The Guest Book (13 page)

T
hat young man from art camp asked about you today when I picked up Emma,” Macy’s mother said that night at dinner. Max, who had been watching TV and picking at his dinner, suddenly looked interested. Macy looked down at her plate to avoid their eyes. She couldn’t explain what was happening either. She’d said a prayer on the beach, and suddenly her life’s theme song was “It’s Raining Men.”

Max balled up his napkin and threw it onto the table. It bounced and landed on Macy’s plate. She fished it out of her ketchup and made a face at him.

“What young man, Mom?” Max asked. “Since Macy doesn’t seem to want to know who you’re referring to.”

“There’s a nice young volunteer at Emma’s day camp. He’s really good with children, and he’s well-liked around here,
Buzz says. His name’s Dockery Caldwell. Macy met him yesterday, but she didn’t go back today.” Her mother paused long enough to catch Macy’s eye. “He noticed your absence and asked after you.”

“Mom, are you seriously suggesting that I make some sort of play for this volunteer? I went on a date with Pastor Nate, and I’ve spent time with Buzz’s son. I think that’s quite enough for one trip, don’t you?” Macy laughed and stood up, picking up hers and Emma’s plates and going around the kitchen island to put them in the sink.

“Hey, I wasn’t done with my French fries!” Emma hollered.

Macy looked down at the one lone French fry on the plate. “Yes, you were!” she yelled back.

She heard Max offer to share his remaining fries with Emma. Typical. It would be a miracle if Emma didn’t turn out ruined from all the spoiling she got from the adults in her life. Macy smiled at the thought. There were worse things in life than to be loved that much.

Brenda came to stand beside her as Macy scraped the plates into the disposal and let the water carry the mess away. Before Brenda could speak, she turned on the disposal and let the grinding noise fill the silence. Not to be deterred, Brenda waited until Macy had no choice but to shut the empty disposal off.

“I just think you should be nice to him. I mean, he just wants to talk to you. And Buzz thinks very highly of him,” she added.

“So you’ve said,” Macy answered, placing the rinsed dishes in the dishwasher and closing it with a bang. “Buzz also thinks
highly of his son, I would imagine.” She turned around to face her mother. “But I’m not the only woman with men pursuing her this trip, am I? What’s up with you and Buzz?” Macy had promised herself she would let whatever was going on between the two of them just play out, but she grasped at the first straw that presented itself in order to change the subject. She nearly retracted the question before she realized her mom was smiling as she began to answer.

“We’ve been spending some time together, and … it’s been nice. I had … forgotten how nice it can be just to have someone around. A man to share things with.” Her mother’s smile grew bigger as she spoke.

Macy studied her mother for a moment. “And is this something that’s going to go beyond this trip? Have y’all talked about this?”

Brenda threw her hands up. “Hey, we’re just having a good time!” she exclaimed. “Neither one of us wants to put a label on it.”

Macy grinned. “You sound like a kid, Mom.”

Brenda did a little twirl right there in the kitchen, her arms still raised. “I feel like a kid!” she said, giggling.

From the doorway, she heard Max’s voice and turned to see him there with his mouth open. “Do I even want to know?” he asked.

Macy laughed. “No. You do not want to know. Trust me.” Their mom started laughing in earnest and so did Macy. Hearing the chaos in the kitchen, Emma scampered in to join them,
laughing with them even though she had no idea what was going on.

“I’m going to leave you crazy women to yourselves,” Max said.

It was only after they had stopped laughing and finished the rest of the dishes that Macy thought to wonder where he had gone in such a hurry and how he’d found transportation. Her stomach rumbled with worry as darkness fell.
I am not my brother’s keeper
, she told herself.

“How about we all pile into my bed and watch a movie?” her mother asked.

“Yay!” Emma cheered. “Movie! Movie! Movie!” she chanted as she did a lap around the kitchen, pumping her fist in the air.

Macy’s mother took out the large pot they used to make popcorn on the stove. Macy was glad to see it was still here after all these years. Her mother caught her eye, and she knew they were both thinking of her dad throwing the popcorn into the air and catching it with his mouth while they all laughed and applauded. They both looked away and blinked their eyes. There had been a lot of moments like this on the trip—memories popping up that were both painful and healing, like immersing a wound in water.

“Popcorn?” Brenda asked as she poured a layer of oil in the pan.

Macy heard Emma, who’d moved into the den, change her chant from “Movie!” to “Popcorn!”

