The Legacy: Making Wishes Come True (17 page)

T
HIS
MUST BE
WHAT HEAVEN’S LIKE
, Jenny thought. She sat on the bow of Richard’s boat and watched the hull slice through the water of the cobalt blue Atlantic. Behind her, Richard stood at the helm, and the magnificent white sail flapped in the stiff northerly breeze. Sun sparkled on the water like silver sequins; puffy clouds, chased by the wind, skidded across the blue sky; and tangy salt spray moistened her skin and stung her eyes. Yes … this was purely heaven.

Jenny wrapped her arms around her knees and pulled them against her chest. She wanted the brisk wind to blow away the smell of the hospital that clung to her skin. She wanted the sun to evaporate the stench of medications and treatments, of sickness and pain. Even though she wore a cable knit wool sweater and an oversize windbreaker, she was cold. But the scent of the sea was so delicious, the feel of the spray so luxurious, she couldn’t bring
herself to climb off the bow and return to the boat’s cockpit, where she would be partially shielded.

“Ahoy! You all right?” Richard shouted, breaking the spell of sun and sea.

She turned and yelled, “I’m perfect.”

“Why don’t you come here and hold the helm for a spell?”

She knew he was trying to protect her. Her grandmother hadn’t liked the idea of their going sailing at all. “It’s too taxing,” Marian had argued the night before. “Too much exertion for you.”

“I’ll be sitting down the whole time,” Jenny insisted. “Richard will be doing all the work.”

Marian had cast Richard a hard glance. “I won’t do anything to hurt Jenny,” Richard had contended.

“Don’t forget to take your medicine on time,” her grandmother called out as they’d left that morning.

How could she forget? Jenny wondered. She longed to throw the pills into the sea. They made her groggy and disoriented, but they did help check the constant pain she seemed to be in these days. The last time she’d been released from the hospital, she’d been weak, but at least she’d felt better than she did this time.

Richard studied Jenny as she sat curled up on the bow. She looked fragile to him, like a rose battered by wind and pelted by rain. She was impossibly thin. Her clothing hung on her frame. Dark circles rimmed her eyes, and her facial bones protruded from beneath pale, stretched skin.

He wanted to protect her, take care if her. If only he could. After he’d worked months to make Jenny let him into her life, Marian was trying to push him out. He felt a deep, growing resentment toward Jenny’s grandmother. He and Marian had had an argument
the night before, when Jenny had gone up to bed and he was preparing to leave.

Marian had ushered him to the front door of her summer home, where she had attempted to talk him out of their plan to go sailing and picnicking. “It’s simply too long a day for her,” Marian had stated. “She’ll be totally worn out.”

“She wants this, and I’m going to give it to her. I’ll be careful. I’m not stupid, you know.”

“That isn’t the point.”

“What is the point, Mrs. Crawford? Why are you working so hard to keep Jenny and me apart? Now that she’s in remission again, I’d think you’d be doing everything to encourage her to get on with her life. I know I’m not the kind of man you want for Jenny, but I love her. And I’m not going to disappear now that she’s on the mend. I don’t care how many relapses she has, I’ll be here for her.”

Marian had pressed her lips together, refusing to comment. Finally, she’d given him a penetrating look and said, “Very well. Take her out tomorrow. Give her the good time she wants so much.”

Marian’s attitude had irked him. As if he were going to show her a bad time—

“What are you thinking about so hard?”

Jenny’s question jerked Richard out of his thoughts. She had crawled back from the bow and was gazing at him through the ship’s wheel. He grinned, hooked his elbow through the wheel to hold it steady, and helped her down. “I was thinking what a terrific-looking figurehead you make.”

She jutted her upper body forward. “Like the ones sailors used to carve on the prows of old ships? Thanks. I love being called a relic.”

Richard laughed heartily. “You’re hardly a relic, Jennifer Warren Crawford.”

“I don’t know.… I think my bones are creaking.”

“That’s the ship’s deck. Or maybe my stomach. What do you say I lower our mainsail and toss out the anchor, and we eat the grub your grandmother’s cook packed for us?”

She wasn’t hungry. She never had much of an appetite these days, but she agreed. He spread a blanket on the deck, padding it with cushions and life jackets from the quarters below deck. She helped him set the food out—enough to feed four people—and watched as he ate heartily.

“Peel you a grape?” he asked when he saw that she wasn’t eating much.

“Aren’t you kind. No … I’m enjoying watching you eat.”

“You mean pig out, don’t you?” She giggled, and he pulled her down so that her head rested in his lap. “Open wide.”

She obeyed, and he placed a plump purple grape in her mouth. It tasted sweet and cool. “Very good,” she said.

He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “Yes, very good.”

His eyes glowed green as emeralds, and she felt the old, familiar yearning for him. “Why are you so nice to me?”

“Figure it out for yourself.”

She tried to concentrate, to work out his enigmatic answer, but the gentle swell of the water beneath the boat, the warmth of the sun, and the sound of the lax sail fluttering overhead were making her eyelids grow heavy. “I’ll have to figure it out
later. Now I need to take a little nap.” She hated losing even a minute of this wonderful day.

“A nap sounds good to me too.” He stretched out alongside her, raised himself on, one elbow, and gazed down on her upturned face.

“Just a little nap, all right? Wake me soon,” she asked as her eyes closed.

He watched as she drifted off to sleep, and when he was certain that she slept, he bent and kissed each eyelid more softly than the summer breeze.

“But I want to go to the cave. You promised.” Jenny jutted her lower lip stubbornly and refused to budge from the end of the dock.

“Jen, it’s almost four o’clock. I’ll bet your grandmother’s pacing the floor looking for us.” Richard tried to reason with her. They’d hit a headwind, and it had taken him far longer to bring the
Triple H
into port than he’d anticipated.

