Shadows on the Sand (12 page)

What did he expect? He’d kept his distance for all the years he’d been coming to the café. Of course, it wasn’t just Carrie he’d kept at arm’s length; it was any woman.

It had taken his breath when he discovered that as soon as Ginny was dead, there were women who saw him as available. They didn’t seem to understand that loving someone didn’t stop just because that person died. Deep and true emotions continued, even seemed to intensify, with the absence of the loved one and the stark realization that she was now gone forever. If anything, the fact that he was grieving seemed to bring out the nesting, mothering instincts in these women. They wanted to take care of him, coddle him,
marry
him.

Ginny and the kids weren’t gone a month when he got his first invitation to dinner from a single woman. And they kept coming. After he refused enough of them, word seemed to have gotten around, and he’d been left more or less alone by the women themselves. That’s when the dinner invitations from families who just happened to have single or divorced daughters began in earnest. He’d even gotten a couple from families with unhappily married daughters. It was like they expected him to fall in love with one such sad woman and ask her to leave her husband for him, therefore curing all her ills.

Ri-i-ight.

Not that Carrie had ever been one of those women. She’d always been polite and kind, never pushy. Sometimes he wondered if she might have a bit of a crush on him. After all, she tended to blush whenever he spoke to her. Then again she might be allergic to him and the flush was the first step in getting hives or something. Wouldn’t that knock his pride down a notch or two?

Because he felt foolish to even think of Carrie and crushes, he had held himself more aloof than usual around her. Until today. He had to admit he’d enjoyed his time shopping with her. He’d enjoyed her attention to his injuries. He’d even enjoyed her distress at Chaz’s near miss.

So what did that mean? What did he expect from her now? That she’d get all teary and tell him how glad she was that he’d escaped death because—because what? Life wasn’t worth living without him? She’d have died if he had?

No, what he wanted was for her to sit beside him and smile at him. Not just smile like she smiled at Mr. Perkins and everyone else who came into the café, but
smile
. At him. For him.

He swallowed hard as it hit him that he wanted to matter to her differently and more deeply than anyone else, even than her sister or Mary P.

His stomach cramped. That couldn’t be right. It couldn’t. It would be unfair to Ginny, disloyal, unfaithful.

Which was stupid.

Ginny was dead. Three years dead.

Greg still got the sweats whenever he thought about that day. And he had suspected nothing. He should have. He should have!

“You’ve got me blocked in,” Ginny had said, her voice rushed. “I’ve got to get the kids to school.”

He pulled his keys from his pocket with no shiver of premonition and tossed them to her. She caught them, grinned, and blew him a kiss. As she
and the kids went chattering out of the house, he took a bite of his Cap’n Crunch, savoring the taste, when his world exploded in a fireball.

There were no screams, at least not from Ginny and the kids. Just his own anguished cries. Just the shrill shouts of the neighbors and the shriek of the sirens of the first responders. And the mocking whispers of flames writhing and dancing in the bright morning sunshine.

If only he hadn’t ignored the threats, hadn’t treated them like so much hot air from a buffoon who thought he was John Dillinger. If only he’d realized the depths of brutality and utter lack of morality in the man whose goal in life was to become a crime kingpin. If only he’d realized it didn’t take a large following to have men who would seek vengeance on their leader’s behalf, men who knew how to make bombs.

If only. If only.

Marco Polo was little more than a street thug, but he’d attracted a band of loyalists who followed his every wish. If his charisma had been coupled with matching intelligence, the man would have become a real-life don to rival the fictional Don Corleone or Tony Soprano.

When Greg first heard of him, he’d joked about the man’s name. “His mother must have failed history to name a son Marco when he has the last name Polo.”

Well, Marco got the last laugh if you didn’t count serving life with no possibility of parole.

So here Greg sat, wanting Carrie to smile at him, all the while overwhelmed with guilt about what he knew was a very normal feeling.

I like her
.

Greg couldn’t breathe. It was Ginny’s voice.

I do
.

“Ginny?” But it couldn’t be.

Her name as he said it was a mere whisper, little more than a breath, but
Carrie heard it. She turned to him with a shocked, sad expression, not the smile he’d wanted. He tried to smile at her, thinking maybe then she’d smile, but he couldn’t. His facial muscles weren’t working.

Go for it, Greg. With my blessing. It’s time
.

It was the bump on the head. It had to be. He felt like Scrooge blaming Marley’s ghostly appearance on a bit of potato because Ginny’s voice was every bit as impossible as Marley’s materialization.

His phone vibrated on his hip. He grabbed at it, grateful for something to break this painful moment.

The caller ID read Fred Durning.

“I need to take this call.” He stood. “It’s a guy about the closing on the property sales tomorrow.”

“Sure.” Carrie pointed toward the front of the apartment. “The living room’s through there.”

He nodded. At least she hadn’t sent him out the door. He slid his phone open as he walked into a warm, inviting room. Why it appealed to him he couldn’t have said. He just knew the room stilled the chaos swirling inside.

“What can I do for you, Fred?”

“Hey, Greg. Tomorrow’s the big day. When and where can we meet?”

Someplace neutral. Someplace friendly. “How about we start with a cup of coffee at Carrie’s Café?” He gave the address. “Ten o’clock sound okay?”

Appointment made, Greg slid the phone shut and just stood there. He stared at the rug, a light gray. He had to go back to the kitchen, back to Carrie. He wanted to, but at the same time he didn’t. He’d spent three years keeping life as complication free as he could manage. He’d liked it that way, and Carrie was a complication with a capital
C
.

But the voice was right. It was time to move on, to live again. As it said
in Ecclesiastes, there was a time to mourn and a time to dance. Had he at last come to the dancing time after the long, black stretch of mourning?

