Last Kiss

by Luanne Rice

  “Okay, Nell,” Wes said, backing off. She could see she’d shocked him, hurt him, with her tone. She glanced around, saw all the other kids watching her. She started to stand, realized she was shaking, and stayed where she was, making herself be still.

  Partying and hanging around with boys had been okay this summer, in spite of how much she missed Charlie. But suddenly it wasn’t okay anymore. She stared across the smooth, calm bay at Gavin’s boat. Now that he was at Hubbard’s Point, Nell knew that everything was different.

  Until Gavin came, Nell had been lulled into the acceptance that Charlie was gone forever. She’d felt mere grief, dull and aching. But what she felt right now was alive and wild, a frightening thing inside herself. Now, watching the film of Charlie brought home as never before the way he moved, sounded, touched her. Suddenly she felt as if she had to see Charlie again, and for some reason having Gavin here made that feel possible.

  As if Nell hadn’t hired Gavin to find Charlie’s killer, but to find Charlie himself. The thought rocked her, made her feel she just might be losing her mind.

  “You okay, Nell?” Billy asked, turning to look at her.

  She nodded. “I just need a swim,” she said. She adjusted her pink bikini and stood up. Then she took off in a dead run down the beach, and without even stopping to feel the temperature of the water, dived straight in.

  STEVIE MOORE LEANED on a tall stool in her studio, working on a painting. She was illustrating her latest book, Three Blue Eggs in a Nest. Having written children’s books her whole career, it felt both odd and wonderful to be doing another one now, just as she was pregnant with her first child.

  She painted the fine twigs, pine needles, and strands of hair woven together. When Nell was ten, and she and her father had just moved in here, Stevie and Nell used to take nature walks to Little Beach, the marsh, or, some days, to the Hubbard’s Point cemetery. They loved the quiet there, the austere and aching beauty of the old lichen-covered granite stones. Sometimes they’d bring paper and charcoal, make rubbings of winged angels, carved names.

  But not on the day Stevie was remembering now, that was coming to life on her canvas…. They were just taking a walk, spending time together. There’d been a bad storm, and they came upon a robin’s nest knocked out of a tree. They looked inside, and there nestled three perfect, unbroken blue eggs. Somehow they had survived the fall.

  Painting now, Stevie remembered how panicked Nell had been. They had to climb the tree, replace the nest in the crook of the branches so the mother would return to it. But which tree? Which crook of which branches? Crying, Nell had scanned all the surrounding trees. The graves were on an open hillside surrounded by woods of pine, scrub oak, and sassafras.

  They’d heard the mother robin before seeing her. Her grief was unmistakable. She was flying around and around a thick white pine. Stevie and Nell stood on the ground, holding her nest. They watched the robin fly in circles, as if wrapping the pine in invisible thread, as if she could hold something together.

  “She’s showing us,” Nell had wept. “She wants her babies back…”

  Nell had wanted to climb up, put the nest back; but she was sobbing so hard, Stevie was afraid she would fall. Back then, still dealing with the rawness of her own mother’s death, Nell could so easily break at the thought of any mother and child being separated…even unhatched ones. So Stevie had climbed instead.

  Working on her canvas, she remembered holding the nest in one hand, using the other to pull herself up into the pine tree. The needles were thick and long, blocking out the sky. She was surrounded by tree, feeling the sticky black pitch under her fingers. The nest felt precarious; she tried to hold it on the very tips of her tarry fingers, to minimize the human touch. It was such a crazy idea, such a long shot, that they could replace a nest, to hope that the mother—however grief-crazed right now—would return to hatch the eggs.

  If she could even find the spot in the tree. Stevie had always loved nature, especially birds. Her children’s bird books had captivated millions, but writing about happy outcomes in the natural world was so much different from the ambiguity and harsh reality of true life. But Nell was right: the mother robin was a harbinger, guiding them to the spot. So Stevie climbed higher, scouring the trunk and branches for any sign of where the nest had been.

