose and tail aimed like the ends of a weather vane.

  Mike never knew whether or not to trust the mutt’s instincts. He was as likely to unearth a dead scrod as a lost child.

  He went around to the beach side of the house, shading his eyes against the glare of sunset reflected on the water. With the light behind him, his shadow fell long across the rustling yellow salt grass.

  He spotted Sandra walking along the beach in the distance. She made a solitary figure on the wide stretch of sand littered with wrack and debris, her slender silhouette black against a brilliant sky. She couldn’t know it, but the picture she made, so small against an overpowering back drop of nature, etched itself on his soul —Sandy against the world. All alone, not an ally in sight. He wondered how she’d managed to survive a whole year of being thrust away to this remote spot. No matter what else happened, he would always remember her like this—isolated, her shadow covering the path in front of her.

  The beach smelled of salt and rot and air so cold it cut the lungs. Zeke’s sharp bark alerted her, and she stopped walking while Mike jogged to catch up. She didn’t smile, didn’t speak. He couldn’t tell why. Maybe she sensed he was going to a place in her life where he was not welcome, a place she kept walled off and wholly to herself.

  She looked lonely and filled with pain and still so beautiful it made his heart hurt to look at her. He didn’t say anything, but took her by the shoulders and kissed her— harder and with more possession than he’d intended. She surrendered to him with a shudder that ran the entire length of her body. She fit against him as though molded by nature to occupy that space as a permanent resident.

  He curved his hand over her head, stroking her cold, smooth hair. “Hey,” he said, “I got worried when you didn’t answer the door.”

  “I missed you,” she said.

  “Ditto.” Since Thursday night, they had only been apart maybe sixteen hours, but it felt ten times that long. His bunk on the boat already held her shape and her scent. The pillow had a hollow in it where her head had lain.

  “I didn’t know whether to call you or not,” she said, shivering. “So I didn’t.”

  “You should have.” He bent and gathered a fistful of driftwood. It was easy to find this time of year, when the beaches were deserted and undisturbed by foraging tourists. The smooth pieces were bleached by the cleansing sea, dried by the steadily blowing wind. He arranged the firewood in the lee of an old log, then searched his jacket pockets for a book of matches. “I never have a match on me since I quit smoking,” he said.

  “When did you ever smoke, Malloy?”

  “Truth?”

  “Truth.”

  “In 1980. Same year I learned to drink beer. The habit didn’t stick with me, though.”

  “Why not?”

  His search finally yielded a bent cardboard matchbook from Gloria Carmichael’s Shrimp Shack. “Blame it on a woman.”

  “Linda Lipschitz.”

  He grinned, surprised she remembered that conversation. “She couldn’t stand the smell, so I gave it up.”

  He went down on one knee and struck a match, cup ping his hand around it, touching the flame to a crumpled bit of paper, then nurturing it along until the twigs caught and snapped. Within a few minutes, a good blaze took hold.

  Sandra sat cross-legged on the sand, stretching her hands out to the fire. The orange flames painted her face with mysterious color.

  “Impressive, Malloy,” she said. “I should award you a merit badge or something.”

  He sat next to her and slid his hand inside her jacket. Her yielding flesh was warm and vital beneath a soft sweater. “I’ve got a better idea,” he said, and whispered an explicit suggestion in her ear.

  She nestled her head on his shoulder. “That’s supposed to cheer me up?”

  “It cheers me up.” But he was here to talk, not seduce her, and so he kissed the top of her head and removed his hand from her jacket.

  Her hand went inside his pocket and found his. “I had a good time with your kids.”

  “Yeah? I was a little worried about Mary Margaret—she acted sort of prickly.”

  “This surprises you?”

  “Hell, yes. The kid has her moods, but I never saw her act rude before. I wasn’t sure whether I should ignore her or yell at her.”

  “Did you ever bring a woman out on the boat with you before?”

  “Other than Angela, no.”

  “As Mary Margaret would say—duh. You’re her hero. She’s used to having you all to herself. What’s she going to think when you bring a stranger onto her turf?”

  “Sounds like you know her better than I do.”

  “No, I see her more clearly. She’s a great kid, but she can’t be great all the time.”

  “Kevin is. He’s great all the time. It worries me.”

  “Wait a minute. You’re worried because your kid is great?”

  “He’s too good to be true. I keep thinking that he’s holding in his true feelings, and one day his head will explode.”

  “You’re a good dad, Malloy. I like the way you worry.”

  “You give strange compliments.”

  She lifted her head from his shoulder. “I’m a strange person.”

  “Mary Margaret seemed a lot more friendly in the afternoon. Whatever you said made her warm up to you.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah. So what did you say?”

  She hesitated. “We talked about my books. Writing. A few other things.”

  “What—”

  “Female things. And if you keep
pushing me for specifics, I swear I will tell you, word for word, exactly what was said.” She took her hand out of his pocket.

  Mike knew a warning when he heard one. “Yeah, okay.” He fed another stick to the fire. Twilight had turned the sky deep purple, and the flames from the driftwood spread a soft fall of firelight on the sand. The heat formed a cocoon without walls, enclosing them in gold and shadow.

  “Sandy, there’s something I have to ask you,” he said, pushing the words out.

  She straddled the log to face him. Her eyes grew wide and wary in the fluttering light. “Why did I just feel the whole world shift?”

  “You’ve got good instincts, maybe.” It was true. There had always been subtext between them, from the first moment he’d seen her. Beneath the words they spoke ran a separate current of meaning. The current was strong now. She picked it up like a radar receiver. Moving away from him, she looped her arms around her drawn-up knees.

  He turned to face her directly. “I want you to tell me what happened the night Victor died.”

  “No.” Her reply was as swift and vicious as a slap.

  Mike had been slapped before. So he simply sat and watched her. “Sandy,” he said at length. “Talk to me.”

  “Christ, Malloy, do you have something against my feeling happy? I actually had a good day.”

  “Right up until you saw the bridge and had a panic attack.”

  Her look was poison. “Maybe it’s your job to make sure my misery index didn’t fall too low.”

  “You know better than that.” All day long he’d been debating with himself about how to approach this. He couldn’t say he had a hunch—she’d never buy it. He wasn’t even sure he bought it. But in the boathouse yesterday, the weirdest feeling had swept over him, as insubstantial as cobwebs, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it. This was hard, but he needed to do it, to uncover the past and convince her it was all right to stay in Paradise.

  He knew in his gut that Sandra’s story of that night was incomplete. She hadn’t lied, but her monosyllabic replies to the death investigator’s interrogations hid much more than they revealed. “I know you’ve been over this before, but I want you to tell me what happened,” he said.