Chapter Twenty-six, Losing the Moon

Nick slid down in the chair, hoped the dark, greasy-haired boy in front of him was tall enough to hide his own too-long hair from Amy’s sight. The classroom was shaped like an amphitheater, rising from a podium in curved rows of blue padded spring-back chairs overlooking a chalkboard wall. A musty smell, like an old gym locker mixed with chalk dust, filled the room. The floor was sticky under Nick’s feet, where another student must have spilled some caffeine-laden drink, trying to stay awake during class. The name “Megan” was carved in crooked lettering on the wooden flip-down desk, which pulled up from the side of the chair like a meal tray on an airplane.

He wanted to sit in on Amy’s class and listen to her teach, hear her voice, watch her body move across the room. The girl next to him wore a black turtleneck sweater, baring an inch of her tummy above her too low-cut jeans; she looked at him, wrinkled her nose. He smiled at the girl, hopefully letting her know he was completely harmless before she raised her hand and asked Mrs. Reynolds who the old geezer sitting next to her was.

Dim and dusty light illuminated the podium more than the room itself. He hoped the low light would assist him in his mission of obscurity.

Amy entered the room, making him feel warm, safe. She wore a pair of brown corduroy pants with high-heeled boots and a tan sweater with fringe at the sleeves. Her hair fell loose over her shoulders, but when she turned around to pull down another chalkboard, he saw she had tried to attach a tortoiseshell barrette in the waves. She looked like just another student, not a forty-something-year-old teacher with two grown kids. She plopped her books down on the podium and smiled at the class.

“How was break?” she asked in the general direction of the slouched and rustling students who were opening their notebooks, searching for pencils, girls opening and closing their purses.

Amy squinted against the faint light. “Steve . . .” She motioned to a student sitting by the far wall. “Will you turn on the auditorium lights? I hate when I can’t see everyone.”

Amy turned to the chalkboard. “Let’s start with the syllabus for the semester.” She began to pass out a pile of papers. “We’ll begin with the Greek-revival period and how it made its way into the architecture of Lowcountry South Carolina.”

She wrote “Greek Revival” on the board and turned to the class. “Melody, you were in my last class. Do you remember where we left off during this period?”

The class laughed. Nick laughed—too loudly. Amy’s head snapped up and she squinted to the top of the auditorium just as Steve turned on the lights. Her face fell.

Amy frowned, continued to talk about plans for the semester in a quiet voice, tucking her hair behind her ears, glancing up and down, left and right, but never at him. Students turned and looked at him every few minutes as if to ask, “What have you done to our fun teacher?”

Finally, after the students had scribbled across pages and Amy’s nervous movements ceased, she announced, “Okay, let’s end early today. We have our first field trip tomorrow—an early morning. Meet at the front steps of Prentiss Hall with a full list of the four styles of neoclassical architecture.”

She snapped her book shut, waved a dismissive hand at the class. Nick stayed in his seat, gazed at her until the last student slammed the wooden door shut.

He didn’t know and didn’t care. He wanted to push Amy up against the black chalkboard, and when he was done with her find chalk dust on her brown corduroys, her tan sweater.

“Amy, you have to. Trust me on this—you’ll be glad you said yes.” He stepped closer and lifted her chin so she was forced to look at him.

Amy’s face in the warped mirror over the wooden dresser was flushed, her eyes wide. It was just the cold, she rationalized, not the anticipation of Nick’s surprise. She looked away from the obvious excitement in her face to the rectangular room standing out in bas-relief—a reverse Polaroid of the dorm room she’d lived in when Nick hadn’t come back for her. Sheer pink curtains, stained with salmon-colored streaks in the pattern of a rising sun, attempted to brighten the room. A metal desk squatted under the window with a black metal chair whose peeling paint revealed a bright blue undercoat.

Once in a while she would come back to the dorm to find a burned candle, an open book or piece of clothing and the odd thought “Who has been in my room?” would pass through her mind. Then she’d remind herself the room was nothing but a place to crash one night a week.

How odd. How many times had she stood in a dorm room that didn’t look much different than this—except with her own 1970s paraphernalia covering the walls-—brushing her hair and wondering what she and Nick would do that night? Without the items that defined family and home surrounding her, she believed that this was just another evening with Nick, just another dorm room. Yet it was a different dorm room, and Nick was waiting for her—which is all he’d ever done . . . wait for her.

