Sunburst

by Jennifer Greene

  It had taken time to arrange for the plane, pick up the Jeep and organize their supplies. Then they had stopped to have a snack and buy a few food staples to take with them. Through all of that, they’d both maintained an even mood, yet Kyle had barely spoken for miles now, and was driving north toward Lake Superior as if the devil were after him, on roads not built for speed.

  There were more deer-crossing signs than road markers. The endless spruce and balsam and birch forests seemed to encroach more and more on the narrow road, making Erica uneasy; increasingly, it seemed as if they were going nowhere, as if the primitive woods could swallow them in the darkness, and no one would know.

  It should have been an opportune moment to talk to Kyle, to explain what had really happened between her and Morgan, and yet she didn’t. She was afraid to. His expression was increasingly grim, his whole body tense with concentration, his silence ominous; and the tension kept growing. The gray dusk finally settled into darkness; wearily, Erica leaned back. Vermilion could not be far now. Finally, she dozed off.

  She awoke to the tang of lake air and the crispness of pines, vaguely aware she was in the Jeep, curled up against the door. A soft sweatshirt was draped over her shoulders, nestled under her chin; beneath it she felt kitten-snug, perfectly content. The softest click next to her ear made her stir, unwillingly. Suddenly, her head was falling and collided with a warm, solid cushion…a cushion that chuckled.

  “Kyle,” she murmured sheepishly.

  “Don’t wake up,” he whispered. “Everything’s fine. Erica…” He scooped her up and cuddled her close; sleepily she nuzzled her cheek to his chest. He smelled like warmth and freshness, like dreams. “Sleep,” he murmured next to her ear. His lips touched her forehead, reinforcing that soothing order.

  She was willing. She felt the world falling away, her head against something soft and downy and cool and not nearly as comfortable as Kyle’s shoulder. Vaguely, she protested, and felt his finger touch her lips, hushing her again. She loved the feel of that finger. Her lower lip felt like a flower that only opened when touched; she savored that sensation until she felt his hands brush at her waist, where her camisole was tucked in. His knuckles pressed lightly into her stomach as he unsnapped the white jeans soundlessly. She smiled in sleep.

  He wanted to make love.

  She wanted to make love. She could smell the lake and the trees. She could feel the night all around them like something tangible, privacy and darkness and silence. The rich scent of the man only added to that, a primal, evocative scent that she could inhale, that filled her lungs.

  He was leaning over her, his hands parting her jeans. His hands slipped inside the fabric, almost but not quite touching… She murmured at his teasing. As he shifted her just a little, one of his hands slipped to her back, sliding the jeans over the curves of her hips, then down over her thighs, over her calves, then off.

  The cool night air was enough to make her shiver-she reached instinctively for him-but not quite enough to make her open her eyes. She was loving the sensations coursing through her too much to open her eyes; in the darkness every nerve ending, every heartbeat, every tactile sense was intensified. Desire was a soft, silky cloud covering all of her, protective and luxurious and sweetly wild.

  Her hand brushed his thigh, then moved up to where his legs parted, vaguely aware that for some reason her own legs were no longer cold, but covered by the fabric of a sleeping bag she didn’t want. She wanted freedom to twist her legs around him, to scissor him close. He wanted the same. She could feel his arousal in her hand, through his jeans; she could hear his sucked-in breath in that night silence.

  She opened her eyes.

  Their gaze met that instant in the darkness. Brooding and indigo-dark, his eyes were filled with desire, as deep as the night. She could see a pearl of moisture on his forehead. Two pearls. A row of them. Abruptly, he moved her hand, tucked it into the sleeping bag and zipped the fabric up around her.

  “Kyle-”

  “Dammit. Sleep, Erica.”

  She heard him rustling next to her. While she’d been dozing in the Jeep, he’d been busy. He had spread a tarp beneath both their sleeping bags to ward off the night’s dampness; their totes were next to both of them. She heard him take off his jeans and slide into the sleeping bag not two feet away from her. He turned on his side, facing away; by that time her eyes had adjusted to the starlight.

