When Light Breaks

by Patti Callahan Henry

  Tears stung the backs of my eyelids. I wouldn’t find the answers in a swift moment of revelation like I had found the questions. Those questions came clear and certain, but the answers were not so easy. Would trying to find them result in a quest that would lead to my own destruction?

  I sat back down in the boat, leaned against the bow, and stared across the curve of the estuary and creek where I’d floated. An energy that felt like electricity ran down my forearms before I realized why: the landscape was unfamiliar; it was not the right-to-left curve of the creek I knew.

  I sat upright, inhaled through pursed lips. I jerked my head to the left and right. How long had I been floating in and out of the small dead ends and curves of the creek? I glanced at my wrist—I didn’t have my watch. I hadn’t told anyone where I was going.

  I groaned. I’d broken every Lowcountry safety rule I knew. I pictured the headlines, how they’d find me days from now petrified in the baking sun, how a local girl should’ve known better. Then I laughed. Here I was lost in the circuitous marshes, and I was worried about what the headlines would say when they found me.

  God, what had become of me? If life, as Maeve said, was a journey, then my journey was about to abruptly end in a comedic twist: lost in familiar territory—a tortuous metaphor for my life. I lifted the paddles and pulled against the water, squinting against the sun to see the horizon. I had either floated to the east and was looking at Oystertip or had floated south and was staring at Back-bay Island. Either way, if I could get there, reach some landmark, I could find my way home.

  So here I was, lost in a land I thought I knew. Sunlight licked the tops of the grasses, which meant I needed to head that way—west, not toward the sea to the east. As I rounded a corner of marsh I spied Palmetto Pointe Lighthouse. I exhaled: my landmark. I released the paddles and lay back on the seat. I really hadn’t been lost at all, just confused in my wondering and wandering.

  I lifted my head, trailed my hand over the top of the water. A smooth surface rolled underneath my hand. I held my breath as a baby dolphin whispered beneath my fingers, lifted her bottle nose toward them. I petted her and a sob formed in the back of my throat, at the base of my heart. Where was this baby’s mama? A second pewter hump formed next to the dolphin, rose as if in answer to my question. I’m right here, right here.

  I flipped off the side of the boat in an instinctive act—from a desire to be part of them, part of their family—diving through the sea with a mama, with a family that laughed and played. I joined them without fear until I broke through the water and watched the boat floating away from me.

  In a remembrance of the days when Deirdre, Brian, and I swam with long, strong strokes through these waters, I reached the boat, turned to find the dolphins gone, having vanished beneath the dove-gray water.

  I paddled slowly toward the lighthouse, then to the left toward Brian’s home.

  The weekend passed as I reached for answers along the waters of Silver Creek. I walked down the beach or stared out to the water and wondered about the edges of land tied together by the sea—about the edges of the stories tied together by time. Maeve’s land, my land; Maeve’s story, my story. And yet not her story at all—a legend.

  I’d ignored my cell phone and had even forgotten that the next tournament was over until I saw Peyton standing at the bottom of Brian’s front stairs, looking up at me as if he didn’t recognize me, as if all the confusion inside had changed the outside of me. And maybe it had as I sat on the porch, still in my drawstring pajama bottoms and tank top, a cold cup of coffee cradled in my hands.

  I jumped up; coffee splattered across my lap, the warped porch boards. A long way off a seagull cried, and then squawked, and I could almost believe it came from the far side of the water: Maeve’s sea.

  “Hi, honey.” I wiped at the spill, walked toward the stairs. Peyton reached the landing before I stepped down.

  He pulled me into a hug, but it was weak, like someone had watered down his affection: a lukewarm offering. “Hello, Kara.”

  I raised my eyebrows at his formal greeting. “Well . . . how did you do?” I spread my hands out wide in a question.

  “Do you care?”

  “Of course I care. Why are you asking me like that?”

  “Well, I couldn’t get ahold of you all weekend, and it’s not like you’re busy. . . .” He waved his hand across the porch.

