He ran around in circles a few times, and then sprinted back down the beach in anticipation of the next throw. He apparently forgot all about the Frisbee and ran toward a male figure approaching from down the beach. I recognized him long before his features became clear. Oddly, there were no backflips in my stomach. I felt queasy. I walked towards him. Rhett jumped up to greet him, ran two circles around him, then escorted Michael back to me.
My eyes found his and something sizzled.
I welcomed him with a smile. “Looks like he fetched you.”
Michael smiled back. There was sadness behind the smile, but something else, too. “I hoped I might find you out here this afternoon.” He paused for a moment and glanced up the beach, then back to me.
“Listen,” I said. “I understand. You’ve lost your brother and your mother. Your father is back from the dead. And it looks like you’re going to be a father. Congratulations.” I forced a smile. “That’s a lot for anyone to have to absorb and—”
He closed his eyes, sighed and shook his head. Then he opened his eyes, and they claimed mine. He closed the distance between us and took my face in his hands. Gently, he rubbed my cheeks with his thumbs. “It has been quite a week.” He brushed my lips with his and pulled me to him.
We held on to each other. I nestled my face into his neck and inhaled him. Seagulls flying overhead called out. A soft breeze wrapped around us, swirling from sand to sky. I’d imagined this scene so many times over the last ten years. I’d lived this moment a thousand times in my dreams.
Why did I feel so conflicted? I loved Michael, didn’t I? That love—that obsession—had defined the last decade of my life. But I saw Michael with fresh eyes now. He was no longer the white knight I waited for, but the man who made me wait while he lived with another woman for vague, weak reasons. The man who, only now when he himself had been betrayed, wanted me. Anger bubbled to the surface. God help me, could it be that I’d always wanted the one man I couldn’t have simply because I couldn’t have him? Or did this new ambivalence have something to do with Nate, who waited for me on the deck.
I pulled away from Michael. There was a question in his eyes. I didn’t have the answer. For the first time in a very long time, I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I took another step back.
He dug his hands in his pockets and glanced away, towards the ocean. “I’ve made a mess of things.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
He plopped down in the sand, staring out to sea. I joined him, a foot away.
After a moment, in a practical tone, he said, “I need to get through the next week. The funerals, all the arrangements. Then Robert is going to get me the fastest divorce possible, using whatever means necessary.”
“But the baby—”
“Is likely not mine. We won’t know until after it’s born. If the child is mine, custody won’t be a problem. His mother will be in prison.”
“His mother?”
“His, hers, whatever. I don’t have a preference.” He leaned closer to me. “You do want kids, right?”
I was nowhere near ready to discuss children.
I felt him tense. “You don’t want kids.” It was a statement.
“Yes, I do. Someday.”
“You just don’t want one that’s not yours.” His voice had an edge. “Or is it that you don’t want one that’s hers?”
Colleen waded through the surf a few feet away. “He’s yours on a silver platter. Just like you’ve always wanted.”
“Hush up,” I hissed at her.
Michael slid a foot away and looked perplexed.
“Not you.”
He looked up the beach, then down. “Liz, what’s going on? Talk to me.”
I hooked my arms over my knees. “I do want kids, someday. But you’re not even divorced yet.” His eagerness to segue from one wife directly to another unsettled me.
“I told you, I’m working on that.”
I huffed out a sigh. “Things are moving too fast. I want to get to know you again. People change, I’ve changed. Ten years is a long time. You might not even like me now. I’m very set in my ways.”
“Pig-headed, I’d say.” Colleen skipped through the foam of the Atlantic.
“What will happen to Marci’s child if he isn’t yours?”
“I’m not sure,” Michael said. “They’ll do a paternity test. He or she will still need a home. If Adam is the father, then we can probably still get custody.”
“What do you mean if Adam is the father? It’s you or him, right?”
“There are other possibilities.” He stretched flat out in the sand and looked at the sky.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” I flopped in the sand beside him. The sky was a cloudless, brilliant blue.
“I wish I were,” he said. “I went to see her this morning. Thought she might be in the mood to bargain for a quick divorce, seeing as how any attorney who can keep her off death row won’t come cheap. She was. But I had to make keeping the child part of the deal. She wanted an abortion.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“And, she relished telling me the child could also be Troy Causby’s, or Scott’s.”
“I figured Scott. But Troy, too? He sure got around.”
“Apparently.” Michael rolled over on his side and propped his head in his hand. “If the child is Troy’s, then his family will no doubt adopt. If it’s Scott’s—”
“His parents will get involved.” I sighed. “Knowing Scott, he’ll somehow avoid jail. But I doubt he’ll want the responsibility of a child.”
“The good news is Marci will be off the Vodka while she’s pregnant. I don’t think they’ll be serving that in jail.”
We laid there in the sand, me looking at the sky and him looking at me. Finally, I rolled my head towards him. “How are you dealing with…your mamma?”
“I grieve for her, for the loss of her.” He played with the sand, picking up handfuls and letting it slip slowly out of his fist. “But I also grieve for what she did to our family. All the years I thought my father was dead. She did a number on him, on all of us. I guess I grieve most for the person I thought she was.”
“What about Adam?”
He shook his head. “He was my brother in biology only. I should feel bad he’s dead, but I can’t. That’s an awful thing to admit.”
“What’s awful is the kind of brother he turned out to be.”
“So, what do you think constitutes a decent waiting period after your wife has a year-long affair with your brother and then shoots him? Before you marry her cousin, I mean.”
“I don’t think that situation is covered in Emily Post.”
“I know somebody who let the real thing slip through his fingers.” His eyes searched mine. “I won’t let that happen to us again.”
