He loves me. Nicholas Enright loves me.
She dug her hands deeply into her pockets and repeated the words aloud.
“Nick Enright loves me.”
In spite of the cold, she was warmed with the knowledge, blushing at the memory of how she had so shamelessly pursued him the night before. Then she laughed, in spite of herself.
Nick Enright is in love with me.
The joy of it began to flood through her. This incredible man, this wonderful man, loved her. She wished she could share it with Ry, this delight. In an instant, the sadness pulled at the sides of her mouth, and for a long moment, the pain tugged at her. There was nothing to be shared with Ry, not the joy of her falling in love with his best friend, not the wonders of the holiday season.
She drew a shell from her pocket and bent down to write her brother’s name in the sand. The slow, shallow waves crept toward it, eating away slowly until the letters had disappeared. It was no more certain than
that
, she thought, watching the water lap at the shore.
Corri ran toward her, calling her name, and India turned to watch the child fly across the beach—in spite of her overabundance of clothing—her pockets bulging with shells. The child’s mission had been accomplished. She had found shells perfect enough to be turned into Christmas presents for the people she loved. All in all, in spite of life’s uncertainties, was its mystery really any more complicated than the simple delight of a child?
Ry was gone, but the season held wonders to be shared, traditions that India, in her obsession to convict over the past few years, had simply ignored. This year, she would make up for it. There would be a night of caroling, and she would take Corri just as Aunt August had taken her and Ry. There were Christmas cookies to be baked, and presents to be selected and wrapped with equal care. There was so much she had pushed from her life over the past few years that she desperately wanted now. It was too late to share it all with Ry except in memories, but there was Corri and there was Aunt August. And there was Nick.
And there were new memories to be made. India hugged
Corri to her and, against a frigid wind, turned back toward the dune and the warmth of the house on Darien Road.
“Do you think they’re dry enough yet, India?” Corri peered anxiously at the counter where her clamshells were lined up after a good scrubbing.
“I think maybe.” India nodded. “Now, tell me again what you are going to do with them.”
“I am going to glue these little flowers onto them. Then I will paint ‘Merry Christmas’
here”
—she pointed to the bowl of the shell—“and tie a ribbon on them so people can hang them on their tree.”
“They will be very pretty ornaments, but how will you get the ribbon through the shell?” India asked.
Not having worked out this little detail yet, Corri stared hard at the shells, as if the solution would come to her if she stared long enough and hard enough.
“Ry had a little drill,” Corri announced. “It made little holes in things.”
“Do you know where it is?” India asked.
“Downstairs, in the basement.”
“Okay, then it’s down to the basement we go.”
After cracking the first three shells she attempted, India got the hang of the drill and managed to make proper round holes just large enough for thin satin ribbon to slip through. Corri gleefully scooped up the shells and raced up the steps to the kitchen to begin her project. India watched as Corri slid a long opaque stick into a sort of gun.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Glue gun.” Corri responded without looking up.
“Are you allowed to use that?”
“Umm-hmm. Aunt August lets me help her.”
“But does she allow you to use it by yourself?”
Corri hesitated, not wanting to lie. “Do you know how, Indy?”
“I can learn. Let’s get these done so we can clean up and start baking.”
With India’s help, Corri made a dozen shell ornaments, then put them aside on the window sill while both paint and glue dried.
“These really are lovely, Corri,” India told her. “Tell me who they are for.”
“My teacher. My piano teacher. Mrs. Hart at the library ‘cause she always saves special books for me. Mrs. Osborn. Darla’s mom.” Corri went right down the row, naming the recipients of each shell. “This one’s for Zoey, this one’s for Georgia and this one is for Mrs. Enright.”
“You have two left over,” India pointed out. “Are you sure there’s no one else?”
“I guess I just made too many.”
“Could I have them,” India asked, “to send to friends in Paloma?”
“Sure.”
