A Time for Us

by Amy Knupp

  Knowing her mother would already be at work, Rachel finally pulled out of the hospital lot, drove the short distance to the bridge, crossed to the island and drove right on past the turn that would have led her home.

  Just the sight of the old, increasingly lopsided, formerly bright yellow boathouse had Rachel sitting up straighter and breathing more easily. Why hadn’t she managed to come here since she’d moved back to San Amaro?

  There were a handful of other cars in the gravel lot but not a person in view as she made her way to the door of the boathouse. Taking solace in the hand-painted Come On In sign that was almost as old as she was, Rachel felt her burden lighten as she opened the screen door.

  “Holy moly, look what the beautiful day dragged in. My eyes must be failin’ me.”

  Rachel couldn’t help smiling at the sound of that familiar gravelly voice, even though she wasn’t able to make out the man sitting in the deep shadows yet. “Buck!” she said, moving toward him as her eyes began to adjust to the low light.

  “Rachel Culver, I have half a mind to kick you outta here. Saw in the newspaper you were back in town bein’ a doctor at long last. Guess you have better things to do than tend to your boat or visit an ornery old man.”

  “Oh, stop it,” Rachel said, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m here now, ornery old man.” She waited for him to gain his feet, holding her hand out to steady him.

  “Not only are you about five years past due, but you’re late. It’s almost eight a.m. Sun’s been up for hours.”

  “I just got done with a shift at the hospital. I came straight here.”

  “Eight a.m. will have to work just fine, then.”

  Buck grasped both of her hands and studied her, working his jaw as he did. Rachel took the opportunity to size him up, as well, drinking in the sight of him. He’d aged more, but then, he had to be in his mid-nineties by now. Other than being a little more stooped over and having a few extra sun-roughened wrinkles, he looked the same as always. His faded yellow T-shirt said Buck’s Boat Rentals, and his skinny, knobby-kneed legs jutted out from baggy, wrinkle-free khaki shorts. He wore his usual sports sandals and life-loving, sunken-in grin.

  At last, he nodded his approval at what he saw, so Rachel did the same. “Looking good, Buck Winfrey. Life must be treating you right.”

  “Can’t complain. Got a full boathouse and my whittlin’ keeps me busy.” He nodded to the cluttered end table next to where he’d been sitting. Now that Rachel could see in the lower light, she spotted a piece of wood and some tools. “You here to get out on the bay?”

  “I am,” Rachel said eagerly, glancing down the rows of boats for a glimpse of her blue-and-green kayak. “It’s been way too long.”

  “Come on, then,” Buck said, leading the way to her storage space at the opposite end of the third row.

  “How’s Bob?” Rachel asked, eyeing the shadowed corner where the two sides met the ceiling. The darker spot wasn’t recognizable, but she knew it was the resident bat.

  “Happy as can be. Bugs are keeping that ol’ bat well fed this year. Won’t be long before he’s too fat to fly.”

  “That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, in my opinion,” she said, casting one more nervous glance toward the corner.

  Rachel helped Buck free her kayak from its rack, surprised as always by his strength, which was so incongruent with his bony, slightly hunched body. “I got this,” he said. “You gonna wear those doctor clothes out on the water?”

  She hadn’t even stopped to think about her lack of a swimsuit or suitable kayaking clothes. Her scrubs were comfortable but...

  “I got somethin’ for ya.” Buck motioned with his head toward the door she’d come in through. Rachel followed him and helped him lower the kayak to the dirt floor, leaning it against the wall by the door.

  Buck walked over to the wall behind the open door and started digging through a large, open cardboard box. “Here we go.” He faced her with a victorious glimmer in his eyes. “Think this’ll work? Ladies’ medium. Might be a little big on the likes of you, but I didn’t order anything smaller. Would’ve if I’d known you were gonna show up.”

  He held up a yellow tank with Buck’s Boat Rentals on the chest.

  “Looks perfect to me. Thanks, Buck. I’ll change into that and roll up my pants. It’ll do.”

