Enchanting Lily (16 page)

“And Lily’s what I got.”

“Good name. You’re like a flower.”

“Thanks.” She blushed.

He spoke in a simple, direct way. No candlelight, no romance, but somehow she found that his words affected her.

She grabbed her purse and they pulled up their hoods and ran out through the rain to the truck. He’d tidied up inside. The library book and papers were gone. She found this endearing.

He drove through downtown to a secluded cove that she hadn’t known existed, but was close to town and easily accessible by car. The beach was rich with driftwood, rock, shells, and barnacles; the air was scented with sea salt and kelp.

“Bish and I call this our secret beach,” he said, “although I’m sure it has a name. I just can’t remember what it is.”

“Thanks for showing it to me. This is amazing!”

They hiked down a narrow path to a flat stretch of sand. He pointed across the water at a line of distant lights. “Seattle seems so far away, like a mirage.”

She shielded her eyes, her hair whipping in the wind. “I didn’t think so many boats would be out when the sea is choppy.”

“Speedboats are always out, but you don’t see many sailboats on a day like this. You always see eagles.” He pointed back toward the bluff, where madrone and fir trees leaned over the beach, their gnarled roots clinging to the cliffside. An eagle soared on an updraft, letting out a high-pitched shriek.

“There’s a nest over there.” Ben pointed to a tall fir. “I’ve seen four or five eagles circling. There’s another one. And another.”

Three bald eagles with magnificent wingspans sailed high in the air. Ben and Lily followed them along the beach, picking their way across rocks and shells, barnacles and kelp.

“Watch out,” he said as they approached a concrete boat ramp. “You almost stepped on a fish.”

Lily looked down and jumped backward. Littering the ramp were several large fish heads, some with spines still attached. Now she could smell them, too. Josh had hated
the smell of fish, would’ve gagged at this stench, but Ben didn’t bat a lash. Lily supposed he was accustomed to bad smells in his profession. “This would be heaven for the cat,” she said. “Fish everywhere. What happened here?”

“Seals were feasting, I suspect.” He pointed to other small carcasses on the sand, then to a round, dark shell with spiny protrusions. “Sea urchin. I rarely see a shell intact.”

“They look so fragile.”

“In the water, those spikes are good protection. But when they’re away from their natural habitat, thrown up on the beach, they’re vulnerable.”

“I’ll try not to step on them.”

“Bish used to be scared of them when she was little. She wouldn’t even wade into the surf.”

Lily imagined Bish as a baby, then as a toddler, and she felt the pain of opportunity lost. The soul of any baby that she and Josh might’ve had would remain in the primordial soup forever, in the land of what might have been.

“Are you okay?” Ben was looking at her, concern in his eyes.

“I’m fine. I was just thinking, um…Bish is an unusual name. She said it wasn’t short for anything—”

“But it is. It’s short for Bichon Frise.”

She couldn’t help smiling. “Are you kidding? You
named your daughter after a small breed of fluffy white dog?”

He laughed and shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe it either. “It was Altona’s idea. She wanted to name all our kids after dog breeds. We didn’t get past one. Can you imagine naming a kid Keeshon, Pug, or Beagle?”

“Or Corgi or Rottweiler?”

“Rotty for short?”

They burst into laughter. “How does Bish feel about it? Let me guess. She tells everyone her full name is Bish, like she told me.”

“I asked her if she wanted to officially change her name, but she refused. Maybe she’ll change it when she’s older. What could I do? I was in love with Altona. I went along with what she wanted.”

“I did that with my husband, too, went along with what he wanted. Not that he was domineering. If I wanted something, he was happy to oblige. I just rarely had a preference.”

“Did you two plan to have kids?”

“We both wanted one from the start.”

“Were you high school sweethearts?”

“I met him in college. How about you and your wife? Ex-wife, I should say.”

He hunched his shoulders against the wind. “I met her
in the second grade. We both went to Fairport Elementary. But she was a restless type even then. I knew that about her.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “When she got the job offer of a lifetime, we both knew.”

“She chose to travel.”

“International Corporate Event Planner. That’s her official title now. When her big break came, that was it. She had to go, and I had to stay here, to give Bish stability.”

“I’m sorry. That must’ve been so hard.”

