His use of my childhood nickname at that moment touched me immeasurably. I smiled at him. “Good night, Rilt.”
He backed away, then turned and walked swiftly to his room. I made my way up the stairs to the Lighthouse, stumbling as I went. Once there I threw myself across the bed and stared up at the ceiling fan revolving slowly above me. My feelings for Rick were powerful. And he returned them. This was hard to absorb after such a long time of regarding him as my sister’s husband, unavailable to me forever.
It was a while before I changed into my nightgown, and later I fell into a light sleep, waking frequently to mull things over, but when I awoke early the next morning, Easter, I wasn’t the worse for all the waking. I felt energized by a new perspective. One part of me didn’t believe anything that was happening. What if I had dreamed it? But no, the memory of Rick’s kiss was too, too real. It had happened, and everything was different now.
That Easter morning, I swung my feet out of bed and threw aside the filmy curtains. The rising sun was a majestic sight, one that never failed to fill me with wonder. I showered, wrapped myself in my robe and ran downstairs. I didn’t hear Rick stirring behind his bedroom door, but I knocked anyway.
“Happy Easter,” I called before he answered. “Get up and get ready. You and I are going to church.” We hadn’t discussed going, but attending Easter worship is part of our tradition. I’ve always loved the Tappany Creek Chapel and enjoyed the service, especially on this holiday with flowers blooming all around and the little girls dressed up in pastel dresses.
“Mmmfgh,” Rick said, or something to that effect.
“Rick?”
“Don’t want church.”
I might have expected this. Rick tended to avoid joining the rest of us at church on any Sunday morning, though Lilah Rose had always insisted, and I wasn’t about to cut him any slack.
“It’s Easter, Rick. I’d rather not go alone.”
I heard Rick moving around his room before he cracked open the door, his smile making me forget the beard stubble and sleep-encrusted eyes. He glanced toward the closet. “I’m warning you, I may not be properly wardrobed for church.”
“I’m not, either. I only brought one dress, forgot to pack pantyhose, and your mother would pitch a hissy fit if I showed up for the service bare-legged.”
“My mother,” Rick said with a lift of his eyebrows, “is in faraway China.”
“Somehow I think she’d know,” I warned him. “She could smell out an impropriety like a bloodhound on a case.”
“I won’t snitch on you,” Rick promised with a wink.
“There’s a man’s suit hanging in the closet of the other bedroom,” I said. “It might be one of Hal’s.”
“I’ll check,” Rick said.
I hurried back to the Lighthouse, showered and slipped into my silk print dress. I wished I’d packed dressy sandals, which would allow me to go stockingless, but I only had pumps.
The sleeves of Hal’s suit were slightly too long for Rick, though the pants fit him fine. When he showed up in the kitchen for inspection, he looked wonderful to my eyes. “Wow,” I said, ogling him over the rim of my coffee mug. “You clean up good, McCulloch.”
“So do you. You’re beautiful.”
It was what I wanted to hear, but I didn’t feel completely dressed. We set off in Rick’s car, and as we rounded the corner near Jeter’s, I noticed that the store was open. “Stop!” I said suddenly. “I want to buy some pantyhose.”
Rick slowed the car, sparing an admiring glance for my bare legs. “Your legs are tanned and gorgeous.”
“I don’t feel right,” I said.
“For Pete’s sake, Trista, are you serious?”
I was. “Stop making this difficult, Rick McCulloch. It’ll only take a minute for me to run in, and we’re early for the service besides.”
Rick rolled his eyes, but he pulled up in front of Jeter’s. “Thanks,” I told him, favoring him with a broad smile over my shoulder as I marched inside the store. I found the pantyhose I wanted, one size fits most, and paid one of the young girls behind the counter.
“You’re Trista Barrineau, aren’t you?” she asked as she sorted bills into the cash drawer. “I’ve seen you on TV. You’re taller than you seem on television.”
