Chapter 19
She rolled into him before she opened her eyes.
Her hair was across his chest and her hand landed on his ribs and she pressed her face into his shoulder and made a sound that wasn't a word. The morning was coming through the curtains, gray and gold, the marsh light that arrived early on the island and stayed.
"Good morning," she said. Her eyes opened. She looked at his face and whatever she saw there made her smile. "You look happy."
"Yeah. I just woke up with the most beautiful girl on the island. Every little boy's dream."
"I thought playing pro baseball was every little boy's dream."
He dove under the sheets.
"Beck!" She squirmed and laughed and her knee came up and caught him in the ribs and he didn't care. "Beck, what are you doing?"
"I'm exploring!"
Her laugh hit a register he'd never heard.
Full, unguarded, not managing anything, not reading the room, not deciding how much of herself to let out.
It came from her stomach and it filled the bedroom and Hudson lifted his head from the couch in the living room and his tags jingled as he investigated.
Beck came up from under the sheets and she was wiping her eyes and her hair was everywhere and her face was red.
"You're insane," she said.
"You're beautiful."
"I'm a mess."
"You're a beautiful mess."
She hit him with a pillow. He caught it. She hit him with the other one. He let that one land.
"Come here," he said.
She came. She settled against his chest, her chin on his sternum, her eyes on him. The joy was still in her face but it was quieting into something else, something warm and steady and present.
"I want you to meet my parents," he said.
She didn't blink. She didn't hesitate. She didn't process it, didn't ask when, didn't start planning.
"Ocala isn't far," she said.
"Two hours."
"So let's go."
"Today?"
"Right now. Shower and go."
He searched her face for the version of Kirstin who thought about things, who calculated, who managed the variables before committing.
She wasn't there. The woman on his chest was the woman in the painting, the one who smiled at things when she didn't know anyone was watching, and she wanted to get in the car and drive to Ocala because it was Saturday morning and the man she'd woken up with had parents she hadn't met.
"Okay," he said. "Shower and go."
"I'm showering first."
"We could?—"
"No." She was already up, already moving toward the bathroom, already pulling her hair back. "You'll explore and we'll never leave."
She closed the bathroom door. He heard the water start. Hudson padded into the bedroom and put his chin on the bed and looked at Beck with the patient confusion of a dog who had been on the couch all night and was unclear on why the humans were so loud this early.
"I know, buddy," Beck said. "It's a lot."
He drove. She sat in the passenger seat with her bare feet on the dashboard and her window down and the October air coming through warm and heavy with the smell of the mainland, different from the island, less salt, more pine, the Georgia interior opening up around them as they crossed the causeway and turned south.
She'd been on the phone with April for twenty minutes.
He hadn't planned that. They'd been on I-95 for ten minutes when her phone rang and Kirstin had looked at the screen and said "It's my mom" and answered and the woman who emerged on the phone was a version of Kirstin he'd never met.
She was lighter. Her voice went up half a register. Looser, quicker, reacting to things Beck couldn't hear from the other end. She said "Mom" in a way that was both protest and affection, a daughter who loved her mother and had been loved by her mother and knew both things at once.
"Yes, he's right here," Kirstin said. She glanced at Beck. "He's driving."
A pause. Kirstin listening to whatever April was saying on the other end.
"Mom." Kirstin was smiling. "Yes, I sent you the picture. That's what I look like when I read. I don't know. Ask him."
She held the phone toward Beck. "My mother wants to know if you really took that picture."
"Yes ma'am."
Kirstin pulled the phone back. "He said yes ma'am. I know. I know." She was laughing now. "He's from Ocala, Mom. That's just how they talk."
The conversation went on. Beck drove. The highway opened up, flat and green, the Georgia pines lining both sides, the sky wide and blue.
Kirstin talked about the birthday. About the bread he'd baked.
About Jon crying over the painting and pretending he wasn't. About Morgan and Brady and Luke and Addison and the candles and the tablecloth and the margaritas.
