For Better, for Worse, Forever

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “Who’s she?” April thought she knew all of her parents’ friends. She’d not only never met this Betsy, she’d never heard of her either.

  “She was my best friend for more than eleven years. We did everything together—work, lunch, shop—sort of like you and Kelli, except we were older, mid-twenties to thirties. And we were both trying to have a baby. It helped going through all the frustration and disappointment with another woman. Men can’t really grasp the trauma a woman experiences when she wants to get pregnant but can’t.”

  Her mother plucked up a seashell and cradled it in the palm of her hand. “Anyway, at one point Betsy stopped talking to me. She just pulled away and I couldn’t figure out why. I begged her to tell me what was wrong. Had I done something to offend her? It was sheer torment for me. Then one day I heard from a mutual friend that Betsy was pregnant. I rushed to her and asked if it was true. It was. And I asked why she hadn’t told me. And she said because she hadn’t wanted to hurt me. She felt guilty, April, because she had something she knew I desperately wanted.”

  April heard the emotion in her mother’s voice and realized that even now, years later, the event still affected her. “So what happened?”

  “I told her I was happy for her, and I was. But I felt so betrayed because she hadn’t confided in me. It did irreparable harm to our friendship. She couldn’t believe that I could rejoice with her, that I wouldn’t be jealous and depressed about it.” Her mother paused. “So why am I telling you this? Because you’re going through much the same thing. You’re alive and Mark isn’t. You think he would somehow be disappointed in you if you allow yourself to have fun or date another boy. But from what I know about Mark, that simply isn’t true. No more than my being petty and angry about Betsy’s pregnancy would have been true all those years ago.

  “Mark understood. He knew what the odds of his dying before you were, even if the wreck had never occurred.”

  Her mother was right again; Mark had told April as much before their engagement. He had not expected to outlive her. “What are you saying to me?”

  “I’m saying it’s all right for you to be happy again. Give yourself permission to enjoy your life. To date if you want. To have a good time. It’s what Mark would have wanted. And if you’ll search your heart, you’ll see that I’m telling you the truth. Mark loved you. Now you must honor his love by living, not merely existing.”

  “But I—”

  Her mother interrupted. “Nobody knows how much time she has to live, April. You could have just as easily died before Mark. In an accident … anything.”

  April noted that her mother hadn’t said “a relapse.” But of course, that was such a real possibility that perhaps there was no need to state it. April shuddered. She didn’t want to die. The realization almost took her breath away. But if that feeling didn’t make her disloyal, what did it make her?

  “Don’t you think Mark would have missed you if something had taken you away from him?” her mother continued.

  “Sure he would have missed me.”

  “Wouldn’t you have wanted him to feel happy again?”

  “You know I would.”

  “Then stop feeling guilty and start enjoying every day you have to live.”

  Long after her mother had gone up to the house, April sat staring out at the sea, now calm and flat. The sky was deepening to shades of mauve. Far out against the horizon, a sailboat looked dead in the water. She identified with the boat. She felt limp. She longed for a new breeze, a fresh wind to come into her life and blow away the clouds of despair. She hungered to feel as alive as she had when she’d been with Mark. Was her mother right? While she couldn’t have Mark again, was it possible to have something to give her life new meaning?

  April decided to give herself permission to get out more and spend more time with her family. When her parents went to restaurants and museums, she accompanied them. They flew to St. Thomas for a day of shopping and antique hunting. She took long drives in her Jeep up into the rain forests of St. Croix and onto the far side of the island to the city of Frederiksted, passing abandoned sugar mills from the island’s early history.

  She passed the Buccaneer many times, but she never went in to see Brandon. She honestly believed she didn’t need the complication of him in her life. She was strolling past shops in downtown Christiansted one afternoon, looking for a gift for Kelli’s upcoming birthday, when she heard someone call her name. She turned to see Brandon hurrying toward her. Against her will, her heart gave a little leap. She pasted a smile on her face and braced for the encounter.

