by Grace Palmer
She laughed, and he had the same annoying, niggling question he’d had all day—was she laughing with him or at him? He still hadn’t landed on an answer. It was driving him nuts. She was driving him nuts.
Truth be told, he hadn’t thought much about women since Rose. It wasn’t a stretch to say she’d broken his heart last year. He was man enough to admit that now. She’d opened the door to a happy little life and then slammed it shut in his face. That wasn’t all Rose’s fault, he knew. She had baggage. Emotional scars, and the fear to go with it. But still, that didn’t stop him from getting hurt by what she had told him. I can’t do this. I’m sorry. He still shuddered every time he thought about the note she’d written.
He wondered where she was now, what she was doing.
Then, with a massive act of willpower, he wrenched his attention back to the present. Ally was on the phone. He could hear her breathing impatiently.
“What’re you doing?” she asked him.
He looked around. Henrietta was curled up on her bed in the corner, but she was awake and eyeing him, as if trying to decide whether or not he ought to be taking this call. “I am—I was—sleeping. Your dad worked us hard today.”
Ally laughed again. “He does that. He’s a softie though.”
“For you, maybe.”
“Definitely for me,” she agreed. “I’m his little angel.”
“Why do I get the feeling you aren’t all that angelic?”
For the third time in the last minute, she laughed. She laughed an awful lot. Brent was starting to realize that he liked that about her.
“Guilty as charged,” she admitted. “As a matter of fact, that’s why I was calling. Wanted to see if you could show me how to get into a little trouble around here.”
“How’d you even get my number?” he asked, bewildered.
“Your boss gave me your business cards.”
“Marshall is not my boss,” Brent corrected sternly. When he realized how petulant he sounded, he relaxed and chuckled at himself.
“Boss, boyfriend, whatever. We don’t have to put a label on it if you don’t want to.”
He knew she was messing with him, but it prickled him nonetheless. “He’s not that either.”
She changed the subject. “How’s your girlfriend?”
This time, he was ready to banter. “Imaginary,” he shot back.
“I hope she’s nice.”
“She is. Pretty, too.”
“She sounds lovely. I hope you two have a wonderful life together.”
Brent settled back onto the couch, smiling despite himself. “What kind of trouble are you trying to get into, anyhow?”
He could hear her grin through the phone. “Now you’re talking my language,” she said. “Depends—what do you have on tap?”
He started to answer, then caught himself. “I shouldn’t even be on the phone with you. You’re a client. This is a bad idea.”
“Was a client,” she corrected. “Trip’s over. I left my client status on the boat. Now, I’m just an innocent citizen looking for something to do on a Saturday night. Where’s the harm in that?”
Brent sighed. Something about this screamed trouble—Ally herself screamed trouble—and yet, he found himself getting drawn in. She just seemed like pure, unadulterated fun. Was that such a bad thing? Was that so wrong? He was a twenty-three-year-old man with no plans on a Saturday night. Was it such a bad thing to go see what Nantucket was up to tonight?
“So what’s it gonna be, sailor boy?”
An idea popped into his head. He grinned. If he’d had a mirror in front of him, he knew exactly what he would see in his reflection—a grin that looked exactly like Ally’s. Henrietta whined in the corner.
“Ever throw an ax?”
Thunk. The ax buried itself in the wooden target just left of center.
“Bull’s-eye!” Ally cried, throwing her hands up in victory.
Brent laughed. “That’s a little shy of a bull’s-eye, cowgirl.”
“Yeah, well, I’m shooting from the men’s tees, so I get a little bit of a bump to my score.”
Brent scratched his head. “I don’t remember agreeing to that?”
Ally poked him in the chest. “You didn’t have to. I’m the guest. I set the rules around here.”
“I don’t remember agreeing to that, either.”
