Magnolia Bay Memories

by Babette de Jongh

  “I’ve got tickets for you too, Caroline, if you want to play any of the games.”

  “No, thank you. But after we find Mama, can we go see the puppies?”

  “Sure thing.” They went to the tent where the shelter tours started. Abby was sitting in one of the two chairs, reading a book. Her wavy brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, a few wisps escaping to twirl down her neck. She wore a cute sundress and sandals but looked a little wilted in spite of the warm breeze.

  “Hey, Abby,” Adrian said.

  She looked up from the book she was reading. “Holy sh…” Her wide hazel eyes flickered from him to Caroline. “Holy…um…sheep.”

  Abby set her book aside and walked over to study Adrian’s face. Gingerly, she lifted his sunglasses, just enough to see his two black eyes, before easing them gently back down. “You’re lucky to be alive, man,” she whispered.

  “So I’ve been told. About a million times.”

  “I didn’t think…” Abby swallowed. “It’s worse than I imagined.”

  He cut his eyes down toward Caroline. “I’m fine,” he said with emphasis. “The bruises will fade in a few days.” Or weeks, whatever. “Heather’s giving a tour, I guess?”

  “Yeah. She’ll be done in a few minutes if you want to wait here.”

  “Then we’re gonna go look at the puppies,” Caroline announced. He could tell that his accident had set his relationship with Caroline back a bit, but once again, progress was being made.

  “Yep, we are,” he agreed, smiling down at her. “I just hope they’re not too cute because I’m pretty sure your mama wouldn’t want us bringing home a new puppy, huh?”

  “Adrian,” Heather said from behind him. “Can we talk in private for a few minutes?”

  He turned, smiling, but felt the smile die when he saw her expression. Remote, resolute, regretful. The distance he’d sensed between them at the hospital hadn’t decreased overnight, as he’d hoped. Instead, it seemed that though they stood next to each other, they were worlds apart.

  Heather turned to Abby. “Don’t you think we can stop doing tours at this point?” Her tone was light, but he knew she was faking a nonchalance she didn’t feel.

  “Yeah, sure.” Abby sounded puzzled but agreeable. “Everyone who wanted a tour has probably already done it.”

  Heather knelt to talk to Caroline. “How about if Abby takes you to get a snack or something?”

  “But Adrian was going to take me to see the puppies,” Caroline said in a quiet, pleading tone. “I want to see the puppies.”

  “I’ll take you to see the puppies.” Abby held out a hand to Caroline. “Come on.”

  Instead of taking Abby’s hand, Caroline stepped up to Adrian and raised her arms, a silent signal for him to pick her up. With an apologetic glance to Heather for making her wait, he lifted Caroline into his arms and turned slightly away from both Heather and Abby.

  Caroline took his face in her small hands. “I’m sorry you got hurt,” she whispered, “but I’m glad you’re gonna be okay.”

  Touched by her sincerity, Adrian felt the unaccustomed sting of tears behind his eyes. How long had it been since he’d cried? He couldn’t remember.

  “Thank you, Caroline.” He hugged the child close, and when she patted his back and put her head on his shoulder, he realized for the first time that he had already begun to love each of Heather’s kids.

  He loved Josh’s wild exuberance, Caroline’s quiet intelligence, and even Erin’s passionate outspokenness. In the hospital last night, he’d had plenty of time to think about the life he’d been leading and the one he wanted to reach out for. He had begun to believe that maybe his life could be about more than his work and his self-indulgent pursuit of the next fun adventure. Maybe he could fit into Heather’s life, and if he tried hard enough, he could be a good daddy to her kids.

  But now, watching Heather’s expressive face, he wondered if this would be the last time he saw any of them.

  ***

  Heather spotted Reva walking toward them from the aviary with Freddy the macaw on her arm and Georgia trotting along beside her. Heather took Adrian’s arm and headed in that direction. They met up with Reva near the fence that separated Reva’s private residence from Bayside Barn’s public venue. “Reva,” Heather asked, “can we use your house for a minute? I want to talk to Adrian somewhere private.”

