Last Kiss

by Luanne Rice

  Gavin would be there to meet her—she knew it. But she couldn’t move.

  I’m here…She swore she heard him say it.

  THE FIRE WAS SMALL, compact, ringed by the stones he’d collected from just above the tide line. He was conscientious about it all—he hadn’t built a fire on the beach in many years, and wanted to make sure it didn’t spread to the woods. This was a beautiful place, and the last thing he wanted to do was destroy it.

  Mainly kids came over here at night. Little Beach was a haven for young lovers, and it always had been. They’d walk through the woods, sticking to the path that wound so magically through the tall trees, under interlaced branches, like the path in any one of a hundred fairy tales. In such tales, it always led to someplace magical: a witch’s wood, a ruined castle, an abandoned rose garden.

  Stevie had captured the essence of such paths. All her children’s books were like charmed walkways—gateways to her readers’ hearts and imaginations. The woman could write and draw enchantment like no one else. She told stories full of love and connection, brought families together. So why was she driving their family apart?

  That’s how it felt to Jack Kilvert, huddled by the small fire. He had enjoyed Sheridan’s dinner party so much—sitting there with all those old friends, with Stevie and Nell—he’d felt more comfortable than he had in weeks, maybe even months. He’d felt the security and continuity of being with people he’d known for so long; deep down, even though he didn’t tell himself consciously, he’d believed that Stevie would feel it, too—and say yes without him even having to ask the question again.

  But she hadn’t. After the party was over, they’d walked home. Nell had gone straight to bed. Jack and Stevie had sat on the porch, talking about the evening.

  “Wasn’t it great to see Sheridan and Gavin together again?” she’d asked, rocking in the chair next to his.

  “It was,” Jack had said. “Made me wonder why they ever went apart in the first place.”

  “I guess it wasn’t their time yet,” Stevie said.

  “Their time?” Jack asked, turning to look at her. He was aware of his tone—incredulous, annoyed. Because everything she said lately worried him. What was she thinking? How did she see life and the world?

  “Yes,” she said patiently.

  “I have to ask you,” he said. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean, I guess they had to go their separate ways for a while. Maybe they each had to wrestle their demons before they were ready to finally get together.”

  “First, they’re not really together,” he said. “Sitting at the same dinner table is not the same as being ‘together.’”

  “I know that,” Stevie said. “But it’s happening. It’s under way…I can feel it. They can’t stay away from each other for long. There’s going to be a big bang, and pow—they’ll be as one.”

  “Big bang? We’re not talking about the creation of the universe,” Jack said.

  “Ohh,” Stevie said, turning to give him a glowing smile. “That’s a great idea for my next book! The creation of the universe…I might call it Worlds Collide, and have it be about the evolution of creatures and beings and the birth of love!”

  Jack just shook his head. Was everything books with Stevie? Had he missed something, falling in love with her?

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Is it easier for you to write and paint ‘the birth of love’ than to figure out what you want to do with me?”

  “I know what I want to do with you,” she said, reaching across the space between their rocking chairs to take his hand.

  “You could have fooled me,” he said.

  “Really? I think I’m pretty clear about it,” she said. “I want to love and hold you and have our baby and live together in perfect happiness.”

  “Huh,” he grumbled.

  “What’s the second thing?” she asked. “A minute ago you said, ‘First, they’re not really together,’ implying there was a second…and maybe a third…”

  “Okay,” he said, taking his hand out of hers. “Second, what about us? We went our separate ways—just like Gavin and Sheridan. I married Emma, you married…”

  “Three husbands,” Stevie said. “What’s your point?”

  “The point is, I want you to be my wife!”

  “Jack,” she said, her tone suddenly cold, “I’ve told you. You are my one and only. You are my alpha and omega. You’re singular…you’re the sun. You’re the moon. You’re the Hope diamond. I will not make you number four. You are number one.”

  “I want to be number four,” he said. “I want to be your husband.”

  “Not going to happen,” she said stubbornly, shaking her head. “You are number one. The only man I’ve ever loved enough to not marry.”

