Follow the Stars Home

by Luanne Rice

  “Yeah,” Alan said. “One date.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  The problem was, Alan hadn’t been fast enough. The world could change in the course of one date, and when he’d been out with Dianne, he had known he had met someone amazing. He had felt a deep connection looking into her eyes and kissing her in the car, and he could have sworn she had felt it too. But then he had worked some late nights at the hospital, called Dianne at the wrong time, and lost his chance to see whether the connection was real or just a dream.

  “So what’s the problem?” Tim asked again.

  “You’re going to marry her and settle down?”

  “Yep.”

  “Really settle down?” Alan asked, making himself a disapproving jerk so Tim wouldn’t detect the fact he was being eaten alive by jealousy.

  “As much as I can,” Tim said. “She knows about the boat, the lobster license, the fact I work offshore. I don’t think it bothers her.”

  “She hasn’t watched you come and go,” Alan said. “For the last ten years.”

  “Hey, you had your chance. You could have been an oceanographer. You’re the one who nailed yourself to a medical practice.”

  “I know.”

  “Dianne has no problem with my work,” Tim said. He grinned, showing his broken front tooth. Trying to pull pots in a high sea six winters before, he’d gotten smacked in the face with the winch handle. It pissed Alan off that Tim wouldn’t go to the dentist and get it capped. It was almost as if he had decided to live a role, play a part.

  “She likes the maverick lobsterman,” Alan said. “That it?”

  “Yeah, she likes it.”

  “The renegade home from the sea.”

  “Hey …” Tim said, picking up on the sarcastic tone.

  “Hope she likes it as much when you’re not home from the sea,” Alan said. “When you decide to head into Newport instead of back to Hawthorne.”

  “Those days are over,” Tim said. He grinned again, and there was something of a brother-to-brother wink in his eye. Alan felt the jealousy surge again, and he wanted to knock his brother flat on his back. Tim was right: Alan had dated Dianne only once. But whether he liked it or not, Alan still felt the connection. Alan knew his brother, and he didn’t want him hurting her. Taking a step forward, he stood toe to toe with Tim.

  “They’d better be,” Alan said.

  Tim stared him down, his eyes lit up and ready to fight. Neither brother had forgotten their last fight up in Cambridge, and Alan could almost feel the heat pouring off Tim’s skin. They were each waiting for the other to throw the first punch.

  “She’s different than we are,” Alan said. “She comes from a family where they look out for each other. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “You warning me?” Tim asked, jabbing Alan’s chest with his index finger. “About my own wife-to-be?”

  “I’m warning you to be good to her,” Alan said.

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Her parents stick around,” Alan said. “For each other and for her. Not like Mom and Dad. Not like what happened after Neil died.”

  “I was there for Neil,” Tim said, head up, chin out.

  Alan stared, harsh challenge in his eyes, unable to contradict something his brother held as gospel truth. But thinking back all those years, Alan remembered Tim sitting outside Neil’s window.

  It was summer, and the sky was blue and birds were singing, and Tim had sat in the grass throwing his baseball into his mitt over and over again. Alan had snuck past his parents to be with Neil. They could hear the thunk-thunk of Tim’s baseball going into the mitt. That dark bedroom had smelled of sickness and death, and Neil’s eyes had been wide as an owl’s, staring at Alan with the sheer terror of not knowing what was going to happen to him.

  “Don’t hurt Dianne,” Alan said now, with a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  “Go to hell,” Tim said. Stepping back, he turned and started to walk away. “You my best man or not?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Alan said, because Tim was his only living brother. For his sake, and for Dianne’s, he’d finish this right then. Dianne would never know about this fight or about the misery he was feeling inside. “I am.”

  “I don’t know why,” Tim said, “but I’m glad.”

  Weary and fed up with the fight, Alan had stood by his desk, watching him go. His brother was tall, his posture straight and proud. Why shouldn’t it be? He had won the girl. Alan had the diplomas and degrees, Tim had his boat and Dianne. When he got to the doorway of Alan’s office, he turned around.

