Meara joined her against the deck rail and stared out at the ocean. “It never gets old.”
“It’s so beautiful.” Constance went quiet after that, unable to speak as she watched the dusk happen before her eyes. In the wake of their quiet, punctuated only by the sound of the lapping surf, she could hear soft male chatter coming from the deck below, which sat outside Rhett’s bedroom. He’d shown it to her after they arrived, had said, “Put your stuff in here. It’s got a bigger bed. I’ll sleep in Mel’s room,” and left her to the cozy space that sported a queen-size bed, simple wooden dresser and bookshelves and an adjoining bath. Constance couldn’t make out any of their words, but eventually realized the reason for that was because they were speaking Spanish.
Rhett and his father. Every once in a while, they’d break into laughter, then would pick back up again in the language they both seemed most comfortable sharing. Listening to Rhett speak Spanish was like listening to another person altogether, but with the same deep baritone. His words rolled together, musical and light. Goose bumps rose over her skin. Constance blamed it on the North Carolina wind.
“Those two.” Meara held up her first two fingers, crossed. “It’s funny because Rhett is way more like me than he is his father. Tall. Persistent. Some would say bullish. We don’t back down and we like to have things our way. Domingo, he’s more soft-spoken. Conciliatory. Got the biggest heart of any person I’ve ever met in my life.” Meara’s face glowed in the darkening sunset.
Constance understood. Domingo, who had given her the biggest hug she’d ever received in her life from a father figure, had a heartbreaking smile and a personality that accepted you immediately. He seemed like the kind of person who liked you by default, and saw the best in everyone. Standing at around five feet seven, he was still taller than Constance but well shorter than his wife or son. “My sister, Mel, got the small person genes,” Rhett had said with a grin, and Domingo had laughed harder than anyone.
“Rhett and I are too much alike, maybe,” Meara continued, “to be as close as that. He and his father have always been inseparable. Did everything together, though I was the sportier of the two. I would push Rhett hard at soccer practice or cross-country training and Domingo would say, ‘Ah, it’s just a game, mijo.’” Meara waved a hand. “Just a game. When is anything just a game?” She gave Constance a knowing smile.
Constance figured that between Rhett’s insistence on pushing people out of their comfort zones and his proud acceptance of any performance that was given with full effort, he’d gotten the best of both of his parents. “I was a cheerleader,” Constance said, then wondered why she’d led with that. “Not just at games but we’d travel and compete. I was actually pretty good.”
Meara glanced down. “You got the quads for it.”
Constance followed her gaze and ran a palm over her bare thigh. “Thanks. I think.”
“Yeah, it was a compliment. Who wants skinny legs?”
Constance didn’t say, Me, most of my life. She actually liked her legs now.
Meara reached out and tucked a windblown strand of hair behind Constance’s ear. “Constance Morrigan,” she said. “An Irish girl, then.”
“Dad’s side. My mother’s people were Russian.”
“That explains the eyes. Pretty.” Meara turned back to the ocean. She opened her arms. “Our house has been here ages. Long before all these beach rentals that have a thousand rooms. I understand why people do it, but I like my little space.”
“Your home is lovely.”
“Thanks. Rhett told me you’re a massage therapist.”
“Yes. I’ve been helping him with his leg.”
Meara chuckled. “Oh, no.” She waved a hand at Constance’s startled expression. “I’m not laughing at your profession. I’m a physical therapist myself. I was just thinking that you’re about as chatty as my son. You two must have a lot of wild conversations.” She snorted with soft sarcasm. “Do you both wait for the other to start talking?”
Constance giggled. “Sometimes,” she said. “I guess I’m kind of quiet. My father raised me, after my mother died, and he was legally deaf. He lost his hearing in Vietnam. He could still talk, because he wasn’t born deaf. But he rarely did. He liked silence.”
“You’re the type that doesn’t need to fill the silence,” Meara suggested. “People think you’re aloof or disinterested, but that isn’t true. Am I right?”
