When Light Breaks (29 page)

“You can stay as long as you want. But you gotta tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m not sure, Brian. I just had this desperate need to get away. Far away. But, like you said, this is as far as I made it.”

“Why didn’t you go to Deirdre’s?” He leaned against the door-jamb.

I rolled my eyes. “You have to ask?”

“Or Charlotte’s, or your fiancé’s?”

“Okay.” I held up my palms in surrender. “If you don’t want me here, just say so.”

“No, you’re more than welcome. Can I do anything?”

“I’d love a drink.” I pushed him back with my hands, then gave his left biceps the deserved pinch from the front-door conversation.

He jumped back. “Kara Larson, you are so lucky I’m your brother.”

And as his footsteps echoed down the hallway, I whispered, “Yes, I am.”

I threw my suitcase on the guest bed pushed up against the wall, which doubled as a couch in Brian’s half-used art studio. I touched the edges of a just-begun long-abandoned painting of sea oats. Were any of us Larson children listening to the hints of our heart, or were we all hiding our desire in the back corner room?

I sighed and walked out onto the porch. The dark creek spread before Brian’s porch like the silver-edged infinity I’d imagined my mama had slipped into all those years ago. The moon hid behind the house. I took a deep breath and settled into the rocking chair.

“Well,” I said to my brother, imitating my dad’s voice, “I just don’t understand why you would live in such a place.”

“I know, it’s a dump.” Brian sat down next to me, handed me a glass of scotch and ice.

“You are so lucky.” I took a long swallow of the drink, let my head cloud over with its warmth. I wanted the questions to take on a fuzzy edge.

“I am lucky,” Brian said, “and so are you. So tell me why you’re here.”

“You really don’t have to listen to it, Brian. I just needed a place to crash and think things through.”

He sat with me for a moment, and we absorbed the sound of the incoming tide we couldn’t see in the darkness, flowing over the oyster shells with a wind-chime song. These tides had gone on before me, and would go on after me. They had gone on before Maeve and before Mama and before life.

“Brian—go on your date, I just need to be quiet anyway.”

He hugged me before he left. “Wake me if you want to talk.”

 

The dream is clouded; I make out the shapes of the landscape, but not the details. I am late for my wedding, and I can’t find the correct turn off Magnolia Street to the church. I go up and down, up and down, walking on the sidewalks I’ve known my whole life, but they are different, shifted to the right or maybe the left and the turn is gone. I am starting to panic, running and ruining my hand-appliquéd water pearls on the silk stiletto heels. The turn is gone. I run back to the garden shop—the one where I bought the angel—and call for Mrs. Marshall, but she isn’t there; she’s gone to my wedding.

I startled, awakened with a cold panic.

Confusion drifted over me like dust settling on a windowsill. I couldn’t pull past the wondering—where was I? Why? Where was Peyton and why was he mad at me? Why couldn’t I find him?

I opened my eyes to an art easel in the corner of the room—Brian’s house. I jumped from the bed and dressed, went outside to the rising morning to yank a rowboat from beneath the porch.

I launched the boat, leaned back to watch the sun rise over the cordgrass blowing sideways inside the wind; I trailed my fingers along the water.
Be careful what you believe . . .

I spoke out loud, “I believe . . . ,” and found a vacant space as empty as the discarded shells on the mud banks.

I tried again, lifting my face to the wind. “I believed . . .” And I realized that, this time, I spoke about the past—about what I
had
believed. “I believed that Mama left us willingly, I believed that I loved Peyton with a full heart, I believed Jack was gone forever.” I took a deep breath, lifted my voice to the sky. “I believed I knew my heart, I believed Maeve’s story. . . .”

The sun burst from the horizon in a streak of pink light and the world unfolded; it opened and spread its wings wide and broad, and for the briefest moment, I saw it all—all the questions. I didn’t see any answers, but the questions, which had been rattling around in my brain like pieces of broken china I couldn’t put back together, became as delineated as the coastline: What was my story? Why was I here? Should I marry Peyton, and did I love him as I should? What were my gifts and how should I use them? Did I love Jack or only the youth he represented—a time when I felt loved?

