Carolina Dreaming: A Dare Island Novel

by Virginia Kantra

  Metal filings flew. Two holes, ten feet up, one on either side of the pole.

  Lucky barked from the back of the truck.

  Gabe shut off the drill.

  “Hey, Gabe.”

  He had an audience. Aidan stood with a couple of kids at the edge of the carport, gazing up at him on the ladder.

  Gabe swallowed the dryness in his throat, dredged up a smile. “Hi, sport. Who are your pals?”

  “This is Chris.”

  Right. Gabe recognized the smaller of the two boys who had walked home with Aidan a couple weeks ago.

  “And this is Hannah,” Aidan said, indicating the dark-skinned girl in purple-laced sneakers.

  She cocked her head, regarding Gabe with big green eyes. “What are you doing?”

  “You took down the basketball hoop,” Chris said at the same time.

  “Yep.” He came down the ladder, went to his pickup.

  Aidan tagged after him.

  Gabe dropped the tailgate. Lucky bounded from the truck, running from child to child, throwing himself down at everybody’s feet, leaping up to thrust his nose in hand after hand. Hannah giggled.

  While the kids fussed over the dog, Gabe hefted his cargo from the back of the pickup.

  “What’s that?” the girl asked.

  Gabe carried the box to the carport.

  The kitchen door opened, and it was like the sun came out on the porch, because . . . Jane.

  The howling sandstorm inside him eased. Not that the letter in his pocket went away. But he could breathe again.

  She smiled at him, warm and a little shy. “I thought you were all done here.”

  “Got one more job to take care of.” He set down the box, revealing the picture on the side.

  “A new hoop!” Aidan shouted.

  This time the smile came easier. “That’s right.”

  “Gabe, you shouldn’t—” Jane started.

  “Cool,” Chris said.

  “Can anybody play on it?” Hannah asked.

  “Once it’s up,” Gabe said.

  “Awesome!” Aidan said. “Thanks, Gabe!”

  “Don’t thank me,” Gabe said. “You still have to put it together.”

  “Me?”

  The staggered delight on the boy’s face caused a catch in Gabe’s chest. He cleared his throat again. “If you’re up for it. I need somebody to assemble the bracket before I attach the backboard. Think you can look at the directions, see how everything gets put together?”

  “By myself?”

  Gabe eyed the other two. “Wouldn’t hurt to have some help.” It might even do Aidan some good to get his friends involved.

  Chris’s face split in a grin, exposing a missing tooth.

  “I can help,” Hannah volunteered.

  “Hannah’s really smart,” Aidan said.

  “Great. Let’s see what you got.” He made them stand back as he slit open the carton, as he located the instructions and the bag of parts. “Keep everything on the cardboard now. Don’t lose anything.”

  Three heads bent over the cardboard. Fingers poked through washers and bolts.

  “You just made him really happy.” Jane stood beside Gabe, their shoulders almost touching. “Thank you.”

  He looked down at her, warm and close and important. “My pleasure.”

  “It must have been awfully expensive. You need to let me pay you back.”

  His jaw set. “No.”

  “It’s too much. You’re too generous.”

  “Look, I wanted to give him something.” Needed to give him something. Wanted to do anything to turn this crappy mood around. “He did help me paint.”

  “Gabe, I think we need tools,” Aidan said.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “To tighten things up,” Hannah explained.

  “The bolts should just be finger-tight for now. We’ll tighten everything down after it’s all assembled.” Gabe crouched beside them to check. “Yeah, like that. Good job.”

  He straightened, reaching automatically to make sure the letter didn’t fall out of his pocket.

  Hannah threaded a bolt through a hole.

  “Not that one,” Aidan said, grabbing. “Try this.”

  She snatched it back. “I’ve got it. Look.”

  He preferred their squabbling to the voices in his head.

  “What’s the matter?” Jane asked very quietly.

  Gabe shook his head. He didn’t know where to start.

  “Bad day?” she probed softly.

  “I got a letter,” he heard himself say.

  “Bad news?”