  I groaned. “I—”

  He held up his hand, successfully stopping my excuse. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Please tell me how you did in the tournament.”

  “I won.” His face said otherwise.

  “That is fantastic, but you don’t look like you won.”

  He nodded. “You weren’t there to support me.”

  “You obviously didn’t need me, and I was supporting you—just not on the sidelines. You don’t need me there every minute to win.”

  “You know, I heard about you at Danny’s Pub. You never came over that night. You never came to say good-bye or good luck, then I hear you’re dancing at the bar. . . .” He closed his eyes, twisted away from me.

  An emotion resembling fear, but more like anxiety, filled my stomach. Something threatening loomed at the edges of the horizon behind Peyton, but I couldn’t make out its shape or form. Then he spoke.

  “Maybe this engagement is not such a good idea,” he said.

  “Oh?” Had I screwed this up like my daddy had warned? Had my own selfish behavior lost my engagement, my fiancé? Please, I thought, no more leaving in my life . . . no more leaving me.

  He sat on the bottom step. “I need someone who will be there for me, and you don’t seem to want that. I need . . .” His face was set; still beautiful, but set and vacant, like a photograph of Peyton, but not the man. “Damn, why does this keep happening?” He dropped his chin down to his chest, his fists clenched at his side. “Mom warned me this time—not again, Peyton, not again. But I told her it was different with you. . . .”

  “Your mom?”

  “This isn’t because of Mom.”

  “Yeah, but it might be that you keep thinking you’ll find that one girl who will make you whole, who will help you win and keep you in line—and your mom will love her.” I stared over his head, not wanting to look at him to feel the leaving coming again and again and again, like the waves crashing in monotonous curls.

  “Kara?”

  I looked at him and the abandonment crashed on the shoreline, higher and higher until tears came with it. “What?”

  “Do you love me?”

  I continued to stare at him. This was the most important question anyone had ever asked me—and there I was at this turning point, where my future lay to the left or the right, where I had to understand that the path I took would be the one I’d travel for a very long time. There was no U-turn here at all.

  “Do you?” He stood now, and then moved away. “I guess your silence is my answer.”

  “No.” I stood. “My silence is not your answer.” I grabbed his arm. “I do love you, Peyton. Do I love you the way I should? Or, more important—the way you need? The way that will last a lifetime of marriage, children, old age?”

  “I can’t answer that for you, Kara.” His jaw clenched, twitched.

  “I think you already answered for me, Peyton. You don’t believe or feel like I love you the way you need me to. Something about the kind of love I have for you is not enough—and maybe that isn’t your fault. Maybe it is mine—the love not being enough for you. Maybe because I don’t have enough or maybe you need too much . . . I don’t know. But . . .”

  “I keep ending up here.” His hands splayed open. “With my hand out for an engagement ring I gave in sincerity. I don’t get it,” he said.

  And there it was: I’d done the thing my family, my friends, and Palmetto Pointe could chew on for years—broken an engagement with the invitations already mailed. I sank to the chair, and then reached over, slipped the diamond off my left finger and held it ou
t without looking up.

  I felt him take it from me, then I heard his footsteps go down the stairs and stop, but I still didn’t raise my head. So this was how my heart broke—this easily, with the handoff of a diamond ring.

  “Kara?”

  I lifted my eyes, but didn’t speak.

  “I’m sorry.” His voice cracked.

  I nodded. “Isn’t there a way to talk this out, try to figure out where to go from here?” But even as I said it, I knew the answer. I didn’t love him deep enough, wide enough, and he knew it; he knew something I was only starting to realize.

  “Maybe I do need too much, Kara. Maybe I do need someone who can be what you’re not willing to be.”

  I nodded; he was right. There was something wrong with the way I loved—it was not enough.

  When he was gone, the tears came, but not in full; the sorrow was mixed with wondering what Daddy, Deirdre, Charlotte, and Mrs. Carrington would say and do.

