Island Hearts (Jenny's Turn and Stray Lady)

by Vanessa Grant

  She stayed for three days, listening to her mother talking about the garden, the neighbors’ children who were turning into hooligans as they grew up, and the weekly bridge club.

  On the last day of her visit, her mother said suddenly, “Georgina, I’ve always wanted to tell you how sorry I was that I opposed your marriage to Scott.”

  George was peeling potatoes. She stopped the action of the peeler and stared at her mother. “That’s a long time ago.”

  Her mother shrugged. She was small, but George had always felt slightly intimidated by her. Now she said, “It kept you away from home for a long time. I missed you. And it was your life. I’d no business trying to live it for you.” She took a deep breath, said, “And I hope you won’t be angry with me now, but I don’t want you to spend your life like this. You were never meant to live alone. I think you should go out and find a man and—” She spread her hands wide, indicating somehow the years of her own widowhood. “You should have a family.”

  “Any man?” asked George, smiling, mischief lighting her eyes. “What should I be looking for?”

  “Love,” said her mother.

  “I’ll think about it,” she promised.

  She’d hardly thought about anything else since leaving Green Island. She didn’t mention Lyle, but when she left the next day she promised to return soon.

  She went to the north end of Vancouver Island. She visited a second hand book store and picked up an armful of books – everything from Agatha Christie to Georgette Heyer. Then she checked into a small motel and spent two weeks walking the beaches and reading. She felt instinctively that if she could bury herself in the books, vegetate for a while, her subconscious might straighten out her tangled emotions.

  One afternoon, in the middle of an Agatha Christie murder, it occurred to her that Lyle loved her. Although he hadn’t actually said the words, it was in every look he gave her. And Lyle’s kind of love was nothing like Scott’s. Scott had wanted her in spite of her wildness. Scott hadn’t loved all of her. He’d loved what he wanted her to be.

  Lyle loved the woman who was crazy enough to sail single-handed from Mexico to Alaska at the wrong time of year, the woman who was restless and afraid and prone to argue about anything that seemed to threaten her freedom.

  Was she insane? Running from a man who felt like that about her? She called the travel agent and canceled her Mexico reservations. She took a bus and ferry back to Vancouver, arrived at Jenny’s in mid-afternoon when the house was empty. They’d bought a big old house on the North shore, overlooking the water. They kept a spare key in the porch, where George suspected any intelligent burglar could find it.

  She was feeling a little less sure of herself by the time she opened the door. If Lyle loved her, surely he knew it was impossible for her to live on a lighthouse. She’d never pretended to like the isolation, but what if he expected her to—

  To be someone else. She was George. He had to accept that. If he really loved her, he would accept that.

  She opened the door, found a can of Coke in the refrigerator and walked, sipping the cool liquid, into the living room. She was wearing blue jeans and an oversized shirt. She discarded her sandals and went barefoot across the floor.

  Her mail was on the mantle, not far from the empty playpen. Her new calling card. A letter from the insurance agent saying that her claim would be delayed while they waited for the coastguard report on her shipwreck.

  An envelope addressed to her in childish printing, with Green Island Lighthouse as the return address. A small package with Lyle’s handwriting on it. Not a letter, but another cassette.

  Her hands trembled as she pushed it into the tape player. The speaker crackled, then Lyle’s voice was saying gruffly, “This one’s for you, honey.”

  The music filled the room. The drums and the bass guitar. Lyle’s voice. ‘I use my own voice to show the words,’ he’d once said to her, but this was more than words and music. It was a love song, her love song. She sank down onto the hearth rug, hugging her knees and listening to Lyle’s voice, Lyle’s music, asking her to let him love her.

  The music faded to silence. Then there was only the sounds of traffic outside… a faint crackling that came from the stereo Jenny and Jake must have bought at a bargain sale somewhere.

  Sitting alone in that big living room, tears flowing down her cheeks, she admitted to herself that she was waiting for Lyle to come. She’d prided herself on being independent, on knowing her own mind. That was all nonsense! Lyle had touched her heart and she had run, terrified. And now, knowing she couldn’t run away from her own heart, she was waiting for him to come. Waiting for him to take the decision out of her hands.

