35. Mac
When Shelby calls, Annie is by my side in an instant.
“Hello?” I croak.
“I’ve got him, Mac,” her voice comes over the line.
I’m not a religious man. But in that moment, I drop to my knees, sobbing, thanking her and thanking God.
“Thank you,” I blubber into the phone. “Thank you, Shelby.”
The phone falls, and Annie picks it up. They speak softly for a few minutes and then hang up.
“Wait,” I say from the ground. We’re on the beach, where I’ve been aimlessly searching for Nate like he might be out here somewhere. My biggest, pounding, heart-rending fear was that he wasn’t on the beach, but in the ocean.
Annie kneels down beside me. I ask her for my phone.
When she hands it to me, I dial Shelby again.
“Can I speak to him?” I ask.
“I’m not sure he wants to talk.”
“Okay, maybe…could you put it on speaker so he can hear me?” She hesitates, then there’s some fumbling.
“Okay, we’re here,” Shelby says, her voice tinny now.
“Nate? I just wanted to say I love you. I didn’t know about you until last year, and since then, you…and Shelby…you’ve become my whole world. But Nate? I’ll never leave you, okay? I promise that, right from the bottom of my heart. I’ll tattoo it on my chest. I’ll never leave you, and…I don’t think Shelby ever will either. But I can’t speak for her so…let her tell you. Just…I love you.”
There’s silence on the other end of the phone, so I hesitate a moment before saying a meager “bye.”
“Bye,” Shelby says, her voice so quiet I hardly hear it.
Annie helps me hang up.
The relief that Nate’s okay is like a palpable thing inside my chest. And knowing he ran to Shelby—that she’s a safe space for him—my chest nearly cracks with gratitude.
And heartbreak.
Hearing Shelby’s voice again—it broke something in me I thought was already broken. Like a heel coming down on pieces of glass. But it brings to a point how these recent weeks have been. Chaos and pain. Anger and loss.
Relief and heartbreak.
I haven’t been living since Shelby’s been gone. My heart’s been in two places—here and there.
And it’s all my fault.
Annie sits beside me in the sand, which is still wet from the earlier rain. She curls her arms around her knees. “Mac,” she begins.
But I put a hand on her arm. “Don’t,” I say. I know what she’s going to say. “It’s not your fault.”
“He heard me say he never should have been born!”
“That’s not what you said.”
“It’s close enough.” She’s crying. “I’m sorry. This has nothing to do with me. I’m fine. It’s this place. I always fuck everything up when I’m in this place.”
“No,” I say. “Trust me. You didn’t fuck this up. It was all me.”
Yesterday, Nadine left. Just like I knew she would. And she didn’t just say goodbye and take off. She invited Nate to hang out. He went, and she wasn’t there.
“She fucking stood him up. That part’s on her.”
Annie nods. “I thought me being here—I thought I could protect you from her.”
Our fight wasn’t good. After Nadine stood Nate up, Annie broke down, saying the only reason Nadine is in our lives is because of her. The only reason she hit on me at that bar that night is because Annie told her where I was. That’s what Nate heard. After the devastation of being stood up by his own mother, he heard Annie saying it was her fault the two of us ended up as unwilling parents.
I was so pissed off at Nadine I couldn’t even see straight. I was so hurt for my son…I blew up on Annie instead, demanding in a low voice that wasn’t as low as I thought, “Why the fuck were you even friends with her in the first place?”
I didn’t know he heard, but of course he did. We were in the kitchen. It was the middle of the night. I thought I heard the click of a door upstairs and checked on him, but when I went in, he had his eyes closed, the light off.
The next morning, Nate left for school without saying goodbye. And he just didn’t come back.
“I’m sorry, Mac,” Annie says now. “I’m so, so sorry.”
I wrap an arm around my little sister. This was a familiar position for us, way back when.
Only this time, we both fall apart. We cry about this, and probably a whole fuckload more.
Then I tell her I need to get to Vancouver.
“What, now?” she asks, wiping her eyes. The rain’s started again.
“Yeah.”
“But the ferry doesn’t go again until tomorrow morning.”
“That’s why I’m calling Stu,” I say, pulling out my phone.
Stu doesn’t pick up, because of course he doesn’t—I don’t even know why I gave him a cell phone.
But he does respond to me throwing rocks at the side of his boat.
“What in the Goddamned hell?” he says as he comes up on deck.
“I need you to take us to Vancouver.”
He eyes Annie and me, then barks a laugh. But when I explain the situation, he fires up his cabin cruiser with no further questions.
After his wife passed, Stu sold their little cottage, which happened to be right on the water. It fetched a good price—I know because I was the one who paid it. He used the proceeds to purchase a mid-sized boat, which he moors down in the public marina.
I made him get a cell phone so he’d be safe in emergencies. I also help him get his boat serviced every spring so I know it’s in good working order.
The trip to downtown Vancouver is just under an hour. If it were daytime, it would be a beautiful trip along the coast, past several coastal communities and gulf islands on the other side. As it is, it’s pitch black, but Stu knows this route like the back of his hand. It’s how he visits his daughter, which he does every few weeks.
“Thank you, Stu,” I tell him as we approach the dock closest to Shelby’s side of town.
“I’ve only got one bed,” Stu says.
I don’t tell Stu that was a scenario in a book of Shelby’s I read a while ago.
“Oh, we can take the ferry back,” Annie says. “Right?” She looks at me.
“No, I need you to stay, actually,” I tell Stu.
They both look at me questioningly. “I’ll explain later, but please, Stu, if you don’t mind. Just until tomorrow afternoon.”
I promise him I’ll explain, but it doesn’t take too much convincing. “You’re interrupting my painting schedule,” he grumbles. But still, he leads us down to the dinghy, mumbling something about visiting his daughter tomorrow morning.