  Tim’s blue eyes were fierce. Alan’s stomach tensed, knowing that his brother was claiming victory in their latest battle of life. But staring across the office, he saw something else too. Deep in those eyes Alan saw fear. He saw the glimmer of a man who was already lost.

  For a moment Alan tried to think of something to say, something to call Tim back and keep him from walking away, make up for the latest breach between them. After all, the brothers were each other’s only living relative. But once Tim McIntosh had decided to walk, nothing anyone could say was going to stop him.

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  The last Wednesday in May, Alan felt tense, as if he wanted to run twenty miles. Instead, he only ran three, heading over to the library early. Mrs. Robbins wasn’t at the counter, a fact that disappointed him straight off. But there was his yellow and white striped towel, folded like a book, on top of the reshelving cart. Nodding to the young library assistant, Alan reached across the counter to get it.

  He picked out his journals, settled down in the reading room, and opened to an article called “Krill: Life Force and Food Source for Blue Whales.” His heart was still pounding from his run. His left knee had started aching lately-for the first time in years-from an ancient injury, the time he’d crashed straight into Tim, sliding home at a baseball game behind Barnstable High School. His throat had been hurting all day, and now he sneezed.

  He had taken Rachel Palmer, a nurse he knew from the hospital, to the movies Sunday night. Afterward, she’d wanted to get a drink and have dinner. Instead, Alan had convinced her to walk out on the curving sand spit to the lighthouse. It was dark. There was no moon, and they could hardly see their way.

  Her shoes were wrong, the too-high heels sinking into the cold sand. She didn’t complain though. She kept up with Alan, talking about the movie. Alan had strode along, hands jammed into his jacket pockets. Across the bay was Gull Point. The channel was black ink, the tide rushing out. The lights of Dianne’s house blazed beyond the dark marsh.

  Alan stood under the lighthouse. The beacon swung across the water, lighting a path to Dianne. Rachel held his hand. She was tall and sexy in her tight beige sweater. Alan eased her onto the damp sand, taking off her clothes so roughly, she’d exclaimed. She pulled her own lacy black bra off herself. Lust, thrills, they’d had it all. Alan had held her tight, trying to catch his breath. Wanting to make up for his thoughts, for the fact he couldn’t stop staring at Dianne’s house across the channel, he’d let her wear his sweater and jacket.

  “Call me,” she said when he dropped her off.

  “I will,” Alan said, kissing her. She gave him back his clothes. Shivering in his T-shirt, he left them on the seat. She was divorced. She worked in the ER, and she had a six-year-old son. Alan felt like a creep who deserved the cold he’d caught. He knew he’d never call her again. Truth, when it came to romance, had never come easy for Alan. He thought back to how he had pretended to forgive Tim for stealing Dianne, when instead he had wanted to kill his brother.

  He sneezed.

  “Gesundheit,” the reference librarian whispered loudly.

  “God bless you,” Mrs. Robbins said simultaneously, coming around the corner with a stack of new magazines.

  “Thank you,” Alan said to both of them.

  “Are you coming down with something?” Mrs. Robbins asked.

  “I always catch the kids’
colds,” he said.

  “Then you shouldn’t be running.”

  “I need the exercise,” he said.

  “Exercise, my foot. Get yourself home and spend your day off in bed,” she said sternly, but then her face softened into a wonderful smile. “If the doctor won’t mind my saying so.”

  Alan sneezed again. His throat hurt, and his chest felt heavy. Mrs. Robbins put her hand on his forehead. It reminded him of his grandmother.

  “You have a fever, my boy,” she said.

  “Hey, how’re Julia and Dianne?” he asked, trying to sound offhand. “Things seem to be working out okay with Amy?”

  “Never mind Julia and Dianne,” Mrs. Robbins said. “Never mind Amy. You go lie down and try taking care of yourself for a change. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said. Chills came over him suddenly, and he shivered. He was really sick. Being cared for felt strange. Again he thought of his grandmother. Dorothea had done her best after Alan’s parents had absconded into their misery. But she had lived on Nantucket, a sea voyage away, and Alan had hardly ever seen her.

  “And call me in the morning!” Mrs. Robbins said.

  His grandmother might have joked the same way.

