The Guest Book

by Marybeth Whalen

  “So you like painting?” he asked, not bothering to move out of the doorway. “What else do you like?”

  Macy stopped just inches from him, surprised he seemed so comfortable slouching there. She could smell his cologne and thought perhaps he had on Old Spice, just like her dad used to use.

  “I like lunch,” Emma said. She rubbed her stomach.

  “I’m actually trying to round her up so we can go eat,” Macy said, hoping that would spur him to move of the way.

  Max walked up behind the pastor and looked into the room, locking eyes with Macy. “Hey, what’s the holdup?” Max asked.

  Pastor Nate shifted to see who was behind him, and Macy took the opportunity to slip by, pulling Emma along as she did, grateful to make her escape. She couldn’t put her finger on the right words to describe how he made her feel —attracted but unsettled; a familiar stranger she should probably steer clear of. Pastors weren’t exactly her “type.” She paused to wave good-bye to him, then followed Max and Emma out the door and to the car. Max was talking a mile a minute about how weird it was to be back in church after all these years and how he needed a drink ASAP.

  Macy ignored his ramblings and walked faster to get to their mother, who was standing by the car.

  “I just met the nicest woman,” Brenda said as they were getting in the car. “She runs the community center here at Ocean Isle. It just so happens that they have an art camp every weekday morning. I told her that was right up Emma’s alley. She’ll love it!” She looked from Emma to Macy, waiting for their acknowledgment of her brilliance.

  Macy merely nodded in agreement as she sank into her place in the backseat. The car was at least one hundred degrees inside. She rested her head on the hot glass window and waited for the air conditioner to bring relief. As they pulled out of the parking lot, she looked at the entrance of the church and saw the pastor watching them go, a funny expression on his face.

  With Emma down for a nap and Brenda willing to watch her, Macy decided to go for a ride. She balanced the weight of the ancient bike with one foot and pushed the kickstand up with the other. Then, with a wobbly start, she was off, her feet finding the pedals as she focused on the sidewalk in front of her. Her plan was to do a loop down to the pier and back to the house without falling or running into any pedestrians. The last time she’d been on a bike had been the last time she was at Time in a Bottle, but it only took a few feet before she fell into a rhythm. It was true what they said about riding a bike.

  She felt her leg muscles hum to life as she rotated the pedals and breathed deeply, taking in the briny air as her hair blew back from her face. She eyed the pier up ahead and thought about the nights she used to steal away to the pier as a teen, falling in with the crowd of other teens who congregated there as soon as it got dark. One year, another teen had pulled her under the pier and kissed her. She’d hoped he would reveal himself as the mystery artist, but no such luck. At least he’d been a good kisser. Back then, finding the artist hadn’t felt as urgent. Back then, she’d thought she had all the time in the world to discover him.

  But it wasn’t like she hadn’t tried to find him at all. There was the year she was fifteen when she’d hatched a plan to discover who he was, certain it would work. She’d ridden a bike — perhaps this same one; it looked old enough, squeaked loud enough—to the real estate office where they always stopped to pick up their keys for the beach house. As she rode down the street, the memory came back to her.

  She’d stepped into the cool air-conditioned office of the real estate company, her eyes adjusting to the darker interior after being outside in the brilliant sun. She gripped the notepad and pencil she’d brought along, hoping the nice lady who greeted her would give her something worth writing down.

  “Hi,” she’d said shyly, her voice faltering. “I’m Macy Dillon, and I’m staying at Time in a Bottle.” She’d pointed in the direction of the house, as if the woman might not know where the house was, then dropped her hand, feeling stupid.

  The woman nodded. “Is there a problem with the house, dear?” she’d asked.

  “Oh no. I just have a question.” She’d paused to look around the tiny office as she phrased and re-phrased her next words in her head.

  “Yes, dear?” the woman had asked. The phone rang, but the woman didn’t move to answer it.

  “Well, umm, I, umm … had a question.”

