BEYOND THE UMBRELLAS and the people, Sam could still see Allie. He watched as she arrived at the ocean’s edge and dropped her swim cover.
She was wearing a one-piece bathing suit today, turquoise and navy shades swirling together. The back was an open U, dipping just below her hipbones, leaving the tenderness of her neck exposed, and her naked back. Her skin was golden and flawless. The bathing suit was every bit as sexy as the bikini had been. He felt mesmerized by her, and was relieved when she flung herself into the ocean with a kind of reckless abandon.
He contemplated the gift she had just given him. He didn’t know which was more dangerous: the physical allure of her or the emotional sanctuary.
She believed in him.
He hadn’t known he had needed that. He was a man who had always believed in himself. He did not know why it meant so much to him.
She barely knew him, or Cody, for that matter. And yet, they shared a space. She probably, at this point, knew more about his and Cody’s relationship than any other living being, aside from Popsy, who hardly counted.
Popsy, who crept out of Cody’s room every night, pushed open Allie’s door and climbed into her bed. Now that Sam had fixed the latch, Allie must be letting the dog in, because Sam still woke in the morning to Popsy slinking out of Allie’s room, as if he had been caught in an indiscretion.
The indiscretion being that Popsy had never once slept with Sam.
“And that is going to be the only indiscretion in this house,” Sam muttered, as he watched Allie swim out past the wave break, and begin a strong crawl across the mouth of the bay. He decided, when Cody woke up, they would go out for dinner.
A good strategy, because when they came back, the house was empty. It was only after Cody’s bath that Sam realized he had forgotten to get milk while they were out.
Cody was already in his pajamas, but sometimes he was upset by small changes to his routines. With that one notable exception, when he’d had the muffin Allie brought him for breakfast, he ate cereal for breakfast. Bits O’ Goodness, nothing else.
The counselor had told Sam that Cody’s rigidity about his routines, and what he ate, were a way of trying to make his world safe and predictable.
Since tomorrow they were meeting his aunt and uncle and his cousins, it didn’t seem like it would be a good morning to test the waters with a new breakfast, say of toast, or waffles.
Sam wanted the day to be perfect, not to start with friction between him and Cody, or with one of Cody’s meltdowns.
There had been no meltdowns, he realized, since they’d arrived. The long days of sunshine, water, sand, were doing everything he hoped.
“Come on, buddy, let’s get dressed and go get some milk.”
Cody shook his head, vehemently, no.
Which would be safer? A small disruption to the bedtime routine now, or trying out something new for breakfast tomorrow?
“You can pick some things. It will be fun. You like the grocery store. You can pick cookies.”
Cody shook his head, no, again, then dashed by his uncle at lightning speed. He went out the back door and, thankfully, skidded to a halt when he saw Allie out there, her guitar across her lap, a blank piece of paper beside her and a pencil behind her ear.
Sam came out. She’d been so quiet he hadn’t realized she was home. He certainly hadn’t heard a guitar.
“Come on,” he wheedled. “Chocolate chip.”
“What’s up?” Allie said.
“Uh, we’re out of milk. I thought I’d make a quick run to the store. I’m bribing Cody to come with me. Please don’t tell me bribing is not part of good parenting.”
She smiled at him. “I’m no expert on good parenting. You can go for milk if you want, me and Cody can hang for a bit.”
“I don’t remember that being part of our arrangement.”
“Well, sometimes life requires flexibility.” She ran her thumb over the strings of her guitar. The notes were rich and full. Definitely a sound Sam would have noticed if it had happened before.
She didn’t even look at Cody, but ran her thumb over the strings again. “You want to hang with me while your uncle goes and gets groceries?”
Sam could feel himself holding his breath. Cody didn’t like letting his uncle out of his sight.
But Cody looked at her, then nodded with a certain insulting vehemence.
“Sheesh,” Sam said.
“Before I got sidetracked, I took two years of early childhood education at university, so I’m imminently qualified for half an hour of child care.” Allie strummed at her guitar, took the pencil from behind her ear, wrote something down, frowned and crossed it out.
“My guitar hates Paul’s Steakhouse,” she muttered.
“I ate there once. I hated it, too.”
She groaned. “Don’t tell me that. I’m supposed to be writing a jingle for their radio ad.”
“Like a character on a sitcom?”
She shot him an annoyed look. “Kind of like that,” she said. “Only without the sleazy part. Or the fabulously wealthy part.”
Cody settled on the floor of the porch in front of her. He raised his arms in the air and made fluttering movements with his fingers.
Allie glanced up from her guitar, shot Sam a puzzled look. He frowned.
“I think maybe he’s requesting a song,” Allie said.
Sam looked from her to his nephew, and then recognized exactly what Cody was doing. “You’re right! His Aussie cousin Nicole sings him that one. On the video conferences. ‘Inky-dinky Spider.’”
“Oh!” Excited, Allie began strumming her guitar. “It’s ‘itsy-bitsy,’ not ‘inky-dinky.’”
“Thank you,” he said drily. “I consider myself edified.”
