Never Say Never

by Lisa Wingate

  No wonder she never asked me to share it. I just reminded her of my father, of how things were, of how much time she’d wasted with a man who never put her first.

  Sometimes, you have to move on because it’s too hard to look back, she wrote on the sticky note that was still attached to my birth certificate, now safely tucked inside Gil’s Bible. One of these days, you’ll understand.

  That day had arrived. Today, it made perfect sense. Today I understood. Those old lyrics Don’t fall in love with a dreamer were just as true as they had always been.

  Tears welled in my eyes, and I let them come. As much as I tried to picture catching the ship in Tampa, satisfying my contract, going back to Perdida, helping Don put the shop together again, listening to Maggie and Meredith talk about the grandchildren in Kansas, the images felt forced, small, sad.

  Home won’t be home anymore. It won’t be the same.

  Maybe I wouldn’t even go back. Maybe I’d just try to go full time on ship, drift from one contract to another, from one port to the next until something seemed right.

  Would anything ever be right? How would I know? It felt right with Kemp, here in Daily, with Donetta and the girls at the beauty shop. It felt like I was finally home. I’d allowed myself to sink into the foolish idea that I was just another Dailyian—like all the regular people. Just like the town kids I’d once envied at the Dairy Queen.

  Maybe I’d never know how to create a normal life, how to build the house with the painted fence outside and the welcome mat on the porch, inviting people in. Maybe I was more like my father than I’d ever wanted to admit. Where would I ever have learned how to create that picture, how to put down roots, how to be somewhere, or with someone, forever?

  Maybe some people just wander all their lives …

  The sunset blurred behind tears.

  I don’t want to be lost anymore. I don’t …

  Headlights strafed the backyard, and I heard a truck rattling into the carport. Wiping my eyes, I stood up and started toward the house, pulling myself together and putting the mask back in place as I reached the back door. Crying over any of this was idiotic and weak. Of course I wanted my life back. I had a good life. I was self-sufficient. I had a business doing something I loved. I had a place of my own where I could open my window at night and hear the tide drifting in and out, the waves rhythmic, even predictable. If Glorietta hadn’t come along, I would never have considered the need for anything beyond that.

  So why was I standing here now, looking through Donetta’s back door, disappointed when it was Donetta, not Kemp, who stepped into the kitchen?

  I came in and she slapped a hand to her chest. “Oh gracious, Kai, you scared me!”

  “Sorry. I was sitting outside making some calls—getting my flight information and everything.” Donetta didn’t seem surprised that I was leaving. Obviously, Kemp had told her. “Is everything okay down at the hotel? You look really tired.” I knew I should have gone and checked on Donetta before now. As much as she’d done for me, she deserved that, but I didn’t want to see Kemp or catch familiar sights around town and replay mental film clips of my Daily memories. It would be better if I just finished packing and left in the morning. Easier.

  There was a slight tremble in Donetta’s lips as she turned and set her purse on the counter. “Well … things don’t look so good for tomorrow mornin’. Betty Prine is so mad about the Holy Ghost crew still being here, she plans to turn in a complaint on my building and get the fire marshal here first thing. You know, normally, they just overlook a lot of squeaks and creaks in these old buildings, but if they got a complaint to satisfy, and especially one from Betty Prine, well, that ain’t gonna be the case. I keep tellin’ myself the good Lord’s got this in hand, Donetta, but sometimes it’s hard not to wonder.” Her voice broke on the final words, and she braced her palms on the counter, slumping forward, seeming defeated. Even when Glorietta was passing over us in full force, I hadn’t seen her surrender like this.

  I keep tellin’ myself the good Lord’s got this in hand. Yet here she was, one step from losing her livelihood because she’d tried to do a good deed. If that wasn’t wrong, if that wasn’t unfair, I didn’t know what was. If God wouldn’t send down a miracle for Donetta Bradford, who would He send a miracle for? If He didn’t listen to someone like her, He didn’t listen to anybody.

