Follow the Stars Home (43 page)

“I know,” Dianne cried.

“At last,” Alan said, rocking her, rocking her.

“I'm sorry-” Dianne gulped, “-that I'm crying.”

“Oh, don't be, sweetheart,” Alan said, cradling
her, kissing the tears from her eyes and her cheeks and the base of her neck. It was only then, when she reached up to touch his face, to thank him for his tenderness, that she realized that his face was wet too. That he'd been crying along with her, feeling the same new nameless, extraordinary emotion that had rocked her from the inside out.

An emotion all their own, that they had invented themselves.

“Oh, Alan, I love you,” Dianne said. “Love. Love …” Because she didn't know what else to call it.

October was a beautiful month. It felt like an extension of summer. The days were warm, sometimes hot. The nights were chilly, never quite cold. On his Wednesdays off, Alan would drive over to Dianne's. They would bundle Julia into a sweater and jeans, and he would row them across the marsh.

Fall was the best time to go to the beach. They had the whole place to themselves. The water was green and clear, and the waves broke gently, as if they were saving all their force for the winter storms that would come later. Alan would run, and then he and Dianne would swim, keeping their eyes on Julia as they dove through the waves.

They touched each other constantly. Once they had started, they could not stop. Alan loved the softness of Dianne's skin, the intensity of her love. She had told him about her new emotion, and he knew what she meant. It was the buildup of all their years together, of wanting each other and not being able to act on it. It was deep, and it filled him with joy, but it wasn't all happy. Because of all the lost time.

Sometimes Alan couldn't believe his life. He would
be lying in the sun, Dianne's head on his chest, and he would shudder, realizing that they could die at any moment. He'd have to feel her heart beating against his just to know that they were together, that all this was happening. Why now, why this year? The waves rolled in, the questions kept coming. Alan trained himself not to answer, not to even try.

All he had to do was love her.

“I didn't know you liked the beach so much,” Dianne said one day.

“I never did,” he said.

“You used to spend your Wednesdays running to the library,” she teased.

“Now I run on the beach instead,” he said, hugging her. “Wherever you are, love. Wherever you and Julia are.”

“Gleee,” Julia said. Her head lolled against her chest. It had become harder for her to hold her neck erect. The seizure had taken a great toll, and Alan and all her doctors were mystified as to the reasons. Alan was a scientist, a doctor, but he knew that explanations could not be found for everything. Instead, he pulled Julia onto his lap and rocked her in the sun.

Dianne had been lying on her stomach, gazing up at the lighthouse. The first time he'd felt uncomfortable, coming to the lighthouse beach, remembering that this was where he had come with Rachel. But that was in the past. The wasted past, the years without Dianne, the time he'd spent waiting for her to come to him. He wasn't going to squander any more of it with regrets.

“What do you think it is,” Dianne asked, shielding her eyes from the sun, “that lets a sand castle last and last?”

“What sand castle?” Alan asked, holding Julia.

“That one up there,” Dianne said, pointing up toward the lighthouse.

Half turning, Alan looked. He saw a square pile of sand, looking more like cinder blocks than the castles Dianne, Amy, Julia, and Lucinda had made on their trip. Dianne had shown him pictures, and those sand castles had been amazing and imaginative.

“It's been there for weeks,” Dianne said. “I've been watching it.”

“Are you sure it's the same one?”

“Yes,” she said. “It's crumbling around the edges, but it's definitely the same. Someone must have made it with mortar. I guess being so close to the lighthouse, it's protected.”

“The waves don't get up that high,” Alan said.

“Daaa,” Julia said, brushing his chest.

“It hasn't rained much,” Dianne said. “One good storm, and I think it will go.”

“We can always build another one,” Alan said.

“I like that one,” Dianne said. “I don't know why, but I like that sand castle up there.”

“Maaa,” Julia said, as if she liked it too.

“Oh, God,” Alan said, grasping them both. “Don't ever let this end.”

Buddy Slain didn't like the word no. No was his least favorite word in the English language. It filled him with bile, as a matter of fact. It seemed unfair, a great injustice, an impediment to his happiness. When a woman said it to him, the bile became poison.

Driving around town, the word
no
rang in his ears. Buddy's ears rang from amplified rock, the music blasting out of his speakers and the music he played in his band every night. They had a gig down by the waterfront, in one of the bars Buddy had been drinking at his whole life. Looking into the audience, it pissed him off, it
hurt
him, to not see Tess in the crowd.

Tess wasn't a beauty. She wasn't rich, she wasn't brilliant, she wasn't anything overly special, but she was his. Buddy had picked her out of a Saturday night crowd four years before, bought her a drink, taken her out of her misery. Everyone knew Tess Brooks was a widow. She was a homebody with a fatherless girl, a depressed woman with nothing much to live for. Until Buddy.

How quickly she forgot!

Just because the state and some fancy neighbors decided to meddle in their lives, Tess had kicked him out. He had to leave so she could see her kid again. Amy was going to cause her problems, and she'd wish she had Buddy there to help straighten them out. Amy could get herself fat; he could tell from the way her face was plumping up. Tess was too easygoing to ride her about it. You had to watch a kid, especially a girl, to keep her from gaining weight. For the girl's own good.

Getting kicked out of your own house was the ultimate no. It didn't matter to Buddy that Tess owned the property, that she had paid off her mortgage with the settlement she'd received after her husband's death. What seemed important was that she had looked Buddy in the face and said “Leave.”