  “Yes, dear. You mentioned that,” the woman said. The phone rang a second time. This time the woman did answer it, holding up one finger to Macy. Macy practiced her question in her mind while she waited for the woman to answer someone else’s question about linen supplies. When the woman hung up the phone, she looked at Macy again and resumed their conversation. “Now where were we?”

  “Well, my family’s been coming to Time in a Bottle for a long time,” Macy began her explanation. “And I’ve been exchanging … correspondence … with someone who’s also been coming to Time in a Bottle for a long time. But I don’t know his name. So I was wondering if you could tell me if you might have a … record … of the families that have stayed at Time in a Bottle in the weeks following this one?” Macy, finished with her question, had smiled.

  The woman had frowned in return. “Let me see if I have this correct,” she said. “You want me to go into my records and divulge the names of the families who regularly rent Time in a Bottle so you can find a boy who’s been anonymously writing to you?” A smile crept over the woman’s face. She chuckled. “Well, that’s one I haven’t heard before.”

  Undeterred and just naive enough, Macy had pressed her.

  “Yes, I was hoping you had some sort of record of the names of the families and the ages of their children. This person has to be around my age, because we’ve been … corresponding … since we were five years old.”

  The woman’s eyes widened. “Well, if that’s not the cutest thing.”

  Macy had believed she was home free, her heart thrilling at the thought of how close she was to finally finding out who the artist was at that moment. “Yes, ma’am,” she’d said. “I think so.” Now if she could just get the woman to open up her log book or whatever it was that housed their rental information, she would have the answers she needed, or at least the beginnings of the answers. Macy’s heart hammered inside her chest. She was so close to his name, convinced this woman held the key … right up until the woman frowned at her again.

  “I’m sorry, honey, but I am simply not allowed to give out that information. Our rental records are confidential.” The woman’s sad expression hadn’t looked entirely genuine. “But I sure wish I could help.” She leaned forward, propping her round face on her two plump fists. “Can you think of any other way to find him?”

  Macy tried not to cry in front of the woman, willing her eyes not to release their threatening tears. Her entire plan had revolved around this being her answer. In her imagination, she’d marched into that office and retrieved the names of all the families who rented Time in a Bottle after hers. She’d planned to spend the rest of this year’s vacation tracking them down using the pay phone and her allowance, which she needed to feed into it, until she determined which one had a son around fifteen who liked to draw. It had all seemed so simple.

  The woman sighed as she pretended not to notice Macy’s glassy eyes. “Nothing’s ever simple, is it?” She looked at Macy like they were in it together, like she understood. “Believe me, I know the feeling.” The woman rolled her eyes and slouched dramatically in her chair, resting her hands on her ample stomach. “Love never does get any easier. When you’re your age you think it will, but it won’t. Men don’t get less mysterious, they get more mysterious. Every time you think you have one figured out …”

  The front door to the office had opened and a man wearing polyester khakis and a golf shirt bearing the name of one of the local golf clubs had strolled in, looking tan and entirely too confident in spite of his paunch of a belly and thinning hair. The woman sat bolt upright in her chair,
her hand flying to her hair, patting it down as a smile came over her face. “Hello, Tom,” she said, her tone changing from discouragement to excitement.

  The man breezed through the office, unaware of the woman’s reaction to him, unaware of the way she’d brightened as soon as she saw him, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “I’ll be in my office,” he mumbled as he walked past.

  Macy watched as the woman looked away from the man’s closed door, turning her attention back to her desk with the smallest of sighs. Macy wished she could capture the feelings swirling in the room at just that moment with one of her drawings, wished she could take all the energy and emotion that love requires and put it on the page so that everyone who saw it would feel it too.

  “Thanks for your help,” Macy offered, extending comfort instead of receiving it. She glanced out the window as a little boy ran by clutching a kite to his chest. Just then, an idea for her next guest book entry began to form in her mind—a red kite against the blue sky, the tail bobbing amidst the clouds. The artist would know Macy was that kite, moved by the currents of the wind, dipping or soaring on forces beyond her control.

