The Guest Book

by Marybeth Whalen

  Macy looked around for Emma, hoping she could collect her daughter and get out of the building as quickly as possible.

  “Mrs. Lewis?” she heard a voice calling above the din of children. Her eyes scanned the crowd and landed on an older woman holding a clipboard. The woman was looking at her and smiled when they made eye contact. “Mrs. Lewis?” she asked again.

  Macy pressed her lips into what passed as a smile and decided not to clarify that she was not Mrs. Lewis but Ms. Dillon.

  The woman made her way across the room, delicately navigating the obstacle course of parents and children gathering art projects and stray belongings. She kept her eyes locked on Macy, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening as her smile widened. She waved the clipboard in Macy’s direction. “I’m LaRae Forrester,” the woman said, running a hand through her cropped gray hair. “I was Miranda’s —” The woman sighed and checked the clipboard, then glanced up apologetically at Macy. “Sorry. Emma’s group leader.” She laughed and pulled the clipboard into her chest, hugging it like a small child. “She’s just a delight.” She shook Macy’s hand. “I met Emma’s grandmother earlier. You all are friends of Buzz Wells?”

  Macy nodded with a smile. “We are.”

  “Well, any friend of Buzz’s is a friend of mine!” she exclaimed.

  Macy thanked her and scanned the room for her daughter. There was no sign of her. “Do you know where Emma is?”

  “Oh, she’s with Dockery.”

  “Dockery?” Macy asked. She’d never heard such an unusual name before.

  LaRae smiled. “He’s a volunteer, like the rest of us. Does special projects with the kids. He’s really good with them.” She pointed down a hall. “They’re probably down there.”

  Macy headed in the direction LaRae had pointed, poking her head into one room, then the next. She was having flashbacks from church, wondering what she’d find when she found her daughter. Wet paint and —

  “You seem lost,” she heard behind her.

  She turned to find Emma giggling next to the man who’d spoken. He smiled at her.

  “Emma and I have been having great fun talking about her interest in art. She’s an exceptional artist,” he said.

  She reached out to hug Emma, who raced into her open arms. Macy held her daughter close, focusing on how right her world seemed whenever she was with her. She loved having breaks, but it didn’t take long before she was itching for her daughter’s presence. She inhaled the smell of her skin, now mixed with paint and ocean breeze. There wasn’t a sweeter smell in the world.

  She looked up from the hug and found the man looking down at her with an amused expression.

  “Thanks for bringing her to me,” she said, grasping Emma’s hand and backing toward the common room.

  “No problem whatsoever.” He leaned against the wall as though he had all the time in the world. He was wearing a surfing T-shirt and khakis that hung low on his hips. He had dark hair and dark eyes that seemed to bore into Macy as he gazed at her without speaking. The seconds stretched out. He gestured toward Emma. “She says she got her artistic talent from her mom. Is that true?”

  She briefly wondered what type of man volunteered to spend his free time with the preschool set. “Umm, I guess so? Well … thanks,” she added. She pulled on Emma’s hand as she made her way back to the main room. She looked back to see if Dockery was still standing behind her, but he was gone.

  She swung Emma’s hand playfully. “I bet you’re ready to hit the beach, huh?” she asked her.

  “Yeah,” Emma said.

  Macy could hear the exhaustion in her voice. As they left the community center, Macy found herself scanning the parking lot. For what she couldn’t say.

  Emma was quiet on the way home from camp, staring out the window from her perch in her car seat as the beach businesses that lined the streets between Ocean Isle and Sunset Beach slipped by. “You feel okay back there?” Macy piped up, trying to catch her daughter’s eye in the rearview mirror.

  Emma nodded without looking at her.

  “You’re not acting like yourself. Are you wishing that Grandma and Buzz picked you up? I know they took you to get ice cream after camp yesterday.”

  It was a grandparent’s job to be fun, Brenda always said.

  Macy wanted to be fun as a parent. “How about I take you to Sunset Slush today?” she asked.

  At least that offer generated a response. Emma turned from the window to look at Macy. “We already passed it,” she said with a resigned sigh.

  “What if I told you I know where another one is?” Macy hoped that whatever was bothering Emma would melt away as fast as the slush she was going to buy her.

  “Another one?” Macy heard the note of hope in Emma’s voice.

  “Yep, just down this street. Not far at all.”

  A new song came on the radio, and Macy sang along, wishing that Emma would sing too, like she usually did.

  “This song’s usually your favorite, Emma Lou. Don’t you want to sing with me?” Max always called her Emma Lou, among an assortment of other nicknames he dreamed up for her. When Macy was in an especially playful mood, she sometimes borrowed his terms of endearment.

  Attempting to get a giggle out of Emma, she fumbled over the lyrics to the vaguely family country song. When it was clear she was botching the song terribly, she started making up her own silly lyrics — anything to coax a smile out of Emma.

  Emma rewarded her with half a smile as Macy parked the car and pulled the key from the ignition. Even though her goofy singing didn’t elicit the response she’d hope for, she pressed on. “So what kind do you want?”

  Emma shrugged. “What kinds do they have?”

