The Mailbox

by Marybeth Whalen

  She put her arms around him and looked into his eyes. “Not lame at all,” she said.

  As he kissed her, she willed her mind to record it all: the roar of the waves and the cry of the seagulls, the powdery softness of the warm sand under her feet, the briny smell of the ocean mixed with the scent of Campbell’s sun-kissed skin. Later, when she was back at home in Raleigh, North Carolina, she would come right back to this moment. Again and again. Especially when her mother sent her to her room with the paper-thin walls while she entertained her newest boyfriend.

  Lindsey opened the mailbox, the hinges creaking as she did. She looked to him, almost for approval. “Look inside,” he invited her.

  She saw some loose paper as well as spiral-bound notebooks, the kind she bought at the drugstore for school. The pages were crinkly from the sea air and water. There were pens in the mailbox too, some with their caps missing.

  Campbell pointed. “You should write a letter,” he said. “Take a pen and some paper and just sit down and write what you are feeling.” He shrugged. “It seemed like something you would really get into.”

  How well he had come to know her in such a short time. “Okay,” she said. “I love it.” She reached inside and pulled out a purple notebook, flipping it open to read a random page. Someone had written about a wonderful family vacation spent at Sunset and the special time she had spent with her daughter.

  She closed the notebook. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. She couldn’t imagine her own mother ever wanting to spend time with her, much less being so grateful about it. Reading the notebook made her feel worse, not better. She didn’t need reminding about what she didn’t have waiting for her back home.

  Campbell moved in closer. “What is it?” he said, his body lining up perfectly with hers as he pulled her close.

  She laid the notebook back inside the mailbox. “I just don’t want to go home,” she said. “I wish my uncle didn’t have to return to his stupid job. How can I go back to … her? She doesn’t want me there any more than I want to be there.” This time she didn’t fight the tears that had been threatening all day.

  Campbell pulled her down to sit beside him in the sand and said nothing as she cried, rocking her slightly in his arms.

  With her head buried in his shoulder, her words came out muffled. “You are so lucky you live here.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I guess I am.” He said nothing for a while. “But you have to know that this place won’t be the same for me without you in it.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes red from crying. “So you’re saying I’ve ruined it for you?”

  He laughed, and she recorded the sound of his laugh in her memory too. “Well, if you want to put it that way, then, yes.”

  “Well, that just makes me feel worse!” She laid her head on his shoulder and concentrated on the nearness of him, inhaled the sea scent of his skin and the smell of earth that clung to him from working outside with his dad.

  “Everywhere I go from now on I will have the memory of you with me. Of me and you together. The Island Market, the beach, the arcade, the deck on my house, the pier …” He raised his eyebrows as he remembered the place where he first kissed her. “And now here. It will always remind me of you.”

  “And I am going home to a place without a trace of you in it. I don’t know which is worse, constant reminders or no reminders at all.” She laced her narrow fingers through his.

  “So are you glad we met?” She sounded pitiful, but she had to hear his answer.

  “I would still have wanted to meet you,” he said. “Even though it’s going to break my heart to watch you go. What we have is worth it.” He kissed her, his hands reaching up to stroke her hair. She heard his words echoing in her mind: worth it, worth it, worth it. She knew that they were young, that they had their whole lives ahead of them, at least that’s what her aunt and uncle had told her. But she also knew that what she had with Campbell was beyond age.

  Campbell stood up and pulled her to her feet, attempting to keep kissing her as he did. She giggled as the pull of gravity parted them. He pointed her toward the mailbox. “Now, go write it all down for the Kindred Spirit. Write everything you feel about us and how unfair it is that we have to be apart.” He squinted his eyes at her. “And I promise not to read over your shoulder.”

  She poked him. “You can read it if you want. I have no secrets from you.”

  He shook his head. “No, no. This is your deal. Your private world—just between you and the Kindred Spirit. And next year,” he said, smiling down at her, “I promise to bring you back here, and you can write about the amazing summer we’re going to have.”

  “And what about the summer after that?” she asked, teasing him.

  “That summer too.” He kissed her. “And the next.” He kissed her again. “And the next.” He kissed her again, smiling down at her through his kisses. “Get the point?

  “This will be our special place,” he said as they stood together in front of the mailbox.

  “Always?” she asked.

  “Always,” he said.

  Summer 1985

  Dear Kindred Spirit,

  I have no clue who you are, and yet that doesn’t stop me from writing to you anyway. I hope one day I will discover your identity. I wonder if you are nearby even as I put pen to paper. It’s a little weird to think that I could have passed you on the street this summer and not know you would be reading my deepest thoughts and feelings. Campbell won’t even read this, though I would let him if he asked me.

  As I write, Campbell is down at the water’s edge, throwing shells. He is really good at making the shells skip across the water—I guess that’s proof that this place is his home.

  Let me ask you, Kindred Spirit: Do you think it’s silly for me to assume that I have found my soul mate at the age of fifteen? My mom would laugh. She would tell me that the likelihood of anyone finding a soul mate—ever—is zero. She would tell me that I need to not go around giving my heart away like a hopeless romantic. She laughs when I read romance novels or see sappy movies that make me cry. She says that I will learn the truth about love someday.