For the time being, he was bunking at Randy Benson's condo. Nice place down by Jetty Beach. If Buddy had the bucks for a place like Randy's, he wouldn't be wasting his time on Tess. On the other hand, she needed him. She was a sad sack with a handful for a daughter. Little bitch had run off with his dog-another serious injustice.

Driving around Hawthorne, Buddy drank a beer and nursed his grudges. First he drove downtown, looking up at the medical building, the place where Saint Alan had his office. Saint Fucking Alan McIntosh, the man who could do no wrong. He didn't know where the jerk lived; high-end doctors like him kept their home numbers unlisted and their addresses private. They loved pulling the strings, doctors: getting people dependent on them, then disappearing into the comfort of total privacy so the little people couldn't find them. Buddy cruised up and
down the fancy streets of Hawthorne, hoping to find the good doctor.

Giving up for now, next he headed for Gull Point. Slowly driving down the dead end, he peered at the house, the homestead of the witches who'd stirred this hornet's nest up in the first place. The Robbins ladies. Mother and daughter and freak of nature. Three holier-than-thou bitches who liked to mess up other families because they were unsexed and unsatisfied. Women like that couldn't be happy unless everyone else around was dry and alone, hating men like they did.

Peeling out, Buddy laid rubber all the way up the road, away from Gull Point.

Last but not least, he drove down his street. His
old
street, he thought, remembering the most bitter no of all:
“Leave.”
There was the house. A dump compared to the condo he was staying at now. A royal dump. But Buddy was ready to sacrifice. He'd give up his bachelor luxuries-a fridge full of Mol-son, premium cable,
Penthouse
in the bathroom-to return to his rightful place, if only she'd ask him nice.

Nice
, he thought, driving slowly by.
It would have to be nice.
The curtains were open. He could see in the front windows, and he narrowed his eyes, hoping for a glimpse of Tess. She loved him, whether she wanted to admit it or not. They had had plenty of tender moments, their sex was wild, he knew how to treat her like a queen. Sure, his temper got the better of him sometimes, but that was just his passion coming out.

You couldn't make it in rock and roll being Milquetoast. Tell that to Dr. Saint Alan. Buddy was all about fire and passion. U2, that Irish band, had nothing on Buddy. Buddy was metal, screaming with anguish and
heartbreak and dying of love.
Dying
of love. Tell that to Dr. Nine-to-Five. Dr. Suburb, Dr. Perfect.

Driving back the opposite way, Buddy slowed down even more. Okay, there she was. Tess was walking outside into the backyard. It was a sunny day, and she had a basket of laundry to hang on the line. Clothespins in her mouth, she hung the clothes. Amy's shirts, her jeans, her underpants. Tess's nightgown, her bra, her panties. Buddy's laundry should be in there. Buddy's laundry needed washing too.

Parking across the street, he felt angry watching Tess hang up wash that wasn't his. It seemed like another no, another way he was being left out. Beyond the anger, though, was love. That's the thing not many people understood: Buddy was all about love. Buddy would die for this woman, no questions asked. He gunned his engine, just slightly. She didn't hear.

“Love you,” he said out loud.

Tess pulled the line, hung another shirt. The sunlight turned her hair auburn.

“Love you,” Buddy said again. He kept his voice low. He didn't have to shout. That much he knew. If their connection was half of what he thought it was, he barely had to whisper.

“Hey,” he whispered, staring at Tess, his eyes boring into her skull.

Some cars passed by. Buddy slouched down a little. He wouldn't want that CWS bitch catching him there. He checked his watch: two-thirty. Amy would be heading home from school. Her bus wasn't due for twenty minutes, but Buddy didn't want to take unnecessary risks.

“Hey,” he said again. “Love you. See you, baby.”

Tess brushed her hand across her ear as if chasing away a bee. Probably picking up Buddy's vibe, but didn't know what it was. She was okay. She was
A-okay. Not beautiful, not brilliant, not the hottest woman he'd ever had. But to Buddy, Tess was all right. She was his.

October stayed mild, and then one day snow flurries fell. One day the temperature plummeted twenty-five degrees. Amy had gone to school in overalls and a T-shirt, but when she got off the bus at Gull Point, she was freezing, running through the falling flakes to the studio. Throwing open the door, she yelled hello. Orion jumped all over her, licking her face.

“Hey, boy,” she said, petting him. “Good dog.”

No one but Stella and Orion were there. Amy frowned. Had she made a mistake? Usually she visited Dianne and Julia every Thursday afternoon. She missed coming more often, but she didn't want to act like the old days, give her mother the idea that she preferred this family to her own.

Looking up, she saw Lucinda coming across the yard. She was carrying a big bowl. White flurries danced in the wind, brushing the marsh grass and blowing along the ground.

“Where are Dianne and Julia?” Amy asked. “Is something wrong?”

“They're in the house,” Lucinda said. “Julia has a cold.”

“Just in time for winter,” Amy said, looking out the window.

“I made popcorn,” Lucinda said, offering Amy some. “It's a tradition Dianne and I thought of when she was a little girl-we'd make popcorn the first snow of every year.”

“Because it's white and fluffy?” Amy asked, munching.

“I guess so,” Lucinda said. “Because it's festive.”

“Can I see Julia?” Amy asked, looking across the yard.

“Um,” Lucinda said. Amy knew the answer was no, and that sent a knife into her heart. She felt awful, and she wasn't sure why: Was Julia really sick? Or did Amy feel bad because she was being banished from Robbins family life?