CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
There was an earthquake.
Or else a poltergeist was causing the bed to vibrate so hard my teeth rattled.
“Auntie Audi.”
I cracked an eye open. Neither an earthquake nor a supernatural entity was responsible for disturbing my sleep. It was my five-year-old nephew.
Isaac, surprisingly strong for a kindergartener, stopped trying to shake me awake and smiled triumphantly. He’d lost his first two teeth a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t help but smile back at the gap-toothed, tousle-haired little demon who had decided to deprive his poor old aunt of some much-needed rest.
I yawned and rolled over. “What’s wrong, buddy? You need something?”
“I need to go to the beach and get some seashells.”
A glance at my phone told me it was barely six thirty. “Right now?”
“Grandma says the best time to go is early in the morning before the bee combs come out.”
“The what?”
He looked impatient. “The people who come to visit and take all the shells.”
“You mean the beachcombers?”
Isaac shrugged his thin shoulders.
I yawned again and sat up, trying to rub the sleep out of my eyes. “Why don’t you go get dressed and I’ll get you some breakfast?”
“I am dressed,” he insisted.
I checked him out. “That’s your underwear, Isaac.”
“I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”
“You remember what your daddy said. Water’s too cold to go swimming anyway. Now go get dressed, and if you’re quiet, I’ll take you down to the beach after you eat some breakfast.”
My nephew hopped off the bed and began rummaging through his suitcase, presumably in search of clothes. I peered at Leo, who was stirring in the other bed. Since rooms were limited in the beach house owned by Jennifer’s family, I was sharing a guest bedroom with the boys. They’d been squeezing into one twin bed while I occupied the other. William insisted on taking the couch and leaving the other two bedrooms for our mother and Jennifer’s mother.
The rest of the house was quiet, meaning everyone else was likely still asleep. Yesterday had been an emotional day as we said our farewells to Jennifer.
A family friend, a diminutive elderly fisherman who had known Jennifer’s father before he died of colon cancer six years ago, had taken us out on his creaking boat. In the tranquil waters several miles from shore, we said our sad, unfairly early farewells to Jennifer Kaufman Gordon. Leo cried in his father’s arms. My mother kept her arm around Jennifer’s mother, who was bereft over the loss of her only child. Isaac asked for my help when he wanted to toss a piece of paper overboard. It was a careful crayon drawing of his mother, beaming with a blue mouth and long blue hair beneath a bright orange sun. Isaac’s drawing fluttered on the sea breeze and settled atop the water, and the real sun shone directly on Jennifer’s blue smile before the paper bobbed away in the waves.
I tied my hair up, grabbed some comfortable clothes out of my own suitcase, and tiptoed into the bathroom to change. When I returned to the room, Isaac was now wearing a red sweatshirt with green shorts, and Leo was sitting up in bed blinking at us with a frown.
“We’re going to have a quick breakfast and take a walk along the beach,” I said. “Why don’t you come with us?”
I thought he’d refuse. Leo had been quiet. He’d been quiet the day of his mother’s death, he’d been quiet on the plane to Portland and quiet on the drive to Lincoln City. Then yesterday, as his mother’s ashes blended with the ocean, he’d unleashed the most inconsolable wail I’d ever heard and sobbed on William’s shoulder until we returned to land.
But this morning Leo nodded and swung his legs around the side of the bed. “Okay, I’ll come.”
In the kitchen I tried to be as noiseless as possible as I put a pot of coffee on and opened a box of muffins someone had been kind enough to bring over yesterday. Throughout the afternoon old friends and family had stopped by to pay their respects. The house itself had been in the family for generations and was jointly owned by Jennifer’s mother and her three sisters. Now it was mostly used as a vacation place, since most of the family had moved away from town. Jennifer’s mother lived in Portland and planned to return home today. She ran her own business, a small bakery, and indicated she couldn’t be gone long. But she said she liked the idea that we would remain at the beach house with the boys and encouraged us to stay as long as we wanted.
