by Sarah Abbot
Ryan pulled out his cell phone, started dialing. “You like lobster?”
She lifted a brow. “Is that a serious question?”
“Hey, Johnny,” he said into his phone. He looked at Abby and winked. “Is Gary still in the kitchen? Yeah? Great. Can you get Cook to fix up a couple lobsters and a couple containers of coleslaw, then have Jim drop it off at the Captain’s House? Tell him there’s a big fat tip in it for him.”
Abby grinned. “What’s for dessert?” she whispered.
He covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “How do beer nuts and pretzels sound?”
“Perfect!” she said, laughing.
“Johnny, throw in some nuts and pretzels, will you? Oh, yeah, I’m also going to need candles, matches and a bottle of white wine—and don’t forget plates, glasses, napkins and utensils. You got that?…No, I don’t ask for much. Thanks, man.”
He rang off, tucked the phone in his pocket and took her hand again. “Hope you’re hungry.”
Abby’s stomach started to growl. “Starving.”
They walked on. Several patrons were seated beneath the huge green-and-white striped umbrellas of a sidewalk café. They nodded and waved at her and Ryan, their eyes widening, as they took in the sight of two former archenemies, holding hands.
Across the street, the stained glass windows of the Starboard Bed and Breakfast glinted in the twilight, and flowers in the window boxes shuddered in the breeze. Their fragrance floated in the air, mingled with the aromas of garlic bread, iced coffees and ocean.
They passed the shingled homes that made the town so quaint, each with a riot of rose blooms tumbling over fences toward the cobblestones of the sidewalk. Petals floated on the breeze like butterflies, touched the skin with the fleeting grace of quiet inspiration.
“I love it here, Ryan,” she said impulsively. “I’ve never seen a more beautiful place in all my life.”
Ryan’s expression was unreadable. It softened suddenly as he grasped her shoulders and turned her gently. “There it is. The house they wanted to live in.”
Abby looked up at the most gorgeous house she had ever seen.
It was at least four stories high, and was complete with turrets, a verandah that wrapped around the entire front, stained glass windows, a widow’s walk, and commanding double front doors.
Even as she looked more closely and noticed that the house was in need of extensive repair, she was struck with love for it; for its grace and craftsmanship, for the history that was bundled between its walls, for the care that must have been lavished upon every inch of it.
Then it struck her. This was it. This was her house of healing, of growing, of peace. Her eyes filled with tears; her breath came up short. A feeling of such intensity—of such absolute certainty—just had to be right.
She was meant to have this house; she knew it as surely as she knew the sun would rise in the morning. And she knew exactly what she was meant to do with it.
She turned to him, grasped his hands in hers. “Take me inside,” she said.
Ryan guided her up the front stairs, which were littered with long-dead leaves and twigs. He fiddled with the lock. At last fitted the key, and he turned the handle.
The doors opened to reveal a grand foyer, a winding staircase, two huge arched openings that led into large, gracious rooms on either side of the foyer.
The feeling grew in depth, filling her heart with unmistakable certainty. This was her destiny; there was no other word for it.
“It’s beautiful, Ryan.”
“You like it?” he asked, chuckling. “It’s for sale.”
“I’ll take it.”
Ryan’s expression was so comical, she would have laughed…but her heart was in her throat and her pulse was racing far too quickly. “I mean it, Ryan. I want this house.”
“What on earth for?”
“For my mother,” she blurted. “For me. For every person who needs to escape to a place that’s so magical they can’t imagine it exists.” She grabbed his hands, knew she was talking too quickly and probably making no sense whatsoever, yet she continued. “I can’t explain it, but since I’ve come here, I’ve been overcome with the feeling that I want to be part of this place—that I want to share it with others.” She caught the breath she’d been chasing, felt the air go very still around them. “I want people to know that their hearts can wake up again.”
“When does that happen?” he asked quietly. “When do hearts wake up?”