  “A Buck’s shirt will more’n do, young lady. I don’t give them out for free to just anybody! Them are twelve-dollar shirts.”

  “Well, then, I’ll pay you twelve dollars when I get my purse out of the car.”

  “No, you will not. It’s a gift, just for you, Miss Rachel. Now, you get changed and then we’ll get you on the water.”

  There was no arguing with Buck. Never had been. Rachel took the shirt and tried not to show any reluctance whatsoever to go in the tiny restroom Buck had installed in the boathouse corner years ago. It was no bigger than the bathroom on an airplane, with barely enough room to turn around, let alone lift her elbows to change her shirt. And the cleanliness factor, or lack thereof... Rachel closed her eyes, breathed through her mouth and put the tank on as fast as humanly possible. She burst out of the tiny space and struck what she thought, in her fashion-moron way, might be a modeling pose before Buck could tell she was gasping for fresh air.

  “That’s some damn good advertising,” he said. “Be better with some of them puny little shorts to show off your legs, but we can work with the doctor pants.”

  “Nobody will be seeing me in ‘puny little shorts’ anytime soon.” Rachel bent over to roll up her scrubs.

  While she’d been in the restroom, Buck had retrieved her two-sided paddle—she was impressed he could put his hands on it so quickly since she’d been away so long—and was holding it up like an oversize walking cane.

  “You ready yet?” Buck said good-naturedly.

  She straightened and eyed her beloved boat. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Need help?”

  “I’ve got this,” Rachel said as she picked up her kayak and headed for the dock.

  She set the boat into the water and climbed in, scoring no points for grace, but she didn’t care. The second she was floating, she felt some of her tension leave her body as if a pressure-release button had been pushed. Buck handed her the familiar, orange-tipped paddle and she pushed off the dock with a wave.

  With every dip of the paddle, Rachel relaxed more. The bay was shallow here and clear enough to see to the sandy bottom. She watched for fish, just as she always had, as she began a calming, rhythmic pace with the paddle, from one side to the other. A gull screeched from the shore behind her. In the distance, she could hear the captain’s voice over the intercom on a tourist boat as it set out on one of its daily fishing excursions. The gentle splash of her paddle hitting the water with each stroke mesmerized her. Took her further from her cares and worries. By the time she made it to the middle of the bay, the professional fishermen had left shore hours before and the dolphin tours were not yet under way. She was gloriously alone in her favorite place in the world.

  With her back to the bridge that spanned the bay, Rachel stilled. Breathed in. Closed her eyes briefly in gratitude for the peacefulness around her as it seeped into her bones.

  Noelle had never gotten it. She’d kayaked with Rachel plenty of times but swore it was dull on the bay. White-water kayaking would have been much more her style, though Rachel was pretty sure her sister had never gotten the opportunity to try it. Rachel had tried countless times to explain how being alone in a single-person boat out in the middle of the bay was soothing and restorative to her.

  “There’s nothing to do but think out there,” Noelle had said more than once. “It’s like the water magnifies your problems and that’s all that exists. There’s nothing to distract you from whatever’s eating away at you. It could drive a girl to drink.”

  Noelle had never understood Rachel’s explanations. For Rachel, the solitude and the closeness of the water had the opposite effect—th
ey took her away. They allowed her to set all her other thoughts aside, to be drawn out of her own problems into the quiet drama of nature. She could sit for hours watching for fish, looking for bubbles in the water, stirring the water with her paddle without a care as to where she drifted. The gentle sounds the water made against the boat soothed her, cleared her mind. Noelle had loved the wildness of the gulf side of the island, the turmoil and the nonstop commotion of the waves smashing continually on the beach. Her favorite place to be whenever she’d been upset was in the middle of the crashing waves. Rachel grew agitated if she watched the never-ending waves for too long.

  She dipped her fingers into the tepid water, closed her eyes and raised her chin so the sun could beat down on her and color her skin. Several feet away, a fish splashed, forming ripples on the otherwise placid surface. She cleared her mind and just...was.