She sashayed away to the little table they were occupying at the far end of the ax-throwing lane. He watched her walk, trying not to be too obvious about admiring her. She was wearing a long blue sundress, despite a little bit of a chill that had set in once the sun went down. She didn’t seem to mind the coolness of the air. Her tanned shoulders were exposed by the thin straps. Brent could swear that the sun on the boat that day had brought out a few more freckles across her collarbone.
She was pretty, there was no denying that. But, in all honesty—Scout’s honor and all that—that wasn’t her chief appeal to Brent. She just didn’t seem to care about anything at all. It was like she was doing cartwheels through life without ever once worrying if she might fall. Brent couldn’t exactly relate. But her energy was intoxicating nonetheless.
“Well, we’re all out of axes,” he said as he joined her at the table. “What’s next?” She took a long sip of the beer. He’d stuck to his guns and ordered a seltzer, though he wanted badly to join Ally’s party and drink the pitcher of beer she’d ordered. Still, he knew that that way held only trouble. No, best to let Ally do the drinking.
She smacked her lips as she drained her glass. “Thought I’d ask you the same question.”
He weighed the options. “There’s a billiards hall down the way if you shoot pool or throw darts or whatever. Could go dance at the Chicken Box, or—”
“I’ve got a better idea,” she cut in. She had that fiery gleam in her eyes. Before she even opened her mouth to say what the idea was, Brent knew he was in. All the way in, head-first-into-the-deep-end in, hook-line-and-sinker in. That was a dangerous thing to feel, but he felt it anyway, and on a night like tonight, he wasn’t going to second-guess it. Just go with the flow. Do the cartwheel. Take the plunge.
“Oh yeah?”
“Let’s go swimming.”
He laughed. “Sounds like fun, if you’re into hypothermia. It’s still only April. Might’ve been a warm spell, but the water is still—”
“I’ll drive!” She snagged his car keys off the table and took off running. Brent stood still for a minute. When he realized she wasn’t coming back, he dropped some cash on the table to pay for their ax-throwing and drinks, and took off running after her.
Ally had the car pulled up in front of the bar by the time he got out there. She flashed the brights on and off a half-dozen times, then laid on the horn a half-dozen times more. The music was cranked on high, too, some booming pop song on the radio. Brent was mortified. People were leaning out from the bars and restaurants up and down the street, trying to see who was causing such a ruckus. He ducked his head as he hustled into the car.
“What on earth are you doing?” he exclaimed. “People are watching!”
Ally laughed. Her eyes were gleaming. “Let ’em watch!”
He knew this was a losing battle, so he changed the subject. “We’re not swimming,” he argued. “That’s crazy talk.”
“Maybe you oughta learn to talk crazy sometimes, sailor boy,” she shot back with a wild grin.
“This is—you’re—jeez, just … You shouldn’t be driving!”
“Why not?”
“You were drinking!”
She ran a hand through her long blonde hair and shrugged him off. “I had like two beers. I’ll be fine. Relax; this ain’t Catholic school. It’s okay to break the rules sometimes.”
He didn’t have much of a chance to keep arguing, because just then, she floored the accelerator in his truck and they went sailing down the road. Ally seemed to be following the signs for the nearest beach. Brent, for his part, was white-knuckling the door handle. She didn’t
seem to be too drunk to drive by any means. He was actually fairly impressed by her ability behind the wheel, though she was for sure way more reckless than he ever would’ve been. They took corners at breakneck speed, but she never once faltered. It wasn’t fear of crashing that kept Brent squeezing the daylights out of the handle. It was fear of Ally herself.
She was too open. She didn’t seem to have any demons at all, at least not like he did. She wasn’t worried about guilt or responsibility or any of the things that weighed so heavily on Brent’s soul most hours of the day. As far as he could tell, she was mostly worried about wringing as much fun and emotion out of the world as she could, like squeezing every last drop of water out of a wet towel. She laughed loud and drove fast and drank quickly. And when she decided she wanted to go for a swim, she didn’t check the temperature first. She just dove in.
