her own. She felt love, felt its pull anyway, but had no more understanding of it than Leah in her innocence did. They were looking at the same mystery from different sides. She said as much to Leah with her eyes as she let her sister’s hand drop.
Leah, with her hand paused on Brooke’s shoulder, recalled her sister’s miming of roaming fingers earlier in the day. With a mischievous glint, she darted her hand beneath the hem of Brooke’s baby-doll nightshirt and up over her stomach.
Brooke, apparently well-practiced in intercepting such attempts, grabbed Leah’s hand before it got very far and quickly pinned both Leah’s arms against her sides and rose above her sister, straddling her waist and tickling her sister as she held her arms down with her knees.
Leah shrieked in joy and torment.
Brooke stopped after a few seconds and waited for Leah’s eyes to clear then said in careful deliberation, “That’s not love; that’s sex. It’s important to know the difference.”
Leah’s eyes framed a new question. “What’s sex?”
Brooke screamed in exasperation and threw herself face down on the bed.
Leah leaned over and patted her sister on the back as if to say, “That’s O.K. Brooke. I love you anyway.” The she returned to reading her book—a Jane Austen novel, about love.
One cloudy afternoon past midweek, they were again in their cave. Most of their overheard conversations this day were from fishermen, and the fish were apparently biting, based on the exclamations and back-slapping (Brooke loved miming those) and strong odors that drifted down through the cracks in the boards. Leah had begun to wonder if Brooke were fabricating or at least embellishing some of the relayed dialogue. If so, it marked a new excursion into creativity for Brooke, who’d not previously shown such interest or ability. It didn’t matter to Leah. She adored watching her sister enact the scenes from the world above, whether they were literal or imagined or a combination of the two.
The sky grew darker, leaving little light to make its way through the cracks in the pier deck; and their “cave” seemed now the real thing, shadowed and lonely and cut off from the world. Above, fishermen rushed past, hauling tackle and coolers and folding lawn chairs toward the safety of pick-ups with camper shells. In the distance, thunder rumbled. Leah glanced at Brooke at the vibration the thunder caused. She’d already felt the approach of the storm through all her working senses. Now it was time to leave.
Brooke reluctantly agreed and started to rise from her seat on the driftwood when she suddenly stopped and raised her hand for Leah to wait.
Leah looked at her sister with evident impatience—a rare emotion but she was terrified of thunderstorms.
Why? Brooke mouthed with a painful scowl.
Leah tilted her head. She thought she could make out two people on the bench. Why would anybody be pausing on that bench now?
Brooke waited, listening intently, her mouth unmoving, her eyes closed as if that might help her hear. Why, Jackie? She mouthed, her face twisted in pain.
Leah felt another vibration of thunder, stronger this time. She rose to leave.
Brooke held her down with the gentle press of a hand on her shoulder while holding the other hand up, a single finger extended in a gesture of temporary pause.
Leah grew angry in fear. Was Brooke fabricating this conversation to goad her? She knew how much she hated thunderstorms. Why was she stalling?
Because I don’t love you anymore! Brooke’s face showed cold-hearted determination.
Leah paused in her flight, stared at Brooke.
Who is it? Brooke’s shoulders slumped in abject resignation.
Leah leaned forward in anticipation. If Brooke was making this up, she’d kill her.
Brooke looked down at her sister, a glint in her eyes. Was she teasing Leah, or waiting for a response from above.
Leah tensed. The next vibration of thunder and she was gone, with or without Brooke.
Who is it? Brooke’s resignation changed to anger and insistence.
For just a second, Leah forgot the storm. Who is it? she wondered. Who had caused this break?
There’s no one else, Sean. People just fall out of love. Brooke mouthed the words with a remote sadness.
Leah looked confused.
Who is it? Brooke looked angry now, shaking Jackie, insisting on an answer.
There’s no one else. You’re hurting me!
Silence.
I’m sorry, Sean. I’m very, very sorry.
Footsteps passed overhead.
Leah and Brooke waited, both holding their breath. They waited. There was another rumble of thunder. They should go. But they waited.