I couldn’t speak. Something thick was lodged in my throat.
His eyes glowed warm and bright. “I love you, Liz Talbot. I think I always have. Ever since you were five and started tagging around after Blake and me.”
“Michael, let’s give this some time.”
He smiled that warm smile—the one that made me hear Van Morrison singing Someone Like You. Then he hopped up on to one knee in the sand and pulled me up until I was standing and he was holding both my hands.
“I may be sick,” Colleen said.
“Will you please go away?” I said.
“What?” Michael looked crushed.
“Not you.” I covered my mouth with both hands and shook my head.
“Liz?”
“Michael, please stand up. I’m not ready for this.”
Slowly, he stood, confusion and hurt written on his face. “I’ve wanted you for so long…”
Tears sprung to my eyes. “And I’ve wan
ted you, just as long. But right now, I’m not sure if it was really us I wanted, or the idea of us. I need time.”
He shoved his hands back in his pockets and stared at the sand. “So, what, I should ask you out on a date?”
“Maybe,” I said. “When things settle down. Right now I think I’d like to settle into being neighbors. And friends.”
“Okay, then.” He nodded. “I guess I need to get back to Mamma’s. Dad’s coming by. We have arrangements to make. Come by later?”
“Of course. I’ll clean up and get a pound cake in the oven.”
“Skip the cake. We’ve got four pound cakes already, and the day is early. Just come when you can. It’s the neighborly thing.”
“I will.”
We both brushed the sand off. He turned and walked away.
“I always liked him.” Colleen’s voice was right in my ear. “If they’d let me go to college with you, you would’ve married him instead of Scott. But now…”
I spun around on her. “Could you at least not pop in during what should be private moments?”
She tilted her head and appeared to ponder that. “It would take some of the fun out of it.”
“I thought you were supposed to guard the island. It isn’t in any danger from Michael or me.”
Colleen turned and started down the beach.
“Hey, where are you going?” I asked.
“I’m going for a walk. I want to enjoy the ocean for a while.”
“You coming back?”
“Not today.”
“Are you…crossing over now?”
She stopped, turned around, and gave me an exasperated look. “I’ve already crossed over. I told you, I’m not a ghost.”
“I know, I know. You’re a guardian spirit. Will I see you again?”
“Probably.” Colleen smiled. “If you stay here.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Colleen glanced towards the house. “I’m only seventeen, but I think you have a lot of unresolved issues.”
I followed her gaze. Nate stood at the end of the walkway, staring in my direction. How much of the scene with Michael had he witnessed? Something cold grasped at my heart and I couldn’t quite catch my breath.
Colleen chattered on, “I wonder if he’d be willing to move. Long distance romances are a challenge, but not impossible. If you do stay here, you’ll never be able to live on what you’d make taking clients from Stella Maris. You’re going to need to drum up some business in Charleston. Go online, update your website. Don’t you just love the internet?”
She grinned, spun twice, and walked away.
Reader’s Discussion Guide
At the beginning of the book, Liz has established a life for herself several hours away from her family and the hometown she loves. She believes the reason she can’t go home is because Michael and Marci live there. Do you think she is really still in love with Michael, or after her failed marriage, does she create an idealized version of Michael and the life they might have had together?
Colleen and Liz were once the same age, but Colleen will be forever seventeen, while Liz is now thirty-one. How does this impact their relationship? Do Colleen’s supernatural powers balance the relationship?
Do you think Nate is in love with Liz? If so, why do you think he has kept this to himself?
Michael knows he was tricked into an unhappy marriage, and yet he doesn’t pursue a divorce stating Marci can’t take care of herself, and he didn’t want to give her half of everything he’d worked for in a divorce. Is he honorable or simply living with the status quo because it’s the path of least resistance, or some combination of both?
Liz and her sister, Merry, are quite close, yet Merry manipulates Liz without remorse, and Liz lets her get away with it. Is this a normal big sister/little sister relationship?
Which of Liz’s immediate family members do you like best: Mamma, Daddy, Blake, and Merry? Why?
Adam Devlin is not a nice guy. But from his point of view, the land he wants to develop is his birthright. He would argue he should have been able to develop Devlin’s Point—and make a lot of money by doing so—without having to resort to the elaborate scheme that was his downfall. At what point do the interests of a community override the interests of an individual?
Liz’s daddy, Franklin Talbot, is somewhat of a chameleon. He’s a respected member of the town council, yet at times he seems to slide into the skin of a somewhat eccentric good-ole-boy. Is this calculated on his part? Does he play the role the day demands or is he a little unbalanced?
Do you wish Liz had reconciled with Michael when he came to her door and she wouldn’t let him in?
Kate Devlin is another character who is not always what she seems. Do you feel any sympathy for her?
Do you think Deanna Devlin knew all along what Troy Causby was? Did she secretly hope he would kill Adam, or was that her plan? Or is she exactly as innocent as she appears?
What do you think the future holds for Liz and Michael? Do you see Nate in her future rather than Michael?
About Susan M. Boyer
Susan M. Boyer has been making up stories her whole life. She tags along with her husband on business trips whenever she can because hotels are great places to write: fresh coffee all day and cookies at 4 p.m. They have a home in Greenville, SC, which they occasionally visit. Susan’s short fiction has appeared in moonShine Review, Spinetingler Magazine, Relief Journal, The Petigru Review, and Catfish Stew. Her debut novel, LOWCOUNTRY BOIL, is a 2012 RWA Golden Heart® finalist and a 2012 Daphne du Maurier finalist. Visit her at: www.susanmboyerbooks.com.
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