“ALLIE DOES,” SAM said softly.
For a moment Allie felt a sense of betrayal. She had told Sam she didn’t sing publicly anymore. Still, this wasn’t really publicly. Just a small family gathering.
Hesitantly, Allie took the instrument Kathy held out to her. It was a cheap guitar and badly out of tune, but she fiddled with the frets, and then finally, she strummed a few tentative notes.
The strange thing was she barely knew these people, and yet the fear of judgment that had filled her since American Singing Star was absent. In fact, having the guitar in her hands, people around her, the fire glowing, made her feel as at home as she had ever felt with a guitar.
She suddenly realized she was not in a war with herself, at all. The decision wasn’t whether to leave or stay, to be cautious or bold.
The decision was whether or not to be herself. Whether or not to come home to herself.
“Okay,” she said to the children. “I’m going to teach you how to sing in the round. You, too,” she said to the adults. She went around the circle and numbered everyone, including Cody so he wouldn’t feel left out, though obviously he would not be singing the rounds.
“One, two, one, two,” she sang out. “All the ones, over here, all the twos over there.”
“I forget which number I am,” Sam said devilishly, and Nicole and Bryan yelled at him he was a two.
“This is the song,” Allie said, “I’ll sing it, and then we’ll sing it all together. ‘Flames are climbing, flames are climbing, come closer, come closer, In the glowing, in the glowing, Come sing with us and be joyous.’ Is everybody ready?”
No one answered.
“What?” she asked.
“I think you may have the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard,” Kathy said. “Ever.”
Allie blushed and dropped her head, but not before she saw that Sam was looking at her, and he was smiling.
As if he was proud of her. As if he had deliberately put an obstacle in front of her that he knew she could overcome. As if he saw the truth of her, and knew she had allowed her true self to come out.
Reading too much into it, she scolded herself. But she nodded at him.
“Sing,” she said, and their voices rose together, riding the sparks into the night until it felt as though they were touching the stars.
As she played the guitar and sang, some of the neighboring families wandered over and were invited to stay. A sense of community leaped up.
They sang everything: children’s songs and ballads. They sang rock and roll and theme songs from television shows. Sometimes the singing was good, and mostly it was terrible. Sometimes they could remember all the words and all the verses of each song but mostly they could not.
And as the night wore on, the songs became quieter and quieter. One by one the children nodded off to sleep, Bryan in his mother’s arms, Nicole in her father’s, Cody in Sam’s.
Her awareness of Sam, of his basic goodness and strength, his willingness to do the right thing, intensified every time she looked over at him and saw that child nestled so trustingly into his chest, fast asleep.
Allie was not sure she had ever enjoyed using her voice as much as she did leading a singalong, long into the night, on the Fourth of July at Sugar Cone Beach.
Finally, though, her voice was nearly gone, and she set the guitar down.
“One more?” Sam asked. “Please?
She realized she could refuse him nothing. They had known each other such a short time. How could she feel so strongly toward him? She reached for the guitar.
“Could we finish with this?” Sam asked. “It’s a song my brother-in-law insisted I learn every word to.”
His voice, a beautiful, rich, natural tenor rose, alone, into the night, as he sang the opening bars of “Waltzing Matilda.”
One by one other voices joined Sam’s. Allie picked up the song easily and accompanied on the guitar, but found herself so choked up she could barely sing.
Their voices rose and became one, until they were all Australians, and all Americans, and all part of that amazing beauty and sadness and heartbreak and then beauty again that is to be human.
The impromptu party broke up shortly after, neighbors—new friends—gathering their sleepy children and calling their goodbyes.
“What a splendid evening,” Kathy said, as Allie and Sam organized Cody and Popsy for a walk up the darkened beach to their own place.
“You really have an incredible voice,” Bill said. “I have a friend, in Australia, who is a record producer. Do you think—”
“No,” Allie said quickly.
She couldn’t follow that dream again. She just couldn’t.
Sam seemed to understand. He nestled the sleeping Cody up on his shoulder and took her hand.
Together they walked out into the sand and the night. He didn’t let go of her hand, presumably because it was dark, the silence companionable between them.
At the cottage, they stood outside for a minute before going in. The night was velvety warm, an embrace of stars and sea-scented water.
“Thank you for a beautiful day,” Allie said huskily.
“No, thank you.”
They stood there for a moment, as if both of them knew the perfect way to end a perfect day.
His eyes dark with yearning, Sam leaned toward her.
Wanting something from him that she had never wanted so much from another human being—more than a kiss, but connection—Allie leaned toward him.
But then Popsy pulled on his leash, wanting his bed, and Cody woke suddenly, and the moment was gone.
