Embers

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  "Shoo-ah," Lloyd crooned, filling the baby's tiny, tiny hand with his finger. "But then, the apple don't fall far from the tree." He kissed his wife's sweaty brow. "Her ma's a beautiful woman."

  Meg left the birthing room not long after that, leaving the new parents to cherish their moment, and went back home where she woke up her father and let him know that all was well. After that she went into Terry and Timmy's room and told them that they had a new little sister to teach how to fish and play ball.

  And after that, although it was not quite dawn, she went for a walk. There was no way she was going to fall asleep anytime soon; too much had happened in the last few hours. She felt overwhelmed by events and needed to walk off some of her excess emotion.

  She put on a down parka and a wool cap and wrapped herself in the image of little Sally Atwells to keep herself warm as she slipped outside into the piercing December cold. The vicious nor'easter had blown itself out at last, replaced by a frosty, star-studded clearing. The wind still howled, but it was the kind of howl that any fisherman knew would soon die down.

  Meg flipped up the hood of her parka and pulled on her mittens, then began walking briskly along deserted streets toward a downtown that would look not much busier at midday. Bar Harbor in December: the best-kept secret in New England. Shops — the ones that stayed open all year — were trimmed in gold and silver, red and green, for the holidays. But the lights inside were kept low, because in winter it was hard to pay the bills.

  She thought of her last walk with Tom. It seemed more like four years than four months. What would he think of the place now, she wondered, approaching the shore — so desolate, so wild, so unforgiving. She imagined other islands in other lands, ringed by warm sand and swaying palm trees.

  Maine was a hard, hard place.

  Inevitably, her steps took her down the Shore Path. She had refused herself the luxury of a walk there ever since August, and ever since August, she had resented Tom for it. He'd ruined the Shore Path for her, ruined Acadia, ruined the little closet-bedroom he slept in his first night in Maine. He'd ruined the corner chair at the dining room table, ruined the bird feeder in her favorite part of the garden, ruined the little metal car in the Monopoly game. The front lawn, the screen door, the back shed—ruined. As for the cabin in the woods, she couldn't imagine going back to it, not if it were the last dwelling on earth.

  All the ghosts were gone now but one — and he wasn't a ghost at all, despite his presence everywhere she went.

  Balance Rock lay ahead, gray and solitary and indomitable. Meg approached it with a heavy heart, unwilling to relive their last exchange there. And yet she felt driven to it, she didn't know why. It had something to do with the last few hours. But so much had happened in the last few hours. How could she begin to sort it out?

  I can't leave everyone and everything behind, she'd told him. Any more than that rock can be rolled away from this beach.

  She stopped on the salt-coated footpath, drinking in the icy, newly cleansed air, and stared at the rock, gray and solitary and — moved.

  No way, was her first thought. It must be the light. The dawn was pink and blue and compressed, a December dawn. Still, there was plenty of light, if you knew what you were looking for. Meg walked around the boulder, pushing at it from this direction and that, feeling perfectly dumb as she did it. She thought of Tom, and his heroic effort to persuade her. It hasn't moved, she'd insisted.

  Fool.

  Maybe, was her second, heart-thumping thought. But how to be sure? She stuffed her mittens in her pocket and began an awkward, unfamiliar scramble up the rock. Different. The handholds weren't in their usual place. When she got to the top and sat there looking out at the whitecapped, still-roiling sea, that was when she felt it: Balance Rock was still balanced, but on a different edge.

  "I was wrong!" she cried, throwing her arms out elatedly to the dawn. "You were right!"

  ****

  The blackness of Lake Michigan exploded into a fairyland of twinkling amber as Meg's plane passed over the lake's shore on its way to O'Hare Airport.

  Magic: for as far as she could see, for miles and miles and miles, lights shimmered and danced on a blanket of snow. So this was Chicago. It was so much bigger, so much vaster, than anything she'd ever known; how would she ever find him?

  Dammit; why couldn't he be listed in the phone book like everyone else? All she had was his business card, the one she'd stolen from the top of Terry's bureau. She took it out of her purse and read it again, for the thousandth time: LIEUTENANT THOMAS WYLER, COMMANDING OFFICER, VIOLENT CRIMES. A station address and the phone number, and that was it.

