Remember Me

by Deborah Bedford

  “Hunter—”

  “I wrecked your car.”

  “You will pay me for the car. You had no right to do that.”

  “I stole it out of your garage.”

  “That doesn’t make me not love you.”

  Hunter and Sam tromped through the sand the same way they were tromping on each other’s hearts, getting farther and farther from the water line. They stumbled through a tangle of driftwood logs. Sam sat down hard on one of them. He pulled his nephew down at his side.

  “I heard you tell Mom that she was the one who had to take care of me—that you didn’t want to,” Hunter repeated, the same line he’d used to condemn himself before.

  Sam’s pants were dusted with sand. “Things have turned out differently than I thought they would.”

  He could see that Hunter’s anger had finally begun to drain. Sam broke off a piece of driftwood lying at their feet—part of an old, dead limb—and began scratching patterns in the crusted sand beside his feet. Hunter said in a choked voice, “It might take me half my life to pay you back, but I’m going to. I’ll get a job when we get home.”

  Sam and Aubrey stopped at the chainlink gate meant to keep visitors from the pier. Below, they could see the harbor licking the prow of the old boat. The anchor dangled from a rusty chain. A thick layer of salt encrusted the windows. Walt McCart must not have washed them in a very long time. The painted name across the stern of the vessel had worn until it was barely legible.

  No-Nonsense II.

  At first glance, the deck looked to be deserted. But Sam glimpsed the man sitting on a stool off to one side. He had a wild look about him that Sam didn’t remember. He looked as if he’d just blown in from a storm. His sandals were cracked, his feet planted wide with defiance.

  Mr. McCart’s grizzled beard made him appear old for his years. Sam couldn’t be sure whether his high color was because of sunburn or drink. Sam realized that moment that he might have been wrong. This wouldn’t be as simple as calling to him and asking to be let in. Aubrey touched his arm. “Sam? Do you see him? Now do you understand?”

  While driving Aubrey over here this morning, Sam had felt certainty instead of fear. He had felt peace instead of worry. He understood that, during the past few days in Piddock Beach, something had refreshed his heart and made it change.

  Be my first love, Father, he’d prayed. Help me minister to the one I have always put before you.

  Still, even knowing about Gary’s drinking, Sam couldn’t access the sorrow in Aubrey’s eyes. It seemed to reach into the depths of her soul. He had to make this statement. “I never understood why your father gave all the credit to your brother and never any to you.”

  She lowered her gaze to her fingers, which were wrapped around a link in the gate. “The night before he left for Vietnam he said, ‘If I get out of this town, I’ll be out of Dad’s hair. He’ll stop thinking I’m the only kid he’s got.’ Then he said, ‘I can promise you that, Aubrey.’”

  “He shouldn’t have made promises he couldn’t keep.” She pressed her forehead against the gate. “I always wondered if you came that summer.” When she shut her eyes, he could scarcely bear it.

  Sam stared at the dilapidated boat as it rocked in its mooring.

  “You always loved me, Sam. And my father never did.”

  In the distance, the man sat on the stool, listing with the boat as it rode the swells. A battered, stained fishing cap sat on McCart’s knees.

  “You have a father who loves you, Aubrey. Not your earthly father. A heavenly one.”

  “Some good that does. I wouldn’t even know how that feels.”

  He tucked her hand over his elbow, compelled to pursue this. The soil of her spirit had been tilled; he could not turn away.

  “What do you want out of your life, Aubrey? All the times we’ve talked, you’ve never said.”

  She opened her eyes and lifted her head. “I want to have a family that doesn’t fall apart.”

  “You have a God who will always think you’re amazing, a savior who died for you.” He moved a tendril of her hair behind her ear. “He sees you as everything good you can be.”

  She was still gripping the gate with both hands. He was surprised, suddenly, to realize she was wearing a wedding ring. She’d caught him looking at it. “I still love Gary. I love the man he is when he doesn’t drink. Weren’t you going to ask me about that, Sam?”

  He said nothing.

