Bay Song

by Noelle Adams

  She waited until he’d taken off his shirt before she started for the water. He always wore a suit too now, after that first evening. That had been mostly a test, which he’d passed, and she had no desire to tease him by insisting it continue. She could see that he was partially erect beneath his shorts, but it didn’t faze her. He’d been hard a lot around her for the past two weeks. Another of those things that excited and scared her at the same time.

  He wanted her. A lot. And he was good at holding himself back.

  But she couldn’t help but wonder how long he’d be able to do so.

  A week later, as they were standing on the beach in the morning, watching the grizzled man on the distant pier, Holly asked Cade, “Why don’t you fish?”

  “What do you mean? I do fish.”

  She frowned since it sounded like she might have inadvertently offended him. “You’re here at a beach house, near several very good fishing piers, and you haven’t fished.”

  “I usually fish on a boat. To tell you the truth, before I met you, I spent a week on my boat fishing, so I guess I’ve had my fill.”

  This surprised her since he seemed like such a doer—a man who liked to get things done. She’d assumed he spent the middle of the days, when he wasn’t with her, writing or doing something else connected to his job. She wondered if something had happened that had prompted him to hang out and fish for an entire week like that.

  She hadn’t known him long, but she felt like she understood him, and she couldn’t imagine him doing that without reason.

  She was tempted to just ask since that was what she normally did when she had a question, but the fact that she knew he was a writer—and still hadn’t told him—caused her to hesitate.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked as if he read something on her face. “Do you not approve of fishing?”

  She loved animals. He knew that. And she actually didn’t like the idea of killing fish for sport. “I don’t care, as long as you eat them and don’t kill them just for fun.”

  “Why would you think I kill them for fun?”

  “I don’t. I was just saying. I don’t see anything wrong with fishing for food.”

  “I usually throw them back.”

  She smiled. “And that’s fine too.”

  He smiled back at her. “Do you not fish?”

  “I never have. We never had a fishing pole.”

  “We?”

  She realized her mistake but decided it wasn’t worth trying to hide or dissemble. “Me and my mom.”

  She expected him to question her further, but he didn’t. All he said was, “Why don’t I take you fishing then?”

  She felt a flash of discomfort as she visualized the number of people who sometimes lined up on the fishing pier in Cape Charles. “The pier in town is always busy.”

  “I know. I wasn’t thinking about there. My buddy has a place a little farther south, and it has a pier. I could ask him if we could use it, and there would be no one else around.”

  “Oh. Good. That would be fine then. When did you want to go?”

  Cade was smiling, as if she’d really pleased him by accepting. “Let me call him and see what he says.”

  His friend was evidently out of town, and so they were able to go the following morning.

  It was only two miles away, so Holly suggested they walk. She hadn’t been in a car in years, and the thought of it actually made her a little nervous.

  Cade had no problem with walking, and it was a cool, pleasant morning, so they took the back roads until they reached his friend’s place.

  Cade carried the fishing stuff, and Holly carried a bag with grapes and bottles of water.

  Holly actually had a good time, as Cade taught her how to put on the bait and then cast the rod. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually learned how to do something—even something simple—and it was an exciting and freeing experience.

  She started to wonder what else there was she might be able to learn, without going into town or interacting with a lot of people.

  Cade was enjoying himself too. She liked the expression on his face as he stared out at the bay. Relaxed. Almost fond, as if he was remembering something really nice.

  When they were both standing on the pier, holding their rods, she turned to him and asked, “So how did a city boy like you learn how to fish?”

  “What makes you think I’m a city boy?”

  “I know you grew up in Cape Charles, but you’re definitely a city boy now. You live in a big city, don’t you?”

  “New York,” he admitted. “How can you tell?”

  She gave a little shrug. She couldn’t identity the specific clues she’d picked up on. They just came together in her mind unconsciously. That was nearly always how she got her impressions of people. Even if she hadn’t overheard that conversation in the drugstore, she still would have known he was from the city. “You give off that vibe. Do you like New York?”

  “Sure.” He was staring off at the horizon again, and it looked to her like he’d thought of something painful or at least uncomfortable. “It takes some getting used to if you’re from a small town, but I like it a lot.”

  She’d never been to New York. Just the idea of it she’d visualized from books made her blood run cold. But he probably liked the fast pace, the action, the variety of people, the ever-changing scene. Everything that she dreaded.

  “Oh, you never answered my question. How did you learn to fish?”

  “My Uncle Roy taught me.”

  “The man behind the grill at the drugstore?”

  “Yeah. That’s him.”

  “He has your eyes.”

  Cade paused. “Yeah. I guess he does.”

  “I like him. He never tries to talk to me.”

  He laughed and reached over to tuck her hair behind her ear to keep it from blowing in her face. “You have an unusual measure for liking people, you know.”