I heard the shuffle of footsteps and looked up to see my mother wandering into the kitchen. I held up the pot of coffee and she nodded, so I poured her a cup while she veered toward the living room where William slept on the couch. She leaned over and touched his face with a gentle sigh before approaching the breakfast bar to retrieve her coffee.
“Did you sleep well?” she whispered.
I hadn’t really. Isaac had woken me up twice during the night because he needed to use the bathroom and was afraid to go down the hall himself. And the mattress I slept on had felt as if it had been stuffed with hard potatoes instead of foam and springs.
“I slept fine,” I whispered back.
She smiled and sipped her coffee. My father had not accompanied us to Oregon. Something about a big deal one of his companies was finalizing on a coveted piece of property in Scottsdale. I pictured him coming home late to that big, empty house and brooding in his study with a half-empty bottle on his desk. It was not a nice picture.
Isaac and Leo jostled their way into the kitchen, shoving each other halfheartedly. I put a finger to my lips before giving them each a muffin and a glass of juice.
“We’re going to walk along the beach and look for shells,” I murmured to my mother.
“Otherwise the bee combs will get it all,” Isaac hissed as he kicked his legs on the high stool.
My mother nodded seriously. “I see.”
“You should come too, Grandma.”
She smiled. On the plane to Oregon she had confided that she had decided to retire even sooner than expected. William would need help with the boys, and his extremely demanding job complicated the situation.
“All right,” she said, getting to her feet. “Let me go change and I’ll come along.”
The old cottage was only steps away from a stretch of pristine beach. The area was nearly empty this early, the soft waves of the Pacific Ocean gently splashing the hem of the sandy beach.
“Don’t go in the water!” my mother shouted as the boys took off running.
A handful of seagulls had been pecking in the sand at the water’s edge. As the boys whooped and sprinted close to the shore, the gulls took flight in a shrill explosion of indignant calls that sounded for all the world like some heavy-duty bird cussing.
Leo picked up a stick and poked at something in the wet sand while his brother squatted down and stared intently.
“I hope it’s not a washed-up jellyfish,” I said to my mother.
My mother looked alarmed. “Boys!” She clapped her hands to get their attention. “Please be careful.”
I sat down on the sand, but my mother hesitated.
“We should have brought a blanket,” she said, looking at her white linen pants.
“Come sit, Mom.” I tugged at the pretty patterned shawl she had wrapped around herself in case the ocean breeze was cool.
After a few seconds of fretting over her spotless clothes, she gave up and eased herself primly onto the sand beside me.
We watched as Leo picked something up, dangling it by two fingers. Isaac shouted, “It’s a crab!” and they both shrieked while Leo flung the poor creature somewhere in the sand. Then they started laughing and I had trouble deciding which one looked more like William.
My mother must have been having the same thought. “They look so much like their father.”
“Yes, they do.”
“But I can also see Jennifer,” she admitted.
“Um, Mom?” I struggled for the words to approach a delicate topic. I didn’t want to anger her, but something needed to be said, and I wanted to spare William the chore of saying it.
She turned to me with a cocked head, waiting for me to speak.
I took a breath and looked at my nephews capering around on the sand. “The boys only have memories of their mother now. We have to be mindful of that. And we have to be careful what we say in front of them.”
In other words, don’t go bashing Jennifer anymore.
Luckily she understood what I was saying and nodded thoughtfully. “I know. I will never again utter a cross word about their mother.”
“What about Dad?”
“I’ll talk to him.”
Leo and Isaac flapped their arms, pantomiming the seagulls circling overhead.
“He’s not a bad man,” she said. “Your father. He’s just bad at opening up his heart sometimes, bad at letting the people he loves know that he gives a damn.”
I thought about Jason, about the way he was always the one to say how much I meant to him. Had I ever said it back? I couldn’t remember.
“I’m bad at that too,” I confessed. “Something else I inherited, I suppose.”
My mother circled her arm around my back. “No,” she said. “No, you’re not like that, Audrey. You were such a loving little girl and you’ve grown into a kind, caring woman.”
