| |
Cindy was full-on shaking when Wayne found her on the back porch. The woman was now forty-seven years old but didn’t look a day over forty, with glorious dark blond curls that wafted down her shoulders and almond-shaped blue eyes. Wayne hadn’t seen her in several weeks, and he realized with a jolt that she really did look a bit like Elise Darby.
All this time...
“Wayne...” Cindy breathed. She jumped up from her rocking chair and wrapped her arms around him. Her head fell against his chest.
For a moment, Wayne was transported back to Tara’s funeral. Was that the last time he had hugged Cindy like this?
When Cindy pulled her head back, she wiped the tears from her eyes. “I’m sorry to call you like that. I didn’t know what to do.”
“No, I get it,” Wayne told her.
“I poured you a glass of whiskey,” Cindy said. “Wine seemed a little too...” She snapped her fingers, looking for the word.
“Celebratory?”
“Something like that.”
Wayne sat in the other rocking chair. The one Fred normally sat in. In other happier times, he and Tara had sat across from them, glasses of wine in hand, as they laughed through the night.
“I just can’t get my head around it,” Cindy continued, her eyes shadowed. “I haven’t heard a single thing from him since he left the island. I’ve thought about it all the time. Thought—what if he died somewhere, somewhere in Asia or something, and nobody knew how to contact me?”
Wayne’s shoulders were heavy. He stared into the amber liquid of his whiskey. “Michael’s a responsible kid. No matter what happens, he has you and Fred as parents. He can’t shake that.”
Cindy’s chuckle wasn’t a happy one. “You know as well as everyone that Michael looked at you and Tara more as parents than Fred and me. He spent so many evenings over at your house instead of ours.”
Wayne twitched at the memory.
“You know Tara loved that kid,” Wayne affirmed. “She couldn’t have children of her own, and when you gave birth to Michael...”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Cindy said. “I remember it all clear as day. Twenty-four years ago, me and Tara and baby Michael went everywhere together. Tara used to sew him little outfits to wear. She used to babysit him for hours at a time so I could get some shut-eye.”
“She made it pretty clear to me that if we were going to work, I had to make sure to include Michael in my understanding of who she was,” Wayne said.
“Just because she wasn’t related by blood, she was still that boy’s aunt,” Cindy breathed. “He trusted her much more than he ever trusted me. I think he always resented being from the Swartz family. He hated having that target on his back.”
Michael said that over and over again. He resented being rich. He wanted nothing to do with the Swartz money.
In some ways, his leaving was no surprise at all.
But his return? That was a huge shock.
Something was in the air this year. Maybe that very thing had dragged Elise Darby back to the island where her parents had met and fallen in love.
Maybe that very thing in the air had led Wayne to believe that for the first time in a very long time, he could find love again.
He glanced at his phone once again. Elise hadn’t texted him back.
Profound sorrow stirred in his stomach.
“I just can’t get my head around it,” Cindy whispered. “There’s no telling where he’s been, or what he’s been up to, or even why he left... I know Tara’s death really took something out of him. It took something out of all of us. But he was a sensitive guy.”
Wayne closed his eyes. In the months after Tara’s car accident off the island, Michael had tried several times to reach out to Wayne. Wayne had been a shell of his previous and now current self. He had hardly eaten anything, he’d had perpetual gray shadows under his eyes, and he’d allowed his dark hair to grow long, nearly to his shoulders. Making conversation with anyone had been a huge struggle, and he hadn’t exactly welcomed Michael.
Michael had thought of Tara as a second mother, yes.
But Michael had a mother.
And Wayne? He hadn’t had anyone.
Still, he hadn’t been able to escape the blame he’d put on himself after Michael had left the island with only a note—one that had read: Don’t look for me.
They had lost two people that year: Tara and Michael.
Now, they were getting one back, but they had no idea what state he was in or what he had gone through. It was then, sitting out on the porch, that Wayne realized he’d just half-assumed Tara and Michael were off somewhere together, joyful and without worry.
How stupid.
“I can’t believe Fred didn’t stay,” Cindy whispered toward her glass. “His own son...”
Wayne didn’t have words. He sipped his whiskey again and huffed.
“I’ve missed you, Cindy,” he told her.
It was Cindy’s turn not to respond for a long time. When she finally did, she said, “The reputation you’ve built for yourself on this island is really weird for me.”
This felt like the worst kind of attack.
Essentially, it meant: You have ruined Tara’s memory with your reckless bachelor ways.
“I didn’t know what else to do with myself,” Wayne whispered.
It seemed terribly cruel that she had just outright decided what he had done was wrong when she’d been allowed to continue as Fred’s wife and Megan’s mother.
Wayne’s heart felt stricken. It was almost as though he felt the knife going through right there as she spoke her words. He opened his lips to say something. But what could he possibly say to support all he had done? Even the idea of having met someone else was now all tied up in the issue of the Swartz family and all of their BS.