“Sounds like a
yes
to me!” she said.

Her mother didn’t turn from the pan. “Tomorrow, I want you to be the one to pick Emma up from art camp, okay?”

Macy put her hands on her hips and dropped her head, knowing when she was beat. “Ooookaaay.” She sighed, sounding like the teenager she used to be when last she’d stood in this kitchen.

Brenda looked over at her. “I need you to do it anyway. Buzz would like to take me on a little adventure on the high seas in the morning.”

“Mom,” Macy said. “You’re incorrigible.”

Macy could hear the smile in her mother’s voice when she turned to watch the oil heating in the pot. “That’s me, all right,” Brenda said. “Being incorrigible feels pretty good.”

Macy grinned to herself as she left the room to find a family-friendly video to watch with her mom and daughter, the two women she loved best in the world. She went to her room to riffle through the movies she’d brought with them. Her phone vibrated on the dresser as she was digging through the suitcase, and with a sigh, she leaned over to grab it to see who was calling. It stopped ringing just before she picked it up.

She stared down at the Missed Call alert on the screen and then closed her eyes as she listened to the voices in the den: Emma’s excited one, her mom’s sweet one. She wanted to run out there and add her voice to the mix, pretend she had never seen the call and be absolved of her responsibility to call back. But she’d put it off long enough.

She held the phone in her hand for a moment longer, then pressed the button that dialed his number and hoped he
wouldn’t answer so she could go on with her night. But of course he did.

“Yeah, Chase? Saw I missed a call from you.”

He paused. “I was about to step out for the night, so I’m glad you caught me.”

“Oh, that’s good.” She looked around the room, wishing she could be done with the conversation already.

“I actually called to tell you I’ve got some news.”

“Yeah?”

“I talked to my brother after you left the other day. Told him things weren’t working out between us — “

“I didn’t say that!”

She could hear his wry smile come through the phone. “You didn’t have to. So anyway, he’d told me that he had a friend who needed someone to work in IT for them. And he put me in touch with his friend, and it’s all happened quickly, but if I want the job, they say it’s mine. I just gotta get out there.”

“Out where?” Her heart sank as she thought about explaining to Emma that her daddy was leaving. Again. She thought of that night in the tent with Emma between them holding both their hands; of the dinners they’d had with each other around the tiny table that, though it hadn’t held more than two people before, had somehow expanded to hold three; of the way Emma had begged for Chase to come with them to the beach and how she—the mean mommy—had said no.

“Denver, Colorado.”

“Wow. That’s … out there,” was all she could manage to say.

“It’s a good job, Mace.”

“Good enough to take you away from your daughter
again
?” she challenged. Even if there was no future for Macy and Chase together, she still wanted Emma to have him in her life.

“Good enough that I’ll have the money to fly back to see her relatively often and to fly her out to see me when she’s older. She’ll love it out there. Denver is a beautiful place, you know.”

“So I hear.”

“You’re not seriously mad about this, are you?”

“No. I just — “ She sighed. “I just thought I’d have more time to figure everything out before you forced my hand.”

“I’m not forcing anything, Macy. I’m letting you go. Because I’m afraid if I don’t, you won’t be able to move on.”

“But I —”

“Macy, I think that if I stayed, you’d settle for me. Because you feel obligated. But we both know that’s not a good reason. And I’m sorry. For ruining what we had once by taking off. I was a stupid kid who ran away.”

Macy didn’t want to cover that emotional ground again. She sighed. “How soon do you leave?”

“Haven’t worked all that out yet. But it’ll be soon.”

“Wow.” Wyatt’s advice to her earlier that day had been timely. It was time to break free from Chase, time to move on.

“You know, Macy, I’ve thought a lot about what you said as you were leaving,” Chase said. “And I have a piece of advice for you. That little girl you talked about? The one who used to be fun? The one you said I never got a chance to know?”

Macy felt her cheeks growing warm with embarrassment
when he brought up her comment. She was grateful he wasn’t standing in front of her. “Yes.”

“Find someone who recognizes her when he looks at you. You think you can do that?”

She looked up to see Brenda standing in her doorway with a broad grin, holding a two-liter of root beer and a carton of vanilla ice cream. Emma danced behind her.

“Come on, Mommy!” Emma shouted.

Macy held up a finger, and Brenda disappeared with Emma following behind, her eyes on the ice cream.

