I choked. “God, I hate that feeling.” I looked up at the sky, as if that could stop the burn in my eyes and the thickness in my throat. “I think that all the time. If only I’d known, I would’ve done things so much differently. I would’ve…appreciated her. The things she did, who she was.”
“We always take things for granted until they’re gone.”
I could only nod in agreement.
A pair of RVs rumbled onto the turnout. Eden coughed at the diesel fumes, and I jerked my thumb at the road. “Let’s head out.” I opened the passenger door for Eden, and closed it behind her.
The ride back to her house was quiet, except for the wind blowing through the open window, and the radio turned down low, playing country. Neither of us was inclined to talk, lost in our memories of the past.
When I stopped in front of Eden’s house, she kicked open her door, and then paused. “Thank you, Carter.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I caught a familiar chorus, and turned up the radio. “One Day You Will” by Lady Antebellum. Eden sat with one foot dangling out of the truck, the other on the floorboard, listening. By the end of the song, Eden was sniffling and tapping her toe to the beat.
Her green eyes found mine. “Damn you, Carter. I’m sick of crying. It’s all I seem to do lately.” She slid across the bench seat, reaching around my neck with her arms.
I held her, resisting yet again the urge to inhale her scent. “Sorry,” I said, “I just thought you could use the encouragement.”
She let go after a moment, slid out of the truck, waved once she’d closed the door. “’Bye.”
I watched her go in, wondering how I was going to find excuses to see her now that her house was done. In just a few short weeks her presence had become an integral part of my day.
I drove to the little marina on the opposite side of the peninsula, parked my truck with my tools locked in the cab. The boat ride home was a little over twenty minutes, if I went fast. Today I was loathing the silence of my empty house, so I took it slow. I docked at my pier, tied up, but didn’t go inside. Instead, I sat on the bow of the boat and watched the sun go down, wondering yet again what I’d gotten myself into. Wondering if Britt would approve of Eden. It was a strange thing to wonder, since if Britt had been in any position to tell me, Eden wouldn’t be part of my life. I wondered how long I could keep pretending to myself that I didn’t have feelings for Eden that went past friendship, and how long Eden could pretend the same thing about me.
I knew I couldn’t fix her situation, and I had no desire to become an instant father-figure to a child that wasn’t mine. Losing Britt had been bad enough, but knowing I’d also lost my child had nearly been too much. It was something I didn’t often think about, but I found myself doing exactly that as I sat on my boat, watching the sun set.
Britt had been sixteen weeks pregnant when she died. We’d been less than a week from the ultrasound that would have told us the gender of our baby.
We’d decided on Brett, if it was a boy. Irene, if it was a girl.
What if something was possible between Eden and me? Someday? When she had the emotional wherewithal to think about such things. She couldn’t now, not yet. I knew that, and I respected it. But could she someday? And could I accept the things that would come with Eden, if such a time ever came? A child? The turmoil that would surely exist between Eden and her sister, not to mention the husband? I wasn’t sure.
I had no way to answer any of those questions. Even allowing myself to consider the possibility was inviting heartbreak. Eden might not ever be willing or able to be with me. She might not want to. She might just be latching onto me as the only source of comfort in her life. She’d done it once, with Caden. Why not with me now?
I cursed myself for the judgmental nature of that last thought. But it was true, though.
I understood the way things had happened for her, with Caden. When Britt died, I’d been desperate for any kind of comfort. I’d drunk myself stupid for several weeks straight. And if Britt had had a twin sister—one who looked exactly like her—with similar mannerisms and personality traits, would I have felt the temptation to seek some kind of comfort in the familiar? I probably would have.
Unless you’d lost someone who was a huge, vital part of your life, you simply couldn’t understand the agony, the desperation, the way that every day seemed impossible. Each breath hurt. Each second, each hour was an eternity of hurt. You’d do anything to stop the pain. To escape the torment, the ache inside, the gaping hole where that person should be. And if something or someone could offer some kind of comfort, even temporarily, you’d take it, just to find a single moment of peace. And if there was guilt involved, it was even worse.