  That’s when Jack had stood up and walked away. He’d left their house—barefoot, without taking a jacket. Started walking, and wound up—without really having any idea of how he got there—at Little Beach. The night had turned cool, or maybe it was just that his blood was running cold. In either case, he was shaking. He looked across the water, at the warm lights on up at Sheridan’s house, and assumed that Gavin had stayed.

  They were making passionate love, swearing their lifelong devotion to each other, planning their marriage. Jack gazed up the hill and was positive that’s what was going on. Gavin shows up on the scene and bang—he and Sheridan get married. That was the only possible outcome, considering how he felt about her. So why couldn’t it be the same for Jack and Stevie?

  Maybe because he felt so cold—or maybe because life felt so tough right now, and he just wanted to do something simple, Jack gathered stones, placed them in a tight circle. Then he dragged over smooth driftwood branches washed high by the tide, stacked them in a pile. He stuffed broken sticks beneath the pile, lit the dry tinder.

  The fire had caught, and it was burning now. He felt the heat on his face and hands. Staring into the conflagration, he saw the smoke drift up toward the sky. A million stars blazed against black nothingness. The Milky Way, that huge and graceful white highway of stars, spread over everything.

  He thought of Stevie and her new book idea: the big bang. Staring up, he knew that all this had come from somewhere. All this: stars, galaxies, the night, the sea, the fire, Hubbard’s Point, the love he had for Stevie had all originated in space dust. So much from what seemed like so little.

  He wanted to understand it all; maybe not the universe out there, but the one under his own roof. He wanted to help Nell make the big transition—leaving home for college, going out into the world. This should be a time of joy for her, but instead she was trapped in grief, in the obsession of learning what had happened to Charlie. He’d been the same way after Emma had died, and he knew what Nell was going through.

  The fire spit and crackled, and Jack stared past the sparks into the sky, at a million stars. He tried to help Nell the best he could, and he’d do the same for the baby. Jack loved his family. When he thought about how eternal it all was, he knew that Stevie was right: a piece of paper, a marriage ceremony, didn’t mean much.

  But Jack tightened his arms around his knees and stared harder as his eyes blurred and a lump the size of a rock formed in his throat. Because he wanted it anyway; he wanted it so much. He knew how fleeting life was, and he wanted to hold tight to everyone he loved while he still had them.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE DAY AFTER THE PARTY, SHERIDAN SAT BACK ON the couch, strumming the strings of the guitar Gavin had handed her. It was a big old Martin, a gift to her from Merle Haggard after a show they’d played together in Nashville.

  From where she sat, she could see the Squire Toby at anchor. The boat looked miniature, so far away; she wondered whether Gavin might be on deck, looking her way as he had been last night.

  She didn’t have a hangover, but she felt the aftereffects of something. Her wine had tasted funny, but instead of a headache, she felt almost lighthearted. She remembered the taste of his kiss, and t
he sight of that fire on the beach behind his boat, and the knowledge that he was right there waiting for her.

  Picking up the phone, she called Agatha.

  “What did you put in my wine?” she asked.

  “I thought perhaps you were calling to thank me,” Agatha said.

  “That, too,” Sheridan said. “But I want to know.”

  “Darling, please. Didn’t you listen to my toast? That’s all I was doing…creating an atmosphere conducive to dreams coming true. Whatever they are. I wasn’t focused solely on you—”

  “Maybe you should have been. Poor Nell took a sip from my glass before I realized…”

  “She’s fine,” Agatha said. “I called Stevie first thing this morning. Nell slept like a baby, that’s all.”

  “Just tell me—what was it?”

  “Wild thyme,” Agatha said. “Perfectly harmless…”

  Sheridan and Agatha talked a few more minutes, with Sheridan thanking her sister for dinner and the intentions. She hung up, staring down the hill at Gavin’s boat. Wild thyme wasn’t any big deal. It was an herb, grown right here in the garden, and Sheridan knew people used it in cooking all the time. Agatha was right—it was perfectly harmless. But their grandmother had always said “thyme for dreams…” She had told them to look right in their own dooryard garden, to find their own dreams.