  I pulled my legs up under me and leaned back on the rocking chair. The screen door behind me slapped; I turned to Brian.

  “Hey, bro. I didn’t know you were home.” I wiped my face, tried to sit up straighter.

  “I just arrived a little while ago, but snuck in the back door when I saw Peyton.”

  “Oh...”

  He glanced down at my hand, my empty finger. “Over?”

  I nodded. “There is something wrong with me, Brian. Why can’t I love enough to beg him to stay, to fight for him to stay? I’m sitting here—just sitting here like a fool.”

  “Maybe because you don’t want it that badly, Kara. It is sad, but maybe not sad enough.”

  I nodded. “No, it’s pretty damn sad.”

  “Then get up and do something about it.”

  I looked at Brian and spoke the truth. “I don’t want to.”

  “Oh?” Then he laughed.

  “It’s not funny.”

  He sat in the chair next to me, leaned forward. “I know it’s not funny. I’m sorry.”

  “Time to face the family music,” I said. “I’ve got to tell Daddy, Deirdre, Charlotte.” I groaned. “All that work, the dress, the damn flowers, the invitations.”

  Brian reached his hand out, took mine in his. “You want me to tell them?”

  “No, I have to do it myself. It seems there is a theme in my life—leaving.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” my brother said, and hugged me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The following weeks were filled with the mandatory calls to be made, reservations to be canceled, deposits lost, and family quagmire to wade through.

  After I left Brian’s house that morning, I sat down in Daddy’s office to tell him and Deirdre about the broken engagement.

  “Peyton and I are not getting married.” I took a long, deep breath and looked at my father, then my sister in the eye.

  Deirdre jumped up, threw her arms wide in exasperation, then looked to Daddy. “This is why you should’ve never told us what Mama said about following your heart—she’s broken off an engagement to the best man she’ll ever catch.”

  I laughed, the sound reaching my ears before I’d even realized I’d laughed out loud. “Catch? You think Peyton was a catch? For God’s sake, Deirdre.”

  She turned back to me. “You never think rationally, Kara. You’re always chasing after the next thing . . . always thinking there is something better around the corner. You have no idea what you’ve done.”

  “Deirdre.” I stood, touched her arm. “He broke it off with me.”

  She stepped back, then held up her hand. “Oh.”

  “It was probably my fault,” I said, “but he broke it off—he didn’t think I loved him enough.”

  Deirdre sat in the leather wingback chair and looked up at me. “Did you?”

  “Probably not.”

  Daddy stood now, came over, hugged me. “I have to admit—I wanted this marriage for you, Kara. I did. But I’ve got to trust you.” He shook his head. “I just hope it wasn’t because of anything I told you . . . or did.”

  “No, Daddy.”

  “I have to believe that you know what you’re doing.”

  Deirdre snorted. “Dad, you know you’ll lose all your deposits.”

  “Better than losing Kara to a man she doesn’t love.”

  I spoke to Deirdre. “I’m not really sure why you’re so angry.”

  “Is this about Jack?” she asked.

  When she spoke his name, I allowed the same question I’d held at bay to enter my heart. “I’m not sure, Deirdre. I’m confused and lost about a lot of things.”

  “You are?” She walked toward me, and half of her face appeared as though her muscles could not decide whether to crumble in tears or clamp down in judgment. “You’re confused and lost? You were about to marry the greatest guy you have probably ever met and you’re confused?” Her voice rose higher and higher until I wanted to cover my ears.

  I lifted my hand. “Yes, I’m confused. I know this has probably never happened to you.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me, leaned toward me. “You have no idea what confusion is all about, Kara Larson. No idea whatsoever.” Then the muscles wanting to cry gave way, her face fell in on itself and she ran from the room, up the stairs. The slam of a door echoed down the stairs and into Daddy’s office.

  I turned to him. “What in the . . . ?”

  He shrugged. “Kara, I’m at a loss here. I don’t know how to help you. I don’t know how to help Deirdre.” He bit his lower lip in a gesture I’d never seen from him. “I need your mother right now.”

