“You can stay with me. Caleb is at Grandma’s. I have two guest rooms and an empty house. It’s silly for you to get a hotel.”
Without hesitation, something she only later noticed, she placed her phone back into her purse. “That would be nice.”
Men and women stopped by the bar, shaking hands with Jack, greeting him and meeting Kate. Half an hour later, Burt came to seat them, and Kate asked, “Do you know everyone in town?”
He laughed and pulled her chair out for her as she sat. “I’ve lived here for fifteen years. It’s not a big town. It has nothing to do with popularity, just familiarity.”
Finally settled at their table with fig appetizers between them, Kate lifted her fork to hold across the table. “You have to have a bite of this. I’ve never tasted anything this good anywhere.”
He took a bite. “Amazing, I know. It’s the chef’s favorite.”
“I want to tell you something,” she said.
“Anything.”
She laughed. “I doubt that, but I do want to tell you how much those yearly letters meant to me. I always waited until the end of the day to read it.”
“I loved writing them,” Jack said. “Sometimes I felt guilty writing to you without telling Maggie, but it somehow seemed so separate. And important.”
“It was important. I don’t think I would have gotten through some of her birthdays without those letters,” she said.
“I’m glad,” he said. “I’d hoped that was true. And of course I loved getting yours at the office. Thanks for … being thoughtful about that and not sending to the house. I mean, I never asked, but—”
“I know,” she said. “New subject?”
“Your favorite vacation the past few years. Good one?”
“Absolutely.” She laughed and the cadence of their friendship resumed as if thirteen years had never passed, as if the birth of their child and then his marriage and divorce had never happened, as if Kate’s life had never been broken.
But it had.
* * *
In the spill of light from Jack’s table lamp, they sat in the living room facing one another across the couch. Kate curled her legs beneath her bottom. With the comfort that had arrived, Kate asked the question that had niggled below the surface of all her other questions. “Were you and Maggie happy at all? I mean, I know you must have been, but…”
He leaned into the cushions. “We were. The last time I really remember it, though, was a trip to Mexico.”
“Tell me about it.”
“My stories are boring.” He waved his hand across the room. “Look at me. While you’ve worked different jobs and opened a store, I’ve been right here.”
“I want to hear about all of it. I want to hear about Caleb and your job. And your art studio. And your friends. And life. All of it.”
“Well, all that will take a lifetime to tell you.”
“We’ve got that—a lifetime.” It wasn’t until Kate spoke the words that she understood how they sounded—as if they had a lifetime together. Just the two of them. “Oh,” she said. “I mean, I mean that we have all our lives ahead of us. I didn’t mean…”
He laughed and reached forward to touch her knee. “I knew what you meant.”
“Tell me about your last happy time with her.”
He closed his eyes and then opened them with a smile. “Okay.”
“Good.”
“So there we were on vacation for the first time in two years. Caleb was a year old and neither of us felt like we’d slept since the day he was born. The colic. The crying. The diapers. My God, we were past exhausted. So, we decided that we needed a few days: sleep, drink, eat. Repeat. We stayed in this tiny family-owned resort in Cozumel. There was a private and tiny beach. A tiki bar. And the most amazing guacamole I’ve ever tasted. I still think about that guacamole.
“We were well into our second day when we decided to go snorkeling. The hotel owners told us that if we walked a half mile up the beach and then jumped in, the current would carry us right back to our beach. We did this a few times and it was our third time when we realized we’d floated too far down, way past our hotel. We ended up at a hopping singles’ resort about a quarter mile down the beach. Now we’d heard the parties at night and laughed at how old we must be that we didn’t even care that there was a party in walking distance down the beach.
“We climbed out of the water and thought we’d walk back to our resort, but a mariachi band was playing and the next thing we knew we were dancing and putting margaritas on the tab of someone named “Burris.” It all seemed funny and fun until Mr. Burris heard me put one last margarita on his bill.
“Now this Mr. Burris wasn’t just any guy. He was drunk. He was huge, and if he wasn’t a professional bodybuilder, he should have been. When I tried to explain that we were just having fun, that I would go back to my hotel around the corner and get him some cash, that I had every intention of paying him back but I had nothing on me but a bathing suit and a mask with a snorkel, he didn’t think I was funny.
“So that is how I ended up in the back of a police car.”
“My God,” Kate said through bubbled laughter. “Seriously?”
“A fight ensued. Then there was a bouncer. And a policeman. And yep, handcuffs and a cop car.”
“Did Maggie freak out?”
“Absolutely. In the end the local police were a little too busy with some drug cartel to give a shit about some half-drunk, fully sunburned tourist. They dropped me off at the hotel, where Maggie and I swore that being up all night with Caleb was safer than partying. We never left the country again.”
“Really?”
“Not on purpose, actually. I wanted to take her to Scotland. That was her dream. Her husband is taking her next year.” Jack looked directly at Kate. “Is it okay if we don’t talk about that?”
“Of course.”
He stood then and held out his hand. “Lights out for me. I’m used to sharing the house with an eight-year-old who has an eight-thirty bedtime.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty wiped out too,” Kate said and stood. “I’ll leave in the morning and head home. So don’t feel like you have to entertain me or anything.”