India searched through Corri’s jars of paint until she found the red. With a careful hand she printed “Season’s Greetings from Devlin’s Light, NJ” across each of the two shells. She planned on sending one to Roxie and one to the colonel and his wife, who were keeping an eye on her townhouse while she was gone.
“Indy, I don’t have a present for Nick.” Corri bit her lip.
“Hmm. What might he like?”
“Something special. It has to be special.”
“How about a goodie basket?” Aunt August suggested, sweeping into the kitchen in her long black woolen cape, which covered her to her ankles.
“What’s a goodie basket?” Corri frowned.
“A basket of goodies, of course.” India laughed. “What a great idea.”
“Now Corri, you know that Nick has a real sweet tooth,” August told her. “You could fill a basket with cookies and homemade fudge and little fruitcakes and nuts and such.”
“And a gingerbread man with his name on it?” Corri asked.
“Exactly.”
“Yeah. Nick would like that.” Corri beamed. “Let’s do gingerbread now.”
“I guess there’s no time like the present. Corri, run and answer the door, sweetie. I think it’s the mailman. India, get the butter out to soften and check to make sure we have enough flour. Good grief, here we are, a scant week until Christmas, and the baking’s not even done yet.” August
disappeared into the front hall briefly to hang up her cape. “You were a long time on the beach this morning for such a cold day, India.”
“Corri wanted to look for shells. She made tree decorations.” India pointed to the counter where the shells lay.
“You were gone long before she joined you.” August poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot on the counter and sipped at it. Frowning when she found it to be cold, she popped the cup into the microwave and set it for thirty-five seconds. “India, you know I try never to interfere with your life, but if there’s anything you need to talk about, I’m here to listen.”
“Thank you, Aunt August. I know that you’re there for me. I appreciate it.”
“Nick called while you were out,” August told her. “He said he’d stop over.”
When India didn’t comment, August said, “I remember when you were younger, every time you had something on your mind, you headed out to the dunes alone.”
“I always seem to think better when I’m by myself.” India nodded.
“I was wondering if it was Nick who sent you out to the dunes this morning.”
“I guess he was part of it. Nick and Ry were both on my mind.”
“Two very fine young men.” August put her glasses on to set the oven temperature for the cookies she and Corri would be baking.
“I was thinking about how it would have pleased Ry. About me and Nick. I was wishing that Ry could know.”
“Why, child, what makes you think he doesn’t know?” August chuckled. “And I think he’d have been more than pleased that you and Nick are”—she glanced at India from behind her dark lenses—“finding each other. Ry wanted you to find someone special and fall in love.”
India opened her mouth and was about to speak when August waved her hand at her niece and laughed, saying, “Please don’t insult us both by refusing to admit that you’re in love with Nick, India.”
“I don’t know what I am.” India sighed.
“Of course you do, dear.” August patted her on the back.
“And no one’s happier than I am. It’s time you settled down.”
“Like you did, Aunt August?” India reminded her aunt of the obvious.
“Like perhaps the way I should have,” August replied, a shade more sharply than she should have.
“I’m sorry.” India softened. “I never stopped to think that maybe you would have rather done something other than take care of Ry and me.”
“I never regretted for a minute the days I spent with the two of you. My own children could not have been more dear to me. I could not have been more proud of either of you, could not have loved you more than I did.”
“Aunt August, I feel a large
but
hanging in the air,” India said.
“But …” August sighed and sat in her seat near the window and looked out at the now desolate garden.
“What happened?” India asked.
“India, you may not have noticed, but I have a very broad streak of independence.”
“Really?” India dead-panned.
“And when I was younger, I was a little too full of myself. When I left Devlin’s Light to go to college, I was certain I’d never come back. What could a little town like this offer to the likes of me? Why, once I got my degree, I’d move on to better things. I would find the love of my life. Oh, I knew exactly who he’d be, India.”
“Who?”