  When she'd called the number, she'd got a sergeant who knew her name, which had pleased her immeasurably. She had been hoping he'd say, "Hey, here's his home phone; call him there." But the sergeant hadn't offered it, and she hadn't quite dared to ask for it. Instead, she'd made up a story about surprising him and would the sergeant please not mention that she'd called?

  In the course of that conversation she'd learned that Tom was delivering a guest lecture at De Paul University on Thursday night, and so that became her plan: to surprise him after his talk there. (All in all, she'd rather be embarrassed in front of a bunch of kids than in front of a bunch of cops.)

  After her plane landed she stepped into a cab and said, "De Paul University; I'm in a hurry, please." Her life became a nip-and-tuck battle with the clock as the cab alternately crawled and crept toward its destination. The traffic! She had no idea! It all looked so close on the road atlas!

  She said this many, many times to the cabdriver. Eventually he said, "Lady, if you want to get out and walk, I'll give you your money back." After that she shut up. If that was how these big-city types were, then fine. She knew it. She just knew it.

  One little detail she'd forgotten to nail down was the building where Tom was delivering his lecture. She'd assumed that she would have time to find that out. As it turned out, she had seven minutes left before he'd be gone.

  Frantic by now, she blurted some incoherent version of her problem to the cabbie, who broke into a broad grin and said, "No kiddin'? He's a copper? My brother's a copper. Hey, we'll find 'im."

  How he managed it, Meg never quite remembered, but it involved a security guard and high-speed runs at three different buildings. Tom was in the last one. Meg and Conrad — good friends by now — peeked through the small square windows in the doors of the packed lecture hall.

  "Zat him?"

  "Oh, my God, yes," she said, stunned. "He looks so real."

  "What, real; he looks like he's supposed to look. Like a cop."

  "He does, doesn't he," Meg agreed, taking in the gray suit, light shirt, and dark tie. Even from outside the room, she could see that he was in complete command. The class was hanging on his every word. He said something she couldn't hear; his audience broke out in laughter.

  She backed away from the window and closed her eyes. What a stupid idea, surprising him. What could she say? Take me back? I've changed my mind? What if he'd changed his? Who knew? And yet, the thought of asking him on the phone had been even stupider.

  "I can't do it. I can't go in there," she said flatly.

  "Sure you can. What's the big deal?"

  "There are too many people around. I have no idea how he's going to react."

  "Hey, you don't know them and they don't know you. That's one of the upsides to living in a big city."

  "I'll wait 'till they all leave," she decided.

  "No good," said Conrad, rubbing his stubby beard. "He might leave with them. You got to go right up there, show your face, let him clear everyone out."

  "Maybe it'd be better to do this at the station."

  Conrad snorted. "Yeah. Right."

  Meg took a deep breath. "Okay, here's what I'm willing to do: Go in, stand in back, if he starts to leave with the class I'll raise my hand."

  "I can live with that," said the cabbie. "Well — I'm outta here," he said with a fatherly smile
. "Good luck. If you have a Polish band, invite me to the wedding. My cab number's one hundred sixty-three."

  Impulsively, Meg threw her arms around him and hugged him. "Thanks, Conrad," she said. "Is everyone here like you?"

  He laughed. "Whaddya think? We're New York?"

  He left. Clutching her carry-on bag and dragging her parka, Meg slipped into the back of the packed room and got swallowed up in the standing-room-only crowd. Tom said into the mike, "One last question; we're running over."

  A young woman dressed in a bulky sweater and jeans stood up and said, "You've said that all the police can do is attack the symptoms of illness in our society. Can you tell us what you think is the single biggest factor in finding a cure for that illness?"

  He didn't say anything right away. Meg could see that he was struggling with the answer, that he wanted to get it right for them.

  "Parents," he said at last. "If a kid nowadays has two parents who are involved — really involved — with him or her, then that kid has a jump start on the rest of society. If he has one parent who really cares, he's still in pretty good shape. An older sibling, a relative, a role model on the block — all of them matter, all of them can make a difference.