After he drops us off, Annie insists on checking into a hotel. I’d rather sleep outside Shelby’s place, but she rolls her eyes. “You’re a wreck, Mac. Whatever you’ve got planned, it’ll go better if you’re rested.”
She books a hotel for us a few blocks away from Shelby’s, and even though I am exhausted from worry and covering all of Redbeard Cove and the surrounding mountains and beaches on foot since three that afternoon, I lie awake for several more hours, finalizing the ridiculous plan I’ve got brewing in my mind.
I only pray it’ll work.
When I wake up, the sun is streaming in my window, and I smell coffee. I check the time—it’s nine a.m. I sit bolt upright.
Nate.
But when I blink awake, I see there are two people sitting at the table in the corner of the room.
One of them’s smiling at me. The other’s dressed in an oversized Vancouver Canucks jersey and matching sweatpants.
“Nate,” I exclaim, my throat already clogged with tears. I leap out of bed, rushing over and throwing my arms around my son.
At first he doesn’t move, probably because I’ve lifted him off the ground like a little kid and have also managed to pin his arms to his sides.
“I’m sorry,” I say, lowering him to the ground.
He’s trembling. “I’m sorry too.”
I look to Annie, questioning.
“Sorry I went and got him without you. You did look like you needed your sleep, though.” She looks over at her nephew. “And I needed to talk to Nate. I’m the one who needed to apologize. I should never have said what I did. I don’t know Nate well, but I know for sure the world is a better place with him in it. And I know he’s the thing his dad is most proud of.”
“Ever,” I say. “I don’t regret you for a nanosecond. In fact, I’d make all the mistakes in the world if it meant having you for even a day in my life.”
Nate’s chin wobbles. “I really thought she was going to stay this time.”
I wrap my arms around him once more, this time giving his arms room to breathe. And my heart lifts when he hugs me back. “I know,” I say. “There are some people who are just too lost to come home, you know? No matter how much they want to in their hearts.”
This is more than trying not to shit-talk Nate’s mom. I know, from what Annie told me on the way down here, that Nadine hates herself for what she does. “She’s not proud of what she’s done, Mac. But I’m going to keep working on her. Maybe one day I can get her to be a part of Nate’s life, if that’s what he wants.”
It’s what I love about Annie. Even when she hides away, she doesn’t give up on people. She fell away for years, but if I’d called her and asked her to come home, she would have. It’s why I never called.
We talk for another hour before going for breakfast and talking some more. By the end of it, Nate’s almost as upbeat as he was when everything was good with Shelby, back before it all started going downhill.
“What are you going to do about her, Mac?” Nate asks when we’re full of a spectacular brunch. I took notes for the Dinghy.
“That’s what I’m hoping you can help with,” I tell him.
Several hours later, we’re walking down a street with a giant board on wheels, the black garbage bags taped together to cover it flapping in the breeze. My hands are covered in ink and bits of tape. Deanie meets us at the door to Shelby’s office building. It’s Saturday, so there’s no one around.
“This better work,” Deanie says as she helps us maneuver the board into the boardroom. “My best friend is a wreck.”
Deanie’s treating me with a coolness I can practically feel, but when Nate pulls the plastic bags off the board, she presses her hands to her mouth. “Okay. It’s a start.”
I tell her the rest of the plan, and that I’ll text her when we need her to meet us here again, but she shakes her head. “This I have to see in person.”
“Actually,” Annie says. “Maybe you can help.”
She explains what we need to Deanie, who agrees but says she’s staying on team Shelby no matter what.
“I wouldn’t want it any other way,” I promise. I mean that.
My heart’s beating wildly by the time everything’s lined up, and it threatens to skip right out of my chest when Deanie confirms she was able to talk Shelby into going with her to the beach.
This is much better than what I had planned, which consisted of waiting around until I saw Shelby leave her building before executing things.
“This is the second most cockamamie thing I’ve ever seen,” Stu says when he picks us up on the dock.
“What’s the first?” Nate asks.
“I’ll give you one guess.”
“Do you know how Shelby and I met?” I asked Annie on the boat ride down.
She’s the only person I know who hasn’t questioned why Shelby jumped into the water. “I can relate with wanting to ghost my own life,” she says.
By the time Stu reaches the beach, I’m sweating, and not just because I’m wearing long-sleeved flannel in the middle of summer.
The beach Deanie took Shelby to has to be the most popular beach in the whole damned city. It’s packed cheek to jowl with attractive sunbathers. Music carries from several spots over the water to where we stand out on the deck of Stu’s boat.
I text Deanie.
MAC: Are you serious?
DEANIE: As a sunburn.
I want to tell her sunburns aren’t always that serious. That this is the most important moment of my life—a heart attack would be the better metaphor. Then I realize I’m freaking out. I take a breath and type again.
MAC: Where are you?
DEANIE: Yellow umbrella. Shelby’s in a red bathing suit, looking like a sad million bucks.
I squint across to the beach. We couldn’t get all that close since Stu had to follow harbor rules.
Then I spot them. Two little stick figures about halfway up the beach. Shelby’s reading a book; Deanie’s standing up and stretching, not-so-subtly waving.
MAC: Okay. Now.
My stomach churns.
“You sure about this, MacGregor?” Stu asks.
“Yup,” I say. That’s not entirely true. I’m sure about Shelby. I’m sure about doing anything to get her back.
On the beach, I see Deanie sitting down on the lounge chair next to Shelby. I see Shelby lowering her book and propping her hand over her eyes.
I’m just not sure this is going to do it. But a man can pray.
A man can also lift those praying hands up and point them into the air.
And he can dive into the Pacific Ocean, fully clothed, on a hope and a goddamned prayer.