Oh, if Hilary could hold this hour in the palm of her hand! If she could only keep it as a treasure in a box and pull it out to examine it at her whim! But, just like that, Seth said, “I’ve got to call Emily and tell her about this. A Ramirez three-run homer! She didn’t even know we were going to be at the game.” He fished in his jeans pocket, looking for his cell, and Hilary felt a deep spasm of fear.
“Did you see my phone, Mom? I think I must have left it at home. I don’t remember bringing it.”
Hilary found something interesting on the JumboTron and, with her heart hammering, pretended not to hear.
“I think I left it on the kitchen counter. I think I remember putting it there when I first came in.”
A picture of a cute little kid flashed up on the huge digital screen. “Oh, look. Seth. Isn’t he cute? Look at the White Sox hat.”
“I don’t know why I wouldn’t have picked my phone back up.”
It was the perfect time for Hilary to say, I don’t, either. But she couldn’t do that. For a moment, she was terrified he’d be able to borrow a phone from someone else. She was terrified he’d search for his phone by calling it and, the minute his voice answered after one ring he’d know someone had sabotaged him and turned the thing off.
But, “Do you have yours with you, Mom? Emily’s got to hear about this! I’ve got to call and tell her.”
Hilary promised she didn’t orchestrate it this way. She promised she didn’t even have enough time to think it through. But after she’d gotten home from the meeting with John Mulligan, her battery had been almost completely drained. She’d plugged it into the wall charger and hadn’t given it another thought. Which meant, thank heavens, she didn’t have to lie to Seth. Because hadn’t she already done enough?
As the innings progressed, her heart felt about as light as an armored bulldozer. Who knew that a baseball game could end that fast? And as they wandered out onto Shields Avenue amid a horde of rowdy, delighted fans, who were either waiting in line to buy more White Sox paraphernalia or leading people along the sidewalk in impromptu victory chants, Hilary turned to her son and suggested, “Let’s don’t go home yet.” He looked at her like she’d finally crossed the line and gone nuts. “Let’s go get something to eat.”
“Mom. I just ate five hot dogs.”
“What? You can’t eat more?”
“No.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s a first.”
“It is not.”
“Oh yeah? Go tell that to somebody who hasn’t been buying you groceries for the past eighteen years.”
It took a great deal of time to find the parking lot where they’d left Seth’s truck. They’d been in such a hurry when they’d arrived, neither of them had happened to note the landmarks as they’d raced toward the ballpark. Finding the truck actually involved a serious discussion, pointing in opposite directions, and fifteen minutes of sheepish looking around. Once they’d found the truck, it took another good while to edge their way into the line of idling vehicles and wait for a chance to enter the freeway. They were almost there when Hilary saw the ramp backed up and had another idea. “Turn left instead,” she told Seth. “Let’s see what this baby will do. Let’s take the back roads home.”
“This baby? Did you just call my truck a baby?”
“Cut it out with the old-lady vocabulary lessons,” Hilary said. “Just do what I say.”
Which led them straight from the South Side up toward the lakeshore. The afternoon had dissipated into dusk by the time they broke out of the neighborhoods and on to the water. What light was left was reflected in tiny copper coins that swelled and waned along the waves of the lake.
Boats swayed in their slips as Hilary and Seth passed the marina. Lamps had begun to flicker in some of the vessels. Out a little farther, the party barges had begun their nightly voyages, creeping along the length of the shore so revelers could have their perfect view of the Chicago skyline awash in a brush of evening watercolor. Hilary imagined the music, the food. She imagined the happy, untroubled passengers inside. The barges’ illuminated windows laid down streams of candlelight as they passed.
That’s when Hilary noticed the sign for the sailboat charter company. White incandescent bulbs encircled the sign. AFTERNOON, SUNSET AND EVENING CRUISES AVAILABLE.
If the sailboat hadn’t been just sitting there bobbing, tied up and moored and waiting for them, Hilary might have been able to resist. But here was the boat, a beautiful four-masted topsail schooner.