She talked about Beck like someone she'd decided to keep, no qualification, no hedging, the casual certainty of a woman who has moved past the question of whether and into the territory of what comes next.
He heard her say "next weekend" and "yes, I want you to come" and "he'll be here" and "Mom, you're going to love him."
She hung up at the Florida state line.
"Sorry," she said. "She calls and it just goes."
"Don't apologize."
"She saw the painting. She called first thing this morning. She wanted to know—" Kirstin stopped. She put her phone in the center console and sat up straight.
"What?"
"She wanted to know if you see me like that all the time or just when I'm not paying attention."
"All the time," he said.
She put her hand on his leg and left it there. They drove south toward Ocala and the windows were down and neither of them said anything for a while because there was nothing left to say.
* * *
The house was on a cul-de-sac.
Kirstin saw it from the end of the street and the first thing she noticed was how normal it was.
One story. Beige stucco. A lawn that was green and mowed.
A mailbox with BECK on it in stick-on letters from a hardware store.
Two cars in the driveway, a sedan and an SUV, neither new, neither old.
A basketball hoop over the garage, the net frayed, the backboard faded from twenty years of Florida sun.
This was where Ethan Beck came from.
She'd built a version of it in her head.
Not a mansion, she knew better, but something that reflected the career.
A nicer neighborhood. A bigger lot. Some evidence that their son had made millions of dollars playing a game.
She'd expected to see the baseball somewhere in the architecture, in the landscaping, in the cars.
The mailbox said BECK in stick-on letters.
He parked the Range Rover behind the sedan. The street was quiet. Saturday morning in a neighborhood where people watered their lawns and walked their dogs and went to the same church they'd been going to for thirty years.
"Ready?" he said.
"Yeah."
The front door opened before they reached it.
His mother was small. Five-two, maybe five-three. Dark hair cut short, practical, a teacher's cut. She was wearing a t-shirt and jeans and sneakers and she was already crying.
"Oh, get in here," she said. She pulled Beck down into a hug that bent him in half. He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off the ground by an inch and she said "put me down, Ethan" and he didn't put her down and she laughed and hit his shoulder.
"Mom, this is Kirstin."
Deanna turned to her. The eyes were dark like Beck's, warm like Beck's, and they did what his did. Made you feel like you were the only person who mattered.
"Honey, come here." She hugged Kirstin. No handshake, no formality, just arms around her, tight. "I have been dying to meet you. He calls me every other day and I hear Kirstin this, Kirstin that, and I told Steve, I said if he doesn't bring this girl home soon I'm driving to that island myself."
"Thank you for having us, Mrs. Beck."
"Deanna. And you're not a guest, you're overdue. Come inside. Steve's making lunch and pretending he knows what he's doing."
The house was exactly what the outside promised.
Clean, lived-in, comfortable. A living room with a couch that sagged in the middle and a recliner by the window and a TV that was too big for the wall it was mounted on.
Family photos in frames on every surface.
Beck in Little League. Beck in high school.
Beck in a Florida Gators uniform. Beck in a Braves uniform, grinning, holding a bat, the grass of a major league field behind him.
And photos that weren't Beck. His parents at a beach. A Christmas morning. A dog that must have been old and gone. Deanna in a classroom with twenty kids around her. A man standing next to a grill with tongs and a beer.
The man came around the corner from the kitchen.
"Dad, this is Kirstin."
Steve Beck was Beck in thirty years. Same height. Same build, softened by time, the athlete's frame still visible under the years. Same easy presence. He shook her hand. Firm. Warm.
"Good to meet you, Kirstin. You want something to drink? Sweet tea or I can make coffee."
"Sweet tea sounds great."
"Good answer."
They sat in the living room. Deanna brought the tea in glasses that didn't match and set a plate of cookies on the coffee table, the edges still warm.
She sat in the recliner and pulled her legs up underneath her and it was immediately clear where Beck got everything.
The ease. The warmth. How she made you feel like you'd known her for years before you'd finished your first glass of tea.
"So," Deanna said. "Has he told you about the prom?"