Coincidentally, that seemed to be more or less exactly what she had planned. When they reached the parking lot for the beach, she threw the car in park and leaped out, leaving the keys in the ignition and engine running. Brent cursed again, retrieved the keys, and chased after her.
But the strangest thing happened as he ran down the path to the beach. It felt like he got lighter with every step. Like gravity was loosening its hold on him, or maybe he was just—for the first time in the last twelve months—outrunning his demons. The wooden boardwalk turned into sand, and as he burst out of the dunes, he saw Ally running ahead of him. The moon was bright tonight. It lit up the beach in a smooth white glow. Where it hit Ally’s skin, it shone back, almost brighter for having touched her somehow.
She didn’t stop. Brent thought she would’ve at least taken off her dress, maybe, but she didn’t seem to even consider the possibility. She just kept running, from the soft sand into the wet sand and to the edge of the water. She didn’t stop there, either. He could hear her laugh as the waves tickled her toes, then her ankles, then her knees. The hem of her dress was floating behind her in the water, and still she kept going, until she couldn’t touch the bottom anymore. Then she started swimming straight out, like she was headed for the horizon.
He was frozen in place, right where the ocean met the sand. It looked dark and foreboding out there, even with the full moon skimming off the wave caps. He had two choices, as far as he could tell. He could sit and wait for her. Or he could shuck off his shoes and run in after her.
Staying on shore was safe.
Running after Ally was unknown.
But he’d been playing life safe for a long time now. Maybe you oughta learn to talk crazy sometimes, sailor boy.
Brent stood on one foot and ripped off his boot, then did the same with the other. He threw them over his shoulder and ran until the water was hugging his torso and he couldn’t run anymore. He started swimming then, taking big, slashing strokes with his arms. His shoulders ached and he swallowed a fair amount of saltwater, but he didn’t stop. Not until he finally reached Ally, treading water out past where the deep swells turned into whitecaps.
“I wasn’t sure if you were gonna come out this far,” she said. The moon lit up her face.
Brent smiled back. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure, either.”
“Well,” she said, touching her chin as if she was deep in thought. “To the victor go the spoils, right?”
He wasn’t sure what she meant. But when she reached out to grab his soaking wet shirt and pull him towards her to plant a kiss on his lips, he wasn’t too worried about it anymore.
19
Holly
Sunday afternoon.
Everything was happening so fast! Holly felt like she was in one of those cartoons where something zoomed by her so quickly that it made her head literally spin around on her neck. One second, she was crying on her couch and terrified that her husband, her high school sweetheart, the love of her life and father of her children, was cheating on her. The next second, they were in the car on the way to go house-hunting in Nantucket. It still didn’t quite make sense, but Holly was in such a good mood these days that she didn’t even want to question it.
“Think the kids will be nice to your parents?” she asked.
“I gave them both a lecture on behavior before we left,” Pete said. He was behind the wheel of their minivan as he pulled onto the highway, bound for the ferry to Nantucket. “Two lectures for Grady.”
Holly grinned. She always knew when Pete was hiding something. “And …” she prompted.
He smiled sheepishly. “And I promised him that I’d buy him a new video game if I got a good report from Pop-Pop and Memaw.” When Holly started laughing at him, he protested, “Gotta show ’em both the carrot and the stick, you know? C’mon, now, that’s just good parenting.”
“What did you bribe Alice with?”
“Had to get creative with that one. Five homemade certificates, redeemable anytime for ice-cream night with Daddy. Limited to one use per week, no school nights.”
“Very creative indeed,” she admitted. She loved when Pete was like this. Ever since he’d told her about his grand plan to move the family to Nantucket and turn their lives around, it was like this massive weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He was her Pete again. He sang in the shower, he rehearsed elaborate high-five routines with Grady, he brushed and braided Alice’s hair with Bobby Fischer-like intensity. He was the man she loved, and she loved that she loved him. She loved everything these days. The very air itself seemed sweeter, the sun seemed brighter.
She was going home.
