The Guest Book

by Marybeth Whalen

  He smiled back. “Something like that. I’ve just got a story I’d like to share with him. I think it might help him with … whatever landed him here tonight.” He looked away, looked out the windshield at the lights of the police station.

  “So it was you Buzz called.” Her earlier concern about her appearance came rushing back, and she realized the concern applied to handsome, single pastors as well.

  “Yeah. He thought I might be able to come and … help.”

  “Why?”

  “He knows my story. And I know his.”

  “I’d like to know Buzz’s story. I bet it’s a doozy,” Macy quipped. The intensity of Nate’s stare was getting to her, forcing her to try to keep things light. Who knew preachers could be so smoldering? Maybe she should go to church more often.

  “I’m sure if you ask Buzz, he’ll tell you. We all have stories, Macy. Mistakes we’ve made. And when I meet someone like Max, I just try to let them know that those mistakes don’t have to … define them.”

  The look he gave her told her he wasn’t just talking about Max.

  She broke from his gaze. “I wonder what’s keeping them? How long has he been in there?”

  Nate shook his head. “I just got here. Figured you might know.” He laughed. “Guess not.”

  She shook her head. “I’m clueless. I passed out as soon as we got on the road.” She amended herself. “I mean not passed out like from alcohol, more like from being tired. I’m wiped out from a long day with Emma. That’s all.”

  He chuckled. “It’s fine, Macy. You don’t have to censor yourself around me. You can talk to me like you talk to anyone else.”

  “Huh. I doubt that!” She realized she was having fun teasing him. Their laughter was a nice break from the seriousness of the moment. But it died down almost as quickly as it started.

  Nate looked down at his hands. “So what do you say we practice talking like regular people when it’s not two-thirty in the morning?”

  She squinted at him. “What do you mean?”

  She wondered if she was dreaming all this, if in the morning she would realize that she’d fallen asleep on the sofa after dinner and none of this had really happened: Max hadn’t gotten picked up by the police. Buzz hadn’t driven her to the police station. And Nate hadn’t just asked her what she thought he was asking.

  “I mean, I kind of noticed you weren’t wearing a wedding ring when we met on Sunday, and I was kind of hoping …”

  The look on his face was so hopeful Macy almost laughed. She had been noticing his lack of a wedding ring at the same time he was looking for hers. Somehow she knew he didn’t do this often, that this kind of question was entirely out of character for him. But she couldn’t resist the temptation to tease him about it.

  “Don’t you think it’s in bad form for a pastor to ask a woman out he barely knows? Especially when that woman is clearly on the fence about the whole church thing?” She set her jaw and attempted to look tough, but a smirk played at the corners of her mouth. “It could send her running in the other direction.”

  He took a deep breath and leveled her with his beautiful brown eyes, eyes the same color as his hair. “Or it could make her want to come back to something she never intended to return to.” He took a moment and let his challenge sink in. “So?” He smiled at her and his dimples were back, along with little laugh lines around his warm eyes. “Do you like seafood?”

  What else could she do? She had time left at the beach, and she’d promised herself she would move forward. Nate might be the perfect way to do just that. And who could be safer than a pastor? She smiled back at him. “Yes,” she said shyly. “I like seafood.”

  “Great! I know just the place to take you. It’s not a tourist trap. You’ll love it.”

  “Look! Buzz and Max are coming,” Macy said, relieved she was able to change the topic. She wasn’t good at romantic overtures even when she’d had plenty of sleep.

  “So would Wednesday night work?” he asked, undeterred. His hand was on the door handle, and Buzz and Max were almost to the car.

  She nodded, ducking her head like an awkward adolescent. Something about Nate made her feel like one—and it had nothing to do with the fact that he was a man of the cloth.

  “It’s a date,” he said, and slipped out of the car before she could think twice about what she’d just agreed to. She sat blinking in the sudden brightness of the overhead dome light as she watched Nate join Max and Buzz. Buzz waved at her to join them where they stood, and she opened the door with a sigh no one else heard.