  “My mother’s dead.”

  Shit. He hadn’t intended to tell her like that. He hadn’t planned on telling her at all.

  “Oh, Gabe.” Jane turned toward him, her fingers squeezing his arm. “When?”

  “Six weeks ago.” About the time he got out of jail. It took the lawyers that long to find him.

  “How?”

  “Cancer.” All the years he’d feared for her life, he’d never thought it would be a disease that finally finished her off. “I didn’t even know she was sick.”

  What kind of son didn’t know his own mother was dying?

  Jane was silent. But for some reason, he wasn’t afraid of her judgment. Maybe she was the one woman in the world who would understand.

  “Stay right here,” she commanded, with another squeeze.

  Like he had someplace better to go.

  He stood there numbly while the kids wrangled at his feet and Jane ran lightly up the porch steps and into the kitchen.

  “Okay.” She was back, holding a bottle of water. She put her free hand on his arm again. “Let’s go sit down over here.”

  He let her lead him to one of the tables under the trees, within sight of the carport. She handed him the water.

  Doing what she did best, providing food and drink. Not offering false reassurances, just her presence. Her acceptance. Her peace.

  “Thanks.” Unscrewing the top, he drank deeply. It was something to do, to avoid meeting the sympathy in her eyes. And it eased the ache in his throat, a little. “You should go back inside. You have work to do.”

  “Rudy and Lindsey can handle it. So, this letter . . .” Her fingers were cool and light on his arm. “Was it from your father?”

  “No. He’s dead, too. At least, I’m pretty sure he is.”

  “You don’t know.”

  He shook his head once side to side. No. But he could guess. Sole beneficiary, the letter said. His mother would never have left him a dime if the old man was alive. She had made her choice between her husband and her son years ago. “The letter was from her lawyer. Some law firm in Detroit.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Jane said.

  “Don’t be. I lost my mother ten years ago, when she kicked me out. My father . . .” He turned the bottle around and around in his hands. “He hit her all the time,” he said suddenly. “When I tried to stop him, he hit me, too.”

  “Oh, Gabe.”

  He took a deep breath. “When I finally got big enough to beat the shit out of him for raising his hand to her, Mom threatened to call the police on me. She took his side. Even after he died”—how long had he been dead?—“she chose him over me.”

  “Because she was ashamed,” Jane said. “It’s hard to admit when you’re wrong.”

  “I didn’t need her to say she was sorry. I forgave her a long time ago,” he said. It was true. Kind of a relief, that.

  “Maybe she couldn’t forgive herself.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” He exhaled. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.”

  “Gabe.” Jane stroked his arm. “You just found out that you lost both your parents. It’s all right to grieve.”

  “I didn’t lose anything. You can’t grieve for something you never had.”

  “Yes, you can. You’re mourning your family. Not the family you had, but the one you wanted. The one you dreamed about.” Her voice was sad. “I still miss my mom sometimes. I
t’s funny, because I don’t even remember her all that well. But I miss the things mothers and daughters are supposed to do together, getting our nails done or her coming to my high school graduation or shopping for my wedding dress. I told Travis I wanted to elope because Dad didn’t approve of our marriage. But I think, deep down, I didn’t want to get married without my mother being there.”

  He didn’t know what to say. Her mother had walked out on her. Hard to get around—or over—that. He covered her hand with his.

  She sighed. “I guess maybe I just really miss the idea of her, you know?”

  “I know,” he said, because he couldn’t leave her hanging out there all alone. “I sent Ma these postcards. So she could reach me, if she wanted to. If she needed anything.”

  Like one day she would come around. All is forgiven, come home. But she never had. And now it was too late.

  Jane turned her hand over, lacing her fingers with his. “I always wanted to hear my mother say it wasn’t my fault.”

  “Yeah,” he confessed. “Me, too.”

  Her eyes were shiny. Hell. Was she crying? He really hoped she wasn’t going to cry. He held her hand tighter.

  She bit her lip. “I guess part of you never gets over wanting your mother’s . . .”

