Return to the Beach House (26 page)

His chest ached with a volatile combination of color-laced emotions—joy, relief, passion, love. But mostly there was the profound, breath-stealing sorrow that came with knowing this could be the last time he would be there to meet her when she came home.

They’d survived ten years of hit-and-miss time together, but he’d reached the point where he was exhausted from missing her. He was lonely and wanted more. If they couldn’t find a way to stop giving the best of who they were to their jobs, he would find a way to go on without her.

He’d already survived one devastating loss. Somehow, he would manage to do it again.

Before the plane landed, Lindsey caught the flicker of a shadowy figure moving across the viewing platform. She knew without question it was Matthew braving the cold, willing her plane to a safe landing by his mere presence. In all the years they had been together, she couldn’t recall five times when she’d been the one doing the waiting. Somehow it was always Matthew who arrived first, Matthew who made the arrangements for a place for them to stay, Matthew who met her with open arms and a kiss that turned a long separation into a fleeting memory.

He coped with their separations by planning for the next time they could be together. She survived by escaping into whatever violent world she inhabited at the moment, having discovered early in their relationship that dodging bullets and bombs left little time to indulge the loneliness that came with missing him.

When her days or weeks between assignments didn’t coincide with Matthew’s, she wandered through whatever part of the world she happened to be in at the time, not realizing that what she was really doing was looking for a place for them to call home.

They’d tried an apartment in Atlanta, and one in London, picked for the major airports that served those cities more than for any love of the locations. But they found it was easier to meet spontaneously where and when opportunity presented itself. When months went by and they couldn’t connect, she missed Matthew like she missed oxygen at fourteen thousand feet.

He was the ground where she sank her tenuous roots. It could be an airport where they held hands and drank coffee until one of their flights was called, or it could be a couple of days they stole to hole up in a hotel making love and ordering room service so they never had to get dressed to go out. It didn’t matter in which city or country or continent they found themselves, they created their own home.

For years it had been enough. Or so they told themselves, ignoring the growing ache to share a story or a simple touch or a look that conveyed more than words could express. There were times when she looked into the night sky and convinced herself that Matthew was looking at the same star. She needed that connection to him as deeply as she needed to believe the work she did mattered.

She’d learned to patch her broken heart by summoning memories of the times when she’d stepped out of her observer role and rescued a child in desperate need of medicine or surgery, or when she’d finagled transport for a family to a refugee camp. She’d even taken solace in the story she’d talked her editor into doing on dogs adopted by U.S. soldiers while on duty and how they were forced to leave the dogs behind. She still received emails from grateful GIs, with pictures attached of their dogs, thriving in American cities all across the country as a result of the laws that were changed, in large part, as a result of that series of photographs.

Even this had stopped working. Now all that was left to sustain her fingertip hold on sanity was her constantly thinning connection to Matthew.

He was the only one she’d ever told when she started having minor meltdowns and how they had started to scare her. The last one, in the Congo—an hour of uncontrolled sobbing when she’d curled up in her sleeping bag and stuffed a sweater against her mouth—she hadn’t shared with him, and probably wouldn’t. To do so would be to acknowledge what Matthew had been telling her for the past four years—if she didn’t find a way to heal herself, she was going to wind up locked away in some sterile mental hospital. Her parents would visit on weekends and then on the drive home ask themselves what could possibly have happened to their sweet, fun-loving daughter.

They didn’t have a clue who she really was. Like her brother and sisters and grandparents, they loved her without knowing her. Only Matthew understood.

Matthew raced down the stairs and did a double-take when he saw Lindsey appear at the open doorway of the plane. In a tenth of a second, he went from confused to convinced that it wasn’t actually her, just someone who bore an uncanny resemblance to her. This woman was older and a good twenty pounds lighter, her black hair was short and dull, her stride slow and unsure. Then he saw the camera bag flung over her shoulder and knew that it was Lindsey and that she was in desperate trouble.

She fought for a smile as she followed the yellow line on the asphalt to the terminal, then leaned heavily into his embrace. The wind caught her hair and blew it against his face. Finally, something familiar—the flower-laden scent of her favorite shampoo. “What in the hell happened to you?”

She hated scenes. If she put into words what she was feeling, she’d create a scene that would scare not only Matthew but everyone within range. Instead of answering, she took his arm and steered him inside.

He stopped and turned her to face him. Passengers caught in their roadblock silently parted and flowed past, like a stream finding its way around a boulder.

“What’s happened to you?” he demanded again, fear radiating from him like debris from an explosion.

“Not now.”

“Is it your mom? Your dad?”

“
Please,
Matthew—not now.” Seeing he needed more, she added, “My parents are fine. Just get me out of here.”

He shouldered her backpack and guided her toward the baggage carousel. A woman juggling two toddlers and a car seat dropped her purse in front of them. Matthew offered to take the car seat, and she handed it to him with a tired smile of gratitude.

“Want a kid or two to go along with the seat?” she joked.

He returned her smile. “Give me a couple of years.”

Lindsey flinched as the innocent exchange triggered the tears she’d succeeded in controlling until then. It seemed everything made her cry lately.

“You could have warned me,” he said when the woman was out of earshot.

She tried to laugh, but it came out sounding more like a choked sob. “And I could have sent a picture, but I was afraid once you saw how big a mess I am you might find a way to cancel.”

Instead of answering, he clamped his jaw so tightly she could see the cords on his neck standing out. She should have known better than to try to joke about what was going on between them.