She dropped her arm and stared out at her grandsons. They both had sticks now and they were scratching pictures in the sand.
“We should have come to places like this when you and William were kids. Instead we hardly took vacations. Lord knows we had the money. Your father and I just always had work, always had other priorities. And we allowed time to slip away.”
When she grew quiet I realized she’d stopped staring at the boys and was now staring at me with a mournful expression.
“I should have been there more,” she said. “For you. You were desperate for attention. You deserved attention. Instead you became so lost.”
“Mom, it wasn’t your fault I started drinking myself into oblivion every chance I got.”
She sighed. “But the fact that I refused to deal with it was my fault. You were still a child, Audrey. I couldn’t face the fact that you needed help. I couldn’t face what it said about my failures as a parent. I’m sorry for that.”
A breeze lifted my hair, and I breathed in the clean salt air. The boys were still determinedly carving up the sand with their sticks.
“Maybe someday we can all take that vacation together,” I said. “Perhaps we can even convince Dad to come along with us.”
She grinned. “I’m pretty sure I can persuade him.”
“Grandma!” Isaac shouted. He jumped up and down and held an object up high in his left hand. “It’s a shell! It’s a shell!”
“Ooh, let me see,” she exclaimed, and got to her feet, brushing sand off her palms. The spot we were sitting on had been a little damp, and my mother walked away with wet sand clinging to the backside of her white pants. Mentioning such things would have ruined the moment, though, so I said nothing. I just watched as Cindy Gordon laughed and played on the beach with her grandsons.
My knees were getting stiff, so I stood up and stretched, wishing I’d brought my phone with me so I could take the opportunity to check in with Jason. With so many people around all the time for the last few days, I hadn’t had the chance to talk to him much. He assured me repeatedly that the project was running smoothly, probably because he figured that’s what I would be most worried about. Yet what I longed for even more was to hear his voice drop into a sexy whisper and say something outrageous, something that would get me turned on or cause me to dissolve in a swirl of romance. Every hour I was away from Jason, I missed him even more.
I was bending my torso back and forth, trying to relieve the knot in my back that came from sleeping on the terrible mattress, when I saw William standing about twenty feet behind me wearing nothing but a pair of gray sweatpants. From the look of his hair, he’d literally just rolled out of a deep sleep on the couch and stumbled outside.
“Morning,” I said, shaking off some sand and approaching him.
He’d been gazing at Leo and Isaac, who were now kneeling down and digging in the sodden sand beside their grandmother. Apparently she’d given up all concern for her white pants, because she was crouched right down there with them.
“Good morning,” William answered politely but tonelessly. Like Leo, he’d been quiet since Jennifer’s death. I knew he was trying to be strong for the boys, but there were moments when he looked as if he might not have the strength to keep standing. This was one of those moments.
A broad piece of driftwood had been abandoned nearby, probably dragged up this far to serve as a natural bench. I sat down on the edge, hoping my big brother would get the picture, and he did, easing his tall body down on the driftwood with a thick sigh.
“They’re having fun,” I said, pointing to the boys with a smile.
William nodded absently. “Good.”
“Is Lisa still leaving today?” I asked, referring to Jennifer’s mother.
He scratched his head. In childhood his hair had been as light as his sons’, but it had darkened as he grew up. For the first time I noticed a little bit of gray around his temples. “I think so. I haven’t seen her yet this morning.”
“When were you thinking of leaving?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. Tomorrow maybe,” he said. “You really don’t have to stay, Audrey. I know you have important things to get back to.”
There was no bitterness in William’s voice. He thought he was just stating a fact, that the demands of my job would be occupying my thoughts. But nothing could be further from the truth. I didn’t care if I returned to Lester & Brown tomorrow or three weeks from now. I wasn’t going anywhere until William and the boys were ready.
“Hey.” I touched his bare shoulder so he would look at me. “There’s nothing more important than being with all of you.”
William’s eyes, a rich hazel, looked so tired. I had never seen my brother look as tired as he’d looked these past four days. “I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful,” he said. “I’m so glad you’re here. You and Mom.”