  I reached for him and hugged him. “So do I. I’ve got so much to do to cancel all this, Daddy. Can we talk later?”

  He turned back to me. “Yes, and let me know how I can help.” He pointed to a large envelope on the side table. “By the way, that small package arrived for you this morning.”

  I walked over, opened it, and took a deep breath: it was the antique postcard of Galway Bay that I’d ordered on eBay. A hooker dominated the photo; it sailed sideways, cutting through water so blue it must have been hand colored. The water separated for the boat as it aimed directly for the side of the quay, and the docked boats, to the thatched-roof houses. The vessel was reaching, sailing, yearning for home: to dock. I imagined Maeve standing on that quay—waiting. Did she really want me to find this man who might not exist? I sighed and turned toward the stairs, took them two at a time to Deirdre’s room.

  I pushed her door open without knocking and entered the room with my hands on my hips. “Tell me what in the hell is going on with you.”

  She sat on the bed, curled over, staring in her hands. I walked to the bed. She stared at me. “What if we’re not who she wanted us to be? What if we’re a disappointment?” Deirdre choked on the words.

  I sighed, sat on the edge of the mattress. “I don’t think that her last words had anything to do with being who she wanted us to be, but with being who . . . we were meant to be.”

  Deirdre’s face hardened again. “Don’t you think that after Daddy told you what Mama said, you got confused?”

  “No, if anything, I got clearer.”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “Clearer? What do you mean?”

  “You know how Mama said to listen for the hints? Well, I heard them in a story.”

  “A story? You are not making any sense at all.”

  “I think we all hear hints differently. The way I hear it, you won’t. I think the main thing is, Mama didn’t want us to shut off our hearts.”

  Deirdre just stared at me; her face quivered.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I can’t stand to disappoint one more person in my life. Now I’m disappointing our dead mother because I’ve shut off my heart. I want to love . . . I swear I do.”

  She spoke as though I had left the room and she was talking to the Spanish moss hanging in front of her window, as if it could catch her words in its net and carry them safely away. “I’ve guarded my he
art in every way I know how. I have lost my friends, lost my husband. I’ve guarded my heart with duty, with busyness, with anger. . . .”

  She turned to me now. “Do you think we both just don’t know how to love enough?”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t believe that.” I paused in thought. “Do you remember when you woke me up in the middle of the night, and took me to see the turtles hatch?”

  “What?”

  “Do you remember that?”

  “No, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  I took her hand. “I was young; five, maybe six. You came into my room in the middle of the night and held my hand, led me over the lawn, across the footbridge and down to the beach to watch the turtles hatch, then crawl toward the water. We cried together because those babies had to do that alone, all alone. No one ever knew we sneaked out—it was our secret.”

  Her chin rose slowly. “Yes, I remember. I knew Mama was sick then, and you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “No, we hadn’t told you yet. I was eleven and we hadn’t told you.”

  “But I knew. I remember how I knew I would have to do the same thing . . . figure it all out without Mama.”

  “Oh, Kara.” She dropped her face down. I went to her, wrapped my arms around her and allowed her to cry until the tears subsided, and the sunlight turned dusty pink in her room.

  Charlotte and I stood in front of Mrs. Marshall’s Garden and Antique Store, where I’d bought the broken angel weeks before. I hadn’t visited Maeve in the hospital in the past few days—her family had come from Ireland, and they’d promised to call me to report any change in her condition.

  I pushed open the doors; I needed to cancel the urns and palm trees I’d ordered for the reception. Charlotte lent her levity and brevity to every task necessary. She kept me laughing when I wanted to cry, and quickly severed conversations I tended to drag out with apologies and explanations.

  The aroma of green plants and soil filled the air. I inhaled, then called out for Mrs. Marshall. She stood from where she’d been reaching down behind the counter. “Well, hello, darling.” She walked around the corner holding her cat, Azalea. “It is so weird that you stopped by today—I was set to call you in a little bit.”