  “Sure,” Reva said. “Just don’t let any of the critters out. I’ve put Jack and Winky in there for the day to avoid getting them stressed with all the people around. Winky was in a hell of a mood, so I put him in a big dog crate in the laundry room. But his cat crate is right there, Adrian, so you can take him with you when you’re ready to go back home. Just be careful with the transfer because if he manages to slip out of the house, he won’t be coming back.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Heather promised.

  Reva looked back and forth between them, her expression concerned. “Is everything okay?”

  Heather hesitated, but Adrian answered. “Everything’s fine, Reva.”

  “Thanks,” Heather added. “We won’t be long.”

  Inside Reva’s old-fashioned farmhouse, a welling-up of love for Adrian threatened to swamp Heather’s determination to pump the brakes on their relationship, but she couldn’t allow that to happen. Gathering courage to say what had to be said, she perched on the edge of an overstuffed chair. Jack, the new three-legged dog, came into the room quietly. He leaned against Heather’s leg.

  Adrian pulled an ottoman up close to Heather’s chair, sat in front of her, and slipped his sunglasses up onto his head.

  She stifled a gasp at the bruising around his eyes that made the irises seem all the more blue. Without her consent, her arm reached out and her fingertips touched the swollen skin. Then her brain kicked in, and she pulled her hand back as if she’d touched a hot stove.

  Adrian leaned forward and grabbed Heather’s hands in his. “I can tell you’re gearing up to kick me to the curb, but before you say anything, please hear me out. This thing between us is happening so fast that it scares you—hell, it scares me too. I know you’re thinking that the accident was a wake-up call, a chance to back out.”

  “Not back out. I do think we need to back up to being friends though.”

  “Of course we can be friends, sure. But I had a lot of time with nothing to do but think last night, and I’ve realized that I want more than that.”

  “I’ve had time to think too. And I’m not capable of more than friendship right now.”

  “I know that the accident was traumatic. I get that. But it doesn’t have to change anything between us.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Heather pulled her hands out of his and crossed her arms. “From my perspective,” Heather said with emphasis, “it changes everything.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” He bolted to his feet and paced the braided rug between the couch and Heather’s chair. “It shouldn’t.”

  “It changes everything because it made me realize that I’ve been selfish in thinking that I could have a relationship with you or with anyone. I’m a mother, first and foremost. My first…no, my only responsibility is to protect my kids.”

  “I’m a threat to your kids?” Adrian flung his hands up. “How, exactly? You know I would never hurt your children. I wouldn’t harm them in any way. In fact, I would do anything to protect them. Even if you kicked me to the curb, I would still give my life to protect any one of them or you.”

  “I know that, Adrian.” Heather kept her voice level. “But first of all, I’m not kicking you to the curb. I’m resetting our relationship before we’re in too deep to back out.”

  “Ha!” He pointed an accusing finger at her face. “So. Now you admit it. You do want to back out. You are kicking me to the curb.”

  “No, I’m not. You’re twisting my words. I just want to go back to bein
g friends while we still can.”

  “You haven’t dated enough to know this, but the friend zone is the death knell for a romantic relationship.”

  “We haven’t known each other long enough to call this a relationship though, have we?”

  “Not a… Are you kidding me? What you’re saying makes zero sense.” He crossed his arms and studied her, his mouth tight. With exaggerated patience, he walked over to the couch and threw himself into it. “But I’m willing to listen. Go ahead. Shoot.”

  In the silence marred only by the ticking grandfather clock, she gathered her thoughts. Honesty, she decided, would be her only recourse because he could read her too well to accept a lie. “I’m falling in love you, Adrian. And you’re right. It scares the hell out of me.”

  He nodded, accepting her first declaration of love with little outward emotion beyond the movement of his throat when he swallowed.