It took her by surprise how excited she was about that. She knew she loved Nantucket, but she never expected that she’d miss it this much. With all the time and attention it took to raise two kids as a stay-at-home mother, she’d pretty much just buried those feelings in the back of her head. As if she didn’t even have the energy to realize that she wanted to be back in the place she grew up. The tap water didn’t taste right in Plymouth, she was just now noticing, and the traffic lights were different. People usually didn’t wave and smile at you on the sidewalk here, and even when they did, it felt fake and forced and just plain weird. Not like the charm of her hometown.
Going house-shopping was an unexpected treat, too. Holly loved houses, interior decorating, all the things that went into that. She was shy to admit it sometimes—she was enough of a girly girl already, wasn’t she?—but sometimes when the kids were asleep and Pete was working, she would stay up all night watching HGTV house remodeling shows and shouting at the TV whenever she disagreed with their design choices. She couldn’t wait to see what might be available for them. She knew for sure they’d find something special. But, even more than the new house itself, what she was excited about was possibility. Hope, in other words. It was practically a foreign emotion at this point. But, goodness gracious, it felt wonderful.
So wonderful, in fact, that she rolled down the window of the car as they merged onto the highway and let out a whooping cry of joy. The wind blew her hair into a crazy mess as they accelerated up to fifty, sixty, seventy miles per hour, but she couldn’t care less. Pete looked at her.
He chuckled. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I just love you,” she said. She was giddy, silly. Had Pete always been so cute? Had he always looked so good in his glasses? Had he always had such nice, strong forearms? She loved her husband so much in this moment. She leaned over the center console between them and planted a kiss on his cheek.
Pete put one hand on her knee as he drove with the other one. “I love you, too,” he said. It felt like they were back in high school, just driving aimlessly around Nantucket with nowhere to be and nothing to do but love each other.
It had been so long since Holly had felt this free.
She never wanted it to end.
It was going to be a beautiful day in Nantucket, so Pete and Holly decided to leave the car on the mainland, take the fast ferry in, and just use bikes to get around. Holly was squirming in her seat with excitement the whole way over. Fortunately, the fast ferry from Hyann
is took only an hour, so they were there in no time at all.
She took a deep breath as they disembarked. “We’re home!” She threw her arms around Pete’s neck. “I can’t believe we’re moving back.”
“I can. It’s gonna be great.”
Brent met them at the ferry terminal with a pair of bicycles from the house on Howard Street stashed in the bed of his truck. He looked like he’d had a late night, but when Holly asked him what he got up to, he just mumbled something nonsensical, gave them a tired smile, and took off home.
“Wonder what kind of mischief he got into last night,” Pete remarked. “That was awfully abrupt, even for your brother.”
Holly shrugged. “Who knows? He’s been all over the place these days. Hopefully, it was good trouble.”
“He looked kinda happy though, didn’t he?” Pete said. “Like … more relaxed. More so than he was at Christmas, at least. He looked pretty glum then. Maybe he met someone.”
“You never know!”
Equipped with bicycles, they went riding off. Holly had assembled a list of open houses that were available for viewing that day. She figured they’d eventually secure a realtor when they narrowed down what exactly was possible within their price range. But she knew the island like the back of her hand, and she was so excited that she wanted to be very hands-on with the early part of the house-hunting process. So off they went to their first stop.
The first few houses were all not quite right for one reason or another. One needed quite a bit of work to the kids’ bathroom, while another had shag carpet and mirrored walls installed everywhere that might have been fashionable fifty years ago, but now felt horribly dated. Still, it was fun to walk through the houses holding Pete’s hand and imagining what it would be like to live in this one or that one.
Pete seemed to be having a good time, too, though he didn’t quite share Holly’s fondness for the intricacies of interior design. She’d wax melodic about crown molding or accent walls, and he would just nod and smile. “I see what you mean, dear,” he’d say. Whether he saw or not didn’t really matter. She was just glad that he was here with her.