  "Whoever it is, he or she has to love the kid enough to teach him — or her — right from wrong. And that takes a lot of work, a lot of one-on-one effort. When you're in the middle of a divorce, looking for a job, fighting an addiction, setting up a new household — who has the time? You've got to find the time, find the energy. You can't just cross your fingers or leave it to the 'experts.' You can't just leave a child to raise himself."

  He added thoughtfully, "I used to think that the right kid, with a break or two his way, could still make it on his own. Not anymore. A kid today doesn't have a chance if someone's not right on top of him. You can reform the schools, add new teachers, rate TV for violence, design new national programs; but government can only do so much.

  "It all starts at home," he said quietly. "At home. Thank you and good night."

  The class applauded warmly, then began filing out. A huddle formed around Tom, a multiracial group made up mostly of women, earnest and concerned.

  But where were the ones who needed to hear what he had to say? They were somewhere else, caught up in the very struggles Tom had rattled off. Meg sighed, thinking of her own family, thinking how incredibly lucky she was.

  He knew she was there, of course. She'd seen him glance up once in her direction, then flush deeply and turn his attention to the next questioner. Eventually the huddle began to thin and melt away, like fog on a hot summer morning, until there was only her, only him.

  As if she'd seen him just hours ago, she said, "I like what you said at the end. I wish I'd got here earlier to hear the rest."

  He matched her apparent sense of calm, smiling that wry smile of his as he gathered up his notes. "Heck, I could've faxed these off to you and saved you a bundle."

  Her cheeks turned bright scarlet. "Oh, that's all right," she said lightly. "We've sold the dollhouse. We're rich. Compared to what we were, anyway."

  He looked up from his briefcase. His eyes glittered with unfathomable emotion as he said, "That's great. So things are working out for you. The Inn Between'll be the showpiece of Bar Harbor."

  She'd been standing a few feet from him, assuming or hoping — she didn't know which — that he would gather her in his arms and kiss her madly and that words wouldn't be necessary. But this wasn't the movies. He was leery of her, she could see that. She'd jerked him around once too often.

  She walked over to a desk and sat at it; it'd been a very long time. "The Inn Between does look wonderful," she conceded, smoothing her hands over the Formica, trying the desk on for size. "We worked like dogs on it all through fall." At least it made the time pass. "But — it's still empty. I doubt that we'll bother staying open next winter."

  "Really," he said, a little sharply. But his next words were said almost with a shrug. "Maybe you need to advertise."

  "Are you kidding?" she asked, genuinely incredulous. "For a while we were on the front page of every tabloid in the country!"

  "I meant something more like The New York Times," he said ironically, wiping the whiteboard clean of his marker.

  "Gee, I don't know why. If you planned to stay somewhere, wouldn't you pick the place where the innkeeper had two heads?"

  He laughed, and so did she, remembering the brief insanity of it all.

  "Did your uncle ever nail down that contract for movie of the week?" he asked, still smiling.

  "Oh, that all fell by the wayside. Which was just as well. Uncle Billy said he didn't want Brian Dennehy playing him, anyway; too fat. I think he was holding out for Sean Connery."

  Tom sat on a corner of the desk behind the lectern. "And Comfort?" he asked, a little hesitantly.

  "Ah! I should've told you!" said Meg, her face lighting up with pleasure. "She had a beautiful, beautiful girl — Sally Mary Atwells."

  "Hey, that is great news. Did everything go all right?" Tom asked, obviously remembering their fears.

  "The baby slipped out smooth as a smelt," Meg said cheerfully. "Comfort brought her home the day before yesterday. Wait — I have a picture here somewhere." Meg lifted her handbag onto the desk and began rummaging through it with both hands. "It's a cute shot: Sally's on their bed, with a flyrod lying alongside her for scale. That was Dad's idea. He —"

  "Meg," Tom said sharply, grabbing both her wrists. "What the hell is going on here?"

  Wincing from the blast of his vehemence, Meg said in a small voice, "I just thought you might like to see the photo —"

  "Forget the goddamned photo! What are you doing back in my life, for God's sake!"

