Family Trees (9 page)

“But you're not a mommy.” Shelby had laughed weakly.

“Gran and Grandpa haven't been honest with you, Shelby.”

“What?” She looked toward the kitchen, willing her grandparents to return. Sensing that she'd need protection from the secret that was about to be revealed to her.

“I'm talking about me. I'm not just a family friend, Shelby,” she said, dropping her feet back onto the floor and leaning forward. “I'm your mother.”

Jackie reached out to Shelby, but she recoiled and hugged Polly tighter, instinctively protecting the doll from someone she thought she could trust.

“Come here, Shelby.” Jackie's attempt at a motherly smile came across, instead, as a contemptuous sneer. Shelby shuddered. “Give your mom a hug.”

Instead, she scrambled to her feet and ran into the kitchen with a trembling chin and eyes brimming with tears. Shelby found her grandmother standing at the kitchen sink and flung her arms around Ginny's leg until Olen reached down to lift her up. With her arms wrapped tightly around her grandfather's neck, her tears wetting his shirt, and her grandmother speaking softly into her ear, Shelby listened as the two people she loved most reluctantly told her the truth.

Later that morning, Shelby retreated into her room and climbed up onto her bed with Polly and another gift she had received. This one from her grandfather. It was a diary with a smooth red cover, gold-edged pages that she thought were beautiful, and gold lettering that spelled out
My Diary
in a delicate script. The diary's best feature was a lock and key that she felt certain would be strong enough to keep Jackie from knowing her innermost thoughts.

In her best printing, and using what few words she knew how to spell at the time, Shelby began to write. About her questions. Her fears. Dreams. She poured her truth onto those pages.

As the years went on, Shelby never forgot the sound of her mother's words or the pain they incited. Shelby learned that her best defense was to keep her mother's voice at bay. If Jackie wanted to communicate, she could do it in letters.

“Despite everything, she's still my mom,” Shelby finally told Ryan. “And she's my grandparent's daughter. I don't think they'll ever stop worrying about her and the decisions she makes. And I don't think I'll ever wonder what my life would have been like with parents in it.”

“Do you still write?” he asked.

“I used to—” she began, realizing it had been a long time since anyone other than her grandparents had asked about her writing. “I was actually studying journalism at Madison. Something happened a while back and I,” she said with some apprehension.
Too much, too soon,
she thought.
What is it about this guy? We just met and here I am telling him everything.

He looked at her curiously. “You quit?”

“No, not exactly. I had to come back to help out on the farm,” she lied. “I'm sure I'll go back and finish out my last year. Eventually.”
Or never,
she thought.

“I don't know. It seems to me that they'd want you to finish that degree,” he said. “Pursue your own dreams regardless of what anyone else thinks. Particularly your mother.”

“I wish it was that easy. I mean, I wouldn't expect you to understand, coming from a city like Chicago. It's just that they're getting older and the farm is a huge responsibility and”—she said, perhaps to reassure herself more than Ryan—“they just need me.”

“Maybe so,” he offered. “But it seems to me that you have two people who love you unconditionally. With that kind of support, anything's possible.”

“Is it?” Shelby reached down to pick up one last stone and threw it into the lake. Gentle ripples circled away from the diminutive splash and, like childhood memories, caught the moon's glow as they traveled back to her.

C
HAPTER
10

“Y
our table is ready,” Ryan said, sweeping his arm over a picnic blanket. Their first evening in the park, which hardly qualified as an actual date, had been eventful. Once he had dried off from his lake plunge and Shelby's guard started to come down, ever so slightly, they spent the night talking. And by the time they parted ways, they were even laughing. She had agreed to see him again.

That was a few days and several dates ago and on this evening, Ryan had driven Shelby to a small beach outside of town that offered privacy, sand dunes, and a view of Madeline Island across the bay. The week was passing quickly and Ryan would be leaving for Chicago in two days.

“I hope you're hungry because I went a bit overboard,” he told her, referring to the assortment of cheeses, salami, bread, and smoked whitefish wrapped in newspaper. Kneeling beside her on a plaid blanket, he held up two cardboard containers of strawberries and blueberries. “I didn't know which one you liked better, so I grabbed both.”

“Strawberries, hands down.” She reached for one of the crimson berries, plucked off its fringed green top, and took a bite. “I'm impressed—you thought of everything.”

“You don't mind eating outside?” Once again, he had managed to plan a date with Shelby that kept them out of the public eye, such as it was in Bayfield.

“The restaurants will always be there, but it's not often that I have dinner on the beach. In fact, I'm actually surprised you picked
this
beach—you know, considering the bears and all,” she said, removing the pungent, smoke-infused fish from its oil-stained paper wrapping.