Usually when I’m on the island, I’m not recognized, which is wonderful since I can’t go anywhere in Columbia without people knowing who I am. Worse yet, some of them make rude remarks. My personal favorite? “You don’t look as good as you do on TV.” Well, duh. I wear tons of makeup on-screen.
With this girl at Jeter’s, I was understandably reluctant to involve myself in a long conversation, but she had an open, likable face. She might have been Goz’s daughter. Rose? Ivy? I seemed to remember that his girls were named after plants.
“I want to be a reporter just like you,” she confided. “I’m going to take a journalism class in school next year.”
“That’s a good start,” I said warmly, and as I left the store, I realized that providing a positive role model for young people was a worthwhile thing to do and something that I didn’t often consider when embroiled in turf wars and intrigues at work.
“You look like the cat who got the cream,” Rick said as he backed out and onto the road.
I tore open the pantyhose package and told him what the girl had said and how it had made me feel good.
“That’s important,” he said. “And if you—”
He stopped talking as I shimmied my dress up my thighs. “What in the world?”
“I bought these pantyhose, and now I have to put them on,” I explained patiently. I slipped one of the legs over my foot and smoothed it upward, remaining modest but mindful that Rick quickly averted his eyes.
“You’re titillating as hell,” he said. “Are you doing this to turn me on?”
I halted my labors to stare at him openmouthed. “My legs aren’t anything new to you,” I reminded him. I hitched the pantyhose as high as I could, then started with the other leg.
“Sweet blessed Jesus,” Rick muttered. At my disapproving glance, he darted his eyes in my direction. “That was a prayer. It is Easter, you know.”
“I don’t understand what all the fuss is about,” I said, wishing the seat of Rick’s car was more roomy so I wouldn’t have so much trouble sliding the hose up over my hips.
“Context. Opportunity. And sex appeal,” he said as he wheeled in to the church parking lot. He swerved in to a parking space under a crepe myrtle tree, immediately switching off the engine and turning with his elbow propped on the steering wheel.
I twitched my skirt down and started to get out of the car, but he pulled me toward him so he could kiss the middle of my forehead. “The next thing I want to see you do is take those damn pantyhose off,” he said, his voice low in his throat.
I couldn’t help laughing, and we walked into the sanctuary with our fingers lightly laced together.
The sermon, delivered by a new, young pastor we’d never met, touched on renewal and hope, which I found particularly apt. The minister shook our hands as we left the church, saying that he’d like to see us at services again. I think he believed we were married, which amused me, and later, a member of Lilah Rose’s summer bridge club greeted us and told Rick that it was good to see him and his wife at the service. I waited for Rick to correct her, but he didn’t. When I asked him why he hadn’t, he merely shrugged.
“It’s too complicated to explain,” he said briefly, and I suppose I agreed with him. Besides, it was a beautiful morning, the honey-colored stones of the church gilded with sunshine, and the sea, visible beyond the church yard, a sheet of billowing blue. I didn’t want anything to spoil it.
On the way home we stopped at the park where a group of small boys were flying kites in the freshening wind. One of them had trouble launching his homemade creation, and Rick ran with it until the gusts pulled it up into the sun-washed blue sky. I sat watching from a low wall, my legs pulled up, my arms draped
loosely around my knees much as I had when I’d watched Rick flying kites there years ago.
“We should go for a walk,” Rick said when he rejoined me. “That storm the other day washed up a lot of shells. If we search hard enough, you might find that perfect sand dollar you’ve never found.”
He’d already removed his jacket. I glanced down at my shoes and pantyhose. “Well,” I said slowly, “I guess they’ve served their purpose.” With that, I ducked down behind the wall and tugged them off, rolled the nylon into a ball and tucked it into the end of a drainage pipe, not caring if I ever saw them again.
We ran down to the beach, where a few families had already staked large umbrellas in the sand. Rick rolled up the legs of his borrowed pants, and I scampered in and out of the waves, as sure-footed as a marsh pony.
“You know, there doesn’t need to be any more than this,” Rick said, his arms sweeping out to encompass the sea, sand and sky. The wind had blown his hair back from his forehead, and the faint scar from his long-ago fight with Hugh Barfield showed through his tan.
