Wildwood Creek (28 page)

My eyes met his, and I felt myself falling, yet walking a tightrope at the same time. This feeling was a chasm so wide, so deep, so terrifying. If I kept stepping out farther and farther, sooner or later I was bound to take a misstep and tumble into the abyss. Everything in me wanted to believe that this was real, but I just couldn’t get there. Trust is a muscle, and when you haven’t exercised it most of your life, it atrophies like any other part of the body.

“Yeah, give me a door and a window, and I’ll try the window,” I joked, deflecting again. How pathetic, really.

He just shook his head and smiled down at me. “I was serious.”

I stood there searching him. For what, I couldn’t say. Proof? Some indication of how often he did this kind of thing? Did he charm everyone he met—like the deli girl and the ladies up in the big house? He was so easy with people, so seemingly unhindered, but was this really him? And why was I so caught up in wondering? I had my own plans for my life, my own dreams, and after this summer in the village, those dreams could start moving at light speed, compared to the past. I didn’t need distractions . . . risks. Yet I was drawn to Blake Fulton like a moth to a porch light. Why?

“Listen, Blake, I . . .”

He reached across the space between us, touched the side of my face with the backs of his fingers. I closed my eyes, leaned into him without wanting to. My head was a mess, wave upon wave of thoughts and memories crashing on shore, splintering into droplets, chaotic and disorganized—my mother telling me what a screw-up I was, Lloyd looking right past me at a family dinner like he wished I wasn’t taking up space, a child psychologist telling my mother that my oppositional
behavior was an attention-getting device, my father’s friends and family spreading his ashes near a stream he’d loved as a child. The impossibility of comprehending that he was gone forever. The terrible, throbbing ache of always wondering whether I was doing what he’d want, whether I was honoring his life or just disappointing him.

“Blake, I’m just not . . .”
Sure of anything.

“Shhh.” He pressed a finger to my lips, stepped closer, and I lost myself in him. I knew he was planning to kiss me, and suddenly everything about it seemed right. The tide of worry in my mind went still, and a breath caught in my chest, then trembled out in anticipation.

“You know, I can’t figure you out.” His voice was low and intimate. His eyes held mine.

“Do you want to?” Who
was
this girl? This girl jumping in so completely, free-falling and not caring where she might land?

“Yeah, I do.” His lips quirked slightly to one side just before his head inclined over mine, and my eyes fell closed, and I tumbled through space. His kiss was soft at first, but strangely familiar. In some part of my mind, I realized I’d been imagining this, and now it was real. I let myself drift into the strong, solid feel of him, the slight scent of woodsmoke, the taste of his lips against mine.

The questions didn’t seem to matter then. They fell away, and for the first time in a long time, everything about the moment felt right.

When his lips parted from mine, he stood back and looked at me, his hand twined into my hair, the pad of his thumb sliding along my cheek. “Some things don’t need to have an explanation, Allie. Some things just
are
, because they
are
. Because God made them that way. If we’re meant to solve the mystery of Wildwood, we will. And if there’s something
meant for you and me, I think we’ll know. Maybe that’s why we’re both here this summer. Maybe for us, it’s about you and me.”

If there’s a girl in this world who wouldn’t fall to pieces over words like that, coming from a guy like Blake Fulton, I hadn’t met her yet. I laid my head against his chest and just hung on, because I didn’t know what else to do. Nothing in my life had ever felt this incredibly powerful or deathly uncertain.

I wanted to believe in it. I wanted to grab the idea that all of this was meant to be, that it would last and travel beyond the confines of Wildwood, but as I clung to Blake, all I could see was my eight-year-old self, running after my father’s car the day he drove away and never came back.

When you love people, they leave.

The chasm opened again as the heat of the kiss burned away, the gap quickly separating Blake and me. Love provided such a thin, fragile bridge. How could anyone trust it, even under the best of circumstances? And these were hardly the best of circumstances. What would we really be, out in the real world with all its distractions?

Some things just are, because they are. Because God made them that way.

Was God a big enough bridge? Was it really possible that this was meant for me? The answer to the prayers of thousands of lonely nights?

