Buzzy had pulled out the hose and started dousing the remaining flames in the fire pit, and I doubted it would be lit again anytime soon.
Leala suddenly turned and came toward me. Will released me in time for Leala to fling her arms around my shoulders. I hugged her back and felt her body quaking with the fear, the relief. She didn’t say anything—and she didn’t have to. I could feel it all in the way she clung to me.
When she finally let go, she picked up the tennis ball in the grass and chucked it as far as she could into the water, and it landed with an angry splash. Then she turned and strode toward the house, never having said a single word.
Will took hold of my hands, turning them over to look at the palms and then my forearms as if still unbelieving that I wasn’t hurt. “Thank God you and Tuck are okay, Sadie Way. I don’t know how you caught him in time. It really was like you were flying.”
I didn’t know how I’d done it, either. Adrenaline, maybe. Or maybe there had been a little lake magic at work. It all seemed a little fuzzy at the moment.
He said, “For a second there, I flashed back to eight years ago when you fell in the lake, to the panic, to the overwhelming fear and the sudden wish of please—please be okay.”
My skin tingled strangely as Mama’s voice echoed in my head, talking about these water lantern festivals being the death of her. What were the odds of Tuck and me having near-death—or, at the very least, life-altering—accidents on the night of the festival? Or that he’d have his at the first festival I’d been to since my accident? And that I’d be the one to save him from harm?
It suddenly didn’t seem coincidental at all. It seemed like it had all been set up on purpose. I was supposed to have been here, to experience it. To live it. To learn from it. I glanced at the lake, instantly knowing there had been a whole lot of lake magic at work tonight.
Had the purpose I’d been searching for all along been to eventually save Tuck? I didn’t think so—I still felt the pulsing pressure inside me, but it was fainter. I was so close to understanding … so close yet I couldn’t fully grasp it. My heart pounded, my skin tingled, and my thoughts swirled, round and round, caught in a storm I didn’t yet understand.
I swayed and Will put his arm around me. “Whoa, I’ve got you.”
“I’m okay. Just a little woozy.”
He tightened his grip on me rather than releasing me. “It’s probably the adrenaline wearing off.”
“Yeah,” I answered absently, looking again at the lake. Feeling it pulsing in me. Reminding me that I was alive.
I am alive.
The tingles intensified.
“Let’s get you a drink,” he said. “Come on. Do you want me to carry you? I will.”
The humor in his voice shook me out of my headspace. “I dare you.”
He laughed, and my mood lifted, the gloom chased away by the light in his eyes. In one fell swoop, he lifted me up into his arms. “I might not put you down.”
My body was pressed against his chest, and my legs hung over his left arm. “All right by me.” I smiled. “Plus, I’m less likely to trip over my own feet this way. No need to take another header into the lake tonight.”
He shook his head. “Don’t even joke.”
“Hey ho,” Teddy exclaimed as she came out of the house and saw us. “Is there a sign-up sheet for this kind of transport? Because if so, I need a pencil. That’s my kind of rideshare.”
Bree followed closely behind her. “Sign me up, too, please.”
Will laughed but didn’t put me down as fireworks continued to burst above us.
Mama came out of the house with a cocktail in hand and shook her head at us, but there was a smile on her face. Before she could say anything that was sure to embarrass me, an air horn echoed across the lake, and she bellowed, “It’s time!”
Leala and Connor emerged from the house, still looking shell-shocked. Tuck came out holding Uncle Camp’s hand and asking every few seconds where Moo was. Uncle Camp winked at me as he passed, and Iona gave me a pat on the shoulder and a “Well done, Sadie,” that made me teary again. Mama must’ve told them what had happened.
We all headed down to the water, Will not putting me down until we reached the dock. And even then, he held my hand as we all lit the candles inside our lanterns and gathered in a semicircle, facing the heart of the lake.
