Falling for the Single Dad (14 page)

* * *

Alone at the base of the dunes, Caroline stared at them, silhouetted against the night sky. Weston's broad shoulders were rigid. Izzie said something to him, but he kept their backs to Caroline as they faced the sea. She'd never felt so alone.

Caroline had a feeling she'd just made the biggest mistake of her life. Should she—?

She took a step forward, then stopped. It had to be this way. For everyone's sake.

Tears stinging her cheeks, she left them at the water's edge as a cloud shadowed the moonlight and darkness covered the deep.

Chapter Fifteen

“S
o you're really leaving?”

Her father stood in the open doorway of the cabin. Heaving a sigh, Caroline pushed past him, toting her suitcase toward the car. “I wasn't going to leave without saying goodbye.”

“Why are you doing this, Caroline?” He dogged her footsteps all the way to the car.

She threw the duffel into the trunk and slammed the lid. “I know you probably won't believe me when I tell you I'm not running away this time. Despite how it looks.”

He leaned against the vehicle, his long legs extended in front of him. “Then tell me what you're doing.”

“I can't stay, Dad.” She cupped the bracelets on her wrist with her other hand. “I promise it won't be like last time. I'll call every week. Write. Return for a visit when Honey's baby is born. But I can't...” Her voice shuddered. “You of all people know why I can't stay here. I can't take the chance of...of...” She gulped. “A relapse. There will be a relapse. You and I both know that. Seeing me like that would scar Izzie for life. Destroy Weston for good this time.”

“Caroline.” Her father's face contorted with grief. “It doesn't have to be this way. There's no certainty of a relapse. It wouldn't be like last time when you were alone. You'd have your family. Weston and Izzie's love to help you.”

“Oh, Daddy, I wish... How I wish...” Her vision blurred.

He opened his arms. She laid her forehead against the scratchy cotton of his shirt. She inhaled the familiar, always-longed-for scents of her childhood.

“I'm not running away from you or the family, Daddy. I just can't stay and watch Izzie find her forever mother or Weston take a wife.” She lifted her gaze. “I can't bear that. I can't stay here if I want to stay well. Please.” She fisted his shirt with both hands. “Please try to forgive me.”

He cradled her face in his calloused, work-hardened hands. “Nothing to forgive, Ladybug.”

She choked back a sob. He hadn't called her that since she was a little girl.

“I love you, Caroline.” He pulled her into a fierce hug. “And this will always be your home.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist. “I love you, too, Daddy.”

“Alone is no good, sweetheart. Trust me, I know. Like with your baby turtles, family and community are vital to survival.”

“I'll call my therapist today, I promise.”

“Are you headed to Virginia Beach?”

“For now.”

Her father released her. “Give me a call when you get across the Bay Bridge.” The experienced waterman swept a practiced eye toward the sky. “Storm's coming and you know how your old man frets when his chicks are away from the nest.”

She nodded and swiped the tears from her cheeks.

“Come home when you can, Ladybug. We'll always be here for you.” His gravelly voice thickened. “Waiting and watching for you.”

* * *

“You're wrong.” Izzie hurled herself out of the SUV before Weston could bring the Chevy to a standstill. “Caroline wouldn't leave. She loves me.” She rocketed out of the car toward the cabin.

He scanned the empty driveway and rested his forehead on the steering wheel. Izzie hadn't believed him when he told her about Caroline's departure. He'd tried explaining about Caroline's career and, in desperation, even her illness. Bringing Izzie to the deserted cabin was the only way he could think of to get Izzie to see the truth.

As for accepting the truth? He was still working on that one himself.

“Caroline?” Izzie pounded up the steps. “Caroline? Where are you? Caroline?”

He pushed open the car door and eased to the ground like an old man. He'd done this to Izzie. Seth had warned him. Yet Weston had believed he was smarter. Smarter than the people who had loved Caroline the longest. Why?

Because he was arrogant. So sure his deep feelings for Caroline were returned. That they'd finally found their soul mate in each other.

He shook his head. There was no such thing as a soul mate. Why was he so stupid? Women couldn't—shouldn't—ever be trusted.

Not with the heart of his child. Nor with his. What was so wrong with him that neither Jessica nor Caroline had been able to love him enough to stay?

Inside, Izzie's voice echoed.

