by Luanne Rice
“The value of our property…” Rumer whispered. “It has nothing to do with money. It's the land… this beautiful Point.”
They stood by the window, gazing across the bay. People were leaving the beach for the day; just a few brightly striped umbrellas remained. The Good Humor man rang the bell, tempting the kids as they walked by. A few boats were fishing out at the breakwater, and several white sails dotted the blue water.
“This beautiful place,” Zeb said.
Rumer sobbed, and she seemed surprised when he took her hand and pulled her to the sofa. Together they sat down, and he took a deep breath. The value of the land… the new neighbor had gotten Zeb thinking; he understood that Rumer's grief was for something much more than baby squirrels, the trees next door. It was for their childhood, their memories, the way things should have been.
“What is it?” she asked.
“The other day you asked me why I won't be flying anymore.”
“I'm not even sure whether to believe you or not, Zeb. You love it so much.”
“Not anymore,” he said.
“Tell me why.”
“Something happened up there last September,” he said, stroking the back of her hand, “that brought me down to earth.”
She stared into his eyes. “You looking down here, me looking up there… so many nights, when I dreamed, I left my body to go flying with you… up there. My old friend Zeb…”
“Up there,” Zeb said, looking up at the blue sky, the golden clouds holding the first of the sunset light. “I felt very far away… that's what I remember thinking. Like, how will I get back? Will I ever see anyone again? I looked out the spacecraft window, down at Earth, and I swear, we were passing right over Hubbard's Point”
“What happened?”
“We had an explosion,” he said.
Her eyes were wide, listening. She couldn't know that he was feeling the blast inside his body—as he did every time he thought of it. The Point was peaceful; he and Rumer were sitting side by side, and again Zeb felt the bottom fall out of the world.
His fingers closed around the sofa cushion beneath him. It was a subtle move; he hadn't even been aware he was doing it. But Rumer saw, and she reached down to hold his hand. Her fingers entwined with his—warm and secure. Wthout checking, Zeb knew his palm was sweaty. Rumer just held it, gazing at him steadily.
“There was an electrical fire,” he said. “It wasn't the first one I've ever experienced; it wasn't even very bad…” Even so, he could smell the wires burning, the plastic melting. Sometimes he felt as if the burning smell had gotten into his skin and hair, and nothing would ever wash it out.
“But it felt like an earthquake. As if we could get knocked out of the sky. As if we'd passed through a black hole.”
“How long—”
“It lasted only a few seconds,” Zeb said. “Our computer showed the fire was in the control panel, starboard side… Mel Davis, the pilot, took action right away. He was great—we shut everything down.”
“Were there flames?”
“Not that we could see,” Zeb said. “But we assumed it had to be bad—we'd felt the blast, and our instincts had kicked in. The thing is, it wasn't all that serious. There are procedures; we've run through them many times. We put it out right away—we were never in real danger.”
“But you were up in space,” Rumer said. “You must have been so scared.”
“We're trained,” Zeb said, his pulse racing, “to expect things like that. I've felt explosions worse than that in the simulator. But yes—we were in space. I felt very, very far from everything I loved.”
He remembered how quickly he and Mel had taken action, put out the fire. Mel had laughed almost right away—Zeb ordinarily would have been laughing along.
“Michael?” Rumer asked.
“And you…”
“Me?”
“You and Michael,” Zeb said, his voice thick. “Our groundspeed was so fast—we made that last orbit, and then we came down. But my thoughts were racing even faster. You and Michael… I couldn't wait to land, to check in with you right away.”
“You called one day last September,” Rumer said. “Dad told me…”
“Yes. I was wishing you'd answered the phone, but Sixtus picked up… said you were working out in the field somewhere. I don't think I told him anything about the explosion—he thought it was just to catch up. That's when he told me about Dana getting married. I called Winnie to see if her house was available. I started thinking—I need to reevaluate everything. I need to figure out what was important. I need to set things right. It took some time, but I put the plan together.”