“I thought you came to see the boutique,” he said.
“I’ll go by in the morning on my way out.”
“I’d love to show you the studio,” he said.
She smiled. “I’d like that.”
She followed Jack down the hall where the bedrooms hid behind closed doors. He had already showed her to the guest bedroom where her suitcase sat on the end of the bed. She stopped in the doorway and Jack turned before he entered his bedroom next to hers. “Sleep well,” he said.
“You also,” she said.
They both shut their doors, and yet Kate stood with her forehead against the doorframe until she heard the sink run, and then the soft sound of his feet moving across the room. Then she lay in bed, the sheets pulled tightly around her body, which hummed with the utterly true, but perfectly impossible fact that Jack Adams was on the other side of the wall.
* * *
March 20th, 2004
Dear Katie,
Happy Seventh Birthday to Luna.
I think in many ways writing this letter every March has become a cornerstone for my year. You know, sometimes it takes me a week or more to write the entire thing. But it is here in this letter that I look backward and forward, like some people must do on New Year’s Eve.
This is a difficult letter to write. I don’t know how to say this gently, but Maggie and I divorced. Maybe you’ve already heard or maybe this is a shock; I have no way to know really until I get your letter in return.
I thought maybe I’d write to you of the details, but I can’t.
Caleb wakes in the middle of the night hollering for her, and I have to go to him and explain that he will see her tomorrow or the next day. He isn’t taking this well. No hollering or calling or wishing or praying or being good will make her come back to this
house. She’s moved to her family’s farm where she wanted to go all along.
I’m not sure I’ve fully felt the awfulness of it all yet. I feel very separate from life; free-floating almost.
I hope that this is the most terrible yearly letter I will ever have to write to you. And that you will never have to write one like it to me.
Love,
Jack
P.S. I saw this poem a long time ago and copied it. I thought you might like it, but now I don’t remember who wrote it or even its title. But here it is anyway.
It’s hard to believe
we’re looking at the same moon.
But if what they say is true—
then you are there and I am here
while that lazy moon floats high between us,
as if she doesn’t care.
Or worse, as if she doesn’t know.
* * *
twelve
BIRMINGHAM, AL
2010
Morning came with a sudden gasp. Kate sat upright, briefly disoriented. Sunlight streamed onto her face, into her eyes. She shouldn’t have spent the night at Jack’s house. Everything that needed to be said had been said and now she would have to go make small talk over cereal or eggs. It would have been best to have a nice good-bye the night before and move on with their lives.
The clock read 5:30A.M.—it was still early and she didn’t want to wake Jack. How awful would it be to sneak out?
They’d talked. They’d summarized the past. What was left? The truth of course. She’d only told him the best parts, leaving out the pain and disorientation of those years. Like how that first year after the adoption, she’d folded into herself like a flower that was too fragile and too complicated to ever open. How she’d dipped into a deep darkness, a place where she’d wondered what there was about her aimless life that was so important that she couldn’t have raised her little girl. How only one vow had helped her get through that year—to never love again. All that romance, fairy tale, love forever and ever was crap. Loss: it was the period at the end of every sentence.
She hadn’t told him how, during that year, she’d taken a job at the marina in Hilton Head, cleaning yachts, babysitting kids, and serving at cocktail parties. It was a job, pay and busywork. She’d tried not to think about Jack living his life in Birmingham and loving his wife as if nothing had ever happened. She’d hated him. She’d loved him. She’d missed him. She’d then hated him. All in a never-ending cycle.
She didn’t tell Jack how much—how deeply—she’d hurt her parents. Luna was the first-born grandchild, one they held and then let go. Kate had known it was their fervent prayer that Luna would be restored to their lives. In her worst moments Kate was annoyed with their hopes for “one day.” She felt that her parents yearned and pushed into the future, into the day they would see Luna again as if this day wasn’t good enough, because this day didn’t have Luna.
She’d understood, of course. Didn’t she feel the same? And yet she’d been frustrated again and again when her parents brought Luna into the conversation. “Oh, we planted a tree for her, darling.” “We found those pictures last night and looked at them again. She is so beautiful.” “Did you fill out that paperwork that will allow her to find us when she’s twenty-one?” And the worst of all the comments was from her dad. “I hope I live long enough to see her again.”
And why would Jack want to know how Molly and Tara had had opposite reactions, as if they’d sat down and Tara said to Molly, “Okay, you talk about it almost every time you can and I’ll never ever bring it up. Okay? Good. Now we’re balanced.” It wasn’t because Tara cared less and Molly cared more. No, it was because of who they were. The sisters shared the same hurt. They just showed it in very different ways.
She skipped the part where on Luna’s first birthday, she’d sat alone at the large restaurant table, staring out over the water, wondering what her one-year-old daughter was doing at that very moment. Sitting in a highchair with a little piece of pink cake? Ripping wrapping paper off a doll?
Was she really supposed to tell Jack all of that? Kate groaned, cuddling up further into the pillows, wishing for sleep. She’d told him the best parts, erasing the harder truths. He’d probably done the same. What good was there in reliving it all?
