And Then I Found You (2 page)

“Well, I better get home for dinner or I
will
be grounded,” Katie said.

They walked hand in hand to the fork in the path. One way led to his house, the other
to hers. Jack glanced toward Katie’s unseen house as if Katie’s mom and dad had seen
what happened on the riverbank.

“I can make it home from here,” Katie said, knowing she didn’t yet want to go home.

“You sure?” he asked.

“Yep,” she answered, and then kissed him quickly, and crooked so their front teeth
clacked together. She ran up the path and when she knew he could no longer see her,
Katie stopped and took a hard right to her favorite willow tree—the one with a trunk
as thick as three men, the tree she hid under and in. Her fortress. Flopping down
on the ground under the willow’s guardian limbs, Katie spoke out loud. “Today I said
my
first
curse word. Today was my
first
kiss. Today is the
first
day of spring, and now my
first
promise: I will never, ever love anyone but Jonathon Gray Adams—my Jack.”

Some people wish upon stars, others on birthday candles, but Katie Vaughn made a promise
under a half moon and in that moment, nothing felt more important than this vow made
on the first day of spring—one that couldn’t and wouldn’t be broken.

And when the night is new

I’ll be looking at the moon

But I’ll be seeing you.

SAMMY FAIN AND IRVING KAHAL, 1938

one

BLUFFTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

2010

The unopened letter perched on the side table like a single wing about to take flight.
Katie Vaughn—who at thirty-five went by Kate—wanted to open the letter, but waited.

For Kate, the first day of spring held more than blooming daffodils. It was still
a day of firsts. Kate had a ritual, a sacred ritual. She made sure that she did something
she’d never done before, something that would count as new on the first day of spring.
Six years ago she’d opened her boutique. The year before that she ran a marathon with
her sister. Of course there was that trip to Charleston with Norah. Then four years
ago the midnight swim in the darkest water with Rowan, the first time he’d visited
her in South Carolina. It didn’t matter what she did or said or saw as long as it
hadn’t been done, or said, or seen before.

This year, Kate’s parents, Nicole and Stuart, would meet Rowan’s parents for the first
time. After four years of dating, Kate and Rowan had finally found a day and time
when both sets of parents were not only willing, but also able, to meet. They’d tried
this before, but someone always had a reason for backing out: a cancelled flight,
a threatening hurricane, a bout of the flu or, mostly, overwhelming job responsibilities.
Holidays had become a source of agony—who would get Kate and Rowan?

Kate wasn’t sure she was ready for this meeting, but as she knew: Life moved ahead
without her permission.

And yes, it was time. Four years of dating and the parents should meet. Or so she
was told.

The door buzzer forced its cracked sound into her loft, and her mom’s voice came through
the intercom. “Buzz me up, darling.”

Kate’s loft was on the second floor of a historic brick building above the boutique
she owned. Her living space ran the length and breadth of the building and overlooked
an oak-lined street front bordering the lush Broad River.

When the elevator doors opened, Kate’s mom, Nicole, appeared with a cigarette balanced
delicately between her fingers, like a gymnast on a balance beam.

“Mom,” Kate held her nose in disgust. “Not in here. Seriously.”

“Oh, darling,” Mom came close and kissed Kate’s cheek with the cigarette held up and
out. Nicole ambled to the kitchen sink, taking one long draw before turning on the
faucet to douse the embers, then tossing the offending cigarette into the trash.

She wore a pair of white linen pants and a pastel button-down—an outfit she wore almost
every day with the shirt changing shades until Labor Day, when she donned khakis or
pressed denim. (Never jeans, she’d said. Only boys wear jeans; girls wear denim.)
Her copper hair was cut short and tossed with gel in a style Kate knew was supposed
to look casual, but looked messy. “I was downstairs shopping in your store for something
to wear tonight, and thought I’d come up and say hello.”

“Did you find anything?” Kate asked, already knowing the answer.

“Oh, I tried. But you have such trendy things and it’s all so expensive. I couldn’t
afford it even if I liked it.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing you don’t like any of it. I know you have something
in that closet of yours. It’s not like this is some fancy dinner.”