  Macy closed her eyes as Buzz drove her home. Max and Nate had driven away in the opposite direction. Buzz had promised he’d work out getting the Dillons’ car back in the morning. She could relax, he’d said, patting her hand like it was all taken care of. She laid her head on the seat and thought, This is what it must be like to have a dad.

  “I’ll take him for coffee,” Nate had told Buzz. She wondered just what Nate had in mind. She was certain coffee wasn’t the only thing. Maybe a good come-to-Jesus meeting with a pastor was just what Max needed. From the looks of things, Max hadn’t been completely sober yet when he was released and seemed unfazed by the late hour, his newly set court date, or the strangers who’d helped retrieve him from jail. He’d laughed at stupid things as they stood outside the station, and yet, even in his drunken state, he had picked up on whatever it was between her and Nate. Had it been that obvious?

  “You like my sister?” he’d asked Nate — a little too loudly —right before Macy got back into Buzz’s car, anxious to get away. With her luck he’d tell Nate embarrassing private things about their family—about her—as soon as she was out of sight. With a sigh, she decided there was nothing she could do about any of it. Max had always been someone she couldn’t control, no matter how hard she tried or how much she helped him. Nate had no idea what he was getting in to — with Max, or with her.

  fourteen

  The next morning Macy woke to a quiet house. Emma’s energetic morning chatter and the incessantly happy noises from morning programming on children’s television were conspicuously absent.

  She slipped out to the kitchen to find hot coffee in the pot and a note left by her mom. “Back in a bit,” was all it said. “Enjoy your morning off!”

  Brenda and Buzz had taken Emma to art camp as promised, and Macy had slept later than she could remember sleeping in quite some time. She walked back toward her bedroom and paused outside Max’s closed door. He was snoring away inside, and she resisted the urge to wake him up in some cruel way, payback for her interrupted sleep the night before. She wondered where Nate had taken him and wished she could have been a fly on the wall for that conversation.

  Macy went back to the kitchen and sipped her coffee. She looked out the window, giving herself time to just be before she had to decide what to do. She could draw or read her novel or take a walk or … She heard pounding next door, thought about her run-in with Wyatt on Saturday, and felt her face grow warm. She rinsed her coffee cup and put it in the dishwasher, then turned over the note from her mother to write a note of her own: “Gone for a walk, back soon!”

  Afterward, she would work on a picture for the guest book, but first she needed some inspiration. She pulled on athletic shorts and an old T-shirt of Chase’s, one of the few things of his she’d kept after he’d left all those years ago. He’d seen it in her laundry pile during one of his recent visits and had taken it to mean far more than it did.

  She shook her head, dislodging thoughts of Chase, and slid into a pair of flip-flops, grateful for the opportunity to walk out of the beach house unencumbered for a change. There was no one to think of but herself. Macy loved her daughter, but this day camp was one of Brenda’s better ideas. She hoped Emma liked it enough to go both weeks.

  Macy crested the hill where she could see the ocean, letting it take her breath away again. She wondered what it must be like to see it for the first time. Avis had grown up in a landlocked state, had
never seen the ocean until her adult life. Macy couldn’t imagine a life that didn’t involve regular trips to the sea, a childhood without its vastness to define her own smallness. She smiled at the sight of it, thankful that she’d had that and wishing she could thank her dad for giving it to her. Her eyes filled with tears and for once she didn’t blink them away.

  The beach was already beginning to fill with people for their day at the beach, tourists ready to redeem the day lost to rain. She watched fathers pointing umbrellas to the sky and planting stakes in the sand for canvas sun shades, mothers spreading blankets and picnic baskets, children running as fast as they could to the shoreline. She’d come full circle right here, from child to adult. Her thoughts were no longer consumed by sandcastles and shells. Now her focus had to include safety and sustenance.