  “I thought that was you,” he said, jogging up. “I mean that red hair of yours is like a stoplight. How’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  She heard the admonishment in his tone. “I’ve been around,” she told him. “Busy.” Even to her ears it sounded lame.

  But his grin was quick, forgiving. “Well, now that we meet again, could I buy you an ice-cream cone? That shop across the street has tons of flavors.”

  The air felt humid and sticky. Ice cream would taste good. “All right,” she said, offering him a smile.

  Inside the pink-and-white ice-cream parlor, the air was cool and smelled of peppermint and chocolate. They chose different flavors and settled in at a small round table next to the picture window where sun beamed through the glass. “So what’s kept you busy?” he asked.

  “My parents.”

  He made a face. “It doesn’t sound very exciting.”

  “I have cool parents. How about you?”

  Immediately he stiffened. “My dad and I don’t get on too well.”

  She licked the ice cream, savoring the sweetness. “And your mom?”

  “She’s dead.”

  His statement sounded so stark that she gasped. “I’m sorry.”

  He licked his cone in silence, offering no other explanation.

  April cast about for something else to say, something to change the subject. The clock on the wall gave her the opening. “I thought you said you had school on weekdays until two.”

  “I didn’t feel like going today. I skipped.”

  “Do you have to work?”

  “Yeah, but not until three.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his long legs. “I wanted to come see you but I didn’t think you’d open the door for me.”

  “Look, Brandon—”

  “It’s okay,” he interrupted. “But I want to explain something.” She nodded politely, and he continued. “I got to thinking about it and I realized that you’ve finished high school and I haven’t. I figure you don’t want to be seen with some local high-school jerk. I’m really eighteen and I should have graduated last June, same as you, but don’t go thinking I’m some kind of dumb dork. You see, I had a rough year and I ended up missing too many days, so the administration said I had to repeat most of my senior year. I could have taken a test and gone straight into college. But I, um, I decided to hang back and graduate a year late.”

  His story surprised her. She suspected there was plenty he wasn’t telling her. She wasn’t about to dig it out of him either. The less she knew, the easier it would be not to become involved with him. “I didn’t have much use for high school by the time graduation rolled around,” she told him. “But I was glad I finished. You did what was right for you. And, by the way, I’ve never thought of you as some high-school jerk.”

  By now they were both through with their ice cream. “Look, would you like to take a walk on the beach with me? We can go over to the resort, and then I’ll be close to my job.” He stood and held out his hand. “Please.”

  She couldn’t say no—didn’t really want to—so she followed him outside, where they got into their separate cars and drove to the Buccaneer. Once there, they parked and he took her out onto the grounds. The tropical sun beat down and sprinklers arced over the golf course, tossing jewel-like drops of water over the grass. He led her into a forest garden where huge multicolored hibiscus and bright-orange
bird-of-paradise flowers grew in well-tended beds. Inside the garden the air felt cooler, and sun-dappled leaves shaded the winding pathways. “I’ll never get over how pretty everything is in St. Croix,” she said.

  Brandon stopped, peered down at her, and, touching the ends of her hair, said, “Yes. I agree. Things are more beautiful here.”

  Her heartbeat accelerated as she caught his message in his eyes. “So where does this path lead?”

  “Come. I’ll show you.”

  She followed, and minutes later the path led out of the garden and onto a sunny lawn. There she saw a latticed gazebo, painted white and trimmed with satin ribbons and cascades of white flowers. “How beautiful,” she exclaimed.

  “We must have just missed the party,” Brandon said. He stooped and picked up grains of rice and wild birdseed and tossed them playfully into the air.

  “What is this place?”

  “It’s the wedding chapel. People come from all over the world to be married here.”

  5

  Her heart thudded, and reality crashed in on her. “Can we go somewhere else?” Brandon looked surprised. “There’s no-place prettier than here.”