  Holding her guitar felt so good, a dream in itself. Last night Gavin had told her that some things were necessary; for her, that had always been music. Hearing it, finding the melody, composing lyrics had always been the way she’d made sense of her life. Her fingers picked the strings in old, familiar rhythms and repetitions.

  She found herself staring at Gavin’s boat, playing songs from the past. She’d never had to go searching for melodies—they found her. Her fingertips always knew what she most wanted to hear. Today that seemed to be songs for Charlie.

  Her son had loved ballads. He’d been the original rough-and-tumble little boy. He’d climb trees all the way to the top, scramble into gullies, collect things that crawled. He’d loved snakes. He’d go to school in clean clothes, come home looking as if he’d been to battle: untucked, unwashed, scuffed, and torn. He’d watch the scariest movies without getting scared. But when it came to music, he loved ballads.

  Sheridan had played him the classics, and she’d written plenty for him as well. Sometimes when he couldn’t sleep, she’d let him stay up and he’d lie right here on the couch and listen to her play. She’d sing to him, the prettiest, saddest songs she could think of: Patty Griffin, Emmylou, Patsy, Lucinda, Loretta, Crystal, Dolly. That went on until the summer he turned twelve, and then he wouldn’t do it anymore. He was too cool to let his mother sing to him.

  His friends up here at Hubbard’s Point were into their own thing, but Charlie stayed loyal to Nashville. He and she had been an anomaly down there: Northerners by birth, Nashville at heart. There’d been a few others, like Mary Chapin Carpenter and Maura Fogarty, but they weren’t too common. Sheridan had been drawn to Nashville, moth to a flame, as a very young woman.

  Maybe it was her unconventional family, the way they could outdo the Southern gothics with a glance and a spell; maybe it was her own sentimental heart, never cool enough for rock; or maybe it was just that she loved Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, and Loretta’s little sister Crystal Gayle.

  When she was young, right here at Hubbard’s Point, she used to hold a candle and pretend it was a microphone, sing Crystal’s “Half the Way.” Mishearing the lyrics, she’d sung Don’t take me house away. Agatha had had to correct her, but it hadn’t mattered: Sheridan had felt the song’s longing. She’d tapped into Nashville, and she’d tapped into herself.

  Charlie had grown up commuting with his mom between Nashville and, during the years she’d signed with a major label in New York, an apartment in the West Village. She’d shown him the places she used to play: Kenny’s Castaways, the Village Gate, the Pyramid Club, the Kitchen, 8BC.

  “Mom, did you used to be cool?” he’d asked.

  She’d laughed, because she knew what he meant: she had a reputation for writing about love, heart, family, mothers and kids.

  “Sort of,” she’d said. “I tried.”

  “Like how?”

  “Well, I had a crazy haircut—cut short on one side, long on the other. I wore a motorcycle jacket.”

  “Sweet!”

  “Not really,” she said. “I had the look down all right, but I wasn’t feeling it inside.”

  “Were you in a band?”

  “Several,” she said.

  “Like which ones?”

  “Well, ones you’ve never heard of. There was Five Graves to Cairo, then there was Brass Ring…and let’s not forget the Mothertruckers.”

  Charlie had loved it. They’d laughed, and she’d shown him pictures. Her mother had kept a scrapbook of all her clippings, and they’d looked through it. She’d shown her son the memory lane version of herself as a chameleon: with bleached hair, with black hair, with razored-short hair, and, finally, with the long wavy natural-colored hair she had today.

  “Why’d you do all that?” he’d asked.

  “Because I was a musician, and I wanted to make a living doing what I loved. Kids my age were listening to Madonna and Duran Duran, and that kind of music was happening in the city. The thing was, when I wasn’t playing with the band, I’d be sitting home listening to Merle or Crystal….”

  “You were living a lie,” Charlie said gravely.

  Sheridan had hidden a smile, loving to hear him say that; he was her son, all right: dramatic and emotional, right there with the big statement.