  She turned and headed toward Bird Island, away from the crowds. She wanted to be alone with only the seabirds for company. She would try to walk all the way to the mailbox that stood in the dunes. Her father had taken her to the mailbox as soon as she was old enough to make the long trek. Like so many visitors to the area, she used to write letters to the Kindred Spirit—the unidentified person who tended the mailbox. Maybe she would leave a note for the Kindred Spirit this year as well.

  As she walked, Macy composed the note in her head, thinking about her plea to God to help her find the man who’d eluded her all these years. Was believing in God’s ability to answer prayer as silly as believing a note to the Kindred Spirit would make a difference?

  She wondered if perhaps the mystery artist never intended for her to find him after she blew her chance. If that was the case, she only had herself to blame. She let the thought worry her, toying with it like a cat with a ball of yarn, batting it around for sport. Max had talked about regrets, but Macy knew about her own regrets all too well.

  The truth was this whole romantic notion she’d latched onto was probably just foolishness. She was investing too much in the idea of finding the artist, letting her emotions carry her away to a dangerous place — a place Macy knew was not safe for a single mother to go. She needed to live in reality, care for her daughter, and plant her feet firmly on the ground back home, not go digging her toes into this beach sand and into the farfetched idea of finding a long-lost love. Shifting sand, she thought, remembering the Sunday school lesson she and Emma had discussed Sunday night.

  Once again, Macy heard her father’s timely, prescient urging for her to build her life on the solid Rock. She grew frustrated with herself as she continued walking, thinking about how she’d done the opposite of that. She needed to make changes in her life. Changes that would get her on solid ground and out of shifting sand.

  Finally, she saw the mailbox looming just ahead—the tip of it sticking out just above the dune. Macy was glad it was still standing—another part of her childhood there to greet her after all these years — but instead of trudging toward it, she stopped and stood, just looking at it, suddenly unsure. Miracles like the one she’d asked God for happened to other people, people who’d lived better lives than she had. She turned, tears flooding her eyes, and headed back to the beach house.

  Macy approached the boardwalk feeling discouraged. She had, she realized, enjoyed the passing fantasy that she could find her artist, that her prayer would be answered. But God was not a genie in a bottle, and Macy was not in a position to ask Him for things after all the years of silence between them.

  She shuffled through the sand, barely noticing the searing heat on her feet, barely hearing the sounds of children playing and families laughing.

  I will get my head screwed on straight, face the facts of my life, and not dwell on dreams, she vowed as she walked.

  “Hey!” she heard, as she continued her power walk toward Time in a Bottle. Wyatt was standing on Buzz’s roof next door, his dark shape outlined by the sun behind him, much as he had been on Saturday when she’d first seen him.

  Macy waved quickly, ducked her head, and made a beeline for the door of her own beach house.

  “I need to talk to you!” she heard him yell. She stopped short, sighing as she did. She should avoid him, be cordial but maintain her distance. It was step one in her plan for smarter living from her beach-walk epiphany.

  “Yes?” she asked, squinting up at him, shading her eyes with her hand.

  He gestured at her to come over, and she reluctantly crossed the yard. She couldn’t be rude. If he told his dad, Buzz would tell Brenda, and then Macy would get a lecture. She stared down at her feet as she walked. Her toes still needed polishing, preferably before she went out with the pastor. She shook her head at the thought. Why in the world had she agreed to the date? She pictured the handsome pastor’s dimples and remembered exactly why she’d agreed to it.

  Wyatt scrambled down from the roof and landed like a gymnast on terra firma.

  “Where’s your crew?” she asked.

  “On another job site. I’m headed over there in a few. I just had to finish up some last-minute things for my dad. He’s finally thinking of letting me remodel this old place.”

  Macy silently cursed her timing. If she’d walked on the beach just a few minutes longer, she would’ve missed him entirely. Handsome construction workers weren’t part of her new plan. “Oh, well, it’s nice of you to help him,” she offered, sounding, she hoped, politely distant.

