“So you’re really leaving?”
Her father stood in the open doorway of the cabin. Heaving a sigh, Caroline pushed past him, toting her suitcase toward the car. “I wasn’t going to leave without saying goodbye.”
“Why are you doing this, Caroline?” He dogged her footsteps all the way to the car.
She threw the duffel into the trunk and slammed the lid. “I know you probably won’t believe me when I tell you I’m not running away this time. Despite how it looks.”
He leaned against the vehicle, his long legs extended in front of him. “Then tell me what you’re doing.”
“I can’t stay, Dad.” She cupped the bracelets on her wrist with her other hand. “I promise it won’t be like last time. I’ll call every week. Write. Return for a visit when Honey’s baby is born. But I can’t...” Her voice shuddered. “You of all people know why I can’t stay here. I can’t take the chance of...of...” She gulped. “A relapse. There will be a relapse. You and I both know that. Seeing me like that would scar Izzie for life. Destroy Weston for good this time.”
“Caroline.” Her father’s face contorted with grief. “It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s no certainty of a relapse. It wouldn’t be like last time when you were alone. You’d have your family. Weston and Izzie’s love to help you.”
“Oh, Daddy, I wish... How I wish...” Her vision blurred.
He opened his arms. She laid her forehead against the scratchy cotton of his shirt. She inhaled the familiar, always-longed-for scents of her childhood.
“I’m not running away from you or the family, Daddy. I just can’t stay and watch Izzie find her forever mother or Weston take a wife.” She lifted her gaze. “I can’t bear that. I can’t stay here if I want to stay well. Please.” She fisted his shirt with both hands. “Please try to forgive me.”
He cradled her face in his calloused, work-hardened hands. “Nothing to forgive, Ladybug.”
She choked back a sob. He hadn’t called her that since she was a little girl.
“I love you, Caroline.” He pulled her into a fierce hug. “And this will always be your home.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist. “I love you, too, Daddy.”
“Alone is no good, sweetheart. Trust me, I know. Like with your baby turtles, family and community are vital to survival.”
“I’ll call my therapist today, I promise.”
“Are you headed to Virginia Beach?”
“For now.”
Her father released her. “Give me a call when you get across the Bay Bridge.” The experienced waterman swept a practiced eye toward the sky. “Storm’s coming and you know how your old man frets when his chicks are away from the nest.”
She nodded and swiped the tears from her cheeks.
“Come home when you can, Ladybug. We’ll always be here for you.” His gravelly voice thickened. “Waiting and watching for you.”
* * *
“You’re wrong.” Izzie hurled herself out of the SUV before Weston could bring the Chevy to a standstill. “Caroline wouldn’t leave. She loves me.” She rocketed out of the car toward the cabin.
He scanned the empty driveway and rested his forehead on the steering wheel. Izzie hadn’t believed him when he told her about Caroline’s departure. He’d tried explaining about Caroline’s career and, in desperation, even her illness. Bringing Izzie to the deserted cabin was the only way he could think of to get Izzie to see the truth.
As for accepting the truth? He was still working on that one himself.
“Caroline?” Izzie pounded up the steps. “Caroline? Where are you? Caroline?”
He pushed open the car door and eased to the ground like an old man. He’d done this to Izzie. Seth had warned him. Yet Weston had believed he was smarter. Smarter than the people who had loved Caroline the longest. Why?
Because he was arrogant. So sure his deep feelings for Caroline were returned. That they’d finally found their soul mate in each other.
He shook his head. There was no such thing as a soul mate. Why was he so stupid? Women couldn’t—shouldn’t—ever be trusted.
Not with the heart of his child. Nor with his. What was so wrong with him that neither Jessica nor Caroline had been able to love him enough to stay?
Inside, Izzie’s voice echoed.
Helpless, his hands stuffed in his pockets, he leaned against the clicking, cooling engine. Listening to the gut-wrenching calls of his beloved child. His jaw tightened. He’d never forgive Caroline for hurting Izzie like this.
No. That wasn’t right. Had he learned nothing from Jessica? He couldn’t allow the bitterness to twist him up inside again. Hate and unforgiveness would in the long run only cripple him and by extension, Izzie.
“Where are you, Caroline?” On the porch, Izzie’s voice ricocheted off the tree canopy surrounding the cabin. “I love you, Caroline. Come back. Please, please don’t leave me.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. Her pleas like the cries of his own heart. When he could stand it no longer, he plucked Izzie off the porch. In the shelter of his arms, he carried Izzie to the truck. She buried her head against his chest and sobbed.
