Snapshots (23 page)

Rick drew Trista closer so that her temple rested against his cheek. “I remember another lovely spring night,” he said. “You had treated the cut on my forehead and rinsed out my shirt. The satin of your dress felt smooth beneath my hands when I put my arms around you.”

“But I was also wearing a bra with miserable stays that cut into my skin and left scrapes that were sore for days,” she said, her breath sweet on his skin. Her lips curved into a smile against his neck.

He moved his hands upward, sliding them across her ribs one by one. “No bra tonight,” he said. “I can tell.”

“Mmm,” she said, leaning into him. “Is that important?”

He gazed up at the stars for a moment. “Maybe,” he said.

“I've thought about us a lot. Rick, I've avoided talking to you since I left Tappany Island because I needed the time and space to decide what to do. I prayed for a sign, something that would let me know that we're supposed to be together. If I didn't get one, I'd bow out gracefully from my job at WCIC and pursue some of the job offers I've had in the past. Atlanta, maybe, so I could live closer to Mom and Aunt Cynthia. Or somewhere out West where I could sink down new roots, California, perhaps, or Arizona.”

“Would you be happy so far away from the South? It's in your blood, as it is in mine.”

She looked thoughtful. “Something would draw me back every year, a homing instinct. I love Tappany Island, Rick, and the cottage. It's a way of life that I couldn't relinquish easily.”

“Nor could I,” he replied reflectively.

“Anyway, today I got my sign. Two of them, in fact. When Byron announced that he was leaving WCIC and I learned that I was going to be the sole anchor of the evening news, that was the first. The second was when you called and told me you were here. In Columbia. And wanted to see me. That changed everything.”

“Did it?” he asked, drawing back so he could study her face. “Did it really?”

“Really,” she said, the word only a murmur.

He kissed her then, thinking of how much this woman had meant to him over the years. Thinking of lost opportunities, and wrong decisions, and hurt feelings, and how love was almost impossible to find. Yet like the perfect sand dollar, once found, it was to be appreciated for its beauty.

For a long time, they kissed each other. Over and over and over, until he knew he'd never get enough of her kisses as long as they lived.

“I love you, Trista,” he said.

“Like a sister?” she asked teasingly.

“I guess I deserve that,” he said with a bit of embarrassment. “I can't be without you, Tris.”

“No one else ever measured up to you, Rick, ever.”

He leaned back to look at her. “Did you love me back then? The night of the prom?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I think I always loved you, even before the sixth-grade picnic, even before you attacked Hugh in that hotel room. But we were so young. Too young.” A tear trickled down her cheek, silver in the moonlight.

“The day I learned about your engagement to Graham, I got in my car and drove clear across Georgia and partway through Alabama. I found myself in some nameless little town and checked into a run-down motel where I stared at the walls for two days until I forced myself to drive back to Columbia. I couldn't bear the thought of you with anyone but me.”

“I didn't have a clue,” Trista said. “I had no idea.”

“If we'd stayed together then, we'd probably have drifted apart.”

“Maybe,” she said, though she sounded unconvinced.

“Maybe we're not supposed to know how it would have turned out. We've grown up, Tris. Our experiences have tempered us, challenged us, changed us.”

He brushed a tear away with a fingertip and kissed the place where it had been. She smiled tremulously.

“Hey, McCulloch. I think we should consider making up for lost time,” she said.

She led him the length of the balcony to the sliding door that opened into her bedroom. He didn't speak as she pulled back the draperies to admit the light of the stars and the huge silver moon above. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him with all the passion that he had been anticipating during the past weeks.

He held her tight so that he could feel her heart beat, and he marveled at life. Second chances didn't often present themselves, and yet he intended to take full advantage of this one.

She shifted away, and as he watched, she lifted the caftan over her head in one fluid movement. When she stood before him, her tall, slim body outlined against the open door and the light behind, she was more exquisite than he had even imagined, and now she was his.