Ryan was slicing a wedge of softened Brie, its insides melting away from the white outer skin and onto the picnic cutting board, when he held the knife still and looked up. “Bears?”

“You didn't know?”

His eyes started darting about the deserted beach.

“Huh, I'm surprised. I thought you would have read about it in a travel guide or something.” Shelby tilted her head and looked at him with a quizzical expression. “This is the most popular place for bear watching. In fact, people often sit in their cars on the side of the road over there, and wait to spot them,” she explained casually, pointing in the direction of Ryan's parked car.

“I've never really thought of bears on the beach. . . .” His voice trailed off as he glanced over his shoulder.

“No, I suppose not. But we're talking about Wisconsin black bears. They love to forage on these dunes,” she continued without concern, removing the skin from the smoked fish and pulling away a flake of its tender meat. “Berries, smoked fish . . . and sometimes, they even enjoy a good pinot.” Shelby popped the piece of fish into her mouth and gave a nod to the unopened wine bottle at his side. She then covered her mouth, chewing and laughing.

“Bears,” he chuckled, reaching into his bag for a corkscrew. “You didn't fool me for a minute.”

“I don't know . . . you had that look on your face . . .” she teased. “Do bears make you nervous?”

“You make me nervous.”

 

“For a visitor, you seem quite at home.” Shelby lay on her side, propped up on her elbow and unable to eat another morsel of their picnic dinner.

“I love it up here.”

“Do you realize you've done more in one week than I probably do in an entire summer?”

“Come on, that can't be true.”

“I'm serious,” she said, taking another sip of wine. “Let's take yesterday. I've lived here all my life and I never kayaked into the sea caves until I went with you and your friends. Or this picnic—I can't tell you the number of times I've been to this beach, but never once did I think to come in the evening. And look at what I've been missing—it's so peaceful.”

“Beautiful,” he said, admiring Shelby more than the scenery. “In fact, do you mind if I take a picture of you, while there's still a little light?”

“I'm too stuffed to pose.”

“Don't move.”

As he reached into his camera bag to retrieve his equipment, Ryan was taken by Shelby's confidence and ease. There were no pretenses with her. She was naturally beautiful and unconcerned about impressing others, including him.

He stepped away from the blanket and raised the camera to his eye. His attraction for her grew as she smiled at him through the camera's lens.
Click
. He took more shots from different angles and distances while she became playful in her expressions—sometimes serious and contemplative, sometimes cross-eyed with puckered lips—and sometimes just herself.
Click
. When he knelt at the foot of the blanket to take one last shot of Shelby in the fading violet light, Ryan realized how much the photographs summed up their brief time together. It was a balance between respect and attraction. Enjoying the day without regard for tomorrow.

“I've noticed, over these past few days, that you really seem to know your way around that camera. When did you pick it up?” Shelby asked.

“In college,” he said, replacing the lens cap. “Before that, I was mainly into drawing. I spent a lot of time sketching cars when I was a kid.” He reached for his camera bag and packed up his equipment while she watched.

“Do you still draw?”

“A bit.”

“I'd love to see your sketches someday.”

They hadn't talked about what would happen between them once he left for Chicago. Ryan hadn't mentioned the distinct possibility that he'd return. She brushed her hands back and forth across the blanket before bringing up the topic he had hoped to avoid. “You haven't talked much about your family this week—they must enjoy seeing your photographs.”

“My dad treats it like a hobby.” He snapped the camera case shut and moved to sit beside her. “He'd rather see me behind a desk than behind a lens.”

“And your mom?”

“She's more supportive. In fact, she gave me my first camera when I was thirteen. It was one of those handheld cameras. Blue.” He smiled at the memory. “I think it was her way of encouraging me to put down the pencil and try to connect with my father. Since his work involves video and film, so to speak, she probably thought he would relate more to me through photography.”

“You've obviously moved on from that little blue camera.”

“That's true. I hadn't really thought much of photography as art until I was in college. Have you ever heard of Vivian Maier?” Ryan wasn't interested in discussing photography at that moment. In fact, it was taking everything he had not to lean over to Shelby and kiss her for the first time. The only thing holding him back was knowing that although they had seen each other every day since that first night in the park, she was firmly against becoming attached to someone who was passing through town.

“No, I haven't.” Shelby gently bit her lower lip and he wondered if they were sharing the same thoughts.

“I hadn't either, until a friend dragged me to her exhibit on campus. She had an incredible story. You see, she took thousands of photographs that were packed away in boxes and forgotten. Years later, someone found the boxes of negatives in an old storage locker, printed them, and realized how incredible they were. She wasn't discovered by the art world until after her death.”

“Great story,” Shelby said. “What did she photograph?”