  And he wasn’t going to do that, damn him!

  Here she was, all ready to let him carry her off – mind you, she meant to do a little fighting, to negotiate her own terms, but she fully expected him to come and get her.

  And he wasn’t going to.

  He was going to leave it up to her. He’d sent her his message, his love, and if anyone made the next move it was going to have to be her. All right! But he was asking for it. If he was leaving this up to her, then she was going to do it her way! He’d better love her, really love her, because she was about to interfere in his life unforgivably!

  Maybe it wasn’t so bad being a volatile, restless woman. If she weren’t, who would get Lyle and Robyn off that lighthouse?

  She grinned, surprised at herself, because she was actually feeling good about herself. Why not? Emotions were better than being cold. And being restless meant you saw more, did more. And so many people loved her. Jenny. Her mother. Robyn. And Lyle. She took the cassette out of the stereo. Then she opened Robyn’s letter.

  Dear George

  Uncle Russ and Ant Dorothy had a baby boy. Uncle Russ is coming home in two weeks, but Ant Dorothy is gonna stay in town another month with the baby. The baby is called Lyle for my dad.

  We’re gonna go on holidays on the fifteenth. We’re taking the ferry and visiting my grandma near Victoria. Then we’re flying to Vancouver an then I go to the hosptal.

  Daddy says I shouldn’t ask you, but please will you come see me in the hosptal like you said? I’m having my opration on May the twentieth.

  Love, Robyn

  George was still sitting on the rug in front of the fireplace when Jenny came in. Jake was right behind her, the baby in a pack on his back, with its fist clamped on a lock of Jake’s hair.

  George was frightened inside. It was a delicious and exciting fear, something like taking Lady Harriet before a gale, surfing wild before the wind. She stood and moved quickly towards them, stopping Jenny’s surprised greeting with a quick question, “Jake, doesn’t that guy you introduced me to – Dennis? – doesn’t he work at a travel industry? Would he be willing to do you a favor?”

  “He does,” Jake agreed, turning to let Jenny lift the baby out of the pack, giving a special smile to his wife and a grin for George. “And he might. And hello, cousin. Nice to see you back. Changed your mind about going to Mexico?”

  “Yes, I have. I never really wanted to go to Mexico.” She was starting to pace the room, wanting action now. “Do you think he could track down a reservation for me? I need to know the flight someone’s arriving on from Victoria.”

  “We could do it ourselves,” said Jenny, her eyes alive with curiosity. “We can use the computer at the studio to get into the airline reservations.”

  “Good!” She swung back to them. Jenny was holding the baby in her arms. Jake was half listening to George, but mostly watching his wife and baby. “And, please, would you two mind awfully if Lyle and his daughter stayed here while they’re in Vancouver?”

  Of course they didn’t mind. They had a big old house, and Jenny was agonizingly curious to see this songwriting lightkeeper. Jake was still grateful to George for helping him and Jenny get together. George noticed that his eyes lost their focus as he thought about a rocky isolated lighthouse with a music man tending the lig
ht. It was a natural for a television documentary.

  Good. If Jake was interested, Jenny would do the rest when she met Lyle. George wasn’t quite sure how Lyle would react, but she planned to shake up his comfortable lighthouse life.

  The computer at Austin Media cooperated by producing the date, time and flight number for Lyle Stevens’s reservation on the Victoria-Vancouver jet.

  George felt the excitement growing inside her. The days seemed to drag by as she waited for Lyle to come to Vancouver, then suddenly it was time and she felt her confidence draining away.

  She almost ran Jenny’s car into a bus on the way to the airport. The driver shouted at her and she had no retort to make at all. She just drove on, trembling. She rushed to the airport, but arrived far too early. Then the plane was delayed… And she waited.