Abby looked up at him, saw the pain etched in his face, and her heart caught. They were not so different, he and she. She took his hand, held it in the warmth of her own. Her eyes felt suddenly warm with tears. She looked down at the hand she held, turned it over in hers and traced the lines she saw in his palms, wondering if this one meant he’d been abandoned by his father, if that one meant he’d never quite unburdened himself of the pain. “I guess it’s different for everyone,” she said softly, her thumb rubbing a callus on his hand that spoke to her of work so intense and so focused that perhaps its main purpose had been to help him forget his wounded heart, and material that was nothing more than a providential by-product. Now, she did look up at him. The pain was still there, deep in the shadows of his eyes, but there was also something more; something that made her body thrill just to be near him. “My heart started waking up when I arrived in Destiny Bay.”
“Funny,” he said, his lips suddenly very, very close. “So did mine.” His eyes seemed somehow deeper in color, his mouth somehow wider and softer.
He was going to kiss her again. He was going to put his mouth on hers, and…
A thunderous thumping sounded from the door.
“Dinner’s here,” he said gruffly, sounding deeply resentful, and went to open the door.
Abby leaned back against the wall, feeling delightfully stuffed. Around them were the littered shells of unfortunate lobsters, empty coleslaw containers, and a half-consumed bottle of wine. She closed her eyes contentedly. “That was delicious.”
“Next time, we’ll order the strip steak. It’s one of the few items our chef does better than The Surfside chef.” Ryan handed her a drink.
Next time? Abby looked up at him. Something had definitely changed during the course of the evening, and changed for the better. “That sounds nice.” She sipped from her glass, never taking her eyes from him. “I’m glad you brought me here, Ryan. And please excuse my outburst earlier this evening—but I do mean to buy this house from you. And I’m going to get a great deal. It’s only fair to let you know.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” he said dryly.
She looked around the bare walls. “This is a good house. I can feel it. There’s a lot of healing that’s going to happen inside these walls.”
His expression was guarded as he looked into his glass, swirled the amber contents slowly in its bowl. “That would be nice,” he said at last. “And the captain would approve. His wife—whom he loved very much—died in childbirth. Her son never knew her. It feels right that this place should be about reclaiming life.”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
She settled back against the wall, reached across the distance between them and grasped his hand, ignoring the jolt she felt in his fingers. She softened her grasp, stroked the flesh of his hand with her thumb.
“Do you hear that?” she asked, listening to the surge of the bay outside the house, her heart thudding in response to the sound of the gurgling surf and the simple magnificence of a rush of tide. She closed her eyes, almost hearing it carving gullies around stones embedded in the sand. “Have you ever heard anything more magnificent?”
Ryan’s smile was suddenly indulgent. “Nothing.”
“When I was a kid, Gran and I would spend the entire summer on the cape. Dad would come up on the weekends.
“I would fall asleep to the sound of the ocean every night. My grandmother would sing Kipling’s “Seal Lullaby” to me. She changed a word or two—you know, so that it sounded as if it were written for a child
instead of a seal.” She looked up at him through her lashes, suddenly shy that she’d revealed such a tender memory.
His hand softened in hers. She felt as if he were finally holding hers, instead of the other way around. “Sing it to me.”
“Oh, I don’t sing,” she said, shaking her head adamantly.
“C’mon, you must sing. Everybody sings.”
“Trust me. I don’t sing.”
“I want to hear it anyway.”
She held out her glass, brow lifted. “Fill ’er up. Then I’ll give it a go.”
Ryan kindly obliged her, and Abby sipped a bit of courage into her veins, cleared her throat, and started singing.
“Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon o’er the combers looks downward to find us
Asleep in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow;
Ah, weary wee baby, curl at thy ease!
No storm shall awake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.”
Abby looked up, and found him staring at her with a look of utter mystification on his face.
“Good grief,” he said at last.
Abby burst out laughing. “I’m awful, aren’t I?”