“That’s what we always think when we’re on the island, but somehow, other things intrude. Money, time, jobs, responsibilities.”
“Marriages,” Rick said soberly.
“Life,” I added.
We grew tired of walking after a while and headed back. Once, we stopped and talked with a man who was photographing arrangements of driftwood, and he offered to take a photo of us. I sat on one of the large silvery logs, and just before the shutter clicked, Rick pushed a lock of hair back over my shoulder.
“Good one!” exclaimed the man, and he wrote down my e-mail address so he could send me a copy over the Internet. I didn’t think the picture in his viewfinder was perfect, since Rick’s face was slightly turned away from the camera, but the photographer had caught me in a rare relaxed pose, happy and carefree.
And then I found it—the perfect sand dollar. I happened to glance down as we walked, and there it was, lying right on top of the sand as if waiting for me. I picked it up and brushed it off, a lovely souvenir of this special day.
Neither Rick nor I had given a thought to preparing the usual Easter dinner of ham and all the fixings. Instead, we defrosted steaks in the microwave and Rick grilled them outside. I set the dining-room table with Lilah Rose’s elegant hand-painted china, threw potatoes into the toaster oven to bake and made a simple tossed salad.
Afterward, we watched a DVD of old Seinfeld episodes, shoveling popcorn into our mouths as we hadn’t since we were kids. It didn’t take long for us to become engaged in hearty debate about which was the best episode ever made, and Rick said that his favorite wasn’t in the collection we were watching.
“In the one I like,” Rick said, “Elaine and Jerry are sitting on his couch doing this exact same thing, watching TV. And they get into a debate about whether they should sleep together. And—”
“I’ve seen it,” I said, all but dumping the popcorn bowl in his lap. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
“You could take it that way,” he said consideringly as he switched off the TV and leaned toward me. In the sudden quiet, my heart started to beat faster, a series of pitty-pats that echoed in my ears. Rick traced the inside of my wrist with his thumb, and the stirrings of desire uncoiled somewhere below my stomach.
“On that show,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “Jerry and Elaine find a whole lot of reasons why they should remain just friends.”
“And reasons that they should make love, too.”
“But they’d made love before, when they were boyfriend and girlfriend,” I pointed out as Rick’s hand slid higher.
“They must have enjoyed it,” he said softly, “because they decided to go ahead and do it again.”
Rick’s eyes searched mine, never wavering. By this time, I knew what was going to happen, and I longed for him to put his arms around me. The electricity flickering between us was extraordinary, and I felt an effervescent sense of unreality.
But I was not so mesmerized by Rick that practicalities fled my mind. “Now that you’ve made it clear exactly where we’re going with this,” I said unsteadily, “maybe I should hit the shower. I’m still all sandy from the beach.”
“Let’s take a shower together,” he said, nuzzling my temple.
“In the Lighthouse or downstairs?” I asked.
“The Lighthouse. With the dark ocean visible through the curtains and a moon path ready to take us as far as we want to go.”
“As far as we want to go,” I murmured, imagining Istanbul and Timbuktu and limitless possibilities stretching as far as we could see.
He kissed me, the kiss growing hungrier as I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him close. This time when we made love, Rick and I would do so as adults. Without reservation. Knowing the true meaning of our love for each other. Facing the future, whatever it might bring, together.
The doorbell rang. Rick sat up straight.
“Damn,” he said. “Who could that be?”
I disentangled myself. Frantically, I ran my fingers through my hair, bringing it back to some semblance of my usual style. “I bet it’s Stanley and family, here to pick up Daria’s book.”
“I’ll go see who it is,” Rick said. He stroked my cheek briefly. “But let’s mark the place where we left off, okay?”
I returned his smile with a quavery one of my own and hurried to get the book, which I’d left in the kitchen. I arrived at the front door just as Rick threw it open.
“Well,” said Martine, tossing back her expensively streaked hair. “Look who’s here.”
