Chapter Twenty-two #2
Caro looked up at him. “I thought you’d be glad I left, and I couldn’t stand to see that.”
“You thought.” He sighed, ran a hand through his hair. “Come home,” he whispered. “Mom’s watching the kids for the rest of the weekend.”
Caroline smiled. “She’ll be bleeding from her ears before tomorrow morning.”
“That’s her problem. We need some time alone.”
“Okay.” Caroline turned and went upstairs. She came down a minute later with her overnight bag. She enfolded Ruby in a fierce hug, whispering something that Nora couldn’t hear, and then both girls laughed.
Finally, Caroline walked across the kitchen to Nora. “Thanks,” she said quietly.
“Oh, honey, I’ve waited a lifetime for last night.”
Caroline’s eyes were bright. “I won’t miss you anymore.”
“No way. You can’t get rid of me now. I love you, Caro.”
“And I love you, Mom.” Nora pulled her daughter into her arms and held her tightly, then slowly released her.
Jeremy took the overnight bag from his wife, then held on to her hand. Together, they left the house.
Ruby and Nora followed them as far as the porch, watching as the gray Mercedes followed the white Range Rover out of the driveway.
“She’s gone,” Ruby said.
“She’ll be back.” Nora stared out at the beautiful blue sky and choppy green sea. It was going to be a great day for sailing; no clouds, a little breeze shivering through the trees, sunlight on the water.
Ruby sidled up to Nora, stood so close their shoulders were touching. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
Nora turned. “For what?”
Ruby looked different somehow. Serious. “For all the presents I sent back and all the years I stayed away. But mostly I’m sorry for being so damned unforgiving.”
Nora wasn’t sure how it happened—who moved first—but suddenly they were clinging to each other, laughing and crying at the same time.
At exactly eleven, a boat horn blared. A loud ah-oo-gah, ah-oo-gah. The Wind Lass pulled up to the dock.
Ruby glanced down at the water, watching Dean tie the boat down. “They’re here.” There was a strand of worry in her voice.
Nora understood. “Are you afraid to see Dean?”
Ruby nodded.
Nora laid a hand against Ruby’s cheek. “You could travel the world and you wouldn’t find a better man than Dean Sloan.”
“He’s not the problem. I am.”
“Your whole life has been tangled up with Dean. When someone pinched him, you got a welt in the same place. He’s a part of you, Ruby, like it or not. Being afraid of him is like being afraid of your own arm. Just let go. Have fun. Let yourself remember the good times, not only the bad.”
Ruby looked up at her. “I want that, Mom. I want it so much . . .”
The sailboat honked its horn again.
“Grab the picnic basket,” Nora said, pointing to the pile of supplies on the kitchen table.
Within minutes, they were headed down the path to the beach. Nora moved as fast as her crutches would allow.
The sailboat was tied down. Dean was on the bow, holding the two ropes that held the boat against the dock. “Welcome aboard.”
Nora handed her crutches to Ruby and stepped carefully onto the boat, trying to ensure that her cast didn’t leave a mark on the teak decking.
When her balance was steady, she took her crutches and tossed them onto the settee belowdecks.
Limping awkwardly, she sidled around the giant silver wheel and sat down beside Eric.
A pillow rested behind his stocking-capped head and a thick woolen Navajo blanket covered his body.
Although he was smiling, he looked terribly pale and weak.
The shadows were purple beneath his eyes. His lips were chapped and colorless.
Nora was shocked by his appearance. He looked so much worse than the last time she’d seen him.
It wasn’t Eric; this gaunt, too-fragile man was a whittled-down version of him, perhaps, but when she looked into his huge, sad eyes, she saw the spirit that cancer couldn’t touch.
With exquisite gentleness, she curled an arm around him and drew him close.
He rested his head against her shoulder, shivering a little. “You feel good,” he murmured.
Dean started the engine. Ruby untied the boat and jumped aboard; they motored out of the bay, and when they passed the tip of the island, Dean rigged up the mainsail.
The boat immediately heeled starboard and caught a gust of wind, slicing through the water.
Eric pressed his face into the wind, smiling brightly.
Nora tilted her head against his and stared out at the lush, green islands. Ruby was up on the bow of the boat, standing in the wind. Nora didn’t have to see her daughter’s face to know that she was grinning.
Dean hurried belowdecks. When he came back up, Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” blared through the speakers.
On the bow, Ruby moved her hips to the beat. Nora imagined that she was singing—off key—at the top of her lungs.
There was a pause between songs, and the silence seemed endless and perfect, a moment trapped in a time that was somehow both then and now: Dean at the wheel, Eric and Nora sitting on the aft deck, Ruby poised at the bow, always eager to see where they were going.
Nora felt the hot sun on her cheeks and heard the loose flapping of the ties against the mast.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Eric said.
She smiled at him. “Where else could I be? You and Dean and Ruby . . . you’re the best parts of my life.
I’ll always remember my dark-haired boy.
Every time I turned around, you were there, grinning up at me, saying, ‘What are we gonna do next, Miz Bridge?’ It seems like only yesterday you were sitting at my kitchen table with your banged-up elbows on the pink placemat. God, the time goes so fast . . .”
“Too fast.” Eric’s gaze was steady.
Nora’s throat closed up, but she refused to let him see her cry. Gently, she touched his face.
Eric turned away; she could tell that he was collecting himself again, distancing himself from the truth they’d dared to touch upon.
He looked at Ruby, standing on the bow, then at Dean. They were the full boat-length apart, each trying not to get caught staring at the other. “You think they’ll figure it out?”
“I hope so. They need each other.”
“Take care of him for me,” Eric said in a throaty voice, wiping his eyes with the edge of the blanket. “I thought I’d always be there for him . . . my baby brother.”
“You will be.”
Eric laughed and wiped his eyes. “God, we’re out sailing and we look like we just watched Brian’s Song.”
Nora laughed and wiped her eyes.
A swift breeze rose suddenly, filling the canvas sail with a tharumping noise. The boat keeled over and cut through the sunlit, glistening water.
Dean looked down at his brother. “Do you want to take the wheel?”
Eric’s face lit up. “Oh, yeah.”
Dean slipped an arm around his brother’s frail body and helped him hobble toward the big, silver wheel. Eric took hold; Dean stood behind and beside him, resting a hand on his brother’s shoulder, to keep him steady.
Wind-tears streaked across Eric’s temples, his thinning hair flapped against the sides of his face, his T-shirt billowed against his sunken chest.
“Orcas!” Ruby said suddenly, pointing starboard.
At first, Nora didn’t see anything. She stood up and tented a hand across her eyes.
She saw the first black fin rise slowly, slowly from the water. Then there were six of them—black fins moving through the sea like the upended teeth of a comb, impossibly close together.
“I’m the queen of the world!” Eric yelled, flinging his arms out. He laughed out loud, and for the first time in weeks, it was his laughter, not the weak, watered-down version that cancer had left him with.
Nora knew that when she looked back on Eric’s life, and the ugliness of the past few weeks and months seemed overwhelming, she would picture him now. Standing tall, squinting into the sun, laughing.
And she would remember her boy. Her Eric.