Helpless, his hands stuffed in his pockets, he leaned against the clicking, cooling engine. Listening to the gut-wrenching calls of his beloved child. His jaw tightened. He'd never forgive Caroline for hurting Izzie like this.

No. That wasn't right. Had he learned nothing from Jessica? He couldn't allow the bitterness to twist him up inside again. Hate and unforgiveness would in the long run only cripple him and by extension, Izzie.

“Where are you, Caroline?” On the porch, Izzie's voice ricocheted off the tree canopy surrounding the cabin. “I love you, Caroline. Come back. Please, please don't leave me.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. Her pleas like the cries of his own heart. When he could stand it no longer, he plucked Izzie off the porch. In the shelter of his arms, he carried Izzie to the truck. She buried her head against his chest and sobbed.

“It's going to be okay, Isabelle.” His voice quivered. He slid Izzie onto the seat and buckled her inside.

Coming around the truck, he threw himself into the driver's side. “Maybe not today or tomorrow. But I promise you, we're going to be okay.”

“The turtles and Caroline are gone...” Izzie beat the seat with her fist. “You promised we were going to be okay then, too.”

His stomach muscles clenched. “I tried to get her to stay, Izz.”

“Like you tried with my mom?” Her eyes gleamed with tears and fury. “Maybe you didn't try hard enough with either one of them.”

Weston jerked. How did she—? The knot in the pit of his stomach contracted, squeezing the air from his lungs. And he remembered last week when he'd caught her on his laptop. The out-of-the-ordinary trip to the library the next day.

He raked his hand over his head. And stared at his shaking hand. Izzie had an insatiably curious mind, not unlike Caroline's, to know. Whether it was in her best interests or not.

Izzie laid her head onto the armrest and cried. He wished for a moment he could stop being the adult so he could, too.

Thrusting the gear into drive, he bypassed the lodge. The cab was silent, except for the sound of Izzie's heartbroken sobs. Lost in the could-have-beens, he steered the truck toward the home he'd hoped to create with Caroline. Toward a future he and Izzie would now spend alone.

At the cottage, he allowed Izzie to slip from the truck without a word. She headed toward the beach. Like her dad, Izzie needed to grieve her loss in her own way. Heartsick, he made his way into the house. The home he'd never share with Caroline.

The torn-apart kitchen called for his attention. Emails awaited him in his office. He could bear the thought of neither. He found himself in the family room at the base of the lighthouse. His gaze fastened on the nautilus shell on the mantel.

As the mollusk grew, its body left the old chamber for a new, larger space. It walled itself off from the older chambers. But the empty chambers remained key to its survival. The chambers created a golden spiral and regulated the buoyancy of the living mollusk. And the cross section served as a reminder of how far the mollusk had come.

He peered up the circling staircase toward the upper stories. Like the nautilus, he'd hoped... He gritted his teeth. If only he could seal off the past as easily as the mollusk. If only he could've steeled himself from loving Caroline Duer, as complicated and multichambered as the nautilus.

Weston stormed up the curving steps past Izzie's room. At the sight of the frilly pink decor, he closed his mind to the joy of the day when he and Caroline had moved Izzie into her brand-new quarters.

Hurrying onward, he threw open the door to the master suite. Picking up the jar of seashells they'd collected one morning on the lighthouse beach, he flung the contents against the wall. The glass shattered. Shards and seashells flew across the bedspread Caroline had helped him select.

“Will I always be alone?” he shouted. “Is this my punishment for not being there for Jessica?”

Seizing the photo he'd framed of Caroline and Izzie taken in front of the cottage, he shook it at the ceiling. “Punish me. Not Izzie.”

As he tossed the picture onto the bed, his gaze darted. Every square inch of space held memories of Caroline. He didn't know how he was going to live here with the images of her laugh and her face everywhere he turned.

“Why did you bring Caroline into our lives if you knew she'd never stay? Was it a test? That I failed? Again?”

Silence greeted him. His anger spent, anguish swelled. He sank to the floor beside the bed and put his head in his hands. His heart was shattered. He ached for the woman who would never be his.

But in the quiet, he became aware of the distant roar of the waves. The in and the out. The rhythmic cadence stilled the angry torrent of his thoughts. Calmed and regulated his breathing.

