True Blue (Hubbard's Point)

by Luanne Rice

  “I know.”

  “Kids like that, who've had too much adversity young, have a real uphill battle. Quinn tries so hard, but she's something of a lost soul… she needs us to understand her.”

  Rumer nodded. Her father and Quinn had several things in common. Although Sixtus hadn't been orphaned, as Quinn had been, his father had died when he was a child. His mother had worked very hard, often leaving him and his twin brother on their own for long stretches of time.

  “I might have stayed lost forever if I hadn't met my Clarissa. Your mother was the most patient woman alive.”

  “She was,” Rumer agreed.

  “I'm a better old father than I was a young father.”

  “Oh, Dad…”

  Smiling, she stared up at him, leaning across the deck canvas. He was right, but she would never acknowledge that out loud. “He's haunted by demons,” her mother would say when Rumer and Elizabeth would ask why their father seemed so quiet, so sad.

  “Demons?” Elizabeth would ask, frowning as she watched her father go off on another of his solitary sails, leaving behind his wife and daughters. “You mean, like devils? Inside him, eating him up?”

  Rumer would flinch, feeling her father's pain and also her sister's—Elizabeth could never understand why her father wouldn't take her along, why she couldn't cheer him up. She would put on skits so hilarious, Rumer's sides would ache from laughing, but her father would just sail away instead of watching.

  “Not real devils,” their mother would say, trying to soothe Elizabeth. “Just bad memories from his past. His father died very young, leaving his mother with too much responsibility. And Daddy had his own brother to look after…”

  “Like me and Elizabeth,” Rumer had said.

  “Yes, only you look after me, not the other way around—and you're my little sister,” Elizabeth had laughed, hugging her and teasing her for being her caretaker.

  “It's because I love you so much,” Rumer had said, her throat aching as she wondered what she'd ever do without her sister. She had adored Elizabeth. She had protected her from their parents, hiding the fact that Elizabeth loved to steal their beer and drink it till she could block out her loneliness, hiding the times she'd gone over to Little Beach with boys and a blanket, the fact that she was a fast girl in a small town.

  “You know,” her father said now, “Quinn might not need school—education snuffs the spirit right out of some people. She'll wind up being an artist or a poet or an actor or a sailor—something that would scare the life out of most folks around here.”

  Rumer watched the rabbits coming out of their warren under the azalea bush next door. It was happening all through the yards on the Point: animals everywhere at dusk, their time to feed.

  She found herself thinking of her sister—the untamed artist. Unable to keep their father from sailing away, to really connect with anyone but Rumer, Elizabeth had decided none of it mattered anyway. Drinking killed the pain, but it also drove her grades down. She had dropped out of school, left town, and in the process—almost in spite of herself—become a star. She had made their father more proud than any degrees, certificates, or veterinary positions ever could; Rumer suspected that he wasn't speaking about Quinn at all right now.

  “Did Winnie tell you that Zeb and Michael are coming?” she asked, feeling cold, last night's bad dream rising up inside her again.

  “She mentioned the possibility a while ago. I know, I know—don't look at me like that. I didn't believe her, or I would have told you. After all this time, who would think they'd come back here?”

  “I know.”

  “Elizabeth didn't say anything when I talked to her last Saturday,” he said. “She's on location in Toronto, then east to the Maritimes; she said she might hop down for a visit…”

  “She might not know herself,” Rumer said. “They are divorced, Dad.”

  “That they are,” her father said stonily, starting to sand again. Irish Catholic, he didn't like acknowledging Elizabeth and Zeb's divorce. Born in Galway, he and his family had moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, when his father—on his deathbed, and never having mentioned it before—had instructed his wife to “sell everything and move to Canada.”

  Brave woman: single mother, pioneer that Una Wicklow Larkin was, she'd boarded her twin boys onto a ship and taken them across the sea. Sixtus revered the headstrong spirit of his mother and had passed it on to his two daughters.

  “It'll be good to see Michael again,” her father said.

  “But not his father,” Rumer said, shaking her head.

