For Better, for Worse, Forever (4 page)

A
pril realized that her mother was absolutely correct. It would be pointless to deny it. She
did
feel guilty because she was alive and wanted to remain so. Yet she also felt disloyal to Mark. “What am I going to do?”

Her mother put her arm around April’s slumped shoulders. “Let me tell you a story.”

April nodded, still feeling as if she were betraying Mark.

“You know all that your father and I went through to have you. Years of trying to get pregnant and disappointment after disappointment, fertility drugs, and finally going to Europe for in vitro fertilization. Which is
why you’re an only child. I couldn’t do all that again. You’re all we ever wanted. You’re perfect.”

“And then I got a brain tumor when I was five. So much for perfection.”

Her mother squeezed her affectionately. “But the tumor was arrested, at least for a time. But what I want to tell you about concerns all those years I tried to get pregnant … and about my friend Betsy.”

“Who’s she?” April thought she knew all of her parents’ friends. She’d not only never met this Betsy, she’d never heard of her either.

“She was my best friend for more than eleven years. We did everything together—work, lunch, shop—sort of like you and Kelli, except we were older, mid-twenties to thirties. And we were both trying to have a baby. It helped going through all the frustration and disappointment with another woman. Men can’t really grasp the trauma a woman experiences when she wants to get pregnant but can’t.”

Her mother plucked up a seashell and cradled it in the palm of her hand. “Anyway, at one point Betsy stopped talking to me. She
just pulled away and I couldn’t figure out why. I begged her to tell me what was wrong. Had I done something to offend her? It was sheer torment for me. Then one day I heard from a mutual friend that Betsy was pregnant. I rushed to her and asked if it was true. It was. And I asked why she hadn’t told me. And she said because she hadn’t wanted to hurt me. She felt guilty, April, because she had something she knew I desperately wanted.”

April heard the emotion in her mother’s voice and realized that even now, years later, the event still affected her. “So what happened?”

“I told her I was happy for her, and I was. But I felt so betrayed because she hadn’t confided in me. It did irreparable harm to our friendship. She couldn’t believe that I could rejoice with her, that I wouldn’t be jealous and depressed about it.” Her mother paused. “So why am I telling you this? Because you’re going through much the same thing. You’re alive and Mark isn’t. You think he would somehow be disappointed in you if you allow yourself to have fun or date another boy. But from what I know about
Mark, that simply isn’t true. No more than my being petty and angry about Betsy’s pregnancy would have been true all those years ago.

“Mark understood. He knew what the odds of his dying before you were, even if the wreck had never occurred.”

Her mother was right again; Mark had told April as much before their engagement. He had not expected to outlive her. “What are you saying to me?”

“I’m saying it’s all right for you to be happy again. Give yourself permission to enjoy your life. To date if you want. To have a good time. It’s what Mark would have wanted. And if you’ll search your heart, you’ll see that I’m telling you the truth. Mark loved you. Now you must honor his love by living, not merely existing.”

“But I—”

Her mother interrupted. “Nobody knows how much time she has to live, April. You could have just as easily died before Mark. In an accident … anything.”

April noted that her mother hadn’t said “a relapse.” But of course, that was such a real possibility that perhaps there was no need to
state it. April shuddered. She didn’t want to die. The realization almost took her breath away. But if that feeling didn’t make her disloyal, what did it make her?

“Don’t you think Mark would have missed you if something had taken you away from him?” her mother continued.

“Sure he would have missed me.”

“Wouldn’t you have wanted him to feel happy again?”

“You know I would.”

“Then stop feeling guilty and start enjoying every day you have to live.”

Long after her mother had gone up to the house, April sat staring out at the sea, now calm and flat. The sky was deepening to shades of mauve. Far out against the horizon, a sailboat looked dead in the water. She identified with the boat. She felt limp. She longed for a new breeze, a fresh wind to come into her life and blow away the clouds of despair. She hungered to feel as alive as she had when she’d been with Mark. Was her mother right? While she couldn’t have Mark again, was it possible to have something to give her life new meaning?

April decided to give herself permission to get out more and spend more time with her family. When her parents went to restaurants and museums, she accompanied them. They flew to St. Thomas for a day of shopping and antique hunting. She took long drives in her Jeep up into the rain forests of St. Croix and onto the far side of the island to the city of Frederiksted, passing abandoned sugar mills from the island’s early history.