  The ticking clock marked time.

  “I lost more than a year of my life when Dale died. So did my kids. We’re only just now getting over it, and in some ways, we’ll never be over it. Seeing…watching Dale die, right in front of us, and not being able to do anything about it… We were all scarred by it in different ways.”

  Adrian nodded. “I understand that.” To his credit, he didn’t follow up with a But…, though she knew he wanted to.

  “The bottom line is, I may have already made the mistake of falling in love with you. But the kids aren’t there yet. I need to protect them from making that same mistake. Because if we allow you to take Dale’s place—”

  “I don’t want to take Dale’s place,” Adrian butted in, his voice earnest. “He will always be your kids’ father. I wouldn’t try to diminish his memory.”

  “I know, Adrian, but it’s not even about that.”

  “Then what’s it about?”

  “I can’t…” Sudden tears swamped the back of her throat, and she tilted her head back to keep them from flooding her eyes too. She felt him touch her knee and tilted her legs gently away from him to the other side of the chair. “I can’t let you into our lives as anything more than a friend because none of us would survive it if anything happened to you. Maybe one day…”

  He moved back to the ottoman and grabbed her arms, forcing her to look into his poor, bruised eyes. “Nothing is going to happen to me. I promise.”

  She touched his cheek. “But it already has, and it could again. It’s a miracle you’re not dead, Adrian. And if you had been…” This time, she couldn’t stop the tears from filling her eyes and spilling over. “I barely managed to keep it together when Dale died. There were days…weeks…” She gave a huff of sad laughter. “Hell, there were whole months when I thought I’d go crazy.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  Confessing it all, she realized, was the only way to get through this. “I actually did go crazy sometimes.” She looked into his eyes and allowed herself to show him everything she felt. Maybe letting him know how toxic too much love could be would convince him when nothing else could. “I love my children, of course. You know that.”

  “Everyone knows that, Heather. It’s evident in everything you do.”

  “But Dale was my soul mate. We were everything to each other. When he died, I did go a little bit crazy. I screamed at Josh to go get the EpiPen, not thinking that he was too little to reach it. I screamed at Caroline to go find my phone so we could call for an ambulance. I screamed at Erin to get the damn horse out of the way because I was too scared to do it and I didn’t want to leave Dale’s side. My poor kids…”

  Heather took a shuddering breath and wiped her eyes with the tissue Adrian pressed into her hand. “My poor kids were rushing all over the place, trying to save their daddy, while all I did was sit there and hold his hand and scream at them.”

  “It was an emergency situation,” he said, too quick to make excuses for her. “Of course you would be frantic.”

  “But it wasn’t just then that I was a bad mother. There were days afterward when I couldn’t get out of bed. I just…checked out. Erin had to step up and be the twins’ mother because I…I just couldn’t. She took care of me when I should have been taking care of her. She taught herself to cook, brought me food, encouraged me to eat.… I didn’t even care that my children needed me. Sometimes, I’d send them outside to play so I could lock myself in my bathroom and scream until my throat was sore.

  “If anyone had known how badly I was coping… If the kids had said anything to their teachers, the authorities would have taken my kids away from me. And they’d have been right to do it.”

  She paused to let that sink in before hitting him with the worst of it. “There were times when I let my children take care of themselves while I locked myself in my bedroom because I was afraid of what I might do to them.”

  “You would never hurt your children.”

  “Wouldn’t I?” She twisted the tissue he’d given her. “How would you know?”

  “I know you better than to think you could harm your kids.” He put a hand over hers. “You should know yourself better than to think that.”

  “Pushed to the brink, anyone is capable of anything. My mother taught me that, when my father left us and she took it out on me. For years, she took it out on me. And that’s a lesson I’ll never forget. My kids and I have finally made it out of the woods, and now you’re trying to lure us right back in.”

  “But, Heather, you’re not your mother. And I’m not Dale. I don’t have any allergies. If a bee stung me—”

  “It was hornets.”