Arriving at the carousel, Matthew put the car seat against the wall and sprinted to get Lindsey’s duffle bag before it made a second round.

When he returned, she tried another smile, a sad attempt to bring a little joy into her homecoming. “I’ve missed you.” A tear raced down her cheek. “It’s been so long.”

“Too long,” he said.

Lindsey dug in her pocket, brought out her phone, and handed it to him. “Nothing is more important than these next four weeks.”

He would have been less surprised if she’d given him her camera bag and told him to toss it into the ocean. Her phone and cameras were the bible and prayer book of the Lindsey Thompson Church.

Matthew took the phone and slipped it into his pocket, appreciating the symbolic gesture, knowing it was no more than that. He picked up her backpack. Feeling its heft, he tried something easy. “Another camera?” When she didn’t immediately answer, he added, “Don’t tell me you finally broke down and bought that new lens.”

The smile was genuine this time. “I picked up the 70/200 before I went to Kabul last summer.”

“And?”

“Other than weighing too much, it’s incredible.”

“I told you that you’d love it.”

She came up on her toes and kissed his cheek. Fresh tears reflected the overhead lights before she could blink them away. Would she ever stop crying? “Doesn’t come close to the way I feel about you.”

Chapter 2

Lindsey stood in the middle of the living room while Matthew took her duffle bag into the bedroom. She glanced around and noted the small things that let her know Matthew had already settled in. There was a pair of running shoes by the sliding-glass door and a cloth on the dining room table where he’d cleaned his camera. A German edition of
GEO
magazine sat on the table beside a recliner. Next to the magazine was a coffee cup that could substitute for a soup bowl—along with a pair of glasses.

When did Matthew start wearing glasses?

She put her backpack on the table and then dug her fingers into the softness of the cashmere throw draped over the back of a chair sitting by the fireplace. If she let herself dream of houses, this would be the house she dreamed about. The walls would be painted the same sand color, the trim a soft cream. The carpet would be wildly impractical, something deep and plush and only a little darker than oatmeal. She would buy a sofa just like this one, made for naps or for tucking her feet under her legs and snuggling into the corners. Every chair would have an ottoman, and there would be lots of light for reading or doing crossword puzzles or even needlepoint.

From somewhere in the part of her brain where tender, underappreciated memories were stored, she flashed on the image of a needlepoint pillow she’d started in college and never finished. A sharp, painful ache of longing coursed through her and then, as quickly, was gone. One day she would finish and display that pillow in a home of her own, even if it looked every bit as bad as she remembered.

In her dream house there would be a fireplace with a raised hearth like this one. She could watch the flames and feel the warmth and forget, if only for an hour or two, all the children she had met who didn’t know how to dream anymore.

“It’s beautiful,” she told Matthew when he returned. She crossed the room to look out the sliding-glass door. The clouds had lifted, leaving a narrow strip of sky on the horizon where the sun sat like a bright orange beach ball after its last bounce. “Actually, it’s beyond description.”

Matthew came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist. She leaned into him. “Most of the houses in the cove are second homes,” he said, “and not used in the winter, so we’ll have the beach pretty much to ourselves.”

“How did you find this place?”

“Remember the piece I did on the evolution of Irish Setters for
Smithsonian
a while back?”

“My mom bought a copy for me. I haven’t seen it yet—but I will.”

“Doesn’t matter. It was just a fun piece with nothing earth-shattering in it.” He leaned forward and nestled his cheek against her hair. “I became friends with one of the Setter owners, Eric, a fiction writer who used to live here with his wife before they moved to Maryland. When he found out I was looking for a place for us to rent last summer, he and his wife, Julia, suggested we stay here. Then, when our plans fell apart, Eric said we should come whenever we had the time.”

“He must be pretty famous to afford houses on two coasts.”

“It’s complicated, but yeah, Eric’s books do okay.”

“Eric . . . ?”

“Lawson.”

“No wonder
Smithsonian
wanted him included in the piece. I see his books everywhere.” She didn’t say anything for several seconds, and then asked, “How long have you been here?”

“When I asked Julia about using the house in January, she invited us to come early. There’s a long-standing tradition with the year-round people to celebrate New Year’s together, and since it was Eric and Julia’s turn to host the party, they thought, if we came early, it would give us a chance to meet the neighbors. You weren’t available, so I came alone.”

Lindsey was hit with a jealousy so ugly and so uncharacteristic that it took several seconds to understand what it was.

“Was it a good party?” She thought about how she’d celebrated—after an exhausting day spent meeting with editors, she’d propped herself up in bed in a less-than-wonderful hotel room in New York, going through her pictures of the “Lost Children in the Congo” while out of the corner of her eye she watched the ball fall in Times Square on a ten-year-old television. She’d considered calling Matthew, but wasn’t sure where he was or what time zone he was in and figured they would celebrate in their own way as soon as they were together again. At the time she’d thought he would call her. Now she knew why he hadn’t.

“As a matter of fact,” Matthew said, “it was a great party. I’m glad I took them up on their offer.”

“You should have told me. I might have bailed out of my meetings sooner.”

As she’d known he would, Matthew instantly responded to the
might have.

“I didn’t want to put that kind of pressure on you,” he said with barely constrained sarcasm.

She waited, looking for something safe to defuse the tension. “Have you ever thought about how few mutual friends we have?”

“We’ve never been drawn to the same kind of people, not even in college.”