She ignored him, strummed the guitar, fiddled with the frets and then began to sing.
“The itsy-bitsy spider,” she sang, playing simple, accompanying notes on the guitar, “went up the water spout.”
Sam felt a quiver go up and down his spine. The guitar made a sound he had never heard an instrument make before: as if it had its own voice.
“Down came the rain and washed the spider out.”
And Allie’s voice was beyond incredible. Nothing in the way she spoke could have prepared him for the tone of it, rich, deep, sensuous.
“Out came the sun and dried up all the rain.”
It seemed suddenly as if the world was infused with that very sun she was singing about, as if light had come out from behind a rain cloud and made the world sparkling and new. Cody was sweeping his arms from side to side, forming a semi-circle for the sun. For a suspended moment, Sam was aware of the corn silk color of Cody’s hair, the roundness of his cheeks, the thickness of his lashes.
The light extended to Allie. Sam felt as if he was nearly vibrating with awareness of her, of the unconscious sensuality of her fingers as she strummed, of the light playing with the black tips of her sun-streaked hair, of the golden tone of her skin and of the plumpness of her lower lip. He was aware of the way her too-large light blue button-up shirt had slid off the slenderness of her shoulder, revealing a bra strap as white as snow. He was aware of the snugness of her shorts, and sun-browned legs, and bare toes tapping the rough wood of the porch.
“And the itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.”
Her voice was rich, it was stunning, it was magical, the kind of voice that could weave a web of enchantment around the unwary, that could wake a man who had been sleeping, that could make him so acutely aware of everything around him, and of his own heartbeat and the summer heat coming off his skin, that it felt almost painful to be alive, to be breathing.
Was that silly song really about life? Climbing up, being washed down, the sun coming out and giving you the courage to try again?
The enchantment seemed to have oozed over Cody like warmed honey. He clapped with delight. He smiled! Not that secretive little smile that sometimes Sam caught sight of, as Cody moved into his imaginary world of superheroes and cars, but an open, engaged smile of pure delight.
“You’re really good at this,” she encouraged Cody. He puffed up under her approval. She began the song again at the beginning.
Cody swayed happily, and acted out the sequence.
First the dog, and now Cody, Sam thought, watching, trying to hide the fact that this small event was making him feel alive, his nephew’s obvious pleasure was making him extraordinarily emotional.
“What?” Allie asked, glancing at him.
“Nothing,” Sam mumbled. But it wasn’t nothing.
He thought of asking her if she was an enchantress. That’s how he felt, with her music, her beautiful voice washing over him, as if he could follow the dog and his nephew and fall, fall, fall under her spell.
The worst possible thing he could do was give himself over to it. She’d agreed to hold down the fort. He needed to go get milk. But instead, in the grip of something larger than him, and larger than all of them, Sam found himself sinking onto the deck, cross-legged, beside Cody.
“Can you do ‘Do Your Ears Hang Low?’” Sam asked her.
“Of course.”
Allie sang every rollicking, motion-based children’s song that she knew. And then she slowed it down and sang quieter songs, until finally she was singing lullabies.
At some point, Cody climbed onto Sam’s lap, inserted his thumb in his mouth, and despite his fighting it, his eyes finally closed and stayed that way. His warmth puddled against Sam and made him feel the glorious and terrifying pull of pure love.
Sam got up, his nephew in his arms, and went into the house. He tucked Cody in and stared down at the sleeping child, so aware of the gravity of his responsibility, so aware love complicated decisions—it didn’t make them easier.
He untied the cape string, and tiptoed out and shut the door. He told himself not to go back out on that deck, but how could he not thank her for the look he had seen on Cody’s face?
“He didn’t even wake up for bedtime stories,” he said. “It’s the second time today I feel like I owe you a big thank-you.”
“Not at all. That was really fun for me, too.”
He came and sank down on the swing beside her. It felt as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
“I saw something tonight that I wasn’t sure I’d ever see again,” Sam confided in her. “While you were singing, Cody was the way he used to be. I mean, not talking. But happy. Especially with his aunt and uncle coming tomorrow, that means so much to me.”
His hand found hers, again as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He squeezed it. Some part of him wanted to hang on. Forever.
Despite the itsy-bitsy spider encouraging him to try again and again, Sam knew the saddest lesson of all. There was no forever.
He slid his hand from the warmth of hers.
Allie loved the weight of Sam on the swing beside her, the gentle creak as he shoved it back and forth with the balls of his feet.
“It made me happy, too,” she admitted, “in a way I haven’t been for a long time.”
He stopped pushing the swing back and forth with his feet. He looked at her, ran his hand through his hair, looked toward the darkened beach, the moonlight capping the waves in snow-white froth. He was making a decision, Allie thought, whether to go or whether to stay here with her.
“Allie, how come you haven’t been happy?” His voice was a rasp.
She was aware they were standing at a crossroads, of sorts. Life had taught her it was dangerous to trust people. Just like Sam, she had a decision to make right now, too.
So did she protect herself? Or did she throw caution to the wind?