  Ten minutes left until the plane touched down. She couldn’t get through security to meet them at the gate. Where should she wait? She mentally retraced the route for disembarking passengers, and decided that the luggage carousels were the best place to wait. They had to come down that escalator and they would surely have luggage to claim.

  Maybe this wasn’t a good idea, after all. Surprising him. Had she read his feelings wrong? Would he rather she waited, passively, for him to contact her?

  Given time to think, had he come to regret writing the song for her? Love was only a word, after all. Not everybody meant the same thing when they said it. She hadn’t felt like this when she was a seventeen-year-old girl worshiping the tall man who said he loved her.

  A loudspeaker voice announced the arrival of someone’s flight. She couldn’t hear over the excited babble of a group of teenage girls wearing school uniforms. Lyle’s flight? No! It was too soon. She wasn’t ready, after all.

  She found the carousel with Lyle’s flight number over it. It was turning slowly, still empty. She watched the escalator intently. What if they had only hand luggage? They would go down the escalator and out of the terminal. She could miss them by glancing away.

  She should have written to tell him she would meet him.

  What if he didn’t want her here?

  Damn it! Stop it, George! If he loves you, he knows you’d do this sort of thing. He—

  She moved to make sure she had an unobstructed view of the escalator. An endless stream of people riding down towards her.

  Two lovers holding hands. The woman stumbled as she stepped off the escalator. Her lover caught her in eager arms. Three children with a harried mother. The younger boy poked the older in the ribs, then gazed off innocently. A man with a turban and a long beard. Two tall young men in immaculate suits, carrying briefcases. A girl in jeans and long straight hair, her face worried and intense.

  Lyle.

  His head was bent, his eyes on the child beside him. His hand rested on the rail, covering Robyn’s as they rode down.

  His face seemed more lined than she remembered, his eyes narrowed as he glanced around. He didn’t see her.

  He was wearing a light brown sports jacket over an open necked shirt. His throat showed bronze above the open collar, his hair glinting red and curling just slightly over the collar of his jacket.

  George tried to make her feet move, to go to them, but she was frozen. God! She was terrified. She just had to walk up and say hello, but she was utterly panic-stricken.

  Robyn was craning her neck, taking in everything, her face eager but tense. It was Robyn who saw George first, just as they stepped off the escalator. She pulled away from Lyle and went flying across the space between them, dodging the two men with briefcases and flinging herself into George’s arms.

  “I knew you’d come! I knew it! I knew it!”

  George staggered under the weight of Robyn’s surprisingly solid body. She braced herself on a pillar and let her arms go around the girl, burying her face in the long soft hair and ignoring the elbow that seemed to be pushed hard into her ribs.

  Robyn felt warm, full of enchanting corners like the point of her elbow. George held her, afraid to look up, trying to put off that moment when she’d meet Lyle’s eyes.

  Even though she tried to prepare herself, when she looked up at Lyle her heart slammed hard against her rib cage. Surely Robyn must feel it?

  He was taller than she remembered, his hair sleeker, his eyes a deeper blue. Or was it the clothes he was wearing? She was used to seeing him in jeans, with his hair tousled by the wind. His face was stern, not smiling. He didn’t say hello. She had thought she would know how he felt the moment she saw him, but she couldn’t read anything in his eyes. Her own smile faded and she tried to make her eyes cool and friendly.

  It was long seconds before Robyn pulled back and twisted around to her father. “Daddy, did you know she’d be here?”

  He shook his head. His eyes left hers, took in the activity around them. “Our luggage should be here any minute.” Lyle pointed to the carousel and Robyn moved away from them to watch the luggage that was starting to slide down the ramp.

  George watched Robyn, avoiding Lyle’s eyes. She should never have come. He’d known where to find her if he wanted her. She should have waited.

  George said, “She’s hardly limping at all today.”

  He spoke as if to a stranger. “She forgets to favor the leg when she’s excited. And it is almost normal now. This is the last time she’ll have to have surgery. Then— exercises and time. This time next year she could be running and jumping.” He pushed his hands in the pockets of his elegant slacks, seeming to turn away from her. “Why are you here, George? For my daughter?”