You may miss your daddy, sugar pie, and I know you do. You always will. But you got to remember, God’s just one prayer, or one thought, or one hope away.
Grandma Rita had promised me, holding my face at my father’s funeral.
You lean on that when the world goes dark. Whatever big hurt you’ve got inside you, God can cover it over. Don’t be afraid to open up and ask.

But really, I’d never asked. I’d never believed that God had anything better in store for me than a life where you do your best to get by, to stumble along broken and wounded, never quite daring to hope for the really good things. But maybe I’d been wrong all this time. Maybe a tragedy is exactly that—a singular thing, a shadow we travel through on the way to a different destination. Maybe the bigger tragedy is the one we undergo by choice. The decision never to walk forth from the shadow and see what lies beyond it.

When Blake and I continued on along the spring path, I felt lighter, somehow. As if, all along, maybe it really could’ve been that simple. As if perhaps I could change the way I’d been looking at things.

The moment of clarity stayed with me as we returned to the schoolhouse, Blake disappearing into his side, and me going into mine. When I came out again, Blake was standing on the back porch in black exercise shorts and a gray tank top that fit rather well, I might add.

He frowned at my outfit, which I had reduced by several layers of petticoats and a corset, after trading out the heavy plaid skirt for my lightweight muslin daily skirt.

“You’re going in that?”

I looked down, confused, my mind stumbling in a race from past to present. It hadn’t even occurred to me to leave behind the costume and garb myself like a normal person. “I never even thought about it.”

Blake grinned. “Not that it isn’t fetching.” He waved a hand toward the trees. “But no cameras today, Scarlett. No need to play the part. I know you’ve got clothes hidden in there. Your part-time roommate doesn’t keep secrets very well. That might come as a surprise.” He nodded toward the spring path, where the girls were giggling and looking at something under a cedar bush. For once, Wren was in on
the game rather than just watching with a morose look. I wondered if she’d also leaked the information about the cell phone, but Blake seemed casual enough, so I guessed not. Thank goodness. Wherever Kim was by now, I hoped her plan to meet Jake had worked. I hoped she was being careful.

“Go on,” Blake urged. “If we run into anybody, they’ll just think you grabbed your clothes from crew camp.”

“Good point.” I hurried back to my room and returned in my closest approximation to swimming gear—capris, T-shirt, and tennis shoes. When I rounded the building again, I felt strangely underdressed as Blake looked at me.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, there was that realization again. We’d never spent real world time together, other than those confusing meetings in and around the Berman Theater. What if he didn’t like me this way?

Doubt inched its way in, a summer cloud testing the determination of the sun as we walked to the water, the girls dashing ahead. I felt a shadow sliding along the ground, trying to keep pace. Did Blake feel it too? What if all we really had between us was the codependence of two people forced to live in close proximity, in a very strange situation?

He seemed quieter than usual as we sat on the rocks along the lakeshore, our legs dangling in the water while the girls enjoyed the magic of waves and sunshine. The motorboats slipping past seemed almost foreign now. Too noisy, too bright, too fast. Wildwood was a muted life, moving at the pace of a raft drifting down the lazy Mississippi. It took time to accomplish even the simplest of things. There was no multitasking, because so many tasks required the sum of your energy and effort.

At the end of each day, I was physically exhausted, yet mentally so much calmer than I’d ever been—as if my brain weren’t trying to go a million directions at once, even in sleep.
The past few evenings, other than that one strange dream last night, I’d slept like a rock, barely even hearing Blake come and go from his room as he worked the night shift.

“Kind of strange, isn’t it?” He motioned toward a passing boat.

“Back to the future.”

“Temporarily.” The group of lakegoers toasted us with their beers as they went by. “Not getting tempted by the dudes with the luxury yacht there, are you?”

I shook my head, bracing my arms and leaning back, enjoying the sunshine. “Pppfff!” The kids on the boat looked about seventeen or eighteen, maybe. Too young to be turned loose on a party barge like that one. “Hardly. Why?”

He shrugged, looked out at the water. “You’re kind of quiet this afternoon. Thought maybe you were considering making a run for it while you could.”

