by Amy Knupp
“I think I remember that. Either that or I’ve heard the story before. Come on.”
With a questioning look, her mom followed her onto the sand. The wind on the shore was fierce tonight, making the waves wilder than usual. The moon was nearly full. Clouds periodically blew over it, for the most part, but every few minutes, it peeked out and lit up the sand and the water. Like Rachel and her mom, Mother Nature was having a dramatic night. Apparently, she’d scared the tourists inside—there was no one in sight up or down the beach.
“What are we doing, Rachel?”
Rachel dropped the towels in a pile several feet from the wet sand, thinking. What would Noelle do? No-brainer. “Night swimming.”
Her mom laughed halfheartedly. “I didn’t bring a suit.”
“That would never stop Noelle.” Rachel unsnapped her shorts and shed them without hesitation.
“What?” Jackie said, sounding scandalized but smiling. “You are not...”
“I am.” She lifted her T-shirt over her head and threw it in the sand next to her shorts then stood there in her bra and underwear. “We used to do this all the time. Well,” she amended, “Noelle did. She dragged me out late at night after you’d gone to sleep—”
“She did what?”
“I made her swear to always take me with her, even though I never got in,” Rachel continued. “The thought of her swimming at night all alone...” It still made her shudder.
“So you’d come out here and do what?” her mom asked.
“I sat with a book and a flashlight. She did this.” Rachel ran toward the water and splashed in. The drama of the crashing waves flowed through her, enlivened her. It was scary and invigorating at once. “Get out here, Mom!” she yelled, unsure whether her mother could hear her over the roar of the waves.
Rachel went deeper, diving into a wave and coming out drenched on the other side. Splashing as she regained her footing. Laughing.
“This is crazy!” her mom said, suddenly six feet away and soaked, as well.
“You wanted to honor your younger daughter!” Rachel said, scooping the water with both arms and flinging it toward the sky.
Her mom looked thoughtful for a few seconds, and then she nodded once emphatically and flung herself into the next wave as it overtook them.
The two women played in the waves until they were exhausted, laughing and carrying on as if they had no worries in the world. Something strange came over Rachel, an exhilaration she couldn’t describe or explain. She suspected there were tears involved—she couldn’t tell for sure with so much salt water from the gulf pouring down her face—but they didn’t feel so devastatingly sad the way they had for the past two weeks.
Anyone watching them would’ve thought they’d either lost their minds or were a couple of twelve-year-olds having the time of their lives. Without conferring, they slowly made their way toward shore in their underwear and bras. The air temperature was lower than the water temp, and Rachel shivered, rubbing her hands over her upper arms. Once they were fully on land, fat raindrops began to fall, though it took them a few seconds to realize it. They looked at each other and laughed.
“Good thing we’re already soaked,” her mom said.
“Here.” Rachel threw the top towel to her and wrapped the second one around her own shoulders. Spreading the third one out on the sand, she flopped down onto it.
Her mom followed suit. “Noelle would watch the storm come in, too.”
“Yes, she would.”
Lightning zigzagged down to the horizon way out over the gulf. It took several seconds, but the crash of thunder finally reached their ears. The hairs on the back of Rachel’s neck stood on end as she watched the show. Her mom sat next to her, pulling the large towel up over her head and grasping it tightly at her neck. “This is crazy.”
“Exactly.”
They’d managed to capture the spontaneous, life-loving spirit of Noelle. To live it themselves for a few amazing, carefree minutes. If Noelle were here, she would’ve loved every second of it. Rachel refused to let in any wish that she would have opened up and done this when her sister was still alive.
As the rain let up just as suddenly as it’d started, Rachel realized this was the first time she’d thought about her sister without being dragged under by sadness and tears. “We absolutely have to do this again sometime.”
Her mom nodded thoughtfully. “I like that idea.”
Being able to think about Noelle like this, focusing on the wildly alive version of her instead of as a distant, painful memory, emboldened Rachel. An idea occurred to her and she tried to push it away, but it persisted as they sat there with the roar of the waves and the wind enveloping them. “Do you think...?” she began, then stalled.
“Do I think what?”
Rachel pursed her lips before speaking, giving herself every opportunity to not say what was on her mind. “A while back, Mariah Jackson suggested I say a few words about Noelle at the benefit concert....”
Her mom’s hand snaked out from under the towel and clasped Rachel’s.
“I said no initially—repeatedly, actually—but I think I’m going to do it after all,” Rachel said. “I’m not sure what I’ll say yet. Just a few lines. A minute or two, no more. It’s a rock concert, after all.”
“I love the idea, Rachel. We’ll make it happen. You can do it right before I introduce Tim Bowman.”
Just like that, Rachel sobered, wondering what she’d gotten herself into but knowing she couldn’t change her mind. It scared the daylights out of her, but she felt compelled to do it. A simple public tribute to the amazing woman who was her sister—it was long overdue.
* * *
THE MORNING OF the benefit concert, the air was so thick with humidity you could slice it like heavy pound cake.
By the time Cale stood on the beach, watching Tim Bowman’s crew assemble the stage, the midmorning sun had broken through, clearing the overnight rainstorm, and gave hope they’d have clear weather by the 8:00 p.m. start time.
