Everlasting (14 page)

Then he heard a melody. Someone was standing outside the church, whistling. Tristan stood in the foyer close to the ladder, ready to climb to safety, but suddenly found himself
humming along with the cheerful whistler. The song was from
Carousel
, the music Ivy played for him.

He rushed to the stairway that led to the basement. It was Monday afternoon, the basement lit with sun, exposing him to whoever might peer in the clear windows. It was stupid—dangerous—he knew it. And then he saw her, sitting in the tall grass by the window, whistling. Stupid, dangerous—and she knew it. They would take the chance anyway.

Tristan hurried to the window, tapped on it and removed the wood block. At first he thought she hadn’t heard him; she glanced around so casually, looking as if she were daydreaming. Then she scooted to the window, slid it open the same time as he, and climbed through into his arms.

“Steps,” he said as she pulled the backpack through. He shut the window, replaced the block, and followed her. They made it only to the landing halfway up the steps. Safe in the bent arm of the stairway, they clung to each other. He covered her face with kisses.

“Missed you.”

“Missed
you
!”

“Love you.”

“Need you!”

Her hair tumbled over his face and hands. He lost himself in her smell, her touch, and her voice. The sweetness
with which she kissed him went straight to his soul. If he was fallen, he thought, Ivy was the grace sent to him, redeeming him.

“Tristan,” she said. “I missed you so much. I shouldn’t have come in the daylight, but—”

He silenced her with a kiss.

“It never gets easier, being away from you.”

“I know.” He held her against him and gently stroked her cheek. “I will always want you with me.”

“I was worried about you during the storm Saturday night. But you look fine.”

He decided not to tell her about the voices he had heard. There was no reason for her to fear something that was happening only to him.

“No big leaks?”

“Not after I thought to close the door to the bell platform.”

She smiled and walked around the main floor of the church, tracing its carved wood and remnants of delicate stenciling with her finger. Then they sat together on one of the long wood benches. Watching the light of the milky glass play over the contours of Ivy’s face, Tristan wondered if he would ever get over the simple wonder of looking at her.

“I have some new information about Luke,” Ivy said, and told him about her conversation with Bryan on Saturday night and yesterday’s meeting with Alicia.

“Then Luke may actually be innocent. . . .”

“He
is
innocent. I just know it!”

“Slow down, Ivy. Let’s not celebrate too soon,” Tristan warned, but his heart lightened in spite of his attempt to be cautious.

Ivy recounted her information about the man who had found Corinne’s body, then checked her cell phone. “Still no response. But reporters are supposed to be persistent,” she added, pulling up James Oberg’s number and trying it again.

Her eyes brightened. “Yes, hi. This is Abbie Danner.” She held the phone away from her a little so Tristan could hear.

“The college girl who left a message earlier,” the man was saying.

“That’s right. I’m working on an article about the death of Corinne Santori.”

“Been done,” he told her.

“Yes, but as you may know, Luke McKenna was spotted a few weeks ago in Orleans, and the police have renewed their search for him. Here on the Cape there is a constant turnover of summer people, so not everyone read the previous article.”

“Reprint it,” the man replied.

“I’m an intern, sir. I’m writing my own piece. I aim to impress.”

He laughed. “All right, just one question. This’d better not take long.”

“Would you describe for my readers how and when you found the body?”

“I was walking my dog—our usual route. We were three quarters the way around Four Winds. Rufus had just done his business, and we were hurrying back. We’re always back for the news.”

Tristan and Ivy exchanged glances. Alicia had been with Luke till the end of
Law & Order
—eleven o’clock.

“TV news? The local news?”

“Only one I watch.”

Ivy squeezed Tristan’s hand, trying to control her excitement.

“At eleven p.m.? There wasn’t any delay, like for a baseball game or something? Was it on at eleven p.m. that night?”

“Why else would we’ve been hurrying? But then Rufus started sniffing, started acting like a damned bloodhound, and found the girl in a clump of bushes.”

“So when did you call the police?”

“When we got home. Eleven ten. Wake-up Forecast comes on at eleven ten. I hate the way they string out the weather nowadays.”

“Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Oberg. You’ve been very helpful.”