  But, honestly, I feel like I did learn the truth about love this summer. It’s like what they say: It can happen when you least expect it, and it can knock you flat on your back with its power. I didn’t come here expecting to fall in love. The truth is I didn’t want to come here at all. I came here feeling pushed aside and unwanted. I can still remember when my mom said that she had arranged for my aunt and uncle to bring me here, smiling at me like she was doing me some kind of favor when we both knew she just wanted me out of the picture so she could live her life without me cramping her style.

  I tried to tell her that I didn’t want to come—who would want to spend their summer with bratty cousins? I was so mad, I didn’t speak to my mom for days. I begged, plotted, and even got my best friend Holly’s parents to say I could stay with them instead. But in the end, as always, my mother ruled, and I got packed off for a summer at the beach. On the car ride down, I sat squished in the backseat beside Bobby and Stephanie. Bobby elbowed me and stuck his tongue out at me the whole way to the beach. When his parents weren’t looking, of course. I stared out the window and pretended to be anywhere but in that car.

  But now, I can’t believe how wonderful this summer has turned out. I made some new friends. I read a lot of books and even got to where I could tolerate my little cousins. They became like the younger siblings I never had. Most of all, I met Campbell.

  I know what Holly will say. She will say that it was God’s plan. I am working on believing that there is a God and that he has a plan for my life like Holly says. But most of the time it feels like God is not aware I exist. If he was aware of me, you’d think he’d have given me a mom who actually cared about me.

  Ugh—I can’t believe I have to leave
tomorrow. Now that I have found Campbell, I don’t know what I will do without him. We have promised to write a lot of letters. And we have promised not to date other people.

  A word about him asking me not to date other people: This was totally funny to me. Two nights ago we were walking on the beach and he stopped me, pulling me to him and looking at me really seriously. “Please,” he said, “I would really like it if you wouldn’t see other people. Is that crazy for me to ask that of you when we are going to be so far apart?”

  I was like, “Are you kidding? No one asks me out. No one at my school even looks at me twice!” At school I am known for being quiet and studious—a brain, not a girl to call for a good time. Holly says that men will discover my beauty later in life. But until this summer I didn’t believe her. I couldn’t admit that no one notices me at school because, obviously, he believes I am sought after. And I knew enough to let him believe it. So I very coyly answered back, “Only if you promise me the same thing.”

  And he smiled in that lazy way of his and said, “How could I even look at another girl when I’ve got the best one in the world?”

  And so now you see why I just can’t bear the thought of leaving him. But the clock is ticking. When I get home, I swear I will cry myself to sleep every night and write letters to Campbell every day. The only thing I have to look forward to is hanging out with Holly again. Thank goodness for Holly, the one constant in my life. In math class we learned that a constant is something that has one value all the time and it never changes. That’s what Holly is for me: my best friend, no matter what.

  I wonder if Campbell will be a constant in my life. I guess it’s too soon to tell, but I do hope so. I’m already counting down the days until I can come back and be with Campbell. Because this summer—I don’t care how lame it sounds—I found my purpose. And that purpose is loving Campbell with all my heart. Always.

  Until next summer,

  Lindsey

  Chapter 2

  Charlotte, NC

  Summer 2004

  Grant stood on the porch steps with papers in his hand. More documents, Lindsey knew, that said their marriage was over. He shuffled his feet awkwardly as she stared him down with her back against the closed front door, a barrier between them and the home they used to share. “Did you need something?” she asked, enjoying watching him squirm.

  She continued to stare as he shuffled through the papers. Even though this week marked the end of a year’s separation, the pain was still as fresh as the day he left. They had been married for twelve years—Lindsey had given him the better part of her twenties and nearly half of her thirties—and for what? To end up divorced and confused about her future. Her hopes of an eleventh-hour reconciliation were dashed even as he stood there with papers signifying the end.

  Looking at Grant with a mixture of longing and disgust, Lindsey decided that if it wasn’t easy for her, she sure wasn’t going to make it easy for him. She knew that wasn’t a very Christian attitude, but there it was, creeping into her thoughts and actions. No matter how godly she tried to be around Grant, her best intentions lasted mere moments. About as long as it took for him to start talking.

  The kids, she knew, were watching from his car where they waited for an evening with their dad. She willed herself to stay calm and civil, for their sake. Grant held up the papers. “My attorney wanted you to look through this,” he offered. “It’s some final stuff for our bank accounts to be separate and … well, you’ll see when you look through it. No surprises or anything. Just standard stuff.”

  No surprises? It was still surprising to her that they had reached this point. How could he call anything he was doing “standard”? She accepted the papers and fought to keep tears from her eyes at the way their marriage had been reduced to a business arrangement, a mere contract with terms to negotiate.

  “We’ll need a response from you when you get back from Sunset Beach,” he said. “Do you know when that will be?”