So yeah, I got it.
But getting it, understanding how it had happened, and not judging her was one thing. But being able to weave the complications of her life into my own? That was something else. And I wasn’t sure.
God, if I was this confused about things, what must Eden be going through?
~ ~ ~ ~
I took a couple of days at home, cleaning up and finishing two sculptures I’d set aside. One was a life-size bust of an Arabian horse that needed a few coats of stain, and the other was a commissioned piece for one of Max’s friends. It was a huge piece of driftwood that she had found while on vacation in Mexico. She had it shipped up here to me and had asked me to “do something with it.” Basically, it was a case of making something pretty from the old hunk of wood. It was an interesting challenge, and I’d had fun with it. The piece of wood was almost eighteen feet long and four or five feet thick, twisted and gnarled, yet worn smooth as glass by the relentless movement of the ocean. I’d studied the wood for days before beginning to work, and even then it had been a process of discovery. Sometimes I started with an idea, and found a piece of wood to match the project I had in mind. Usually, though, I let the wood tell me what it wanted to be. This piece fell into the latter category. I worked a single stroke of the chisel at a time, scraping in one spot, carving in another, inch by inch, whittling away the wood slice by slice, always listening to what the grain of the wood and the twists and gnarls told me.
It was an abstract piece, sort of. It resembled a female body, in a way, but one that was reaching for the sky, spine twisting in dance, arms tangled and fingers twined. That was what I saw in it, at least. I knew Sharon, Max’s friend, would love it, and would probably pay any price I asked.
I still had to finish the bar for the tasting room, and I had to check on the progress on the tasting room itself. But…I wasn’t ready for any of that. If I went back to the winery, my brothers would want to ask me questions, talk to me. And inevitably, they’d ask about Eden, and I wasn’t ready for that. I didn’t have any answers. Even if I told the truth—“we’re just friends”—they’d see the other part of the truth. That was the rough part of being thick as thieves with your brothers: they knew you inside and out, and could see past lies and omissions.
So, to fill the time, I began a new project. I took the pile of floorboards from Eden’s house and went to work. The pieces were various lengths, and some were broken from being pulled up, and others were fully intact. I fit six of the widest pieces together edge to edge, and joined them together with some iron bands I had left over from another project. Then I puzzled the other pieces together, using intact pieces as well as broken ones, splitting other pieces to get fragments to fill holes, and bound the whole together with the same iron bands. This created a vertical side-wall which I joined to the bottom piece with a wedge and short wood screws. I repeated the process several times, until I had all four walls in place, and then once more for the lid of the chest. I found a pair of hinges in a box of metal parts, black iron to match the bands around each wall and the lid. The actual construction of the seaman’s chest took most of one day, and that was the easy part. I planned to artificially age the wood, which wasn’t a difficult process, only tedious. First, I bleached the wood until all the
original stain was gone and the wood was almost blond, and then I used a ferrous sulfate stain to create a weathered, gray appearance. The wood itself was already scratched and pitted and gouged from years of use, so I only had to exaggerate the effect in some places and then add another coat of the graying stain.
When I was done, the chest looked like something that might have been rescued from a shipwreck. I was pleased with it, and hoped Eden would be, too. I hauled the chest from workshop to boat, and once I’d navigated over to the peninsula, I brought it to Eden’s house.
It was mid-morning when I showed up, another clear, beautiful summer day in Traverse City. The sun was just starting to peek above the tree line in the east, shedding splintered shadows and spears of light on the beach. Eden was on the beach, with her cello. She’d set a blanket on the sand, and had brought one of her second-hand kitchen chairs out to sit on. I knew she heard me arrive, but she didn’t pause in her playing.
