For Better, for Worse, Forever (5 page)

“Wait!” she heard Brandon call. He ran up behind her and caught her arm. “Don’t run off. What’s wrong? What’s happened? I thought you’d like the place. You said St. Croix was perfect and this is one of the prettiest spots on the island.”

He must think she was crazy. Her hands trembled, and her knees felt rubbery. The
sight of the wedding chapel had opened a wound on her heart that left her reeling and grief-stricken. “Which way to the beach?” she asked, struggling to hold back tears.

“This way.” He took her quickly out of the garden, across rolling manicured grass, and down to the shoreline, where the gentle waves rolled onto the sand.

There she stopped and breathed in great gulps of sea air, calming her racing heart. She kicked off her sandals and began to walk along the shore. The water washed over her footprints, blurring them. Brandon walked beside her, not speaking, allowing her the time she needed to gather her composure. She owed him an explanation but wasn’t sure how to begin. “I’m sorry, Brandon. I didn’t know that was going to happen. I was caught off guard.”

“Exactly what
did
happen?”

“Memories,” she whispered. “Just when I think they’ll never come back, they do.”

Again he kept silent.

She said, “My parents brought me to St. Croix to help me get over something. You see, back home, I knew this guy … we were very close.”

“I knew it!” Brandon stopped walking. “I knew you were too good-looking to not have a boyfriend.”

She turned to face him as the waves washed sand out from under her bare feet. “He was more than my boyfriend. Mark was my fiancé.”

A somber look crossed Brandon’s face. “Oh.”

“But he’s dead.”

He looked jolted and his face went pale. “How …?”

“Have you ever heard of cystic fibrosis?” She told him slowly, haltingly, about Mark and his disease, his love of racing cars, his accident. “He would have made it—the crash wasn’t that bad—if it hadn’t been for the CF. In the end, it won.”

Brandon listened intently. She couldn’t read what he was thinking, but she knew her story had affected him because it showed on his face. “Life stinks!”

“But we can’t change how life turns out,” she said. “Mark didn’t deserve to have CF and he didn’t deserve to die so young. After he was gone, I hated being in New York without him.”

“So you came here.”

“Winter up there is awful … the sky all gray and cold. Bare trees.” She shivered. “Everywhere I went reminded me of him. Last June, when I graduated, my father wanted us all to go on a family vacation, but at the time I was involved with Mark and I didn’t want to leave. Once he was gone …” She shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished. “I love it here … the ocean and all.”

“What were you doing that day I first saw you up on the hill? It had something to do with Mark, didn’t it?”

“CF robs a person of his breath, so blowing up a balloon was a pretty big deal for Mark. He used to blow up balloons for me as a present. Sometimes he’d tuck little notes inside. This time,
I
blew up a balloon for him, and I sent it up into the sky on the chance that he was up there, looking down. I wanted him to know I was thinking about him. And that I loved him.”

“Mark was a very lucky guy to have had you.”

“No, I was the lucky one.” Tears brimmed in her eyes. “We were right in the middle of
planning the wedding when Mark died. Seeing that wedding chapel … well, it brought everything back.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You had no way of knowing.” She turned to face him, smiling tentatively. “But you’re right, it is beautiful.”

Brandon shifted from foot to foot. “Now that I know about you and Mark, it explains some things to me. I understand that you might not want some guy pressuring you and coming on to you. But let me be honest. I still would like to see more of you. Nothing heavy,” he added quickly. “But I do know every inch of this island and most of the surrounding water. If you’ll let me, I’d like to be your friend. I’d like to take you around and show you my island.”

His request was eloquent and simple and it touched her. She recognized that Brandon wasn’t some kid with a hidden agenda. Like her, he was lonely. He also had something buried deep inside his psyche that was painful. She guessed it had to do with the loss of his mother. She wouldn’t probe. If he wanted to talk about it, he would.

“I would like that very much,” she said.

She gazed out to the open sea. A sailboat leaned into the wind against the horizon. “You know, I’ve watched those boats from the first day I arrived, and I’d love to go sailing on one. Do you think we could do that sometime?”

A dark expression crossed his face, prompting her to ask, “You do sail, don’t you?”

“We have a boat. A nice one, but it’s in dry dock.”

“Repairs? Painting?”