“It was the worst thing that’s ever happened—well, except for my dad dying and my goldfish going belly up when I was ten.” He threw another flat rock into the waves, where it skipped four times before sinking.

“Josh dying was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, bar none.”

“I can understand that. If you don’t mind my asking, how did he die?”

“Car accident.” How easy it was to say two simple words, when the memories came in a broken mosaic of many black moments—the impossibly long drive to the trauma hospital, the eternal wait, the grim-faced doctor leading her past other patients, blood on the floor, and Josh lying so still, so cold, and yet, with the sheet pulled up to his chin, his eyes half-open, he had seemed, at first, to be looking at her. What had happened next? She must’ve
crumpled. Somebody held her up by her armpits. Somebody had brought her water. People were talking to her, but she rested her head on Josh’s chest and sobbed. How surreal it had felt not to hear his heartbeat.

“I’m sorry,” Ben said.

“Thanks.” She couldn’t help it—the tears came, and she realized she hadn’t let herself cry in months.

“Sorry I brought it up.” He handed her a crumpled tissue from his pocket.

“No, it’s good, just a little embarrassing.”

“Hey, I see people cry all the time at the clinic; well, not all the time. They’re happy a lot of the time, too.”

She laughed through her tears. “I’m sure they are.”

“I’ve been known to cry now and then myself.”

“No, you? Impossible.”

“Believe it or not. I cried when Altona left, still cry sometimes, even at little things.”

“I still miss the little things about Josh,” she said, sniffing into the crumpled tissue. “He used to write notes on scraps of paper. ‘Coffee for you, my love,’ he would write and put the note next to the coffeemaker. He’d leave one in the bathroom next to my toothbrush. ‘Thinking of you.’ I kept all the notes in a wooden box. After he died, I took them out and posted them everywhere, in the places he’d left them, like he was still around.”

Ben flung another rock into the water, but this one sank. “When Altona packed her bags, I hid one of her sweaters, just an old wool rag that was starting to unravel. She only wore it around the house. I thought she wouldn’t miss it. At night, you’re not going to believe this, I kept it next to my pillow and sniffed it.”

“I kept Josh’s shirt under my pillow. I still do, sometimes. I sold many of his things, but I kept a few, the ones that smelled like him. I’ve got his shoes and shirts in the closet.”

“I wanted to smell Altona, too. But then she came back looking for the sweater.”

“She came back for it, really?”

“Yeah, and I gave it to her. Pretended it had fallen behind the dryer. Crazy.”

“I think we all do crazy things, when we lose someone. At a support group, I met a widow who scrawled notes on blackboards all over the house. She wrote what she was thinking, what it was like to be a widow, to be alone.”

“What’s it like?” He looked at her with genuine curiosity. She liked this about him, his openness—maybe he and Bish were more alike than she had thought.

What was it like? Nobody had ever asked. Instead, they’d told her what she was supposed to feel or tried to pacify her or given her instructions about the afterlife. “It’s
like half of me was ripped away. More than half. My heart, all my insides, my limbs.”

“I’m sorry. That sucks.”

“Yeah, that’s a good way to describe it. What about you? What about Bish? It must’ve sucked for her when her mom left.”

“Bish pretends to be a grown-up, to be over it. She knows her mother isn’t mom material. Altona knew it, too. But a girl needs her mother.”

“She doesn’t have any contact with Altona?”

“Hell, Altona forgot to call on her own kid’s birthday. She called the next day, said she’d been traveling, didn’t get a cell phone signal. Bish chose to believe it. Altona apologized, and Bish pretended to forgive her. What else could she do?”

“The poor kid.”

“She likes you, and she loves that dress. Nobody’s ever done that for her, sewn a thing to fit her.”

“It’s my pleasure. But I don’t know if I’ll do a good job.”

“You’ll be great.”

“Thanks, but the jury is still out.”

“No, I mean it. You’re great.”

“You’re not so bad yourself.”

They were both quiet, listening to the wind, the surf,
the call of seagulls. How could Bish’s mother have abandoned her family? How could she not be involved in her daughter’s life?

In the distance, a gaggle of cormorants floated on the waves. The damp, cold air brought Lily back to life, her senses on the alert. The sky darkened, and she and Ben sprinted back to the truck just as the sprinkling rain became a downpour.