Vast. Unfathomable. Altogether more than him. Like God's love for him and Izzie. And Caroline, too. He lifted his head. “I can't do it anymore, God. I'll never be enough for anyone. I'm so alone.”

The wind whistled against the brick tower. And in the caw of a seagull, his heart quickened with a realization. He'd never be enough, not on his own. Only God could enable him to be the father Izzie needed.

Only God could help Weston become a husband someday. Or, if not God's will, God would help Weston bear the tasks He'd set before him. But Weston would never be alone.

He recalled what Caroline had told him of the most terrible time in her life. Truthfully, he couldn't comprehend that kind of loneliness. There'd always been his parents, his sister and now his Kiptohanock friends and church community.

The anger toward Caroline seeped slowly from him. Replaced by a growing compassion for the burden she carried and the battle she was so determined to fight alone.

He prayed for God to heal their hearts, especially Caroline's. To help her understand she never had to be alone again. Not because of Weston. But because her Heavenly Father would never, never leave his child alone to face the dark.

Then he bowed his head and wept for everything the darkness had cost them.

Chapter Sixteen

W
eston's stomach growled, and he jerked from where he'd fallen asleep beside the bed. It had been a long night after the hatching when Caroline walked away on the beach. And today even longer as he tried to comfort Izzie in the face of Caroline's abandonment.

He grimaced. Caroline had made no promises. She'd been up front from the start. If anyone was to blame, it was him for unrealistic expectations and allowing Izzie to get her hopes dashed.

Weston scrubbed his hand over his face. Propping one arm against the mattress, he hauled himself to his feet. He blinked at the brightness outside the windows.

His belly rumbled. What time was it? His gaze flew toward the digital clock on the nightstand. He sucked in a breath. Three o'clock. Neither he nor Izzie had eaten lunch. He couldn't believe he'd fallen asleep and slept for over three hours.

Like father, like daughter, Izzie wasn't one to miss a meal. Even if lunch in the summertime usually consisted of peanut butter sandwiches and watermelon.

He stopped outside her bedroom. “Izzie?”

No answer. He grunted and continued toward the gutted kitchen. He expected to hear the blare of the television, but when he crossed into the cottage, there was nothing.

“Izzie?”

His voice echoed in that unmistakable way in an otherwise unoccupied dwelling. Maybe she was still on the beach. His pulse accelerated. He shouldn't have left her out there alone so long.

Reminding himself Izzie was nine years old and not a baby, he started for the door. But he stopped and stared at the empty spot where the garden tomato Miss Jean had given them used to sit upon the windowsill. He wheeled into what was left of their makeshift kitchen.

A dirty paring knife and cutting board lay inside the steel sink. He did a quick survey. The loaf of bread was smaller than he remembered from yesterday. A banana, a bottle of water and two granola bars were missing, too.

Izzie had probably given him up as lost and done lunch without him. No need for panic. But his heart ratcheted a notch. Maybe she was having a picnic on the beach right now...

Quickest way to check, he tore through the cottage and headed once more up the lighthouse staircase. Outside her closed bedroom door, he paused as another thought struck him. When he'd mounted the stairs earlier, hadn't Izzie's door stood open?

“Izzie?” His fist pounded the door. “Answer me, Isabelle.”

He thrust the door open. It banged against the wall. He strode across to the window overlooking the beach.

The waves piled high, churning and foaming with a coming storm. The sky had darkened in the brief time he was downstairs. But there was no redhead in sight.

He crossed to the opposite window overlooking the tidal estuary. Nothing. Wait...

An orange life vest haphazardly lay between the rocky point of the Neck and the water's edge. But the kayak—

He inhaled and counted the rack on the shoreline one more time to be sure. As if you could somehow miscount between two kayaks. One kayak was gone.

Dear God, no. She couldn't have been that foolish. She's spent her life, young as it is, on the water. She knows better. Where is she going? What is she after?

He fell against the windowpane. Izzie knew better, but the heart? The heart wants what the heart wants. Her words from the previous day replayed in his head. She'd gone after the hatchlings.

In a sad, desperate sort of way, he understood his daughter's motivation perfectly. She might've lost her mother, and she'd lost Caroline, too. But Izzie would make sure—no matter what—the hatchlings didn't lose theirs.

He straightened. She couldn't have gotten far. God help him, his little girl couldn't have traveled far. But into the open ocean? His heart quailed.

