Emily smiled back at her. “Of course.” She might’ve bombed in her efforts to help Amber, but she could be an angel of mercy to Claire. The tradeoff wasn’t the same but made her feel a little better. She blocked out the image of Amber’s near-sprint away from her house the night before, the empty glass bowl left on her counter.
Suddenly, beside her Claire sat up and Emily could feel tension emanating from her. She heard Claire start mumbling to herself, the mood going from festive to fearful in a moment. “That’s too far,” she heard Claire say. “Don’t take him that deep.”
She looked at Sara and Noah, who had rapidly moved from ankle-deep water to knee-deep and seemed to be moving deeper. She could feel Claire coiling tighter beside her on high alert in case her quick reflexes were needed. She wondered how it felt to never relax, never let go. In moments like this, she was actually glad she and Ryan had never had a child. She couldn’t imagine being fully and solely responsible for another human being with no help, no white knight on a steed pulling into the driveway ever.
Both women were silent as they watched the children splash and laugh in the knee-deep water. Sara, taller, didn’t realize how dangerous it was for her smaller brother and wasn’t trying to be daring. Emily knew Claire wouldn’t interfere unless they got deeper. She could feel Claire willing them to move in the right direction, to be safe. When Sara took Noah’s hand and did just that, both women exhaled in unison. Claire laughed and elbowed Emily. “They are going to give me a heart attack. Just you wait and see.” Their mingled laughter was the sound of relief, the joy found in safety in all its forms.
There were two moments from that day Emily suspected she would always remember, moments that in their own simple way added up to change everything. One plus one equals two. One came when Emily was alone for a bit, her eyes canvassing the beach as they often did. Claire walked along the water’s edge with her children, patiently looking at another shell Sara presented, kicking water playfully back at Noah every time he kicked it at her. Emily watched the trio for a while. Then her gaze moved across the beach, taking in the scope of a summer’s day at Sunset at the height of the season. People were everywhere, towels and chairs and umbrellas and coolers occupying every available patch of sand. She became just an observer and not a participant, seeing the scene unfold, a landscape painting entitled “Perfect Summer’s Day.” And as she watched the scenes around her, she felt a glimmer of what she’d felt on the massage table that day—that letting go, that openness. It wasn’t a skein of yarn unspooling, more like a taut thread going the slightest bit slack. She felt more open, more connected to people than she had in a long time. She was among the living.
A heavily tattooed man played tenderly with a toddler. He looked like a giant lumbering grizzly as he tried to follow the pint-sized boy. And yet his awed look when he got down on the sand and peered at his child’s little face brought tears to Emily’s eyes. Near them a man and teenage boy played a game of lacrosse, sending the little ball sailing into the air and expertly catching it over and over, the ball making a whizzing sound as it passed over her head. She tried to decide if they were father and son, uncle and nephew, or not related at all. Perhaps the man was someone who had once reached out to the boy the way she’d tried to do with Amber. Maybe the boy was grateful he had now. But then she heard the man say something that ended with the word son, and Emily knew she’d guessed wrong.
Her eyes moved over to find two elderly women sitting side by side wearing matching floppy, wide-brimmed hats reading the exact same book. The image made her think of her and Marta someday, when they were old women. They would be that way, she thought. She would buy them matching hats and Marta would demand they read the same book so they could discuss it. They would compete over who could read faster, underlining passages to read aloud to each other. Perhaps by then Marta would be less enamored with Phil. Emily debated surreptitiously snapping a photo of the women with her phone and sending it to Marta with the words, “Us, someday.”