  “But I don’t want to be here.” April spun and hurried back up the path into the garden. The flowers, which only minutes before had been breathlessly beautiful to her, now seemed waxen and surreal.

  “Wait!” she heard Brandon call. He ran up behind her and caught her arm. “Don’t run off. What’s wrong? What’s happened? I thought you’d like the place. You said St. Croix was perfect and this is one of the prettiest spots on the island.”

  He must think she was crazy. Her hands trembled, and her knees felt rubbery. The sight of the wedding chapel had opened a wound on her heart that left her reeling and grief-stricken. “Which way to the beach?” she asked, struggling to hold back tears.

  “This way.” He took her quickly out of the garden, across rolling manicured grass, and down to the shoreline, where the gentle waves rolled onto the sand.

  There she stopped and breathed in great gulps of sea air, calming her racing heart. She kicked off her sandals and began to walk along the shore. The water washed over her footprints, blurring them. Brandon walked beside her, not speaking, allowing her the time she needed to gather her composure. She owed him an explanation but wasn’t sure how to begin. “I’m sorry, Brandon. I didn’t know that was going to happen. I was caught off guard.”

  “Exactly what did happen?”

  “Memories,” she whispered. “Just when I think they’ll never come back, they do.”

  Again he kept silent.

  She said, “My parents brought me to St. Croix to help me get over something. You see, back home, I knew this guy … we were very close.”

  “I knew it!” Brandon stopped walking. “I knew you were too good-looking to not have a boyfriend.”

  She turned to face him as the waves washed sand out from under her bare feet. “He was more than my boyfriend. Mark was my fiancé.”

  A somber look crossed Brandon’s face. “Oh.”

  “But he’s dead.”

  He looked jolted and his face went pale. “How …?”

  “Have you ever heard of cystic fibrosis?” She told him slowly, haltingly, about Mark and his disease, his love of racing cars, his accident. “He would have made it—the crash wasn’t that bad—if it hadn’t been for the CF. In the end, it won.”

  Brandon listened intently. She couldn’t read what he was thinking, but she knew her story had affected him because it showed on his face. “Life stinks!”

  “But we can’t change how life turns out,” she said. “Mark didn’t deserve to have CF and he didn’t deserve to die so young. After he was gone, I hated being in New York without him.”

  “So you came here.”

  “Winter up there is awful … the sky all gray and cold. Bare trees.” She shivered. “Everywhere I went reminded me of him. Last June, when I graduated, my father wanted us all to go on a family vacation, but at the time I was involved with Mark and I didn’t want to leave. Once he was gone …” She shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished. “I love it here … the ocean and all.”

  “What were you doing that day I first saw you up on the hill? It had something to do with Mark, didn’t it?”

  “CF robs a person of his breath, so blowing up a balloon was a pretty big deal for Mark. He used to blow up balloons for me as a present. Sometimes he’d tuck little notes inside. This time, I blew up a balloon for him, and I sent it up into the sky on the chance that he was up there, looking down. I wanted him to know I was thinking about him. And that I loved him.”

  “Mark was a very lucky guy to have had you.”

  “No, I was the lucky one.” Tears brimmed in her eyes. “We were right in the middle of planning the wedding when Mark died. Seeing that wedding chapel … well, it brought everything back.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You had no way of knowing.” She turned to face him, smiling tentatively. “But you’re right, it is beautiful.”

  Brandon shifted from foot to foot. “Now that I know about you and Mark, it explains some things to me. I understand that you might not want some guy pressuring you and coming on to you. But let me be honest. I still would like to see more of you. Nothing heavy,” he added quickly. “But I do know every inch of this island and most of the surrounding water. If you’ll let me, I’d like to be your friend. I’d like to take you around and show you my island.”

  His request was eloquent and simple and it touched her. She recognized that Brandon wasn’t some kid with a hidden agenda. Like her, he was lonely. He also had something buried deep inside his psyche that was painful. She guessed it had to do with the loss of his mother. She wouldn’t probe. If he wanted to talk about it, he would.