“I know another place we can go,” Ben said, damp hands on the steering wheel. “A quintessential island destination, and it’s indoors.”

“All right, if it’s indoors, then it qualifies.”

He drove along a country road that led past gently rolling hillsides, farmland, and old Victorian farmhouses. The pastoral island, open and airy, allowed Lily’s soul to relax and breathe.

He parked the truck on a grassy bluff overlooking the sea. “Rain’s stopped for now. We can make another dash for it.”

“Where are we going?” she asked as they headed out across a grassy field. A white building emerged from the mist, its wavy glass windows reflecting the silvery light, a white tower rising into the clouds.

“A lighthouse!” she exclaimed.

“I want to show you the tower. You have to go up an iron spiral staircase to get up there, but the view is spectacular.”

She nodded, swallowing a dry lump in her throat. As she and Ben jogged through the wet grass and rain, she wanted to climb up into that tower with him, but how could she tell him that she was afraid of heights, that she would freeze up on the second rung of the spiral staircase?

Lily

“The lighthouse is run by volunteers now,” Ben said, slowing to let Lily catch up. “Limited hours, but I know people who work here. I asked a friend to come down and open up the place for us.”

“Wow, you had this all planned out?”

“I just made a phone call.” He led her up the steps and into the lighthouse, which smelled of old wood and dust. “This was one of the few remaining stucco lighthouses in the northwest. Most new ones were made of concrete. The
original was made of wood, but it was torn down a long time ago.”

“I didn’t even know this was here,” Lily said, following him into the main room of the tiny museum. In the center of the room stood an old beacon light encased in glass. “The original beacon is missing,” Ben said. “Nobody knows where it is. But this one was used while the sailing ships still came down through the strait, gathering wind for the journey south.”

“How does one gather wind? Does the sailboat pick up speed and then drift south on the strength of the air trapped in its sails?”

“Good question—who knows?” He smiled at her. The wind whistled somewhere up in the rafters. “Hello, Dirk?” he called out.

A gray-haired, fresh-faced man, athletic and wrapped in fleece, emerged from a small room with a sign reading
Gift Shop
above the door. “Hey, Ben, good to see you.”

The men shook hands. “This is Lily,” Ben said. “She’s new to the island. I’m showing her around. Makes me see my home through new eyes.”

“That it will.” Dirk shook Lily’s hand, too, his fingers thick and warm, and she felt as if she had just been inducted into a secret society. “You can take him out any day if it gets him to see old friends. You’d think we’d see
a lot of each other on an island this size, but I guess Ben has been holed up in the clinic.”

“Making a living,” Ben said.

“I hear you. We just lost our state funding. Running on volunteers now.”

“Man, that bites.”

“Yeah, well. It’s the state of the world.” Dirk waved an arm upward. “Tower’s open. Go for it.”

“Thanks for opening up the lighthouse for us.”

“I got paperwork to take care of anyway. Let me know if you need anything.” Dirk headed back into the gift shop, and Ben motioned for Lily to follow him into the hall and up a steep, iron spiral staircase. No turning back now, not when Dirk had obviously come in just to open the tower for them.

Lily’s hands were clammy, her heartbeat fast. Ben stepped up ahead, turned, and reached down a hand. “Steep staircase here.”

“I can manage.” She gripped the railing, not looking down as she climbed each narrow step. How silly it would be to freeze up now. But by the fifth step, she had to sit down.

“Are you all right?” Ben asked.

She looked up at him, her legs rubbery. “I get vertigo.”

He came back down and took her hand. “I’ll help you.”

She tried two more steps, then sat down again. “I’m really sorry. I feel so stupid. It’s the steps—I can see right through the rungs and all the way down—”

Before she finished speaking, Ben swept her into his arms in one swift movement, carried her up the last of the stairs, and deposited her, breathless, at the top.

“Whoa!” she said, grabbing the railing in the tower room. “Thanks. I didn’t expect that kind of service.”

“You okay?” His eyebrows drew together. “You look a bit pale.”

“Fine—this is great. Thanks.” She hadn’t realized he was so strong. She joined him at the window, and a small thrill rushed through her. “Look, you can see across the water. There’s a freighter, and a navy ship. What a view.”