“But I want to make a good impression.” Nicole glanced at the unopened letter, tapping
her finger on its edge. “Also, I wanted to check on you because I know what today
is and I know it’s … hard.”

Yes, everyone fumbled to find the just-right word for what the day was and what the
day meant, and
hard
was as good a description as any other. Kate smiled. “Thanks, Mom. Really, it’s okay
this year.”

“Ah,” she said. “Love will do that.”

“Do what?”

“Make everything better.”

Kate laughed. “You’re funny. I’ve never said I’m in love.”

“Well, dear Lord, you’ve been dating him for four years and I can see it.
And
you’ve never asked us to meet anyone’s parents. It’s time, sweet pea. It is time
to fall madly and terribly in love.”

Kate stood. “Tara and Molly are going to be downstairs any minute and I’ve got ten
million things to do before tonight, so hug me, then go home and pick out an outfit,
okay?”

They talked for a few minutes about times and logistics for the evening. Even as Kate
promised that her parents didn’t need to do anything but show up, Nicole won out with
her insistence that she would bring an appetizer and her husband’s favorite whiskey
in case Rowan was out.

“Dad can live without his whiskey for one night.”

“Maybe one night,” Nicole said, “but not tonight.” She hugged her daughter. A dark
smudge of lipstick was smeared across Nicole’s front tooth, and Kate made a brushing
motion with her finger across her own teeth.

Nicole reached up and wiped the lipstick off her teeth without a word: mother-daughter
silent language.

They hugged good-bye and Kate stood in front of the closed elevator for a moment,
thankful that her mother—no matter what excuse she’d used—had come by. No one in Kate’s
tight-knit family ever really knew what to do or say on this day. Each family member—Mom,
Dad, and Kate’s sisters, Tara and Molly—had all tried different ways to deal with
it. They ignored the day. They sent cards. They made phone calls. They made visits.
A lot of visits. Kate’s little sister, Molly, had once brought over a tiara and set
it on the kitchen counter like a monument where it had stayed for almost a year until
Rowan had asked what the sparkling crown was for, and Kate had hidden it in the box
with all her other memories.

Kate was the oldest of three sisters and the one who baffled her parents the most.
She didn’t conform to the Vaughn Family prototype: studious and bent on traditionalism.
Fifteen years ago, when she still went by the name Katie, her family had begged her
not to leave for south-of-nowhere Arizona, which was—in their humble opinion—far too
close to the Mexican border. They told her not to leave South Carolina and all she
knew. Jack had warned her that if she went, their relationship might not make it through
the absence. But Katie left. At twenty years old, she hadn’t imagined ever losing
anything of value: love, confidence, or, least of all, Jack Adams. Doing something
so terrifying and wonderful as living in the wilderness and helping young girls could
only hold the best of things. Young Katie hadn’t—
couldn’t
—conceive of all she would lose inside a single choice that had felt so right.

Maybe there was something to the supposed magic of March twentieth, because Kate hadn’t
fully loved another man since her promise under the willow tree. Kate often joked
to her best friend, Norah, that on that first day of spring, after that first kiss,
she should have made Jack also promise to always love her. A one-sided promise hadn’t
done Kate any good at all.

“It could be that a girl only loves like that once,” Kate had told Norah. “Only once
and then after that, love is more sensible.”

Norah had completely disagreed. But Norah was a romantic; Kate was a realist. Or so
she said.

And now there was Rowan.

*   *   *

Kate knew that Tara and Molly would be waiting downstairs, wandering the racks and
asking to open the new boxes in the back room. The biggest perk when your sister owned
a clothing store? First pick of the new shipments.

But Kate was wrong. Tara and Molly were sitting on stools behind the checkout counter,
talking to Norah and holding their ever-present Starbucks cups.

“Kitty-Kat,” Molly said.

“Katie-Latey,” Tara said.

Kate laughed and pointed at the imitation Paris Train Station clock hanging on the
back wall. “Two minutes. I’ve got two minutes until late is late.”

“Your definition of late and our definition aren’t quite the same,” Molly said.

“Just today, can we take a break from pointing out my faults?” Kate asked, trying
to smile at her sister. That was the thing with Molly—she knew what dug the deepest
and hurt the most, and sometimes she couldn’t help but use that superpower.