  The minute Lucinda Robbins got home, she took two cans of chicken broth out of the cupboard. When Emmett used to get sick, she would boil a chicken and make the stock from scratch. But for now, she made do with canned, throwing in some shallots, carrot, celery, peppercorns, bay leaf, and thyme from the garden. She set the pot to simmering.

  The girls were in Dianne’s studio. They were listening to Carly Simon today: The love songs floated on the air, straight into Lucinda’s open window. Dianne loved Carly. She always had. She’d listen to that voice-full of passion, singing about lost love and a broken heart and the joys of her children and hope about tomorrow-as if only Carly could express the things Dianne felt so deeply inside.

  Dianne was a wizard with wood. She had her father’s carpenter hands, his common sense, and his patience. Patience, above all, was the key to good carpentry. The ability to take a careful measurement, down to the last fraction of an inch, to fit pieces of wood together in a tight squeeze with no gaps or buckles. And faith: that she was making the right cuts, that she wasn’t going to ruin a piece of expensive wood with carelessness.

  Dianne had all that patience and faith when it came to wood.

  But Dianne had no faith at all about love. Why should she? Sometimes Lucinda looked at Dianne’s life and wondered how she had survived the despair. To be madly in love, the way Dianne had been with Tim, to marry him in the wedding of her dreams, to have his baby, and to lose him when the baby didn’t turn out to be the right kind.

  Dianne had nearly died. Literally. Lucinda had spent those early days after Tim’s departure caring for Julia while Dianne was too sad to get out of bed. For so many days, once she realized the extent of Julia’s problems, she was flattened by postpartum depression, and the only thing Dianne could do was cry. Julia had pulled her through though. Eleven years ago, that tenacious little baby with her terrible troubles and fierce needs had saved her mother from dying of love.

  But Alan McIntosh helped too. He had stopped by every day. There weren’t many doctors who made house calls, but he had never considered not making them. He was a forgiving man to look past Dianne’s leaving him for his brother. He’d come over straight from the office, minister to Julia’s peculiarities. Her third week alive, she’d had surgery to repair a twisted intestine, and they had attached a temporary colostomy bag to catch her little baby bowel movements.

  Dianne, wild with grief, had fumbled with the bag. She had pulled the adhesive away from Julia’s stoma, the open place in her tiny belly, and Julia was screaming in pain.

  Lucinda still remembered the pandemonium. Julia wailing, Dianne sobbing. Alan had walked into the kitchen, put his black case on the table, and taken Julia from Dianne. He held the infant against his chest, calming her down. A little trail of yellow baby poop stained his blue shirt, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  “I hurt her,” Dianne said, trembling as she wept.

  “No, she’s fine,” Alan said.

  “When I went to change the bag, I pulled too hard, and the connection ripped right off! Her skin’s so raw already, she’s been through so much …”

  “You didn’t hurt her,” Alan said more firmly. “It was like taking off a Band-Aid, that’s all. It’ll sting only for a minute. We’ll get a new one, get her all set up.”

  Gently handing Dianne her daughter, he rummaged through his case. He tore open the packages. Within two minutes he had cleaned Julia’s stoma, attached a new bag, wrapped her in her baby blanket.

  Lucinda had stood back, paralyzed. She had raised a healthy daughter, hadn’t had a clue about how to fix a colostomy bag, how to help Dianne from losing her mind. In awe of her own daughter, she had felt afraid to move.

  Alan had brought the courage to carry them all. Although he never pretended Julia was normal, he never acted as if she were different. Dianne had given birth three weeks earlier, the same week Tim left. She was pale and nearly insane, a quivering wreck with her dirty hair and blue robe. Afraid to hold her own baby, she had stood in the corner, tearing at her hair.

  Lucinda would never forget what happened next. It was summer, and the marsh was alive with crickets. Starlight burned the black sky. A wild cat howled, and it had reminded Lucinda of her own daughter. Alan had walked across the kitchen, tried to put Julia in Dianne’s arms. But she wouldn’t take her.

  “She’s your baby,” Alan said.

  “I don’t want her,” Dianne wept.