“Black-and-white candids of ordinary people doing ordinary things. And yet, she was able to capture the stories and emotion behind those ordinary moments,” he said, trying to take his mind off his attraction to Shelby by reflecting on Maier's work. He had been so moved by the woman's photographs that he returned to her exhibit three more times that week, just staring at the images and trying to figure out what it was that made them so unique. Was it her composition? Lighting? Expression? Because of Vivian Maier, an artist who created images for herself rather than for her public, photography was never the same for him again—and his new aspiration was born.

After the sun disappeared beyond the horizon, the only remaining light came from a few votive candles that Ryan placed in the sand, the distant lights from Madeline Island across the bay, and the rising moon. A second bottle of pinot sat off-kilter against a rock, uncorked and half-full. Lying on their backs and looking up at the night sky, Ryan wondered aloud how long it had been since he had felt this relaxed. The soft blanket beneath them, a gentle breeze brushing off the water, the sound of her laugh—the combination was more intoxicating than the wine.

He looked over at Shelby and noticed color rising in her cheeks. First rose toned, then a golden orange, and finally a blazing emerald green. From the corner of his eye he saw a brightening overhead. Looking skyward, he uttered his amazement. He watched in awe as a kaleidoscope of light shifted and blended fluidly above them. It was as if God was orchestrating a silent symphony in the skies. Inspired, Ryan reached across the blanket for Shelby's hand before realizing she'd likely pull away. Instead, she entwined her fingers with his and he felt a rush of desire sweep through him.

Cast in the light of aurora borealis, with Shelby at his side, Ryan was at a loss for words. This woman—this place—had made him feel more alive than ever before. He couldn't rationalize how quickly she had filled his heart any more than he could explain why the sky was now aflame in color. In his head, Ryan knew he was witnessing solar flashes in the night sky—but his heart knew he was taking a glimpse of heaven on earth.

He couldn't let another day pass without expressing through touch what words couldn't convey. How do you describe a bond you feel for someone, when logical thought insists that it couldn't happen so quickly? You don't earn someone's trust in a day. Love doesn't happen in a single evening. At least that's what he had always believed.

Ryan slowly rolled onto his side, so close to her now that they nearly touched. The small space between their bodies felt charged. He raised his hand to touch her cheek, ever so lightly. When Shelby looked at him, her eyes were bright with emotion and reflecting the lights above them. He leaned in close enough to feel her quickening breath on his lips. His nose barely brushed against hers. A playful touch before his lips fell softly on the blush of her cheek. With his lips no more than a whisper away from hers, he smiled with his eyes, touched her chin, and then kissed her lightly.

He pulled away to take it all in. He would hold the image of her in his mind, clearer than any photograph, and remember how lovely she was in that moment. Her bright eyes were dazzling as they reflected the spirited wisps of color that moved across the sky. Ryan then gathered Shelby in his arms and kissed her with more passion. She arched her body against his and kissed him back as the sky continued to cast its transcendent light upon them. They lay atop the blanket on the sand dunes, wrapped in each other's embrace, until the candles burned out and the northern lights faded to black.

 

“Come on, I want to show you something,” Shelby said on their last evening together. As soon as he arrived at the farmhouse, she had met him at his car and took his hand. The sun was disappearing quickly, casting a ribbon of warm light across the horizon. She led Ryan to her favorite spot on the property, the barn. He had noticed it the first time he visited Meyers Orchard and admired its architectural character. It was a gamble-roofed barn, painted apple red with white trim. As they approached, Shelby explained how Ginny had fallen in love with its charm the first time she and Olen had stepped foot on the property. Tonight, silhouetted against the early evening sky with amber lamplight shining within, it seemed almost magical.

“Would you believe this is the first time I've been inside a barn?” Ryan asked as they entered.

“You don't get out much, do you?” Shelby gave his hand a playful squeeze.

“If I were to imagine the quintessential barn, I think this would be it,” he said once they were inside. He dropped her hand and walked about the space, looking up at the high-ceiling framework that resembled the inverted skeletal hull of a ship.

“Quintessential? You
are
a city boy.”

Ryan chuckled as he walked past a stack of empty storage crates.

“Would you believe it if I told you this was a mail-ordered barn?” she asked, seemingly delighted to show him this place that she loved.

“Seriously?” He touched some of the antique tools that hung on a pegboard along the far wall.

“The original owners ordered this barn from a 1911 Sears, Roebuck catalog for roughly five hundred dollars. You're standing inside the ‘Barn Number Twelve' kit.” Shelby made her way around the crates to join him. “I've always loved the thought of a gigantic package arriving here with words stamped across the sides of the crate, ‘Some Assembly Required.' ” She laughed. “Can you imagine?”