“He’d be a scholar, perhaps of Latin or Greek. Perhaps ancient history. Not at all like …” A name seemed to catch on her tongue, but she swallowed it back. “Well, like the boys here in Devlin’s Light who were on their way to being bay men like their fathers were. Oh no, August Devlin was not going to settle for anything less than a romantic hero who sat with her by the fireside and read Browning’s sonnets.”
“Did you never find him?”
“Oh, I found him all right.” August smiled ruefully. “A classics professor from Princeton, if you will.”
“What happened? Why didn’t you marry your hero and live happily ever after?”
“It took me a while to realize it, India, but he was a man who was more in love with the image he created of himself than he could ever have loved someone else. He loved the idea of being a man who dressed in tweeds and drank sherry. He loved the idea of reciting poetry to a breathless young woman. He loved the idea of being passionately in love. But he never loved
me.
Not the way I needed to be loved. Not the way … some others might have loved me.”
Not daring to ask who those “some others” might have been, India watched her aunt take a small sip from her cup.
“Well, by the time I realized just what it was that I really did need, it was too late.” August tapped her fingers on the table in front of her. “By the time I had returned to Devlin’s Light, it was simply too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“Too late to do what I should have been doing all those years I was chasing the fancies of a young and very foolish girl.”
“Why was it too late?”
“Because while I was sipping sherry with the man in tweeds, the man I should have married had done exactly what I had told him to do when I left Devlin’s Light. He found someone else and married her.”
A shocked India watched her aunt walk to the cupboard where she kept her baking supplies and begin to take down what she would need that afternoon.
“Aunt August …”
“Don’t bother asking who, or why,” August told her without turning back to face her. “Just learn from my mistake. Don’t think there’s anything better waiting for you anyplace else, India, because men like … like
Nick
don’t come along but once in a lifetime.”
“Know where you belong, and with whom,” India repeated the sentiments August had expressed.
“My words, all right.” August nodded. “And don’t think I haven’t choked on them.”
“What made you choke, Aunt August?” Corri asked, concerned, as she carried the mail into the kitchen. The stack of magazines, catalogs and Christmas cards filled her arms. “Can I help open the cards?”
“You may open all the cards,” August told her. “But you
must show them to India and me, so that we know who to thank.”
As Corri carefully opened each envelope and read each card aloud, asking for India’s help when confronted with a word she did not know and could not sound out phonetically, India watched her aunt putter efficiently in the kitchen and pondered this new information. Aunt August had had a beau, one from Devlin’s Light, whom she had scorned in favor of a great unknown world that had beckoned her. She had told him to find someone else, and in time, he had. What had become of him?
And no, in her heart, India knew that she would not make the mistake August had. If nothing else, last night with Nick had confirmed what she herself had begun to suspect. There had never been a man like Nick Enright in her life, and there would never be another. She now knew
who
, and she was pretty sure she knew where.
She was wondering if it was too soon to tell Nick when his face appeared in the glass panel of the back door. He rapped twice before letting himself in.
“Hi,” he called in.
“Hi,” all three Devlin women answered back.
“I was just down at Lolly’s and she was telling me that tonight was Christmas caroling night.” He stood in the back doorway, his hands in the pockets of his brown leather jacket, his face ruddy from the cold.
“Well, if you want to know what’s going on in Devlin’s Light, Lolly’s coffee shop is the place to go.” August smiled and took down a big yellow earthenware bowl and set it on the table. “So, Nick, what did you think of the captain’s house?”
“It’s wonderful.” He looked over August’s head to meet India’s eyes. “I hope I don’t have to wait a whole year to go back.”
India blushed and Nick laughed. August pretended not to notice.
“We’re baking stuff,” Corri announced. “Christmas stuff, ’cause Christmas will be here before you know it.”
“Hmm.” He looked over August’s shoulder at the recipe she was scanning. “Looks pretty good. Want some help?”
“India, is he allowed?” Corri asked, pointing to the
basket she had hauled in from the pantry to serve as the repository of Nick’s goodies.
“Sure.” India nodded, then leaned over and whispered in Corri’s ear, “He won’t know that some things will find their way into his basket.”