“To come out here?”
“Back home, to see you,” Zeb said, rubbing the back of his neck, feeling weary with how far he had come. “And to bring Michael here. I knew—I hoped— it would be good for him. This is my home… I've lived other places, but I've never really left.”
“You couldn't,” Rumer said, her voice raspy. “You belong here.”
“I've done so much to push it all away….”
“But you couldn't.”
The chain saw whirred outside, slicing through pine branches. Zeb's stomach clenched. He thought of the new neighbor taking down the trees he and Rumer loved. He had to tell her how he felt, and he had to find out her side: The necessity had grown stronger every day, pressing his heart and strangling him. It was like a launch window—very little time to do a very precise thing.
Standing together, he and Rumer listened to the destruction of the tree they loved and watched the sunset. Yellow light spread over the beach and sea, and Zeb thought of launch windows. Once, during a June mission, the shuttle Endeavour had to lift off and rendezvous with the EURECA satellite in order to return it to Earth after a year in orbit. With a seventy-one-minute window, they reached it on the sixty-seventh.
Another time, they had to fire a Delta II rocket in order to launch a U.S.-Japan Geotail spacecraft into a looping orbit around Earth and the moon. It was July, nearly ten years ago, and they had had a two-minute window. In spite of the keplerian elements involved, they had succeeded.
“What are you thinking?” she asked now.
“About launch windows.”
“What do they have to do with right now?”
“Well,” he said, “they're a limited time in which something has to occur. Like the passing of orbiting spacecraft with which the shuttle must rendezvous… or the time of day that a satellite payload has to pass over a certain region of the earth. Or—” He swallowed, bowing his head. “A certain amount of time within which a person can correct all the mistakes he's made.”
“Like selling your house,” she said in a low voice.
“That's not the one I meant…” he said.
“Why didn't you keep it?” she asked, the words tearing out.
“I couldn't, Rumer. The divorce was a mess. Maybe if we'd waited it out, let the dust settle, we could have kept it… but Elizabeth didn't want it. She said anytime she wanted to come here, she could stay with you and your father… it bothered her to think of me owning property right next door. So we put it on the market, and it sold that very first month.”
“Maybe you can buy it back,” Rumer said with longing, looking out the window at the chain saws.
“I wonder what it would take,” Zeb said.
“I don't know,” Rumer whispered.
Zeb stared into her eyes. Summer was passing by; soon he was expected to return to California to start his new job. The launch window was getting smaller for him to say what he had to say. In that mission craft last September 30, choking on white smoke up there in space, he had known he had to get straight with Rumer. He stared into her blue eyes now: She was the one he had loved his whole life. Since they were kids, younger than Michael and Quinn.
“What happened that day?” he asked.
“Which day?”
“The first day of spring. We were supposed to meet at the Indian Grave, and you never ca
me…”
“I've told you—I came home from college planning to meet you, but I never got the word. Why have you never believed me?”
“Because I left you that note.”
“In the drawer?”
“You know I did.”
“I never got it, Zeb.”
“Maybe you weren't ready,” he said as if she'd never spoken. “Maybe I was rushing you.”
She looked troubled, her eyes clouded as if trying to remember. From the front windows they overlooked the beach, cove, distant trees, and the path to Little Beach. Through those woods, at a secret spot, there was a hidden trail over the tidal creek to the Indian Grave. Zeb's pulse raced, waiting for her to speak.
“I looked for a note,” she said softly, shaking her head. “I waited for you to call. I didn't know where you were. I waited up all night. You could have called me. You could have walked over and told me. We could have held hands and walked down the beach and through the path together… I'd have helped you pitch your tent! Why didn't you just come next door?”
“I was trying to be very Hubbard's Point romantic. The drawer had always worked before. I thought you'd have liked it.”
“I would have,” she said. “You acted so cold afterward.”
“I was hurt,” he said.
