The Marine (Semper Fi; Marine)

by Cheryl Reavis

  But something happened to Allison just before she was supposed to go onstage, something internal and real, something she couldn’t or wouldn’t explain. Grace didn’t try to cajole her or force her to play. She took one look at her youngest child’s pleading eyes and trembling mouth, made their apologies to the music teacher, took Allison by the hand and left. Then Grace drove to the mall in Jacksonville, ostensibly to appreciate the Christmas decorations and to people-watch as homesick Marines from Lejeune tried to make themselves feel better about being away from loved ones during the holidays. But Grace and Allison both had known the real reason they were there. They were killing time so they wouldn’t have to explain their early return to Lisa and Trent. Neither Grace nor Allison had talked on the way to the mall. There had been no room for conversation. The car had been too full of a miserable daughter’s gratitude. Grace had never mentioned the recital again, and as far as she could tell, Allison hadn’t been ruined by her mother’s indulgence. Allison had continued her piano lessons; she had played in all her subsequent recitals. There was even a bonus. As a result of that one episode of stage fright, Grace and Allison had bonded in a way that Grace and Lisa never had, even though Lisa was the firstborn.

  It occurred to Grace suddenly that she had been overwhelmed by her own personal version of stage fright—only hers hadn’t yet been resolved. She was still struggling to find her way.

  Her way.

  Aside from her daughters, there was no one left to complain about whatever departure from sane behavior she might decide to make in order to find it, but at this moment, she was a woman without a working plan for her life beyond cleaning a vacation cottage and taking a long walk on the beach.

  “First things, first,” Grace said aloud. Her priority was the ocean and the always-pleasurable moment when she would first hear the surf and actually taste the salty air.

  She locked the car and put the keys into her jacket pocket. She didn’t take the direct, backyards-and-hedges path from her little sliver of no-man’s land to the beachfront. She went in a parallel direction instead, down the street toward the more commercial resort area to the south. The farther she went, the more upscale and blatantly pre-fabricated the cottages became. In contrast, hers was a weather-beaten relic from 1940’s family beach vacations and quickie wartime honeymoons.

  The good old days.

  Traffic was light this afternoon. Only two vehicles passed by on the street—a privately owned patrol car making the daily property rounds for those vacation homeowners who subscribed to a security service, and two men in a faded blue pickup truck—military, she thought—because of the Camp Lejeune bumper sticker. The older of the two she recognized. He was a permanent resident somewhere in the area and a nodding acquaintance, a fisherman she sometimes encountered on her beach walks, yet another military retiree who couldn’t quite let go of the old life and who ended up living somewhere in the shadow of Lejeune. It was another aspect of Semper fidelis, she supposed. Both vehicles slowed a little as they went by. The security officer in the patrol car raised his hand in greeting. The two men in the truck didn’t.

  There were fewer people at the beach than Grace expected. Most of them were out on the pier and either fishing or about to. Ordinarily, she liked to walk the 600 foot length of the pier and back, but not today. Today, she wanted to be in the sand, to look for beach pebbles and unbroken shells, to dodge the waves rolling in, the way she had as a child.

  She suddenly remembered something Sandra Kay had once told her about the pier fishermen, about how easily they could be taken in. Some enterprising young girl, who was as accomplished at thievery as the ever-present gulls, would innocently join the men and fish alongside them, sometimes for hours. Then she’d pointedly decide to go buy herself something to eat. It naturally followed that she would be more than happy to bring her new friends some refreshments when she returned, especially the expensive liquid kind—only she wouldn’t return. She’d take off with all their money for parts unknown. Grace didn’t see anyone she suspected of being a pseudo-fisherman con artist this afternoon, and it occurred to her that Sandra Kay had probably known the details of the ruse because she herself had done it. What a pair she and Sandra Kay had been—Goody Two-Shoes and The Grifter.

  Grace stood for a moment looking out to sea, tasting the salt on her lips. Then she began walking down the beach, just above the tide line debris, mindful of the sound of the surf and the cries of the gulls hanging suspended in the air currents overhead. She thought of Isak Dinesen and her assertion that salt water—sweat, tears and the sea—cured anything. Perhaps it was true. At least for this moment, Grace worried about nothing. She savored it all and let go of regrets.

  She kept walking, and eventually she saw a group of young women standing close together a few yards ahead. She realized that they were singing, a chorus from a school or a church choir practicing on the beach, their eyes firmly fixed on their intense, bird-like little director, who seemed to be willing them to hit the right notes. They sang a cappella and in tight harmony, something wistful and beautiful Grace couldn’t recognize.

  She stood and listened, appreciating their skill and their obvious pleasure in executing it. Other people stopped as well, respectfully at a distance as Grace had. A runner trotted by, giving the group two thumbs up as he passed. One of the girls offered him a discreet little wave of acknowledgment, reminding Grace of her uncontainable Allison.

  The song ended to a smattering of applause, and Grace abruptly decided she was ready to go back to the cottage. Home, she would have said before that abstract concept had been replaced by the reality of financial necessity.