Somehow his clothes obligingly ended up on the floor, and he went to her and just held her against him, rocking slightly as he gloried in the smooth texture of her skin, the kisses she trailed along his jaw and throat, her hands upon his firmness. For a long time, they touched each other, their kisses growing deeper and more intense. When he gazed into her eyes, he saw that they glowed with a special warmth, a deep-down happiness and contentment that he had never seen there before.

How could they have not realized it would be like this? How could they have avoided this all their lives? He didn't know. He didn't know anything except that he loved Trista with all his heart.

“Marry me,” he said close to her ear.

“Yes,” she said shakily. “Of course.”

They eased themselves down on the bed, and he noticed how fragile she seemed. She wasn't—her body was an athlete's, toned by running every day. Her pulse raced beneath his fingertips, and she moaned when he held her full breasts in his hands and kissed the rosy tips one by one. Their eyes locked for a long moment in which he knew—
knew—
that for her, this experience was as moving as it was for him.

He slid on top of her and almost immediately she guided him inside. He felt an astonishing sense of oneness with her, something he had never experienced, as though not only their bodies but their souls had merged. His exultation encompassed her, joined with hers as he grasped her hands and pinned them above her head, gazing into her eyes as her hips curved up to meet his and began to move instinctively.

Together they found their rhythm, felt it echo in their blood, lost their bodies in its throbbing beat. He felt her release building even as his own surged through him, and he cried out her name as he spun out of control. Lost in the reflection of stars and moon and city lights in her eyes, he could only cling to her as he drifted slowly back to reality. To Trista in his arms.

Which was as real as life could be. After a while, he brushed her damp hair from her face.

“When?” he asked her, knowing she would understand.

“In the fall, at Sweetwater Cottage. On the beach. With our families there, and Lindsay and Peter and their children.”

“Attendants?”

“I don't care. I just want to be married.”

Everything happens for a reason, Rick decided in those moments. Sometimes we take detours from the path of life, and we go where they lead us. But eventually, if we're lucky, we find ourselves where we're supposed to be. Or where we should have been all along.

“Rick? You're going to accept the job Alston offered, aren't you?”

“I'll tell him so tomorrow.” He glanced at his watch; it was after midnight. “Make that today,” he corrected himself.

They heard the staccato click of toenails on the oak floor, and then Dog appeared beside the bed. She whined and nosed her muzzle into Rick's hand, which was hanging over the edge.

“We can't go on calling her Dog,” he said.

“I thought you didn't want to give her a name,” Trista replied as she snuggled closer. “You said you weren't responsible for her.”

“That was when I didn't believe in permanence. Things have changed. Besides, every family should have a dog.”

“I agree,” Trista said.

“How about Joey? Like the title of the song we sang in the talent show?”

“Joey,” Trista repeated sleepily. “I like it. It's a boy's name, though.”

“Doesn't matter. She's a tomboy, the way she jumps for the Frisbee and runs through the waves.”

“Okay, Joey it is.”

The dog must have heard because she padded around and jumped onto the bed beside them.

“Is she going to sleep with us?” Trista asked, fading fast.

“I think we'd better get used to it,” he said, chuckling in spite of himself as Joey settled into the angle behind his knee.

“I love you, Rick,” Trista said.

“I've always loved you,” he said, going her one better. “If only I'd had the sense to figure it out in the first place.”

For an answer, Trista raised her lips for his kiss, and that was the last thing he knew before he fell asleep.

2007

W
e are riding in the car toward Tappany Island, and our six-month-old son is asleep in his car seat behind us. Our dog, Joey, snoozes on the floor beside my feet, her whiskers twitching every so often with doggy dreams. Rick and I hold hands; we still feel like newlyweds even after almost three years of marriage. I've arranged two weeks' vacation from WCIC, where I continue to anchor the evening news, and Rick has scheduled the same amount of time away from Barrineau, Dubose, and Linder. It is the first day of June, and the air already hangs hot and humid.

“Do you think Lindsay and Peter will arrive at the cottage before we do?” I ask, wrinkling my nose at the scent of the marsh wafting from the vents of the air conditioner.