  “Hmmm,” her father said, fiercely working on the boat. He had a cane now that he rarely used. Sailing was the only way he could move freely through life, as freely and gracefully as when he was young, and Rumer knew he couldn't wait to get his boat into the water.

  But right now her focus left her father and spiraled backward in time. Memories of Zeb flooded in so strong, clawing at her heart. Rumer wanted to run. She wasn't sure which had been the more excruciating: losing Zeb to her sister, losing her sister to Zeb.

  All she knew was that after everything had happened, her entire world had exploded. Rumer could have sworn the sky was a totally unfamiliar shade of blue; the roses in her mother's garden had seemed to wilt. For a few weeks, Rumer had wished she would die.

  Now, picking up her medical bag, she waved goodbye to her father and started down the hill. There really wasn't much more to say.

  But there was so much to remember.

  Driving in her truck, a basket of carrots and apples on the seat beside her, she wound her way through Hubbard's Point, under the train trestle, and onto the main road. Old memories seemed to gather and grow more solid. The marshes—greening for summer—stretched eastward and formed the estuary of the Connecticut River.

  She remembered the sweet, bone-deep feeling of having a best friend. Zeb: the sense that they would do anything for each other, anything, for the rest of their lives. They had been connected by a golden thread that could never be broken. His force could reach her from wherever he was. And when his fingers touched her skin, she felt the fire in her heart and bones.

  Her mind played over lazy summer meanderings, down the beach, across the creeks, over to the Indian Grave. They would crab for blue claws, race to the raft, keep each other warm at movies on the beach. She could see his smooth, tan skin, seal-silky His tousled, sun-lightened hair, his amazing grin—the image still brought an electric jolt, like a dire warning to not go there.

  Steeling her back, she ignored it.

  Every summer had had its own character: Their fourth summer, they had learned to swim; their seventh, they had rowed out to Gull Island; the ninth had been the start of their paper route; their eleventh had been filled with swimming and fishing; by their fifteenth, Rumer had fallen in love with him with a sense of longing so fine, it became her constant companion. She brooded about him constantly. Listening to the radio, hearing love songs that reminded her of him, her eyes had filled with tears and she had thought that this lifetime was nowhere near long enough for all the things she hoped to do with Zeb.

  He must have felt the same. When they were sixteen , their first kiss was a thrill that rivaled the meteor showers Zeb was always dragging her onto the roof to watch. Rumer couldn't remember when they had started, and she couldn't have imagined them ever ending. She had counted on him like clockwork.

  She remembered the time he had sailed to Orient Point with a group of boys. They were late getting back. His father was due home from a long trip, and Zeb was supposed to have cut the grass. Rumer had pulled out the lawn mower and mowed his grass for him. He'd told her later that when he came up the stone stairs, carrying the sails, he'd been able to hear the engine, and he'd run up the hill to give Rumer a salty kiss, to take over the job.

  The sound track of their friendship: the lawn mower, sails flapping, wind in the branches overhead as they stared at the stars. She had nurtured his love of the sky, and he had encouraged her to follow
her dream and become a vet, his voice in her ears so soft and kind and funny.

  All that music was gone now.

  No promises had ever been made; Zeb had certainly never proposed to her. But somehow, deep down, she had always imagined that they would be together. Weren't there promises without words? To Rumer, those were the strongest kind.

  They had the golden thread: They hadn't needed words. Promises made with silent kisses, with tentative touches, with the passion of their hearts. Clicking from childhood friendship to being in love had been a tough transition, but they'd been making it. Their connection probably could have survived anything, forever—except falling in love with someone else. Especially when the other person, for Zeb, was Rumer's sister, Elizabeth.

  Another electric jolt, more memories.

  Driving faster, Rumer wished they would fly out her truck's open window. She remembered their wedding day, nearly twenty years ago now. She had been invited, of course. Elizabeth had actually asked her to be the maid of honor.