I drew back from these larger questions, attempted to fold the world back in around me like a blanket, so that it would surround me and comfort me. If I understood the questions, where were the answers?

Mama’s words came to me:
In the hints of your heart.

In all the times I’d tried to find her, remember her, listen for the whisper of her voice, I’d only found scraps of torn memory. Now her words I’d never actually heard washed over me.

Tears stung the backs of my eyelids. I wouldn’t find the answers in a swift moment of revelation like I had found the questions. Those questions came clear and certain, but the answers were not so easy. Would trying to find them result in a quest that would lead to my own destruction?

I sat back down in the boat, leaned against the bow, and stared across the curve of the estuary and creek where I’d floated. An energy that felt like electricity ran down my forearms before I realized why: the landscape was unfamiliar; it was not the right-to-left curve of the creek I knew.

I sat upright, inhaled through pursed lips. I jerked my head to the left and right. How long had I been floating in and out of the small dead ends and curves of the creek? I glanced at my wrist—I didn’t have my watch. I hadn’t told anyone where I was going.

I groaned. I’d broken every Lowcountry safety rule I knew. I pictured the headlines, how they’d find me days from now petrified in the baking sun, how a local girl should’ve known better. Then I laughed. Here I was lost in the circuitous marshes, and I was worried about what the headlines would say when they found me.

God, what had become of me? If life, as Maeve said, was a journey, then my journey was about to abruptly end in a comedic twist: lost in familiar territory—a tortuous metaphor for my life. I lifted the paddles and pulled against the water, squinting against the sun to see the horizon. I had either floated to the east and was looking at Oystertip or had floated south and was staring at Back-bay Island. Either way, if I could get there, reach some landmark, I could find my way home.

So here I was, lost in a land I thought I knew. Sunlight licked the tops of the grasses, which meant I needed to head that way—west, not toward the sea to the east. As I rounded a corner of marsh I spied Palmetto Pointe Lighthouse. I exhaled: my landmark. I released the paddles and lay back on the seat. I really hadn’t been lost at all, just confused in my wondering and wandering.

I lifted my head, trailed my hand over the top of the water. A smooth surface rolled underneath my hand. I held my breath as a baby dolphin whispered beneath my fingers, lifted her bottle nose toward them. I petted her and a sob formed in the back of my throat, at the base of my heart. Where was this baby’s mama? A second pewter hump formed next to the dolphin, rose as if in answer to my question. I’m right here, right here.

I flipped off the side of the boat in an instinctive act—from a desire to be part of them, part of their family—diving through the sea with a mama, with a family that laughed and played. I joined them without fear until I broke through the water and watched the boat floating away from me.

In a remembrance of the days when Deirdre, Brian, and I swam with long, strong strokes through these waters, I reached the boat, turned to find the dolphins gone, having vanished beneath the dove-gray water.

I paddled slowly toward the lighthouse, then to the left toward Brian’s home.

 

The weekend passed as I reached for answers along the waters of Silver Creek. I walked down the beach or stared out to the water and wondered about the edges of land tied together by the sea—about the edges of the stories tied together by time. Maeve’s land, my land; Maeve’s story, my story. And yet not her story at all—a legend.

I’d ignored my cell phone and had even forgotten that the next tournament was over until I saw Peyton standing at the bottom of Brian’s front stairs, looking up at me as if he didn’t recognize me, as if all the confusion inside had changed the outside of me. And maybe it had as I sat on the porch, still in my drawstring pajama bottoms and tank top, a cold cup of coffee cradled in my hands.

I jumped up; coffee splattered across my lap, the warped porch boards. A long way off a seagull cried, and then squawked, and I could almost believe it came from the far side of the water: Maeve’s sea.

“Hi, honey.” I wiped at the spill, walked toward the stairs. Peyton reached the landing before I stepped down.

He pulled me into a hug, but it was weak, like someone had watered down his affection: a lukewarm offering. “Hello, Kara.”

I raised my eyebrows at his formal greeting. “Well . . . how did you do?” I spread my hands out wide in a question.