There was the screech of the back porch door. Wayne and Cindy turned their heads to find Michael Clemmens, aged twenty-four, with hair down to his shoulders, large caverns beneath his eyes, a stoop to his shoulders that seemed to represent just how hard the world had been to him, and a big backpack stretched across his back, presumably filled with everything he owned in the world.
He stood out on the porch and looked down at his mother and Wayne. His mouth made no move to smile. Slowly, he shifted the backpack down to the ground and loosened his shoulders slightly.
What the heck was there to say to someone you loved so much who’d abandoned you?
But a mother’s love was much more powerful than all that.
Cindy stood and tapped her glass of whiskey on the little coffee table. She walked toward him on shaky legs. Her hands found his upper biceps as her eyes looked into his hungrily.
“Oh, honey.” Those were the only words she could muster before she fell forward and wrapped her eldest child in a huge hug.
Wayne felt strange. He stood and placed his hands on his hips and shifted his weight. When Cindy fell back, she brushed a tear from her cheek and brightened her voice to ask, “I should get you something to eat! You’ve probably traveled a long way and are starving.”
Hurriedly, as though time was running out, Cindy entered the house and marched toward the kitchen.
This left Wayne and Michael in a bit of a stand-off.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Michael said.
These were the first words he’d spoken.
They nearly knocked Wayne to his knees. He couldn’t decide if they were meant to be cruel, if they were angry, or if they were hopeful.
“Your mom called me,” Wayne explained.
“So you’ve kept the band together, then,” Michael said. “You, Mom, Dad—best friends forever, right?”
Wayne swallowed the lump in his throat. “Not exactly.”
Michael turned his eyes toward the ground. Wayne shoved down his desire to rush forward and hug this man as tightly as he could.
The only kid I’ve ever been really close to—the son I never had. The son who abandoned me, or the son I abandoned when I couldn’t handle the world.
“You want to tell me where you were?” Wayne asked suddenly.
Now I just sound like my own grumpy old man.
Cindy reappeared with a turkey sandwich, its plate piled high with potato chips. In her other hand, she held a bottle of beer.
“Sit down, Michael,” she ordered.
Her voice simmered with motherly love.
Michael did as he was told. Sitting in the opposite chair, he grabbed the beer and the plate and looked at them both with huge, empty eyes.
Cindy watched him from the side, her hands clasped so tight it turned her knuckles white.
“Thanks, Mom,” Michael finally mustered as though he had long since forgotten the concept of gratefulness. He then took a big bite of the turkey sandwich.
Cindy sat again next to Wayne, watching her son, captivated. Wayne could have probably written down all her thoughts.
Why is my son so thin?
Where has he been?
What’s happened to him?
Does he hate me? Is that why he left?
Does he hate his father?
Does he hate Wayne?
Halfway through the sandwich, Michael placed the plate on the coffee table, took a large swig of beer, and then said, “You know, I really did have a long journey today, Mom. Wayne. Do you mind if I head up to bed?”
Cindy looked anxious. Wayne thought she might flutter up out of her chair.
“Of course, honey. I put clean sheets on your bed. There are fresh towels on the chair by the window. Your sister’s off the island for the week.”
“She still lives at home?” Michael asked, his eyebrow arched.
“She doesn’t, no,” Cindy said. “She lives with a few girlfriends above the fudge shop.”
Michael looked disappointed, although Wayne couldn’t guess if it was because his sister no longer lived there or because he couldn’t make fun of her because she still did.
“Good night,” Michael said. He kept his beer in hand as he walked toward the door. “Thanks again for the food. See you in the morning.”
Silence hung between Wayne and Cindy after that. Wayne cleared his throat, hunting for the right words to say.
“I always wondered what I would say to him when I saw him again,” Cindy breathed. “I thought I would smack him across the face for making me worry so much. I thought I would scream at him. I thought maybe I would fall on the ground sobbing. But instead, I just made him a sandwich as if nothing had happened. I probably sounded like the biggest idiot on the planet.” Her chin twitched. “I can’t help but think of what Tara might have done in the same situation.”
Wayne’s heart stopped beating.
“What would she have done?”
“She would have just wrapped her arms around him and held him close and asked him to tell her about each one of his adventures. She would have called them adventures, rather than... whatever it is I want to call them. And he would have opened up to her, you know? He would have told her every single bit of his journey, every weird nook and cranny along the way. And she would have laughed, and asked all the right questions, and drank alongside him. Maybe they would have stayed up till dawn, with so much to say to each other that they wouldn’t have bothered to sleep.”
Wayne felt an ache in his heart—one of regret.
“Come on, Wayne. You know it’s true,” Cindy blared. “You know that she’s the mother he always wanted. He loved her much more than he loved me.”
“No, Cindy. It’s not true,” Wayne stated, his words harsh. “You can blame his leaving on Tara, on me, on everything that happened, but in truth? He was always just a wayward kid. He always wanted to make his mark on the world. And I guess it’s up to us now to be patient. To wait for him to tell us what happened and what went wrong and how we can help. Just to be there for him. Don’t you think?”
Cindy bit hard on the inside of her cheek. She finally nodded, wordless.