“Pretty clear,” she agreed, taking a sip herself.
A family several yards away started closing up their striped umbrella and collecting their towels and children. I watched them for a few moments, then said, “I miss those days.”
Kristin followed my gaze, then nodded. “They really grew up fast, didn’t they? I mean, they’ll be out on their own so soon. It makes me melancholy too.”
I remembered Jamie running on the beach, dashing toward the waves and jumping the white line of phosphorescent foam like it was a rope, then standing there while the wave drew back, burying his little feet in the sand. I could remember him kneeling in the surf, digging for sand crabs, always begging to bring them home as pets, and never understanding when I said we couldn’t own them because they needed to be where nature had put them.
There was obviously a lesson in there for me as well. One I’d have to learn over and over again in life, apparently.
Easy enough to say, If you love something, set it free, but hard to truly set something free if you really love it.
“You could still have another one, you know,” Kristin said.
I turned my attention back to her. The sun was gleaming off her hair, making it shine like a new copper penny. “Hmm? Another what?”
“Another kid!”
A wave crashed on the shore as if to punctuate what she’d said. Another baby. With Jamie almost out of high school. “I can’t even imagine it,” I said.
“Maybe you should start. Thinking about it, that is. You were so young when you had Jamie, you’re still well within your childbearing years—”
“I don’t know about well within.”
She flattened her hand and tipped it side to side. “Okay, maybe you’re not where you were at twenty, but, yeah, I’d say you’re still well within your childbearing years. Didn’t you and Ben ever talk about having another one?”
“Early on.” I thought about it. “But it just never happened. We decided to be philosophical about it and take it that Jamie was all we needed.”
“There’s something to be said for that,” she agreed. “But, honestly, look at where you are. Your life is truly beginning again now. It’s not what you expected, it’s not what any of us expected, but that’s the fact. There are a whole lot of possibilities you probably never thought about before that are now available to you.”
I turned my gaze to the ocean and to the horizon that stretched out far beyond. It wasn’t endless, but it looked like it was. That was true of my life too. From where I sat, there was a long way to go. No one knew what was coming up. But, as Ben had said, there were some glorious possibilities. “Sometimes it’s hard to let go of the known, even when it’s not so great,” I said.
She nodded. “We’ve all been there. But that is a stuck place. Fear never keeps someone in a wonderful situation, it just puts everything on hold.”
It had for three years now. The sharp shock of finding out about Ben when it had happened had worn down to a soft pain that was constant. It was always there, it never let me down. And even while I hated it, when the waves of sadness came over me, they were familiar, and there was a certain comfort in that.
The comfort I should have taken, of course, was in my family and friends. Everything that remained. Because a lot did remain. It felt like I’d lost everything, but I hadn’t. Yet in that mire of grief, I’d let too much important stuff go.
“Part of me feels like I’d be betraying Jamie if I moved on in a new relationship, even though he says he thinks I should,” I confessed.
“Jamie! He’d probably be the happiest one!”
I looked at her. The sun, behind her, was hovering just over the low buildings along the boardwalk, cutting straight shadows down the sand. “Do you really think so?”
“He’s about to spread his wings and fly into his future. Of course he wants you to be happy and not be some sad sack at home that he has to worry about.” She smiled at me. “Not that you’re a sad sack.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
“And you know, frankly, he’s not too old to develop a good relationship with a man if you find someone you like that much. The guy wouldn’t be his father, obviously, but all boys could use a good male influence.”
I agreed with that. One of my biggest regrets was that Jamie didn’t have anyone to show him how to be a good man. He’d remember Ben, of course, he hadn’t been that young when he’d died, but don’t we all have role models of some sort throughout our lives?
We sat in relative silence for a while after that, listening to the waves hitting the sand, watching the tide come in closer and closer to where we’d propped our Tommy Bahama chairs in the sand.
After a while, we finished our drinks, met each others’ eyes, and nodded in unison, then laughed. Our stomachs were on the same exact time table. It was time for dinner.
We shook the sand out of our towels and chairs and started walking on the still-hot sand.
What is it about summer at the beach that makes you feel like it should stretch on forever? These hot, sun-soaked days felt permanent; I couldn’t even picture snow and cold winds right now.
If I were home in Potomac, would I feel the same? Probably not. With no sea breeze to cross through the house, I’d have the air-conditioning on, and that was always too cold, no matter where I set it. And the artificial hum drove me crazy, made me want to scream every time it kicked on. Admittedly, I loved the sound of a lawn mower and the smell of fresh-cut grass, but that was nothing compared to the unique mix of sugar and salt on the wind of the shore.
It was going to be damn hard to get rid of the beach house. A big profit, to be sure. The kind of profit that made the future a lot less scary. But I made a good salary and both houses were nearly paid off, since Ben had been determined to take the shortest mortgage we could reasonably afford. If I kept the place, I might have to live on a tight budget for a few years, but then things would get a lot easier.
I thought about it while we walked to Phillips Crab House for dinner. Thought about continuing to come here without Ben versus starting anew at home without all the memories that tied me down.