“Lisa let me know there’s no hurry for us to leave. She also said the family would love it if you brought the boys back here now and then.”
William looked out toward the horizon. The ocean appeared so endless from here. It was easy to imagine why people had once thought it stretched into infinity.
“This was her favorite place in the world,” he said wistfully. “We came here for a week the summer we got engaged. And then again the year we got married and several years after that. She was pregnant with Isaac the last time I was here. She brought them a few more times after that but I didn’t come along. I was too busy. Too busy working.”
A small wave crashed as if to emphasize William’s last statement, which he’d spat out with a tone of disgust. The beach occupants squealed and scattered as the cold water crept toward their ankles.
“It wasn’t her fault, Audrey,” he said.
“The accident? Of course it wasn’t her fault. It was a goddamn drunk driver who got on the freeway in the wrong direction.”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. The end of our marriage wasn’t her fault.”
“It makes no difference now,” I said uneasily, thinking about how Jennifer had cheated on him and shattered their family. William was just so heartsick he was taking responsibility for everything.
“I let her go,” he said, narrowing his eyes at the horizon. “Worse than that, I pushed her away. I was so hell-bent on becoming the greatest legal superstar the Gordon name had ever known that I neglected the most important thing in my life. I forgot birthdays, ignored anniversaries. Jen tried. She tried for years. Hell, I think she had that damn affair as a last-ditch effort to get my attention. But even when we were at our worst, we were determined to give the boys a good life. We were learning how to make this new normal work, how to share the responsibility of our sons. In time, I think we would have been friends. I can’t believe she won’t get to see them grow up.”
William had always been like Superman to me. Perfect, invincible, indomitable. Hearing him confess to his failures and his anguish tore me up in a way that nothing else ever had. I didn’t even know what to say. The only thing I could do for him was remain at his side and listen.
“I’m going to step down from the bench,” he said. “I sacrificed far too much to get there. It all feels hollow now.” He looked at me, his handsome face full of torment. “What the hell is the point of grabbing for the fucking brass ring if you wind up letting go of everything that really matters in the process?”
I had no answer. “I don’t know, William. I really don’t.”
My brother let out a snort of laughter that had no humor in it. “I heard someone say once that when a man’s gasping his last breath, the one thing he won’t be thinking is ‘Damn, I wish I’d put in more time at the office.’ I didn’t really appreciate that warning until recently. Now I get it. Of course, now it’s too late.”
I nudged my brother’s arm and pointed toward the beach. Our prim and proper mother had sunk down to her knees in the middle of the beach, laughing with abandon as her two young grandsons tickled her with glee.
“It’s not too late,” I told him. “You have two miraculous reasons to wake up every morning and be the best damn father on the planet. And you’ll do it. I know you will. You’re already their hero. And you’ve always been mine.”
He looked at his boys running around, tiptoeing to the surf and then shrieking when the water chased them back to the sand. For the first time in days a real smile lit up his face.
“Thanks, sis,” he said softly, and stood up.
Leo and Isaac noticed him then and they both came running. William laughed gently as the boys collided with his legs, then he lifted them each in one strong arm and carried them over to where our mother waited with her hands on her hips, her hair all over the place, her expensive clothes a disaster. She didn’t seem bothered, though. She hugged William when he set the boys down, and they all began scouring the shoreline for elusive shells.
I stood and watched them for a few minutes, then drifted closer to where the dry sand had been soaked by the waves when they crept ashore and then receded. I could still see the animal shapes the boys had been drawing with their sticks earlier. They’d even written their names side by side.
I picked up one of the abandoned sticks and carefully scratched some words into the wet sand. I was standing back and admiring them when Leo approached to check out what I was doing.
“Who’s Jason?” he asked, looking down at what I’d written.
“My boyfriend,” I answered with a smile.
“Why did you write that you love him?”
“Because I do.”
My nephew looked doubtful. “I’ve never met him.”
“You will.” I took his hand. “Come on, let’s go see if we can hunt down some more shells before the bee combs find them.”