Now there really was nothing left to think about, was there? She just needed to watch it all unfold. Letting go of any control over the situation felt good, a relief warming her middle.

She grabbed her purse and headed down the concrete stairs to the foyer where Nick stood waiting, just as he had a hundred other times. She smiled at the desk attendant who, for the first time all day, actually sat at her post.

He’d startled her in class, his voice echoing below her consciousness before she saw his face above the students. When she’d seen him, she’d understood she was the only one who really knew him, who could fill all those wide, empty spaces inside him.

Nick turned and flashed his “You’ll forgive me for leaving” grin at the cute girl, who waved goodbye to him. He opened the door and Amy walked through, brushed up against his arm; her skin prickled beneath her coat and sweater.

His pickup truck was parked next to her SUV; a low-lying birch shed its leaves on their car roofs, on the curb and bricked street. The freezing temperatures of the past weeks had risen, but not by much. She shivered and pulled her coat closer. Nick wrapped his arms around her and walked her to the passenger side of his truck.

He opened the door of his truck. She climbed up on the running board, sat down in the passenger seat. He slammed the door and for the brief moment it took him to walk to the other side, she was alone in the truck. It smelled of pine, of soil, of outdoor life. Blobs of sap stained the carpet. The console held a cell phone, a few discarded beer bottle caps, jagged at the edges, and a pencil with a chewed eraser end. The cab was actually quite clean compared to the Camaro he’d had in college. She took a deep breath as he opened the driver’s-side door, jumped in.

He turned and smiled at her—his smile, his beautiful smile, was all for her. All the unsolved disputes with Phil, all the echoing problems paled now. The only difference between this smile and the one she remembered from years ago was the slight crinkling beside his eyes, the wider chin. His eyes seemed to give off the same static electricity as her sweater.

He maneuvered the truck out of the parking spot, then turned right at the end of the road. She relaxed as the heater pumped pine-fragrant warmth into the cab. She leaned against the back of the seat, closed her eyes. Still waiting. And although she still wasn’t sure what she waited for, it wouldn’t be much longer.

“Nick . . . thank you.” She looked out the side window. They left the Savannah city limits and headed for the beach road. Shadows from overhanging live oaks offered a canopy below the sky and a shield from the outside world, and she felt like the lane was a world unto itself, with its own heartbeat. The truck emerged on the other side to crisp, ironed lawns.

He eventually stopped the truck on the side of a gravel road, put it in PARK. She opened her window and leaned her head out on the windowsill and sighed. “The marina. Where are we going?”

“We have everything we need.” He pointed to the bed of the truck, where parkas, hats, cameras and what looked like camping equipment were piled high.

“A friend of a friend convinced the owners that he wanted to rid the house of any architectural artifacts—to prove the house is worth nothing.”

She opened the truck door. “Okay, what’re we waiting for?” No more waiting. The thought was warm and drowsy in the crevices of her mind, her body.

The hum of the motor filled the boat as they huddled inside the cab. Waves slapped against the hull. Her heart slapped against her chest.

Nick anchored the trawler off the edge of the island, then lowered a small Boston Whaler Tender from the back. The island now seemed to beg to be left alone—not to be anyone else’s personal haven beyond the wildlife already living there, as the afternoon light mellowed the once-inhabited playground of a rich indigo merchant.

They snuggled up in the Tender as Nick ran it aground on the beach. They bundled up in coats and hats, then he threw a hiking backpack and a large parcel of down over his shoulders and waved his hand to come on.

Nick poked her arm. “Yeah, it’s a little big for you, but it’ll keep you warm.” He reached down and held up a broken shell. “Time brought us back here, Amy.”

He handed her the shell, placed it in her palm. He pulled her to him and she fell against the soft down of his coat, of him. He pressed the shell into her hand and the memory invaded as a flood beginning in her legs, then finally reaching the recesses of conscious memory. She lifted her face to him—only memory and body in control now.