“Spurned?” she asked, her lips tight, and when he nodded, she went on. “I know how you must have felt. For two months I barely heard from you. And then we went to see Elizabeth in that play and everything changed. I just thought it was easier for you to love her than me.”
“Rumer—,” he began.
“Do you really think it matters anymore? After all this time?” she asked sadly.
Just then the telephone rang. It was Sixtus calling from Lunenburg in Nova Scotia. Outside, the land-scaper began hacking down the row of bamboo overgrown with thick honeysuckle vines.
Rumer spoke to her father, sitting down on the love seat by the stone fireplace. Zeb listened to the sound of her voice, soft and happy to be speaking to her father, to know he was safe.
He closed his eyes, wishing she could know how much he wished she had answered the phone when he'd called last fall. He had been so afraid; the explosion had made him look at his life, face the fact that he had made a terrible mistake.
Love is forever, his mother used to say. When you think you've lost it, come back to our sanctuary. It'll be right here waiting for you.
Zeb's hands were shaking. Outside, the chain saws roared, cutting into the sanctuary. Rumer spoke softly on the phone, her voice soothing his spirit, touching his heart. When she looked across the room, their eyes met. She kept talking to her father, but she didn't look away from Zeb.
ON RAINY DAYS, Foley's store was filled with thwarted beachgoers browsing through books and magazines, children perusing comic books and penny candy, friends having tea, and teenagers playing the jukebox. The message drawer got its greatest use on these days, with one set of friends leaving notes and the next group reading them. The sheets of paper were like movable graffiti.
And over the years, the notes became like leaves on the forest floor. Some settled and became part of the ground; others were retrieved, while still others simply disappeared. Some of the oldest fell apart—the paper folds wearing out, the edges getting caught in the drawer's wooden seams.
Rumer, Quinn, and Michael sat around one of the scarred wood tables. Drinking tea, Rumer watched them do their homework on Act II of Romeo and Juliet. Taking a break, they tried to read the old initials carved into the wooden tabletop.
“There's my parents,” Quinn said. “LU & MG. And Aunt Dana and her old boyfriend: D&T.”
“Here's my dad,” Michael said. “ZM—can't be many of those around. But instead of'EL’ it's ‘RL’”
Rumer blushed, stirring honey into her tea. “That was a long time ago.”
“RL is you?”
Rumer nodded. “We were old friends, your father and I. You knew that, right? As I remember, he carved our initials together as a joke. It was never serious, Michael.”
“Serious enough for him to carve it.”
“We had a paper route… I think we'd come in for hot chocolate one cold, rainy morning like today. Some boy I liked was probably sitting over there”—she gestured at the counter—”and your father decided to make him jealous. Something like that.”
“Mom said you were her biggest rival,” Michael said.
“Wow,” Quinn said. “A little Shakespeare right here at Hubbard's Point. Two sisters and the same guy!”
“Elizabeth said that?” Rumer asked, stuck on Michael's comment.
Michael nodded. “Yep. She laughed when she did, because obviously…”
Rumer reddened deeply. Obviously, her sister meant, Rumer wasn't a contender in any competition with Elizabeth.
“What's her problem?” Quinn asked. “Rumer's awesome!”
“She thinks I'm ridiculously small town,” Rumer said, trying to smile. “Right, Michael?” But then, because her nephew was squirming and she didn't want to put him in the middle, she changed the subject. “Have you two left notes for each other yet?”
“Notes? What do you mean?” Michael asked.
“In this drawer,” Rumer said, pulling it open to reveal all the folded sheets of paper.
“Lovers,” Quinn said, staring into Michael's eyes, “leave messages for each other. It's a Hubbard's Point tradition.”
“Good to know,” Michael said, taking a pen from his pocket.
“Yes, isn't it?” Quinn asked, taking a pencil from the back of her hair. A notebook lay on the table in front of her, filled with notes about Romeo and Juliet. Surrep-tiously, Quinn began to write, making sure no one could read her words.