  “I know. But you can tell a lot about someone if they can sense you don’t want to talk and they don’t try to force it on you anyway.”

  “Are you saying something about me?” he asked with a teasing glance.

  She shook her head. “I didn’t mean you. But some people are like that. I like your uncle. Why did he teach you to fish and not your dad?”

  She wasn’t sure why she was asking so many questions. She’d decided the day they met that she wasn’t going to ask him questions that she didn’t want to answer herself. But the more she knew him, the more she wanted to know.

  Cade didn’t seem averse to answering. “My dad died when I was three. I never really knew him.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. What happened to him?”

  “Cancer.”

  For some reason, he seemed a little bigger, fuller, to her than he had the moment before. It was irrational, but somehow knowing this about him made him a little more real, a little more like her. Things hadn’t all come easy to him his whole life.

  He slanted her a look. “You’re not going to say sorry?”

  “No. Why would I?”

  “It’s just something people say. To show sympathy.”

  “I know. I heard it all the time when… when I was younger. It always made me mad.”

  Cade didn’t answer. It felt like he was holding something back.

  “Anyway,” she added, “I’m glad you had your Uncle Roy, if you never got to know your father.”

  “Me too.”

  “What is your mom like?” she asked, surprising herself when the question just popped out.

  “She’s great.” Cade smiled. “She’s always baking.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. If I lived with someone who baked, I’d be about three times bigger than I am.”

  Cade’s eyes traveled down the length of her body, a smolder of admiration sparking up. “I somehow doubt it. What about your mom?”

  Holly should have expected the question, but she sucked in a breath anyway. “What about her?”

  He shrugged li
ke it was no big deal. “You asked me about mine, so I asked you about yours. We’re even right?”

  “Right,” she murmured, looking down at her hands wrapped around the fishing rod. “Even.” She swallowed and said, “She’s great too.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She left.”

  “What do you mean she left? She didn’t just walk out on you or something, did she?”

  She liked the repressed outrage in his voice, as if he couldn’t believe someone would do that to her. “No. Not like that. She… she had to leave. I was eighteen.” It wasn’t as hard as she’d thought to give him the answers, so she started to relax a little.

  “Why did she have to leave?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “You can give it a try.”

  She swallowed hard. “Life was difficult for her. It was too… too hard for her to stay here.”

  Cade looked like he had more questions about that, but he must have picked up resistance from her expression because he didn’t press. “Did she bake?”

  “No. She didn’t bake. She loved nature, and she loved books. She told me stories.”

  “What kind of stories?”

  “Stories she made up, about the things around us. The sun had a story and the moon and the stars. And the birds and the seashells. And the bay.” She closed her eyes, suddenly feeling a tug of nostalgia so strong it took her breath. “And the bay.”

  “Is that why you’re so attached to all of it? All the things around you, I mean?” He looked like it was a sincere question, like he really wanted to know.

  “Maybe.” She frowned. “I’ve never thought about it, but maybe. Telling stories does that, doesn’t it?”

  “Does what?”

  “Makes us know things with our hearts, not just our heads.”

  He was a writer, she remembered. She wondered if his books were mostly head knowledge or if he exposed his heart in what he wrote.

  She wished she could read one of his books.

  “I like that,” he murmured. “I’ll have to remember that.”

  She felt a flash of surprise and joy, realizing that something she’d said, just an idle comment, seemed to have meant something to him, might have really helped him.

  “Where did you go to school?”

  She supposed it was a normal question, but it felt invasive to her. She had to fight the instinct to close up on him. Cade didn’t deserve that. He was just interested in her, being friendly. “My mom taught me.”

  “She homeschooled you? All the way through?”

  Cade probably pictured a regular homeschool routine, but that wasn’t how Holly was taught. Her mother wanted to stay completely off the grid—for very good reason—so the state didn’t even know Holly existed until she was a teenager.

  Holly didn’t tell Cade that though. “When we lived in Maryland, I went to a public high school.”

  “That must have been a hard transition for you.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “I guess so. I think I was just… pretending to be someone else. So it didn’t feel as hard as it was.”

  “When did you stop pretending?”

  “When we moved back here and then my mother left.”

  “So your dad wasn’t in the picture?”

  Holly tried to hide the chill that overwhelmed her. “He was never in the picture.”

  “So who did you have left when your mother left you?”

  “I had everything here. It’s been enough.” She was telling him the truth. The absolute truth.

  Cade was frowning, as if he didn’t like the idea of that, as if he was worried about her.

  He didn’t ask any more questions, a fact that Holly greatly appreciated.

  That afternoon, Holly was strangely restless.

  She didn’t normally feel this way. Usually she could amuse herself without any trouble—by reading or working around the house or lying on an outdoor chaise near the house and watching nature keep busy around her.

  But today she couldn’t find anything to occupy herself.

  She wanted to talk to Cade, to be with him, even just to sit next to him.