I considered his observation.
I
was the one who was quiet this afternoon? Far away? Maybe it
was
me. On top of everything else, or maybe because of it, I couldn’t stop thinking about Kim, and the fact that I was lying, and that this whole situation had the feeling of a snowball rolling downhill. This business with the cell phone, with doing something that could cause problems for Blake and trouble between the two of us, had to end here. I wasn’t letting this happen again, no matter how desperate Kim was to see Jake. Something inside me had turned a corner this afternoon by the spring creek. If there really was a chance of something for Blake and me, I was going to invest myself in it, no matter how shaky I was. It wouldn’t help to build it on an undercurrent of lies.

Maybe I should just tell him the truth now. Get it all out in the clear . . .

I opened my mouth to do it, then lost my courage and diverted the subject instead. “So what about you? What comes
next, assuming we make it through this long, hot summer in Wildwood?” I couldn’t help picturing him after the docudrama finally aired, fielding offers for the next season of
The Bachelor
. “Do you go straight to another job for Rav Singh, or on to doing security for someone else?”

“Depends on what my buddy and his wife pick up for us. Kevin and Leah pretty much take care of that end of the business. It’s really Kevin’s baby, even though we’re partners.” He plucked a little purple wildflower that was growing from a fissure in the rock, studied it. “The security business was his idea after we finished our last deployment and got out of the army. He had some contacts in Hollywood. He sets things up with the clients. I just look at logistics once I know what kind of a job we’re taking on and where—calculate how many people we’ll have to hire, what kinds of vehicles we’ll need, what we can do to stymie the paparazzi if it’s an event like a wedding or an awards show. Logistics is more my thing. Kevin and Leah like the PR end of it, so it works.”

We’d suddenly stumbled into an area I’d wanted to ask about but been afraid to. “Is that what you did in Afghanistan? Logistics?” Was I overstepping by asking? Dredging up something that was hard to revisit? But I needed to know him. I needed to learn more about what made him tick. About who he really was inside.

He waited a minute to answer. “In a way. Security. Not always as well as I would’ve liked. It’s a crazy world over there. When you don’t get it right and things go bad, it’s not just the tabloids leaking some wedding photo or a creepy fan getting a little too close for comfort—it’s soldiers’ lives. Little kids’ moms and dads, people’s sons and daughters. Someone’s husband. Someone’s wife. You don’t stay one step ahead . . .” He let the sentence go unfinished.

“Is that what you’re thinking about when. . . . I’ve seen
you on the porch at night.” I blurted it out, then immediately wished I hadn’t. “I’m sorry. That’s none of my business.”

He handed the flower to me, our fingers brushing as a speedboat rushed by, three kids squealing in an orange inner tube. “It’s okay. It’s not something I talk about much anymore, but it’s not something you just leave behind either. Any soldier who’s been there can tell you that you don’t come home the same. There’s stuff in your head. A lot of guys didn’t come back, or they didn’t come back in one piece. The questions you ask yourself can drive you crazy—why couldn’t you have done just one thing different on some certain day. Why couldn’t you have made the difference? Why’s another guy gone and you’re still here? Why does God let things happen the way they do? Sometimes, the only option you’ve got is to just get quiet and ask. Just let it all go, you know?”

I did know, in a way. I understood that kind of regret. I’d always thought, if I’d gotten up and gone with my dad the day he died, maybe I could’ve kept the accident from happening. Maybe I would’ve been watching, seen the truck jackknifed in the road ahead. Maybe I would’ve begged him to stop off for doughnuts, and he wouldn’t have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

If only
could drive you crazy.

“I know.” It seemed strange to admit it after all these years, especially to a person I’d met such a short time ago, but somehow I knew he’d understand it. “It’s hard to get past the idea that you can just . . . alter things. I did that for years after my dad died. I’d rewrite it all as I was falling asleep, and in the morning before I opened my eyes I’d tell myself that if I believed hard enough, it’d come true.” I’d never told anyone about those desperate morning wishes before, not even my grandmother. “It was kind of a secret I kept, but Grandma Rita figured it out. When I was with her in Texas,
in the summers, she’d take me to the church where my dad grew up and show me the murals he’d helped paint in the children’s building. She’d tell me that, as pretty as they were, they weren’t anything compared to what Dad and Grandpa John were seeing now in heaven. It helped me let go some.”