  “I would like that very much,” she said.

  She gazed out to the open sea. A sailboat leaned into the wind against the horizon. “You know, I’ve watched those boats from the first day I arrived, and I’d love to go sailing on one. Do you think we could do that sometime?”

  A dark expression crossed his face, prompting her to ask, “You do sail, don’t you?”

  “We have a boat. A nice one, but it’s in dry dock.”

  “Repairs? Painting?”

  He shook his head. The gloom in his eyes passed and he gave a quick grin. “We’ll rent a little boat, big enough for two. I’ll teach you how to sail it. How to tack and swing the sail about without knocking yourself into the water.”

  “I’d like to learn.”

  A beeping sound interrupted them, and Brandon glanced down at his watch. “My cue to go to work,” he said, flipping off the miniature alarm. “I’d like to call you.”

  She’d enjoyed the afternoon and realized she wanted to see him again. “Sure.”

  He offered to walk her to her car, but she told him, “You go on. I’m going to walk on the beach awhile longer.”

  “Talk to you soon,” he called, and jogged off toward the golf course.

  She watched him, gave a deep sigh, and whispered, “I hope this is okay with you, Mark.”

  By the time Brandon pulled into his driveway, night had fallen. The lights were on inside the sprawling house, which meant that his father was home, returned from one of his many business trips. Brandon couldn’t say he was glad. The less he had to do with his father the better. He went into the kitchen through the garage and saw his father sitting at the breakfast bar, nursing a drink over a half-eaten sandwich.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Working.” Brandon crossed to the refrigerator, every nerve in his body tingling.

  “I called the Buccaneer at five and they told me you were gone.”

  “Well, your source was wrong. At the last minute Doug decided the grounds crew needed to mulch the garden near the sixteenth hole. So that’s what I did.”

  “What about your schoolwork? Or are you going to take yet another pass at your senior year?”

  Low blow
, Brandon thought, but he ignored the barb. “I didn’t have any homework.” No need to mention that he’d skipped school that day.

  “When I come home after a week away on the job, I expect to see you. I wanted us to have dinner together.”

  “It was never important to you before,” Brandon shot back. “Mom and I ate by ourselves half my life.”

  “You watch your mouth. I was trying to earn a living.”

  Brandon glared at his father. “Well, now you have all the time in the world.”

  Rage crossed his father’s face, and Brandon knew he’d stepped over the line. He didn’t care. Why should he spare his father’s feelings? “You think I chose to leave the two of you alone so much? You think you know so much about taking care of a family? About making sure they have the things they want? Well, I’ve got news for you, Brandon, you don’t know a thing!”

  Brandon fished in his pocket and pulled out his car keys. “I know I’m out of here.”

  His father stood, tipping over the kitchen stool. “You do not have my permission to leave.”

  “I didn’t ask for it.”

  “You can’t leave until I say so.”

  His father took a step forward, but Brandon met his challenge. “Watch me.”

  “Your car—”

  “Is mine. It belonged to my mother and she left it to me. And I pay for the gas and insurance.”

  His father raised his hand as if to slap Brandon. Brandon didn’t flinch. His father sagged against the counter and buried his face in his hands. “I—I don’t want to fight with you, son.”

  “Too late,” Brandon said. He slammed the kitchen door, got into the car, and screeched out of the garage. But he stopped at the end of the driveway. It was after ten and he really didn’t have anyplace to go. Why did it have to be this way between him and his father? Why did they always end up in a yelling match?

  Brandon bowed his forehead until it touched the steering wheel gripped between his hands. His heart pounded crazily and his body shook. Of course, the questions were pointless. He knew why. There was just nothing he could do about it. He turned his roiling thoughts to April and immediately felt calmer. She understood what it was like to lose somebody you loved. But she didn’t understand what it was like to lose somebody the way he had lost his mother.