“Everything okay for tomorrow?”

Carrie stood just inside the room, caught in a stray beam of sun, like a carefully staged frame in a film. Her shoulder-length blond hair gleamed and her steady navy blue eyes studied him. She was slim, a little taller than Ginny had been, and at this moment she appeared so female he didn’t know how to react. Or rather he did, and that scared him.

“Everything okay?” she asked again.

He blinked and held out his phone. “I’m meeting the guy tomorrow at the café.”

She smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes. “That’s nice.”

“Make certain there are a couple of sticky buns for us, okay?”

“Sure. Not a problem.”

He had to walk back to the kitchen, but he’d have to pass her in the narrow doorway to do so, feel her body heat, smell her scent. But he couldn’t stay flatfooted in her living room, staring at her like some lost Rain Man. “Um, I’ve got to go. Get back to work.”

She nodded, turned, and walked into the kitchen. He followed her, feeling the fool, but at least he didn’t have to walk past her.

“See you later, Mary P, Lindsay,” he said. They smiled and waved. Carrie held the back door for him, and he had to pass her after all. It was as if she’d burn him if he got too close. Which was ridiculous. She was just Carrie. Sweet Carrie. Lovely Carrie.

He swallowed hard. Had he been so conscious of Ginny when they first dated? He must have been, right? He couldn’t remember. All he knew was that Carrie Carter, in one afternoon’s time, had struck him a heart blow without even knowing it.

She followed him onto the porch, where she was forced to stand close because of the landing’s small size. The air snapped around them.

“Thanks for all your help,” he managed. He pointed to his battered face. “And for your peas.”

She waved his thanks away. “Always glad to share a vegetable with a friend.”

A friend. “Look, Carrie,” he began but didn’t know how to continue.

Look, Carrie, saying Ginny’s name didn’t mean anything?
Because it did, but not as Carrie clearly thought.

Look, Carrie, I think there might be the very real possibility of something between you and me? And Ginny approves?

“And you know this how?”
she’d ask.

“She told me.”
And wouldn’t that sound just fine. Carrie’d be certain he’d suffered a concussion after all. Which he must have.

“It’s okay, Greg. It’s okay.” Again that sad smile.

And Carrie went inside, closing the door softly.

A
fter an evening spent staring at the television with no recollection of what he’d seen, Greg took himself off to bed. He read until his eyelids drooped. He read on until he found himself dozing, the book sagging in his hands. Quickly he put out the light and lay down.

As soon as he’d snugged the covers over his shoulders, his eyes flew open. He stared into the darkness with a weary sigh. His mind hadn’t gotten the message that he wanted the oblivion of sleep. Instead it played and replayed the day on a full-color loop—the accident, Carrie, Home Depot, Carrie,
Ginny
, Carrie’s sad expression—over and over and over.

Trying to break the cycle, he counted backward from a hundred. Not so much as a yawn. He counted forward to a thousand. He prayed for everyone in his family. He sat up and read some more. He thought for a moment around two o’clock that he was drifting off, but the thought seemed to kick-start the loop to double speed, making Carrie race around as if running for her life.

He gave up just before dawn. He untangled his legs from the disheveled bedding and got to his feet. He pulled on an old pair of jeans and a Seaside sweatshirt, and grabbed his fleece pullover and Phillies cap.

Dawn was just lighting the sky when he stepped into his Starcraft. The peace he found on the water was just what he needed to get his mind back in neutral. One night thinking about a woman and he was as jumpy as Oreo when Carrie sprayed the Bactine.

Bad example. Bad! He was here
not
to think about Carrie. He turned his eyes toward the bay, which lay like a smooth sheet of silver in the gray
morning mist. He guided his boat from its slip and turned east into the rising sun. A few fishermen and charter fishing boats kept him company as they headed for open water.

When they reached the channel where the bay and the ocean met, he turned back, lining the buoys up for red right returning. He didn’t want the excitement of the colliding currents. He wanted tranquility, ease, disconnection.

He still knew peace on the water because Ginny never went fishing. She didn’t mind cooking what he caught, but she wasn’t interested in the catching. The bay held no memories of her to blindside him, only pleasure and serenity.

After he went under the Ninth Street Causeway and was halfway to the Thirty-Fourth Street Bridge, he killed the engine and pulled out his pole. He dropped his line over the side without anchoring. This early in the day he felt safe letting the boat drift with the tide as it receded. He crossed his ankles on the seat facing him and laid his head back. The gentle movement of the boat was soothing, and he thought he fell asleep for a few moments. After the night he’d had, he wasn’t surprised.

But he needed to be alert. All it took was one cowboy in a cigarette boat going full throttle to create catastrophe. He sat up and took a pull on the hot coffee he’d grabbed at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through. The pair of chocolate iced doughnuts were good, though Lindsay’s sticky buns, grilled and spread with butter and reserved for him, would be better.

A gentle breeze ruffled his hair, and he smiled.
In spite of the new complications I haven’t sorted out yet, Lord, life’s good. Not great exactly, but good
.

And good was a vast improvement from the terrible it used to be. He must not wish for more and disturb this pleasant lassitude. Good was good enough.

He took a deep breath of the tangy air and watched sea gulls wheeling
overhead. A blue heron stood immobile in the shallows at the edge of the marshy area to his left, and buffleheads and scaups glided over the wind-ruffled water. A cormorant sat on a piling, black wings spread as he dried them in the sun, now fully risen.

All he needed for perfection was a bite.

The Starcraft’s bow nudged up against a small island covered in sea grasses and got stuck in the mud. Greg reeled in his empty line and set his pole aside. He reached into the storage pocket in the boat’s side and pulled out a collapsible oar. With a twist he extended it.