  “Please, Rue,” Elizabeth had said, holding her hand. “I know it's hard for you, but it won't always be… we love you, you know?” she had pleaded, that “we,” the “we” of Elizabeth and Zeb lodging in Rumer's heart like a splinter of ice.

  “How can you ask me that?” Rumer had replied, her voice shaking, her skin clammy.

  “Because you're my sister.”

  “That's your reason?”

  “Of course. I'm not sure I can get married without you there.”

  “Then don't get married,” Rumer shot out, the words zinging in the air. Elizabeth stayed silent for a long while—shocked, as if she'd been slapped.

  “Put it behind you,” Elizabeth said. “Please? Be my maid of honor. Be a part of our wedding.”

  “I can't,” Rumer said.

  “We're fighting over a guy? Let me get this right— you're holding a grudge about this, letting it come between us? He's the boy next door, Rumer. He's lived there forever—you've had all this time to make it clear you loved him, if you did. Just because you had a paper route together—”

  “It was more than that,” Rumer cried, “and you knew it!”

  “I did not! Not really… I knew you had a crush on him, but you were just kids. You dated other guys—he went out with other girls. Nothing was ever serious between you, Rumer—no matter what you might have thought.”

  Rumer walked away.

  The tears were pouring down her cheeks. She could almost taste the salt now, streaming into the corners of her mouth. She had felt a burning coal in her chest, pressed against her ribs. It hurt so terribly that she'd thought maybe she was having a heart attack. Walking fast away from Elizabeth, then running, she had really thought she might die. She had wanted to.

  Elizabeth didn't know everything. Zeb hadn't told her their secret: It was serious between them. They had a magical connection. They had nearly made love. That last spring… they were going to lose their virginities to each other.

  Something had gone wrong: Crossed signals, and they'd never had the chance again. Elizabeth had swooped down when Rumer wasn't looking, and Zeb had been all too happy to follow her away.

  Running down the beach, past all the people who knew her, knew her family. Some of them had watched her and Zeb grow up together—they had been their customers on the paper route, the parents of their friends. Did they know about Elizabeth and Zeb? Rumer had felt humiliated to think so.

  Picturing her sister's wide-open eyes as she had actually asked her—with sad, absurd innocence—to be her maid of honor made Rumer shake inside. How could Elizabeth do this to her? And how could Zeb? They had betrayed her.

  Betray: The word was so huge, like something that belonged in the theater, in Shakespeare, in the opera, not at beautiful, peaceful Hubbard's Point. But, of course, the fact that it had happened here only made it worse.

  During those summer weeks, while Elizabeth had gone about making her wedding plans, Rumer had been on the waiting list for the Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine; in mid-July, she received her acceptance. She had wept to get it: Thank God she had finished up at college before it happened.

  She hadn't been able to think anymore. She felt dull, stagnant. She stared at the papers on her desk, wondering what they were for, how they'd gotten there. Her heart felt sluggish, as if every beat might kill her. She slept all day. She stayed awake all night. She ate bowls of cereal with sugar and whole milk until the box was empty. She gained weight and didn't care. Washing her hair seemed like a chore.

  It was the only summer of her life that she didn't swim in the sea.

  Her jeans wouldn't fit. Her face looked thick, puffy, in the mirror. She never wanted to leave the house. She avoided the windows that faced Zeb's, living completely in the rooms that looked north.

  Her parents were worried about her, but she couldn't hear their words. They were making plans to go to the wedding. Because their voices spoke about such things—her father giving Elizabeth away, her mother buying a mother-of-the-bride dress—Rumer couldn't bear to hear them ask her how she felt, whether she needed a doctor, whether she wouldn't like to take a swim?

  And then the acceptance into Tufts arrived.

  It was like a lifesaver thrown to a drowning girl. She had grabbed it with her last strength. She was going to become a veterinarian! The fact that she wanted to tell Zeb more than anyone in the world tore her in half. She cried over it, shuddering and quaking, all night.

  She thought of nature, how they had fallen in love with it together. How the bodies of heaven and the bodies of earth had balanced them. How the sky was his and the animals were hers. How his arms had felt around her shoulders; how their bodies had felt almost coming together.