  “Fine. Hornets, bees, whatever. If anything stings me, I’m not going to die.”

  “And Dale wouldn’t have died if he’d carried his EpiPen with him like any normal person would have. But he didn’t because he was too much of a fucking cowboy to take simple precautions.” One of Reva’s cats hopped into her lap, and she petted its soft fur. “You’re just like him in that respect. You were a fucking cowboy on that ski yesterday. Skiing backward, doing 360s—”

  He scoffed. “I go skiing like three times a year. I’ll never ski again if that’s what it takes—”

  “Yeah, but what about all the other stuff you like to do? Hiking, you could get bit by a snake. Riding Charlie, you could fall off. My point is, I’m not capable of a romantic relationship with you right now.”

  “And if that’s not enough for me?” His eyes had gone dark, his voice deadly soft.

  “Maybe our friendship will evolve into something more—and I hope it does—but I can’t promise that it will. I’m not ready—”

  He stood and looked down at her, his expression grim. A slow-simmering anger had begun to build behind his eyes. “So you’re saying you don’t want any claim on me besides friendship. I can date who I want, fuck who I want, do whatever I want, and it won’t bother you. I’m no different to you than Quinn or Mack.”

  “Of course you’re different.” She’d said she was falling in love with him, but he seemed not to remember that now. How had this conversation devolved so suddenly? She wanted to apologize, to take it back, to jump up and wrap her arms around him. But instead she forced herself to sit still. With her hands buried in the cat’s fur, she closed her eyes and tried to gather her thoughts, to figure out what she could say to make him understand. “I’m not breaking up with you, Adrian. I just want to put the brakes on us for a while. That’s all.”

  “Yeah?” His voice sounded cold and distant. “And how long is a while?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “A day? A month? A year?”

  The anger in his voice brought tears to her eyes, but she blinked them back. “I don’t know. Maybe a year? Or a few months?”

  “Sorry, honey.” The endearment sounded like a curse. “That ain’t gonna work for me.”

  “But…” She wanted to remind him of their pinkie swear to always be friends
no matter what. But when she looked up at him, his expression took her breath away, and the words she wanted to say shriveled in her throat.

  “I guess I’ll see you at the shelter sometime. Friend.” Then he turned and walked out, closing the door with a soft and final click.

  ***

  Reva stood with Abby at the adoption event, watching Caroline commune with one of the adoptable dogs through the bars of his crate. Heather walked toward them, holding Josh by the hand and looking straight ahead with a miserable expression on her face. “Uh-oh,” Reva said to Abby under her breath. “This doesn’t bode well.”

  “What is going on?” Abby asked, also talking quietly. “I noticed a high degree of tension between Heather and Adrian earlier.”

  “It appears that she just broke up with him,” Reva said, not particularly caring that she was betraying a confidence. Heather needed to have her butt spanked, and Reva had been hoping that Adrian would do it—sweetly, of course.

  “What?” Abby squeaked. Then she lowered her voice. “I didn’t even know they were a thing.”

  “For about two minutes, maybe,” Reva said. “But it looks like Heather’s gone and trashed it.” She shook her head and made a tsking sound. When Heather reached them, Reva narrowed her eyes and speared Heather with a look.

  “Don’t judge me,” Heather said, her voice wobbly.

  “None of my business.” But her heart ached for all of them. Not just Heather and Adrian, who Reva hoped would go to his friend Quinn for solace and advice, but for Heather’s kids and that poor horse. Charlie had allowed himself to trust, only to be abandoned by someone he loved yet again. “I guess you’re grown-up enough to do what you think is best.”

  Reva knew her tone suggested otherwise. She could abide foolishness in strangers, but when she saw someone she loved making a mess of their lives—and therefore also the lives of their animals, who had no say in the matter—Reva had to admit that she sometimes took it a bit personally. “Is Adrian taking Winky with him?”