  And she saw it: a few twigs and a strand of human hair, caught in the fork of two small branches. Glancing into the nest, she saw more hair beneath the eggs. Someone who lived nearby had cleaned her hairbrush while the robin had been nesting. Inching out the branch, arm outstretched, she placed the nest into the exact spot. It fit perfectly, the missing piece of a puzzle.

  Stevie climbed down the tree. She had a lump in her throat, thinking of Nell missing her mother, Emma, so much, and wondering whether the mother robin would return to her nest. White pine branches grow nearly down to the earth, so she stayed in the green enclosure almost until her feet hit the ground. When she stepped out, Nell was smiling, pointing up.

  “She went back,” Nell said, grabbing Stevie’s hand. “See? She’s already on her nest!”

  And it was true. Stevie stood there with Nell, staring up. The mother had disappeared into the tree, but they knew where to look; and there, through the long pine needles, they saw her small dark head atop the nest. It was a small miracle, a gift of summer. She and Nell had returned often, watching the robin’s nest.

  The babies hatched. They’d learned to fly. And they flew away. One day Stevie and Nell returned, and they were all gone: mother, babies, everyone. They’d scavenged beneath the tree, and found two blue eggshells: all that was left from the hatching. Nell had cried again, but in a different way. Some losses in life were easier to take than others….

  Now, painting the nest, Stevie thought of Sheridan. Sheridan’s son, Charlie, was buried in that same cemetery as the robin’s nest. Nell went there every day, to be with him. Sheridan, too.

  The baby kicked inside Stevie’s stomach, someone she didn’t know but already loved. Her new book was mixed up with all of them: Nell, Charlie, Sheridan, the new baby, Jack, Stevie herself, and the robin family. Jack was so upset with her, and she loved him so much. Where did any of it begin, and where did any of it end? Life was one big love story, and you couldn’t really separate any of it.

  Lost in her work, she suddenly heard footsteps on the stairs and a voice calling her name.

  “Stevie? Are you up here?”

  Looking over her shoulder, she saw Sheridan poking her head into the studio door.

  “Come in,” she said, putting down her brush, wiping her hands on a rag.

  “I knocked,” Sheridan said. “But I guess you didn’t hear.”

  “I’m sorry,” Stevie said, leading her to a wicker loveseat near the big, arched north window. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “You’re working,” Sheridan said. “That wonderful state where nothing else exists but you and your ideas and the art flowing from your fingertips.”

  Stevie smiled. Not too many people got it like Sheridan. “You know,” she said. “I do it with a paintbrush and canvas; you do it with your guitar and your voice.”

  “The reason I came…” Sheridan said, then stopped.

  “You never need a reason,” Stevie said quietly.

  Sheridan tried to smile, getting herself together. Stevie waited, gazing at her old friend. Like so many of their other friends here, they’d grown up together at Hubbard’s Point. They’d known each other as babies, before they could talk. Now they were going through life together.

  Stevie noticed how beautiful her friend was: she was ethereal, and it was the white hair. It made her blue eyes spark, made her pale skin glow. But it also accentuated the sorrow. Stevie had heard of people shocked into going gray overnight; until Sheridan, she had never seen it happen.

  “The reason I came,” Sheridan continued finally, “was to apologize for the other day.”

  “Sheridan, you never have to…”

  “I do,�
�� Sheridan said, stopping her, hand on Stevie’s wrist.

  “You brought me that beach plum jelly, and I was really rude.”

  “No you weren’t,” Stevie said, smiling. “But I heard the crash after I walked down your hill.”

  “Yeah,” Sheridan said, smiling back. “I winged it pretty well.”

  The two women chuckled. Then Sheridan stared at Stevie’s belly. Her hand inched close, as if she wanted to touch it. But she didn’t.

  “I’m so happy for you,” Sheridan said, “and so jealous. That you’re going to have your baby, and I’ve lost mine.”

  Stevie stared down at her friend’s hand, still raised slightly. She thought of the mother robin flying in circles around the tree.