  “I put the ring away for a little while.”

  She reached for the latch on the gate and opened it. For the first time, Sam realized it hadn’t been locked.

  “He took me to an aunt’s house that summer.” She held the gate open. “My mother’s sister. He never wanted me to live with him again.”

  “Were you—?” He studied a cloud above her head. Above him, seagulls bantered in the sky. He hesitated, not knowing how to ask this. “Your neighbor told me there might be a child.”

  Her smile did not reach her eyes. “That’s what always goes around town, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “But if that isn’t it, what is it that your father blames you for?”

  “Maybe he just blames me for not being my brother.”

  Walt McCart leaned slightly toward them as they neared, his ragged brows furrowed, obviously uncomfortable at being approached. It the brief moment after Sam stepped aboard and offered his hand, Walt’s eyes seemed to be the only entrance into the past. Although they had aged, they were still familiar, pale blue, sun-faded, the color of the ocean in a glass. These were kind eyes whose owner offered him the paradise of fighting salmon being reeled in with a rod.

  The fishing hat fell to the deck when Walt stood, and Sam shook the man’s hand. “I’m Sam Tibbits. My dad and I used to fish at your place.”

  But Walt McCart wasn’t peering at Sam anymore. He was eyeing his daughter, who had also come aboard. He stood from the stool so fast that it toppled over. He unknotted the stern rope from its mooring and let it fall into a coil on the deck.

  Walt picked up his hat and dusted it against his discolored pants. He yanked it onto his balding head.

  “Dad. Don’t.”

  “I told you not to come back here again. Didn’t I say that?”

  “Daddy,” she cried. “I’m your daughter. I can’t help that I’m not Kenneth. Please tell me why you won’t have a thing to do with me.”

  “Get off my boat.”

  “Why won’t you look at me?”

  Sam said, “Aubrey—”

  “Why did you sell your boats and send me away when we needed each other most?” Aubrey squeezed her knuckles against her mouth. “Won’t you look at me and see what you have instead of what you don’t?”

  There was a moment when it seemed like the world held its breath. Walt reached for the throttle. If he started the boat now, they would both be thrown overboard. But he didn’t. He stayed his hand.

  “There was a bee in your lifejacket on the day your mother died. She bent to help you because you had gotten stung. She never saw the boom swing toward her.”

  “Daddy. I . . . ”

  McCart gazed past the harbor’s mouth to the buoys that marked the open sea. “I’ve never been able to be fair to you, Aubrey. You and I both know that. I can’t help myself, no matter how hard I try.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Sam held the car door open as Aubrey loaded her duffel bag into the back seat. The warning bell buzzed for having the key in the ignition, the door open. Neither of them noticed the painful pinging.

  “I have to do this,” she said, staring down at Sam’s hand on the door. “The kids need me to stand beside their father in respect, not to run away in shame.”

  The door handle felt hot beneath his hand.

  “If I hide it from them any longer, I give Gary’s struggle power over all of us.”

  “I’m proud of you, Aubrey.”

  “Are you?” He could tell by her eyes that she was hungry to hear it.
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  “Yes.”

  She pressed her fingers to his lips. “I’m not willing to lose everything to bitterness the way my own dad did.”

  “Maybe he won’t have to give up everything,” Sam said. “Don’t give up with him. Keep trying.”

  “Oh, Sam.”

  “It was good to see you again,” he said gently.

  She answered, “It was good for me, too.”

  In order to go forward, to go ahead with what the Father intended for their lives, neither of them wanted anything left behind.

  When Aubrey gripped his wrist and raised her eyes to his, he closed his eyes for a moment. He held his breath, feeling the warmth of her heart, the warmth of her hand. He knew this would be the last time they would ever see each other.

  “Aubrey McCart.” He said her name one final time. And they both knew that, although some parts might not be easy, they would follow their journeys through to completion.

  I give Aubrey to you, Lord. Heal her marriage, Father. I’ve held on to the dream of her for way too long.