“I explained to Peter about the key in the kitchen window box, just in case,” Rick says.

“The same place your mother used to leave it when we were kids,” I reply, smiling at him.

“When we talked on the phone, Lindsay asked about Martine.”

I exchange a look with my husband. “The last postcard she sent was from Morocco. She'd sketched a picture of a camel on it.”

We're quiet for a long moment, because we don't mention Martine often. Neither of us has seen her since that night at the cottage. When she learned of our marriage, she sent us an exquisite set of silverware from Thailand. After that, only an occasional postcard. Every now and then, I feel a pang of sadness because I miss her, but my life is so full that it's only a passing wistfulness, a fleeting wish that we could be closer, knowing full well that because of the circumstances, we probably never will.

Rick squeezes my hand. “Peter said that Adam and Ainsley can't wait to meet our baby,” he says. “Ainsley keeps calling him ‘Rider.'”

We have named our son Roger Boyd McCulloch after both our fathers, and I laugh at Ainsley's mispronunciation. “Before this vacation is over, Ainsley will be able to say his name. She's already begging to be his babysitter.”

“How old is she again?” he asks.

“She's five. Adam is a rambunctious seven.”

“He's old enough to learn to fly a kite,” Rick says with conviction, as if this is a skill that no boy should lack.

“There are kites in the bachelor-quarters closet,” I remind him. “I noticed them when I cleaned.”

“Peter and I will dig them out. You know, Tris, I've been thinking.”

“About?”

“Us.”

Every time Rick waxes reflective, I remember that difficult time at the cottage. That difficult, memorable and wondrous time when we found each other again.

Rick continues to speak. “Here we are, headed for Tappany Island with a new little McCulloch, who is about to experience the joys of the Low Country like generations of McCullochs before him. That's what my grandfather had in mind when he built Sweetwater Cottage—a family resort.”

The idea of the rumpled, faded old cottage as a resort tickles my fancy, and I laugh. “I'm sure little Roger will appreciate the place every bit as much as we did. Before long he'll be falling off the dock while fishing for crabs.”

“And catching alligators in a butterfly net.”

“Riding his bike to Jeter's and reading comic books on the back steps while the guinea hens peck around his feet.”

“Not to mention charging boiled peanuts and Gummi Bears to the McCulloch account.”

“And we'll be taking snapshots of him every step of the way,” I say softly.

“So he can show them to his children.”

“And his children's children.”

Behind us, our son awakens. He gurgles, grins and sneezes. He's a bonny, happy baby, full of fun. Rick and I delight in being parents. We believe it's the best thing that's ever happened to us except for marrying each other.

We cross the old swinging drawbridge, turning left where Center Street intersects with Bridge Road, and soon we spot the tower and gabled roof of Sweetwater Cottage through the veil of trees.

“We're home again,” I say to Rick, and he smiles at me.

“Home,” he says. “What a beautiful word.”

And it is.

Rick parks under the oak tree, I unstrap our son from his car seat, and we walk toward the cottage with Joey following behind until she trots up the back-porch steps and flops down in her customary spot under the swing. I draw a deep breath of the salty air, notice that the oleanders are heavy with pink blossoms and that beyond the dunes, the sea is a wide, inexhaustible blue. My heart, already full, expands to take it all in.

“We need a picture to commemorate our first summer vacation here as a real family,” Rick says suddenly, and he runs back to the car to get his camera and the tripod that will allow him to set the timer so that we can all be in the photo.

Click: Rick and Roger and I are smiling into the camera lens. Rick's arm is curved around my waist, which is already swelling with our newly conceived daughter, and I am gazing up at him with love. I cradle our beautiful son in my arms, and he is clutching a lock of my hair in his tiny baby fist. Holding on tightly, all of us holding on to one another because we know how quickly life can change, how sometimes precious people can be taken from us, how the things we hold most dear can disappear in the blink of an eye.

But we also know the power of undying love. And that's what I hope our children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren will understand when they look at us—forever smiling, forever young—in this snapshot.