  He didn’t save Gil, either. He doesn’t listen. He doesn’t hear. I felt my heart loosening the mooring lines, setting adrift the haphazard vessel of faith that had been clumsily built during anonymous vacation Bible schools and the Sunday school sessions with the free food and nice people. If God was omnipresent, if He knew the falling of every sparrow, why were good people allowed to suffer? If there was a plan, why would this be it?

  Stepping into the kitchen, I laid a hand awkwardly on Donetta’s shoulder. “I wish there were something I could do.”

  Slipping her fingers over mine, she held tight. “It’s good that you’re here. It’s good not to be alone.” Her voice cracked again. “I thought Ronald’d be here by now, for sure. It’s Wednesday, and he knows we were supposed to get home from our cruise on Thursday.”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. Certainly, relationships weren’t my strong point. “Maybe he got his days mixed up.” It was a lame excuse, but I couldn’t think of anything else.

  “He knows what day it is. He’s just bein’ stubborn, since he didn’t want me to go on that cruise in the first place. He thought it was a big fat waste of money.” Her voice had a cold edge to it, like my mother’s when I called to ask about my birth certificate. “You watch. He’ll come in here from fishin’ and he won’t ask a thang about it. He’ll act like nothin’ ever happened. And whenever he hears about the hurricane, he’ll say, ‘Well, that’s how come I told you not to go. It ain’t safe.’ ”

  Unable to find some comforting line to interject, I took a step back and stood by the porcelain-topped table in the center of the kitchen. Maybe the best thing would be for me to go to my bedroom and leave her alone. I was the wrong person to be handing out advice.

  She switched on an old mint-green radio on top of the refrigerator. “Ophelia was just comin’ on with ‘Voices From the Storm’ when I got outta the truck. How about we sit and listen awhile? I can make us some cocoa. I don’t think I could sleep anyhow.”

  “All right.” I agreed, knowing that getting trapped into a long conversation tonight probably wasn’t a good idea. Eventually, she’d want to know what had happened between Kemp and me. I mentally rehearsed the explanation as we made cocoa, then sat down together at the kitchen table. Oh no, Kemp and I didn’t have a fight or anything. It’s just time for me to go back to work. I’m still under contract, after all. Can’t get away with being AWOL in a hurricane forever… .

  Instead of talking, we just sat there, me stirring cocoa I didn’t want and Donetta staring into her cup, looking like the world was on her shoulders. Via radio, Ophelia was talking with a woman who’d become separated from her two young children during the evacuation. After days in a shelter, the mother still had no news of them. Ophelia asked their names, and the mother answered, her voice choked with tears. Then Ophelia wrapped up the interview, saying “If anyone has word of Demarius Long, 9, and Raylia Long, 7, you call in to the Ophelia Show now. Let us know about it. We’re spreading the word and bringing together the ‘Voices From the Storm.’ ”

  “I hope she finds her babies,” Donetta murmured.

  “Me, too,” I agreed.

  “It’s amazin’ how many times Ophelia gets a answer from somebody. Everyone in the whole country must listen to this show.” Nodding, Donetta turned her ear to the radio again.

  Over the airwaves, an elderly man was describing having held his wife’s hand as their car stalled out in floodwater. “We just got out and started walkin’,” he said, and Ophelia made a sympathetic sound. “We didn’t have no other choice. Ella don’t get around too good, but I told her, Elouise, we’re either gonna walk out
ta here together or we’re gonna die together. We been married fifty-seven years, and at this point, it’s gonna be till death do us part, either now or later.”

  “He made me get up and try it,” Ella added, her voice soft, barely audible over Ophelia’s microphone. “I was ready to give up and let the water take me, but I wasn’t going to let it take my Johnny, so I climbed out of that car and I did what Johnny said. I guess it’s good to be bossy sometimes.” She laughed quietly, and Ophelia took the mike again.

  “There you go, all you listeners out there in radio land tonight, a little lesson in from Johnny and Ella. There’s no storm love can’t overcome. Too many times we let go when what we really need to do is cling to each other while the storm rages around us. Let’s see who else we can find here tonight. We’re at a hurricane shelter tonight, sending out the ‘Voices …”

  I tuned out as a commercial came on. “Thanks for letting me stay here.” It occurred to me that I could have ended up in a hurricane shelter like the one Ophelia was broadcasting from, or worse. Anything might have happened if I hadn’t crossed paths with Donetta, Imagene, and Lucy.