“Hey,” Hilary said. “Let’s go out.”
“What?”
“Park the truck somewhere. I want to take you out on that boat.”
“Now? Tonight? Mom, it’s getting dark.”
Hilary gestured toward the sign. “It’s the best time to see the city. You know that.”
“Mom. I’ve seen the city. I was born here.”
This was no tourist-trap putt-putt boat with a set-course schedule, Hilary could tell. The schooner would go where the wind would take her. She was a gaff schooner, she carried a traditional square rig, and Hilary counted at least a dozen ropes on her. She probably looked like a trading ship from the eighteenth century when she was under full sail.
Seth swung to the side of the road, turned off the ignition, and looked at Hilary like he’d never seen her before.
“Come on,” Hilary said. “Let’s go sailing.”
“Are you kidding me? We’re really going?”
Hilary took off for the wharf. “You wanted to go floating around with your family for graduation? You wrote a story about it, I heard. Well, let’s go do it.”
Seth followed her, although he was still somewhat dubious, she could tell. “Mom, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
Hilary was amazed that there was a crew waiting to take the boat out. But it must always happen that way. The brochure stated it explicitly: For any hour-and-a-half skyline cruise, reservations weren’t accepted. Anyone who got the notion could have a trip.
She paid their fare and they hopped aboard. They just went.
The captain instructed them how to help raise and trim the sails once they’d gotten away from the dock and he’d turned the engine off. He said that each of them could even take a turn at the wheel if they liked. But as the motor shut off and, one by one, the sails snapped as they unfurled, Seth and Hilary stood elbow-to-elbow on the leeward deck as the city’s silhouette slipped past.
The breeze caught the boat and brought them around. Instantly she picked up speed. The sails filled. Whitecaps danced along the hull. Seth draped his arm around his mother’s shoulders.
“I don’t ever want you to doubt this,” he told his mom, as much in awe of this experience as his mother was. “No matter what happens, I’m really glad you’re my mom.”
Hilary drank in his words the same way she was soaking up the solitude, the silence out there. And she was thinking, Oh, Seth. Oh, Seth. I hope so. Because I’m going to have to rely on what you say now. You won’t be saying it later.
When a crew member asked Seth if he’d like to learn how to trim the sails, Seth took him up on the offer. Hilary strolled forward and stood with her hair whipping her face. She pulled strands of it from her eyes. They sailed on, soundlessly, heading nowhere. Lake Michigan was a dark mirror being silently sliced beneath their prow. When Hilary started to cry, she couldn’t tell where her tears had come from — the peacefulness of the evening, or the streaming wind, or the hopelessness in her heart.
Hilary scrounged through her purse and found Seth’s phone. When she powered it up, it made a great deal of noise. The screen told Hilary her son had seven voice messages and double that many texts. And so the bad news must be out. Everyone was looking for them.
For two beats, maybe three, Hilary balanced the offending cell against her fingers, felt the warmth and the weight of it. Then she clutched it inside her fist and hurled it as hard as she could, out into the dept
hs of the lake. She might as well be Matt Thornton throwing for the White Sox, she slung it so hard. As Seth’s phone sailed end over end in slow motion out toward the waves, Hilary felt like she was watching her soul disappear with it. She was reduced to only this. One ardent, heartbroken prayer.
Oh, Father. Her soul was in so much distress, she couldn’t help letting God have it by the bucketful. There was so much she wanted. There was so much God could give her if he would only look upon her with favor. Remember your daughter, Lord. I’m so sick and tired of being afflicted with this.
Hilary lost all sense of time; she didn’t know how late it was or even how long they’d been on the water. She might as well have been standing at the door of the tabernacle. She only knew that she wanted this one thing with complete desperation, with complete fervor. Her mouth might be moving, but she wasn’t speaking aloud. She was just asking over and over again for this one particular thing, the one special good thing that she most needed and desired. And maybe this was what God had always wanted from her. Maybe this was the place he’d always wanted to bring her. She was reaching for him with every bone of her body, with every pore of her skin.