  You don’t mean that, Lucinda wanted to say. But maybe she did. Dianne lost her husband and so much more: her sense that love could overcome everything, that the world was a safe place, that good people had healthy children.

  “She needs you,” Alan said.

  “I want Tim,” Dianne begged. “Make him come back to me!”

  “He’s gone, Dianne!” Alan nearly shouted, shaking her arm to wake her up. “The baby needs you!”

  “I’m not a good enough mother for her,” Dianne said. “She needs someone much stronger. I can’t, I’m not …”

  “You’re the only one she has,” Alan said steadily.

  “Take her,” Dianne begged.

  “Your daughter is hungry,” Alan said. He led Dianne almost roughly to the rocking chair by the window and pushed her down. Then, in the tenderest gesture Lucinda had ever seen, he opened the front of Dianne’s robe. She had been fighting, but now she stopped. She just sat there, unable to move.

  Alan placed Julia at Dianne’s breast. Tears rolling down Dianne’s cheeks, she sat there in the dim light, refusing to look at her child. Outside, galaxies blazed in the night. She stared up, as if she wanted to leave this torment and become the blue star in Orion’s belt. Stubborn, she wouldn’t embrace her daughter. Kneeling before her, Alan supported Julia while she nursed at Dianne’s breast.

  A long time passed. Minutes seemed like an hour. After a while, Dianne held her child. Her arms moved up from her sides, seemingly of their own accord. Taking hold of Julia, she touched arms with Alan. Lucinda watched their foreheads nearly brushing, looking down at the baby. Their faces were together, their arms were entwined. Julia sucked hungrily.

  Lucinda stood at the stove, remembering. Glancing at the table, she could almost see them now: Dianne, Alan, and Julia.

  Lucinda decanted the soup into a big container, leaving the lid off to let it cool a little. She packed some fresh bread and butter into a bag, poured some lemonade into a jar. Then, heading across the side yard, she went to tell her daughter that the doctor was sick and it was her turn to make a house call. There were times, she swore, that Dianne was blind to her own life.

  At first Dianne felt impatient. Building a widow’s walk to sit atop her newest playhouse, modeled after one she admired in Stonington, was taking all her concentration. But her mother was insistent, telling her she’d made so
me chicken soup for Alan, and that Dianne had to drive it over to him.

  “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been to his house?” she asked.

  “Well,” her mother said dryly. “You have his address in your book. Look his street up in the gazetteer if you’ve forgotten where he lives.”

  “Only a librarian would have a gazetteer,” Dianne said.

  “Librarians aren’t so different from carpenters,” she said. “The right tool for each job.”

  “I know where he lives,” Dianne said reluctantly.

  “Julia is so lucky,” Amy said.

  They both turned to look at her. She had brought over a game of checkers, and she was playing a brand-new version with Julia.

  “To have Dr. McIntosh for an uncle,” Amy explained.

  “It has its ups and downs,” Dianne said.

  “That’s terrible, Dianne,” Lucinda said. “He’s very good to you both.”

  “Mom, I have to finish this order by Sunday,” Dianne said, trying again. “Can’t you take it over?”

  “I have the girls coming over for reading group tonight, and I have to get things ready.”

  “And you found time to make him soup?”

  “Like Amy said. He’s Julia’s uncle,” Lucinda Robbins said.

  Dianne had the truck windows open, letting spring air blow through the cab. The birds were in high gear, making the twilight hour zing with feeling. Swallows caught bugs in the fields. Flocks of starlings swooped and swirled in one black cloud. A lone kingfisher sat on the telephone wire above Silver Creek. Dianne smelled rose gardens, fresh earth, and the salt flats. Her mother’s package was in back, nestled among weighty bags of hinges and twopenny nails.

  Pearl Street was smack in the middle of Hawthorne. One of the oldest streets in town, many prosperous whaling captains and merchants had built their houses there in the 1800s. Two blocks back from the harbor, it was a little quieter than Front and Water streets.

  Driving slowly down Pearl Street, Dianne breathed the salt air. The sun was setting, and the white facades glowed with peachy iridescence. She hadn’t visited Alan at home in many years. His street brought back old memories of being happy with Tim, and she drove a little faster.