  She let the pillar behind her take her weight again. She closed her eyes briefly, wished she could be somewhere else. She said, “No, not just for Robyn.”

  Robyn was shifting from foot to foot, craning her neck to see each piece of luggage as it started down the ramp to the carousel. Lyle was facing George now. The ice had left his eyes. She thought she could see love there, but she wasn’t sure.

  “Lyle, I’m—” She broke off and laughed nervously. “I’m kind of scared.”

  “What of?” He leaned one arm on the post above her head. He was very close now, only inches away. Why was he making this so hard for her? Why couldn’t he just look at her and know? Did there have to be words?

  “You. Me.” She touched his immaculate jacket fleetingly. “You and me. And you look so formal, I don’t know what to say to you.”

  His eyebrow quirked up. “Formal? I’m not exactly in tie and tails, you know.”

  “No. And you’re not in blue jeans.” She was getting her breath under control. She had to. He was controlled, and she had to be controlled too.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, his voice suddenly ragged, “and, if you’re scared, would it help to know that I’m terrified?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, moving closer. He couldn’t possibly have heard her with all the noise around, but he smiled, then he frowned.

  “George.” His arms gripped her shoulders suddenly. She was halfway into his arms when he stopped and warned, “Be careful. Don’t let me push you into anything.”

  She met his eyes, seeing a strong willed man holding himself back. “Be careful yourself,” she warned, a smile growing on her lips. “I might be the one doing the pushing.”

  She was glad to see him laugh, the light reaching his eyes. “I’m sure I can hold my own, honey.” His lips were on hers in a hot, fleeting caress. “And if I can’t, I’m sure I’ll enjoy losing.”

  Then he was cool and remote, collecting his luggage, steering Robyn towards the exit, letting George keep up with them on her own. How could he be so casual? She was jelly inside, and he was managing luggage as if it were the most important thing in the world.

  “A taxi,” Lyle said, looking across at the lineup of various taxis waiting for fares.

  “I’ve got a car,” George offered, not taking his arm because he didn’t seem to be offering it. “I brought Jenny’s car.”

  When they were in the small car, Lyle at her
side and Robyn in the back seat, George started the engine and let it run for a minute. Jenny’s car had a disconcerting habit of stalling dead if you tried to put it in motion too soon.

  “How are your parents, Lyle?”

  “They’re fine. Did Robyn tell you we were going to visit them?”

  She nodded, then said, “Jenny and Jake would like you and Robyn to stay at their place while you’re in Vancouver. They’ve got this big old house that they rattle around in.”

  “Why? Why do they want us?”

  “Because—” She pushed the car into gear. She couldn’t say, ‘Because I love you.’ She would never have imagined he could be so hard to talk to. Was he being deliberately difficult?

  He said, “We’re better to stay at the hotel. It’s near the hospital – only a few blocks away.” He shifted, laid his arm along the back of the seat. His hand was only an inch from her shoulder. He glanced back at Robyn.

  George carefully maneuvered the car out of the parking lot. “They’ve invited you because I asked them to. They’re my family and they’re— well, they’re grateful that you pulled me out of the ocean. They want to meet you.”

  She was a coward. Why didn’t she say it? They’ve invited you because you’re important to me. Because I asked them to, and they’re blind if they don’t know I love you.

  He shifted again. She guessed that he’d be happier if he were at the wheel of this car. She said defensively, “I’m a good driver.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” he said mildly, making her irrationally angry. Anger was easier than this vulnerable uncertainty, and she took refuge in it for a moment.

  Robyn was too busy staring out the window to say a word. The inside of the car was silent until they were working their way through the traffic down Granville Street. When George couldn’t stand the silence anymore, she asked, “Did you enjoy visiting your parents?”

  “Yes.” He shifted to watch her. His voice sounded too patient, as if he were humoring her. “I told you they live a few miles outside Victoria, right? They’ve got a couple of acres and two big dogs.” He smiled then, and his voice deepened. “The dogs are very big. Robyn was trying to ride one of them.”