Constance thought it through before she replied. “I guess I just don’t see silence as empty. Therefore, it doesn’t need to be filled.”
“Huh,” Meara said. “That’s really interesting.” The rise in Meara’s pitch told Constance that she meant what she said, wasn’t being sarcastic or patronizing.
“A physical therapist, huh? That’s great.” Constance felt a surge of pride at starting a new thread of conversation. “I have a lot of background in orthopedic massage.”
Meara made a fist and they bumped them.
The sun was nearly set, but a jogger went by, down by the edge of the retreating tide. He was shirtless and shoeless, wearing only a pair of swim trunks. Meara pointed. “Rhett brought you on a five-hour drive down here to do that, huh?”
Constance nodded. “We’re going to have a beach run in the morning. Then head back to Virginia, later in the day.”
“You two have been running a lot, then? A new program at the gym or something?” Meara crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed her hands over her skin. With the sun almost down, the temperature had dropped and the wind felt colder. “Rhett’s done a lot of running, obviously, but he’s been more into lifting these years past.”
“He taught me how to lift, too. That’s what we did first. We added running to the mix only recently.”
“Training for a race?”
“Sort of. I used to run all the time. Then I...quit. He’s kind of been helping me—” Constance chose her words carefully “—with some running issues.”
At first, she’d thought this a bad idea. A really bad idea. Sunny, on the other hand, had loved it, and couldn’t show up fast enough to collect Fezzi to babysit. Sunny’s eagerness had only made the idea to take a short trip to the Outer Banks seem even worse. If Sunny was on board, it was probably going to be a disaster.
But ever since she’d gotten here, Constance had felt a sort of calm wash over her body that she couldn’t deny. It was like the breeze got inside her, along with the salt and the dry air, and had soaked up some of the heaviness that’d been bogging her down for so long. “He thought the beach was a good idea,” Constance added. “Nothing like running on the beach.”
“He’s right.” Meara nodded. “I’m not a runner, but even a good walk on the beach can cure a lot of ills.” She glanced at Constance, a little grin on her face. “Ever been to Virginia Beach?”
“Sure.” Constance refrained from telling Meara that Rhett had said Virginia Beach was too crowded. Too busy. Too commercial, to achieve what he wanted to achieve. The Outer Banks, he’d said, was special.
“But not this time, huh?” Meara said. “Not for this run?”
Constance laughed softly to herself. She’d been right about Meara being a tiger. One who knew how to move with stealth. “You know, Meara,” she said, “being more of a listener than a talker all my life makes me really good at the subtle art of innuendo.”
A few seconds passed before Meara broke into loud, hearty, natural laughter. Her laugh matched her personality. Big. Bold. Nothing held back. “So you’re on to me,” she said. “I’m usually pretty good at making people talk without them even knowing I’m doing it.”
Just before they lost the last curve of the setting sun, Constance said, “Where did Rhett see the horses? The wild horses playing?” She touched her own arm, where Rhett had the tattoo, eager to see the spot where, as a boy, he’d watched the last of a dying breed frolic in their happy freedom.
&nb
sp; Meara turned to her slowly. She planted a fist on her hip and smiled. “Shut your mouth. He told you about that?”
“Sure.” Constance touched her arm again. “When I saw the tattoo.”
Meara gave a deep, motherly sort of laugh. “He always tells people he got that tattoo because he’s a wild stallion. He says it sarcastically, but—” Meara waved a hand “—he never tells anyone the wild mustang story. That’s too...too—” she waved her hand again “—sacred, in his eyes.”
Something funny happened inside Constance’s gut. Not a squeezing, but a tingling, like the sparkles over the ocean were inside her instead, sparking and popping. Constance quickly turned back toward the beach, to avoid Meara’s knowing gaze.
“I’ll let him show you the spot,” she said. “That’ll be important to him.”