Ivy put down the phone and gazed at Tristan, her eyes luminous. “Last night I went on Mapquest and checked the driving time between Luke’s and Four Winds. Forty
minutes! There’s no way Luke could have done it, if the body was found and reported by 11:10. We know for sure now, and we’ve got his alibi!”

It felt as if shackles had been removed from Tristan’s hands and feet. He rested his forehead against Ivy’s. Was she thinking the same thing as he? If they could convince the police that Luke was innocent, he and Ivy would be given back their life together.

“I’ll see Alicia as soon as I can,” Ivy went on, “and ask her to go to the police.”

Tristan smiled, then saw the glow in Ivy’s face disappear. “You don’t think she’ll do it,” he guessed.

“I’m positive she will, no matter how much trouble it makes for her. That’s the kind of person she is. But there’s something else we have to think about. Alicia asked me to tell Luke that she’d like to see him. ‘Just one more time’—she said it twice—she was begging me. She was his close friend to the end, and even more, I think she was in love with him.”

Tristan ran his hand over the smooth grain of the old wood bench. “So you’re wondering if it’s right to ask her help in clearing the name of someone she falsely believes is alive.”

“She’d want to clear Luke’s name, no matter what. What I’m not sure of is whether you should see her and try to tell her the truth.”

“If we don’t tell her I’m someone else, we’ll be deceiving her,” Tristan said.

“I know. And deceiving is always wrong, isn’t it? But Tristan, after you died, I would have done anything to see you just one more time—to see you as you looked in our life together. When I finally heard your voice inside me, it helped so much. It helped even when I had to let go of you again.” Ivy reached for his hand. “But that was really you. What if I learned later that it was someone else who had taken on your voice? Would the moments of happiness and comfort have been worth the lie?”

Ivy rose, then walked up one aisle and down the other.

“If Alicia was close to Luke, she might realize I’m not him,” Tristan pointed out.

“But she believes you’ve had amnesia, so that would account for things you don’t know or remember. The awful irony is, the closer a person has been to Luke, the more believable you will seem, because that person will recognize all the details they knew about Luke’s appearance and voice. You even have the Rhode Island accent. It’s just your way of thinking that might seem different. And all that Luke had been through would explain that difference.”

Tristan walked to the front of the church and sat on the altar step. The world outside the windows, muted by the stained glass, lacked color and definition. Inside the building, light flowed into shadow. Tristan longed for the
boundaries of an ordinary life. Ever since Lacey had claimed that he’d fallen when he’d saved Ivy, the line between right and wrong seemed murky.

“The problem is, Alicia saw you once on the Cape,” Ivy went on, “and her eyes have convinced her that Luke is alive. No matter what we said, who would believe in an imposter angel?

“Of course, I could tell her that Luke is far away now, and that he couldn’t risk being in contact with anyone who was part of his life. But,” she added, “it would kill me, after all we’ve been through, if you chose to leave me without saying a word.”

“
Anything
would be better than thinking you didn’t say good-bye to me,” Tristan agreed, reaching for Ivy as she passed him, pulling her down next to him. “So there’s our answer.”

TRISTAN SHOWED IVY HIS “LOFT,” THE ROOM IN THE
tower directly above the church vestibule, and invited her up to his “deck,” the sun-washed floor that supported the bell, beneath the tower’s steeple. They sat together, enjoying the warmth, gazing up at the framed patches of sky, then Ivy departed for Crowleys’ Farm Stand.

Hours later, just after dark, she returned and whistled a song from
Carousel
. When Tristan joined her, they walked to the lot where she had parked her car.

“I haven’t told Alicia anything yet—we only had time to set up where we were meeting—but when I asked for a place where no one would see us, I saw the hope in her eyes.”

Tristan nodded solemnly.

“She jogs every night on the beach, so her grandparents won’t think anything of her going out. Here’s the map she gave me.”

Tristan studied it. “It’s close by. Why don’t we just walk from the beach by the church?”

“We’d have to go past Chase’s house to get to the salt marshes. It’s safer to go to the town beach further down and work our way back.”