Panic streaked through his veins. His chest heaved. Black spots danced before his eyes. He couldn't seem to catch his breath. Pain stabbed. Was he having a heart attack? Was this what it was like for Caroline when she suffered one of her anxiety attacks?

Oh, God. Help me find her before it's too late. Keep my precious child safe.

And he reached for his cell phone.

* * *

Caroline hadn't realized it'd be this hard to leave.

She procrastinated, making an excuse to drop by her office one last time. To say goodbye to her grad students bound for home after this summer's internship. But she skipped Roland's office and his not so subtle attempts to get her to reconsider the job offer.

Hands on her hips, she scanned the holding tanks and contemplated what the team had accomplished in a few short months. The directorship of the new facility would've been a plum assignment for a professional seeking to keep her hand in the game and yet make room in her life for the next chapter.

She swallowed, hard. But marriage and motherhood would never be in the cards for her. Not now. Not ever.

“It's for the best.” Her voice floated across the empty lab. “Really it is.” She worried her bottom lip in her teeth. “Isn't it, God?”

Not expecting an answer, she removed her lab coat, draped it across a stool and made herself walk out of the building to her waiting car.

With a heavy heart, she soon found herself circling the Kiptohanock square in the SUV. One more time, she told herself. Goodbyes were part of recovery. Necessary for letting go and moving forward.

Caroline drove past the Sandpiper, where her sisters had taken Max and baby Patrick for a consolation lunch. Because the Shoreside Duers were feeling down about her abrupt decision to return to her old job in Virginia Beach.

The church steeple pierced the darkening sky. Dad was right. A storm was coming. She'd best quit lollygagging and get herself over the Bay Bridge before driving became hazardous. Yet she idled the car outside the library. Recalling the curious day she met Isabelle Alice Clark. And Izzie's father.

Her heart thumped. Only two months ago? Why did it seem like so much longer? As if maybe her life began from that moment.

“Stop it.” She banged the wheel with the palm of her hand. “Just stop it.”

Without further ado, she peeled past the library and toward the highway. No need to stop at the cemetery. She'd made her peace with the unchangeable. Her mother and Lindi weren't there. Just the shell they once needed, but no longer required. Like her hatchlings.

At the memory of the hatchlings—Izzie's hatchlings—Caroline's eyes welled. Izzie was just beginning to break out of her shell, too.

But so many hazards remained on the way to Izzie becoming everything God intended the intelligent, little redhead to be. Caroline jolted as the car clanked over the small Quinby bridge.

A process—the thought stabbed anew—she wouldn't be around to witness. Nor to guide or encourage. Weston would have to navigate the tricky, turbulent waters of the adolescent years alone.

But perhaps not. She turned onto Highway 13 and pointed the car south. Perhaps Weston would yet find the one, true love of his life. A partner, a helper, a soul mate.

She blinked against the treacherous tears sliding down her face as rain peppered the windshield. He deserved a good woman to love him as Caroline could not. Someone to be there with him and for him as the years rolled by. Filling the beautiful home he'd created with life, laughter and love.

Choking hard with sobs, she fumbled to turn on the windshield wipers. How could she be so selfish to begrudge his ultimate happiness? Even if it meant with someone other than her. Because it had to be with someone other than her.

She took one hand off the wheel to dash the moisture from her cheeks. Her leaving was the right decision for everyone. The only outcome possible given the curse she carried.

But oh, how her heart ached with every mile separating her from those who'd become dearer than her own life. She scowled.
This was what came from loving people.

She'd believed she'd learned that lesson when her mother died. If you never love anyone, no one can ever hurt you again. But instead she hurt herself.

A car honked as the SUV accidentally drifted into the adjacent lane. Cringing, she pulled herself together. Was that what she was doing now? Hurting herself by not allowing anyone to love her?

She readied herself for the certain onslaught of the darkness. Steadied her hands. Prepared to pull off the highway when the panic attack came.

Emotional stress was her trigger. Entering Northampton County, she gripped the wheel as the farmland and railroad tracks flashed by on either side of the highway. Ready as she'd ever be for the breath-stealing, fear-induced anxiety to commence.

But nothing happened, although the sadness at her leave-taking remained. An aching, inconsolable hollow in the pit of her stomach, which neither the miles nor the minutes seemed to abate, much less cure.