  Grace began walking at a quicker pace, needing to get the cleaning job finished. The same blue pickup truck passed by her again, this time with only one occupant, the young man who had been driving previously. He looked at her briefly as he rode by.

  She expected to find the car Lisa drove to school parked in front of the cottage when she returned, but it wasn’t there yet. She entered the screened-in porch, noting, with some relief, that the big three-over-three windowpanes in the old-fashioned front door were still intact. She needed to replace the old door with one more secure. She needed to replace a lot of things.

  She unlocked the door and stepped inside, raising windows and turning on lamps. By the time she had gotten out the cleaning supplies and found her kind of music on the recycled, thrift store radio, enough chilly April air had blown through the house to take away most of the musty smell.

  Grace looked around when the screen door to the porch squeaked open. Allison and Lisa had finally arrived, and one look at their faces immediately engaged the “suspicious mother” part of her brain. She kept waiting for them to say something, but they were too busy looking around at everything—except her. It reminded her a little of the kind of interest Trent had always shown when he came here. In his case, it had been because he had never understood what she saw in the place that would keep her from selling it. In this instance, the girls’ looks were more a bold attempt at nonchalance.

  She glanced out the window. She could only see one vehicle. Hers.

  “How did you get here?” she asked, deciding to start with the obvious and work back.

  “We rode the bus, and then we walked,” Allison said, ignoring the look Lisa gave her. “Lisa was terrified somebody she knows would see us.”

  “You don’t know what kind of people ride buses,” Lisa said in her own defense.

  “Let’s not get sidetracked. The car would be where?” Grace said, addressing the daughter who seemed more inclined to be forthcoming.

  Neither of them answered. Grace had always been the warden parent, and both girls knew it. She might have been leery of rocking the marital boat, but she had always taken her parenting responsibilities seriously. She’d had to. Trent was the one who had opted to be the girls’ “friend.” She had never wanted
friendship. She’d wanted to give her daughters what Aunt Barbara had given her—a sense that someone was in charge, someone who could be depended upon no matter what.

  “Okay. Here’s the deal,” Grace said. “We’ll just do the cleaning while we’re waiting for the big revelation.”

  “I . . . lost the car keys,” Allison offered immediately—anything to put off swinging a broom.

  “Allison, you don’t drive. What were you doing with the keys?”

  Allison looked at the floor. “I wanted to make Lisa think she’d lost them—only I really did.”

  “Allison!”

  “Well, she was being such a butt-head—” She stopped, apparently because of the look on Grace’s face. “I’m . . . sorry, Mom. I’ll . . . pay for them out of my . . . allowance?”

  “Yes, you will and I think you’re going to be surprised by how expensive they are,” Grace said, ignoring Allison’s blatantly clear hope that her token offer wouldn’t be accepted. “So where is the car?”

  “It’s still at school—in the student parking lot. We didn’t let anybody try to hotwire it,” she added helpfully. “Joe-B said he could do it, but we knew you wouldn’t want the car window broken—” She stopped in response to her sister’s elbow. “The car’s all right, Mom. Really.”

  “For both your sakes, I hope so.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Lisa said.

  “And yet . . .” Grace said. “You’re the oldest, Lisa, and a situation like this is what you have a cell phone for. Now go sweep or something. Both of you.”

  They gave the collective sigh of the unfairly persecuted and trooped into the kitchen, first to bicker over changing the radio station and then over who got what cleaning supplies. The screen door to the porch squeaked open again, and Grace looked in that direction. She saw the same faded blue truck first, then the same young man who had been driving it. She opened the front door just when he was about to knock.

  He was neither short nor tall, but was athletic-looking and muscular. He also seemed vaguely familiar in a way that had nothing to do with having seen him earlier on the street. His hair was cut very short, and he stood back from the door, as if he didn’t want the rest of the people in the house to see him. Surprisingly, he was holding a plump and curious baby girl in one arm, and he had a business-size envelope in his free hand. The baby looked all around—at him, at Grace, at the distance to the floor—clearly on a quest for something to smile at.

  “Yes?” Grace said.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” the young man said. “I . . . are you Mrs. James? Grace James?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Your maiden name was Justin.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes,” Grace said again, wondering suddenly if she should have. She waited for him to say something more, but he didn’t. The baby gave him a big, mostly-gums-instead-of-teeth smile, one he tried not to return. He didn’t quite make it.

  “What is it?” Grace said quietly, because it was obvious to her that all this constituted something, in spite of how hard he was working to make his arrival seem routine and matter-of-fact.

  He moved the baby’s inquisitive hand away from his face with practiced ease, briefly bending the envelope, then took a deep breath. “Ma’am, I think you’re my mother.”

  She looked at him, startled. Her first impulse was to laugh, to make light of the remark, but she didn’t because of the look on his face. It reminded her of Allison’s at the failed piano recital.

  “Why in the world would you think that?” Grace asked instead, because of her innate curiosity, the same curiosity she’d passed on to her youngest daughter.

  Whatever response he’d anticipated, she didn’t think that was it. Or perhaps it was because he thrust the envelope at her. She didn’t take it. He let his hand fall.