I honestly wasn’t sure which would be harder.
“So the Realtor is coming tomorrow?” Kristin asked, reeling me back in. We’d finished pretty much everything on the list and were ready for a new assessment of the house.
“Yes,” I said.
“How do you feel about the way the place looks now?”
I sighed. “Kind of like I want to buy it all over again.” We checked in at the hostess’s station and sat on hard wooden benches to wait for our name to be called. “There’s really something to that whole business of removing clutter.”
“I read a book about it. It’s supposed to make a huge difference in your mind-set.” She shrugged. “Then again, talking to the ghost of your late husband can do that too.”
I looked at her. “So you really don’t think I’m crazy?”
She shook her head. “I wish I did. Then I wouldn’t be so scared that I am. But, no. I don’t think you’re crazy. No one else could have known about Kyle. To say nothing of the fact that I’ve never really known you to be crazy. Not certifiably, at least. You’re a little nuts under the best of circumstances.”
“All the best people are.”
She laughed outright. “Ain’t it the truth?”
I put my arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “I’ve thought so for years.”
“All right, all right, I get it.” She let out a sigh. “Okay, if all goes well, the house goes on the market this week.”
“We should bury Saint Joseph in the front garden.”
She looked at me sideways. “Did you kill him?”
“No, I mean we should get a little statuette of Saint Joseph and bury him there for good luck. There’s all sorts of rules about which way he needs to face and so on, but I’ve heard people swear it works.”
“You’re continuing the crazy thing, you know that, right?” she a
sked, lifting a brow at me. “Is this a test to see how far you can go?”
I laughed heartily. “No! I’m serious! That’s what I’ve heard!” Though, given everything else I’d already thrown at her over the past few weeks, I couldn’t blame her for asking.
“Okay.” She shook her head. “We’ve come this far this summer, let’s go to a religious icon store and get Saint Joseph after dinner.”
Chapter Thirty-four
Willa
Sue Branford declared the house “magnificent” and her eyes glowed as she looked around the place. I imagined I could see dollar signs in them like on one of those old cartoons.
“The repair work is remarkable,” she said, examining the place where there had been a leak. “I can’t even tell there was an incident.”
Incident. When I’d first arrived, broken and ill-prepared for anything ahead of me, that incident had damn near made me give up on everything. It had been the perfect example to my then-stressed mind of how hard it all was to do this alone.
But I had done it. I mean, I’d hired Dave and he’d done it, but I’d managed to address it. It was fixed now. Likewise the painting and moving things. Yes, I’d needed help, Kristin had been a godsend, but somewhere along the way I’d stopped feeling like life was impossible without Ben and I’d started to just … I don’t know, I’d started to just live it.
Sue had just finished her tour of the house when the kids came running in, laughing unselfconsciously at some joke between them.
“Oh, hi!” Kelsey beamed when she saw us. “Sorry, didn’t know you had company. We’re about to go to work.”
“Hey, Mom,” Jamie said, and gave the most genuine smile I’d seen on him in a long, long time. “What’s up?”
I introduced them and finished with, “This is Ms. Branford, the Realtor who’s listing the house.”
Both kids’ expressions fell.
“Oh.” Jamie extended a hand. “Nice to meet you.” He tried to brighten when he looked at me. “Is it looking good?”
Sue answered for me. “It’s looking very good! I think there are going to be a lot of excited clients clambering to bid!”
“Great,” Jamie said, utterly without sincerity. It hadn’t been that long since he’d declared he never wanted to come back here. Now, after a few weeks of sun, gainful employment, and—it could not be denied—the company of Kelsey, he looked as if I’d just told him I was going to sell Dolly to the highest bidder.
“Oh, indeed it is,” Sue confirmed, apparently thinking she was enhancing the mood with her good news. “I bet it won’t last a week on the market. Don’t quote me on that, we never do know what’s going to happen, but I have a hunch this one’s going to go fast.”
“How soon will it go up for sale?” Kelsey wanted to know. She exchanged a glance with Jamie.
“I’m not sure,” I said, before Sue chirped up with the news that if we got it on the market quickly enough, it might just be sold yesterday.
“Well, there are a few things we have to do first,” I said, wanting to slow her down before she had a new family moved in on top of us.
I felt Kristin looking at me curiously.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sue said, continuing in oblivion. “I think you’ve done a fab job of getting it ready. I can’t think of anything major that needs to be done at this point besides getting the signs out and setting up some viewings.”
“Well…” I didn’t have anything to say. Well, nothing.
“Come on,” Jamie said to Kelsey. “We’ve got to get ready to go to work.”
Kelsey’s gaze lingered on me for a moment, her blond hair lighter by the day, framing her lovely tawny face. “Willa, let me know if you need anything done. I’m glad to help however I can. I’m just so grateful to be here, you know?”
I could see that. “Thanks, sweetie.”
I watched them, feeling a pang. Their youth, their fun, their carefree days at the beach.
Lord, I didn’t want to take that away from them.