“Yeah,” she told Chase. “I think I can do that.” As she said it, she thought of Nate and Wyatt and—strangely enough—her mother’s mention of Dockery. She’d prayed for one man to come into her life, and it seemed God had sent three.

“Macy,” Chase said, “I’ve gotta go. I’ve got some people waiting on me. And it sounds like you do too.”

“So I’ll see you when we get back?”

“Yeah. For sure. See you then. Now go have fun.”

She ended the call and sat motionless on the bed for just a moment, thinking of his challenge for her to find someone who would recognize the little girl who still lived inside her, the little girl who had started drawing pictures in a guest book. To go forward, she had to resolve her past. Chase was wiser than he knew.

The sound of her daughter’s laughter interrupted her thoughts, and she realized the only thing she had to resolve at that moment was whether she wanted a Coke float or a root beer float. It was a good place to start the rest of her life.

T
he hall of the Ocean Isle Community Center was once again filled with children darting through the hallway like pinballs. After the third one bumped into her, Macy stopped trying to avoid them, fixing her eyes on Emma’s room and hoping she could collect her child, politely wave at Dockery, and break away with minimal fuss. Instead she found Emma hanging off Dockery’s arm like he was a tree branch and she was a swing. Macy shook her head at the sight. She didn’t know if it was Chase’s prolonged absence, Max’s overattentiveness, or simply her child’s personality, but her daughter loved men. Macy longed to give Emma a father figure who would be there for her every day and not just sometimes.

Dockery caught her eye, and she forced a smile in return.
She crossed the room to join them, but not before being stopped by LaRae Forrester, the group leader she’d met before.

“She sure has taken a shine to Dockery,” the woman said, smiling like a conspirator. She walked quickly away, leaving Macy more apprehensive about seeing Dockery than she already was.

Macy put on a smile and tried to sound cheery as she called Emma’s name. “Ready to go, honey?” she said, a little too loudly.

Emma stopped swinging on Dockery, dropped to the floor, and put her hands on her hips.
Oh no
, Macy thought. She knew that look all too well. Emma was working her way up to a full-blown tantrum. She knew the drill and prepared herself to avoid the tantrum at all costs, especially in front of Dockery. She wondered what made a guy like him show up to teach kids every morning at a community center in a small beach town. Why wasn’t he working right now? If he’s so great, what is he doing here?

“I don’t want to go,” Emma said. Her tone was forceful, not whiny. Whiny, Macy knew, would come later, if force didn’t work.

“Well, we’ve got to go get some lunch. How about we stop at that stand you like and get a corn dog?” Emma loved nitrates on a stick, though it pained Macy to see her ingest them. Today, though, she would let go of her anti-corn-dog ways if it would get them out of here faster. There was a price to be paid for everything.

“I could buy her one,” Dockery offered.

Macy narrowed her eyes at him. That was a low blow, offering in front of the kid.

“Yes! Let’s do that, Mommy!” Emma said, jumping up and down. She raced across the room to grab her things as if the decision was already made.

Macy and Dockery traded polite, awkward smiles. She wanted to know why he was making the effort to spend the afternoon with them and what had made him take such a liking to Emma. Not one to trust easily, Macy wanted to make sure Dockery was safe before she allowed him to be around her daughter. But as she looked into his warm brown eyes, she couldn’t deny the kindness she saw there. Of course, only time would tell if he was what he seemed. And how much time would she really be spending with him, after all? It was one afternoon, one corn dog. She decided to stick close to Emma, stay in a public place, and see what happened. One thing she noticed about her search for the artist — it had her overthinking almost every little encounter. She mumbled something to Dockery about finding Emma and went off to retrieve her, laughing at herself as she walked away.

Emma was struggling with a homemade kite that had a long, unwieldy tail attached to it. It was bright pink, which didn’t surprise Macy at all. Pink was Emma’s signature color, as they said in
Steel Magnolias.

“That’s beautiful, Emma,” she said, pointing at the kite.

“Dockery promised me he’d take me to fly it,” Emma said. “It’s a princess kite.”

Macy exhaled. This day just kept getting better and better.

“Oh, yeah,” she managed. “You two could do that sometime.” The words “sometime” and “someday” and “we’ll see” were Macy’s favorite go-to phrases, a way of saying no without actually having to say it.

Emma’s eyes narrowed at her mother. “Today, Mommy. And not just me and Dockery, but me,
you
, and Dockery.” Emma marched back over to Dockery, the kite’s tail trailing behind her, bobbing in her wake.