  The woman, distracted, waved. “Good luck, honey,” she said. “I sure hope you find him.”

  Me too, Macy thought but didn’t say. With her hand on the door leading outside, she looked back at the woman, who was staring forlornly at the man’s closed office door.

  Years later, Macy could still remember how her thought at the time had been that she didn’t want to grow up to be like the woman, pining away for a man who didn’t notice her. She realized the irony of that thought as she turned into the parking lot of the pier and continued toward the gazebo, feeling a little wave of regret as she rode past it.

  After her big plan had failed, fifteen-year-old Macy had gone back to Time in a Bottle and drawn the kite picture she’d envisioned at the real estate office. It was her response to the picture he’d left of a beach rose. She knew his picture was telling her how he saw her, as something beautiful that grew along the path he walked every day, put there for him to notice, to reach for. But she felt more like that kite—unpredictable and unreachable.

  She still felt that way, Macy realized with a pang as she finished riding the bike around the pier parking lot and back out to the sidewalk. She pedaled back to Time in a Bottle with the wind at her back, thinking about how one answered prayer could give her just what she needed to soar.

  “So tell me what you learned today at church,” Macy said, pulling Emma onto her lap and leaning over to help her button her pajama top. Their faces were so close their noses bumped and Emma giggled.

  Macy thought about all the times her father asked her to tell him what she’d learned at church, how it always seemed as though her dad knew God personally, just like other people knew their family members or best friends. Her dad had always made God seem very near. As a child, Macy had felt she’d known God that way too. Now she stopped just short of doubting His existence, having decided a long time ago that while He might be concerned with some people, He wasn’t concerned with Macy personally. Still, she felt it was important to ask Emma about church, to focus on something spiritual for once. A little religion was good for a child.

  “We learned about the foolish man and the wise man. Do you know that story?”

  Macy nodded. It was in the same classroom Emma had been in today that a woman who looked like a 1990s version of Emma’s teacher had passed out butter cookies and pink-tinted punch the other kids called Bug Juice. Macy’s parents were in church, and Macy was enjoying the story the woman told them as they munched on their cookies and drank their punch. She was being lulled into a feeling of comfort by the sound of the woman’s voice, even if she didn’t totally understand what she was saying. The woman told them the story of a wise man who built his house on the rock and a foolish man who built his house on the sand. She said that they could all build their own houses on the rock. Macy remembered being confused by the story. She wasn’t building a house.

  After church, she had asked her dad what the story meant. He’d pulled her onto his lap much the same as she was holding Emma now.

  “Is that a story for when I’m grown up, Daddy?” she’d asked him. “For when I really build a house?”

  He’d smiled. “Well, yes and no. The thing is, Mace, you can start making decisions about building your house on the Rock right now. Do you want to do that?”

  “Sure, Daddy,” she’d said. She didn’t want to be like the foolish man who’d stood on the beach watching his house wash away.

  “Well then, starting now you can learn more about God’s Word, and you can pray and ask Him for wisdom. He will start shaping and molding you, helping you build your house — which is really just another way of saying growing up — on the Rock. Because God is the Rock we build our houses on.”

  Her dad had pulled out his Bible and began reading her the story.

  “So if I do what God says, then I am building my house on the Rock?” she’d asked.

  He’d tweaked her nose. “Exactly.”

  “The Rock is a good place.”

  “It sure is,” her father had answered. He’d been proud; she could see it in his eyes. He’d been sure his daughter would grow up to be a godly woman.

  Maybe it was better he never saw the mess she’d made out of her life. Talk about a house built on the sand …

  She turned her attention back to Emma. “Why don’t you tell me the story?” she asked her. “I’d love to hear it again.”

  “You mean like me telling you a bedtime story?” Emma asked, incredulous. This was a first.

  “Yes, I think I’d like a bedtime story. Would you like to tell me one?”

