“What?” I whispered. “What are you talking about? We were friends, we were.”
Estella covered her mouth with her hand as though afraid to say anything else. She stood there, her short hair gold in the sun, and she seemed vulnerable, ethereal, as though I could pass my hand right through her and she would disintegrate and disappear into the sand. I reached out, but she backed up a step.
“Connie, don’t you remember what happened?”
“When?” I asked, shuffling through memories to find the one she felt so strongly. “You mean Daddy? Graciela?”
“No, Connie. That summer.”
“That wasn’t your fault, Estella. It was mine. I was the one who was drinking, you couldn’t have stopped me. I was the one who got in over my head, quite literally. If it weren’t for you, I would have drowned.”
Estella slowly shook her head. “No, Connie,” she said quietly. “No. If it weren’t for Tate, you would have drowned.”
“He got to me a second before you did,” I said. “I don’t blame you, Estella, I really don’t, I never have. I know you did the best you could.”
“No, I didn’t do the best I could. You must remember, Connie,” she pressed me, stepping toward me, her eyes intense. I took a step back, feeling the waves splash up my calves.
I remembered her eyes. I remembered seeing her green eyes. I remembered the relief of knowing she was going to save me, that my protector was there.
I remembered wondering what was taking so long.
“I didn’t do the best I could. I was going to let you drown, Connie,” she finally said, enunciating each word carefully. It was as though all the air on the beach had been sucked away, leaving only the echo of those words.
“No.”
“I’m sorry, Connie—yes.”
“But why?” I asked, beginning to cry, feeling as sick as I had that day, as sick as Carson had been in the car. “Why, Estella? Why did you hate me so much?”
“I didn’t hate you,” she said, not reaching toward me, not even trying. “I wanted to be you.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said. “You wouldn’t let me—let me die. Oh, no.” I turned away from her, unable to look at her face, and saw Gib and Tate coming down the beach. I couldn’t let them see me like that, see us like that. Estella turned and saw them too.
“Tate knows, Tate remembers,” she said. “I sickened him. Why do you think he wouldn’t sleep with me? I threw myself at him. He couldn’t stand to see me.”
“I—I can’t—” I stuttered, unable to form a coherent thought, unable to stop the memory of her green eyes above the water, calmly watching me, clinically watching me as I swallowed water and went under. I stepped out of the surf, scuttled past her like a crab in a wide arc, and achieved the safety of the dry sand before Gib and Tate reached us.
“Hey, Mom,” Gib said with a grin, genuinely happy to see me, his arms full of fishing equipment, his face open and sunburned, a tiny yellowish smudge of a bruise under his left eye. “Tate said we could camp overnight on Little Dune before we went home.”
“Gib,” I said, looking up at him miserably. His eyes widened and he took a step toward me. Estella stopped him.
“Gib, your mom and I are talking. Could you go back to the house?”
He shook her arm off and narrowed his eyes at her. “What did you say to her?”
“No, Gib, it’s okay,” I said. “Please, honey, go on back to the house.”
He stared at me for a second longer, and I nodded down the beach toward the house. He turned to Tate, seeking his approval, and I was amazed again at how quickly he’d become so close to him.
“Let’s leave them alone, Gib. Come on.”
“Could you stay, Tate?” Estella asked, her voice tight.
“Why can he stay?” Gib protested.
“I don’t know,” Tate said. Then he added, “All right. Gib, you want to take the cooler?”
Gib snatched the cooler handle away from Tate and set off down the beach, muttering to himself and dragging the poles along with his other hand. The three of us watched him go in silence, only turning toward each other when the waves drowned out the sound of the sinkers clanking against the fishing poles.
“Connie thinks I saved her life,” Estella said. “Tell her what really happened.”
Tate sighed and pushed his hair off his forehead. It stuck up, spiky and near white. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses, but his mouth turned down and he didn’t respond for a minute. Estella and I watched him silently.
“What’s the point of this?” he asked, his fists at his hips.
“She says she doesn’t remember. She should know,” Estella said.
He was silent again.
“Tell her the truth, Tate,” Estella said quietly.
He shook his head and muttered, “Fine,” before he turned to me, closing Estella out. “Yeah,” he said. “It took me a minute to realize what was happening. I sort of froze for a second. I thought you were fooling around, and I knew Estella was there. She was so close, and she started to swim just as I realized that you were really in trouble. I jumped in, but it seemed like you were miles away. I never swam so hard in my life, Connie. I was getting closer, but Estella wasn’t. She’s telling the truth. She could have gotten to you before I did. She should have gotten to you before I did. Long before I did.”
I swallowed hard, and swallowed again, dryly shoving unspeakable words down my throat. I couldn’t speak. I knew it was true. I did remember.
I remembered her eyes.
Estella
She remembers. Her mouth is working, but she’s not speaking, and except for the fact that she is upright and dry, it is like watching her drown all over again. Tate is watching her carefully, his back still to me, effectively shutting me out, as it’s always been, as I know is completely appropriate this time.
