She heard the music as soon as she walked into the house. Macy assumed that Max and Emma were in Emma’s room. She would look for them later. She crossed the room, walking toward the music that was coming from the back porch, beach music like her mom and dad used to shag dance to, their hands joined as they pivoted and side-stepped and twisted. Macy had always told them they looked silly, but secretly she loved to watch them. They always looked so happy. The song changed as she got closer, a song so familiar she thought that when she looked outside she’d see her mom and dad there.
The Tams were singing “What Kind of Fool Do You Think I Am?” as Buzz wrapped her mother in his arms and swayed, smiling down at her for a moment before taking her hand and spinning her away. Brenda giggled as he did, but recovered nicely, keeping a firm grasp on his hand as she began to move her feet in time to the music, her eyes locked on Buzz. He pulled her to him and kissed her as Macy stifled a gasp. She’d been telling herself that her mother was just being nice to Buzz. Or Buzz was just being nice to her. But the truth was, Wyatt was right. They had feelings for each other.
She pulled back from the glass door and was about to escape to her room when she heard someone behind her. She turned, expecting to see Emma, but saw Max instead.
Max held a Bible against his chest and looked at her with an amused grin on his face. “Spying on them, are we?” he asked.
Macy moved away from the door so Brenda wouldn’t know she’d seen anything. “I was trying to find her to talk to her. Where’s Emma?”
“I put her to bed; she was tired. Looks like you found Mom, I guess.”
“She’s not alone.”
Max shook his head. “Nope. She’s not. Not anymore.”
“I don’t know how to feel about that.”
“I guess we should feel happy.”
“But is she ready for that? Is he the right person? Shouldn’t we be looking into his … background or something?”
Max laughed. He crossed his arms over the Bible like he was hugging it. “Now how would you have taken it if I’d asked for a background check on Chase when you first brought him around?”
Macy crossed her arms like Max had done, sans the Bible. “In hindsight, I’d say you should have.”
Max yanked his thumb in the direction of Emma’s room. “Really? You’d really say that?”
Macy dropped her arms helplessly. Max had a Bible. Brenda had Buzz. Macy had Wyatt and Nate and even, oddly, Dockery. Everything was changing so fast. She pointed at the Bible. “You want to explain that?”
He held it up. “Your friend Nate. He’s a pretty smart guy. He’s been helping me sort through some stuff. About life … And death.”
She thought about seeing Nate and Max together. Nate had said Max would fill her in when he was ready. She wasn’t really surprised that Nate had been helping Max with spiritual stuff. She could already see changes in her brother as a result of his short friendship with Nate. Wonders never ceased. Max. With a Bible.
“I’m happy for you, Max.” She thought of her prayer that night by the ocean, how long it had been since she’d talked to God prior to that moment. The last time she’d opened a Bible was in a youth Bible study she’d faked her way through before giving up on religion altogether right after her dad died. Later, Chase had become her religion. Now her Bible was on a bookshelf back home, covered in a thick coat of dust. She knew the inscription on the inside by heart: “To Macy. This book will help you be exceptional. Jeremiah 1:5. Love, Daddy.”
“I’m going to check on Emma,” she said. She squeezed Max’s shoulder, knowing it did a poor job of communicating the love she felt for him just then. She was proud of him.
Macy slipped into Emma’s room and tiptoed to her bed. She knelt down beside her daughter’s sleeping form and brushed the hair from her forehead, gently kissing her warm cheek. Emma smelled like ocean water and sun and, faintly, of chocolate. Emma must have talked her uncle into having hot fudge on her ice cream. “I love you,” she said to her sleeping child.
Emma sighed in her sleep and rolled over as if Macy was interrupting a good dream. Macy smiled and rested her hand on her back, content to sit beside her for a while. “Sweet dreams,” she whispered, promising herself that she’d spend every moment she could with Emma the next day. Their time at the beach would be over soon. For just a moment, Macy wished she could go home knowing who the guest book artist was. She didn’t have to end up with him. Just knowing his identity would be enough. At least, that’s what she told herself.
Hours later, unable to sleep, Macy got up and went to the den. All the lights were off. She stood still in the darkness, thinking of the strange week she’d had, of Wyatt’s kisses and seeing Brenda and Buzz dancing, of her lunch with Nate and her morning of teaching without Dockery. She lay down on the couch and pulled a decorative pillow shaped like a seashell into her chest and hugged it. She closed her eyes and waited for sleep to come. Instead she heard footsteps. She opened her eyes.