Macy half hoped the tail would break off and the kite would be ruined. Emma’s tears would be quicker to deal with than an afternoon with this stranger. It wasn’t that he didn’t interest her, it was that things were complicated enough with Nate and Wyatt. Adding a third guy to the mix at this point seemed like a bad idea.

She thought of the plan she’d made on her drive to Ocean Isle to get Emma. She had hoped to get out of the community center quickly so she could head over to the church and surprise Nate with an invite to have lunch with her and Emma. She’d been looking forward to seeing him, actually.

Dockery took the kite from Emma, and the two of them looked at her. “Did Emma tell you about our plans for this afternoon?” he asked.

Macy had been railroaded and she knew it. She managed a nod.

“You okay with that?” he asked. He had a look on his face that was half challenge, half cat-that-ate-the-canary. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t good with her in order to wipe that look right off his smug face, but with Emma standing
there with that excited look, she just couldn’t. Her plans for an afternoon with Nate receded like the tide. She had no choice but to follow Emma and Dockery out to the parking lot and, beyond that, to the beach.

It turned out Dockery had packed a picnic, but he still bought the corn dog he’d promised Emma.

“You sure you don’t want one?” he asked.

“No, thank you,” she said. She swallowed her comment about how obvious it was that he had planned this afternoon in advance. The picnic basket alone was evidence that this was premeditated. She wanted to ask him what was so important about them spending time together. Instead she focused all her attention on Emma and generally tried to make the afternoon about her. She ate fruit, baked chips, and a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich he had packed, remembering all the lunches on the beach she’d eaten with her father. She sat on the blanket Dockery had brought for them and watched as he helped Emma adjust the kite string so it soared higher and higher into the air. One thing Macy did like about the afternoon was hearing Emma’s delighted shrieks. A smile crept onto her face as she watched.

She watched Dockery turn the kite string over to Emma and say something to her before patting her on the back and walking back to the blanket.

Emma turned to grin at Macy. “I’m doing it by myself,
Mommy!” she screamed. Her ponytail was whipping in the wind and her face shone.

Macy gave her two thumbs-up and made room for Dockery as he sank onto the blanket.

“She’s a great kid,” he said. “Thanks for letting me do this with her.”

Macy shrugged. “Sure.”

“But why do I get the feeling you’d rather be somewhere else?”

“I just had some other plans, that’s all.”

“Oh, sorry. I hadn’t thought about that. Emma said you guys don’t do much in the afternoons. I thought you’d like to pass the time doing something different.”

What a sad picture Emma had painted for him: the two of them wandering around with nothing to do all afternoon. Was this his good deed for the day? Entertain the poor single mom and her kid?

“You’re quite the do-gooder, aren’t you?” Macy was determined to keep him at arm’s length, no matter how nice or charming he was.

One corner of his mouth turned up. “Something like that.”

“Is that why you work at the day camp? To do good?”

“I’m a volunteer. Helping out a friend, I guess you could say.”

“So that isn’t your real job?”

He laughed. “Hardly.”

“What is your real job, if you don’t mind me asking?” Macy pushed her hair behind her ears as she had a habit of
doing whenever she wore it down. She wished she’d worn a ball cap. She would have if she’d know she was going to spend the day on the windy beach.

He stood up and pointed in Emma’s direction. “Oops! Gotta help your daughter. She’s about to lose that kite.” He ran off in Emma’s direction without offering any more explanation.

Left with nothing to do, Macy gathered the trash from their lunch and walked the distance to the trash bin located near the public access, dutifully dropping the soda cans in the recycling bin.

When she came back to the blanket, Dockery was reclining on it.

“She sure can wear you out,” he said.

She tried not to look at his form sprawled across the blanket, sturdy and solid with the kind of broad shoulders that could bear a load, even the one she came with. Looking at him only made her think of things she shouldn’t. She thought instead of Nate and Wyatt. They were certainly enough to keep her mind occupied. She’d never been a greedy person and didn’t intend to start wanting more than her share now. No matter how good her options looked.

“Yeah, she’s a bundle of energy, that’s for sure. I know she’s loving all this attention from you. Thank you for being nice to her.” The key was to keeping the focus on Emma.

“She said her dad is back at her house in Greensboro?” he asked. This was a recurring theme—men wanted to know about Chase.