Today marked twenty months since Noelle’s death. That seemed significant in light of all that was running through his head. Twenty months. Six hundred-some days. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, or even whether there had been a specific moment or if it had been a gradual thing, but he finally felt as if he could breathe. As if he could stand the thought of having a future.
Rattling his keys in the pocket of his cargo shorts, he left the concert site and walked north in the sand. He had things to take care of—big things—before he went home to steal a few hours of sleep after work. Last night had kept him and the rest of the crew on duty busy enough he’d only snoozed for a couple of interrupted hours. Tonight had the potential to be draining, and he’d promised to come back late this afternoon to help with last-minute preparations.
When he’d walked out of work this morning, he’d had an unexpected moment of clarity regarding the condo. As he hiked closer to it now, that clarity was gone, and he wondered if he’d just been sleep-deprived and delirious instead. Maybe the alarms last night—a garage fire, a domestic altercation that had turned into the man trying to set his house on fire and a vehicle extrication—had been too stressful and had knocked him all the way off his rocker.
As he passed the Shell Shack bar, he looked for Derek’s wife, Macey, out on the patio or inside the thatched-roof building before remembering she’d given birth—a month earlier than she and Derek had expected—only a week or so ago. He kept walking, as tempting as it was to stop in for a burger. Procrastinating wouldn’t make anything easier.
A few minutes later, his building was just up ahead, on the other side of a small, older motel. The condo building jutted out a few feet beyond the motel and towered four stories higher than it. His eyes automatically sought out his door, and he was taken back to another time, another walk up to it from the beach. The first time he’d taken Noelle to see the place, he’d purposely taken her by this route, the scenic route. The selling Realtor at the time h
ad left the beachside door open for them. Cale kept a security bar in the sliding glass door now, so he had to go around to the main door to enter.
When he did, he waited for the familiar pang—the sting of interrupted plans and jackknifed futures—to hit him in the gut as it always did. He cautiously shut the door and looked left toward the kitchen and then right toward the living room.
Nothing.
Furrowing his brow, he flipped on the light switch suspiciously, as if searching for a live enemy.
The pang was still missing. As he narrowed his eyes, it hit him why: there was very little about the remodeled place that was familiar now. This was no longer the home he’d planned to share with Noelle. He’d gone with more masculine, muted colors and materials than anything they’d ever seriously looked at in the home-improvement store. The light fixtures were steel and glass, something she never would have gone for. Between them and the sleek, black blinds he’d installed in all the windows, the condo had the feel of an upscale bachelor pad.
It hit him now that his subconscious had been hard at work. Though he hadn’t realized what he was doing at the time, on some level, it’d been deliberate. He’d been preparing himself to walk away, gradually letting go of what he and Noelle had envisioned without really realizing it.
He strode to the spotless, unused kitchen. Nope. He could no longer imagine Noelle cooking in here. It was gray, black and white, and the stove he’d wound up buying wasn’t her dream appliance with five burners. There was no clutter or traces of crumbs on the counters, as there always had been if Noelle had been making something. Relief began seeping into his veins as he headed toward the bedrooms.
She wasn’t back here, either. Though Cale hadn’t done any structural work to the bedrooms or bathrooms, the blinds and a different comforter changed the vibe. He could look at the bed now and not see her sprawled across it with her blond hair spread across the pillow, sound asleep when he came home from work.
Cale went to the window and opened the blinds to let in the sunlight, then did the same to the rest of the windows and the vertical blind at the sliding glass door. The bright light brought the place back to life like it hadn’t been in months. It made the condo look appealing, homey.
But not for him.
The set of keys felt heavy in his hand, still buried in his pocket as he jingled them. He gave the living room a critical perusal, searching for anything out of place. The Sports Illustrated was long gone, tossed into the Dumpster he’d had to rent to dispose of all the remodeling debris. He’d packed away the pictures and stowed them in a box in the top of the closet. It looked like a picture-perfect layout that would appear in a home magazine.
The Realtor would love it.
He took the keys out of his pocket and removed the one to the condo. Clenching the single key in one hand, he held up the keychain in his other, a gold letter J for Jackson on a black background that Noelle had given him when he’d closed on this place.
The key would go, the condo would be sold, but that didn’t mean he was “getting rid” of Noelle.
Certain now that his moment of clarity had been accurate, Cale walked out of the condo one last time and headed to the real-estate office one block over, next door to the Chinese restaurant.
No matter what happened in his future—if Rachel gave him a chance, if he one day had a family of his own—he’d always have the keychain, and he’d always have Noelle in his memory and in his heart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CALE HAD LOOKED everywhere for Rachel and was beginning to wonder if she was standing him up—or at least avoiding him.
Instead of letting him pick her up, she’d insisted on riding to the concert with her mother and meeting him here on the patio of the Silver Sands Hotel, at the preparty they’d organized for all the volunteers. As he stood on the threshold between the lobby and the patio, he scanned the crowded area for her familiar blond head. Unfortunately, as short as she was, his chances of seeing her from afar were not good. He began a meandering path toward the long buffet table that was covered with finger foods and desserts, keeping an eye out for Rachel.