  “Yes, I was,” she said. “I remember playing a show at CBGB’s. We were covering ‘I Wanna Be Sedated.’ Great song. I was playing it all downstrokes, Ramones-style, on my blue Stratocaster. When it came time for my solo, I did this crazy thing: I slowed everything way down, and I started playing the song like a ballad. All sad and brokenhearted, you know? And I looked up, and who do you think was right there in front of me?”

  “Who, Mom?”

  “Dee Dee Ramone.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “Yeah,” Sheridan said. She’d closed her eyes, remembering the moment. Charlie had jostled her arm.

  “Mom, what’d he say?”

  “Well, he took me out for coffee afterwards. There was an after-hours club everyone used to go to after the show, but Dee Dee steered me clear of that place. What he wanted to tell me was too important and private for that. So we went to the Empire Diner, all the way across town in Chelsea. Sat at a table with a black glass top. And I remember how he looked me in the eye…and he told me I had to change my life.”

  “Like how?”

  Sheridan smiled. “Like play the kind of music I was born to play.”

  “He told you to go to Nashville?”

  “Not in so many words. But he did tell me I wasn’t punk, would never be punk, should stop trying to be punk. It was like being set free. I remember feeling as if a two-ton weight had just been lifted.”

  “And then you went to Nashville?”

  “Yep,” Sheridan said. “Sold one of my guitars and hopped a Greyhound bus the next week.”

  “And the rest was history?” Charlie asked.

  Sheridan nodded. “Recorded a demo, did a showcase, got signed…and you know the rest.”

  “You met Randy and had me.”

  “That’s the best part of the story,” Sheridan said. “Having you…”

  Charlie had never stopped smiling to hear her say that. Sitting on her wicker couch now, Sheridan kept her eyes on the Squire Toby as she played one of Charlie’s favorite lullabies, “Gentle on My Mind.” Her fingers hurt, and she realized that this was the first time since the year she’d started playing guitar that she didn’t have calluses on her fingertips.

  Mid-song she found herself switching to another song he’d liked, one Sheridan had written. It was called “Myth,” and was about grandmothers in general and Aphrod
ite in particular.

  “You told me love was my destiny

  Your words were always my prophecy,

  Goddess of love,

  Daughter of the king…”

  She strummed the guitar, singing softly. Her grandmother had prophesied love, that was true; she had even told Sheridan that the more she loved, the more she would be open to hurt. But Aphrodite’s words couldn’t compare to Sheridan’s own experience. Now, nearly a year after Charlie’s death, she still felt as if she’d been sliced open with a knife.

  Holding the guitar hurt, but she was glad Gavin had handed it to her. Some things are necessary…. Playing the song, she softly sang the bridge:

  “When your daddy is Zeus,

  There’s such a long way to fall,

  You grew up in the sky,

  Gazing down at it all

  Seeing the world

  With the eyes of your heart.”

  Charlie had loved that song, and he’d loved his own private family myths. The summer he was sixteen, Sheridan had heard him telling some of his Hubbard’s Point friends that his great-grandfather was Zeus himself—king of the gods. Sheridan had laughingly corrected him, telling him that Aphrodite’s husband was James, just a humble Irishman from the green hills of Wicklow and not Mount Olympus. And Charlie had laughed back.

  “Don’t you know, Mom? It’s your song, but don’t you know that’s what myths are for? To tell something truer than true.”

  “Truer than true?”

  “Yeah,” he’d said, and he’d stopped smiling. She thought of the seriousness in his gaze now, and it made her lower her guitar. “James was a king, Mom. Because he was a good man. I never met him, but I know by the way Aphrodite talks about him. You can have everything in the world, and have nothing. Or you can have little and have it all.”

  They’d both known he’d been talking about his father. And that was the beginning of Charlie’s quest to find out more about Randy. Sheridan had wanted to save her son from learning what kind of man his father really was; Gavin had wanted to protect her, too, but she knew. Randy’s profession had been attaching himself to women who could take care of him. Sheridan had never openly faced it; she’d hoped that if she kept it buried, a secret even from herself, then Charlie wouldn’t have to know.