His mouth found hers and he kissed her, slow, easy, as if making sure her mouth remembered his. Not only did her mouth remember, but also her arms and hands. She reached behind his neck and pulled his kiss deeper. There was nothing else to be done but this. He released her and she leaned into him, swallowed the words she wanted to say: “Keep holding on, just keep holding me.”

“Follow me.” His voice was soft, commanding and she had no choice but to follow him across the frost-concealed, pinecone-covered forest floor. Her senses became amplified—the bark dangling from a tree, a spiderweb defined by water droplets, the pure smell of torn wood, the dents in the earth from her own weight, the cracking of twigs under Nick’s feet. So this was what it meant to live in the moment, absorbing nothing but what was before her—giving in to the inexorable, to destiny.

They emerged from the brush and Nick wrapped his arm around her shoulders. The house rose in front of them and the cold air surrounded it in an invitational welcome. She sensed a flood of something she couldn’t label, something that rose—no—washed over her, something from a long, long time ago. Something having to do with yearning and desire and . . . purpose. That was it: purpose.

He laughed and walked toward the door, slipped the backpack and bloated bundle from his shoulders. He yanked a key from his back pocket, shoved it into a rusted keyhole, shook it, maneuvered the key in then out until the door popped open, chips of paint fluttering down like angel wings. Nick bowed and swept his arm toward the open door.

She stepped into the foyer. Nick flicked on a large flashlight and its scattered beam mixed with the dusty interior. The house smelled of must and age-—it almost seemed to live and breathe.

Amy grabbed the flashlight and pointed it to the floor. She took a deep breath and grabbed Nick’s arm. “The floor is Purbeck stone.”

“It’s from an evolutionary era, quarried from the Isle of Purbeck in England.” She waved the flashlight over the floor, then up the curved staircase to the second floor.

Trust me. The words echoed off something inside her, but she couldn’t search now for what it was. He wrapped his arms around her, and this time when he kissed her, he did it with the urgency she remembered. Her hands slid to the back of his head; his hands wrapped in her hair, stroked the side of her neck. Her legs gave way beneath her and only he held her up. He kissed her until only the house and Nick existed in her world.

He placed both hands on her cheeks and leaned away from her. He looked down at her and his eyes were full, wet. “My God, Amy. I do love you.”

He grabbed her hand and held another large flashlight out in front of him and led her through the back hall into the wide, deep dining room. He moved the flashlight slowly around the room—pausing whenever she exclaimed with joy or astonishment at a particular molding or architectural detail. He ran his finger around her palm as she talked and walked. Her words danced in rhythm with the motions of his fingers and hand on hers.

They moved from room to room, entering some alternate world where she was permitted to see everything she had ever wanted in a house, in a restoration project—everything she taught about and loved—and Nick was part of everything she loved. She ran his hand over the rare papier-mâché wallpaper—gilded in some places—in the dining room, over the carved marble mantle in the parlor, over the rocaille scrolls on a mahogany staircase.

She took pictures with the camera and flash Nick provided. After every other room in the house had been photographed, touched and commented on, she entered the living room with a low, guttural sound of joy.

Nick released her hand and she grabbed for it. “Wait,” he said. “I want you to see this room with more light.” He opened a back window and kicked out the board. The sun sifted through the bubbled floor-to-ceiling glass windows like wavering pieces of scattered flame.

She pointed the flashlight where thick dirt covered the wide hand-planed heart-of-pine floors, crisscrossed with the small tracks of unknown animals she dared not think about. Dust motes rose and danced in shafts of lengthening light. She wandered around the room, touching, feeling and explaining the architecture as if her class stood with them.

“I want to hear something . . . I want you to tell me what you’ve been thinking all these weeks since you read the telegrams.” He lifted her chin so she faced him. His touch was still gentle, the same whispered caress it had always been. “Do you wake up in the middle of the night and wonder how this could’ve happened to us—how we could have been separated like that? Do you try to get through the day, and it seems a million years long?”

Amy shivered with the truth. “Yes.” Only “yes” resided within her. It was all up to him now—to end the waiting that was twenty-five years long, yet felt now like only a minute.

“I have something for you.” He reached into his backpack, pulled out a silver box, plain, no wrapping, with the words SYLVIA’S ANTIQUE PARLOR stamped in bold black letters on the top.