  He searched for a word to give her. “Acceptance.”

  “Love.”

  Ah, Jesus. Now he was going to cry.

  He looked up, focusing on the distance, willing away the burning in his eyes. There was the sea, bright and blurry, and the neat roofs and snug houses of the town. There was the addition he had built, square and strong against the weathered oaks, and Jane, sitting across the table from him, the sunlight shining on her smooth hair.

  And there was Aidan, straightening carefully from the cardboard mat, a smile on his face and the rickety bracket held aloft in his hands like a trophy. “Hey, Gabe. Gabe, we got it.”

  His heart swelled and filled. He cleared his throat. Tightened his grip on Jane’s hand.

  The family you dreamed about.

  “Looks good,” he said.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT AFTER dinner, Gabe and Aidan built Legos and then went into the backyard to throw a Frisbee for Lucky. Their shouts and laughter as they tried to teach the dog to fetch made Jane’s heart bloom.

  The next morning at the bakery, Gabe brought her real blooms, a pot of fragrant pink hyacinth—“I can plant them for you. So you’ll have flowers next spring,” he explained—and made her sigh.

  He reminded her they had a date that night, an adults-only Saturday-night date, and sent her into a mild panic.

  “Sure, I can watch Aidan,” Cynthie Lodge said when Jane called. “No problem. Max will be thrilled. Movie nights tend to get a little chick-heavy over here.” Cynthie, the single mom of two daughters, had recently gotten engaged to Max Lewis from the mainland. “The real question is, what are you going to wear?”

  “Oh, I didn’t . . . I don’t think it’s that kind of date,” Jane stammered.

  “It’s always that kind of date. Unless you plan on showing up naked.”

  A surge of memory, warm and low, temporarily robbed Jane of breath. And caution. “Not this time.”

  “Wait. Does that mean . . . You didn’t. You did!” Cynthie said, delighted. “You had a naked date with Gabe Murphy!”

  The warmth turned into a full-body flush. “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. Not about the naked part. But everybody knows he’s stuck on you. I mean, he’s there all the time, isn’t he? Swinging his tools. About time you got some, if you ask me.” Jane heard a rumble in the background—Max’s voice—and Cynthie’s muffled reply. “No, honey, not you. Jane.”

  She should have expected talk, Jane told herself, wavering between amusement and distress. Most of it would be kind. These were her friends, her neighbors. Nobody was going to throw stones at her simply for having sex with a man she was . . . well, that she was seeing.

  Their speculation gave her pause, all the same.

  Not that she should care what other people thought.

  But she did. She wanted their acceptance. Their approval.

  It hadn’t mattered so much at nineteen. Then, it had all been about Travis, about how much he needed her. But things were different now. She was different. She had her son and her business to think about now.

  “So, where are you two going?” Cynthie asked cheerfully.

  I have no idea.

  “He didn’t say.”

  It was too early to say. Wasn’t it?

  “Honestly, men. All they have to do is put on a clean button-down and jeans, and they think they look fine. They think they’re doing you a favor by not telling you what to wear, and don’t realize they’re setting you up for wardrobe disaster.” Another rumble. “Of course I didn’t mean you, babe,” Cynthie said to Max. “You are the exception among men.”

  “I thought I’d wear jeans and a nice top,” Jane said.

  “If that’s what makes you comfortable,” Cynthie said kindly. Warmhearted Cynthie, whose nickname in high school was Body of Cyn, who never seemed to care what anybody thought and looked fabulous in everything.

  Jane was competent in her own sphere. But just once, she would like to have her friend’s brand of confidence. “What would you wear?”

  “Sundress,” Cynthie said. “With flats and a little wrap in case the restaurant’s cold. You don’t want to look like you’re trying too hard.”

  Jane thought about her wardrobe, jeans and knit shirts and black-and-white catering outfits. “I have that dress I wore to Luke Fletcher’s wedding.”

  “The blue one? You look great in that. Very boobalicious.”

  Jane laughed. “Um, thanks?”