The chatter below grew louder, then turned into raucous laughter. Constance had never heard Rhett laugh that loud. She wished she could see his face, the way being with his father might make the skin around his eyes crinkle up and bare all of his teeth into what had to be a huge smile.
“Sounds like they’re going to head inside and start a late dinner.” Meara tucked one corner of her mouth into a guilty smile. “I think. My Spanish is not as good as it should be after being married to Domingo for almost forty years. I don’t cook, by the way. But Domingo is excellent in the kitchen. You’re in luck. He froze a batch of the tamales Rhett missed at Christmas, even though it’s Rhett’s own fault he missed his father’s Christmas tamales. It’s quite the effort. Masa and corn husks everywhere.” She waved a hand.
“Rhett’s crazy to miss Christmas here.”
“Because he gets his dad’s tamales?”
“Because he gets a dad.” It popped out of her mouth before Constance could stop herself. “And a mom,” she added. She suddenly wondered what her mother would have looked like if she’d lived to be Meara’s age. Would she have the same fine lines around her eyes? Streaks of white in her hair, instead of gray? That confident way of speaking, filled with the sort of wisdom and easy love that comes with age?
“Oh, bless.” Meara put her hands on Constance’s shoulders and drew her in for a hug. “That boy missed Christmas and Thanksgiving. And yet, here he is now. Interesting, don’t you think?”
* * *
She wore a pair of tiny swim trunks and a sports bra bikini top that she said were “surf to turf.” They were both different shades of blue, the best color to highlight her hair and eyes, though Rhett didn’t think she’d planned that. Her body looked smooth and strong.
“I couldn’t find you in the house,” Stanzi said. “So I came down here.”
“I’ve been up awhile.” Rhett dug into the wet sand with his toes. “Came down here to warm up.”
He had, in fact, been down here well before sunrise, using the light on his watch to observe the sand crabs scurrying between the hidden holes that led to their vast labyrinth underground. He’d always been fascinated at how quickly and silently they moved, and at how well they camouflaged themselves. Crabs, he’d decided, were ninjas.
Once sunrise peeked over the ocean, a few fishermen had shown up, planted themselves in lawn chairs on the sand and cast their lines. One man had brought a black Lab. He raced up and down the beach, fetching a bright yellow tennis ball, even if it went into the surf.
“Did you sleep okay?”
“Decent enough.”
Better than at home, not nearly as good as after one of her massages. But Rhett wasn’t tired. He was eager for today, as he’d planned everything. Hobbs was covering the gym for the weekend. Mama knew as much as she needed to know about why he’d spontaneously come home, for no apparent reason. The weather was clear and cool but warm enough to make for a perfect morning run. The sound of the ocean, paired with the feel of sand between her toes and the wind drying the sweat on her skin, salt water in her hair and the scent of the beach in her nose, was the perfect formula to pair a new memory with the act of running. He hoped it worked.
Rhett hadn’t planned for the bikini, though. How was he supposed to run while she was wearing that?
“This is perfect.” Stanzi scraped her hair into a messy bun that looked like it’d been mauled by a cat. She sniffed deeply, then jumped up and down on her toes a few times. “Let’s get moving. A little chilly.”
“After you.” Rhett motioned ahead, toward the long stretch of beach that went on for miles. He started his watch. “We can go as far as you want,” he said, keeping her in his sights as she stayed a few feet ahead, “but we’ll have to decide when to turn around. There’s no way to go in a loop out here.”
“Got it.” Stanzi’s cheerful voice matched the airy strides of her light gait.
The little shorts rode up her firm backside as she ran, which helped shake out the remainder of his cobwebs and gave Rhett incentive to keep moving, but also stay a few steps behind. The tide was out, leaving a wavy length of wet sand once the foamy water was dragged back out to sea. The sun was halfway up on the horizon, peeking its round, red dome like a mole from its tunnel, filling the sky with streaks of yellow that hovered behind the last dim drape of night. There were a couple of other runners and early birds on the beach, but mostly they had the place to themselves.