In her empty bedroom, by herself, listening to the sounds of Sam getting an uncooperative sleepyhead into his pajamas, she wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing that they had pulled back.
She did know she had experienced a near miss of a kiss. And she ached for the thing that had not happened.
* * *
Sam awoke in the morning, aware of three things: one, it was raining, a steady drum on the tin roof. Two, somewhere—probably in the kitchen—Allie was singing about how rare rain was in California. And three, that feeling he had woken with for eight solid months, that feeling of being in a black hole of despair, was gone.
Replaced, not quite with lightness, but with a cautious sense that maybe, just maybe, everything would be okay.
Did you fight a feeling like that? Or surrender to it?
Somehow, he had intended the day, yesterday, to be a gift to Allie. A message. See? Life can be good. You can believe dreams come true. You can miss your grandmother, but still live life.
But maybe it was the nature of gifts that the giver received as much as the recipient. Whether they were ready or not.
From the nest of his bed, Sam heard a knock on the back door.
“Is it too early?”
He recognized Nicole’s voice, looked at the clock beside his bed, and was surprised by how late he had slept.
“We’ve brought breakfast,” Kathy sang out. “And rainy day things. Board games. A movie.”
Allie said something about the rain spoiling their vacation.
“We love rain,” Nicole pronounced.
“Why do you love rain?” Allie asked.
“Well, first,” Nicole answered, “because we don’t get very much where we live, but second, it makes me like the sunny days even better!”
Rain makes you like the sunny days.
Way too deep, Sam chastised himself, when he started contemplating that. He got up out of bed, pulled on a T-shirt and some shorts and padded to the kitchen. He stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at them.
He hadn’t realized Cody was up. He and Allie had been drawing pictures with crayons on a huge piece of newsprint spread out on the kitchen table.
Now the tiny kitchen was crowded, and yet somehow there was room for everyone around that table.
“Uncle Sam,” Nicole said, “do you know how to draw a unicorn?” She was holding out a green crayon to him.
When had he become “uncle”? He hadn’t really noticed. His family, he thought, stunned that he had a family again.
Stunned, and a tiny bit frightened. What had more potential to hurt than this?
He scowled at Nicole. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, scorning the crayon she held out. “Everyone knows unicorns are purple.”
“Are they, Auntie Allie?” Nicole asked.
Sam looked at her. Allie was wearing one of her many I-lost-a-ton-of-weight-at-the-spa outfits. Faded blue T-shirt and sweatpants in the very same horrible shade.
She hadn’t combed her hair yet, and it was sticking up all over.
She was so cute it took his breath away.
So, Allie was family, too. How could that possibly feel so right after such a short length of time?
As the rain pattered on the tin roof of the cottage, he pulled up a chair and searched through the crayons.
He added a purple unicorn to the unfolding mural.
Allie came over, and put her hand on his shoulder as she leaned over it to look. She leaned over him harder as she took the crayon from his hand, and made an adjustment to the horn.
Everything else in the room seemed to fade. Just her, touching him, filling his senses with her smell.
Somehow, everything felt so right. After that, the day unfolded with a delicious sense of endlessness.
They drew pictures and played games. They ate peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, and then defied the rain and went outside and jumped in puddles and swam in the ocean.
After, they came in soaked, and the whole house soon reeked of wet dog. Kathy went home and got a change of clothes for them all, and Nicole had a hot shower and the boys shared a hot bath together. They watched a movie. They built extravagant blanket forts in the living room. They ordered pizzas for dinner.
Sam noticed that, like him, Cody seemed to have turned a page. There was a lightness about him that had not been there when they had arrived at the beach. He had a willingness to engage.
And Allie! Ever since she had leaned over him this morning, it was as if everything else was just a backdrop to her: to her shining eyes, to her ocean-slicked hair, to her laughter, to her willingness to get down on the floor and play.
Nobody wanted the day to end.
He felt Nicole tugging on his sleeve.
“Can Cody come for a sleepover at our house tonight?”
It felt as if his world went strangely still. His world had been he and Cody for so long. They had not been apart for one hour since it had happened, let alone a whole night.
What if something happened?
What if he let Cody out of his sight, and something bad happened? What if they didn’t watch him closely enough and he wandered onto the beach? What if a fire started? Or that burglar broke into their house while he wasn’t there to protect Cody?
He knew these doubts were ridiculous. Kathy and Bill had managed not just to keep their children from harm, but to shape them into wonderful people. Creative, moving toward independence, sure of themselves.
Their children were speaking, a mean-spirited voice inside him pointed out.
He understood he was grappling with a bigger question.
What if he lost Cody, too?
“Please, Uncle, please, please, please?” Bryan joined the chorus.