  She was twenty-nine years old, way past the age when she should be obsessing over her clothes or her boobs or dressing for a man’s approval.

  But Cynthie had the experience to know what she was talking about. Jane did not. Married at nineteen, pregnant three years later, changing diapers and living with her father the year after that. She couldn’t remember the last time she got dressed up for a date.

  Aidan sprawled sideways across her bed, his sneakers sticking out over the carpet. He’d never seen her getting ready for a date, either.

  Jane was both relieved and dismayed that he seemed to be taking the change in routine in stride. He seemed more taken aback by the change in her appearance.

  “You look weird, Mom.”

  She yanked at a drawer, hunting for a sweater to wear over the blue dress. “I’m wearing makeup.”

  “I mean, you look pretty and everything. But different. And your hair’s down.”

  “Because I’m not going into the bakery.” She shut the drawer and turned to look at him. “Are you sure you’re okay going to Hannah’s house tonight?”

  Saturday nights had always been “their” time, the one night when Jane didn’t have to open the bakery until nine the next day and Aidan didn’t have to rush to school in the morning.

  He nodded. “Mrs. Lodge is going to let us stay up really late. And she lets us drink soda,” he added.

  “Well, that will certainly help you stay awake,” Jane said dryly. “But we won’t be out that late, Aidan. I’m just going to dinner.”

  “That’s okay. You and Gabe need time to be alone.”

  Jane turned from her closet. “Who told you that?”

  “Grandpa.”

  “Oh.” Oh.

  “Because Gabe is like your boyfriend now,” Aidan continued conversationally. “Like Marta is Grandpa’s girlfriend.”

  “Well, I . . . Well, um . . . Grandpa and Marta . . . I think you should call her Mrs. Lopez.”

  “She said I could call her Marta. When she came over the other day.”

  Jane’s mouth opened. Closed. “Okay. Well. Obviously, when two people like each other, they want to spend time together. That doesn’t always mean that you’re boyfriend and girlfriend.”

  Aidan gave her a p
atient look. “But you like Gabe, right? Like, like like him.”

  “Ye-es,” Jane agreed cautiously.

  She had always tried to be honest with Aidan. She didn’t expect to shield her little boy from the facts of life forever. But he was only seven. Too young for the discussion she was afraid they were about to have.

  “Right,” Aidan said. “And I figure he likes you because he brought you flowers. And you’re always kissing and stuff. Like Hannah’s mom and Mr. Lewis.”

  “Not exactly. Mrs. Lodge and Mr. Lewis are engaged.”

  “I know. Hannah says they have sleepovers. And Mr. Lewis takes Hannah and them out for ice cream. Probably he’ll take me out for ice cream, too.”

  Ice cream and soda both in one night.

  Well, one night’s indulgence wouldn’t hurt him, she reflected. Wouldn’t hurt either of them. They could eat extra vegetables tomorrow.

  “Good times,” Jane said, opening her jewelry box.

  Not much there. Some pretty dangly earrings that she wore at the bakery—no rings, no bracelets when you were working with dough, when your hands were in and out of hot water all day—and the pearl studs Dad had given her when she turned sixteen.

  “If I had a dad, I would go out for ice cream all the time,” Aidan said.

  Her hand froze on the earrings.

  He did have a dad.

  A dad who had tried to abduct him. A dad with a restraining order. A dad she hoped fervently he never saw again.

  “You don’t need a dad for that. We can go out for ice cream tomorrow. You and me.”

  “Cool,” Aidan said in a satisfied voice. “Maybe Gabe could come with us.”

  Oh. His words pierced her heart. To buy herself time, she inserted the hooks carefully in her ears with trembling hands.

  She had worked hard her entire adult life to make certain that her son was healthy, happy, cared for, loved. To ensure that he never felt the lack of a father.

  But she knew—she should know better than anyone—how the absence of a parent could sneak up and catch you.

  The signs were there in Aidan, if she had wanted to see them. His readiness to get in the car with Travis last summer. His desire to write to his father in prison.