  “Go find your life, Sam.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll be praying for you and Gary. I also promise you that.”

  He let go of the car and she gripped the lapels of his shirt. “I believe you.” She smiled. “After all these years, I believe that you are one who will keep your promises.”

  Her CD case was tented upside down on her front seat. He saw her lips trembling. He knew then that they could put the moment off no longer. All had been said, and done. He covered her hands with his own. She gripped his shirt tighter. He never wanted to let her go.

  “Thank you,” she mouthed to him. He could see flecks of light in her clear, green eyes. He remembered once how she’d told him about the green phosphorescence in the sea.

  When she stood on tiptoe to kiss him, he lowered his mouth to hers. He could feel her heart hammering against their joined hands. Sam kept her against him a little longer than he thought proper. But this needed to make up for a lost summer, a hurting, confused boy, a daughter who never knew her mother. He thought, This, then, is the way we will leave it. The kiss we share will be a kiss of good-bye. After he released her, she fumbled with the key. He took one last glimpse of all that blustery, free hair before she shut the door.

  By the time Aubrey backed out of the cottage parking lot, the sun was glinting on the window and he couldn’t see her face. He stepped out into the street to watch her go. He watched until her car became a speck.

  The windows glinted once more as she turned into the distance. He kept waving for a long time, even though he could see her no more.

  The candles inside the church in Piddock Beach had all been lit for the service. The smell of vanilla permeated the air and the ivory wax cast a warm, living glow. The pipe organ played as worshippers filed inside, rustled hymnbooks, and found a place to sit.

  Outside along the water, a squall had begun. Rain peppered the ground, leaving pocked holes in the sand. Whitecaps tossed buoys at the mouth of the bay. The whale-watching excursions had been cancelled for the day.

  The gray clouds darkened the church’s square-cut stones, the granite headstones in the cemetery and the shadows along the twin steeples. Inside the sanctuary, as Pastor Solomon Fraser stepped in to start today’s sermon, the stainedglass windows looked flat and dull; the pictures of seagulls and lighthouses could be seen only faintly.

  Sam didn’t know why he’d felt such a need to come today. Perhaps he came to mourn his lost love of a girl, perhaps he came in thanksgiving because he had discovered his lost love of God, perhaps both.

  Hunter had not wanted to come with him. Sam had planned to leave directly after Solomon Fraser’s message. But a torrent of rain had started outside. Worshipers sheltered themselves in the front foyer, not yet ready to dart out into the rain. The front foyer was a bottleneck.

  Sam was inching toward a side exit when he saw Solomon moving toward him through the crowd. He smiled, nodded his head.

  “I’m so glad to see you. I’d been hoping for a way to talk to you.” Solomon offered his hand. “Would you come to my study for a minute? This way please.”

  Sam followed, his curiosity getting the best of him.

  The room they entered was lined with heavy walnut shelves, much different from the study that Sam kept elsewhere. The downpour outside cast each item on Solomon’s desk in a cool, pewter hue.

  Sam made himself comfortable in the wingback chair that faced the desk.

  “I did not tell you this when you visited before.” Solomon shrugged out of his robe and hung in on a hatrack beside him. “I am retiring in a few months. It is time for this, and I am ready. But still, as you must imagine, it is . . . difficult.”

  Sam felt his throat working. He did not know where this might lead.

  “It is unusual to do things this way, I know. They have started building a search committee. And, of course, the position must be filled with someone of proper training and vision.”

  “I understand.”

  “This is a church any pastor would wish for.” Solomon positioned himself in his chair and braided his fingers behind his head. “This congregation makes everyone welcome. They are used to visitors on the beach; they make everyone welcome.”

  Sam thought he must have gone pale. Solomon stopped and asked if he needed a drink of water.

  “I’m fine.” Sam shook his head.

  “It is a church where the call to reach out for Christ is taken quite seriously.”

  Sam gripped the handles on the chair.

  “I know this might be dangling a carrot in front of you, but I don’t want to go further without your permission. I wondered if you would allow me to submit your name.”

