“None of this is your business.”
“I wish to God that were true.” Sloane stood and for a moment Elise thought he would leave. Instead, he began to pace the length of the room. “I made it my business seventeen years ago. I haven’t forgotten what we meant to each other; I haven’t forgotten you.”
He heard her quick intake of breath, and he stopped to search her face. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” he said with his familiar cynical smile, “I haven’t been carrying a torch. When you refused to go with me, it destroyed whatever we’d had. Except…” His voice trailed off.
“Except what?”
“Except that I wanted to be completely free of this place. I wanted to leave without another thought. Instead, you kept a part of me behind with you. I’ve felt the pull all these years. I’ve never been able to forget Miracle Springs the way I’ve wanted to forget it.”
“And you blame that on me. Convenient.” She was surprised that she was capable of such cold sarcasm. Inside she felt wounded, bleeding.
“You were the only person in this town besides a few relatives who ever meant anything to me.”
“You have a funny way of showing me I was once important to you.” Elise stood, too. She felt much too vulnerable sitting while he towered above her. “You come into my house and demand to know if I’ve wasted the last seventeen years of my life. You haven’t written or called or visited me in all those years, and yet you believe you have the right to answers.”
“We both know I have the right.”
Sloane was facing her now, and they were only inches apart. “Get out,” she said, as calmly as she could manage.
“Believe it or not, Elise, I want to know you were happy. I’d like to know I was wrong when I told you that you were throwing away your life.”
She wanted nothing more than to tell him that he had been wrong. She wanted to pull out warm, happy memories to flaunt in his face. But warmth and happiness had been missing from her life. Except for her students and Amy Cargil, no one had really touched her in seventeen years.
“I’m exactly what you see, Sloane. An old maid schoolteacher living in a house that hasn’t changed since you left. My mother died a bitter woman unable to reach out to anyone or appreciate anything that was done for her. I’ve spent my whole life giving love and not getting much in return.” She lifted her head a notch.
“But there’s something you can’t see, too,” she continued. “I’ve taken more risks than you’ll ever take, even though I stayed in Miracle Springs and you went off to see the world. I’ve given love, with absolutely no guarantee of having it returned. And I don’t regret one instant. I may be weak. I may be afraid of change. But I’m not afraid to give myself. Can you say the same?”
She had summed up the totality of his life in a few sentences, just as he had done for her. Sloane was shocked at her insight and more shocked that she would use it on him. Perhaps she didn’t think that she’d changed, but this one change was obvious to him. The Elise Ramsey he had known would never have fought back so effectively. Silently he applauded her courage.
“No,” he admitted, “I can’t say the same. I’ve lived for myself.”
“Has that made you a happy man?”
“Does such an animal exist?”
“I’d like to think so.”
“That’s always been one of the differences between us.”
Elise could feel her anger melting away. For a moment Sloane’s voice had lost its chill, and she could hear the echoes of the young man she had known and loved. Was it possible that Sloane was still vulnerable? That he too was searching for that elusive something that made life worth living?
“I think if you give up on happiness, you do yourself a great disservice,” she said softly. Unconsciously she leaned closer to him. “I’d rather spend my life looking for it and not find it than give up the search and miss it when it’s right in front of my nose.”
Sloane resisted the temptation to cover the distance between them. He could smell her sweet fragrance, a faint, floral smell that reminded him of orange blossoms and night-blooming jasmine. He felt something twist inside him, something that hadn’t moved in years.
He’d wanted plenty of women, but this feeling was different. It angered him.
“And if you had to reach out for this so-called happiness, Elise, could you do that now? Could you leave safety to find love?” His voice was cold again.
“You’ve never forgiven me, have you?” Elise took a step backward. The warmth she had begun to feel died. “I was young and afraid. And I felt a tremendous sense of duty to my mother. You never understood fear or duty. We were so different.”
Sloane shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”
“I’ve never forgiven you, either.” Elise found his eyes and held them. “All I asked for seventeen years ago was a little time. I wanted the summer to help my mother adjust to my father’s death. I’d have gone with you in the fall. Nothing would have stopped me.”
“I didn’t believe it then and I don’t believe it now. But why are we torturing each other about an adolescent love affair?” Sloane looked at his watch. Both of them knew the gesture was a ruse. “I’ve kept you up long enough.”
Elise wanted to protest. Now that they had begun, they needed to finish. But she didn’t let her feelings show. “I won’t say I was glad to see you,” she said honestly. “I hope the next time we meet we’ll have a more cordial conversation.”
“I doubt that we’ll be having many conversations at all. I’m working on ideas for a book while I’m here, and I’m going to be busy.”
“Then the best of luck,” she said with exquisite self-control. She wanted to shout at him, rage at him for running away before they could finally, once and for all, put an end to their past. “Please tell Clay I’ll be looking forward to seeing him at school.” She turned and found her way to the hall and the front door.