“Connie,” I say. Tate steps back, and I step forward, a small step. “Please, let me explain.”
But she is too far gone. She turns and runs down the beach, stumbling in the loose sand and righting herself to correct her course, now running on the hard pack. It supports her, and now she is flying, but I am not pursuing, and neither is Tate. In fact, Tate is gripping my arm hard enough to hurt to make sure I don’t chase her.
And I appreciate, now, that he cares for her. But he is no longer a part of this for me. Now that it is in the open, he is gone from my soul like smoke in the wind, attached to the confession that festered for too long. I shake loose, feel the bruise that will appear like a slave bracelet in a day or two, but I don’t chase her.
“Why did you have to do that?” Tate asks. Now that it is in the open, things have changed for him too. There is no longer any good-natured, brotherly attitude toward me; instead, the hostility is laid bare, the anger he didn’t let fly thirty years ago finally taking hold. “You haven’t changed a bit, Estella. Why now, when she’s at her lowest point? Why?”
“Because she had to know, and this was the time I had,” I say. “And I owe you an apology too.”
“Not accepted,” he says and walks—no, stalks—away from me, the military evident in him.
I stay on the beach until I see Mother coming, and then I run too, toward her, and she catches me when I fall into her, and I realize that it is the first time I have ever let her catch me.
And I tell her what I did, and I beg for her forgiveness.
And then she walks me along the beach, holding my hand, and tells me more about her father, about the con man, the card counter. She asks for my forgiveness. And now, here we are, forgivable, forgiven, wrung out, and I know that I have more that I am keeping from her, but there is no sense in burdening her with it now.
We reach the cut, and I pull the smaller of Tate’s canoes out of the brush for us to sit on. We gaze across the cut to Little Dune. I don’t know what she’s thinking. But my mind is empty. No numbers. No patterns. Not even any pain, though I know it will return. I would take the
pain over the patterns, though they are both harbingers of the same thing.
But for now I am new.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Gib was waiting for me on the patio. I had stopped running and managed to walk up the steps without stumbling. He was too young to have learned how to camouflage the confusion obvious on his face, and I felt sorry for him. I knew how confusing family loyalty was, how it flexed and expanded, and then shrank and flattened to a hard line again.
“What’d she say to you?” he demanded.
I shook my head as I walked past him and into the house. I said, “Gib, don’t worry about it, okay? This is something between Estella and me. You’ll have things that will be between you and your brother one day.”
He didn’t seem to buy it, but he stopped dogging my steps as I made my way up to the library. I had priorities: I had a house to close up; I had a divorce to get through and two wildly different boys to finish raising; and I had a life to figure out. That was enough. I cast my gaze about the library, desperately looking for something to take my mind off my sister; I didn’t have room for Estella and her problems. I saw my violin case.
Haydn would keep me occupied. I prepped quickly, and then started the adagio cantabile, but the air wasn’t moving in the room, and when the bow slipped I pulled the music from where I’d propped it on the piano and took the violin up on the widow’s walk. I secured the music to the top of the open case with some binder clips, fitting them from left to right, adjusting the angle until I could see without stooping. There was a light breeze, but the back of the case was to it, so the pages fluttered only slightly.
I could see Mother and Estella walking on the beach—Mother providing comfort and aid to exactly the wrong person yet again—and then took a deep breath and began to play. I heard movement behind me, but I ignored it and concentrated on the music, hoping whoever it was, whoever needed something from me, would just go away and leave me alone.
I didn’t bother making any notations, I just played the adagio all the way through, alternating between reading the music and glancing at the Gulf, drowning in the music rather than the water. I’d always played Haydn too correctly, forcing a rigidity where there was none, but I was playing loosely now, perhaps not perfectly, but letting notes flow like water from the end of my bow.
As I felt my sister’s steps on the boardwalk reverberate all the way up through the house my playing changed, becoming angry and careless, as though punishing her with the music. Six pelicans, in a tight formation like feathered fighter jets, soared over me, dipping their wings on the eddies the Haydn made in the heavy air. They swooped below the edge of the house and came up again, and I leaned back to watch them, my chin just barely making contact, my bow nearly horizontal. I could almost smell them as they made their second pass, lifting the air and the music up, up, pulling the fury out of me, leaving me with just wonder.
I quickly found my place again, and now I reined myself in, making the transition easily, something I’d always fought with. I was an either/or player, but something cut the wires in me, and now I was playing naturally, beautifully, the way it was supposed to be played, the way it had been written to be played.
A small sound started behind me, filtering in under the violin, and at first I ignored it, but then it became louder. I turned my head slightly, nearly faltering when I saw Carson sitting on the widow’s walk door with his eyes closed, his clarinet in his hands.
Once again the sound came, nothing Haydn had ever written or intended, but something my son heard and transformed. I turned back quickly, unwilling to lose my place and interrupt Carson. I was nearing the end of the music, and I looked for a way to loop it back. Scanning for the spot, I found it and made the loop seamlessly.