  The significance of this was quite alarming since she’d never felt such an urge to be around other people before, certainly not an urge as strong as this one.

  If she kept feeling this way, she was going to have to cut Cade out of her life. Soon. No matter how upsetting the thought of doing so was becoming to her.

  To distract herself, she decided to clean her bookshelves, a task that required taking all the books off the shelves, cleaning and polishing the wood, and then dusting each book before setting it back into place.

  The job should have kept her busy all afternoon, but she kept pausing, staring out the window, wondering what Cade was doing right now.

  She wished she knew what his author name was. She wanted to read his books.

  She wanted to know him that way, that much, that deeply.

  Maybe she should just ask him.

  It required a constant internal battle to focus on the task at hand, so it took longer than usual to finish the bookshelves. She finally made it to the final shelf—the top one that included all her favorite books.

  She held the William C. Chesterton book for a moment before dusting it. Her favorite book, the one about the Eastern Shore. She stroked the soft cover, wondering if she was the only person who felt the urge to caress her favorite books like they were lovers.

  Chuckling to herself at the thought, she flipped through the pages to dislodge any dust and then gently wiped off the back.

  Then a recognition triggered in her mind that caused her to freeze.

  There was something. Something that had caught her attention. And she had no idea what it was.

  Staring down at the back of the book, she read the description and the blurb quotes, but they were normal, nothing noteworthy about them.

  Then she lowered her gaze to the bottom of the back cover and stared at the picture, immediately feeling that flare of recognition again.

  The author picture had been posed on a city sidewalk, and the young man wore a suit and a pair of glasses. He was tall and fit and attractive in a generic way. It was a full-body shot, so his face was very small and somewhat obscured by the glasses and the tilt of his head. Maybe he was trying to look serious and intelligent for his author image, but he looked like he could have been anyone, like there was nothing personal or unique in his face or body. She probably wouldn’t have even recognized him if he hadn’t already been on her mind.

  But it was Cade.

  It was Cade.

  She read the back, including the very brief bio of the author next to the picture, but it was just as generic as the photo itself.

  Then she read the introduction to the book again, trying to pick up signs of his voice, and it didn’t take long until she could. It was him. It had to be.

  Cade had written this book—the one she loved so much.

  And he’d also written those other books, delving into the darkness of the criminal mind.

  She’d known he was a writer, but she hadn’t known he was this writer.

  She felt stupid—like it was something that should have been obvious but wasn’t. And she also felt upset. They’d even talked about his books. He’d asked her what she thought about them. And he’d never said it was him.

  They’d had that conversation when they just met, however. There was no reason he would have trusted her then with his identity.

  He still didn’t trust her though.

  What was also so unsettling was that now it felt she knew him—really knew him—because she’d read his books. She knew more about how he thought, what he valued, what he believed than she ever would have been able to uncover in weeks’ worth of conversation. And that made her feelings for him more intense, deeper, than they ever should have been.

  What was he doing here anyway? Was he just hanging out between books, between jobs as he’d indicated? Or was h
e starting to work on a new book? And, if so, was that why he always seemed so curious about her background.

  There was a story to be told of her life, but she didn’t want anyone to tell it. Certainly not Cade.

  Surely he wouldn’t be wanting to write a book about her.

  Even the idea was so appalling—such a betrayal—she couldn’t even wrap her mind around it.

  It was silly though. Asking questions was probably second nature to him. He would have absolutely no reason to assume there was any sort of story potential in her life. He would be on the lookout for big, dramatic, gory stories for his next book. Serial killers. Really intense and mind-blowing stuff.

  He wouldn’t be interested in the pain and drama that made up one very small life.

  That evening, they were both lying on the beach on towels after swimming.

  Holly had wrapped a towel around herself as she was drying off, and she didn’t take it off when she lay down on her second towel. For some reason, she wanted to be covered this evening although she normally didn’t even think about it.

  It felt like Cade was exposed to her in a way he hadn’t been before, and irrationally that made her feel exposed to him as well.

  Cade didn’t comment on her choice of covering up. Maybe he was relieved.

  She hadn’t talked much this evening. She’d even been tempted not to come outside to meet him at all. But if she didn’t show up, he might come up to the house to ask what was going on, and she couldn’t let him into her house.

  Not now.

  So she’d kept mostly silent, and he hadn’t yet asked about it.

  They lay in silence for several minutes, listening to the sea birds and the waves until finally Cade turned his head to face her. “So what’s going on with you this evening?”

  She blinked. “What do you mean?” She knew what he meant and what the answer was, but she wasn’t ready to say it yet.

  “You know what I mean. You’re upset about something, and I want to know what it is.”

  “Isn’t there a chance that I’m thinking about things that have nothing to do with you?”

  “Naturally.” He turned onto his side and propped his head up with one arm. “But I want to know about those things anyway.”