  One time, almost, not quite, but leading to what would have been the sweetest time of their lives.

  Rumer held on to that memory like a secret treasure. Her beautiful sister, the actress, didn't know what Rumer and Zeb had done. Next to Elizabeth, especially with all the weight Rumer had gained, she felt like an ugly, fat, bitter, lonely, defiled, vengeful person—guarding her secret treasure like a madwoman.

  They had nearly made love; if they had met at the Indian Grave as planned, they would have.

  She'd show them, she'd thought: Who cared about Elizabeth and Zeb anymore? Rumer was on her way. She didn't need Zeb Mayhew to watch her dreams come true. She was going to Tufts, the best school around; she was going to become a vet.

  The week before the wedding, Rumer had driven her things to North Grafton, Massachusetts, and moved into the third floor of a Victorian house favored by students. On the actual wedding day, she reported to work at her new job at a local animal shelter.

  Two days earlier, a shepherd-Lab mix had been left to die after being hit by a car outside Boston. The owner had found him, and the vet had stitched him up the best he could. Rumer's instructions had been to sweep the floors, swab down the stainless steel surgery tables. But, going into the kennel, seeing the dog staring up with cloudy eyes, Rumer dropped to her knees.

  There, kneeling on the floor outside the cage, she placed her hand against the wire mesh. The vet told her the dog would probably die of his injuries but that the owners wanted to do everything possible. Holding still, she let the dying dog lick her hand. His tongue was so soft, nudging her with such heart-piercing friendliness, and she felt the dam break inside her.

  She sat there for hours. The sun faded, and through the lone window in the concrete wall, she saw the moon begin to rise. Rumer sat on the cold, sterile floor until the dog died, until she was sure Zeb and Elizabeth's wedding was over. The events blended together in her mind, each of them bringing sadness beyond belief.

  And when they were over, Rumer knew more than ever that she wanted to help animals, that when all was said and done, she could trust the kindness of a strange dog more than she could that of her sister and former best friend.

  Animals had never failed her, and to the best of her ability, she never failed them. T
urning into Peacedale Farm, she jumped out of the truck with her medical bag. Edward McCabe owned the place. He was a gentleman farmer with a serious nature. He had gone to Deerfield and Dartmouth; he belonged to the Grange, the River Club, and the Black Hall Reading Room. During the years Rumer had known him, he had had a series of long-term relationships that had sometimes led to engagements but never to marriage. Lately, those relationships had fallen away.

  Rumer was the vet for all the animals on his farm, and she helped Edward administer an important scholarship in his mother's name. Their time together had always felt easy and natural; they both loved nature, hiking, riding, and all animals, especially Blue—the horse Rumer had owned since vet school and kept stabled at the farm.

  Over the past year, Rumer herself seemed to have also become the object of Edward's considerable affection. The word “love” never passed her lips—she didn't want to do anything to jeopardize their very good working friendship, but recently she had sensed Edward wanting more.

  “Blue,” she called now, walking across the yard toward the field.

  The old horse stood at the fence, whinnying softly. He was a big bay, his coat no longer as glossy and fine as it had been when he'd been young. Flicking his black tail, he tossed his head in greeting. Rumer broke a carrot in half and approached him, hand open, feeling him lap the carrot from her fingers, his muzzle so velvety. Putting her arms around his neck, she held him close and felt his love.

  Then, scaling the fence, she climbed onto his bare back and rode into the field. He broke into a gentle canter, circling around the stone outcroppings and birch grove, heading down to the river. She thought of how long they had been together—long enough that she had brought Michael here to ride him sixteen years ago, when he was almost two, during his first visit east, on a thaw in his parents’ and aunt's relationship.

  “Old Blue,” she said, leaning forward to whisper in his ear, her voice getting lost in the wind blowing through the valley.

  “Ish-ish,” Michael had said of the cod weathervane on the fish market, and “Boo,” he had said of the then-young horse.