“Macy?” her mother said.
She rose up on one elbow, blinking into the darkness as she made out her mother’s form standing at the end of the couch. “Yes?”
Her mother took a seat on the coffee table. “Why are you out here? Can’t sleep?” she asked.
“No.” She sat up as faces ran across her mind: Dockery’s, Nate’s, Max’s, Wyatt’s, Buzz’s, Emma’s, and Brenda’s — so dangerously close to Buzz’s when he pulled her close as they danced.
“Did you have a nice day?” her mother asked, almost as if she were inquiring about Macy’s school day like she used to do.
“A better question would be, did you?” Macy said, tilting her head as she watched her mother for a response.
Brenda laughed like a girl. “You mean with Buzz?”
“Exactly.”
“We did. He’s a very nice man, you know.”
“He was Dad’s friend.”
“And mine.”
“Yours? I never saw you so much as talk to Buzz other than to ask if he wanted his drink refilled back then.”
“The year after your dad … died. He was my friend then. That last time we came here.”
Macy was quiet, weighing her words. “Did you have … feelings for him?”
Her mother didn’t say anything for what seemed like a very long time. Macy listened to the sound of a car driving slowly down Main Street. Finally, she heard her mother exhale, as if she were releasing a secret she’d held inside for a very long time.
“I didn’t know what I felt.” She sighed. “I loved your father so much, and I was so heartbroken. Buzz was sympathetic, a good listener. He loved your father too. It was very confusing, because all of that got tangled together and became this … issue between us. He wanted more. I wasn’t ready, of course.”
Brenda clasped her hands together and Macy noticed she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring anymore. More than the words her mother was using, that detail told Macy all she needed to know.
“So you ran?” Macy had made a similar decision that last summer. She thought of the look on her mother’s face the morning she’d walked out to the back porch and found Brenda and Buzz there.
“I’ve decided we should go home,” she’d said as she strode out onto the porch, interrupting a conversation between her mom and Buzz that, upon reflection, looked intense. But she hadn’t seen that then. She’d only seen her own pain, her own resolve to flee the place that did nothing but keep her pain at the surface. Her dad was everywhere she looked.
Her mom had blinked at her a few times. Then looked at Buzz, a long look passing between them. “I guess that’s our answer,” she’d said to him. Macy recalled that now, putting it into context all these years later. Brenda had risen from her seat and smoothed out her shorts. “I think you’re right,” she’d said to her daughter. Macy had nodded and turned to go inside to pack, never once looking at Buzz’s face. If she had, she would’ve seen pain there, rejection, confusion.
“I guess you could say that. I did what I thought was best at the time. I told Buzz someday I’d be back. I just never thought it would take me so long.”
“When I found you together on the back porch that morning … had he spent the night here?”
Brenda paused. “Yes. And no. He’d spent the night, but not like you’re suggesting. We’d stayed up all night talking about what was happening between us. I’d just said I thought we’d better slow down, and right at that moment, you walked out and said you never wanted to come back. I took that as a sign.”
“So why’d you come back now? And how did you know he’d still be here?”
Her mother smiled, her white teeth glinting in the moonlit room. “About once a year I’d hear from him—a card usually just before the anniversary of your dad’s death. Just saying he was thinking of me, that he was waiting for me whenever I was ready. Can you imagine, waiting all these years?”
Macy thought about the guest book. “Yes,” she whispered, “I can.”
“Well, this year the card didn’t come. And I found myself missing that card. Such an insignificant thing, but I realized that I’d actually looked forward to receiving it each year. And then I realized something that surprised me.”
“What was that?”
“That I was scared of Buzz. I wanted him only in that card, where he was safe and contained. In that card, I could still hold onto the hope of him while not having to deal with the reality of him. And I realized that I might’ve waited too long. So I called the rental company right away, booked the house, but I waited to tell you kids until the birthday dinner.”
“So was that the last birthday dinner?” Macy asked. She hadn’t realized she’d depended on that tradition in an odd sort of way. She certainly never thought she’d miss it when it was gone. But there was something about seeing it end that meant other things were ending too.
“I think so, Mace.”