Just beyond the women were three tween girls all sitting in a tidal pool as if it were their own personal Jacuzzi and they were enjoying a day at the spa. The girls were engaged in what looked to be an animated conversation, punctuated with lots of laughter and, Emily was sure, inside jokes built on history. Perhaps their families were friends and vacationed together every summer. Perhaps they were cousins who only saw each other once a year and crammed all the memories they could inside one week at the beach. Perhaps they’d only just met that day and formed the kind of instant bond that seems to happen in childhood. Either way, Emily wished them long and happy lives free from lost husbands like her, unexpected pregnancies like Amber, or the overwhelmed-ness she’d observed in Claire. And yet chances were of the three of them they’d face at least one of those things, and more. No one got to stay a carefree girl, laughing on a beach, her whole life waiting like a promise.
Finally her eyes landed on a couple walking along the beach, their fingers entwined as they moved slowly. Usually she immediately looked away from happy couples, but something about these two captured her attention in an unavoidable way. It was clear they had nowhere to be, no agenda to keep. They’d entered full-fledged beach time and had let go of whatever they’d crossed the bridge carrying when they arrived at Sunset. The girl leaned into him as she walked and he kissed the top of her head and, for a moment, Emily closed her eyes and held that image in her mind. Except in her mind it wasn’t those strangers. It was her and Ryan years ago, making plans and allowing themselves to envision a future that would never come. She opened her eyes and the couple was past her, continuing on their journey down the beach. She didn’t watch them go, and yet the image of them clung to her for the rest of the day, cropping up as they packed up to leave the beach, as she made her solitary dinner and settled down to eat in front of the TV, as she saw the headlights of a car sweep across the front of her house as it turned into the driveway next door.
She put her bowl of cereal down and went to her front window, barely pulling back the curtain so she could see Claire’s husband arrive. From her hidden vantage point she watched as he parked the car and got out, standing for a moment in the glow of the interior dome light from his car. He was tall and even in the gathering dark she could tell he was handsome, a good match for Claire. She watched as Claire moved down the porch stairs and into his arms as he strode toward her. He wrapped her in his arms, Claire disappearing into his dark form as he pressed his lips into her hair. Emily backed away from the space, stung for the second time by a glimpse of such happiness. She knew what Claire was feeling in that moment, remembered it with every molecule of her being. Safe. Complete. Protected. Loved. She had had that once. Had soaked it in as much as she could for the time that she had.
Both images—the couple on the beach and Claire and her husband greeting each other—hunkered down in her psyche, becoming something that teased and taunted her for days, unavoidable no matter how much she tried to distract herself with more novels and household projects. It took her several days to finally admit why the two separate images had converged in her head and stuck there. It wasn’t because she missed what she saw so much. It was, she realized, because she wanted what she saw. She wanted it again.
Sixteen
When the phone rang in the middle of the night, Emily reached for it, disoriented, forgetting entirely that she was in Sunset Beach, North Carolina. Instead she expected the voice on the other end of the phone to be a nurse from the hospital telling her Ryan was asking for her and to please come back, or worse, that he was gone. She blinked in the darkness and realized that that news—the worst news—had already happened. Instead she heard an unfamiliar voice say, “Okay, so you were right.”
“Who? Who is this?” Emily asked, trying to place the deadpan delivery, the emotionless tone.
“It’s Amber.” This time the voice sounded smaller, less tough. Less certain.
“I was right?” Emily repeated, still not fully awake, still not tracking w
ith Amber’s middle-of-the-night timing.
“Yes,” Amber said. “About what you said. I’m not sure how you guessed but I’m kind of glad you did now, because no one knows and . . .”
Emily listened to silence for a few seconds. “Amber?” she ventured.
“Yeah?” When she finally spoke, Emily could tell that Amber was fighting back tears . . . and losing.
“Honey, are you okay? Do you need me to come get you? Is your dad there?”
“My dad’s never here. He always stays over with his girlfriend.”
“Oh,” Emily said. “Okay.”
“And something’s wrong. There’s . . . blood. And I’m worried. I didn’t know who else to call. No one else . . . knows.”