I promise I’ll let Seth go if you’ll just help him through this. I promise I’ll give him up to you.
From out of nowhere the boat’s captain clutched her shoulder. Hilary started; she hadn’t known there was anyone else around. But this burly weather-beaten man was in command and he was watching her with hard censure. His fingers felt like a vise on her collarbone.
“Lady, in this day and age, believe me, I end up with my share of drunk women stumbling around my deck. But I’ve got strict rules for the passengers who board my ship. I can’t allow any drunken or disorderly conduct aboard this vessel.”
Hilary stared at him. Was that what he thought of her? That she was drunk?
“Do you know what my insurance company would do to me if I let somebody fall overboard? Could lose my whole business because of it. I’m taking you back to shore.”
Which left Hilary wiping her face with her shirtsleeve, desperately embarrassed. “Don’t take us to shore. Not now. Not yet.”
“Maybe you should have thought about that before you started sampling all those bottles of wine, what do you say?”
“Please. It isn’t what you think.”
“Is that so?” He took a solid step back and watched Hilary. She wouldn’t be surprised if he started in on the sobriety tests next: Ma’am, follow my finger, please, while he examined her pupils and how steadily they tracked. Ma’am, walk this straight line for me, why don’t you, while he waited for her to totter.
There wasn’t any other reason why she would share such intimate information with a stranger. But he was wrong about her drinking, and being here, praying like this, was so important to her. She didn’t want him to put her and Seth off.
Even as she was denying the captain’s charges, he was leaning in to have a good look at Hilary’s face, his brows knit in disbelief.
“Please, Captain,” she said. “You have to believe me.” She told him softly because she would never make a show of this. “It’s very important. But I’m only praying.” I’m a woman of sorrowful spirit. I have poured out my soul before the Lord.
Maybe it was her sheer discomfiture that convinced the man. “Well, lady. All I can say is, that must be some prayer.”
Hilary mopped her face with her sleeve again, trying to regain her composure. “I didn’t mean to make a nuisance of myself.”
But he wasn’t acting like she’d bothered him anymore. He gripped the railing and peered out in the distance toward the hills of Indiana. “You want something as bad as all that, lady, I’d think God would be willing to give it to you.”
Hilary leaned over the railing, too. “Maybe.”
It surprised her that this man didn’t act affronted after she’d shown him he was wrong about her. She hadn’t put him out of humor. On the contrary, he encouraged her.
“You know, I talk to God a bit myself. There’s something about all the time I spend out here on the water. Something about the way the wind fills the sails that convinces me.”
Lights had begun to sparkle into view all over the city. Hilary had never seen the skyline look so pretty.
“Being a sailing captain makes you understand certain things,” he said. “Makes you understand how even though you can’t always see the wind, it’s still there to propel you forward with power.”
The stars seemed to swirl overhead in a sky that was fading from velvet blue to black. The captain’s words resonated somewhere deep in Hilary’s spirit. She kept thinking how, all this time, she’d been praising God and praying to him in some desperate attempt to feel something, a desperate attempt just to know that he was here with her. She worked to make God come to her because she forgot that he was already always there.
“I figure, when a person asks for something the way it looks like you’re asking for it, God can’t help but listen,” the captain told her. “I don’t know what you want so bad, lady, but let me add my hearty ‘Amen’ to it. I’ll be praying right along beside you for whatever it is. How about that?”
Hilary could hardly speak. How long had it been since a stranger had stood beside her and offered to pray for her this freely? Without having to know a complete lineup of details? Without first having to decide what side of the fence they ought to be standing on?
“I don’t know what to say.”
The captain gave her a wise weather-beaten grin that she’d never forget. “Now I’d best get back to those sails and my crew. We’ll be changing direction here soon.”
