Point Hope (17 page)

What was Amanda doing out on that road that night? Would he ever be able to answer that question? Trey turned his head and looked that direction as they merged.

Suddenly a horn blared. It just kept going.

Alex threw up a hand in anger. “What the hell!”

The other driver flipped him off and sped off ahead of them. Trey expected Alex to keep going, but he pulled off onto a side street, a block before the bridge.

“Did you put on your blinker?” Trey asked.

“I don’t know.” Alex’s voice trembled. “I was merging, and that car shot toward me and hit his horn.”

There was no way to know who was at fault now, but Trey said, “We had the right of way… He probably just wasn’t looking.”

Alex had left the car running but didn’t look like he planned to pull back out any time soon. Trey wasn’t big on omens, but sometimes…like on the beach, it really felt like a sign they were all wearing white. There were guys in the Navy that lived by signs, and not just conventional ones like
red sky at morning, sailor take warning
. Some guys saw meaning in the smallest things. Trey liked to think he was guided by something bigger, like faith, love, and family tradition. He believed in doing the right thing and giving everything his all. In this case, he didn’t think a stupid driver was reason to go home, but it wasn’t his call.

“Alex,” he said, “We can reschedule the appointment if you need to, but you don’t have to let this get to you either.”

Alex flicked a look at him. Maybe he needed more that.

“There’s something to be said for getting back on the horse and not letting life knock you down.” Trey meant all the recent events, as well as the run in with the angry driver. “Even if you’re a good driver, you’ll cross paths with jerks like that. People in a hurry, and so they tailgate you. People sending a text, and so they scream at you because they were on the wrong side of the road. Sometimes you have to be the bigger person.”

“Bunch of nut suckers,” Alex whispered.

“What?” Trey almost laughed but choked it down.

“Rosette says that when people cut her off.
Nut suckers
.” Alex went ahead and laughed.

Trey couldn’t help but join in. “Frickin’ frog eaters.”

“Oh, what about—
effing arf eaters
!” Alex laughed so hard tears sprang up in his eyes. “What is up with her weird words?”

“That’s her way of not cussing, I guess.”

“She kicked the back door the other day and said
shipping snot balls
, but it sounded like
shi—”

“Okay, okay, we’re going to miss your appointment if we don’t get moving.”

“All right, I’m ready.” Alex put the car in gear and drove around the block and then back out to the highway. They were on the bridge when he said, “Thanks.”

~  ~ ~

Rosette glanced at the clock yet again and thought about calling Trey. She pictured him sitting at the DMV waiting while Alex was out on the driving test. She was so nervous for him! What if he didn’t pass? Alex was a good driver—especially for a teenager—but there was always the oddball chance something could go wrong and he’d get nervous and careless.

The house phone rang and she grabbed it without checking Caller ID. “Hello?”

“Hey, Rosette, I’ve got great news!” It was Barb from the Dry Dock Gift Shop in town. For a few seconds, Rosette wished it was Trey calling with news about Alex, but then…

“Did something finally sell?”

“Yes! Your mermaid chess set. An older gentleman and his friends were in, and it turns out they’re chess fanatics. He also loves the sea, so it was love at first sight. Rosy, you wouldn’t believe how happy he was over that set!”

Rosette was ecstatic. It’d been a year since she’d sold anything through the shop. “Wow, and that’s my biggest item!”

They talked for a few more minutes—mainly about what else Rosette had to bring in, before saying goodbye. She actually did have another chess set finished, and she’d deliver that to Barb tomorrow. Maybe this would motivate her to get back to her favorite hobby. It was a fun challenge to pick up driftwood from the beach and decide what to carve it into. Usually the original shape of the wood dictated what it would be—a bird or seal, or perhaps something more whimsical like a gnome or unicorn. She carved and polished and made unique artwork out of the driftwood.

The chess pieces were a little different. It took hours of hunting to find pieces of wood that might be suitable. Of course, she spent countless hours on the beach anyway, picking up any and all interesting items, from bigger pieces of driftwood to carve, to small seashells, to little pieces of wood that held promise. The mermaids needed more carving than anything she did, but she loved it. She had begun in high school, as a project in art class, and just kept going, always having a few pieces to work on. Eventually that had added up to a box of tiny, meticulously detailed mermaids, carved to stand up on their own, all in different poses.