“I don’t think you want to sell,” a voice said in my ear. It was Ben, of course. Except I didn’t see him this time and I wasn’t sure it was really him and not my own imagination, knowing what he’d say because he’d know what was truly in my heart. I closed my eyes hard for a minute to stave off tears. Look at the kids, I imagined him saying. They look so happy here. Like us. Once upon a time.
I glanced to my side and thought I caught a glimpse of him, but he was so close he was blurry to the eye. Or maybe those were my own tears, obscuring my view of the new curtains that were rippling in the wind.
It really didn’t matter which it was. I knew how he’d feel and he knew how I’d feel and so the reality of the conversation didn’t even matter. It was already my reality.
And then I knew that, although love could transcend anything, including death, romantic love had nothing on the love a parent feels for a child. If anything could make him feel the emptiness that the afterlife had apparently filled, it would be Jamie.
I reached my hand subtly into the cold next to me. I could imagine his hand reaching for mine, but, as always, I could feel little more than the imagined touch.
“Well. Thanks so much for coming, Sue. I’ll be in touch soon and let you know what I want to do.”
Sue, still apparently confident in her commission, extended a hand to me. “So nice to see you again, Willa. All right, so I’ll be in touch. You just let me know what you want to do, but I honestly think we can turn this place around within weeks.”
My stomach hurt at the prospect.
Sue put her paperwork into her messenger bag and tucked it under her suited arm.
It was hard to break the habitual feeling that Ben should be acknowledged too, but of course he shouldn’t. It was all me now.
I was on my own, whether he was close in spirit or not.
I realized that shouldn’t have been a revelation, but it was. I’d been going through life after his death barely breathing, just trying to get from one moment to the next, but I had. I had done it for years.
I was going to be all right, I knew it.
Because I already was.
Chapter Thirty-five
Jamie
Jamie and Kelsey pulled up to the house, both laughing unstoppably. Their inside jokes were such journeys that no one in the world but they could laugh at them. One dumb impression would turn into an entire tongue-in-cheek conversation that bred its very own jokes. It was happening now. Suddenly she was talking in an extremely terrible Dutch accent, and all because of the initial joke they’d had that began from the injury she’d incurred at the dump. They were taking out this cheap old bookshelf and throwing it in, but when she insisted on helping, her hand slid whip-fast over a sharp edge and was cut.
Jamie shoved the shelf over the ledge upon seeing the instant blood, and then flew to the back of the car and tore an old Metallica T-shirt. When he came back with it, she was cracking up. He ignored her and wrapped her hand, and she finally calmed enough to say, “Oh, my god, you flew into action like Superman! That was amazing. Suddenly didn’t need help with the bookshelf…”
“To be fair,” he’d said, “I never needed any help with the bookshelf.”
“Bull!”
He made her elevate her hand and let him toss the rest of the junk on his own. She made noise about being fine, but he didn’t budge on this. Once they were in the car and saw that her hand wasn’t as bad as it seemed, they had found their way to the stupid joke.
There was another car in the driveway when they got home, so Jamie had to park on the street.
“Who is that?” asked Kelsey.
“No clue. The plumber has a truck. Probably an electrician or something.”
“In a Prius?” She opened her door. “That either makes no sense or perfect sense, I’m not sure.”
They went in, and a brassy woman’s voice bounced off the walls and floors of the mostly empty rooms.
“Right, right, oh, sure, I agree compl
etely, I agree completely. Yeah. Well, my sister’s husband is a contractor, it would be no problem to get him out here if you think you want to go that route, but I think it’s already magnificent the way it is.”
“I don’t know … probably not, though.”
“You don’t need to, honestly, this place will sell like that.” He heard the snap of fingers and they walked in to see a woman standing in their kitchen with Kristin and his mom.
The woman was shaped almost frighteningly like a pigeon from the side, and had one of those haircuts that made you wonder how she had come upon it in this day and age—didn’t she know it was, like … a joke to have something so mulletlike?
He was being nasty, and he didn’t mean to be. But he was really irritated by her presence.
Kelsey said, “Umm…” but he was pretty sure he was the only one to hear her.
His mom introduced the woman as the Realtor who was going to be listing the house for sale. Sue Branford. She was probably a great salesperson, because she talked right over everything anyone else said. Heaven help anyone who tried to say no to her.
After a moment of polite chitchat, they all said goodbye, and, after offering his mom any help she could give, Kelsey excused herself to go get ready for work. He knew she’d go into the room she was staying in and take that small purple makeup bag into the bathroom and come out looking pretty, though he liked her before she put the makeup on and after she took it off. The Kelsey he knew didn’t have candy-apple-red lips and all that black eyeliner. But he could see that she was doing it right.
Then he’d start the car and let the air-conditioning cool it down a little, and then they’d go out and get in. She’d bring him a water and one for herself, and about one song in, she’d say, “Can I play something?” and then choose the music for the rest of the drive.
It was strange that their routine, new as it was, would be cut short soon. He couldn’t envision that they’d ever have another opportunity like this again.
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