Mama stepped forward, lifted her lantern, took a deep, shuddering breath, and said, “Here’s to good health, safe travels, the power of love, and the gift of life.” Then she knelt on the dock, gently put the lantern in the water, and gave it a gentle shove. She watched it float away for a moment before stepping back in place.
I tracked the lantern, bobbing gently, its candle throwing a gentle glow on the water. A swell of emotion built in me, making my chest ache, my throat tighten, my nose sting.
Buzzy stepped forward, picked up his lantern, and said, “Here’s to love always finding a way.”
Teddy went next. She held hers low, balanced on the palms of her hands. “Here’s to never being too old to realize the meaning of true love.”
Uncle Camp went next, shuffling forward to pick up his lantern, which was mostly undecorated except for a bunch of squiggly lines, and I realized he’d probably had some help from Tuck. I hoped that whatever he’d written on his wish panel in invisible ink would come true. “Here’s to life, love, and new beginnings.”
Connor walked forward. He looked at his lantern, decorated with words that made no sense to me, like red velvet sofa and roaches, but on one panel was a set of coordinates. I knew exactly what those were and what they meant.
He said, “Here’s to knowing when to let go and when to hold on. Now and forever.”
“I do!” Tuck yelled, running forward with his hands outstretched. Connor held him tightly as they set the lantern in the water and gave it a shove.
The anguish in Leala’s features had faded some as she watched her husband and little boy, the lines of her face softening with love. Tears blurred my eyes. I wanted to hug everyone here and not let go. Not for a good, long time.
Bree went next. She cleared her throat and lifted her lantern. “Here’s to making the most out of second chances and fresh starts.” Then she grinned. “I’m moving to Alabama to live with Teddy!”
There was a sudden rush of hugs and kisses, and happiness bloomed in the air, shooting high like the dazzling fireworks. It chased away the lingering traces of the earlier trauma.
Leala tucked a stray curl behind her ear and held her lantern gingerly. “Here’s to strong hearts, strong minds, strong women, and the people who love us, flaws and all.”
“Hear, hear,” Buzzy said, and everyone laughed.
Will went next. He held the lantern high, and the light fell across his face. “Here’s to the healing power of love.”
Mama said it was talking that healed, but she was not entirely correct. It was love. It always had been the best healer, and it always would be, and I was grateful to have an abundance of it in my life.
Iona walked to the edge of the dock, adjusted her sweater, and picked up her lantern. “May we always live life to the fullest. Take the trip, take the chance, make the change. Dance. Forgive. Laugh. Always love. Be the light.”
I stepped forward, unsure how to put into words what I was feeling as I watched the lanterns bob. My emotions were high, on the brink of full collapse. I’d forgotten for a while, especially eight years ago, how this festival was more about love than wishes. But I felt that love tonight. I felt its full force. I picked up my lantern, glanced over the drawings of books and hearts and music notes, past the phrase A Will and a Way, and a badly drawn picture of Leala and me and Mama, then to the candle, flickering in the night, reminding me of a time when I was floating peacefully under the water, watching orbs of light swirl around me. Just beyond the dock all the other lanterns had drifted together, one big pod, their light as a whole much stronger than those that floated alone.
I tried to keep my voi
ce steady as I said, “Where there is dark, there is light; where there is light, there is life; where there is life, there is love; where there is love, there is healing. May we never forget how lucky we are to be here together.”
A round of cheers went up as I set my lantern afloat, and as soon as I stood up, we fell into a group hug. Will and I stayed behind on the dock as everyone else started back toward the patio, to the cocktails, to the music. It was a celebration, after all.
Will had his arm around me as we watched the pod of lanterns drift away, bound together with love and wishes and hopes and dreams.
“Did you make a wish?” I asked.
“Didn’t need to,” he said. “All my wishes have already come true.”
Sighing happily, I leaned against him and tried to keep the tears from falling from my eyes. Happy tears this time.
“Hey, you okay?” he asked, tipping up my chin to see the whole of my face.
“Yeah,” I said, looking out again at the floating lanterns. “I’m just really happy to be alive.”