  Across the table, Donetta looked sad and preoccupied. “Oh, hon, it was nothin’. I wish you could stay longer. Are you sure you’ve got to go?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Well, we’re gonna miss you a whole lot. You made this the best hurricane evacuation I ever had.” She forced a half smile.

  I laughed softly. “It’s been nice … being here.” I felt a pang of disappointment that she didn’t try to talk me into staying or attempt to ferret out the details of Kemp and me. Maybe she knew this was for the best, too. Jen, Jenny, Jennifer and Kemp had more in common. They had history, a shared childhood, families with the same sorts of backgrounds. Jen was the whole small-town package—everything I wasn’t.

  The dogs barked outside, and both of us turned to listen. “Guess Miss Peach’s cat is around the fence again,” Donetta surmised.

  “Guess so.”

  “If I was locked up in a house with that crazy old woman all day, I reckon I’d go on the lam, too.” She smiled wanly, staring into her cocoa again. “You know, she was a beautiful gal when she was young, Miss Peach.”

  “Really?” There was nothing beautiful about Miss Peach now. Her pale, sallow skin hung on a skeletal frame that left her face angular and hard, the cheekbones high and stern beneath sunken eyes that were devoid of joy. Her mouth was narrow and lipless, pleated into a permanent scowl, like the navel of an orange left to rot in the sun. With her thin gray hair rising from her head in stringy flyaway curls, she had the dark presence of a comic strip villainess—the kind of woman who spent her days making fur coats from fuzzy little Dalmatian puppies.

  Donetta made a quiet tsk tsk, as if she knew what I was thinking. “Miss Peach was a looker back in the day—violet eyes and blond hair that curled up all on its own. She grew up right there in that same house she’s in now. Every beau in town wanted to come knockin’ on her door, but they were scared to.”

  “Why?” Suddenly, I was fascinated by the life of Miss Peach.

  Donetta’s gaze rolled toward the ceiling. “Her daddy was the meanest man I ever knew. Good-lookin’ fella, but wicked as a snake, especially if he was drinkin’. He was bad to his wife and bad to them kids. He had three daughters, each one of them beautiful as a movie star, but every boy in town was scared to get anywhere near.”

  “What happened to the other two sisters?” Obviously, there was only one Miss Peach now. Maybe her dead sisters were dressed for tea and waiting in rocking chairs in the parlor.

  Donetta considered the question. “One sister died when she was just a teenager, the other ran off with the preacher’s son, and then there was Raeanne—Miss Peach. She worked in the old grocery store across the alley from our hotel. One summer, we had a man helping us in the shop, and he took a shine to Raeanne. For about two months, that gal was all smiles. She was almost thirty years old by then, but you’da thought she was a high-school girl.”

  I tried to imagine Miss Peach young and in love. On the radio, Ophelia went into a moment of dead air, as if she wanted to stop and listen, too. “Did her father scare him off?”

  Donetta shook her head ruefully. “Raeanne did that herself. After a couple months, that fella got some money together and bought a ring, and planned a picnic lunch down by the lake, where he was gonna surprise her. I made up some potato salad and sandwiches for him, and my grandpa loaned him a truck and everythin’. When that fella come back that night, he looked lower than a lizard’s knees, I’ll tell ye-ew. Raeanne’d told him no, flat-out. Broke the poor man’s heart, and he hopped a train out of town the next day. Raeanne lived there with her folks until they died, and after that she got herself a cat, and she’s been there ever since. Just her and a cat.”

  “That’s really sad.” I imagined Miss Peach and her cat, living year after year, every year the same. No family. Nobody ever coming or going.

  Suddenly the existence I’d created for myself, the apartment in Perdida, the job in which people passed in and out of my life in five to seven day increments, seemed pathetic and small. There was only room in it for one.