  “I’m crazy with it,” Sheridan said. “I can’t stand to say his name, and I can’t stand not to. The summer is filled with him, everywhere. I taste the lemonade I used to make for him. I hear his footsteps on the stairs at night, the way I used to when he’d sneak home from being with Nell.”

  “She still sneaks out,” Stevie said. “She walks the beach roads because she wants to be with him. She goes where they used to walk together. She still wears that piece of towel around her ankle….”

  “How can he not be here?” Sheridan asked. “How can someone so strong and alive not be here anymore?”

  Stevie reached out and laced fingers with her friend, and they both were trembling. Inside, Stevie’s baby kicked.

  “People say I’ll ‘get past it,’” Sheridan said, gasping. “Can you imagine?”

  “No,” Stevie said.

  “My sisters, I love them so much, but they’re driving me insane. They brought me cookies…cookies!”

  “Well, and I brought you beach plum jelly.”

  “I know,” Sheridan said. “But somehow you’re different. You know me in a way they don’t. You know where the songs live…you know what a dark cave it is, because you go there, too, for your paintings.”

  Stevie held her hand, stared at her. She knew Sheridan had said she’d come over to apologize, but suddenly Stevie knew that wasn’t true. She’d come over because Stevie knew about the cave, the place creative people had to live sometimes. Loss both drove you deeper into the cavern and kept you out of it.

  “I was blocked a while back,” Stevie said. “It was after my third divorce, and I felt like the biggest love-loser. Emma had died, and Maddie was drinking, and all I could think about was what’s the meaning of life, and why are we here, and when will I meet my next husband? Everyone I knew had kids; I’d been writing children’s books my whole career. No kids, no love…I was just a serial marrier.”

  “Don’t say that. You believed in love so much, you had to keep test-driving it out. You were just kicking all those other tires until Jack came along.”

  “That’s a nice way to put it.” Stevie smiled.

  “Well, you know I wrote ‘Road Test’ about you, right?” Sheridan asked.

  “Really?” Stevie asked. She shivered to hear it. Everyone always thought writers’ books were about them, singers’ songs were about them, artists’ paintings were their secret portraits. But the lyrics of one of Sheridan’s ballads had reminded Stevie of life before Jack Kilvert:

  I drove around the block a few times

  Baby, I took it down the road.

  You know I hit the open highway

  Pushed the pedal down, and I was gone….

  “Yeah,” Sheridan said. “You were an inspiration to me. The way you kept believing in love, even after getting let down so hard. Especially after Sven.”

  “Husband number three, and a sociopath to boot.”

  Sheridan nodded. “Even so, love triumphs in your life. Me, after Randy—and well, especially Gavin—forget it. I haven’t trusted anyone, or wanted to get close. That’s why I had to write about you. You were so open to Jack.”

  “I was,” Stevie said, shivering. “I still am. But he’s not so sure.”

  “Jack?”

  “Yep.”

  “He’s not so sure about what?” Sheridan asked, sounding shocked.

  “About me.”

  “Come on. He loves you more than anything.”

  Stevie nodded. “I know. I feel the same way about him.”

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “He can’t understand why I don’t want to get married.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why don’t you want to get married?”

  “Well, after being married so many times, I guess marriage just stops meaning very much. Love is all that counts, Sheridan…that’s what I believe, anyway. Believe it with all my heart.”

  “What about Jack?”

  Stevie stared down at her belly. “He wants to get married.”

  “Well, especially with the baby coming.”

  Stevie nodded. “I know. He’s more conventional than I am. He really thinks we should make it legal before the baby’s born.”

  Sheridan laughed. “Jack’s not conventional—that’s not it. He loves you. You’re just falling back on the crazy-artist thing. We get away with a lot in the outside world because of that. ‘Crazy artist’—license to be an idiot.”

  Stevie nodded, smiling. “No one blinked when I kept getting married—I think it was just another spectator sport here at Hubbard’s Point: who’s that nutty Stevie Moore going to bring home next? And now they don’t blink when I’m pregnant and living with Jack, not getting married.”

  “You contrarian, you,” Sheridan said.