  It was much later—an hour? Two?—when she noticed her shoulders were pink and the boat traffic from the marina out to the gulf was picking up. As she gazed south to the other side of the bridge, she spotted two competing dolphin tours heading out south toward where the bay and the gulf intersected. A growl from her stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten since an early dinner before her shift last night. Reluctantly, she dipped her paddle in to turn the boat toward the shore.

  She’d be back much more frequently, now that she remembered the therapeutic value of passing the hours in the kayak. Though paddling back to the dock was the last thing she wanted to do, at least now she felt as though she could handle life and whatever it threw at her.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “HEY, STRANGER,” Sawyer Culver called out as Cale made his way from the street to the Culver garage late Tuesday morning. “Haven’t seen you for several months. What’s the occasion, man?”

  “Just your lucky day,” Cale said. Sawyer set down a large, obviously heavy cardboard box on top of another at the edge of the garage and held out his hand for Cale to shake. “Looks like you’re having a blast here.”

  Sawyer, who wore a sweaty T-shirt and old gym shorts, wiped his forehead and gave Cale a look that said otherwise. He shook his head. “My mom hasn’t cleaned out the garage for years. I still don’t know what the hell I was thinking when I offered to do it.”

  There were a dozen or so boxes stacked on the driveway and a couple in the back of Sawyer’s pickup.

  “Somebody moving out?” Cale asked, immediately thinking of Rachel.

  Sawyer shook his head. “Making a Goodwill run. They’ll either be thrilled when they see me pull up or sorry as hell.”

  Cale frowned and swallowed hard. “Is this some of Noelle’s stuff?”

  “Naw.” Sawyer shook his head, his mouth open as if he were searching for words. “No one has even started to go through her belongings yet.”

  Blinking in confusion, Cale tilted his head in question.

  “Crazy, isn’t it?” Sawyer said.

  “It’s been...a long time.” Long enough that it seemed as if someone would sort through her things and at least pack them away even if they couldn’t bear to get rid of them yet.

  “Don’t I know it.” Sawyer lifted another box from the ground up into the back of the truck. “I’d do it, but you know as well as I do that I’d do it all wrong. My mom refuses to take care of it herself because she thinks Rachel should be in on it since they were so close. Rachel...well... First off, she’s been at school until recently.”

  “And second?” Cale asked, curious to learn more about his fiancée’s twin sister.

  “Second, she’s been the queen of avoidance lately, at least when it comes to anything relating to Noelle.”

  “Gotta be hard to lose a twin.”

  “Hell yeah. Probably as hard as losing a fiancée.” Sawyer paused and gave him a sympathetic look. Cale turned away, gazed up the street at nothing in particular. He’d worked through two tons of baggage and grief, but that didn’t mean he liked talking about it.

  “I think that’s why we don’t push her. But she’s not...” Sawyer shook his head. “Who knows. Rachel has to handle things her own way, I guess. I worry about her constantly. Curse of the big brother.”

  “I hear you.” He couldn’t imagine having to watch Mariah go through something so tough. “Is she here? I actually stopped by to see her.”

  “Rachel?” Sawyer eyed him curiously for a moment. “She hasn’t come home from work yet, as far as I know.” He glanced at his watch. “I have no idea where the hell she is. She should be here anytime. Should’ve been here a couple of hours ago.”

  “She’s dedicated to her job.”

  Sawyer scoffed. “That’s one word for it. She won’t listen to me about that, either, though.”

  “Stubbornness seems to be something the Culver twins had in common.”

  “Hell, Cale. The stories I could tell you about those two...” Sawyer became quiet as if the subject were getting to him. He lifted the closest box and headed for the back of the truck again.

  Cale had no words to offer. He knew it was best not to say more about Noelle unless Sawyer wanted to pursue the conversation. He walked over to one of the boxes, pointed to it and asked, “This one going, too?”

  Sawyer merely nodded and said, “Thanks, man.”

  They were just about done loading all the sealed boxes into the truck when Rachel pulled up beside it in her ancient Honda Accord.

  Cale couldn’t deny that his heart sped up in an inappropriate way as he watched her make her way toward the garage. Must have been an ingrained reaction and some part of his brain hadn’t figured out this was Rachel instead of Noelle yet.