She thought of her pull toward this girl, her desire to help her for no reason other than that the girl seemed like she could use someone in her corner. But God had known that this moment would come, that this girl would need someone to call. He had set it up, Emily could see, so that when the time came she’d have someone who cared. She closed her eyes and thanked Him, wondering what to do next.
Emily had never had a miscarriage but she’d known a teacher at school who had one. At lunch that day the other teachers discussed the poor woman’s tragedy like they were discussing something they had watched on TV, dishing about what happened. It had happened in the middle of third block and her husband, sheepish and ashen, had come to take her to the hospital. That, Emily thought, was what she needed to do. When it was over she would tell Amber that it was for the best and that when it was the right time, she’d have a baby, just like that teacher eventually did, bringing her bundle of blue to the school for all to admire.
“I’m on my way,” Emily said, already moving toward the dresser to extract a sweatshirt to pull on over her old T-shirt, sliding her feet into flip-flops. She hung up the phone with Amber, who agreed to meet her in front of the motel office, and peered in her bathroom mirror. She looked awful, her hair messy and no makeup. For the sake of not scaring poor Amber with her appearance, she settled for running a brush through her hair and slicking it back into a ponytail. She swiped some light pink gloss onto her lips and ran the mascara brush across her lashes. Thankful that she’d gotten enough color on her face during her many days in the sun, she figured she looked passable, grabbed her car keys, and headed out the door.
She zipped down Beach Road, turned right, then left into the motel parking lot, skidding to a stop in front of the main office to find Amber sitting on the curb, her feet stretched out in front of her, looking miserable. She got up and slowly made her way to the car, stopping to put an old threadbare towel on the seat before she sat down. “Just in case,” she said to Emily. The action brought tears to Emily’s eyes and she blinked them back as she put the car into reverse and then drive again, racing forward until they reached the bridge, where they found the gates down and the bridge open.
“No way,” Emily sighed aloud. She put the car in park and looked over at Amber, who was staring at her, open-mouthed.
“I have to get to a hospital,” Amber said. “Like, now.”
“I know,” Emily said, opening the car door, the dome light shining on Amber’s pale face as she did.
She reached out to grab Emily’s shoulder before she could get out. “I know it sounds weird, but I, like, want to save this baby,” she said.
Emily gave her what she hoped passed as an encouraging smile and slipped out of the car. She guessed that the pregnancy couldn’t be saved. In her limited experience, blood in an early pregnancy meant a miscarriage was happening. But she didn’t want Amber to lose hope and she certainly didn’t want to be the one who broke that news to the girl. For that reason alone, she needed them to close that bridge so they could get to the hospital. She’d seen a rather large hospital up Highway 17 near Shallotte. With any luck she’d have Amber there in less than twenty minutes. She headed toward the closed gates, the lights flashing out a warning to not come any farther. Emily walked right past them, determined.
She walked to the water’s edge and, with all the gumption she could muster, began to yell. “Hey!” she shouted. “Kyle? Bridge tender! Someone!” But they appeared to be doing something to the bridge and the clanking tools and machinations blocked out the sound of her voice. She yelled a few more times to no avail, even going far enough to flap her arms and jump up and down. But it didn’t help. Defeated, she walked back to the car, and Amber.
She was trying to think of a way to break the news to Amber that they weren’t getting over the bridge tonight unless they just happened to open it when she got back to the car. Amber handed her her cell phone with a number already plugged in. “Hit Send when you’re ready,” she said.
She looked at Amber with knitted brows.
“It’ll call the tender house,” the girl explained.
“They have a phone?”
Amber looked at her like Emily was perhaps a little slow. “Of course.”
“And you just know the number? By heart?”
The look was still on her face as she said, “Everyone does.”
Emily hit Send and listened to the phone ring a few times while she thought, Well, obviously not everyone.
The voice that answered was familiar. Of course. This wasn’t the time to act like a flustered schoolgirl talking to her crush. She needed to be purposeful and direct.
“Hi, is this Kyle?” she asked.