  He yanked her up from her desk as if she were an impossibly frustrating student and held her, still by her wrists, close to him. His breath fell hot on her face and his eyes glittered with fury. Meg thought of dragons; she considered retreat.

  "W-well, it's Christmas," she said, uttering the first thing that popped into her head.

  "Yeah, it's Christmas — and last month it was Thanksgiving and the month before that, Halloween. You missed Columbus Day, Labor Day, and worst of all, my birthday. I turned forty-one and I turned it without you, goddammit. You missed four full moons, one of them a harvest moon that hung over the lake in the most ... ridiculously heartbreaking way. You missed three great concerts in Grant Park, and you missed waking up in my arms every single morning between August eighth and" — he let go of her wrist and looked at his watch — "today, December eighteenth. So why here, Meg? Why now?"

  Reeling from the onslaught of his words and the agony in his voice, she said breathlessly, "I ... the rock. It moved."

  His eyes narrowed an infinitesimal amount. "Balance Rock?"

  She nodded. "The morning that Sally was born, I took a walk on the Shore Path. It's definitely moved. Everyone says so. Then, too, there was the ... voice. It came right before Sally. But after Gordon Camplin. Oh —"

  "I know about Camplin," Tom said, dismissing him. "Tell me why you're here, Meg. In plain English. Because I can't stand this much longer," he warned in a voice that was raw with tension.

  She leaned her forehead against his chest and spoke into his striped tie as if it were a microphone. "In plain English, then: I love you. I love you more than anyone else in my life. I can live without everyone else — without Allie! — but I can't live without you. I tried, and I made myself miserable, not to mention everyone around me. And before you ask — I can live without Maine. But not," she whispered, vanquished, "without you."

  When he said nothing she felt as if she'd taken a headlong dive down a flight of stairs. If he didn't catch her she'd be forced to take her broken bones and her broken heart back to Bar Harbor and finish out her life an emotional cripple.

  She lifted her gaze to his. He had a grin on his face that reminded her of a kid who's caught a home run ball that went into the bleachers.

  He held her face between h
is hands. "It took you four full moons to figure that out?"

  He lowered his soft, open lips to hers as she closed her eyes for the kiss. She'd waited so long for this. Every night when she closed her eyes, and whenever in the day she closed her eyes, she imagined it: the warm, soft, totally erotic caress of his mouth on hers, of his tongue seeking hers. If it were possible for a kiss to substitute for making love, then this was such a kiss.

  "But ... if I hadn't come?" she asked in a humbled whisper when he freed her at last.

  In a voice of quiet triumph he said, "Before I'd taken half a dozen steps away from you that day at Balance Rock, I'd resolved to resign my position and find something closer to you. I lucked out: on the first of the year, I begin a new job in Connecticut."

  She laughed and kissed him again and said, "I don't know how to tell you this, but from Connecticut to Maine is not a practical commute."

  He wrapped his arms around her tight and spun her around. "Witch! I know that," he said, his voice starting to register the joy that she'd felt in his kiss. "I'm signing on with a national pilot program that's aimed at retraining problem dropouts. The kids volunteer; they have to show some interest in turning their lives around. It's a promising program, the best thing I've seen so far."

  "A kind of boot camp for delinquents," she mused, thinking how perfectly suited Tom was to inspire lost and troubled kids. "I guess Maine's not in the program?"

  "Not yet. Coming soon, I've been told. But until then," he said, cupping her chin in his hand, "until Maine ... will you live with me and be my wife?"

  She lifted her head and their eyes met. "Until Maine, during Maine, after Maine, without Maine — yes," she said, moved inexpressibly by his old-fashioned proposal. "Yes and always."

  "Meggie, Meggie ... I do love you," he whispered.

  Somewhere in the course of the next prolonged and passionate kiss, a security guard appeared and escorted them gently out the door. Exhilarated and unembarrassed, they found themselves standing outside the locked building.

  "Downtown!" Tom said suddenly. "I want you to see how the big boys do one before we leave it forever."