When Light Breaks (10 page)

“Absolutely.” I set my camera on the bar.

“Great. Just great.” She glanced up and down at my outfit, squinted. “Isn’t that the sweater you wore to the Every-Room-in-the-House shower?”

“What?” I asked, and glanced over at Peyton. Why wasn’t anyone else sweating?

“Your sweater.” Sylvia pulled on the sleeve. “You wore that to your last shower.”

“I did, didn’t I?” I rubbed my forehead with my fingertips; Sylvia wavered, miragelike in her too-tight leather skirt and red sweater.

Peyton’s voice came from behind me. “Mom, please. Who cares what she wore?”

I reached for Peyton, but never found his arm as the room spun before me. The last thing I saw as I slid to the floor was Sylvia’s open mouth. The last words I heard were: “Oh, dear God, is she pregnant?” And it wasn’t a question asked with excitement.

CHAPTER SIX

T
he whitecaps are high and crazed, then suddenly calm as if someone commanded the sea to be still. Daddy is building a sandcastle with Deirdre, and Mama is standing over them with an ancient black Nikon, snapping pictures, laughing. Her hair is flying in the wind—brown, sun-licked curls lifting to the sky. A tunnel of white light comes from the cloud above her, settles around her.

Daddy looks up to her, and there is so much love on his face, around his eyes and mouth, that my heart overflows. The light stretches toward him; Mama touches his cheek, drops her camera on the sand and places both her hands on either side of his face, and kisses him.

Deirdre squeals and pulls Daddy toward her. “Oh, gross. Stop that.”

Mama laughs and picks small Deirdre up into the air, into the white light, and kisses her. Daddy plucks a sand dollar and places it at the front door of their gray-white sandcastle. Brian runs toward them, lifts his foot as if to knock the castle down, then falls to the sand, laughing so hard the sound echoes against my chest.

Deirdre screams at him, but she is laughing.

I step toward them, but I can’t move, my feet disobedient to the command to walk to my family. I am so hot, waves of fire move across me, through me.

A boat comes into view behind Mama; three brown sails and a bowed front stern sail across the water.

A vortex of whirling panic overcomes me; I scream for my family, but they can’t hear me, can’t answer me. They are laughing and loving with such intensity that they do not know what is coming.

I burst through the immobility, moist sweat covering me. I get to Mama first, throw my arms around her. She turns to me, looks at me, but Maeve’s eyes stare back at me.

I try to scream again, but find emptiness inside me.

I turn to beg for help from Daddy, but instead find Peyton walking across an eighteenth green waving good-bye to me over his shoulder, his golf club swinging at his side.

I grope through the sand and heat to find that love again, to find Mama kissing Daddy and laughing, to find Deirdre and Brian. The back of my throat fills with sand and I am parched.

They’ve all left now. I am alone.

I curl into the shell-encrusted edge of the waterline and wait for the water to take me to the other side of the sea, where I will find them, find all of those who left me.

A sob rips upward; pain shoots through my throat, and I open my eyes with searing pain. Deirdre stood over me—a different sister from the one left behind on the beach. She held a cup of tea, a plate of buttered toast.

“Kara, you need to eat something, drink something. . . .”

In the recesses of my mind I knew I’d been dreaming, understood that the place I’d just left was imaginary, yet it was as real and solid and whole as the bed beneath me, as the ache running along my back. I’d seen Mama kiss Daddy that way hundreds of times, seen the love on his face, heard Deirdre laugh so hard she hiccuped and bent over. All those things were true; they’d happened.

Abandonment overwhelmed me and I couldn’t speak. I stared at Deirdre, scooted up in the bed. Sunlight danced across the room with the shadows of the coming evening, and I believed that if I could stand and walk to the window I would see a row of clachan houses, a cobblestone street. I closed my eyes, leaned back.

Deirdre sat down next to me; the mattress sank under her weight. “You were crying in your sleep.” She touched my arm; I opened my eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Do you remember when Daddy and Mama used to take us to the beach on the weekends?” My voice cracked.

She averted her gaze.

“Everyone . . . all of us.” I wiped at my face. “We were such different people. What happened between youth and today? What happened to us, Deirdre? Where are those people, those children, that daddy?”

“You’re feverish, Kara. You’ve had a hundred and three temperature; you’re not making any sense at all. Please drink something. I promised Daddy I’d make sure you ate and drank today.”

I reached for the tea, let it saturate my throat.

“It wasn’t only Mama who left—we all left, we all disappeared,” I said.

“Kara, you’re scaring me—you had a bad dream, that’s all.”

“You’re right, just a bad dream.” I reached for the toast, took a bite, stretched my neck to the left, then the right, and pulled my thoughts into the room. “Deirdre, you’ve got to tell me what happened at that party.”

“Let’s just get you better first. Doc Chandler said you had the real-deal flu. You need rest, fluids, blah blah blah.”

“Deirdre, tell me about the party. Now.”

“Sylvia absolutely freaked out.”

“She was worried about me or the party?”

“First she screamed that you were pregnant.”

“Yeah . . . that’s the last thing I heard.”

“Then she went absolutely nuts, claimed that you had ruined her party—the only one she’d been able to give her son, what with his busy, famous career.”