A noise outside meant they were back. She grabbed the camera from the closet shelf and bounced out the front door, running out to the curb where Alex had parked.

One look at Alex said he passed—and it must have been with flying colors! The driver-side window was rolled all the way down, and Alex was excitedly looking out at her, flashing a big, brilliant smile with his perfect white teeth. His blue eyes were sparkling. He looked happier than she’d seen in him a long time.

She hopped right up to Trey, throwing an arm around him and plopping a kiss on his mouth. “My chess set sold down at Barb’s! Can you believe it?” A second later, seeing the surprise on his face, she remembered that they didn’t kiss like that anymore. She quickly dropped her arm and stepped back. Hot color ran up her neck and onto her cheeks like flame up a dry barn wall.

“Wow, that’s great, really great!” He said, several emotions playing on his face. She could almost see him questioning if that kiss meant anything. “Wasn’t that a big ticket item?”

Giddy again, she mouthed, “Two grand!” Her mouth tingled from kissing him and remembering so many things she shouldn’t think about anymore. Then she turned away to face Alex. “Congrats to the new driver in the family!” No one needed to tell Alex to smile.

She held up the camera and snapped a shot. Looking down at the screen, her heart nearly stopped. The camera had caught exactly what she saw: her little boy was turning into a man.

Trey stepped up beside her. She looked up and caught her breath at the look in his eyes. He felt it too.

“We should celebrate tonight,” Trey said. “Alex, where do you want to eat?”

“Can I drive to TJ’s house?” Alex asked, still in the car. “Oh, yeah, let’s go eat Chinese tonight, but I can go to TJ’s first?”

“Of course. Go have some fun,” Trey said, his words light, but his voice full of emotion. Rosette could remember when Trey got his license. They were just friends then, but he drove Ricky, her, another girl named Emily, and Angel all to the beach and then the movies. He’d been spectacular—that was the only word that described the light of excitement in his eyes, that new glow of coming adulthood and freedom. She saw it in Alex now.

Together, they watched him drive off and stood still for a minute, gazing down the road. In another couple of years, Alex would be out on his own. So little time. Had they equipped him with the wisdom he would need?

She shivered, feeling bare standing next to Trey without the buffer of Alex or the other kids there.

“He knows what he’s doing,” Trey said, nodding his head, then heaving a sigh. “He’s smart. He’s not a risk taker, either.”

“He’ll be fine.” She knew Trey needed that reassurance as much as she did. The street was empty now. Somehow that made her feel empty inside.

Trey took a step and waited for her to follow. “Can we talk?”

Her heart sank at his tone. She’d been hoping they’d just let that little slip-up kiss go by. “I didn’t mean to do that.” Heat threatened to creep up her face again.

Trey gave her his brow-creased head tilt before he remembered what she meant. Shaking his head, he said, “No, don’t worry about it.” His gaze dropped to her mouth, and a different kind of heat spread through her.

Was there any chance her husband still wanted her? Needed her? She tried to pull in a breath but couldn’t.

He gestured toward the side of the house and the path that led out back. She followed him and they walked to the back edge of the yard, overlooking the ocean. They watched the waves roll in for a few minutes, the silence building like the tide gradually pushing in the sea below.

“All this has me thinking,” he said at last.

About us?
She didn’t want to ask that. Instead she took off in another direction with, “Losing Ricky and Amanda? Getting Hope…and I guess Summer?”

At her words, he turned to look back toward the house briefly. She didn’t think the kids would think anything of them standing out here to talk…but then again, they picked up on the weirdest little details.

She thought again of kissing him, and how she couldn’t anymore. There was so much distance between them. Leena was between them.

“Trey, one nice day on the beach doesn’t fix everything.”

He jerked his head back to stare at her, unbelieving. Shocked.
Angry.
It looked like this was news to him. How could that be? He raked a hand through his hair. “I know that. But I didn’t want Alex to look back on his sixteenth birthday and remember it as the day we split up.”