“I don’t care. This is my special day, remember? I get to do whatever I want, and now I want to go to the cave.”

There would be no reasoning with her, he knew. Even though he could see she was in pain, even though she refused to take one of her pain pills, she wasn’t going to back down. “At least, let me call Marian,” he said.

“No way. She’ll pitch a fit and insist we come straight home. If we hurry, we can get to the cave and still be home before dark.”

“It doesn’t get dark until almost ten o’clock.” He groaned. “She’ll have my head.”

“Since when did my grandmother start scaring you? You used to poke fun at her and make me
laugh and feel very guilty about it.” She tried to cajole him into giving her her way.

Before she had the power to keep me out of your life
, Richard almost told Jenny. “All right, well go, but when your grandmother flies out of the house and puts her hands around my throat, I expect you to come to my rescue.”

She giggled, temporarily erasing the lines of pain from around her mouth. He knew then that he would do anything for her and suffer the consequences later.

Quickly, he drove along the beach road, to its end, where there was nothing but curving beachfront and high granite bluffs facing the sea.

“It’s even more beautiful than I remember,” Jenny said, getting out of the car.

He had parked as close to the cliffs as possible, but they still had a long walk, to be followed by a stiff climb. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

“I’m going,” she insisted.

They walked along the water’s edge until it became impossible to avoid the jutting stone and swirling water. “Tide’s coming in,” he said. “I hope we can find the entrance.”

“We’ll find it.”

He helped her struggle up the first layer of rock and inch westward around the surface. “The entrance’s not easy to find.” He was talking half to himself. “I was a kid of ten when I first found it.”

“And you showed it to me that first summer I came to live with my grandmother. I’ll never forget all the picnics we’ve had here over the years.”

He felt for a partially hidden crevice, and when his fingers hooked around it, he knew he’d found
the opening. “Duck,” he told her, pulling her tightly against his chest.

Huddled together, they walked hunched for twenty feet, then the confinement ended and they stepped inside a vast cave.

I
NSIDE THE CAVE
, stalactites hung like icicles from the ceiling and along the walls in a rigid fringe. The ceiling soared to a small opening that allowed light to enter, but because the light was so diffused, the cave became lit in an ethereal blue. The formations stood out in blue etched relief, like carvings on grotto walls.

Tears swam in Jenny’s eyes. “It’s like coming home,” she whispered as scenes from her childhood bombarded her.

Richard felt he’d stayed away far too long. Yet, it hadn’t seemed right to come here without her during his few visits to his parent’s island cottage over the summer. “Are you warm enough?”

The cave was damp and chilly, and she was cold, but she couldn’t force herself to leave so soon. She hugged her arms to herself and walked across the granite floor toward the formation that they had used as a tabletop when they’d been younger. “Remember
the times I served us tea?” she asked, ignoring his question.

“We brought it in a thermos and poured it into your grandmother’s best china cups.”

“I sneaked them out of the house.”

Richard grinned. “But we never so much as chipped one of them, did we?”

“Never.” She peered around the tabletop plateau. Something was nagging at her memory, something concerning Richard from last summer. If only her brain weren’t so numb with pain, she would be able to remember.…

“Hey, look.” Richard pointed upward.

The hole emitting rays from a setting sun resembled a halo, and as the beams filtered downward, they changed from bright blue, to lavender blue, to midnight blue. She stood beneath the hole, and blue light spilled over her.

Richard felt his breath catch. She seemed to come from another universe, beautiful and full of light.

“Come stand with me.”

He went to her, and without speaking, they slid into each other’s arms. “It’s like being in a cathedral,” she whispered, looking up at him. “Like a holy place only for us.”

He couldn’t stop himself from kissing her long and deep.

For Jenny, in that instant, her girlhood fantasies turned into reality. Richard was holding her, kissing her. Her heart raced, and her bones turned liquid. How long had she wished for this moment? How long had she dreamed about it? If only the light were magic and could turn them both to stone, then throughout time, they would be together.

Richard broke the kiss. He knew he should apologize,
but the words stuck in his throat. He wasn’t sorry one bit. He stroked her face and said, “I love you, Jenny.” Once the words were out, he couldn’t take them back.

“I’ve loved you forever,” she told him in return. “Don’t you know that by now?”

He touched his forehead to hers, clasped his fingers behind the small of her back, closed his eyes, and took a long, shuddering breath. He was angry with himself for letting himself go, for following his desires instead of his logic. She was too young. He’d taken advantage of her.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Jenny broke away and stepped backward out of the light.

“It’s not that …”

“You think I’m just a kid with a crush.” He said nothing. “That might have been true a year ago, but it isn’t now. Don’t you understand? This past year, I’ve been to hell and back, Richard. I know what pain is like. I know what love is like. I’ve felt them both.”

“Jenny, I—”

“Hear me out.” She held up her hand. “I’ve shared things with my friends … feelings … dreams. We may never get to live them out. But it doesn’t stop us from wanting all the things other people want. Kimbra wants two arms again. Elaine wants to be well. I want to be well. We all want somebody to love us.”

He started to speak, but she silenced him again. “Not loved just by our families, but by someone special who sees us from the inside out. Who loves us even when we’re bald and scabby and ugly.”

She took a deep breath and continued. “Life played a mean trick on me when my parents died.
But it gave me Grandmother … to sort of balance the scales, I guess. Life played an even worse trick on me when it gave me leukemia. So how is that supposed to balance out, Richard? What will tip the scales this time and make cancer less horrible?”

She shook her head, and he saw tears trembling on her lashes. She said, “I don’t know. I keep asking God, but I still don’t know. If … if you really love me, it would be a start.”