  Together, they got out of the car, so Macy could read off a long list of flavors. As she read them, she thought she would splurge and get one for herself as well, instead of just taking a polite bite of Emma’s. What were vacations for if not to indulge?

  “How about a cotton-candy one? That looks good.” Macy pointed as the people in front of them accepted their dishes of hot-pink-colored ice.

  Satisfied with that flavor, Emma nodded her head, and Macy placed their orders. For herself, she ordered a piña colada slush, humming the old piña colada song softly to herself and thinking about her dad. Whenever they came here, he used to belt that song out even though Brenda always shushed him due to the “inappropriate” lyrics. Now that she was older, she knew what the song was about, but back then all she cared about was the sound of his voice and his silly antics.

  It was too hot to sit outside to eat, so they sought shelter inside the car and ate with the air conditioning cranked and the radio on. Macy twisted around in the front seat so she could see Emma. The minutes ticked by as they each enjoyed the sweet, sticky goodness.

  “So are you going to tell me what’s bugging you?” Macy finally asked.

  Emma held her half-full dish in her lap and looked at Macy with a sober expression, a ring of pink lining her mouth. “Okay.” She sighed. “I’ll tell you.”

  Macy stopped eating, placing the white plastic spoon in her own dish. The air conditioning in the car was having a hard time keeping up with the heat. If Emma didn’t talk fast, their slushes would melt into juice.

  “Today at camp, one of the other kids — Lexi — said I wasn’t a good drawer.” She started to cry. “And she said it in front of Dockery, so now he thinks I’m not a good drawer either.”

  Suddenly Macy understood why Dockery had been talking to Emma about her art. He’d been trying to build her confidence in the face of what that other little girl said.

  “Didn’t you hear what Dockery said about you?” Macy asked. “He said you were an exceptional artist.”

  Exceptional. She heard the word in her head, a word she’d not thought of in a very long time. She could hear her dad saying the word to her as they had driven home from getting her the colored pencils she used to draw her first picture in the guest book at the beach house.

  Macy
rested her chin on the back of her seat as she eyed her daughter. “Do you know what exceptional means?” she asked. Her dad had asked her the same question.

  Emma shook her head no, her eyes serious and sad. Young Macy had answered the same way. She smiled at the way history repeated itself. “Exceptional means that you are special and uniquely talented. You have a gift—a gift God gave you. A gift that makes you different from anyone else. Emma, you have a lot of gifts, and one of them is art. As you grow older, you might decide to really focus on your art, develop it.”

  “Like you, Mommy?”

  Macy bit back the argument that rose up inside of her in answer to that question. She thought back on her insight to the handsome pastor’s sermon about the talents. That was something she needed to give more thought to. But for now, she needed to convince her daughter to embrace what she’d been given, to embrace the very thing that made Emma truly exceptional. “Sure, honey. But I think you’re even more exceptional than me.”

  Emma breathed in sharply. “I could never be more exceptional than you, Mommy,” she said, admiration shining in her eyes. Macy felt her eyes fill with tears. Her daughter’s love was so intense, she sometimes worried she could never live up to it. But, oh, how she wanted to be the person her daughter thought she was.

  “Honey, you’re the best person I’ve ever met,” she told Emma. “And I love you so much.” She put down her empty paper cup on the seat beside her, turned, and started the car. As she backed out of the parking spot, she caught Emma’s eye in the rearview mirror and winked at her, just like her dad had done all those years ago as they drove home after buying the colored pencils.

  When he’d explained what exceptional meant, she had nodded, thinking about her kindergarten teacher, who’d picked her picture of cardinals on a snow-covered branch to frame and hang in the school’s front office. The other kids’ cardinals, Macy had noticed, didn’t even look like birds. They just looked like blobs of red paint.

  Her daddy had continued talking to her. “In the Bible, Jeremiah 1:5 talks about how—before you were even born — God set you apart, He made you special so He could do something special with your life. I believe that about everyone’s life, but with you” — he’d smiled at her—”I look at you, and I know it’s true. I know God has something special for you to do with the talents you’ve been given. Do you believe that too?”

  Macy hadn’t been able to figure out how painting pictures of cardinals could be special for God. But she knew her daddy knew things about being a grown-up she didn’t. So she’d nodded.

  After she drew the butterfly shells in the guest book, she’d imagined the other guests who came to the beach house wondering about the little girl who’d drawn the picture. She wondered if they would say her drawing was exceptional. She wanted to do something special for God with her talents, like Daddy had told her to. She wanted to be exceptional.

  She’d said the word to herself just like he had taught her, practicing it over and over again, silently so no one else could hear but her.

  She thought she’d remember that word forever, but she’d forgotten it along the way, left it behind in the mess of loss and rejection and making her own way.

  “I’m not going to let you forget that you are exceptional,” she told Emma as they neared the beach house. She didn’t add, Like I did. She turned into the drive, her dad’s words echoing through her own, proving she’d been listening all those years ago.

  fifteen

  Macy studied herself in the mirror, wondering if the sundress she’d selected was too revealing to wear on a date with a pastor. But it was the beach, after all. And yet, maybe a polo shirt and capris would be more … suitable for a date with a preacher. A wolf whistle stopped her inspection.