  She shrugged. She wanted to stay at the beach as long as it took to clear her mind, to find the happiness she once found at Sunset. “I’m not sure, Grant,” she said. “We’re not really on a timetable. My uncle said we could have the house for as long as we want to stay.”

  Grant smiled, looking every bit like the nice guy she once thought he was. “Well, I hope you and the kids have a good time. It’ll be good for you,” he said.

  She couldn’t stop herself from saying what came next: “It would be good for us if we were going down as a family,” she said. “You can’t possibly think the kids aren’t going to notice that you aren’t there. They’ve spent every summer of their lives going to Sunset with both of us, not just one of us. Don’t insult me by pretending it’s the same. That it’s good.”

  “Linds,” he said, using the pet name he had called her for years, which he had no right to do anymore, as far as she was concerned. “You know I would love to be there, but it just isn’t the best thing. It would confuse the kids.”

  “Don’t even try that, Grant. You don’t care about the kids at all. You don’t care that you have broken their hearts!” She had coached herself not to go in this direction a million times, yet there she stood, tears leaking from her eyes once again. Grant stood on the front porch, not a trace of emotion on his face. His absence of feelings confounded her.

  She could feel Anna’s and Jake’s eyes on her as they sat in his car, waiting to be taken to his bachelor pad for the night, their packed bags sitting at their feet like obedient little dogs. They couldn’t hear their parents, but she glanced over to confirm that they were watching. She knew that they were smart enough to read her angry expression and the way she swiped tears from her eyes.

  She could almost read eleven-year-old Anna’s lips saying, “There she goes, crying again.” Jake, her sweet eight-year-old, sitting in the coveted shotgun spot of the front seat, jabbed angrily at the radio buttons, casting nervous sidelong glances in their direction every few minutes.

  She turned back to face Grant, ashamed of her inability to just let things go where he was concerned. She wanted to, but years of history with him and a profound need to have a real family muddied the waters, clouded her judgment. Instead of playing it cool, she played it hot, her words and actions belying her resolve to not let him see her grief. She knew him well enough to know that he secretly loved that he could still stir up passion in her—even if it was just passionate anger.

  “Just go,” she said. “Be with your kids.” She forced a smile. “But have them back in the morning so we can get on the road.”

  “Linds,” he said, “I do hope you have fun at Sunset this summer. That place always seems to make you happy.”

  “I could certainly use some happiness in my life,” she said before she went inside and shut the door. She did not allow herself to watch him drive away but turned instead to grab the phone, a reflex for as long as she could remember.

  “What happened now?” Holly answered the phone without saying hello.

  “I am such a fool,” Lindsey rasped.

  “What did you do?” Holly’s baby fussed in the background. “Hang on,” Holly said. She could hear Holly’s muffled voice telling her husband, Rick, to take the baby. “Okay, I’m back. Josie’s teething. You didn’t warn me how hard this would be, by the way.”

  Lindsey laughed. “If I told you how hard having a kid is you never would have done it.”

  “Well, you always made it look so easy,” Holly responded.

  “Ha! You just weren’t here enough.” Lindsey thought about the times Anna or Jake cried all night and she and Grant snapped at each other the next day. Is that when their relationship started to crumble?

  “Well, it’s too late now.” Holly laughed, unwittingly echoing Lindsey’s own thoughts about her and Grant. “So tell me what happened and make it fast. The clock is ticking with Rick and J
osie.”

  Lindsey smiled, then sighed deeply. “Well, I might have asked him to come to the beach with us.”

  Holly made a tsking sound. “Let’s play a game,” she said. “It’s a little game I like to call ‘How Many Times Will Lindsey Humiliate Herself with Grant?’ You don’t even want to know what the score is.”

  “I knew I’d have your support,” Lindsey said, looking at the clock. Her thoughts flashed to where Grant and the children would be by now. Probably dinner. Did her place at the table look as empty to him as his did to her?

  “So what did Mr. Congeniality say when you asked him?” Holly interrupted her thoughts.

  “Well, he said no of course or I wouldn’t be calling you.”

  “Please.… You’d definitely be calling me if he said yes. I can just hear you now, declaring that this time it would be different. This time he wouldn’t cheat. This time he’d be the father and husband you always imagined he’d be.”

  “He was a good father and husband once,” Lindsey spoke a little too quickly.

  “Well, that stopped awhile ago, Linds. And he hasn’t changed. He isn’t going to change. He’s not going to be what you hope he’ll be. And throwing yourself under the bus for him isn’t going to make your wish come true.”

  “Wow. So glad I called,” Lindsey said, rolling her eyes even though Holly couldn’t see her. “How do you talk to people you don’t like?”

  Holly laughed. “You know, it’s because I love you that I say these things. I just want you to believe you’re worthy of someone to love you.”

  “I do think that!” Lindsey said, her voice rising an octave.

  “If you thought that, you’d quit putting yourself out there over and over for Grant to hurt. And you definitely wouldn’t have just asked him to go with you to the beach so he could humiliate you further. We both remember how well that worked last year.” Holly’s voice got louder at the end. “Do we need to review what the definition of insanity is again?”