The lot for the beach was empty when they arrived. They moved silently across the crescent of beach and turned east. The shore softened beneath their feet, its deep sand giving way to marshes of long grass. Streams of water ran in from the bay. Kayaks and canoes had been dragged onto the grass, their long curves shining with the night’s dampness. Alicia had told Ivy that there were just a few houses here, set far back from the water’s edge, behind the marshes and clusters of trees. Closer to shore, they were supposed to look for a woodshed used for storing boats.

They rounded a point and Tristan saw her, a slender figure separating from the gray mass of a boathouse, moving tentatively at first, then coming toward them quickly. She stopped a foot away.

“Luke,” she said softly.

For a moment Tristan regretted his decision to come. He didn’t know how to make his voice respond with the same intense emotion as hers. So he said nothing and reached out his hand. Alicia took it, holding it gently. She lifted it to her cheek and he felt her tears running over his fingers.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, words that were true. He put his arms around her, his heart aching for her pain.

“Call when you want me,” Ivy said quietly, and walked a distance down the beach.

Alicia lifted Tristan’s baseball cap and laughed at his raggedly cut hair. With a light finger, she touched his beard. “You look—you look good,” she said.

On this moonless night, Tristan knew that physical sight would tell a person nothing, but he also knew from watching Ivy in the dark, how love gave you sight not dependent on moon or stars.

“You look . . . cared for.”

He nodded. “I’ve been lucky. Alicia, thank you for all the time you’ve spent listening to me, caring about me. Thank you for all you have given me.” It was what Luke might have said to her, if he had known all that Tristan knew now.

“You look better than ever,” she went on. “I am really grateful to Ivy.”

Tristan remembered, after his death, the pain of watching Will take care of Ivy. More than anything he had wanted
Ivy to be comforted and loved. Even so, helplessly watching someone else take care of her had been for him a kind of agony. His heart went out to Alicia.

“I didn’t know you at the carnival,” he told her. “I wasn’t trying to put you off. I had amnesia.”

“I know. And now?”

“I’ve been remembering—slowly.”

“So all that we shared . . . most of it’s gone?” She looked in his eyes. “Yes, I can see it is.” Her voice shook.

“But I am continually remembering more,” Tristan said quickly, no longer trying to tell a selective truth or even a truth Luke might have spoken, wanting only to ease her pain.

“So maybe in time,” Alicia said.

“In time, yes.” His eyes burned.

Alicia touched his cheek with one hand, as if she would catch a tear before it fell. “You’re in love with Ivy, aren’t you.” It was a statement, not a question. “I’m glad for you, Luke. I’m glad you love someone who will be good to you. You deserve that.”

Tristan felt humbled in the face of such unselfish love.

“It’s okay. Really. It makes me happy seeing you happy. But there’s something I have to say, because I promised myself that if I ever saw you again, I would. I fell in love with you a long time ago. I love you still. I will always love you.”

Tristan bowed his head. “I’m so sorry that I’m hurting you like this.”

She put her hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him. He pulled her close to him. For a moment, he felt her pain so intensely there seemed no barrier between her soul and his.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, “for coming, for listening. And you know what I always say—”

He would have given anything to be able to guess and say it back to her.

She laughed. “Okay, remember it from now on: Endings are beginnings, and beginnings are ours to turn into something good.”

IVY HAD RETRACED SOME OF HER STEPS, WANTING
to give Alicia time alone with “Luke.” She had stopped at what she considered calling distance and studied the shoreline around her. At night the salt marsh had its own beauty, with its glistening grass, satin water, and deceptive stillness. Life teemed beneath its surface, but in the darkness, the only hint was its pungent smell, which Ivy liked. The marsh’s calm accentuated the smallest sound. When Ivy heard movement, she turned quickly toward the trees. Birds had been disturbed from their night roost. She saw a light. It disappeared, but she was sure she had seen it for a half second.

There were houses behind the trees, she reminded herself, then strained to decipher the reassuring outline of a
building. Even if there was no house there, people took walks, she reasoned; people walked dogs and brought flashlights with them. She and Tristan would have, if they didn’t have to worry about being seen. She continued to gaze toward the trees, until she heard Alicia calling her.