I recognized the music this time. She’d played it before. The first time I’d heard it was the day I’d stood outside her door and listened, unbeknownst to her. I’d heard it again, one other time. She was facing the waters of the bay, her back hunched over the cello as she sawed the bow slowly across the strings, drawing a haunting, mournful tune from her instrument. I kicked off my boots and socks, rolled up the cuffs of my jeans, and joined her on the beach. I sat in the sand a few feet away, partly behind her so as not to distract her.
I knew enough about classical music to realize, after a few minutes, that she was playing some kind of solo suite, a collection of unified pieces, although I didn’t recognize it. It was beautiful, but inherently sad. She paused between one movement and the next, taking a few deep breaths, then inhaling deeply, straightening her shoulders, and beginning once more. Her hair was loose, blonde waves shimmering in the sunlight around her shoulders, swaying as she moved. The roots were black, and I wondered, as I watched her, what she would look like if she let her hair go back to its natural color. Even more beautiful than she already was, I thought. The blonde was pretty, but her natural black would be…devastating.
I closed my eyes to listen, feeling the soul of the music weave magic around me. Wind soughed in the trees, the water of the bay lapped gently, the sun rose and warmed the air with golden light, and Eden played.
And then…she faltered. I heard the false note, the discordant scrape of the bow on the strings. I heard the gasp slip from her lips, and the choke of a stifled sob, and the sniff. I opened my eyes, and her shoulders were shaking, the bow tip trailing on the blanket, her cello resting against her shoulder.
I stood up, moved across the sand, and sat down close enough that she couldn’t miss my presence. I touched her knee briefly, and kept silent. She cried for a moment and then dragged in a shuddering breath, making herself stop.
She glanced shyly at me, wiping her eyes. “Hi,” she mumbled. “Sorry. I’m—”
“Don’t apologize. I’ll listen if you want to tell me.”
She didn’t respond right away. Instead, she closed her eyes, focused, centered, and began playing once more. This time, I recognized the piece as a well-known introduction to Bach, something I’d heard played by several soloists and orchestras. She played it masterfully, of course, but I saw a difference in the way she played it. This piece she played as if to withdraw emotionally, as if to calm herself, to push away whatever emotions had gripped her when she played the other solo. After the intro ended, she let the cello fall silent, waiting until the last note faded, and then she laid her instrument in the case, tucked away the bow, and clipped the case closed.
Only then did she look at me. “There’s not a lot to say, really. I’m just—moody. Feeling everything, I guess.” She put one palm to her belly, which was growing rounder every day. “I felt the baby kick this morning.”
“First time you’d felt it?”
She nodded. “Yeah. It…it was weird. Scary. And…incredible. It really made it real. I’m really, really having a baby. There truly is an actual human being growing inside me.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I waited a moment and then asked, “What was the name of the first piece you were playing?”
She ducked her head. “A solo I composed. There are four parts to it, so far. One for my mom, one for my dad, one for Ever, and one for Caden.”
“You wrote that?” I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. “That was…so beautiful, Eden. It was really sad, though. Some parts were full of…I don’t know. Longing? Tragedy?”
She nodded. “Thanks. Yeah, you heard me playing Ever and Caden’s parts. I composed those while Ever was in the coma.”
“Are you going to write any more?”
She shrugged. “Maybe someday.” She put both hands on her belly. “For him, or her.”
“When do you find out the gender?”
She hesitated. “In an hour.”
“An hour? Downtown?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Dr. Abernathy. On…Seventh, I think.”
I stood up and extended my hand. “Well, we’d better get going, then.”
She stood up but didn’t let go of my hand right away, confusion on her features. “We?”
“Yeah. We.”
She dropped my hand and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Carter. You’re not coming with me to my ultrasound.”
“You’d rather go alone? It’s kind of a big deal, Eden.”
A gust of wind tossed her hair across her eyes, and she brushed it away. “I know it’s a big deal. I just—”
I leaned down and grabbed the handle of her cello case. She watched me nervously, following me as I carried the huge case across the road and into her house. “You should know I’ve never, ever let another person handle my cello.”