Beck, from the kitchen where he was getting Hudson water: "Mom."
"He hasn't told you about the prom." Deanna leaned forward. "He drove the Bronco. You've seen the Bronco?"
"No."
"We'll get to the Bronco. He drove it to pick up his date. Beautiful girl. Lauren Something. He shows up in a suit that Steve had to tie the tie for because Ethan cannot tie a tie to this day."
"Mom, she doesn't need to?—"
"And the Bronco breaks down. On the way.
On the side of Route 40. In his suit. In June.
In Florida." Deanna was grinning. "Steve had to drive out there in the truck and pick them both up.
Lauren's in her dress on the side of the road and Ethan's under the hood in his suit trying to fix a car he does not know how to fix. "
Steve, from behind Deanna's chair: "The look on his face when I pulled up."
"He got grease on the suit," Deanna said. "He went to prom with a grease stain on his sleeve and he danced every dance because that's who he is. He doesn't let a broken car ruin the plan."
Kirstin was laughing. Beck was leaning against the kitchen doorframe with his arms crossed and his face was red and he was shaking his head.
"That's only the beginning," Deanna said. "You want to see his bathroom?"
"Mom. No."
"Why not?" Deanna was already standing. "Come on."
Kirstin followed her down the hallway. The hallway was narrow, photos covering every inch, the carpet worn in a path down the center from decades of foot traffic. Deanna opened the bathroom door. Standard bathroom, clean, nothing special. Then she opened the closet.
On the bottom shelf, behind the towels, was a plastic bin. Deanna pulled it out. Inside: three rubber boats, a submarine with a missing periscope, and a bottle of Mr. Bubble that had to be twenty years old.
"He took a bath every night until he was ten," Deanna said. "Every night. An hour. The water would be cold and his fingers would be pruned and I'd have to knock on the door and tell him the boats were tired."
"I believe that," Kirstin said.
Deanna put the bin back. "Yep. You've obviously met my son."
They walked back to the living room. Beck was still in the kitchen doorway. His face was still red. Steve handed him a beer and said something Kirstin couldn't hear and Beck closed his eyes and shook his head.
Deanna touched Kirstin's arm on the way past. Light. Quick.
"You know he called me at four in the morning about that bread?"
"He did?"
"Four in the morning. Asking how long to let it rise.
" Deanna picked up her tea. "I said Ethan, it's four in the morning.
He said Mom, it's important." She sipped the tea and glanced at Beck over the rim.
"He paid off this house when he was nineteen years old and he has never once called me at four in the morning about anything. Until your birthday."
She let that sit. She didn't explain it. She just drank her tea and let Kirstin do the math.
They stayed for lunch. Steve grilled burgers and burned one and blamed the grill.
Deanna told two more stories that made Beck's ears turn red.
Hudson slept in the sun on the back patio and the neighborhood was quiet and the afternoon passed slowly and easily in a house where people had been happy for a long time.
At four, Beck said they should head back. Deanna hugged him at the door and held on. Steve shook his hand and pulled him in and clapped his back.
Kirstin was next. Deanna hugged her. Close. Warm. And then, quietly, just the two of them, while Beck was loading Hudson into the Range Rover:
"You're the first one he's ever brought home. Since college."
Kirstin pulled back. Deanna's eyes were steady. Dark and warm and steady.
"I thought you should know that," Deanna said. She squeezed Kirstin's hands. "Drive safe. And make him call me more."
Kirstin walked to the Range Rover. Beck was in the driver's seat. Hudson was in the back. The cul-de-sac was quiet. The mailbox said BECK in stick-on letters.
She got in. She closed the door. She put her hand on his leg.
"I like them," she said.
"They liked you."
"Your mom's amazing."
"She's a lot."
"She's exactly the right amount." She leaned across the console and kissed his cheek. "Take me home, Beck."
He pulled out of the cul-de-sac. In the rearview mirror, Deanna and Steve were standing in the driveway. Deanna was waving. Steve had his arm around her. They stood there until the Range Rover turned the corner and the street was gone.