  “I’m sorry but you’ve made a mistake. I’m not your mother,” Grace said.

  “I know I’m intruding, ma’am—”

  “You’ve made a mistake,” she said again, as kindly as she could because he was obviously in some distress. “I don’t have a son.” She moved to close the door.

  “Wait. Please. I don’t have a lot of time to get this done, ma’am. I was hoping we could talk—” He broke off and took a deep breath. “I don’t want to cause you any problems with your family. I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to—if there was—I know you’ve got your own life.”

  He stopped again and glanced at the baby. “I’ll go . . . but maybe you can look at these,” he said.

  “There’s no point—” Grace started to say, but he placed the envelope on the seat of the one aluminum folding chair on the porch, then turned and left, letting the screen door slam behind him.

  Grace stood there, watching as he walked to the truck and buckled the baby into the car seat. Some part of her—the mother part—crazily wondered whether a truck that old had air bags and if they could be turned off. She left the envelope where he’d dropped it on the chair.

  Both girls stood in the living room behind her. The minute she turned around, she realized that they had heard most, if not all, of the exchange.

  “Mom?” Allison said first, clearly alarmed. “Mom, is that—is he our—?”

  “No, he is not,” Grace said, but she realized immediately that they didn’t believe her.

  “But he knew your maiden name,” Lisa said, her voice rising.

  “Lisa, I’m not his mother. It’s some kind of mistake,” Grace said.

  “Why would he come here and say all that, then?” Lisa cried. “What is he trying to do?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him. But I can assure you I don’t have a male child.”

  “Mom, is that the truth?” Lisa demanded.

  “Of course, it’s the truth.”

  “Then why aren’t you calling the police or something?”

  “All right, that’s it. He made a mistake, and I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I want to get this place cleaned up and go home.”

  “Mom, aren’t you . . . ?” Allison began.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Mother,” Lisa interrupted. “I really don’t. You’ve been totally weird ever since Dad died.”

  “I’m fine. So are you. Now let’s get busy.”

  But Allison abruptly ran out onto the porch. She picked up the envelope still lying on the chair and opened it, taking the pages out and flipping through them. “Mom,” she said after a moment. “Your name and your birthday are on all of these.”

  Chapter Two

  MAN, I SCREWED this up.

  Josh Caven hadn’t realized the daughters were there. Even so, he didn’t know how else he could have done it—except maybe to let somebody else go in first and prepare the woman for the breaking news that her long lost baby boy had found her. Sergeant Kinlaw would have done it if Josh had asked him. He was into that kind of thing—helping out guys with their drinking-PTSD-women-kid troubles—when he wasn’t fishing. But Josh hadn’t asked. The sergeant would have had too many questions, questions Josh didn’t have the time to consider and couldn’t begin to answer. He’d done all the research he could. He must have read every magazine article the library had about searching for birth mothers. Just about all of the women resisted at first, and he could understand that. He already knew the mission had a high possibility for failure, but still, there was a chance, and he had to go forward anyway. End of discussion.

  He didn’t know what he’d expected—except that it wasn’t what he got. As far as he could tell, Grace Justin James hadn’t been all that rattled by his announcement. She’d seemed perfectly clear about the situation from the get-go—he was either seriously misinformed or crazy. Or both. She hadn’t even asked his name.

  If he had thought having the baby wit
h him would make her more inclined to hear what he had to say—grandmothers and all that—he’d missed the mark there, too. He could have been the paperboy, stuck with dragging his baby sister along while he made his collections, as far as she was concerned.

  She could run a good bluff, he’d say that for her. He should have asked her why they used to call her “Lizzie.”

  “I should have showed her the picture. I should have made her look at the adoption papers,” he said out loud. How was she going to argue with that—copies of a goddamned birth certificate with her name on them? Signed. Notarized. Delivered. As it was, there was no guarantee that she wouldn’t just toss them in the nearest garbage can without looking.

  The baby was growing fretful, and he reached out to stroke her soft hair as he drove, thankful that they were almost home—or what they called home anyway. It was an aging trailer one of Sergeant Kinlaw’s buddies had offered him while he tried to dig his way out of the shambles of his life. The baby was teething, and she clutched his hand to gnaw on it. Hard. He could feel the sharp edges of the new tooth coming through.

  “Damn, Spike! That’s your old dad’s shooting hand. Growing teeth is a bitch, huh?” he added in sympathy. He smiled slightly to himself. He had to stop doing that—using inappropriate language and calling her “Spike.” Pretty soon, she was going to be saying words she ought not say and thinking “Spike” was her name. His smile broadened. She was one tough little girl—that’s why he did it. He really liked that about her. There was no denying that she was gorgeous, but he liked the way she could get her vaccinations and then look at his face to see if she was supposed to cry or not. She had a “Baby Marine” T-shirt, and he was pretty sure she was one of the few kids who actually deserved to wear it.

  But tough or not, gnawing the nearest fist wasn’t doing it for her and the fretting escalated. He tried giving her a pacifier. She sucked on it a few times, then burst into real crying, letting it fall out of her mouth and onto the floorboard.