Sloane’s face was a mask. He followed her, trying not to notice the graceful femininity of her walk or the sensuous veil of hair that shimmered under the lights in the hallway. Why had he come? Better yet, why had he reacted so strongly to her? He always understood his own motivations, but his reasons for this visit to Elise were a mystery. Miracle Springs was already weaving its cloying spell around him. He’d be damned if he’d be its helpless victim.
“Good night, Elise,” he said as he stood in the open doorway. Against his will he searched her face for a clue to what she was feeling. But her face was carefully blank.
“Good night, Sloane.” She waited a split second, and then added, “If you ever decide you’d like to finish this conversation, I’ll be available.” She smiled a little, knowing she had effectively had the last word. Even if Sloane never came back, she had made it clear that she knew he was the one who had lacked courage this time. With a small flourish she closed the door in his face.
CHAPTER FOUR
Clay fiddled with the straps of his backpack, adjusting and readjusting until its weight was distributed perfectly. “I guess I’m ready.”
Sloane was surprised by the hesitation in his son’s voice. In the months they’d been together, Clay had shown an inbred self-confidence in every new situation. Whatever his secret anxieties, he radiated a quiet composure and strength of character far beyond his years. But this morning, his first morning at Miracle Springs High, he seemed like the adolescent he really was.
Somehow, Sloane found this reassuring.
“Feeling a little worried?” he asked Clay.
Clay looked up and gave his father a tentative smile. “Yeah.”
Sloane allowed himself a moment to run through his private and all too familiar litany of resentments. His son should not have to feel this apprehension. Going to school should be second nature, as natural as breathing. He ought not to have to worry about what he should do, what he should say. About now a gang of teenagers should be descending on the house, hooting on the front porch for Clay to come join them. Clay should be making some parting wiseass r
emark to Sloane, then standing with both thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans, eyes rolling while he listened to Sloane’s reprimand. His walk to school should be filled with discussions of girls and football and rock stars. The joys of adolescence.
“Miracle Springs High isn’t exactly a prep school for the Ivy League,” Sloane said, feeling a strong need to reassure his son, “but it’s a good school with some fine teachers. After a few weeks it’ll feel comfortable.”
“I don’t think I can sit still that long every day.”
Sloane tried to imagine what it would be like for Clay to be confined to a classroom for hours after the freedom of Destiny Ranch. Clay was right; the adjustment would not be easy. “It’s something you’ll have to develop. This world is filled with places where you have to sit still.”
“Once I was sick for three weeks. I had to stay in bed the whole time. I thought I’d go crazy.” Clay fidgeted as he talked, as if to make his point more emphatically.
Three weeks in bed. Sloane swallowed, but his voice was still harsh when he spoke. “What was wrong with you?”
“Nobody ever said.”
“Did anybody bother to find out?”
Clay stood very still. “They took care of me. I got better.”
Sloane knew it was useless to torture either of them with more questions. Questions didn’t change a thing. Questions, especially questions that were accusations, didn’t bring back the little boy he would never know. “If you’re ready, we ought to go now.”
Outside Sloane paused by the car door and silently debated driving or walking. Driving would get them there faster, and Sloane had a lot to do that day. Walking would give them a chance to talk, maybe help settle Clay’s fears a little. Was parenting always such a balancing act? Whose needs took priority?
“Can we walk?” Clay asked, eyeing the car warily. “I’ll be sitting enough today.”
“Good idea,” Sloane said, the decision having been made for him. “Let’s go by the springs.”
They covered the blocks to the springs in silence. The route had become familiar to them both. Sloane had kept his promise to his son, and in the past week they’d come every day for swimming lessons. Clay’s excellent coordination and uncanny ability to concentrate completely on a task had brought quick results. His strokes were still a little awkward, he sometimes forgot to lock his knees when he kicked, but by and large, he had learned to swim.
But he hadn’t learned to enjoy the water.
Sloane could see resignation in his son’s eyes when Clay waded into the icy-cold springs each day to begin swimming the laps he felt he had to do to perfect his skills. Learning to swim was a task. He brought tremendous natural ability and wholehearted participation to it. He did not bring the abandon, the childlike release of inhibition that Sloane remembered feeling at Clay’s age. Even now that Clay was safe in the water, able to cover distances without fear and able to submerge himself totally and find his way back up, he still showed no signs of liking the experience.
At the entrance to the springs they stood for a moment at the edge of the beach leading down to the water. Then they turned and continued along Hope Avenue toward Miracle Springs High.
“You’ve never told me why they call it Miracle Springs,” Clay said, turning for one quick look before he followed his father.
“I’m surprised your Aunt Lillian hasn’t told you the story.”
“She probably thinks you did.”
Sloane wondered why he’d never thought to explain the legend to his son. How many other things had he neglected to tell him? “Do you remember the mural in the lobby of the Inn?”
Clay nodded. “The one that needs to be repainted?”
“I would prefer wallpaper. It’s supposed to be a depiction of the story about the springs.”
Clay tried to summon up the picture. “It had Indians on it, didn’t it?”
“It’s a very Anglicized Indian legend. This part of Florida was inhabited by Indians as early as ten thousand years ago, and by the first century A.D. most of the peninsula was well populated.”