Her mouth trembled as she slowed to a stop to pay the Bay Bridge toll. She
was
better. At least, today. She'd made the right decision in leaving when she did. Hadn't she?

She crept forward in line with the other vehicles. Who knew what would've become of her if she'd given Izzie and Weston her whole heart?

Images flashed across her mind of a white dress trailing in the sand below the lighthouse. Her family flinging birdseed at her and a handsome ex-Coastie commander groom. Izzie scattering rose petals to the wind—

She gasped. Of all the crazy ideas, surely the craziest of them all.

Get it through your head
—she gritted her teeth—
there's no future for you there
.

She cut her gaze to the rearview mirror. She looked a sight. Her red-rimmed eyes puffy, her makeup streaked across her face.

Pulling up to the attendant in the booth, she fairly flung the money at the woman's outstretched hand. The woman's startled look softened as she hit a button inside the booth to lift the bar blocking Caroline's escape.

Escape? She chewed her lip. Was that truly what she was doing? Again?

“Godspeed, my friend.” The attendant's warm brown eyes held Caroline's. “Wherever you're headed, Godspeed.”

Crossing Fisherman's Island was a blur. Keeping on her side of the narrow lane in the strip-lit tunnel proved an exercise in willpower.

At the end of the second tunnel, she emerged into the brightness of the light. Pulling the car out of traffic, she parked in the lot of the Chesapeake Grill on one of the four man-made islands in the midst of the watery expanse. Silencing the motor with a flick of her wrist, she vacated the vehicle. The rain had passed for now. Yet as in life, another squall loomed on the distant horizon.

Bypassing the restaurant, she headed toward the pier with views overlooking the bay. Seagulls cawed and swooped overhead. The wind whipped her ponytail into disarray.

Her arms folded across the railing, she peered at the rocks surrounding the immense bridge pylons where the waves crashed. Was this what her return to Virginia Beach was about? Escape.

Was she still running? Had her life been about escaping her family? Or all along, was she trying to escape herself?

She laughed. The wind snatched the sound and carried it away. Who was she trying to fool? There was no escape from oneself.

Her gaze skittered to the rocks below. Nor there, either. A fragment of Scripture floated through her mind.

If I climb to the sky, You're there! If I go underground, You're there!

One of the verses Reverend Parks had shared with her. One of his greatest comforts, he'd declared in his own struggle against the melancholy. She'd liked the contemporary, everyday version he quoted to her.

Is there anyplace I can go to avoid Your Spirit? To be out of Your sight?
She sighed.
If I flew on morning's wings to the far western horizon, You'd find me in a minute—You're already there waiting!

Reverend Parks had encouraged her to memorize the psalm. Part of the mending of her spirit, he said.

The storm clouds billowed across the sky. She shivered as the wind picked up speed. No matter where she went,
she
and her problems would always be there.

But so would God. With her when the next relapse came. Her father's brusque voice whispered in her mind.
If
her next relapse came.

If... Suddenly, a word laden with hope.

“What should I do? I don't want to hurt them.” Her breath caught on a sob. “I'm so afraid of being hurt myself.”

But she'd also inherited more than the depression from her family, she realized. And she gathered the remnants of the courage her mother had displayed in her fight against the cancer that stole her earthly life.

Caroline garnered the fortitude of her father's faith, which carried him through the hardest of times—the deaths of a beloved wife and child, through illness both physical and mental.

As for her faith? She squeezed her eyes shut and swayed as the wind buffeted her body. Did she trust God enough to risk loving Weston and Izzie?

She'd turned the car around to head north and just passed through the turnstiles at the toll plaza when her phone buzzed on the console. One hand on the wheel, she frowned as she retrieved the cell, recognizing the number. She'd missed three calls while out on the pier.

Her father hated modern contraptions like cell phones. He maintained nobody needed to be in touch 24/7. He only used his cell in the direst of emergencies.

She tucked the cell between her shoulder and neck. “Daddy? What's wrong?”

“I know you said you'd call when you reached your apartment. I'm sorry to bother you, but...”

Her nerves quivered. “That's okay, Daddy.”

“I thought you'd want to know.”

“Know what?” An inexplicable fear took hold.

“Izzie's gone missing, Ladybug. She took one of the kayaks, and Weston can't find her.”

Her heart drummed in her chest.

“We figure she's gone after those turtle babies of hers.”