“First thing that comes to mind is leave.”
“No. What do you mean by that? You mean leave the island? Us?”
He shrugged his shoulders and then meandered over to the icicle hanging from the post. He gave it a nudge and it swung back and forth before crashing to the ground.
“We’ve got to look on the bright side,” I said. “We still own land on Sanibel.”
“It’s worthless now,” he said, stomping his shoe over the ice.
“Land is never worthless,” I cried as my father walked into the house.
“We can start over.”
“Everything,” Abigail said through violet lips. “Everything we grew together. Our tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and watermelon—destroyed! It’s not just us. I was over talking to the neighbors on both sides, and it’s the same for them, for everyone.”
“The damn freeze,” stuttered Dahlia. “The damn freeze has killed us all.”
“How can you say that?” I said sharply. “You just said anything was possible with God.”
“Yes,” she said, “be it His will.”
I was mad now, madder than ever. I couldn’t possibly believe that it was God’s will for us to be defeated and not start over and not see the slightest good in it all, that we were still alive and our land was still here, frozen and our crops destroyed, but the land still intact. My mama stared trance-like at me, then put her arm around Dahlia, and as I watched them walk into the house together, I felt like hollering after them. “Where’s your wisdom?” I mumbled under my breath. “The two of you, as old as you are, ought to have lots of it stored up deep within, ready to be pulled out in such moments as this.”
I feared my mother heard my words because just as she arrived at the door of the house, she turned and said back to me, “You better come in now. We can’t stay on this island any longer. We’ll be making arrangements to leave.”
“Leave Sanibel? Where? Where will we go?”
“I don’t know, yet,” she said, and then disappeared into the house.
I wanted to cry, but my ducts were frozen shut so nothing could drip forth. Instead, the tears swelled up inside my head and flooded my thoughts. I didn’t know which way to turn, and I reached down into my own jar of wisdom and rummaged around for ideas, anything I might grasp to keep from slipping under.
Go in that house. Go for a walk. Find Jaden. Find Jaden. Go in that house. Pour yourself some brandy. Find Jaden. Go for a walk. Brandy. Jaden. Find Jaden. Find Jaden. Find Jaden—it was the one idea that kept surfacing above all the others so I took hold of it, knowing it was the wisest and strongest branch of an idea.
I had to find Jaden.
Lydia
My hands were shaking as I returned the pages to the drawer and jumped up from the desk. “Marlena,” I cried as I ran through the halls. “Marlena!”
“Lydia, what is it?”
“It’s Josh,” I said. “I have to find him.”
“Wait, darling,” she said, following after me to the front door.
“I can’t wait. I have to find him.”
“Lydia Isleworth, you will wait right here for just one moment, and if you don’t, I won’t let you read any more of Ava’s journal.”
I stopped at the bottom of her steps and sat down in the dirt, then watched her go back into the house. Yes, I’d sit in dirt just to read more of that journal. It was better than sitting on ice. A moment later Marlena returned.
“Here, take these with you,” she said, handing me more pages. “I think it’s important that you read what happens next.”
“Does she leave the island or stay behind with Jaden? That’s all I really need to know.”
“Why don’t you read it for yourself. I suggest you find a nice quiet spot, like the lighthouse, maybe.” She raised her hands up in the air. “Look at me,” she said. “I should stop meddling. Read them wherever you like. Now go, young lady. Go find that boy of yours!”
XXVII
UNLIKE AVA’S WINTRY DAY, mine was a hazy lazy humid one, and I wondered under which conditions was it easiest to run fast. But it wasn’t a race, I decided, as I took off running toward the marina as fast and erratically as a hawk flies, creating my own breeze as I went. Ava and I were on missions of our own, but very much alike, both en route to tell those boys that we loved them and we were no longer leaving the island. We were staying because of them.
As I spotted the marina and Max hosing down a boat from a distance, I circled the area while wiping sweat from my forehead and thinking about all that I would be giving up but also gaining by telling Josh about my decision to stay. And my love for him gave me a lift and nearly made me crash-dive as a hawk does, right to the spot where Max was standing.
“Is Josh around?” I blurted out as if hunting for prey.
“Hi, Lydia, good to see you,” said Max, turning off the water. “He left a little while ago.”
“To where?”
“Key West with a few of his buddies.”
“What?”
“Guys’ trip.”
“How long ago did he leave?”
“A couple of hours ago.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No, they’ve been wanting to go for some time now.”
“When will he be back?” I asked.
He gave me the same look the ranger had at the start of summer when I asked when I might see the hundreds of hawks up in the sky. It was the kind of look that told me you’re not going to see that amazing sight until September.
“In about a week,” Max replied.
“That puts us into September, doesn’t it?”
“I think it does. I haven’t looked at any calendar in quite some time, but …”
“I’ll be starting school by then.”
“I wish you the best, young lady. You’re smart. I’m sure you’ll do great.”
I stared Max in the eyes, wondering whether I should tell him what I came here to tell his son, that I love him and would have stayed for him. But then I thought about the guys’ weekend in Key West and that maybe Josh wasn’t missing me as much as I thought. Besides, it had only been a summer. Suddenly I questioned how I could love someone after only a summer, and I wondered whether it was love or obsession.