“Yes, it is,” he responded. “Who is this?”
“This is Emily Shaw, the woman who bought Ada’s house?”
She heard him smile through the phone and—she couldn’t help it—pictured him smiling as she did. “Emily, yeah, of course. What can I do for you?”
Oh, would Marta have had a field day with that question had she been there. But Marta wasn’t there and Amber was. She looked at the girl who wasn’t smiling at all. “I, um, need to get across the bridge. Now. It’s an emergency.”
His voice went from jovial to serious in a second. “What kind of emergency?”
“I’ve got a girl here—a teen—who is having some, um, issues and needs to get to a hospital. Can you please close the bridge just long enough for us to cross?”
“Is it life or death?” he asked.
She glanced at Amber, who didn’t appear to be in pain, but who, she knew, was convinced that her baby would die if she didn’t get to a doctor. And yet Emily knew that chances were that was already the case. Truth was, without an ultrasound or tests to tell them more, she didn’t know for sure that Amber was actually pregnant at all. There had to be such a thing as false positives with those pregnancy tests.
“No,” Emily answered, a little hitch in her voice as she spoke. “I don’t think it is.”
“I’m on orders from the state not to close the bridge unless it’s a life or death emergency. We’re reopening the bridge at 5:00 a.m. You can cross then. I’m sorry.” He sounded genuinely sorry and Emily felt bad for putting him on the spot.
“It’s okay,” she said. She looked over at Amber and made a face, then executed a perfect three point turn right there at the water’s edge. She said good-bye to Kyle and handed the phone back to Amber before heading toward her house. She checked the clock. It was 3:00 a.m., which meant they didn’t have long to wait for the bridge to be functional again. She turned to Amber. “The state is working on the bridge. He can’t open it unless it’s life or death.”
Amber stared out the window as they drove. For a few minutes she said nothing. “I hate that bridge,” she said as they pulled into Emily’s driveway. “I wish they’d tear it down.” In Claire’s house she saw a light on and half wondered what they were doing up. She thought about the two sides of the argument, and the two women near her who were on either side—the romantic one who favored keeping the small-town access to the island in place and the practical one who favored safety and progress. Two generations held two opposing views.
As she watched Amber open the car door and carefully pick her way toward
the front door of her house, she knew which side made the most sense, and she grieved not being able to help Amber the way she wanted to. Her throat tightened at the thought of yet another disappointment defining her life. She hoped that if she had miscarried Amber wouldn’t blame the bridge, wouldn’t rationalize that this delay had caused her baby’s death. Kyle had asked if it was life or death and as they each flopped down on opposite ends of the couch, she wondered if she had answered wrong.
After they both dozed for a couple hours, they got back in her car and headed toward the bridge. They were waiting when it swung shut to finally allow passage. She looked at the bridge tender’s house, expecting to see Kyle’s face and give him a wave, but she saw another man with gray hair instead. She told herself that she wasn’t disappointed and that it didn’t matter whether she saw him or not. What mattered right now was getting Amber to a doctor.
Thankfully there wasn’t a crowd in the ER of the local hospital when they got there and they took Amber back right away. Emily was impressed at the girl’s resourcefulness. She had her insurance card ready and filled out the forms with an efficiency that surpassed her age. She really was on her own, Emily realized. In that respect, Emily felt that they were kindred spirits. Each of them, when it came down to it, had no one to rely on except herself. She reached over and put her hand over Amber’s. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered.
Amber, who seemed on the verge of tears, nodded. A moment later a nurse called her name. “I’ll be right here,” she promised as Amber walked away.
Emily flipped through old magazines—a Woman’s Day from two years prior and a Runner’s World from six months earlier. It was practically a new release, she thought with a smile. She was debating taking up running—maybe training for a marathon—when a nurse came and fetched her. “Ma’am,” the nurse said. “Your daughter would like you to come back and be with her now.”
The Bridge Tender Page 13