  “It surely is,” Donetta agreed, as if she were reading my thoughts. “Right then and there, I promised myself I wasn’t gonna cheat myself out of havin’ a life, just because my daddy didn’t love me like I needed him to. I promised myself I was gonna have a different kind of life. I’ll sure enough admit that over the years I hadn’t always got it perfect—things aren’t like I wanted them to be between Ronald and me, for one thing. I thought we’d have kids, and I didn’t think I’d be married to a man who don’t see me when there’s a TV in the room, but I ain’t livin’ alone in a house with a cat, either.” Reaching across the table, she laid her hand over mine, her gaze pulling me closer. “You can’t always see the straight path to where you want to be in your life, but if you don’t start walkin’, you don’t get anywhere. If you want somethin’ different, you got to do somethin’ different.”

  The room fell silent as the “Voices From the Storm” music cued. “Hello again, all you listeners out there in radio land,” Ophelia’s smooth sounds purred through the static. “It’s time for Ophelia and more ‘Voices From the Storm.’ We’re here at the evacuation shelter near the coast tonight, spinning out tunes and taking in stories. We’ve just had buses come in with emergency personnel and volunteers, rotating into the shelter for food and rest, after days of working to rescue residents from storm debris and floodwaters. I have a volunteer here with me who’d like to send out a song to his special lady. This one’s for all you listeners out there, warm and safe in your homes with your families tonight. Give the people you love an extra kiss before you go to bed this evening. Remember how lucky you are to be together.”

  Donetta glanced at the clock. “Guess it’s bedtime.” She stood up. “It’ll be an early mornin’, I reckon.”

  I didn’t answer. I barely heard her, in fact. Her voice and Ophelia’s faded, and my own life came into focus. If you don’t start walking, you don’t get anywhere… .

  I’d been walking for ten years, but I wasn’t walking toward anything. Not toward a future, not toward a relationship, not toward a family. I’d been a runaway at seventeen, and I was still running.

  The problem was, I didn’t know how to stop, or where. Where was I supposed to be? What was right for me?

  Maybe everything would make more sense once I was back on my own turf. I could start thinking through my options, come up with an action plan for the future. Maybe I’d be able to look at the big life decisions more clearly… .

  The radio started playing “Waltz Across Texas” as Donetta took the cocoa pot and the cups to the sink and began washing them out. Finally, she just stood there, listening to the music and staring out the window.

  When the song was over, Ophelia’s voice returned and Donetta turned on the rinse water to finish the dishes.

  “So, tell me why you req
uested that song,” Ophelia asked of the “Waltz Across Texas” man.

  “That’s the …” Ophelia’s interviewee, his voice raw and broken, paused to sniffle and clear his throat. “That’s the song that was playin’ the night I first saw my wife. She probably don’t even know I remember. Guess I hadn’t ever told her in so many words, but every time I hear “Waltz Across Texas,” I still see her circlin’ the floor in her red dancin’ skirt. It was like she was on a cloud, and she had a smile that … well, I didn’t have no idea how to dance, but I told myself I was gonna get to know that gal no matter what. I knew right then she was the one. Over the years, I hadn’t told her that near enough. Maybe not at all, I guess. You get busy with life, and you don’t think you need to say it to people—to the people you love, I mean, but …” The sentence broke up, and Ophelia encouraged her interviewee to continue.

  “And, sir, where is your wife tonight? Can we let our listeners know where we’re sending ‘Waltz Across Texas’?”

  “I don’t know where she’s at tonight.” The words were hoarse with emotion. “Her …”

  Something clattered against the countertop near the sink, bounced off, hit the floor, and shattered. I jerked upright as shards of pastel pink pottery skittered across the black and white tile. By the sink, Donetta stood like a statue, her hand suspended in midair where she had released the cup.

  “Donetta?” I whispered, but she didn’t respond. “Donetta? Are you all right?”

  “Th … that’s …”

  “Her and her friends headed off to catch a cruise boat the day the storm come in,” the voice on the radio reported.

  Donetta swayed on her feet, and I rushed from my chair, reaching toward her, adrenaline zipping through my body. Something was wrong. Maybe she was having a stroke or a heart attack. “Donetta?” I caught her as she staggered sideways and slipped on the broken cup. Her weight knocked me back, and the two of us collided with the table, sending it sliding across the floor.