  “It’s just, before I used to get married because, who knows why? I wanted to hold on to the person, I wanted the love to last forever, and I thought the piece of paper would help that happen. I was after security. Now I love Jack with everything, and I want it to last even longer than forever, and I know it will, but…”

  Sheridan nodded. “But you know nothing ever does.”

  “Something like that. Not marrying Jack is how I honor our true love,” Stevie said. Losing Emma, one of her best friends and original Hubbard’s Point beach girls; losing her parents; and even watching Sheridan—and Nell—lose Charlie had made Stevie realize how short and precious it all was, how transient, how ephemeral. A marriage license meant very little compared to the enduring reality of love.

  “Well, I do understand,” Sheridan said. “I was married to Charlie’s father for so short a time.”

  “From what I remember, he’s not the one you really loved.”

  Sheridan glanced up. “Have you been talking to Nell?”

  “You mean, do I know she called Gavin?” Stevie asked. “Yes.”

  “Have you seen him?” Sheridan asked.

  “No,” Stevie said. “I’ve been holed up in my studio, working on this book. I see his boat out at the breakwater…she looks like a beauty. Nell’s seen him, though. She’s gone out there.”

  “She hired him,” Sheridan said.

  Stevie nodded. She waited for Sheridan to get angry, but it didn’t happen. She just stared toward the big north window, at the cool light pouring in.

  “Maybe Nell is right, and we have to know about what happened. I don’t know, Stevie—I don’t know what difference it could make. But I know how he felt about her…” Sheridan paused. “Maybe I should have cared more about the police investigation, done that for my son. But all I really cared about was that he’s gone. That’s all that counted to me.”

  “That’s how I would be,” Stevie said. “But you know, Gavin’s here now. Let him go looking. He’ll find whatever there is.”

  Sheridan nodded.

  “Good,” Stevie said.

  “My sisters think we should invite him for dinner at my house,” Sheridan said.

  Stevie stared at her, waiting.

  “The worst thing that ever happened to me—before Charlie—was breaking up with Gavin. I swear, I wasn’t sure I’d survive. He and I had been so close, and when we finally went apart for good, I felt as if my skin had been peeled off.
I had nothing between me and—everything else.”

  “I remember.”

  “He was everything to me, Stevie,” Sheridan said. “I grew up with him, and I saw the world through his eyes. I felt so alive and awake with Gavin. And I’d never imagined not being with him.”

  “None of your friends ever imagined that either,” Stevie said.

  “He’s not…tamable,” Sheridan said.

  “Why would you want to tame him?” Stevie asked.

  “I don’t,” Sheridan said. “But I can’t live on the edge. I couldn’t back then, when we were young—and I definitely can’t now.” Standing, she walked over to Stevie’s easel. She stood looking at the painting of the nest and the three blue eggs.

  “Well, for whatever it’s worth: you and he were really something.”

  “We were,” Sheridan said. “But the differences between us were too much to take.”

  “Opposites attract,” Stevie said. “To put it mildly.”

  “I know what you mean,” Sheridan conceded. “I just couldn’t take worrying that he’d never come home. He took so many chances. And he was away…all the time. Life on a submarine.”

  “I remember,” Stevie said. “But he’s not on a submarine anymore, is he?”

  Sheridan stared at the painting for a few minutes, her back to Stevie. When she spoke, still not turning around, her voice was thick.

  “You know how fast Gavin came down from Maine, as soon as Nell called him? He’s here for Charlie…he didn’t even know my son, and he’s here to find out who hurt him. Something Randy never did.”

  “His own father,” Stevie murmured.

  She stared at Sheridan. She’d admired her so much, the way she’d raised Charlie all by herself. She’d made sure he had strong male role models, including Jack. She’d taken care to see he had good coaches, excellent teachers. While Randy, whom Stevie had never met, just stayed away.

  “Do you and Randy ever talk now?” Stevie asked.

  “Never.”

  “But you did, after Charlie died….”

  “One conversation,” Sheridan said. “That was it. I called to give him the news. He cried.”

  “Really?” Stevie asked, surprised.