He was going to freaking guilt her into this?

“That again, huh?” She spun around to glare at him, ready to let loose.

“Rosette!” he held up his hands. “Amanda’s funeral is Saturday, for Christ’s sake. We made a deal, remember? We would pull ourselves together for the family and get everyone through this.”

She stepped closer and jabbed a finger into his chest. “You lied!
We
made a deal while
you
were screwing around behind my back! ”

“No, I wasn’t!”  He flung his arms out in frustration and walked the other way, lacing his fingers behind his head, the way he did after running. He growled and paced, then spun and stalked up to her. “Tell you what,” he said, “the decision will be yours. Once we get past the funeral, you can decide what we do.”

“That’s not fair.” She had to push the words through gritted teeth and hot tears. “You are not putting this on me!”

“But I thought you wanted…” The fight deflated in him. “Never mind. Can we just make it through Saturday? Then we’ll talk about this?”

Sure, let’s just put off making a decision and just live in limbo and pain forever.
She shrugged and turned to walk back to the house. “Fine.”

~  ~ ~

Driving solo was the best feeling in the world! Like having your own money, only better. Like having a girlfriend, only he didn’t know much about that one yet. Alex put the window down even with a mist falling. The wind felt awesome.

At the end of the afternoon he drove home, wishing he could stay out, go see some more friends, maybe drive everyone to the movies, but then he remembered the look on Trey’s face when he had enthusiastically suggested dinner to celebrate. Alex parked in the garage and sat in the car for a minute, letting it sink in. He was a driver now.

When he walked inside, he found Trey and Rosette both waiting for him, sitting silently on different sofas in the living room. They were trying to look like they weren’t waiting for him, but they were.

He couldn’t help it; he started laughing. “You two didn’t hold your breath the whole time, did you?”

“Just wait until you have kids,” Rosette said, pointing a finger at him.

That was a weird thought, and it stopped all three of them. Everything had heavy undertones these days. He guessed that’s what happened when people started dying all the time. “I’m going to go invite Summer to Kum Yon’s with us.”

He went out the side door and spotted Summer sitting in the backyard in a lounge chair. It was positioned so you could look out to the ocean, but she was smoking and staring down instead.

He walked over and sat in a chair facing her. “I got my license.”

“Cool.” She looked up at him without expression.

“We’re going out for dinner to celebrate. You should come.”

“You want me to?” She said everything in deadpan, but somehow he could hear a faint tone in her voice, something like hope.

“Yeah.”

 “I’m trying to quit, if that’s what you’re going to say.” She held her hand up with the cigarette, looked at it, and dropped it on the ground. Evidently he made her feel guilty for smoking in front of him.

“No, I was just wondering how you’re doing. I heard Trey making calls about…you know, the funeral.” It was three days away. And exactly two weeks after Ricky’s funeral.

She dropped her gaze. It looked like she didn’t want to talk to him, so he started to get up.

“How do you do it?” Summer asked suddenly, picking at a fray in the knee of her jeans instead of looking at him.

He lowered himself down into the chair again. The mist was almost heavy enough to be a light rain, and they’d end up wet if they sat out in it much longer. Summer didn’t seem to notice at all, or care that her fingers looked cold and bluish.

“Do what?’ he asked. “Deal with all this?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you lose your mom when you were a baby, and then your dad? Then your brother. And Amanda.”

He almost shrugged, but this wasn’t like talking to Trey, where they didn’t say what they really felt. It wasn’t like talking to Rosette where they did talk, but they didn’t
really
talk about the nitty gritty.

Finally he said, “I want to know what you did. Why you went to prison.”

She stared at him like he was an idiot. “Why?”

“There are too many secrets around here.”

“Around here.” She repeated that phrase, thinking about it instead of the bigger part of what he’d said. Maybe that was the bigger part for her—that she was a part of
around here
now.

“They’re soft secrets,” he said, trying to explain it. That was so lame, but it’s what he’d come up with in the middle of the night. “It’s the kind people hold onto, thinking it won’t matter. But it does. Those kinds of secrets change everything.”