“The Seminoles,” Clay interrupted. “I studied Indian tribes one year because we had two Ind… Native Americans living on the ranch. They were Hopis.”
“Well, you’re right about Seminoles being in Florida, but not until much later. Originally the Timucuans inhabited this area. And the tribe in this county was called the Ocali. They were village and town dwellers who hunted and fished and grew corn. They were noted for being a beautiful people.”
“What happened to them?”
“They got caught in the cross fire between the English and the Spanish, and they also fell prey to the Creeks, or Seminoles as they were later called, who were invading from the North. What few remained were said to have been taken back to Spain by the Spanish when Spain ceded Florida to England.”
“The Timucuans named this town Miracle Springs?” Clay sounded skeptical.
“No, the town fathers named the town Miracle Springs back in 1883.”
“It’s all clear to me now,” Clay said, teasing his father.
Sloane smiled. He was enjoying himself. Somehow this conversation seemed free of the tensions that permeated most of their discussions. He wanted to prolong it. “Well good,” he teased back. “Then I don’t have to explain anymore.”
“Go ahead if it makes you happy.”
“Have you ever noticed the little island in the middle of the river, just down from the spring?”
“There’s a big gnarled mass of roots and a bunch of spiky-looking plants that the water doesn’t quite cover,” Clay observed.
“That’s where the miracle occurs.”
“The miracle is that nobody’s dug it up so boats can get by easier,” Clay said, obviously not impressed.
“The legend says that once, hundreds of years ago when the Timucuans still called this area home, there was a beautiful Indian maiden …”
“Let me guess. A chief’s daughter.”
Sloane smiled at Clay’s cynicism. “Right. She was about to be married to a handsome young man whom she had loved since she was a child, but she grew very ill. The chief and the tribal shaman did everything they could to save her, but it was soon apparent that she was going to die.”
“So they put her in the waters of the spring, and she was instantly healed,” Clay finished for him.
“No. She died.”
“Then they should have called it Disappointment Springs.”
“Who’s telling this story? Anyway, right before she died, the young maiden called her father and her young man to her side. She told them she had asked the sun— the Ocalis worshipped the sun—to spare her so that she could do good works. She said her life had been too short to do enough good for others, and she wanted a chance to do more. But the sun had withdrawn its rays in answer. Then she fell asleep and had a dream. In her dream the sun came to her and told her to ask her father to place her body on the island after her death. Then, every year on the anniversary of that day, she could return to grant wishes to those pure of heart who asked for her help.”
“And does she?”
“Well, supposedly she died that afternoon and her body was taken out to the island. And every year on that day, May 13th, she comes back and grants wishes to those worthy few who ask for her help.”
“Come on!”
“Variations of the story were passed down through the centuries. Some of the stories say it was a young Spanish girl, some say it was an old Seminole woman. Some say May, some say December. The version I told you is the one you’ll find in the tourist brochures. Every May the town has a big celebration with festivities at the Inn. Then about an hour before midnight, anyone who wants a wish granted goes down to the beach and waits. About midnight, or a little after, the maiden is supposed to appear in a cloud of vapor. If you see her, it means your heart is pure, your wish desirable, and your chances of having it granted, one hundred percent.”
“Have you ever had a wish g
ranted?” Clay asked.
“I never tried. Not even when I was a child. I guess I figured I never qualified.”
The story had carried them to the sprawling Miracle Springs High School complex. Sloane turned to face his son. “I’ll take you in to meet the principal, then he’ll show you where you’ll need to go today.”
“Thanks.”
Sloane wanted to say so much more. Clay looked calm, and except for the ponytail he’d decided not to cut, he looked like any other teenager. A little less gawky, a little more reserved perhaps, but a normal teenager nonetheless. Still, he wasn’t a normal teenager. He was going to school for the first time in his fifteen years. He was going to school in a strange town, in a strange state, and with only a strange man who happened to be his father to comfort him. He had shared a little, but what other feelings were hidden under that veiled demeanor?
Elise would know.
Sloane was startled by that insight, although in the weeks since he’d come back to his hometown he’d ceased to be startled by the number of times he thought of Elise Ramsey. Elise would understand how Clay felt because her life had been spent trying to understand others, trying to walk in their shoes. If he chose to ask her, she could help him get beneath Clay’s surface. Only, asking Elise for anything was a bad idea. The bond between them was already too strong.
“We’d better go,” Clay said.
Sloane realized he’d been standing on the sidewalk staring right through his son. Even though they were early, the school yard was filling up fast, and curious looks were being directed at Clay.
“You’re right. Let’s go.”
Sloane led Clay through the throng of gathering teenagers and in the wide, glass front doors of the school. The school had been new twenty years before and except for obvious wear and tear, it was exactly as Sloane remembered it. From an adult perspective, however, it seemed smaller—much, much smaller.
He hesitated at the principal’s office. “I spent so much time here,” he joked, “that I always thought that when I left town they’d name it after me.”
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