  Her whole body ached, trying to cope with rejection. In nine years of marriage, she knew his body as well as her own. He had wanted her. His body was stiff with tension from wanting her now; he wasn’t sleeping. She knew Morgan was the problem; and she still wasn’t sure how to bridge the distance between them. It mattered too much that Kyle believe her. “Kyle…”

  His tone was abrupt, as if he’d been waiting for her to try. “We’re here to talk, Erica. Not make love.”

  She took a shaky breath. “You can’t think I would let anyone else touch me, Kyle. Not intimately. I know you don’t believe that. Please let me tell you what happened-”

  “There’s no need to,” he said harshly. “I know, Erica. Now leave it and we’ll talk in the morning.”

  For a long time, she stared up at the sky. Separating was what he wanted to talk about in the morning; she understood that. Believing she’d been with Morgan had only intensified the feelings she’d been afraid he’d had all along. He was angry and he was proud and he’d built an impenetrable wall between them…and she thought of the sweatshirt that he must have dug out solely to make sure she was warm, of the possessive way he had cradled her to him, of his light kiss on her forehead as he’d carried her to the sleeping bag.

  No, Kyle, she thought. I just don’t understand, I’ll admit that, but you’re going to have to work harder than you know even to bring up the subject of separating.

  She awoke to a watery sunlight on her face and the screeching calls of gulls. Totally disoriented, she sat up immediately…to see the most desolate stretch of beach she had ever seen in her life, strewn with driftwood and fallen logs. Behind her, tall birch and spruce encroached almost to the water’s edge. Birds were screaming as they fished for their breakfast, and there was water as far as the eye could see ahead of her, beginning with a splashing, foamy little surf, the lake smoothing to glass beyond.

  Rationally, she knew they had reached Vermilion last night, but the fact didn’t register until she looked east. The lighthouse, a hundred yards away, was a crumbling structure, all but covered with sand as if it had been deserted for centuries. There was no sign that any human being had been here in years. The silence was eerie, ghostly. Perhaps too many ships’ captains had tried to save themselves by following the lighthouse beacon. The air around the whispering sand had a give-up sort of sadness, the isolation complete.

  Erica turned quickly to the sound of copper pot meeting copper cup. Kyle’s sleeping bag was next to her, but empty. The Jeep was farther down the beach, and the sounds came from the other side of it, along with a wisp of smoke that said Kyle was up and fixing breakfast and had probably built a driftwood fire.

  She crouched in the sand and brought out clothes quickly from her tote, suddenly half smiling-at herself. Her first need was a bathroom, the lack of which startled more than appalled her. Spoiled, Erica… There might not be any marble taps or makeup mirrors, but a few thousand acres of privacy lay in the woods beyond the beach.

  She headed for the trees. Fallen pine needles, softened with weather and brushed with sand, made a carpet for her bare feet. Inside the woods, it was instantly cool. The breeze from the lake was incredibly crisp; on the beach she had been conscious only of the steady beating of the sun.

  She stripped completely and put on fresh jeans and a short-sleeved lime-colored top, leaving her feet bare as she started, with toothbrush in hand, for the shore again. Marital crisis notwithstanding, one did not begin a day without brushing one’s teeth…

  She yelped when her bare toes tested the water. The playful surf was like ice just
melted, and the stones that made up the shoreline were smooth and slippery. She rolled up the cuffs of her jeans and bent down; the splash of ice water on her face destroyed any further illusions of sleepiness. After she had brushed her teeth, she stood up again.

  Kyle was standing a few feet from her, his hands on his jeaned hips and his open-necked shirt flapping in the breeze. She liked the way he stood with shoulders back in this desolate country, the sunlight behind him. She saw a man with a bearing of fierce pride, yet those shoulders relaxed just perceptibly as he came toward her, as he took in the tumbling red-gold hair and the rolled-up jeans, the peach freshness on her skin from the icy water, her face tilted up to his.