Warmth overcame her now—a comfort of certainty and the rightness of unalterable destiny. She lifted the top of the box and fumbled with the tissue.

She lifted a necklace off the cotton square on the bottom of the box and held up a small diamond cross pendant dangling off a silver chain. He held the flashlight up to the necklace; the diamonds glinted amid the sparkling, twirling dust. She dropped the necklace to the ground.

She faced him now, her legs askew, not knowing where to rest her hands. Her right one covered her neck. “Oh . . .” She began to cry. Now he would replace the lost necklace, the missing pieces of her heart, the desperate, unfinished longing for him she’d thought long buried.

Nick brought the necklace around her throat, then hooked it. His fingers traced across her skin and she remembered all of it now—where he would touch, where she would. Of course she would—there was no other way.

He reached to touch the cross; his fingers grazed her neck, ran over her collarbone to unzip the front of her coat. Her legs knew where to go and they wrapped around Nick’s as he drew her closer. Her arms fell free when he pushed off the coat, which landed in another dance of dust. She didn’t look away from his eyes; they were on fire with the sun, the copper indistinguishable from the light flashing off the underside of the magnolia leaves outside. Murmured light allowed the suspension of time, and she was twenty-one years old again, promises and vows intact.

She found the feel of his skin, the understanding of his touch. He knew her, what she wanted, who she was and what she loved. He knew all of her and still wanted her.

She leaned in as his mouth found hers, and he kissed her until the sandpaper of his chin shifted down her neck to the crevice where the cross lay. He slid his hands under her sweater, lifted it over her head. Her limbs were like water, fluid with his movements. It had always been like this, always would be—and she wanted him so badly, wanted to be fully understood. She tasted the inside of his mouth—this was where she’d once been and should never have left. She shivered and he pulled the other down sleeping bag over them as a blanket.

“I remembered that. God, I was hoping I’d remembered it right. The way you bend, your fingers in my hair. Amy, I want it all back—all of it.” He grabbed at her, pulled her against him.

She came to him. Here they could have everything they had lost, could unearth the love buried in the memory of touch—skin to skin, arms circling flesh and eliminating any barrier. They moved as one body removing each other’s clothes.

He slid down and kissed her abdomen. She moved her hand down, suddenly shy—her stomach, so different from what he’d known, years and children having changed her. He pushed her hand away, buried his mouth in the softness there, then lifted his head and looked at her. “I wish they’d been our children.” He wrapped his hands around her body.

She groaned and all reality other than him and what was meant to be vanished. How could they have been denied this intimacy, this perfect knowledge of each other?

“Yes.” He moved his finger inside her mouth, then ran it down her chin and around her neck, down her back. “I need to touch every part of you I’ve missed. Here.” He touched the back of her knee. She squirmed and pulled closer. “And here.” He shifted down and traced the outline of her anklebone. “And here.” He ran his hand up her leg to the inside of her thigh. She groaned. “Even here.” He ran his forefinger around the curve of her ear.

“God, I hope so.” He kissed her so gently; she lifted her head to taste more of him. “This is what my dreams are all about, all I’ve ever wanted.” He turned her on her back and rose above her and she heard him and she believed him.

“Finally, Amy. Finally.” His words were desperate and deep and her body rose to meet him, and then completely join him, in a slow choreography of bodies rediscovering a forsaken but not forgotten dance of being one.

Tangled together she felt their release spread like fire, felt the peace of completion like a benediction. She curled up next to him and traced his face with her finger. He shifted beside her.

“Don’t move,” she said, suddenly afraid that if he pulled his body from her she would once again live in the nether-world of longing and wanting where this intimacy was just beyond her reach. He began to move inside her again and she cried out.

“No, no.” She grabbed on to him, pulled him closer, desperate to escape the ache of him gone to a place where she couldn’t find him. He kissed her again and again, keeping his lips to hers even as he spoke.

She tried to distinguish her hand, her leg or arm from his—her want and longing from his—but they were wrapped too tightly to separate.

“If only there was a word stronger than love, stronger than desire. I wish I could find it—find a way to tell you everything you are to me.” He closed his eyes.

“Nick . . .” She arched her back, surrendered all of herself to him. She had words stronger than love, larger than desire; they were in her body, in her flesh and bones, and at last she’d found them.