Then something fell through the cracks of the boards into Leah’s lap. It glinted in some hidden light. Leah picked the object up from the crease in her shorts. It was a ring, a simple gold wedding band. Leah froze in that pose, holding the ring out for Brooke to see.
Then she turned and rushed out of the cave, scurried down over the rocks with well-practiced ease, hit the sand running, raced up the dunes past the sign reading Do Not Climb On The Dunes, climbed over the railing bordering the pier deck, and ran out to the bench above their cave just as the storm broke.
But there was no one there. There was no one anywhere on the pier, all the way out to the fishing end where it widened out or back to where the doors opened on the market. The rain fell in big, cold drops, each like an ice pebble striking her face and head. Then it started to rain harder and heavier. Leah looked around the pier in desperation. Where was Sean? Where was the owner of this ring?
Then Brooke was beside her, wrapped her arms around her like some mothering hen, and pushed her toward the shelter of the market. They burst through the door into the market just as the wind and the deluge struck outside. Then Brooke let Leah go. The two sisters stood there, in the entry to the Penny Pier Arcade and Market, soaking wet and bedraggled, water dripping off their hair, their clothes, their bodies, onto the well-worn floor.
The attendant behind the cash register, a middle-aged woman, said, “You girls need a towel?”
Brooke looked up at the woman and said, “Yes, Ma’am. That would be nice.”
Leah looked at Brooke and started laughing, a baby’s bubbly and infectious giggle reserved now for only her sister.
Brooke could laugh too, as she caught the towel the woman tossed from behind the counter and began to dry her sister’s hair.
It became Leah’s obsession to return the ring to its owner, and she had only half a day to find the man as they’d be leaving tomorrow at noon. She had no idea what the man looked like, if he were young or old, fat or skinny, bald or with cascading locks. In her mind she pictured an average height and build fortyish man with well-trimmed dark hair starting to gray at the temples—in short, someone just like Father, an image that added urgency to her search even as she could not imagine Momma ever being so cruel to Father (but what if he’d fallen in love with someone like Jackie—how sad would he be? how sad would his children be?). In her mind she thought that if she could get the ring back to the man, it would somehow ease his pain, maybe even help mend his marriage. She had to find him. She just had to!
They went out to dinner that night to their favorite fried seafood restaurant in town. Leah stared at every man that walked past, trying to spot in each face the weight of sorrow that would surely be burdening Sean. But all the men she saw were either laughing or gorging on fried shrimp or cozying up to girlfriends or slapping the backs of guy friends or yelling at their kids to keep it down. None of these could be the crestfallen Sean. At one point Momma gently touched her hand and shook her head “No”—Stop staring at the men! It’s impolite.
Leah blushed and nodded and looked down at her food. When she looked up again, Brooke caught her eye from across the able and tapped her ring finger. That was it! She didn’t have to look the men in the eye. She could focus on their hands and look for someone with a band of pale skin where his wedding band used to be.
But that was easier sa
id than done. She quickly discovered that men liked to keep their hands moving—cutting their meat or raising the food to their mouths, gesturing to the waiter or for emphasis while telling a story, waving to someone they knew, raising their arms in surrender, boxing the ears of a recalcitrant child or caressing the cheek of a girlfriend or, sometimes, maybe a spouse. And if their hands weren’t moving, they were usually shoved deep into their pockets, even if those pockets were only the shortened ones of a pair of Bermuda shorts. By contrast, she noticed that women kept their hands much stiller—lying calmly on the table, tucked up under their chins with their long fingers curling over their cheeks, gesturing open-handed in request or offer, lying gently across a child’s shoulder or around her mate’s waist. Leah learned a lot about how grown-ups used their hands, but she had no luck in finding Sean.
As they were leaving the restaurant, she glanced over the patrons seated at the bar beyond the cash register and overlooking the ocean. And to her great excitement she spotted a male ring finger with a pale band of skin where a ring recently resided. She looked at the man’s profile. He was younger than Father and with blond hair in a crew cut. But he was old enough to be married, old enough to have lost a wife. And he was staring out at the ocean with a gaze that might’ve been forlorn. And his hands rested easily on the bar, next to his mug of beer—could that be in resignation and loss? Leah took two steps toward him. He turned
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