Sandcastles

by Luanne Rice

  They walked onto the back porch, with its long view over the field and vineyard toward the beach. Off to the right, across the mouth of the Connecticut River, the lighthouse at Fenwick flashed. They gathered around a small table, sitting in wicker chairs. Regis placed a tray of clams right in the middle, and Agnes offered him a plate of cheese and crackers. Goat cheese from New York State, Camembert, and Vermont cheddar—his favorites. He took them from her, noticing how she sat there smiling, as ethereal as an injured angel, dressed in white, with her head bandaged.

  “Thank you, Agnes,” he said.

  “I remember that you love cheese,” she said.

  Honor served drinks, and Cece pointed out the cocktail sauce.

  “I made it,” she said.

  “Be careful, Dad,” Regis said. “She likes it hot.”

  “I do, too,” he said, and everyone watched him as he dabbed a little on the side of a clam, raised it to his mouth, and ate it. “Wow, that’s good,” he said.

  “Thanks!” Cece said, and she beamed when he took a second.

  The clam tasted so briny and fresh, straight from Long Island Sound. He hadn’t had shellfish in so long. Every bite was delicious and reminded him of how much he had missed—he had forgotten the relatively small things like snacks before dinner, because he had missed the big things—his life with Honor and the kids—so much.

  “Tell me about everything,” he said.

  “There’s a lot to tell,” Cece said solemnly. “What should we start with?”

  “How about you, Regis? When do I get to meet Peter?”

  “Soon,” Regis said, smiling. “In fact, I invited him to come for dessert. I thought the sooner the better, considering…” She glanced down at her engagement ring. John couldn’t believe Regis could be wearing one, and when he looked up at Honor, she widened her eyes at him. Even after six years apart, John knew she had volumes to say on the subject.

  “Regis isn’t the only person with a boyfriend,” Cece said.

  “You have one, too?” John asked.

  “Not me!” she giggled, bringing back memories of Regis when she was younger, when suggesting she liked a boy was the worst thing he could say.

  “Who, then?” he asked, and for a moment his heart stopped, thinking she might say “Honor.”

  “Agnes,” Cece said, giving her sister a look.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Agnes said, blushing.

  “Looked that way to me, too,” Regis said.

  “Could we please not talk about it?” Agnes said.

  “At least tell me his name,” John said.

  Agnes gave him a sweet smile, and he had the feeling she was giving in only because it was him. “Brendan,” she said.

  “The archangel,” Regis said.

  “Don’t tease your sister,” Honor said, and John knew she was concerned, watching Agnes get paler.

  “My camera broke,” Agnes said, seemingly out of nowhere. “I got distracted and knocked it down.”

  “Oh, Agnes!” Honor said.

  “That must have been upsetting,” John said, his eyes on Agnes. She looked pale and worried. “What kind of camera?” he asked.

  “Canon EOS 300D,” she said.

  John had kept up on what was new in photography equipment the best he could. The prison library had magazines, and Tom had donated a subscription to Camera World. Agnes had one of the good newer ones; was it possible she had the eye and feel for it, that she wanted to follow him into the field?

  “Did you have images on it?” he asked. “Is that why you’re upset?”

  “It’s expensive,” Agnes said. “I feel bad about that.”

  But John could see something deeper in her eyes; she had regrets about breaking expensive equipment, but he understood the kick in the stomach of losing a shot you love—and that’s what Agnes was feeling now.

  “It’s that picture she took on the wall,” Cece confided. “The night she crashed into the rock.”

  “Cece, stop!” Agnes said.

  “I wish I could see that picture,” John said.

  “I took it with a timer,” she said. “And a flash set for backfilling, as well as illumination.”

  “Did you get something interesting?”

  She paused, then nodded. “You might say so.”

  “I wish I could see it,” he said again. “Maybe I could take a look at your camera, see what I could do.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “She’s a good photographer,” Honor said, sipping her beer. John noticed that she was drinking the same thing he was, instead of her usual summer rum and tonic; it made him happy, for no good reason. “Honey, why don’t you get your camera, show it to your father while I get dinner on the table?”

  “Okay,” Agnes said. She went toward her room, and Honor and Cece went into the kitchen, leaving John alone on the porch with Regis. The late-afternoon breeze picked up, ruffling her hair, brushing it back from her face. He saw that she had her mother’s exquisite bone structure, and his heart dropped. Regis had grown up while he was gone. He had missed it all.

  “You okay, Dad?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “Then what are you thinking?”

  “I was just wondering…where did all the time go?”

  She nodded, as if she knew what he meant. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t imagine how it felt to have a little baby, and to hear her squawk in the nursery, and take her first steps, and learn how to talk, and name a white cat, and make her parents laugh, and go to school, make a Christmas wreath out of her tiny handprints, dipped in green finger paint and pressed in a circle on white cloth. How it felt to see her collect shells and pinecones, and climb the tallest trees, and beat boys in races, and beg to be allowed to follow him up the steepest cliffs—and then to miss six years of her life.

  Sisela wandered out the back door. She stretched, looked up at John, leapt into his lap. Curled up, lay down. He stroked her back, and she started to purr.