She passed the Buccaneer many times, but she never went in to see Brandon. She honestly believed she didn’t need the complication of him in her life. She was strolling past shops in downtown Christiansted one afternoon, looking for a gift for Kelli’s upcoming birthday, when she heard someone call her name. She turned to see Brandon hurrying toward her. Against her will, her heart gave a little leap. She pasted a smile on her face and braced for the encounter.

“I thought that was you,” he said, jogging up. “I mean that red hair of yours is like a stoplight. How’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

She heard the admonishment in his tone. “I’ve been around,” she told him. “Busy.” Even to her ears it sounded lame.

But his grin was quick, forgiving. “Well, now that we meet again, could I buy you an ice-cream cone? That shop across the street has tons of flavors.”

The air felt humid and sticky. Ice cream would taste good. “All right,” she said, offering him a smile.

Inside the pink-and-white ice-cream parlor, the air was cool and smelled of peppermint and chocolate. They chose different flavors and settled in at a small round table next to the picture window where sun beamed through the glass. “So what’s kept you busy?” he asked.

“My parents.”

He made a face. “It doesn’t sound very exciting.”

“I have cool parents. How about you?”

Immediately he stiffened. “My dad and I don’t get on too well.”

She licked the ice cream, savoring the sweetness. “And your mom?”

“She’s dead.”

His statement sounded so stark that she gasped. “I’m sorry.”

He licked his cone in silence, offering no other explanation.

April cast about for something else to say, something to change the subject. The clock on the wall gave her the opening. “I thought you said you had school on weekdays until two.”

“I didn’t feel like going today. I skipped.”

“Do you have to work?”

“Yeah, but not until three.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his long legs. “I wanted to come see you but I didn’t think you’d open the door for me.”

“Look, Brandon—”

“It’s okay,” he interrupted. “But I want to explain something.” She nodded politely, and he continued. “I got to thinking about it and I realized that you’ve finished high school and I haven’t. I figure you don’t want to be seen with some local high-school jerk. I’m really eighteen and I should have graduated last June, same as you, but don’t go thinking I’m some kind of dumb dork. You see, I had a rough year and I ended up missing
too many days, so the administration said I had to repeat most of my senior year. I could have taken a test and gone straight into college. But I, um, I decided to hang back and graduate a year late.”

His story surprised her. She suspected there was plenty he wasn’t telling her. She wasn’t about to dig it out of him either. The less she knew, the easier it would be not to become involved with him. “I didn’t have much use for high school by the time graduation rolled around,” she told him. “But I was glad I finished. You did what was right for you. And, by the way, I’ve never thought of you as some high-school jerk.”

By now they were both through with their ice cream. “Look, would you like to take a walk on the beach with me? We can go over to the resort, and then I’ll be close to my job.” He stood and held out his hand. “Please.”

She couldn’t say no—didn’t really want to—so she followed him outside, where they got into their separate cars and drove to the Buccaneer. Once there, they parked and he took her out onto the grounds. The tropical sun beat down and sprinklers arced over the golf course, tossing jewel-like drops of water
over the grass. He led her into a forest garden where huge multicolored hibiscus and bright-orange bird-of-paradise flowers grew in well-tended beds. Inside the garden the air felt cooler, and sun-dappled leaves shaded the winding pathways. “I’ll never get over how pretty everything is in St. Croix,” she said.

Brandon stopped, peered down at her, and, touching the ends of her hair, said, “Yes. I agree. Things
are
more beautiful here.”

Her heartbeat accelerated as she caught his message in his eyes. “So where does this path lead?”

“Come. I’ll show you.”

She followed, and minutes later the path led out of the garden and onto a sunny lawn. There she saw a latticed gazebo, painted white and trimmed with satin ribbons and cascades of white flowers. “How beautiful,” she exclaimed.

“We must have just missed the party,” Brandon said. He stooped and picked up grains of rice and wild birdseed and tossed them playfully into the air.

“What is this place?”

“It’s the wedding chapel. People come from all over the world to be married here.”

H
er heart thudded, and reality crashed in on her. “Can we go somewhere else?” Brandon looked surprised. “There’s no-place prettier than here.”

“But I don’t want to be here.” April spun and hurried back up the path into the garden. The flowers, which only minutes before had been breathlessly beautiful to her, now seemed waxen and surreal.