  He was clinging to the chair so tightly that his knuckles had gone white.

  “I sensed something in you from the very first time I saw you, Sam. And I know that you have an affinity for the area.”

  “Solomon,” he choked out the words, considering the offer earnestly. “You will never know how honored I am.” A spark had begun to take hold inside him that could not be held back. “I understand what it is like to leave a beloved congregation in the hands of another.”

  “Well? What do you think?” Solomon tilted his head in expectation of an answer.

  And Sam said, “The Piddock Beach chapter of my life is over, Solomon. What awaits me is back home.”

  Aubrey could have chosen to drive straight down the coast, or she could have turned inland. The coast offered more tranquil beauty, a longer time of contemplation, more challenging driving. The highway, which took her smack-dab down the spine of Oregon and California, would carry her south to Emily’s in half the time. Aubrey chose the more scenic route, the one with hairpin turns and blind corners, not because she wasn’t anxious to arrive at her destination, but because the view pleased her, the glorious heights as the road threaded its way out of the trees, the vast contour of sand etching the coast, the commas of whitecaps stretching farther than she could ever see.

  She followed a route not so different from the route she had followed in her own life. It afforded her the time to think about herself, and her earthly father Walt McCart, and her heavenly Father, who loved her above all things. Aubrey was able to pull off and park the car often, to stand atop the headlands, overlooking what felt like the edge of the world. As she gazed over the panorama of sky and dune and coastal forest, she knew she would return again to her father’s boat. She would return with courage to the slip where Walt McCart’s boat was moored. She would say, I choose not to pull away from you, Father. I am available to you when you are ready. Sam has showed this to me. With God’s help, the wound you’ve carried doesn’t have to be a wound in me, too.

  That would be a healing for another day. But for now, Aubrey knew where this drive must take her. Not to confront her past, but to secure her future.

  Aubrey spent one restless night in a mission hotel near San
Luis Obispo, waking often, praying, checking the clock. She rose before dawn, grabbing breakfast at McDonald’s, balancing the paper cup of coffee between her knees.

  When she steered inland toward The Five and began to fight traffic in earnest, cars zipped past her on both sides, boxing her in. But she kept her speed steady. She didn’t feel hemmed in. She felt waveswept and windblown, refreshed, born anew, free.

  She parked in front of Emily’s house and took two deep breaths, leaning her head against the seat, admitting to herself that she was afraid. It would be so easy to start the engine again and flee. But to hide the truth about Gary from the children, though she’d thought she’d been hiding it in love, could be to buffer them from the very power in the family that God wanted them to grow accustomed to and expect.

  She needed only to stand beside her husband and define healthy boundaries and let him know she loved him and was proud of him, that she opened her heart to how he wanted to heal so he could lead his family.

  She could do this. She could.

  No, she could not. Only God could.

  Because of Sam Tibbits, she had begun to rely on a Holy God who wanted to grow her by playing out an adventure.

  And, oh, how Aubrey had always loved adventures!

  Emily’s screen door banged open and out jumped Hannah, her little legs pumping, her limbs flying akimbo. “Mom! What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to take you home.”

  Hannah looked around. “Where’s Daddy?”

  “We’ll pick him up soon. In a little while. But the rest of us need to be together before that.”

  I will never leave you or forsake you.

  “Aunt Emily is taking us to get hamgurbers,” Hannah chirped like a little bird.

  “Really?”

  She lofted Hannah into her arms, assaulted by the chubby little limbs that encircled her like a vice. Years later, Aubrey would remember this moment not in tight-knit details, but in small, precious blurs: the others spilling into Emily’s yard to welcome her; the brilliant turquoise of Channing’s new gypsy skirt; the shape of Billy’s hands as he leapt to catch the lowest branch of a tree. She would always remember the musty smell of Hannah’s hair as Hannah smattered her face with kisses, Billy’s socks wrinkled around his ankles. So much innocence, Aubrey wanted to cry. And she would remember Channing’s eyes, the same gray hue as an encroaching squall.