They ran in silence for several miles, nothing but the screech of gulls and lapping of the waves to punctuate their heartbeats. As light overtook the sky, vacationers crawled out of their rental houses, toting chairs and buckets, picking along the shore to collect shells left in the wake of the tide.
Stanzi made a circular motion with her hand as she turned around, indicating the halfway spot to head back to the house. Rhett wondered what she’d used as her marker: the bright pink house or a blue umbrella, sitting lonely and unguarded up near the slope of dunes?
Her pace dwindled a little on the return trip, their second three miles going slower than the first three. Rhett didn’t mind, though. He could see the old runner inside her, coming alive after hibernation, hungry and dying to leave the cave.
“The uneven terrain was a challenge,” she said as they slowed to a stop near the edge of the ocean. The private staircase that led to the back deck of his childhood home was visible in the distance. “So was the barefoot run.” She pointed at her feet. “But I loved it.”
“Yeah?” The water that lapped up around Rhett’s ankles was cold, but not overly so. The breakers were yards out, leaving enough ocean to dip into before things got rough. “Think we should finish it off with a swim?”
His question left Rhett with an image of Katrina, the one and only time he’d suggested they go to Virginia Beach for the weekend. Her face had wrinkled up, matching the “Hell, no” that came out of her mouth. “Why would I want to swim in the Atlantic? It’s so dirty. Take me to Hawaii if you want me to swim.”
Stanzi bounced up and down on her toes and tapped her fingertips together, marking the first time Rhett had seen her behave like a little girl. He wondered, based on the stories of her past, how often she’d actually gotten to be a little girl when she was growing up. Her smile was so big he could see that half-moon dimple on her cheek. “Should we inch our way in or just go for it?” She sidestepped a little ways into the lapping waves.
“Well.” Rhett scratched the back of his head. He’d never seen somebody so excited to dive into the ocean. “I’d say, maybe just...” He reached out, planted his hand between her shoulder blades and gave her just enough of a shove to make her lose her balance.
Stanzi went down, shrieking. She hit the water with a giant splash, then jumped up, clutching her arms around herself. “You jerk!” She dove for him, drenched from head to toe, her smile still big and eyes bright.
She didn’t slam into Rhett’s chest so much as he caught her, and went down willingly. The cold water hit him like icy needles, but he quickly acclimated as he bounced to the surface. Stanzi was next to him, shoving the sur
face of the water to drive it into his face, over and over.
Finally, he could catch his breath. Stanzi grinned and dove beneath the surface. When she popped back up, she was a few yards out. “C’mon, Rhett!” She stuck her feet up, floating on her back.
They swam until it felt warmer to be in the water than out, until their fingers were wrinkled up and their bodies were full of salt. When they were finally done, the sun was bright and the beach was getting fuller. Rhett collected his T-shirt from the sand and tossed it to Stanzi. She caught it and slipped it over her head. It fell down to midthigh, covering everything Rhett had enjoyed looking at for the past few hours, but the warm smile on her face more than made up for the loss.
Until this moment, he hadn’t been sure about fulfilling all of his reasons for coming down here. She’d had a great run, in a place as removed from home as was possible. That was enough, wasn’t it?
“I want to show you something.” As they neared the house, Rhett took Stanzi’s elbow and guided her to the side yard, which butted up to the sand dunes. Their house was the last in the row before the dunes rose up like a giant, tan wall, dotted with the dense, squat shrubbery native to the area. If you climbed those dunes, the sand and shrubs went on as far as the eye could see.
Stanzi followed, until they were alone and out of view from any of the beachgoers or other houses. She looked around, taking in everything. Her face lit up. “Is this the spot?”
Rhett couldn’t hide his surprise. “You know what I’m showing you?”
“The horses.” Stanzi’s voice went to a reverent whisper. “This is where you saw the horses.” She clasped his forearms. “Isn’t it?”
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