  “Remember when she was just a kitten?” Regis asked.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “She was sitting on the wall just as if she knew we were coming, and she was just waiting for us…”

  “As if she was waiting for the right family to come by, and we were it.”

  “Had you ever seen such a pure-white cat before?”

  John shook his head. “No, never. And I missed her a lot while I was gone. There were cats at Portlaoise, a white cat in particular that reminded me of her.”

  “Dad, was it terrible?” Regis asked, reaching for his hand.

  “Honey,” he said, and stopped there. Her gaze crackled with intelligence and compassion; he stared into her eyes, wondering what she knew, what she remembered, how badly she had suffered from what he’d done.

  “What was the worst part?”

  He thought. There were plenty to choose from. The noise, the filth, the tension and anger, the bars and walls, the no-escape. But one thing loomed over all the others and made him shiver even now—that moment when he’d made his decision. What sort of harm had he done to her? He couldn’t say it, though. “Missing your mother and you girls,” he replied.

  “That’s how we felt, too. Dad, we missed you so much.”

  “I worried that you did. And that you’d give up thinking I’d ever come home again.”

  “I’d never give up on that,” she said fiercely.

  Just then Agnes returned with the camera. She placed it into John’s hands, gazing at him with hopeful eyes. The camera was small and light, the perfect weight for a teenage girl. He turned it over, knowing the instant he saw the cracked display that it wouldn’t be easy to fix.

  He tried to open the lens cover, but it stuck. Something had bent, and he didn’t want to force it. Looking up at Agnes, he saw the light go out of her eyes.

  “Is it ruined?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure,” he said, not wanting to hurt her, but knowing he had to be truthful.

  “
Is the image gone forever?”

  “Maybe, Agnes. It’s possible,” he said gently.

  “You don’t know how beautiful it was,” she said. “Not just as a picture, but also what it meant.”

  “I know what that feels like,” he said. “To capture something you’ve never seen before…”

  “And want to show it to people,” she said. “To everyone you love.”

  “It’s a huge disappointment when you lose the shot,” John said. “Or to take the picture, but lose the image, have it compromised by…”

  “The camera crashing,” Agnes said.

  “You’re a real photographer,” John said, smiling and drawing her into his arms. “I can tell by the way you care about this one picture.”

  “She thinks it’s of an angel,” Regis said wryly.

  “If that’s true,” John said, “and she lost the image, can you imagine how much worse that would be? To have taken the only known shot of an angel anywhere, and have it trapped inside her camera?”

  Tears glimmered in Agnes’s eyes, even as a smile filled her face. “Thank you, Dad,” she whispered, hugging him harder.

  “Agnes! Honey, I think your zucchini bread is ready!” Honor called from the kitchen, and Agnes hurried away.

  “Isn’t she doing well?” Regis asked, watching her sister go.

  “She’s making a really great recovery,” John said.

  “Seeing her on the beach like that, bleeding from her head,” Regis said, and suddenly she went pale and a great tremor went through her. She buried her face in her hands.

  “It reminded you…” John began, as the sickening realization hit him.

  Regis blocked her ears. She shook her head violently, shocking him.

  This was so hard, something that had haunted him the entire time he’d been in prison, and even before—from the moment the gardai took him away from Ballincastle, that last sight of Honor and Regis standing in the rain. “Regis,” he said, taking her hand again. “How did you manage? After seeing what happened, being right there…They took me away before I could take care of you.”

  “Dad, I was fine,” she said, resolute.

  “But you…” He wanted to say, “But you couldn’t have been fine.” Not after seeing Gregory White charge at them out of the fog, seeing John beating him, picking up the rock…Blood pouring from his head, all over the rain-slicked ground, and all that happened afterward…

  “I felt so guilty, Dad.”

  “Regis, no…”

  She sobbed quietly for a few moments. He saw her shudder, and he wanted to reach for her, rewrite everything that had happened, erase the moment from her mind. Where was Honor? He wanted her now, to help him comfort Regis. Reaching for his daughter, he stroked her hair.

  “It was my fault,” she said.

  He stared at her, stunned.

  “If I hadn’t followed you out to the bluff…you wouldn’t have had to fight Greg White. You wouldn’t have had to defend me.”

  John shivered, wondering what was going on in her mind. “He was crazy and violent,” he said. “He was going to kill us. Do you remember?”

  “Dad,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s the awful part. I barely even remember anything. I think I saw him fall…” Her eyes flickered, her voice faltered. “But then I looked away. I hardly saw anything else. I mean, I know what happened because Mom told me.”

  “What did she tell you?” he asked, his stomach turning.

  “That you went crazy when you saw him attacking me. And you beat him…”

  “I did,” he said, his voice deep and low.

  “But it’s almost as if I wasn’t even there. It’s like a dream. The only thing I’m sure of is seeing you taken away by the gardai. Oh, Dad…” She dried her tears, looking at the doorway. “We shouldn’t talk about it. Mom will get mad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She can’t stand what happened. Made me go to a shrink forever—do you know, she even blames my getting engaged on the fact that I was ‘traumatized’?” Regis exhaled.

  “Well…” he said.