“I ruined her party?”

“Yeah. The arrival of the ambulance marked the pinnacle of her fit. She didn’t want them on her newly pressure-cleaned driveway.”

I threw my head back and laughed. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“Nope.” Deirdre put her hand on my forehead. “You do know you have to live with this woman for the rest of your . . . married life.”

“No, I’ll be living with Peyton.”

“You get everyone in the family.”

I closed my eyes. “Then what happened?”

“They took you off in the ambulance, and you know the rest. You woke up then.”

“It’s all kinda fuzzy—the hospital, and then just sleep and weird dreams. How’s Daddy?”

“He’s all right. You know how he gets when he has no control over things. He’s irritable.”

“You know, we’re going to have to find someone to help him after I leave. Just little things like groceries, laundry, and cooking.”

Deirdre turned away from me. “I was thinking I’d move back in after you go and . . . do all that.”

“Really?”

“It’s not exactly a pleasure being in my little home alone. Just because Bill left me the damn, empty house doesn’t mean I want it.”

I stretched my back and shifted in the bed, and through the fog of half sleep and fever asked my sister the question I’d never asked before: “What happened between you two? You seemed so . . . in love.”

She stared at me for a long moment. Her gaze traveled over my nose, my cheeks, then rested above my head. “He doesn’t believe I love him.”

“What?”

“Shit, forget it,” she said.

I let a long time pass in silence, hoping to hear more from her, but she had shut down.

I sank back on my pillows. “I think I’ll try and get up now . . . thanks for all you’ve done in the past few days . . . checking on me, checking on Daddy. I appreciate you taking care of me.” I leaned forward and hugged my sister, a rare show of affection.

I thought of work and the thank-you notes I’d have to write for presents I still hadn’t opened. I also wanted to stop by Verandah House to visit Mrs. Mahoney. Her stories and admonitions had been ebbing and flowing with my fever. Whether the flu or something far different caused my preoccupation, I knew for sure that I wanted to see her, hear more of her story.

 

Spring moved deeply into Palmetto Pointe with the blooming of azaleas and camellias, the daffodils lifting their faces to the sun. The sweetgrass along the sandy paths swayed as if in a dance to the arrival of warm weather. I hurried along the sidewalk, cursing the lack of parking along Palmetto Drive leading to Verandah House. I passed Marshall’s Garden and Antique Store, and glanced in the front window. Mrs. Marshall had owned the store for generations, and the family name was written in curved, gold letters that had been there for seventy-two years. The
s
winked at me, missing its middle section. I smiled—the
s
had been like that for as long as I could remember. I turned my head when a statue caught my eye.

I stopped, walked toward the window and stared at the miniature statue. It was two feet tall at most: a concrete garden angel, aged and cracked. The wing I could see was spread wide, her face tilted upward as if waiting for a kiss or for someone to tell her something—expectant either way. There was something about the angel that touched that spot inside me that always searched for Mama. I leaned closer—the angel knelt. I pushed the door open, and a small bell announced my arrival.

Mrs. Marshall looked up from where she stood behind the glass display case, holding a magnifying glass. “Well, lookee here. It’s Kara Larson. My, my, what brings you through my door on this beautiful day?”

I smiled. “Good morning, Mrs. Marshall.”

“I heard you were sick . . . fainted right there at a party, did you?”

“Not one of my finer moments. But yes, I did.”

“I heard you scared your mother-in-law to death, making her think you were pregnant and all?”

I lifted my eyes to the ceiling. “Nothing secret in this town? Nope, not pregnant. Just the flu.”

“Did you come to check on those urns and trees you rented for the wedding? They’re all taken care of—ordered and confirmed.”

I nodded toward the front of the store. “No, I was wondering about that angel in the front window.”

“The concrete angel? Oh, she’s just for show. No one wants her—her wing is missing.”

“It is?” I tilted my head and walked toward the front of the store. “I didn’t notice that.”

“That’s because I have the marble birdbath placed just so.”

“Where did you get her?” I stopped and turned toward Mrs. Marshall.

“My junker found her in Savannah. No one wants an angel with a broken wing. I believe she came from a garden.”

“Well, I want her. How much is she?”

“Now why would you be wanting a broken angel?”

I reached into the display and lifted the angel, held her up to the light. “She’s beautiful. Something . . . I don’t know.”

“I agree with you, but she’s broken. I couldn’t sell her to you.”

“How much do you want for her?”

Mrs. Marshall rolled her eyes. “You can have her.”

“Thank you.” I hugged her.

The concrete angel wrapped and stuffed under my coat, I headed down the block to Verandah House.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“H
ello?” I leaned over the front desk and called into the space behind it. Silence met me. I walked out into the hall to the high-pitched calls of nurses and doctors barking orders. I recognized the tone and the words—there was a code red occurring down the hall; they were attempting to revive a resident.

I moved in slow motion toward the noise, toward Mrs. Mahoney’s room.

Lab coats flapped up and down the hall—unwelcome and menacing in their import.

“No,” I whispered. A nurse scurried by, her face somber and tight, a clipboard held against her chest. She looked up and stopped when she saw me. “May I help you?”

I motioned down the hall. “Did she . . . ?”

The nurse pressed her lips together. “Are you a relative?”