“Yeah. He’s house-sitting for us while we’re here. But we’re
not together. We split up when she was just a baby. He’s only recently come back into our lives.” Why was she telling him this? What difference did it make whether this man knew her relationship status?
Don’t be greedy
, she reminded herself.

“Well, that explains it,” he said.

“Explains what?”

A sly grin crossed his face. “Nothing.”

“No, what? Tell me.” He knew how to get her curiosity up, that was for sure. Dockery had mysterious covered.

“You can tell she hasn’t had many men in her life, that’s all. She kind of treats me like a novelty. Her dad’s not been around, and she said her grandfather died?”

How much had Emma divulged to this stranger? Macy felt her heart clench at his honest assessment of her daughter’s formative years.

“Yes,” she said. “My dad died when I was sixteen. He was the one who used to bring us here.”

Dockery was silent for a moment. “I lost my dad too. A few years ago. I wasn’t sixteen but … it was still hard. Now I help my mom run our family cleaning business.”

“And volunteer,” she added.

“Yeah.” He smiled. “Among other things. I guess you could say I’m a jack-of-all-trades.”

“A real Renaissance man.”

“That’s me.” When he smiled, his eyes crinkled at the corners. She found herself wondering about this man, his many sides and talents. Greedy or not, Macy found herself wanting to know more, which only frustrated her more. The last thing
she needed was to find another man intriguing. But if Dockery was trying to interest her, his plan was working.

Nate was waiting for her when she got back to the beach house. Or at least, she thought he was. His car was in the driveway, and after unbuckling Emma, Macy raced up the stairs with her to see him, only to find Max in the den talking to him. She felt like she had walked in on something, because Max looked down while Nate stood up.

She looked from Max to Nate and back again, wondering just what Max had said to Nate. What family secrets had Max been spilling? Her heart raced as she tried to breathe deeply. Mumbling some excuse, she backed out of the den and headed for her room. Once safely there, with the door closed, she sat down on the bed. She couldn’t figure out why Nate had seemed so awkward, why Max had avoided her eyes.

She pulled the guest book into her lap and ran her fingers across the cover, her mind flitting to the strange afternoon she’d had.

When she was leaving the beach, Dockery had stopped her from getting into her car, his touch on her arm both halting her and unsettling her. She couldn’t deny how handsome he was, and something in her thrilled at the mystery of him. He had looked into her eyes as he spoke, fixing her with his gaze.

“Emma said you’re an artist at work,” he’d said. “So what kind of artist are you?”

She loved that Emma saw her that way, but her daughter also believed she herself was a princess and that unicorns were real. She was embarrassed to explain to Dockery just why Emma was wrong. So she’d merely nodded. “I guess you could say that. Signs and murals. Things like that.”

“Well, we’re doing a seascape for our art project on Monday, and I wondered if you’d come by and demonstrate some techniques.” He’d shrugged. “I could use the help.”

“Um, okay,” she had agreed, wondering if it was the smart thing to do, yet knowing how much Emma would love having her there. She was still keeping the focus on Emma. She would just have to ignore the part of her that was happy she’d be seeing him again.

Had he been asking because he needed the help, or was this a ploy to see her again? At times she thought he was just trying to be nice. He was obviously a do-gooder—perhaps he just picked a struggling mom to reach out to from week to week. But Macy didn’t want to be anyone’s project—not Nate’s, not Wyatt’s, and not Dockery’s. Of the three of them, she was worried least about that issue with Wyatt, who seemed genuinely interested in having fun with her.

Now, as she thought about agreeing to help Dockery, she wondered how wise it had been. She got up and headed for the kitchen to get a drink of water. Remembering she had left Emma’s kite in the car, she went outside instead.

She was bending over the trunk to grab the kite when she sensed that someone was standing behind her. She jumped and banged her head on the hatch. She rubbed the top of her head
and spun around to find Nate standing behind her, a concerned look on his face.

“You all right?” he asked, reaching out to touch the top of her head.

He had the kindest eyes. Eyes that seemed to see past whatever she tried to put out there. It had been those eyes that had made her tell him so much the other night. Those eyes that had made her want to have lunch with him today. That and the sense that there was unfinished business between them, leftover from their walk on the beach the other night. They had resisted the desire they both felt, but it lingered, even as they stood on the driveway in the middle of the day.

“I came by today to see you,” he said. “I’m glad I waited around a bit.”