  “Don’t you start, too,” she said warningly.

  “I’m looking forward to meeting Peter,” he said, trying to be diplomatic. Regis held out her ring for him to see, and he held her hand. His heart jolted, and he looked out across the meadow, toward the edge of the vineyard.

  Young people fell in love here, that was for sure. He looked up the hill, saw the stone wall. He thought of himself and Honor, his sister and Tom. So much passion on these hillsides—he still felt the fire, every bit as much as he had back then. The sound of Honor’s voice in the kitchen filled him, made his pulse race. He could barely hold himself back from going inside, just to be near her.

  “Tell me about the white cat,” Regis said, as if she were trying to get back on solid ground.

  “Well, she used to come into my cell, and I’d give her food.”

  “And she reminded you of Sisela?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Very much. Sometimes she’d sit on the table, silhouetted by lights in the cellblock, and I’d think she actually was Sisela, that she’d somehow come over to see me, with messages from you and your sisters and mother.”

  “I’m glad you had her there,” Regis whispered.

  “I’m glad, too. And I was even happier to get home and see the real Sisela. I wasn’t sure she’d still be alive.”

  “We’re all here, Dad. And now you are, too. We’re a family again.”

  John smiled, as if he believed her. But his mind locked on the look he’d seen in Honor’s eyes when she’d met him at the door, the way she had hesitated before taking the flowers he’d brought her, before inviting him into the house. He had broken something that day on Ballincastle—something more solid and eternal than the rock he’d destroyed right here on the beach.

  No matter what Regis, in her youthful innocence, might wish and hope, John knew they had a long way to go before the family was really back together. But just then Cece came charging out, beckoning them toward the kitchen, and he and Regis went in to dinner.

  Eighteen

  It was the first time they had all been at a table together in over six years. Honor sat at one end, John at the other. Their eyes met; Honor tried to look away, but John wouldn’t let her. Cece said grace, and then they started passing the food. Once everyone had filled their plates, Regis raised her glass.

  “Here’s to having Dad home,” she said.

  “Here’s to that,” everyone said, joining in.

  “I wish Peter were here already,” Regis said, bubbling over. “I want him to meet you, Dad, and see the greatest couple in the world—my parents!”

  Honor flinched. Regis was pushing hard, but she knew that now wasn’t the time to set her straight. She wanted this night to be wonderful for the girls. Her own mixed-up emotions left her feeling rocked and dizzy, and having John right here, in his place at the table, made them more extreme.

  “I’m looking forward to meeting him, too,” John said, still staring at Honor.

  “I just want him to see you and Mom together. When I think of how I want us to be when we’re married…it’s just like you two. The way it was when, well, before…”

  “Tell me something,” John said, after a slightly uncomfortable silence. “What makes you know that Peter’s the one? How did you two meet and fall in love?”

  “He’s from Hubbard’s Point,” Cece said.

  “It’s so romantic, isn’t it?” Regis asked. “Just like you and Mom, only the opposite—a boy from Hubbard’s Point, and a girl from Star of the Sea.”

  “But how did you fall in love?” John pressed. “How do you know?”

  “We met at Paradise. Last year, when I was working. He used to come in with all his friends, on their way back from sailing lessons in Hawthorne, and they’d stop for ice cream. Once I was in a bad mood, from working two straight shifts, and he told me to smile…”

  “He said,” Agnes said quietly, “that
you looked so cranky, you’d curdle the ice cream.”

  “I knew I should never have told you that. He was just teasing,” Regis said.

  “Sounds like he’s a real kidder,” John said, looking at Honor again. She wanted to roll her eyes, to show what she really thought, but she was afraid Regis would see. She didn’t trust herself with anything regarding love—Regis’s or her own—right now.

  “It’s very Peteresque, you have to admit,” Agnes said. “Making jokes about your mood at work, while he’s on his way back from sailing lessons. Or golf. Or seeing a Yankees game. Or—”

  “So, Peter does lots of fun things,” Regis said. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “I still haven’t heard why you think he’s the one for you,” John said. “Out of all the other boys in Black Hall, or Connecticut, or Boston, or the rest of the world…”

  “Well, how did you know Mom was the one?” Regis asked stubbornly, reaching right across the table for the bottle of wine. She drained her water glass and poured some wine in, giving Honor a daring look.

  Honor’s pulse was racing. Having John at the table felt both like the most normal thing in the world and the most odd. She watched him now, gazing back at her. His face was so gaunt, and the lively expression she’d always loved was layered over with darkness and grief. The girls were on the edge of their seats, watching for signals passing between their parents.

  “I knew from the minute I saw her,” John said, gazing down the table. “Like Cece said—her family stayed at Hubbard’s Point, and we were at Star of the Sea, and we all met on the beach, to stare at a ship that had been uncovered by a wild storm.”

  “A sunken ship,” Honor said, and it calmed her to tell the story the girls had heard so many times, almost more legend than reality at this point.

  “It was dusk, and the stars were out. Constellations rising straight out of the water. I remember there was a crescent moon, low in the western sky. Your mother’s hair was so dark and shining, and her eyes were so bright—I wanted to stare at her all night.”