“Do you care?”

“Of course I care. Why are you asking me like that?”

“Well, I couldn’t get ahold of you all weekend, and it’s not like you’re busy. . . .” He waved his hand across the porch.

I groaned. “I—”

He held up his hand, successfully stopping my excuse. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“Please tell me how you did in the tournament.”

“I won.” His face said otherwise.

“That is fantastic, but you don’t look like you won.”

He nodded. “You weren’t there to support me.”

“You obviously didn’t need me, and I
was
supporting you—just not on the sidelines. You don’t need me there every minute to win.”

“You know, I heard about you at Danny’s Pub. You never came over that night. You never came to say good-bye or good luck, then I hear you’re dancing at the bar. . . .” He closed his eyes, twisted away from me.

An emotion resembling fear, but more like anxiety, filled my stomach. Something threatening loomed at the edges of the horizon behind Peyton, but I couldn’t make out its shape or form. Then he spoke.

“Maybe this engagement is not such a good idea,” he said.

“Oh?” Had I screwed this up like my daddy had warned? Had my own selfish behavior lost my engagement, my fiancé? Please, I thought, no more leaving in my life . . . no more leaving me.

He sat on the bottom step. “I need someone who will be there for me, and you don’t seem to want that. I need . . .” His face was set; still beautiful, but set and vacant, like a photograph of Peyton, but not the man. “Damn, why does this keep happening?” He dropped his chin down to his chest, his fists clenched at his side. “Mom warned me this time—not again, Peyton, not again. But I told her it was different with you. . . .”

“Your mom?”

“This isn’t because of Mom.”

“Yeah, but it might be that you keep thinking you’ll find that one girl who will make you whole, who will help you win and keep you in line—and your mom will love her.” I stared over his head, not wanting to look at him to feel the leaving coming again and again and again, like the waves crashing in monotonous curls.

“Kara?”

I looked at him and the abandonment crashed on the shoreline, higher and higher until tears came with it. “What?”

“Do you love me?”

I continued to stare at him. This was the most important question anyone had ever asked me—and there I was at this turning point, where my future lay to the left or the right, where I had to understand that the path I took would be the one I’d travel for a very long time. There was no U-turn here at all.

“Do you?” He stood now, and then moved away. “I guess your silence is my answer.”

“No.” I stood. “My silence is not your answer.” I grabbed his arm. “I do love you, Peyton. Do I love you the way I should? Or, more important—the way you need? The way that will last a lifetime of marriage, children, old age?”

“I can’t answer that for you, Kara.” His jaw clenched, twitched.

“I think you already answered for me, Peyton. You don’t believe or feel like I love you the way you need me to. Something about the kind of love I have for you is not enough—and maybe that isn’t your fault. Maybe it is mine—the love not being enough for you. Maybe because I don’t have enough or maybe you need too much . . . I don’t know. But . . .”

“I keep ending up here.” His hands splayed open. “With my hand out for an engagement ring I gave in sincerity. I don’t get it,” he said.

And there it was: I’d done the thing my family, my friends, and Palmetto Pointe could chew on for years—broken an engagement with the invitations already mailed. I sank to the chair, and then reached over, slipped the diamond off my left finger and held it out without looking up.

I felt him take it from me, then I heard his footsteps go down the stairs and stop, but I still didn’t raise my head. So this was how my heart broke—this easily, with the handoff of a diamond ring.

“Kara?”

I lifted my eyes, but didn’t speak.

“I’m sorry.” His voice cracked.

I nodded. “Isn’t there a way to talk this out, try to figure out where to go from here?” But even as I said it, I knew the answer. I didn’t love him deep enough, wide enough, and he knew it; he knew something I was only starting to realize.

“Maybe I do need too much, Kara. Maybe I do need someone who can be what you’re not willing to be.”

I nodded; he was right. There was something wrong with the way I loved—it was not enough.

When he was gone, the tears came, but not in full; the sorrow was mixed with wondering what Daddy, Deirdre, Charlotte, and Mrs. Carrington would say and do.