  Emma giggled. “Okay, but first you have to lie down, and I have to tuck you in.”

  Macy walked to Emma’s bed and scooted down into the sheets, pulling the covers up to her chin. “Is this tucked in enough?” she asked. She could tell that Emma was enjoying this role reversal.

  Emma nodded.

  “Okay. Then I’m ready for my story.”

  Emma perched on the edge of the bed and told the story almost exactly as Macy remembered it. Macy smiled with pride as Emma added dramatic elements to the story. When the storm came along to knock down the houses, Emma imitated the sound of the wind whooshing and the rain pelting and the thunder cracking. Macy pretended to be scared during these parts, and she cheered when the wise man’s house was still standing at the end of Emma’s storytelling.

  “What a great story,” Macy said.

  Emma leaned over her, a serious look on her face. “So what did you learn from it?” she asked, her brow furrowed in total sincerity.

  Macy thought about it for a moment, remembering what her dad had taught her all those years ago, wishing that he could be there for this, that he could have this moment with Emma, see this come full circle as clearly as Macy did. He would’ve loved it.

  “I learned that I need to build my house on the Rock,” she said, thinking of her dad and feeling the twinge of guilt and conviction as she said it. She’d built her house on sand even though she’d known better. And then she’d been surprised when the storms hit and washed her house away. She had to do a better job of creating a stable home for her daughter — maybe the Rock was where she needed to start. She couldn’t believe she was even having the thought, and yet, there it was.

  “That’s exactly right. Good job,” Emma said, giving her a thumbs-up. Then she climbed in beside Macy and threw her arms around her.

  “You know what, Mommy?” she asked after she’d gotten settled.

  “What, Emma?”

  “I like church. I think we should go there more often.”

  “You might be right,” Macy said. She looked at the ceiling and wondered if God was trying to talk to her through her daughter. It didn’t take long for Emma to fall asleep, and though Macy meant to get up and go to her bed, she fell asleep nearly as quickly, lulled by the warmth of her daughter’s nearn
ess, her father’s memory, and faintly, something that felt like the presence of the God she’d once known.

  twelve

  On Monday, it rained, so they all stayed indoors and did nothing after Emma’s first day of art camp. Macy was snuggling with her daughter while they watched a movie about a talking Chihuahua when she heard a knock on the front door of the beach house. She waited to see if someone else was going to answer the door, but she didn’t hear any movement in that direction. Sighing, she kissed her daughter’s head, extricated herself from the clutches of the couch, and lurched stiffly toward the door. She’d been so close to a nice, cozy nap.

  She peered through the peephole, ever the city girl. Buzz Wells was waiting on the other side, shifting from foot to foot as if he was nervous or in a hurry.

  She opened the door. “Buzz! Come in!” She held the door open for him.

  He smiled at her, his gray hair grazing the doorjamb as he walked in. She had forgotten what a formidable presence he was. Tall and broad, he filled up a room just by entering it. And he’d always loved to laugh and tease, usually targeting Macy. As memories came flooding back, Macy was the one to shift nervously from foot to foot.

  “Emma’s watching a movie,” she said, waving in Emma’s direction, who was thoroughly engrossed. She cleared her throat. “Emma,” she said, louder. “We have company.”

  Emma barely waved before turning back to the television. Some help. Macy looked around the room, wishing her mom or Max would show up and take the pressure off her to entertain Buzz, who was basically a stranger after all these years.

  “My son enjoyed meeting you,” Buzz said, taking an uninvited seat on the loveseat opposite the couch.

  In her mind’s eye, Macy could see Buzz seated in the exact same place as the family scurried past him, intent on packing for a day at the beach. She could hear her father’s voice coming from the bedroom. “Has anyone seen my loafers?” He always wore loafers to the beach, even though it embarrassed Macy terribly as she got older. He thought flip-flops were for sissies, and he never seemed to mind having to stop by the boardwalk to empty the sand from his shoes.