It was lucky I wasn’t playing a wind instrument, because all my breath seemed to be caught somewhere below my heart, and somehow, now that I wasn’t looking at him, wasn’t seeing Estella superimposed on my youngest son’s features, I was finally hearing him, hearing what everyone else heard, and my God, they were right. I wasn’t going to be able to control this, or contain it.
The clarinet grew stronger, and soon I was hearing what he intended and I scaled back, softened my sound, and he compensated. This was music I’d never heard before. I let the transitions get loose, I let his vision guide me, and now I was part of it too, and if what I was feeling was even close to what Carson felt when he created it, then I would be a monster to keep him from it.
I looped back once more and finished it off softly, letting him help me down easily, and he sustained a final, perfect wavering note after I’d ended mine. I laid my violin and bow in my case carefully and turned, able to watch him at last, as he stopped and opened his eyes.
He pulled the clarinet away and grinned at me, wiping his lower lip. I whooped in laughter and swept him up and into my arms, his clarinet caught between us sideways, its bell sticking out of his ribs as though grown there.
“Carson,” I cried, finally releasing him and grinning down at him. “That was amazing! How did you do it?”
He was still laughing, and his cheeks were flushed. He looked away from me, bashful at my reaction, but pleased with himself too. “I just tried it,” he finally said simply. “You made it easy.”
“I made it easy?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I knew what you were going to do.”
“Before I did it?”
“I guess.”
“What are we going to do with you, Carson?” I asked. “You love it, don’t you?”
He nodded enthusiastically, and then, to cover his embarrassment, he lifted his clarinet and played a little tune, bluesy and simple, marching away from me and around the railing. We stayed up on the widow’s walk until the sun set, watching Gib walk up the beach and the boardwalk, watching Tate arrive from the beachside and then depart in his truck, disappearing into the brush of the interior. We said little, but I could nearly hear the music between us still, and the low hum of it felt like a conversation of its own.
Gib finally stuck his head up out of the door just as we were preparing to come down. “What are you guys doing? Dad’s on the phone,” he said to Carson without waiting for an answer, and my heart hurt to see Carson so excited. He nearly tripped in his rush to get down the steep stairs, but he caught himself on the banister. I followed more slowly after handing my violin case down to Gib.
“What were you guys doing up there?” he asked again, and I realized with a jolt of amusement that he sounded jealous, those tides of loyalty shifting in him again.
“Just playing,” I said lightly. “You could have come up if you wanted.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
“What did your dad have to say?” I asked.
He shook his head and narrowed his eyes. “Nothing. Stupid stuff. Did you know he moved in with her?”
Of course I had known, where else would he have taken the furniture? But it still shocked me coming from my son’s mouth. “Yes,” I said. “You okay?”
He gave a disgusted little grunt. Answer enough. Carson came trudging up the stairs, his face troubled. “Dad wants to talk to you,” he said.
“You okay?” I asked, searching his face.
Gib reached out and rubbed his shoulder and Carson brightened a bit. “I’m okay,” he said, looking to Gib, seeking approval for his bravery.
Luke started off with a cough before he found his voice, ragged and tired. “I just got a call from my lawyer,” he said without preamble.
I remained silent.
“I, ah, guess I shouldn’t have taken the Escalade. I’d like to ask . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
“What, Luke?”
It took him a moment to respond, and when he did his voice was tightly controlled. “I would like to ask your permission to use the Escalade until mediation.”
“Ah, so you’ve agreed to mediation, then? Why so amenable suddenly?”
Angie had warned me about this. It appeared as though
Luke had very little to his name, though information was continuing to come in. To my surprise, I now held most of the cards. His lawyer must have come down hard on him after Angie called to tell him what he’d done.
“Jesus, Connie, you have no idea what I’m going through here.”
“I don’t care what you’re going through, and I never wanted the Escalade to begin with. I did want my bow, though. You owe me, and Alexander, an apology for that.”
He cleared his throat again. “I’ll get you a new one,” he said.
“With what, Luke? From what my lawyer tells me you don’t have anything. Or do you? She’ll find it, you know. She’s very good at what she does.”
“Keep pushing me, Connie—”
“And what? What do you think you can do to me now?”
“So can I use the Escalade?”
“Use the Escalade, Luke. You officially have my permission. The only thing I care about is how this is going to affect our children. You can call here to speak to the boys, but if you want to talk to me you’ll have to go through my lawyer. Good-bye.”
“Wait,” he said. “Please, just wait. Listen, I wanted to talk to you about the boys before we got to mediation.”
My heart stilled. If Luke wanted them, both of them, either of them, then mediation wasn’t going to work, because I wasn’t giving them up.
“What?”
“I have a feeling Gib will want to live with me,” he said, his voice hesitant.
“Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” I answered. “And you’d better not even think about talking to them about this without me.”
“I haven’t,” he said quickly. “But what do you mean? You don’t think he’ll want to?”
“You might not realize this yet, Luke, but I’m not the only one you’ve betrayed.”
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