* * *
The stars dotted the night sky as I crept outside, sliding the door slowly behind me so it wouldn’t squeak. It was a little past two in the morning, and I’d yet to sleep.
I’d been staring at the living room ceiling, lost in my thoughts of life and love and light and darkness. But it had been the tingling sensations that had forced me to get up and go outside.
The tingles buzzed along my skin, up my arms, down my legs, along my fingers and toes. The sensation reminded me of the days when my foot would fall asleep, that feeling of numbness mixed with pins and needles as the nerve endings woke up from a deep sleep.
All this time I suspected my pain tolerance was an indication, a reminder, that part of me had died the night I’d fallen into the lake—but I’d been wrong. I realized now, with these tingles, that the lack of pain was because I’d been numb.
Numb to life.
When I first woke up in the hospital, I’d been so overwhelmed with what had happened, with my new look, with everyone around me acting so strangely, that I’d never processed what a gift I’d been given.
For eight years, I had been alive but not living. I followed the road wherever it took me, going with the flow. I never formed lasting attachments. I drifted. Lost. Restless. Hiding. Denying myself love. In a way, I was my mother. I’d been living life through others and their stories.
Now, as I finally embraced being alive, my numbness was fading, and my body, my soul, was finally coming back to life. When I stepped on a rock and pain shot through my foot, I laughed, simply because I could feel the pain. I was alive. I wanted to dance, to sing, to shout, but I had something important to do first.
Stars twinkled in the inky sky, and in the distance an owl hooted as I quickly made my way to the end of the dock. A gentle breeze blew as I sat cross-legged and just breathed in the night. Lanterns bobbed in the water, dancing in the current. I dipped my fingers in the water, swirling them around in the shape of a heart.
“Thank you, Lady Laurel,” I said, my voice carrying on the breeze. “Thank you for saving me. I’m sorry it took me so long to say so. I’ve been … numb. I wouldn’t be here without you, wouldn’t know Tuck, wouldn’t know how much I truly love my family and Will. Wouldn’t know that second chances are a gift, and that I don’t need a reason for it. I just need to be thankful because I’m still here. So, thank you, for giving me the gift of life.”
I heard the squeak of the sliding screen door and turned to see Uncle Camp shuffling toward me. I stood up and met him halfway.
He said, “I got up to get a drink and saw you out here. Thought I’d make sure you were okay.”
I looked out over the lake. “More than okay.” He gave me a strange look, and I added, “I was just thanking Lady Laurel for saving my life. It took me a long time to realize I’d never done so.”
He scratched his beard, then pulled me into a side hug. “Life can be hard, Sadie. Full of twists and turns, pain and heartache, and things that make you question whether life’s worth living. But in all my years—and there’ve been a lot of ’em, mind you—I can tell you that for every hard day, there’s an easy one. For every tear, there’s a laugh, and that love is the patch for every broken heart. Being alive’s a blessing that shouldn’t be taken for granted. Some people go their whole lives without appreciating it. Eight years is nothing. A drop in the bucket. The point is you did realize it. Eventually.”
I leaned into him, his love. “All it took was coming home … and a little lake magic.”
He pressed a kiss against my temple, and I smiled as his beard scraped my newly sensitive skin, enjoying the fact that I could feel the whisper of pain caused by his bristly whiskers.
As Uncle Camp and I stepped off the dock onto the grass, a spark of light from the fire pit made me stop in my tracks. “Did you see that? The light in the fire pit?”
“A flare-up?” he asked.
“No. It was a white light.” I headed that way and gasped when I saw Moo and the ball Leala had thrown into the lake sitting on one of the Adirondack chairs as if just waiting for someone to come along to play.
Uncle Camp laughed at the sight. “Seems Lady Laurel doesn’t want Tuck to stop playing ball with his favorite friend.”
“And living his best life,” I said, echoing Teddy as tears blurred my vision. I picked up the cow, who looked none the worse for wear for his fiery adventures, and hugged it much like Tucker would have. “He’s going to be so happy. Thank you, Lady Laurel!”