I set the case down in the corner where I knew she kept it. “No? Is it old?”
“She nodded. Very. And…it was my mom’s. It’s the…the most special thing I own. No one touches it but me, no one carries it but me.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I just wanted to help.”
She smiled at me. “And I let you. I trust you, Carter. At least, as much as I trust anyone. And if I let you carry it, I must trust you a lot. More than I should, maybe.” She grabbed her purse off the kitchen counter. “Why do you want to go with me?”
“You don’t have to go through this alone, Eden. That’s why.”
“But I can’t—” She backed away from me as I stepped toward her.
“Just friends, something else, whatever. I don’t care. I’m not asking for anything, Eden. I’m just…here. For you. I like you, and I want to be there. In whatever capacity you need me.” She closed her eyes, going still as I stood inches away from her, brushing a wayward strand of hair from her face.
For the briefest instant, she nudged her cheek into my hand and then flinched, and turned away. “Don’t, Carter. Don’t. I can’t.”
I stepped away, cursing myself. “Sorry.”
“Yeah, sorry,” She looked up at me, anger I wasn’t expecting filling her eyes. “You’re sorry. For me. That’s all it is. I told you, I don’t need charity and I don’t want pity. This is my fucked-up mess and my fucked-up life, and I don’t need anyone trying to fix it for me. And I keep telling you, I can’t do what you want, be what you want. I can’t have…that. You. This thing between us. You fixed my house. Spent weeks and thousands of dollars. You’ve done so much, and I don’t have anything to give you. I might not ever have anything to give you. Yet you keep hanging around, and you say you’re fine with just being friends. And, damn it, I’m lonely, so I accept it. But then you do that. Touch my hair. My face. And you look at me with those fucking gorgeous blue eyes of yours and all that stupid compassion, like I—like I mean something to you.” She stopped for breath, but then barreled on. “I can’t have that, Carter. I don’t deserve that. I’ve told you that, more than once. Yet you keep…pushing. And now you’re gonna go to my ultrasound with me? Playing the couple? You’re gonna hold my h
and, too, I bet. Let me tell you something, Carter: all you’re doing is teasing me with what I can’t have. You don’t want this with me. You’ve been through your own hell, and you deserve hap—happiness.” Her voice broke on the last word. “And you’ll never find that in me. All you’ll find is trouble.”
“Your ultrasound is in forty minutes.” I moved to the door, held it open, and extended my hand to her. “Are you coming?”
She gaped at me. “Did you not hear anything I just said?”
“I heard.” I let the door close and my hand fall. “And if I choose to keep going, despite that, it’s my business. If I want to tilt at windmills, that’s my choice.”
“Tilt at windmills?”
“Don Quixote. My mom is a literature professor.” I shrugged. “It just means to do something idiotic over and over again. If there can’t ever be anything but friendship between you and me, then so be it. If I feel something more, that’s on me. I can’t and won’t just walk away from you. You need a friend, and I’m here. And guess what? I need a friend, too. And that’s you.”
“You’ve got brothers. You’ve got—everyone on this peninsula, probably.”
I shrugged. “None of them are you.”
“If you want a fucked-up hot mess like me for your friend, there’s got to be something wrong with you.”
I sighed. “Eden, just—come on.” I walked toward my truck, not waiting to see if she followed.
She did, at a distance, with her purse hanging over one shoulder, her posture defeated, looking down at the ground. I was waiting at the passenger door, and opened it for her. She stepped up on the running board, and happened to glance back at the bed of the truck, where the chest I’d made for her sat forgotten.
“What’s that?” Curiosity tinged her voice.
I followed her gaze. “Oh, shit! I forgot all about that! I made it for you.” I left her door standing ajar and opened the tailgate, dragged the chest toward myself by the edges. “I used the wood from your old floors. It’s just a chest. A seaman’s chest, I guess. I thought you could put it at the foot of your bed.”
Saving Forever (The Ever Trilogy: Book 3) Page 15