Not many hours later, seagulls would be flashing their wings overhead, dodging and wheeling and fighting for bits of food, hoping the sailboat’s draft might churn up some breakfast. But for now, the sky had gone totally dark around them. The darkness wasn’t frightening. It warmed and calmed her, like a hug that lingered.
A magnificent sense of peace surrounded Hilary. For here, beneath this sky, atop this water, she was suddenly made aware of how small her problems were in the big scheme of things, and how deeply she was loved. Gone was her melancholy and her discontent. The King of the Universe was orchestrating everything for her benefit. She believed it, discovered it, knew it to be true, deep in her spirit. Oh, what a discovery!
The schooner’s captain was halfway to the wheel when he turned to tell Hilary one last thing.
“Lady?”
“Yes?”
He tipped his cap. “May the God of Israel grant you what you’ve asked of him. You just wait,” he told her. “Things are going to be okay.”
God’s will is my counsel; his presence is my joy, even when I can’t feel him nearby.
Hilary watched after this man for a long time. She heard him call, “Man the mainstay!” And as the ship began to veer and come around to starboard, she was satisfied. She sensed the Holy Spirit in the broad, creaking shift of the schooner beneath her feet. She sensed him in the way the sails overflowed and the vessel began to surge in the opposite direction.
She had never been alone.
Hilary knew she had to confess to Seth about the phone. The first thing she told him as they sat in the front seat of his truck in their driveway was that she’d stolen his phone, she’d launched it into the depths of Lake Michigan. Then, as a cloud of summer bugs swarmed and clicked against his headlights, she made him look at her. She gripped his arm to hold him steady. She told him about Laura.
Seth’s body arched with physical pain. His arms and his spine went taut with the news. He asked every angry question that came to mind. He flung accusations. Was this why they’d spent the day together? Had she kept him busy because she didn’t want him to find out?
How long had she known? How many hours had she kept it from him?
Hilary couldn’t help being frightened while his rage took charge. “How could it happen?” He pummeled the steering wheel with clenched fists. “How could it happen?” He flopped forward in his s
eat, slammed his torso back again. “What have I done?” he cried as he clubbed the air with his arms and the butt of his hand slapped Hilary’s headrest.
“Listen,” Hilary whispered. “Listen.” But she didn’t mean she wanted him to listen to her. She meant that she wanted him to listen to his own heart, to let his grief win out over his anger. His anger at himself. His anger at her.
Which, eventually, it did.
Seth’s angular body went as slack as unused rope. His shoulders slumped; his arms fell helpless at his sides. There was only so much fury that one human body could contain before it broke apart. Hilary had been longing to hold him for so many days, to make him into the young child he had once been, to fold him inside her arms and take some of the burden. But Seth would walk a road for this and none of them could walk it for him. Hilary’s instinct said he’d jerk away if she offered so much as a reassuring hand. So she sat beside him, didn’t express the slightest discomfort at his explosion of anger. She waited until this new ache became ingrained in Seth’s soul. And still, she waited more. She was thinking how dangerous it could be to press sharply against life the way the kids did at the party that night. Because life likes to shove and throw punches and press sharply back.
Chapter 23
Hilary didn’t leave Seth alone for very long at a time in the days following Laura’s passing. She gave her son his space, but she was always in the house, a room away from him, in case he should need her. Every time another of Seth’s friends showed up, Hilary breathed another silent prayer of gratitude. Remy haunted the door and so did Ian. Emily spent quiet hours with Seth when he needed to cry. Chase stopped by to play Xbox.
Laura’s funeral wouldn’t be until next week. The Moore family had decided to wait longer than the ordinary few days before they held the memorial service for their daughter. Hilary had heard that the Moores’ church didn’t have a room large enough to accommodate the number of families expected to attend, so they’d decided to move it to a different church on the outside of town. She’d heard that Abigail wanted the kids to take part in Laura’s service; she wanted to give them time to grieve and, at the same time, give them a chance to come up with a meaningful way for them to memorialize their friend. It made sense putting it off a bit.
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