Rumer smiled. She wondered who they thought they were kidding. Playing it cool, showing just so much and no more. Lately Quinn had started wearing a new ring made from four strands of copper wire; Michael had a similar one, obviously matching Quinn's.
Watching the kids, she found herself thinking back. As much joy as Zeb's notes had brought her, Rumer knew they had also led to trouble.
One night, back at the beach before her first off-Broadway run had started, Elizabeth had stopped in for a soda, reading over Rumer's shoulder. “Whoa, what's this? My little sister's growing up! And so's our next-door neighbor, from the look of things….” At that time, Rumer and Zeb were nineteen, juniors in college, falling in love.
Looking back, Rumer realized that everything had started changing after that. Elizabeth seemed to regard Zeb in a new way. And, more upsetting, Rumer worried that Zeb would notice. How could Rumer hold a candle to her sister if Elizabeth decided to go after him? Rumer and he still left each other notes in the drawer, but she kept waiting for him to wake up and see that Elizabeth liked him… and one day, he did.
“What does it all mean, Rumer?” Quinn asked, back to her schoolwork.
“Mean?” she asked, shaken from her reverie.
“Romeo and Juliet.”
“My sister's the actor,” she laughed. “I'm just a country vet.”
“But you know more than we do,” Quinn prodded. “Come on….”
“Yeah,” Michael said. “Their families gave them so much grief about being together. It's obvious they loved each other more than anything… they were meant to be together.”
“Sometimes that's not enough,” Rumer said.
“Are we allowed to carve our initials here?” Quinn asked, tracing the table. “I mean, officially?”
“Mr. Foley has never seemed to mind.”
Nodding, Quinn took her sailing knife from her book bag. She worked slowly and carefully, making block letters in the wood. Rumer expected them to be hers and Michael's, but instead they were “RM & JC.”
“Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet,” Quinn said. “I never want to forget. Two people destined to be together, torn apart by their families.”
Staring at the Z and R of Zeb and Rumer, Rumer's eyes swam.
“Romeo and Jul
iet,” Quinn said. “I may be emotionally anorexic, but this is for you.”
“Quinn, honey,” Rumer said. “You're not—”
“They have a whole play about them to tell their story,” Michael said, gently taking the knife from Quinn's hand and starting to score beautiful script letters in one of the few places left untouched on the wide table. “We might have only this little spot to tell ours. And summer's going so fast, we'd better do it soon.”
“Because you leave before Labor Day,” Quinn said.
“Shhh, don't say that,” Michael whispered, getting to work.
Rumer watched him chisel “QG” and “MM,” the letters entwined together, and she held herself back from telling them that initials didn't matter at all; neither did the notes they would write and leave. Symbols might last, but unless a couple was really meant to be together—fated and blessed by destiny itself—no amount of carving or writing could make a bit of difference.
Michael's words had reminded her that summer was speeding by. He and his father would be returning to California before long. Rumer shivered as if the first breeze of fall had just swept south from Canada, filling the air with a deep chill.
Tracking the Franklins down took a little doing, but Zeb finally located them. He learned from land records at Black Hall town offices that the Cresthill Road property had been registered under the name Tad's Bedding, Inc. with corporate headquarters located in New Glen-dale, Connecticut. Speaking with the building inspector, he learned that Tad Franklin had filed papers to request zoning variances on the use he proposed for his property.
Driving north through the Connecticut River Valley, Zeb turned off the windshield wipers. The rain had stopped, but the road was slick. He passed forests, bridges, ponds, and small towns, their white steeples showing through the trees. If there was one thing he could do to keep the promise he'd made to Sixtus, it was to look over Rumer's property and happiness by trying to buy back the sanctuary
New Glendale was an old manufacturing town originally known for its production of screws. Advancements in the industry had left factory owners unprepared, so the downtown was filled with many abandoned brick buildings, graceful and a century old, their large windows filled with broken panes overlooking the river.