They both wanted to know that Luna was well and happy. They both wondered and lived with the what-ifs and the could-have and the should-haves. It didn’t matter what they said or did.
Somewhere down the hallway, a door clicked open. Kate rose from bed and slipped on her jeans and white tank top. She entered the living room; it was awash in morning light that simultaneously softened the edges and exposed every flaw in the glass and furnishings. She walked to the windows.
“Spring is such a show-off.” Jack’s voice came from behind.
Kate turned and smiled. There he was—in his jeans and black T-shirt, the same Hornets baseball cap on his head. And the smile, the impossible smile.
“Good morning,” Kate said.
“How’d you sleep?”
“Great. So much that I had no idea where I was when I woke up.”
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Of course.”
And then the nervousness disappeared as they walked into the kitchen. A calm cadence of conversation reappeared and Kate sat on the barstool waiting on her coffee and watching Jack move around his kitchen.
“So,” he said with his back to her. “Which first, studio or boutique?”
“Studio,” she said. “Because I’ll drive back to Bluffton after the boutique. I left a message with the owner that I’d be there late morning.”
He turned and handed her a mug of coffee. “I’ve wondered about Norah. So, she works with you?”
“Yep. When the boutique really took off, I needed a partner. We expanded and now we co-own. She came after she quit her yacht stewardess job and married this great guy, Charlie.” Kate shook her head. “It’s weird how fast time can go.”
“I know.” Jack sat across the bar. “There are things I say I’m going to do every year and then the year is over. Just done.”
She nodded. “The only times a year seemed like more than a year and not less than one was the couple of years after Luna. Maybe time moves slow when you feel awful and time moves fast when you feel good.”
He laughed. “Or something.”
“I really shouldn’t spout philosophy before I finish my first cup of coffee,” Kate said and smiled. “Maybe keep some thoughts to myself.”
“Your thoughts are nice,” he said.
They sat in silence until they both stood simultaneously, as if on cue, as if a bell or whistle had signaled their leaving time.
* * *
LUNA STUDIO. The sign was made of a ten-foot-high piece of dark wood and the letters were fashioned of bright zinc reflecting the morning sun in sharp swords. Kate glanced up at Luna’s name high and bright on the signage, and shivered.
“You okay?” Jack asked.
She nodded. “Yes. It’s quite something to see her name up there like that. All big and proud.”
He opened the thick glass door to let Kate walk in first. The foyer was brightly lit with tiny sconces sending indirect light onto canvas and wood. Kate walked through the small studio while Jack told her about it.
“The idea of this started seven years ago. Maggie wanted to have a place to show her photography and the art of some friends she’d come to know. After the divorce, I dismissed the idea. But then it wouldn’t leave me alone, so even though she has nothing to do with it now, it was Maggie’s idea.”
Kate stopped in front of an angel painting so misty and surreal she thought the angel should be able to fly. “She never asked about the name?”
He shook his head. “I thought that when we opened the studio I would tell her, but now I don’t feel any need to explain.”
The desire came over her too fast. To touch Jack. To kiss him. To reach behind his head and rest her head on his shoulder. Kate averted
her eyes.
“Only Alabama artists,” he continued. “We have shows about every eight weeks or so.”
“Who takes care of all this while you’re working your real job?”
“Mimi Ann,” he said, and then stopped and called out the same name.
A woman came from the back room, smiling and full of energy. She was all blond and platinum, all smiley and crisp. “Hi, y’all,” Mimi Ann said as she walked toward them.
Jack hugged her and then introduced Kate. “This is Mimi Ann Davolt. Luna Studio is nothing without her.”
“No,” Mimi Ann said, “Jack has that backwards.” She smiled at him. “I keep it going. Jack is Luna Studio.” Mimi Ann looked at Kate then, and it seemed as if this was a terribly hard thing for Mimi Ann to do, as if it hurt to look away from Jack. “He has a fantastic reputation for finding the newest geniuses and showcasing their work first.”
“Nice,” Kate said.
A silence fell over the three of them, an uncomfortable emptiness that made Kate turn away, pretending to look at other work. Her heart was up underneath her throat, beating against her collarbone, an old and devastating feeling she’d avoided.
The studio was too warm. Or the name Luna in bright letters had caused alarm. Either way, Kate felt light and dizzy, off balance. She sat on a bench at the end of a short hallway and stared at a coastal scene painting. Jack and Mimi Ann’s voices were murmured and light, coming down the hallway like music turned low, laughter as punctuation.
Kate pulled out her cell phone, which she’d turned off at dinner the night before. The phone’s light flashed back on, and she saw that Rowan had called six times. Lida had called four. Text messages and voice mails had arrived from both of them.
Without checking the voice mails and with a single click, Kate called Rowan back. He answered on the first ring.
“Are you okay?” he answered without preamble.
“I’m totally fine. What’s going on?”
“I’ve been trying to call you since yesterday afternoon. Where the hell have you been? Why aren’t you answering?”
And Then I Found You Page 10
