“Keagan, I am not getting out of this vehicle.” Liv, seated in the passenger seat of her minivan, crossed her arms. The movement made her chest hurt. The doctor had said it was her imagination. Still, it was there. She felt it. She uncrossed her arms. “I’m not budging.”
Keagan chuckled from the driver’s seat. “You know I can outwait you.” He turned off the engine and with that went the heater.
She wanted to protest, but she couldn’t summon the energy to do so. Besides, he was right. He could outwait her. Although she wore socks with her slip-on Birkenstock sandals and a jacket, the van was already chilly.
They were parked down at the beach, in a lot nearly empty at this late hour, and faced the night ocean. The inky water mirrored the sky, both full of shimmering pinpricks as if stars had been tossed high and low on two canvases. Far to the right, gentle waves swelled beneath the pier, their whitecaps briefly aglow in light cast from the vapor lamps high above them.
“Liv, you’re not old and you’re not dying.”
“I am old and, for your information, we’re all dying.”
“You get my drift. You always say age is a state of mind. And yours has been focused on that one foot you’ve stuck inside the grave.”
“What do you expect? I had a heart attack.”
Keagan chuckled again. “I had a heart attack. You might want to reconsider that mantra. It’s getting redundant.”
The man went for days speaking no more than a dozen words. What was up with the Mr. Magpie routine? “If I get out of the car, will you stop talking?”
“Only one way to find out.” He hopped from the car, hurried around to her door, and opened it.
She let him help her down. The sand-covered pavement crunched under her sandals. She inhaled damp, cool autumn air that carried smoky scents from campfires burning in a handful of rings on the beach.
She sighed. “Look at those stars.”
“Hmm. Let’s walk.” He drew her arm through his and led her to the lane marked for pedestrians on the Strand. Its curb paralleled the beach. They turned south, away from the pier.
She suspected he chose the direction on purpose. He knew her first choice was always to walk the pier. Tonight, though, the thought of going up and down its ramp felt beyond her ability. Evidently he did not plan to push her physical limitations.
Just her mental ones.
They walked in silence—blessed silence—at a snail’s pace. It wasn’t their first nighttime stroll. Years before, soon after his arrival at the Casa, Keagan had spotted her around ten p.m., halfway out on the nineteen-hundred-foot-long pier.
She never again walked the pier late at night by herself. With that peculiar sense of his, he intuited whenever she was ready to go and he showed up, quiet and watchful, either keeping his distance or joining her.
She thought it totally unnecessary. Seaside Village was a safe community, and she could take pretty good care of herself. Her height and listen-up voice commanded attention when she wanted them to.
One time years ago she was in the alley performing her macho routine for three teenage boys who were up to no good. She did not have proof they were up to no good, but one carried a can of spray paint in his back pocket. When she asked them about it, they sassed her. Never one to be afraid to stand her ground or call the police, she was prepared to do both, but the need evaporated.
Out of nowhere Keagan appeared beside her. He spoke in a dead calm voice. “You’ll be moving along now, boys. You won’t be returning.”
Without a word or backward glance, they scurried off.
Those boys never returned. Not a trace of graffiti ever appeared on her wall or the gate or the light pole or the dumpster. The neighbors’ properties remained clean.
Those events cemented Keagan’s role at the Casa. Liv hadn’t asked for it, but she didn’t mind. He wasn’t obnoxious about it, and honestly, who wouldn’t want an angel nearby? Or, as Inez called him, a knight? A little Clint Eastwood never hurt either.
On second thought, maybe she had asked for it. She’d complained enough about the Syd-shaped hole in her life, that male presence that complemented her role as a single female apartment manager. Voilà. Sean Keagan showed up on her doorstep one spring day.
Angel or not, he had earned the right to speak things she did not want to hear.
The stars flickered, above and below. Waves kissed the beach. Quiet beauty danced around her and eventually, slowly, it seeped inside.
She let go of his arm. She’d show him who had one foot in the grave. “Okay. Do you want to hear my side of the story?”
“Only if it might help.”
“I’m scared, Sean.” She seldom called him by his first name. He tolerated it from her, although she had the impression it carried sad memories for him. Still, at times like now, she desperately needed a son-type intimate more than an angel or a knight.
They walked several steps in silence.
Finally he said, “Of course you’re scared. You experienced a lot of pain and a brush with death.”
Silence built between them.
“Is there more?”
“No.” She fidgeted. “Yes. What it’s really about is losing control. About depending on others for the simple basics of preparing food and cleaning my home and walking across the courtyard and pulling my weeds. It’s about feeling like God is so far away. So very, very far away.”
He touched her elbow, steered her around, and they headed back toward the parking lot.
“Well,” he said, “what can I say? Life is difficult.”
“Yeah, and it stinks too.”
He laughed. “At times.”
Liv did not. “That’s all you have for me?”
“Yes, Mama Liv, that’s all either one of us has. Life is difficult and at times it stinks.”