Macy nodded in the dark, listening to the sounds of Max getting up in the night, his room door opening and shutting as he padded down the hall to the bathroom. Some other time, she would ask her mom if she’d noticed the changes in Max. For now, she just tried to absorb the changes in her mother. Good changes, necessary ones. Changes Macy had wanted to see for a long time. And yet now that they were upon her, she didn’t know if she was ready.
Macy stretched out on her bed, waiting, for the second time, for sleep to come, her eyes fixed on the guest book. She thought of her mother’s words about Buzz, how as long as he stayed somewhere she could contain him, she felt in control. It was embracing the reality of him that was hard.
Was that how she thought of the boy she’d traded drawings with? Was he a perfect picture to hang on to, a person she could go to in her mind when everything went wrong? Was he real? Was he Nate or Wyatt or Dockery? And if he wasn’t, what did that mean for each of them? Was he the person she was meant to be with, or was he just supposed to trigger this strange search she was now on? Maybe all she was supposed to find at the beach was the answer to what she’d been running from: her fear that if she opened up to someone, she would be left again.
That fear had kept her from going to meet him ten years ago.
She’d opened the guest book on that last visit expecting to find the usual drawing from him, already thinking of what she could draw that would help him see her grief, experience her loss. This time his drawing was of the gazebo near the pier. And this time, with that drawing, there’d been a note. She’d never seen his handwriting before. Never exchanged written words with him except when she’d written her name, hoping he’d finally reveal his.
She’d read his note asking to meet her. And then, every day during that awful week, she’d read it again and thought about what it would mean to see him. Was she ready to change things, to break the rules he’d referred to? Or did she want to have one thing — just one thing — that stayed the same for her? Instead of facing what he’d asked of her, she’d played putt-putt with her brother, eaten banana-flavored snow cones, and taken long walks as she mourned the loss of her father, the noise of her sobs drowned out by the crashing waves. In the end, she’d left him a letter telling him she wasn’t coming. And that she didn’t know when she’d come back. Then she’d marched out onto the porch and told her mother to take her home. She’d run away from him and missed the chance to find out who he was.
To the artist,
By now you know I didn’t come to meet you. What you don’t know is that my dad died. My dad, who once convinced me to draw a picture in a guest book, is gone. And without him, nothing is the same. I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you like you wanted. Any other year, I would have wanted to. I simply could not make my feet walk out of this house and to the gazebo. I know that makes me a coward, and I fear that’s what I’ve become since my dad died. I am afraid of everything — even you. What if, after all this time, we disappoint each other? I don’t think I could take another disappointment right now. So I’ve decided to hold onto you the way you are in my mind — and my heart — right now. This way, something in my life will stay the same, even as everything else is changing. I hope that somehow you understand this about me. I think you do … and that’s the best thing about us.
I don’t know when I will get another chance to see you, as we’ve decided not to come back. It’s just too hard without my dad. He was the heart of these trips, and without him here, the joy is just gone. Everywhere I look, there are painful memories of him, reminders of things I will never do with him again. Maybe someday I will feel differently, but for now, I just need to put some distance between me and this place.
So I’m leaving you one last drawing, and I hope you’ll leave me one too. You can hide the guest book under the loose floorboard in the closet of the room I’ve come to think of as mine, the second bedroom on the left. And one day — I promise you this — I will come back and find it. I don’t know when that will be, but if I know us, it’ll be at exactly the right time. I hope you won’t forget about me. I know I will never forget you.
She’d had no idea if he would leave the final picture she’d asked him to draw—no way of knowing if he was angry over her decision not to meet him. In a way, she’d been frozen in that moment in time, in the moment she’d left that note in the guest book, gotten into the car with her mother and Max, and driven away from Sunset Beach. The truth was, she’d found an odd sort of comfort in the not knowing, in standing still.
And now Brenda had found a way to move again, to unfreeze from that moment when the doctor had told her her husband had died. And it seemed as if she was happier than she’d been in a long time. Was Macy hanging onto the guest book because this person was her true love, or because by holding onto it, she didn’t have to risk finding true love? She could stay safe as long as she didn’t have answers. There was, after all, safety in staying still. If one didn’t move, there was no risk of losing control, going the wrong way, or falling. But staying still meant no one got anywhere. And Macy was ready to move, to be on her way.