Ryan started laughing, too. “Well, not awful… just…okay, you were awful. Jeez, how does a woman who looks as beautiful as you make such terrible sounds? It’s—it’s unseemly.”
Now she was laughing in earnest. “I warned you.”
“You did, at that,” he said, sounding very philosophical. “But other than the singing, the lullaby was nice. Really nice.”
“Why thank you,” she said, not in the least embarrassed. “I hear you, on the other hand, are known to be quite musical. Ronnie described you as the finest guitar player this side of I-don’t-know-where.”
Ryan shrugged. “I don’t know about that, but I did take up guitar as a kid. It was the only way I could think of to channel the artistic compulsion I was feeling. Brawling only worked for so long, and it was bloody inconvenient. When it’s three A.M. and you can’t sleep because all you want to do is create something, you can’t always run out and pick a fight…but you can pick up a guitar.”
“I’d love to hear you play sometime. What’s your specialty? Country, rock, heavy metal?”
“Flamenco.”
Abby almost swallowed her tongue. “Flamenco?” Just when she thought this island was all out of surprises, another hit her. “What on earth made you take up flamenco?”
Ryan topped up both glasses, grinning. “You know all about our history—how the island was settled by shipwrecked seafarers, right? Well, we had a few Spanish wash up along with French, English and Scottish. If you ever go down the south side of the island, you’ll see it in the coloring. Very dark folk. Anyway, there was a man up the shore who claims he’s one hundred percent Spanish. Not very likely, in my opinion, but he plays guitar like he was born with it in his hands, and he was generous enough to give me lessons. Cost my mom a small fortune, but she probably thought it was well worth it. It was one of the few things I showed an interest in and it kept me out of trouble on Monday and Wednesday afternoons.”
“I’m amazed. Now I have to hear you play.”
“I’m sure we could work something out.” He frowned as his phone rang, glanced hurriedly at the screen and silenced it with the press of a button. “That’s Johnny. He can wait. So—” Ryan swirled the contents of his glass. “Tell me more about yourself, Abby. I know you’re a great interviewer—”
“You watched my show!” she said, grinning hugely. “I can’t believe it!”
Ryan cleared his throat pointedly. “Can I help what the receptionist has on the TV when I’m waiting for my truck to be serviced?”
“Oh, no. You can’t help that,” she said sweetly. “Now, let me see…” She leaned into the hollow of his shoulder, completely ignoring the instant tensing of the muscles there. “I have a knack for gardening and horses. I can skate incredibly well. I have a vivid imagination. Oh, and, I can shoot skeet better than anyone I know…how’s that?”
“Not bad. Anything else?”
She thought for a moment. “You should see my sand castles.”
“A closet architect?”
She smiled, remembering how her sand castles shone with the offerings of the tides: beach glass, shells, surf-polished stones. Remembering how she’d plucked them from sun-warmed, silver pools, and then gathered them at dusk to line her windowsill and catch the moon. Remembering how at night she’d lie beneath them, lulled into sleep by eternal whisperings of the cold, Atlantic surf.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
She looked up at him, considering thoughtfully. “No.”
“No?”
“There’re worth more than that. How about an even exchange. Thoughts for thoughts.”
Ryan lifted a brow, considering. “This is getting expensive.”
“Take it or leave it,” she said, reclining slightly as she felt the deal hang in the balance.
“Take it.”
A satisfied smile spread over her face, then quickly melted. “When we went to the cape,” she said quietly, “I’d lie in bed and sing the lullaby to myself. I’d close my eyes and imagine it was my mother singing.” She let her eyes close and saw, behind the blackness of her eyelids, her little room take shape in her mind.
“When the song was over, I’d lie very still, listening to the sound of the changing tides. I’d listen so close, and lie so still that I could almost hear my mother’s voice, calling to me from the sea, and every rushing wavelet that hissed on the shore was her voice saying, ‘hush, hush.’