  Rachel looked more tousled than he’d ever seen her. More like Noelle, he couldn’t help noticing. Her hair was windblown, her cheeks and shoulders lightly sunburned, and her wrinkled clothes were damp in places. Obviously she hadn’t come straight from work.

  “Where have you been, wild girl?” Sawyer asked.

  When Rachel spotted Cale in the shadows of the garage, she faltered, slowing her steps but then covering the reaction quickly. She turned and searched out his Sport Trac, parked across the street.

  Instead of answering the question, Rachel narrowed her eyes, took in the load of boxes in the truck and faced Sawyer. “Are you moving back home or something?”

  “Sorry to disappoint, but no. This stuff is on its way out.”

  “Hi,” she said, finally acknowledging Cale.

  “Hey. I was guessing overtime but the outfit says otherwise.”

  “I took my kayak out after work.”

  “You fried,” Sawyer said.

  She glanced down at her shoulders. “Mildly pink is all. The trip wasn’t planned. I didn’t take any sunscreen. Buck gave me the shirt.”

  “And you forgot a brush, too.” Her brother yanked lightly, affectionately, at the tangled strands next to her face.

  “Kayak hair looks good on you,” Cale said, grinning. “Definitely a different side of the multifaceted Dr. Rachel Culver.”

  “Are you two best buddies now or something?” she asked, ignoring Cale’s comments and heading toward the back stairs to the house.

  “Naw, we can’t stand each other,” Sawyer said. “He’s here to see you.”

  Again, Cale could swear he saw her falter. “Got a few minutes?”

  “If you don’t mind my eating lunch.”

  “Give him a beer, Rach. I owe him for helping me.”

  “We don’t have any beer, but there might be some tea or lemonade.” She spoke over her shoulder as they went up the steps.

  Cale couldn’t help watching her ascend from the back—what guy wouldn’t? Her rolled-up scrubs were baggy and did their best to hide any curves, but the sunlight shone just so through the back windows of the garage, giving him a hint of the outline of her thighs and hips. She’d tucked in the too-big tank, which highlighted the narrowness of her waist. Her shoulders and arms were sculpted and firm, making him wonder when she had time to work out.

  “Your arms and should
ers are different from Noelle’s,” he said without thinking.

  Rachel reached the top of the stairs, opened the kitchen door and stared at him, clearly not thrilled with his observation.

  “Yours are more muscular,” he continued, hoping that the compliment would smooth over the fact that he had no place comparing anything about the two sisters, let alone parts of their bodies. It seemed an insignificant victory that he’d avoided blurting out his observation that Rachel’s hips didn’t swing as much as her sister’s. Nor that he found the lack of sway...intriguing.

  Obviously, Cale had been alone for too damn long if he was starting to notice his fiancée’s sister’s body.

  “My arms were always stronger,” Rachel said matter-of-factly, as if they were discussing the color of the pansies in the whiskey barrel in the backyard by the pool. “I started kayaking when I was ten.” She set down her work bag and her folded scrub shirt then opened the refrigerator. “Good God, a quiche?” She picked up a round pan and sniffed. “The woman made a quiche. On a Tuesday. My mother has lost her mind.”

  “I guess there could be worse repercussions than a quiche.”

  “Want some?” she asked as she pulled back the plastic wrap and investigated. She took down a saucer and served herself a slice.

  “No, thanks. I went to breakfast with a couple of the guys after we got off work. Bad habit.”

  Rachel stuck the plate in the microwave and started it. “You worked last night? Were you guys busy?”

  “Yesterday was nuts. It seems the new batch of weekly tourists is hell-bent on destruction. We had a car fire, a teenager who fell from a second-story hotel balcony and a Dumpster fire within a five-hour time span.”

  “Must have been leftover full-moon stuff,” she said wistfully. “The E.R. was hopping Sunday night but last night was long. I actually got some research reading done between patients.” She opened the fridge again. “Sun-brewed tea—probably pomegranate, knowing my mom—milk, or diet cola?”