Chapter 16: Trista
2004
Click: I’m clutching a copy of Anne of Green Gables to my chest, and Martine is standing ready to stride into the house. Rick is holding the door open, clearly surprised. No snapshot of this moment exists, but it should.
My sister had all the right ingredients for beauty, but when she appeared at Sweetwater Cottage that Easter night, she no longer had the glow that comes from being cherished and loved. Instead, a tenuous line bisected her forehead, and I didn’t recall ever seeing it there before, nor was there one on my face when I glanced into the nearby mirror. Martine was not happy. Why this made me sad, I don’t know. Maybe because I care about Martine so much. Maybe because I have always loved her, no matter what.
“Your cars are parked outside, but the house was so quiet that I tried my key,” Martine said as she shoved aside the stack of photo albums on the couch and accepted a glass of scotch and soda from Rick. “It didn’t work. Guess you had the locks changed, right?”
“Hal had to call a locksmith last year after some kids broke in,” Rick said tersely. “He didn’t want a repeat performance.”
“I’m so glad you’re back to your old self,” I said to Martine. We’d hugged after she walked in, and I was happy that she was so well recovered from her injuries.
“I’m feeling great. Oh, and you won’t believe what happened just south of Orangeburg as I was driving up I-95. I got stopped by this handsome highway patrolman? And he recognized me, or thought he did. He didn’t even bother with my license. He said, ‘Well, if it isn’t Trista Barrineau! I watch you on the news every night, and you did a real good job reporting that story about someone trying to bribe one of my superior officers.’ And then he handed back my license and said to slow down and have a nice day. I was driving kind of fast, but not too awfully. Anyway, thanks.” She beamed at me.
“I wish you’d told us you were coming,” I said. “We could have waited dinner. There’s leftover steak—would you like a sandwich?”
“I ate earlier. Anyhow, I’m just passing through on my way to Maryland to deliver Steve’s SUV to him. He’s in Annapolis right now visiting his kids, and after we rendezvous outside Washington, D.C., we’re supposed to drive around visiting historic sites for a few days before heading back to Miami.” The way she delivered this sentence was the clue that she wasn’t exactly in favor of the plan.
>
Rick drew his brows down, clearly uncomfortable with this topic. I felt a muscle tic in my jaw.
“Anyway,” Martine went on, surely aware of the effect her words were having on Rick and me, “I thought this would be a good chance to pick up a few of my clothes that I left. I figured somebody would be here at Easter.”
I sneaked a glance at Rick, who was now regarding Martine with a blank expression. All that police work, I thought. He’s learned to pull a poker face.
“You’re welcome to take them,” he said, and his gruff tone left no doubt that he meant that Martine should do this now and not wait.
“I hope you’ll put me up for the night. There isn’t a motel for miles.”
A blanket of uneasiness settled over me, and Rick seemed to summon every bit of self-control he possessed. “Martine, we’re divorced. Don’t you think you should have checked with Hal before you decided to stay here? Or asked me?”
She frowned at him. “You’ve more or less disappeared from view, Rick, and Hal never returns my calls.”
“You can stay in the room where Lindsay and Peter usually sleep,” Rick said grudgingly.
“Okay, that works for me, and as a bonus I get to visit with my twin sis. Tris, I can never thank you enough for all you did while I was in the hospital. Thanks, hon.”
Martine had begun calling people “hon” shortly after she moved to Miami. She used the term of endearment for everyone from the garbagemen to her best friend, Jane. This irritated me, but I’d never told her so.
She treated herself to a gulp of her drink. “Mmm, this tastes good. How about a walk on the beach in the morning, Tris, before I start the long drive?”
“Sure,” I said, at a loss. I wondered if she expected Rick to accompany us.
Martine yawned and stretched. “I’m exhausted,” she said, uncurling herself like a languid cat. “See you in the morning. Can’t wait for that beach walk.” With studied indolence, she made her way to the hall and hefted her carryall, continuing to the spare guest room and closing the door behind her.
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