“Some nights, when the tide was high and the surf reflected in ripples of light on my bedroom ceiling, I’d pretend the shimmering rays were her fingers—stretching across the veil of death. I’d imagine that she was trying to stroke my hair until I fell asleep.” Her voice trailed away like a receding tide.
“I still can’t understand why she left us,” she said, the walls around her heart collapsing before the onslaught of relentless grief that had pressed there for so long. Her hands began to tremble, and soon her arms were drawn into a shuddering cadence of pent-up emotion. “I was a baby! I needed her, and she left me!” Her voice was rising, her breath coming in shorter and shorter gasps. The Captain’s House was a million miles away; Ryan’s touch felt as though it were from another lifetime.
Ryan grasped her to his chest, rocking her gently. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She took in a long, ragged breath, slowly regaining composure, slowly returning to the dusty Victorian house and the warmth of Ryan’s arms around her, rocking gently. “Once, when I was about ten, I woke up to the sound of my grandmother screaming. She was having a nightmare—screaming and screaming. She wouldn’t stop. I was so scared. I ran into her room, and Granddad was trying to calm her, but she was fighting him and making this awful, awful noise.”
She pressed her hands over her ears, the remembered sound spiraling down to the core of her, drawing her inward and threatening to drown her in the sea of terrifying memories that tossed within her soul. “She sounded like a wounded animal,” she said, sobbing. The keening wail that echoed in her heart prowled around with claws outstretched, mercilessly tearing away the years of careful distance she had placed between herself and that frightening night.
“She was calling for my mother, saying, “Please, Celeste, please don’t jump! Don’t leave us, baby, don’t leave us!’” she said, tears streaming down her face. “That sound, that wounded animal sound…I’ll never forget it.”
Ryan drew her in tighter against his chest, his heartbeat sounding as unsteady as hers felt. “Go on,” he said, his voice husky. “I want to hear everything.”
Abby’s face was slick with tears she didn’t even remember shedding. She looked up at Ryan. “That was
the night I realized that even someone loving you can’t stop nightmares, and that someone loving you can’t keep a woman from jumping out of a window. Love’s not enough to keep a mother by her child’s side.” She wiped a tear from her cheek, looked down at the floor that swam before her gaze. “From that day forward, I was afraid of it. Love, I mean. So I never let it in.”
Abby was suddenly very aware of the silence. Ryan was staring at her with an expression she found utterly unreadable.
He touched her face, drew his finger down its length. He pressed his lips to her cheek, and Abby felt him kiss away her tears; she felt him inhale her secrets and tuck them somewhere warm and safe.
His tenderness was suddenly more than she could bear, and she clung to him like a drowning person to a life raft. “Don’t let me go,” she whispered, and he held her tighter, stroked her back and twined his fingers in her hair.
“I won’t,” he said, his tone fierce and yet gentle all at once.
They sat there for a time, lulled by the eternal hiss of the sea upon the sand. Abby drank in the sound, let it fool her into believing that they were the last two people upon the earth, and that the sea wanted nothing more than to cloister and soothe them.
She closed her eyes, breathed him in, rested her hand upon the hardness of his chest.
Through the glass of the window, she could hear the sound of the sea change. The tide had turned; it was coming closer to land as if to tuck it in for the night.
Abby pulled away enough to look into Ryan’s face. His eyes were warm, wounded, and looking at her as if seeing her for the first time. “You didn’t forget, did you?” she asked quietly. “Thoughts for thoughts, remember?”
A shadow seemed to cross his eyes. “Yeah, I remember.”
Ryan leaned back against the wall, tucking Abby neatly beneath his arm and drawing her near. “Hearing you say what you just said…it was tough. I’ve been there myself. I’ve been that kid who was left alone; who hears the whispers behind his back; who feels his own heart turning to stone.”
Instinctively, she wanted to soothe the rising anger she heard in his voice—but something within her bade her to be still, to let him feel his fury as freely as she had felt her sadness.