“Hey, Cale.”
He turned to see Captain Joe Mendoza, who slapped him heartily on the back.
“It’s the big night, huh?” Joe said.
“Long time coming,” Cale responded. “Figured you’d be home with that new baby. How’d you get out of the house?”
Joe whipped out his phone and showed Cale a photo of his wife, Faith; their two-week-old daughter; Derek’s wife, Macey; and their tiny baby girl. The two women sat side by side on a couch and held up the infants as if they could smile for the picture.
“I made sure she’s got sympathetic company tonight,” Joe said. “Derek’s on duty, so it worked out well.”
“Look at them,” Cale said, grinning. “Yours has her mama’s eyes, doesn’t she?” Her eyes were open and alert, while the Severson baby snoozed on.
“Yep. Amaya is one beautiful little girl. Gonna be a knockout someday,” Joe said, pride dripping from his voice. “I’m completely unbiased, of course.”
“When she hits the knockout stage, you’re gonna have your hands full.”
“Oh, she’ll be locked in the house till she’s thirty.”
The two men laughed and Cale excused himself to search for Rachel. He made it to the buffet table without a glimpse of her, so he picked up an appetizer plate and filled it with mini sandwiches, nuts and butter mints. As he glanced back in the direction he’d come from, still searching, really starting to wonder if Rachel was okay, he became aware of someone to his left, near the makeshift bar, staring at him. He turned his head and saw a woman with coal-black hair watching him from ten feet away. His eyes collided with her familiar turquoise ones and he dropped his paper plate, scattering everything he’d just loaded onto it. He ignored the mess and stared, his jaw likely sagging to his chest.
“Rachel?”
She made her way to him, attempting to smile but managing to look only nervous. “Hey,” she said when she reached his side.
“Hey? What the...? You... Your hair... I didn’t recognize you.”
She touched the very short do and laughed, but it wasn’t her usual laugh. “It’s different. Way different. I know. I’m not sure what I was thinking.”
“It looks good,” he said, narrowing his eyes in an attempt to see her more objectively. It was true. She looked hot. He’d never seen her in a skirt before, but she wore a short denim skirt and the same shirt as him—the Noelle Culver memorial concert shirt they’d had designed specially for tonight—hers in bright green, his in navy blue. She looked one thousand percent different from the Rachel he knew and loved, but hot.
Yep, loved. The thought didn’t make him so much as flinch. God, it was good to see her. It’d taken some serious willpower to honor her need for time away from him. So many times throughout the days, he’d had things he wanted to tell her, thoughts he’d wanted to share.
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her on the lips.
“Really good,” he said again when he pulled back enough to look at her.
“Thank you,” she said shyly, increasing the space between them. “I decided to speak tonight. Onstage. About Noelle.”
Cale looked down at her in surprise, easily remembering her response weeks ago when Mariah had suggested it. “You did?”
“It’s been a rough couple of weeks. Lots going on, lots to process, but I think I need to do this.”
He nodded slowly, letting the idea sink in. “That’s great, Rachel. I think you should. Do you know what you’re going to say?”
“I wrote it all down.” She pulled a small stack of notecards from her back pocket and waved them around.
Looking at the quantity, he said, “Did you notify them the concert will start an hour late?”
“I wrote big,” she said earnestly. “I’m scared to death I’ll lose my place or that I’ll cry like a baby. And then I wouldn’t be able to see what I wr
ote, so not only would I embarrass myself by blubbering, but also by not knowing what I was going to say.”
Cale grinned and put his arm around her, pulling her in to his side. It was just like her to not leave anything to chance, even a potential, understandable emotional outburst.
“There are worse things than crying, you know.”
“In public? On a stage? Not really.”
“I’ll be as close as I can get, Rach, waiting for you if you want.”
“I want.”
“Did you eat anything?” he asked, finally bending down to clean up the food he’d spilled.
“A little. I think I need a drink. Just one to calm my nerves.”
That she was doing this, getting up onstage to honor Noelle, in spite of all her worries... It made her all the more lovable. He wished he could take away all her fears and worries, even though he didn’t have a single doubt she’d face them and do fine. More than fine.
Cale put his arm around her and led her to the bar, tossing his plate and food into a trash can on the way. “You’re sure about this? My guess is your tolerance for alcohol is that of a toddler’s, unless you have a habit I don’t know about.”
“Your guess is pretty right-on. I’ll have some wine. Only a little bit.”
“Red or white?” he asked as they stepped up to order.
Rachel shrugged.
“Give her a glass of Riesling, please,” he said to the bartender.
The woman, dressed in black pants, a formal white shirt and a bow tie, set a wineglass on the bar, picked up an open bottle of Riesling and poured it. Cale handed her cash and ushered Rachel away to the outer edge of the crowd, near the planters that separated the patio from the sand.
“I didn’t intend for you to pay for it.”
“I’m your date, remember?”
He spoke the words lightly, but Rachel looked up at him intently, a half smile on her face. “How could I ever forget? I’ve waited a long time.” Her tone was a mix of flirtation and shyness.