  The kiss wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t forced it. She ignored his sudden stiffening and simply reached up; her lips tentatively brushed against his just long enough to feel the slightest answering pressure, the slightest tightening of his hand on her shoulder. He might not want to talk, but he was not immune to her. She rocked back on her heels, smiling at him. “I was worried.”

  “You didn’t sleep well?”

  “I slept perfectly well. It was the toothpaste. Whether it was biodegradable. This is a very special place, Kyle, and when we leave it, I don’t want to think we’ve mucked it up in any way.”

  “I really don’t think you have to worry about a dab of toothpaste in sixty-seven trillion gallons of water, love.”

  The last word had slipped out; she could tell from his eyes. But then, maybe he wasn’t quite prepared for her particular brand of nonsense this early in the morning; nor did she make it easy for him to rebuff her when she laced an arm around his waist, hugging him. “I love it. You couldn’t have chosen a better place to get away from it all in a thousand years.”

  “I…” He hesitated. “All I could think of a few weeks ago was that I wanted you to see it. I hate to admit that I didn’t think much beyond that, the rough setting and no johns… You aren’t used to such accommodations. We could stay in a motel-”

  “You can. I won’t. Although if you’re not prepared to whittle me a canoe in the next few hours, I might just have to check out the neighboring territory for boats. How can we catch our supper without a boat? And don’t tell me we came to a place like this to eat in restaurants in the evenings.”

  She’d clearly taken him back another five yards, and she felt a rush of satisfaction as intoxicating as champagne. If he wanted a pampered little brat, he’d have to carry around a picture of her when she was a child. It was one of those issues she’d wanted to make clear a very long time ago… She scampered ahead of him, calling back, “But for now, if you’ve eaten all the food I packed in that box for breakfast-”

  “Erica?”

  She turned, brushing the burnished hair from her face in the breeze.

  “You really like it here?”

  “It’s lonely and desolate-and one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.”

  He strode up behind her, hooking his arm around her neck. “In that case, I might just feed you,” he said gruffly.

  She laughed when she saw his organized feast. Bananas and nuts and apples, bits of dried pineapple for a sweet tooth. He had set the small metal grill over a small driftwood fire; on that the coffee pot rested, giving off its aroma as she sat down on a log. Kyle kept pushing tidbits at her until she was more than stuffed. Gradually, she watched her husband relax, begin to tease her as he always had… Had Morgan really been their guest for only two weeks? Because even as she absorbed Kyle’s good-morning mood, she was suddenly aware of how quiet he had been for those two weeks, how much Morgan had affected Kyle as well as herself.

  “You haven’t said what you thought of it.”

  “The lake?”

  “Of course the lake, bright one. Superior’s the biggest body of fresh water in the world, you know. In the winter, the waters can freeze up to forty feet down, a respectable-sized iceberg.”

  “Safe skating,” she said gravely. “Now tell me something good. You know statistics go in one ear and out the other.”

  “Hollow between your ears,” he said sadly, and she kicked a footful of sand at his ankles. “Let’s see…Superior has a tide, just like an ocean. It has also had tidal waves.”

  “You can only fool some of the people some of the time.” She leaned back against the log with her second cup of coffee in her hands.

  “Real tidal waves,” he insisted, as he looked over the shoreline. “A while ago down in Chicago, Lake Michigan surged up and over the banks so far they had to stop traffic-”

  “You’re kidding,” she said disbelievingly.

  “And then there was the Carl Bradley. A limestone carrier, a good six hundred feet long, carrying a full cargo near Gull Island. It not only sank, it was broken completely in two. The captain lived,” Kyle said musingly. “He said it was a tidal wave that broke his ship apart. Waves up to sixty feet high…”

  Involuntarily, Erica shivered. The image was suddenly there in her mind, of the storm and the people caught in it, helpless. It seemed so much a part of this bleak, haunted beach with its lighthouse trying to save people’s lives. The waters were right in front of her eyes-so brilliant, dancing in the sunlight. It was an absolutely perfect summer day with the sky of aquamarine and the sands spangled with an almost iridescent brightness… It seemed impossible that the lake had so much potential for betrayal, for treachery and tragedy.