“I better get going,” I said. “I’ve got a million things to do before I start school. Just tell Josh I stopped by to say, ‘good-bye.’”
“I sure will. and I wish you the best with all your plans.”
“Thank you, Max,” I said and turned and walked off slowly. Despite my wanting to get away, I couldn’t run. It was no longer early morning and not yet late afternoon, but rather that in-between time of day that made me walk slowly. Besides, there was no need to hurry. I wouldn’t be around in September to see Josh return nor the hundreds of sharp-shinned hawks passing through Florida’s skies.
There was only one thing left to do. I walked to the lighthouse. There, I sat down under a tree for shade and pulled out the journal pages. I could only hope that Ava got to Jaden faster than I did to Josh, or, better yet, maybe she caught her prey in midair and was now enjoying a pleasant feast.
I began to read:
Ava
Ice was everywhere. But it didn’t slow me down. As I ran toward Jaden’s house, with the tawny-colored blanket from my bed wrapped around me like the soft furry skin of a buck, I paid little attention to onlookers and near-collisions on the slippery trail. And when I saw his father standing out front, I wasn’t at all shy. I walked right up to him and asked if his son was around.
“You just missed him,” he said. “He was up all night. And like all of us, not in the best of spirits this morning. I tried telling him to get some sleep, but I think he needed to do some thinking.”
“Darn,” I said. “Tell him I stopped by.”
“I sure will. How’d your family fare?”
“Not good. They’re leaving the island, giving up after this.”
He looked just like Jaden, but for his age, and even then he didn�
�t look that old, not the bad kind of old. He was a good old, and it made me smile knowing that Jaden, too, would be looking good twenty years down the line. And he looked at me with sensitive eyes, and I knew then where Jaden had gotten his eyes from.
“I’m sorry to hear your family is leaving the island,” he said. “You know where Jaden likes to go when he needs to think?”
“No.”
“The lighthouse. I’ll bet you anything that’s where he is right now.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I better get going.”
“Keep that blanket around you. Keep yourself warm, young lady.”
“I will.”
I started for Sanibel’s east end, quickly picking up a trail of tracks etched in the shallow snow that I knew instinctively were his. They were only about eighteen inches apart, so I knew Jaden had walked his way to the lighthouse, whereas mine would probably measure some three to four feet, for I was trotting as fast as a buck.
My lips were numb, and I could hardly talk when I walked up to Jaden, who was sitting on a bench of driftwood. He was staring out at the bay, and he looked moody and bothered, unlike that fine spring morning when I first found him doctoring the pelican to life and the bay was sparkling and swarming with life.
I sat down beside him and opened the furry blanket I had clutched around my neck and waved it in the air so it would land softly over the two of us. “How are you?” I asked.
“Been better. And you?”
I was glad to know the heart can’t freeze, for hearing his words warmed my body and made me tingle down to my toes. “Horrible,” I said, feeling a pout spread across my face as wide as the sky. The sky was slate-colored and it was pouting too, I noticed. “I’m horrible today. This is not my day.”
“We lost everything, too,” he said.
“At least your family is staying. I talked with your father. My family is leaving the island. We’re moving elsewhere because of this.”
He cleared his voice, and I waited for him to say something, anything. He didn’t, and I wondered whether he was thinking what I was, that our dream of one day being together was now freezing into a nightmare.
“I’m not sure yet where my parents are planning to go next,” I added. I just know we’re leaving.”
I listened and swore I heard hoarse-sounding chirps of birds about to die, probably the white pelicans that just days before were forming straight lines in the water, then beating their wings and scooping fish up in their bills. “The birds didn’t know this weather was coming, did they, Jaden? Don’t you think they would have flown off if they sensed it coming? Are birds special like that?”
He turned for the first time and looked me in the eyes. “No one knew this was going to happen, not even the birds. But you know what a bird does when its nest is destroyed? It rebuilds. That’s what it does, without giving it any thought. It rebuilds.”
“I wish my parents would do that.”
“That’s their choice. But you and I are of the age now where we have our own choices to make. Me? I’m starting over in the same spot on the same land, no thought given to it at all.”
“You’re so strong,” I said. “You’re stronger than most people I’ve known. You’re more like a bird.” I laughed and he almost did. “And you’re wise as nature. I think nature is wise, don’t you?”
“You know I’ve always believed that. I think nature is worthy of our respect.”
When I felt his breath on my face, I knew I had to get on with what I had come to tell him, and I knew before I even spoke that my words would screech forth like the chirps of the dying birds. “I’ve come to say good-bye.”
His eyes were judging me as if I were the dumbest girl in the world, but in them I still saw everything I ever wanted, one thing at a time leaping forth like dolphins from the water but then disappearing back under again.
“Stop staring at me like that,” I said. “Say something.”
“What’s there to say?” He smirked. “You already know.” I shook my head. “Know what?”
He smiled as he gazed out at the bay. Then he laughed. “Don’t play dumb with me, Ava. You know you don’t ever have to leave this island or say good-bye to me again. You know I’d love to marry you. In fact, we could marry tomorrow around dusk at the base of this lighthouse.”