Norah, always the peacemaker, always knowing when the sisterly jabs were building,
quickly interrupted and changed the subject. “We were talking about tonight, and wondering
why we, the most important people in your life, weren’t invited.”

Norah stood between Molly and Tara. She was a light, a candle, a beacon really. Kate
and Norah had been best friends since third grade and whenever Kate felt lost, she
looked to Norah exactly as she did when she asked, “Do you really want to sit through
a dinner with the Vaughn and Irving parents?”

The three of them looked at each other in alternate glances and laughed. “Um, no,”
Tara said, standing.

Norah smiled at Kate and winked. Norah drew stares wherever she went, and yet she
pretended she didn’t notice. It was her beauty, yes—with her long, dark hair and almost
six-foot height, with her eyes so dark they appeared mystical—but the stares were
mostly a result of gazes being drawn to Norah’s face where, at birth, a pair of forceps
had gashed her left eye, leaving a dip and scar that made it appear as if Norah had
wept enough to form a half-inch-long furrow into her cheek. Norah was told many times
that there were methods and lasers and surgeries that could fix this, but she shrugged
and nodded. “Yep, that might be a good idea one day.” Yet one day never seemed to
matter to Norah. Only that day, the day she was living, was important to her.

“So, we’re here to pick out your outfit for the evening,” Tara said, her cheeks puckering
inward as she took a long draw of her coffee, which she always desperately needed
what with a ten-, a four-, and a two-year-old under her feet and in her hair and in
her bed (her words exactly).

Kate laughed. “No way. I’ve got that under control. We’re going out to lunch and that’s
it.”

Molly moaned. “Come on, Kitty-Kat. Let’s do something funner than that today.”

“Funner is not a word, Molly.” Kate kissed her baby sister, who wasn’t a baby at all
but twenty-seven years old, on the forehead.

“Then let’s go do something that is memorable and silly instead.” Molly held out her
hands. “I say kayaking out to Goat Island and drinking moonshine until dusk.”

Their joined laughter was a sacred sound. Kate shook her head. “I’m all in on the
kayak, but since I want to appear vaguely human to the Irving family, I’ll skip the
moonshine.”

The front door to the boutique was open, propped by a concrete garden statue of a
little girl holding out her skirts. Birds called and the breeze rattled in the palmetto
fronds, sounding like blessed rain. “God, I love spring,” Tara said as she stood.
“It’s like anything, almost anything at all could happen.” She held her arms out wide,
coffee cup still in hand as a permanent appendage.

Norah glanced at Kate, who attempted to smile back. Yes, anything could happen and
mostly had.

“Where are the kids today?” Kate asked.

“Dearest hubby took the day off. He knew I wanted to spend it with you,” Tara said.

“It wasn’t necessary, but thanks,” Kate said and hugged her sister with one arm, keeping
the full force of the day’s meaning close and distant in a dance of opposites.

“Let’s go then.” Molly jumped off her stool.

“I wish you could come,” Kate said to Norah.

“I almost asked Charlie to cover for me.” Norah smiled.

“Your husband’s too cute; I wouldn’t trust Kitty-Kat’s clients,” Molly said.

Norah laughed. “Good point. Anyway, I tried to get Lida to cover, but she has that
mysterious stomach bug that grabs her every few weeks.”

“Sure thing,” Tara said and rolled her eyes. “The bug that sits on the bottom of the
freaking tequila bottle.”

“Stop,” Kate said.

“I swear, Kitty-Kat, you take in humans like some people take in animals. I think
you should move on to stray cats.” Molly poked Kate’s arm with one slender finger.

This never-ending subject irritated Kate, but she smiled. “I know.”

And she did know. Lida had once been one of the girls she’d counseled in the wilderness
of Arizona. Now twenty-six years old, Lida could hold it together for weeks and sometimes
months, but then she’d slide back into that dark place, a place where someone who
hadn’t visited that same hell could never imagine or understand. The last thing Kate
had energy for that morning was rehashing the pain that led Lida to do things Molly
and Tara couldn’t fathom doing. Kate knew all about doing things she’d never once
imagined doing. Explaining rarely helped.