  “Tell me about that summer you went treasure hunting,” she said suddenly. “How you found this place. What you were looking for. What ever gave you the idea there was treasure here?”

  “History,” he answered her last question, as he got up to start putting away the breakfast things. “Six thousand ships were wrecked on the Great Lakes in one twenty-year period. Of course, most of them have been salvaged, but not all. Four ships in particular were lost right off these waters at Vermilion and never found. The Kamloops was the biggest, with five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of cargo, never recovered. Generally a finders-keepers law applies to sunken treasure, and anyone can discover it after others have tried to salvage and failed.”

  “So you researched it first?” she asked curiously.

  Kyle nodded, starting to douse the small fire with sand. “It was fun, exciting, and the search yielded absolutely nothing. At the time, Morgan’s father had promised me a job, and I figured I could afford three weeks off, even with the cost of school. At nineteen…” Kyle hesitated, then turned to stare at her. “At nineteen, all I wanted was to get rich quick. At any cost.”

  “And you’ve judged yourself harshly for that ever since,” she said swiftly, and stood up, too. Before he could say anything else, she snatched up the nearly empty coffee pot and carted it down to the water. He followed her with the two cups, which was unfortunate. Because when he was right next to her again, she couldn’t keep her mouth closed. She stood straight up once more, with the coffee pot in her hand. “You didn’t desert your father, Kyle. And you were never responsible for his being unhappy.”

  “Look. Erica-”

  She smiled, ignoring the forbidding look in his eyes. “Let’s go see the lighthouse.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He took a breath. “Because I want you to see it from the top at sunset.” He threw an arm around her shoulders, and they carted their few dishes back to the makeshift fire. He pressed his lips hard against her temples, swift and rough. “Shut up, Erica. Leave it all. Let’s just have a good day.”

  She couldn’t imagine why or how that happened, but it did. That Kyle went out of his way not to touch her should have dampened those hours… Well, it did. So did knowing they were both skirting every issue that was important to them, like children avoiding facing up to a problem. What they had to laugh about, Erica had no idea. But they did laugh.

  They were together and alone without responsibilities for an entire day, a combination that proved irresistible; Erica had always found the simplest pleasure in just being with him,
and Kyle’s only wish seemed to be for her to enjoy herself. He drove the short distance to Tahquamenon Falls, showing her Hiawatha country as he’d promised. Tumbling waterfalls cascaded from sheer rock cliffs, nestled in virgin forest, all lush green and fragrant with summer scents.

  One could rent a rowboat there, to paddle around the half dozen falls. Erica told Kyle she was a qualified oarswoman, and when he took her at her word, they nearly cascaded over one of the falls. As it was, he ended up paddling furiously against white water while people screamed at them from the shore. Drenched and laughing they finally returned to Vermilion.

  Tamer sports seemed a better idea; the day had turned sultry. Fishing from the shore? It seemed reasonable enough. Fishing poles weren’t all that hard to rig up, but the only bait seemed to be worms they dug from the floor of the woods. Erica tried to bait the hook. She didn’t mind spiders and bees, but worms just weren’t her cup of tea.

  The fishing wasn’t particularly successful. Having started at the warmest, most somnolent time in the sunny afternoon, it seemed more natural for them to rest on the sand with one hand balancing the pole. There were fish out there. They liked the worms. The napping fishermen just failed to reel them in.

  They didn’t seem to be concentrating too hard on living off the land, and the next problem they faced was starvation. Granola bars and raisins went only so far. Laziness had become infectious, and neither one of them really wanted to leave this private little wilderness; they had to bully each other into preparing a meal. They grilled hamburger over an open fire as the sun went down, then toasted marshmallows, which they ate as they sipped their wine. Both had cast-iron stomachs. A blessing.