Uncle Camp looked out at the lake with such love and affection as he said, “May we always have a touch of lake magic in our lives.” He glanced at me. “No matter where we are.”
It was his way of saying he supported me no matter what I chose to do or where I chose to live, but right now, there was absolutely no place I’d rather be than exactly where I was.
Chapter
28
Sadie
For having had so little sleep, I awoke early enough on Sunday morning to join Leala and Mama on the dock for an early coffee and to see the loon float past. We’d raised our mugs in a toast to her and her kindnesses as she went by, swimming in and out of the lanterns.
When Leala had seen Moo, she’d burst into tears and had run upstairs to put him in Tucker’s arms so it was the first thing her little boy would see when he woke up. The tears were another indication that she still wasn’t herself this morning after last night’s near tragedy, but I had the feeling it would take some time for her to heal from what could have been.
I’d left her and Mama out on the dock and had come back to the kitchen to work on a batch of cinnamon rolls, which took forever to make but were absolutely worth the trouble. I’d come inside to find Iona sitting at the peninsula with a cup of coffee and said, “You should’ve joined us outside.”
She smiled. “Some things shouldn’t be interrupted. That was prime bonding time.”
It had been bonding time, and I had to admit I was going to miss it once the weekend was over. “Better late than never.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” she said.
I lifted the tea towel off the bowl of dough, which had been rising for an hour, and I was happy to see that it had doubled in size. I needed to get the dough rolled, filled, and cut for their second rise before the rest of the yoga crew woke up since, in the warm fuzziness of last night’s lantern launch, I’d promised I’d join them for their morning sun salutation. We had all promised, every last one of us, except Will, who’d gone home before the promises were made. I had half a mind to call him to have him join us, but he’d be here soon enough. We were teaming up to collect lanterns later on.
Iona topped off her mug. “From what I’ve pieced together over the last week, being here last night, for the festival, was quite a big deal for you.”
I cleaned a section of countertop, sprinkled some flour on it, and scooped the dough from the bowl. “It seems silly now that I stayed away so long.”
“Why did you?”
It was a hard question, one with several answers. “Guilt, mostly. I thought it was my wish that caused my accident. It was a selfish wish, one that set me down a path of constantly trying to prove myself, my worth. I cut myself off from everyone in an effort to figure out why I’d been saved.”
I’d been surprised when I woke up this morning to feel a familiar pulsing within me, that push and pull that reminded me so much of the water lapping against the seawall. The pulsing that constantly had me looking for why I’d been saved. I’d been so taken aback to feel it that I’d pinched myself just to see if I could still feel pain.
I could.
It took me a while to puzzle out that my numbness was tied only to my gratitude for being alive and had no connection to why I’d been saved like I’d always suspected. “I still don’t quite know why I was saved, but whatever the reason, I’m grateful I was.”
She smiled. “A grateful heart is a beautiful sight to see. You’re positively beaming today.”
“I have a lot to be thankful for.”
“Indeed.” She stirred sugar into her mug. “Do you regret leaving Sugarberry Cove all those years ago? Seems to me you’ve learned a lot about yourself, and others, during that time.”
I pushed the roller across the dough. “I regret some of it but not all. I wouldn’t be who I am today if not for the choices I made in the past. I wouldn’t have met all the wonderful people who’ve shared their beautiful stories with me. But I wish I’d made more of an effort to come back home, instead of cutting myself off completely. I hurt so many people by doing that. Mostly myself.”
“A painful lesson.”
The wooden rolling pin squeaked as it rolled across the dough, stretching it, shaping it. “But I learned from that lesson. I won’t do it again. I’m staying put. I don’t know quite how I’m going to juggle two full-time jobs, but right here and now it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I’m home for good.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Sadie. I’ve seen how happy you are here.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Perhaps your quandary isn’t so much a question of juggling but balancing.”
The Lights of Sugarberry Cove Page 28