  “Trying to make him lose his religion?” Max asked from the hallway, tapping into her insecurities as only a brother could. She looked over at him with a panicked look.

  “Is it too much?” she asked.

  “Try too little?” Max quipped, resting his hand on the doorjamb.

  “Great.” She waved him away with her hand. “Close the door. I’m going to change.”

  He smirked back at her. “Too late. He’s here.”

  She looked at the clock on her nightstand. Beside it sat the guest book. “He’s early!”

  “Actually he’s been here a few minutes already. I’ve been talking to him.”

  She thought again of sitting with Nate in the car while Buzz and Max were inside the police station working out what Max had referred to only as “the misunderstanding.” Maybe Nate could help Max prepare for his upcoming court date to resolve the misunderstanding. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, her stomach clenching as her heart raced.

  “Go,” Max said. “Don’t get all nervous. I was just messing with you about the dress.”

  She ran her hands along the skirt of the sundress and looked back at Max. “Are you sure?” She looked back at the mirror. “It’s not too … revealing?”

  “Something tells me Nate can handle it.”

  “But I mean, he’s, like, a preacher. A minister. A man of God.”

  “He’s also, like, a person.” Max laughed at his own joke. “Did you know he used to come to this very house when he was a kid on vacation? Just like us? It’s not like he’s spent his life in some monastery or something.”

  Macy thought of the guest book sitting within her reach, and her heart beat even faster. She remembered the way she’d felt as Nate studied her in the darkness of the car, and she wondered why she’d ever prayed that ridiculous prayer.

  “How do I get myself into these things?” she asked out loud. It was a rhetorical question she didn’t really expect Max to answer.

  But he did. “You follow your heart.”

  “Yeah, well, I thought I’d learned my lesson about that,” Macy retorted.

  Instead of his usual witty comeback, Max just backed up a bit with a smile. “I’ll tell him you’ll be out in a minute. You look very nice just the way you are, so don’t you dare change.”

  He started singing the Billy Joel song just as Macy expected him to and ambled back down the hall.

  She took one last look in the mirror, wondering if people who knew Nate would see them together tonight and wonder what he was doing with her. She wondered if he would wonder what he was doing with her. She breathed in deeply and practiced smiling in the mirror. Then she wondered if he had special God-powers that helped him know what she was really thinking.

  If so, she thought, I am in big trouble.

  “Your brother’s a nice guy,” Nate said, as they waited for their dinners. He’d taken her to an out-of-the-way seafood place frequented by locals and recommended she try the scallops or sea bass. She’d taken his advice and was glad she had. Her scallops were served in a sherry cream sauce that made her want to lick the plate.

  It didn’t take long for him to ask about Emma. Macy hadn’t been on many dates since Chase left, but the ones she had been on usually involved the guy in question using her daughter as a go-to conversation piece. She wasn’t surprised to hear this question from Nate.

  “She’s the great love of my life.” She told him about Emma at the beach that day, how she had danced on the edge of the surf, staying just out of the waves’ reach. “Sometimes when I look at her, it’s like I’m seeing her for the first time. I try to hold onto those moments because I know this will all go by so fast.” She ducked her head. “I mean, that’s what my mom’s always saying.” She took a sip of water, feeling like a complete dork, rambling on about her kid. But he had asked.

  Nate seemed unfazed by her gushing. “Your brother said her dad’s … out of the picture?”

  Macy wasn’t going to lie, even if she may never see Nate again.

  “Nearly,” she confessed. “I’m working on that part. He left right after Emma was born and only recently came back to town.” She made a mental note to remind Max that informing suitors of the status of her past loves was not his job.<
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  Nate smiled. “I’m sure it’s not as neat and tidy as you’d like when you have a child involved. There’s what’s true and what you wish were true.”

  Macy rested her chin in her hands and smiled at him gratefully. “Exactly. That’s exactly what it’s like.” She paused. “You talk like you’ve got experience in this.”

  He laughed. “Hardly.” He leaned forward too, so their faces were close. She moved backward slightly, hoping he didn’t notice the distance she’d created.

  “I’ve got experience in what breaks and repairs hearts though,” Nate continued. “But … let’s not talk about all that just yet. I want to hear about you. Tell me your whole life story.”

  Macy laughed. “My whole life story? You don’t have time for that!”

  He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms behind his head. “I’ve got all night, Macy. So go. I want to hear it all. Let’s take a walk so we can talk.”

  “Okay,” she began. “But remember. You asked.”

  It was dark by the time they reached the beach. Based on how stuffed she was, Macy agreed a walk by the ocean was a good idea, not to mention pretty romantic. They kicked off their shoes and walked barefoot in the sand. Macy marveled over how the cool, dry sand felt like powder under her feet.

  “Sunset Beach sand is different from Ocean Isle Beach sand,” she commented, trying to fill the silence.

  Nate started explaining the difference in the sand, pointing out the positioning of the two beaches and how erosion caused Ocean Isle to need to have sand dredged up from the ocean ledge. Macy’s attention began to drift until Nate caught himself.

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “My career choices were between being a marine biologist or becoming a pastor.”

  “What made you choose pastor?”