“You make it sound so simple. You make everything so simple, don’t you?”
“Why not? I love you, and you love me. It is simple, and I know of someone who can marry us without any fuss.” He was still grinning when he took hold of my chin and held it tightly. “But you realize it’s up to you right now, don’t you?”
“Sort of.” If he hadn’t been holding my chin so tightly I could have told him it was also up to my parents.
“You do see that you have choices, Ava, right? Because a lot of people don’t see they’ve got any choices until it’s too late, and they wish they had done whatever it was they didn’t do. I want to make sure you know all of this so one day you don’t look back and think to yourself that you should have married him and could have been loved genuinely and would have lived happily thereafter.”
I moved his hands off my chin, not liking the grip he had on me. “Impossible,” I said jumping up from the piece of wood we were sitting on. “Everything you talk of is impossible, and you don’t understand, you couldn’t possibly.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Everything? Now aren’t you exaggerating just a bit, Ava?”
I thought for a moment about all the impossibilities in the world. A manatee can’t survive in cold water. A starfish can’t move as fast as a shark. An osprey might look the part but can never turn into a bald eagle. My mother can’t always be smiling, and Dahlia can’t tell a story just once. They were all impossible, so I didn’t think I was exaggerating at all.
“C’mon, Ava, is it that impossible for a girl to start acting like a woman and to start making some choices of her own?”
I bent down, desperate for the kind of snow we had in Kentucky, the kind in which I could make a strong snowball, one I could throw at his nose, but instead all this Florida snow allowed me to make was a cold, sandy mixture that fell apart in the air. I think Jaden felt sorry for me at that point because he closed his eyes and said, “Marry me, Ava.”
All at once my thoughts thawed and came tumbling through my lips like an avalanche. “I’m thinking of my mama, Jaden. If she leaves and I stay …” I stopped.
I didn’t know how to explain to him that Abigail’s sad times no longer followed a seasonal pattern and that she had been down in early November, then back up again in December, and now, like this weather, there was no predicting what might happen next. She needed me by her side to care for her, bathe her, and feed her when she was down.
“Look,” Jaden said, taking hold of my hands in his and resting them on his chest. “I’m not going to talk you into anything. I shouldn’t have to talk any girl into marrying me. But if you want us to marry, then let’s do it. We can keep it simple. We don’t need much. Look around us. Everything we love is right here. We don’t even need time to plan. Why should we? We know we love each other, so why make it all harder than it has to be? Meet me here at the lighthouse tomorrow around dusk. I’ll have the minister here. If you’re not there, I’ll accept that you’ve chosen to leave the island for good with your parents.”
“If I’m not there,” I said, “I’ll leave you a letter.”
“A letter?” he said, releasing my hands while laughing and frowning at the same time. He turned and walked toward the lighthouse. “Like a piece of paper is going to sit around waiting for me to find it? Surely it’ll blow away, Ava. It’s been kind of windy, you know.”
“I’ll bury it,” I said, hurrying after him.
“Oh, that’s a great idea,” he said sarcastically. “So I spend the rest of my life digging around in search of a buried rejection letter?”
“It won’t be a rejection letter,” I said. “And you won’t have to search. I’ll place t
he Junonia you gave me atop the mound where I bury it. Look for the Junonia.”
“Sounds like you’re plotting your escape.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I’m just making provisions.”
He had it all wrong, I thought as I stepped up to him and touched my hands to his red, icy cheeks. I pressed my lips to his, and with my kiss I told him I could live happily ever after with him. And soon he loosened the blanket I had wrapped around me and tucked into the neckline of my nightgown, and he spread it over top of us, and there we stood in a warm, private world that I never wanted to leave. But then he reached down and slid his hands over my thighs and up toward my hips and over my waist—all of which I didn’t mind—and up toward my breasts. It took me a moment to come to my senses and wonder why he’d dare such a thing if we were to be married tomorrow. I also thought why he’d dare such a thing if we were to part forever tomorrow. Regardless of what the outcome would be, he ought not to have done such a thing at a moment like this, I realized minutes later, and so I yanked the blanket off the two of us and slapped him across the face.
“How dare you assume a lady wants to do such things?” I asked.
“Ava Witherton, you’re not a lady.”
“Not a lady?” I could feel my mouth drop open and the cold mist shooting out like fire from a dragon. “Then what am I to you?”
“A woman.”
“Oh,” I thought, as I bent down and picked the blanket up off the ground.
No one had ever called me a woman before. I took it as a compliment. He had a point. A lady wouldn’t like what he was doing, but a woman probably would, I assumed. I didn’t know the definition of a woman. Mama had only taught me the ways of a lady, and despite my rebelling against those, I always considered myself a girl, but not a typical girl, more of a boyish-type girl. Now, at eighteen years old, I felt for the first time in my life a woman. But I was a stupid woman, for there is nothing I wanted more than for Jaden to touch me there again.
“Did you like what you touched?” I asked sweetly.
He raised an eyebrow at me. “I’ll tell you after we’re married,” he said.
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