“It’s going to be okay, Isabelle.” His voice quivered. He slid Izzie onto the seat and buckled her inside.
Coming around the truck, he threw himself into the driver’s side. “Maybe not today or tomorrow. But I promise you, we’re going to be okay.”
“The turtles and Caroline are gone...” Izzie beat the seat with her fist. “You promised we were going to be okay then, too.”
His stomach muscles clenched. “I tried to get her to stay, Izz.”
“Like you tried with my mom?” Her eyes gleamed with tears and fury. “Maybe you didn’t try hard enough with either one of them.”
Weston jerked. How did she—? The knot in the pit of his stomach contracted, squeezing the air from his lungs. And he remembered last week when he’d caught her on his laptop. The out-of-the-ordinary trip to the library the next day.
He raked his hand over his head. And stared at his shaking hand. Izzie had an insatiably curious mind, not unlike Caroline’s, to know. Whether it was in her best interests or not.
Izzie laid her head onto the armrest and cried. He wished for a moment he could stop being the adult so he could, too.
Thrusting the gear into drive, he bypassed the lodge. The cab was silent, except for the sound of Izzie’s heartbroken sobs. Lost in the could-have-beens, he steered the truck toward the home he’d hoped to create with Caroline. Toward a future he and Izzie would now spend alone.
At the cottage, he allowed Izzie to slip from the truck without a word. She headed toward the beach. Like her dad, Izzie needed to grieve her loss in her own way. Heartsick, he made his way into the house. The home he’d never share with Caroline.
The torn-apart kitchen called for his attention. Emails awaited him in his office. He could bear the thought of neither. He found himself in the family room at the base of the lighthouse. His gaze fastened on the nautilus shell on the mantel.
As the mollusk grew, its body left the old chamber for a new, larger space. It walled itself off from the older chambers. But the empty chambers remained key to its survival. The chambers created a golden spiral and regulated the buoyancy of the living mollusk. And the cross section served as a reminder of how far the mollusk had come.
He peered up the circling staircase toward the upper stories. Like the nautilus, he’d hoped... He gritted his teeth. If only he could seal off the past as easily as the mollusk. If only he could’ve steeled himself from loving Caroline Duer, as complicated and multichambered as the nautilus.
Weston stormed up the curving steps past Izzie’s room. At the sight of the frilly pink decor, he closed his mind to the joy of the day when he and Caroline had moved Izzie into her brand-new quarters.
Hurrying onward, he threw open the door to the master suite. Picking up the jar of seashells they’d collected one morning on the lighthouse beach, he flung the contents against the wall. The glass shattered. Shards and seashells flew across the bedspread Caroline had helped him select.
“Will I always be alone?” he shouted. “Is this my punishment for not being there for Jessica?”
Seizing the photo he’d framed of Caroline and Izzie taken in front of the cottage, he shook it at the ceiling. “Punish me. Not Izzie.”
As he tossed the picture onto the bed, his gaze darted. Every square inch of space held memories of Caroline. He didn’t know how he was going to live here with the images of her laugh and her face everywhere he turned.
“Why did you bring Caroline into our lives if you knew she’d never stay? Was it a test? That I failed? Again?”
Silence greeted him. His anger spent, anguish swelled. He sank to the floor beside the bed and put his head in his hands. His heart was shattered. He ached for the woman who would never be his.
But in the quiet, he became aware of the distant roar of the waves. The in and the out. The rhythmic cadence stilled the angry torrent of his thoughts. Calmed and regulated his breathing.
Vast. Unfathomable. Altogether more than him. Like God’s love for him and Izzie. And Caroline, too. He lifted his head. “I can’t do it anymore, God. I’ll never be enough for anyone. I’m so alone.”
The wind whistled against the brick tower. And in the caw of a seagull, his heart quickened with a realization. He’d never be enough, not on his own. Only God could enable him to be the father Izzie needed.
Only God could help Weston become a husband someday. Or, if not God’s will, God would help Weston bear the tasks He’d set before him. But Weston would never be alone.
He recalled what Caroline had told him of the most terrible time in her life. Truthfully, he couldn’t comprehend that kind of loneliness. There’d always been his parents, his sister and now his Kiptohanock friends and church community.
The anger toward Caroline seeped slowly from him. Replaced by a growing compassion for the burden she carried and the battle she was so determined to fight alone.
He prayed for God to heal their hearts, especially Caroline’s. To help her understand she never had to be alone again. Not because of Weston. But because her Heavenly Father would never, never leave his child alone to face the dark.
Then he bowed his head and wept for everything the darkness had cost them.