  “It’s the least I can do,” he said. “I grew up apart from him. Only got to come here once a summer to stay for a short time. He and my mom aren’t exactly … friendly.” He chuckled. “Every time I’d come here, he’d babble about your family, how he wished you and I could meet. But the timing never worked. He told me you were this great artist, even showed me this picture you drew in this guest book …” Wyatt’s voice trailed off, and his face colored. “He was proud of you. Said you’d be a great artist someday.”

  Macy’s own face colored at that comment. Some artist she’d become, painting pictures for her daughter and store windows. “Well, I didn’t,” she said flatly, looking back at Time in a Bottle, wanting an excuse to get away from Wyatt.

  “Well, your life’s not over yet, is it?” Wyatt quipped.

  She looked back at him, their eyes meeting for a brief but intense moment. His eyes were a chestnut brown, just like his hair. A shiver went through her even as she scolded herself for lapsing back into her silly daydream. And yet, both Wyatt and Nate fit the description of the boy she was trying to find. The look Wyatt gave her said he knew her better than she thought. A thought occurred to her: What if instead of sending one man, God had sent two for her to sort through? Her dad always said God gave abundantly. She thought of what she’d decided on the beach and pushed the silly fantasy aside.

  “So what did you need from me?” She would be smart, direct, and not prone to romantic rabbit trails.

  “I thought if you liked to paint, you might want to help me on the next big project I’ve got to tackle here. My dad said you’d be staying for a while, and I thought maybe … if you didn’t have plans …” He looked at her hopefully, like a little boy asking for a trip to the park.

  She crossed her arms in front of her. “That’s not the kind of painting I do,” she countered.

  He laughed. “True, but with me you’ll like it. It’ll be fun.”

  “Fun?” It was her turn to laugh. “You expect me to believe that painting walls in the summer heat with you will be fun?”

  “What if I told you I’d make it fun? The most fun you’ve ever had?”

  Macy thought her life was seriously lacking if painting walls with this guy was the most fun she’d ever have. “I highly doubt that,” she said. She noticed she’d begun to sway back and forth while she stood there, a habit she hadn’t been able to break after years of holding Emma. Swaying Emma back and forth had soothed both of them.

  Wyatt imitated her stance, crossing his arms and standing with one foot out just like she was, minus the swaying. Macy looked away from the sight of his biceps flexing as he stood there
. She stared at her feet and decided as soon as she got inside she was painting her toenails. She hoped Brenda had brought that coral color they’d picked out together a few days before they’d left for the beach.

  “Please,” Wyatt intoned, putting on a puppy-dog face for her benefit. “It’ll only take a few hours if you help me.”

  She didn’t feel like being won over quickly. “What about your crew?”

  “They’re busy that day.”

  “I didn’t get the impression that you’d set a day,” she said, just to be contrary.

  “Well, they’re perennially busy.” Macy could tell he was enjoying their banter. She was too.

  “Perennially. My, that’s a big word.”

  “Well, there may be a lot more to me than this construction-worker façade. Maybe this is just my cover.” He paused long enough to fix her with a gaze that caused her to shiver. “Maybe there’s a lot about me you don’t know.” He smiled and his dark eyes seemed to be enjoying some secret that only he knew.

  She thought about the guest book being held by his hands, the pictures he might’ve drawn.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll let you know.”

  He smiled. “Okay, you do that, Macy. In the meantime, I’ll just wait for you to say yes. Spending time with me might be the best thing you ever do. You never know.”

  She laughed at his cockiness and repeated herself. “Okay, I’ll let you know.” She smiled at him and made her exit, knowing he was watching her and liking that she had his attention. It was only after she was inside the beach house that she realized he’d managed to make her forget all the resolve she’d been feeling when she’d come in from the beach. That was not something she could ignore. She needed to make changes in her life, but she wasn’t so sure that her dream of finding the artist had to be one of those changes just yet.

  The following day, Macy followed another mom from the parking lot into the community center, looking around at the mass of children being released from camp all at the same time. A little boy ran into her at full force, carrying a birdhouse he had made from Popsicle sticks. He mumbled a “Sorry” only after his frazzled mother, who’d been following a few feet behind him with an infant in her arms, ordered him to.