He shook his head. The gloom in his eyes passed and he gave a quick grin. “We’ll rent a little boat, big enough for two. I’ll teach you how to sail it. How to tack and swing the sail about without knocking yourself into the water.”

“I’d like to learn.”

A beeping sound interrupted them, and Brandon glanced down at his watch. “My cue to go to work,” he said, flipping off the miniature alarm. “I’d like to call you.”

She’d enjoyed the afternoon and realized she wanted to see him again. “Sure.”

He offered to walk her to her car, but she told him, “You go on. I’m going to walk on the beach awhile longer.”

“Talk to you soon,” he called, and jogged off toward the golf course.

She watched him, gave a deep sigh, and whispered, “I hope this is okay with you, Mark.”

By the time Brandon pulled into his driveway, night had fallen. The lights were on inside the sprawling house, which meant that his father was home, returned from one of his many business trips. Brandon couldn’t say he was glad. The less he had to do with his father the better. He went into the kitchen through the garage and saw his father sitting at the breakfast bar, nursing a drink over a half-eaten sandwich.

“Where have you been?”

“Working.” Brandon crossed to the refrigerator, every nerve in his body tingling.

“I called the Buccaneer at five and they told me you were gone.”

“Well, your source was wrong. At the last minute Doug decided the grounds crew needed to mulch the garden near the sixteenth hole. So that’s what I did.”

“What about your schoolwork? Or are you
going to take yet another pass at your senior year?”

Low blow
, Brandon thought, but he ignored the barb. “I didn’t have any homework.” No need to mention that he’d skipped school that day.

“When I come home after a week away on the job, I expect to see you. I wanted us to have dinner together.”

“It was never important to you before,” Brandon shot back. “Mom and I ate by ourselves half my life.”

“You watch your mouth. I was trying to earn a living.”

Brandon glared at his father. “Well, now you have all the time in the world.”

Rage crossed his father’s face, and Brandon knew he’d stepped over the line. He didn’t care. Why should he spare his father’s feelings? “You think I chose to leave the two of you alone so much? You think you know so much about taking care of a family? About making sure they have the things they want? Well, I’ve got news for you, Brandon, you don’t know a thing!”

Brandon fished in his pocket and pulled out his car keys. “I know I’m out of here.”

His father stood, tipping over the kitchen stool. “You do not have my permission to leave.”

“I didn’t ask for it.”

“You can’t leave until I say so.”

His father took a step forward, but Brandon met his challenge. “Watch me.”

“Your car—”

“Is mine. It belonged to my mother and she left it to me. And I pay for the gas and insurance.”

His father raised his hand as if to slap Brandon. Brandon didn’t flinch. His father sagged against the counter and buried his face in his hands. “I—I don’t want to fight with you, son.”

“Too late,” Brandon said. He slammed the kitchen door, got into the car, and screeched out of the garage. But he stopped at the end of the driveway. It was after ten and he really didn’t have anyplace to go. Why did it have to be this way between him and his father? Why did they always end up in a yelling match?

Brandon bowed his forehead until it touched the steering wheel gripped between his hands. His heart pounded crazily and his
body shook. Of course, the questions were pointless. He knew
why
. There was just nothing he could do about it. He turned his roiling thoughts to April and immediately felt calmer. She understood what it was like to lose somebody you loved. But she didn’t understand what it was like to lose somebody the way he had lost his mother.

Brandon turned off the car’s engine and leaned back against the seat. Exhaustion overwhelmed him. Tropical night air blew through the lowered car windows, tantalizing him with the familiar scent of gardenia. His mother had worn that same fragrance. He waited at the end of the driveway until all the lights went off inside the house. Until the night sounds from the surrounding jungle had blotted out the sounds of neighborhood dogs, TVs, and moving cars. Until he was positive his father was asleep and he could steal inside, alone and unnoticed.

T
he next morning April told her parents about meeting Brandon. Not about their very first meeting, atop the hill, or about the second one, when he came to the house, but about the third. She embellished, saying that she’d gotten lost and he’d come to her rescue at the Buccaneer. “He seems nice, and I think you’ll like him. He wants to show me around St. Croix.”

Her father poured coffee for the three of them. “I can’t say I blame him. You are the prettiest girl on the island.”

April rolled her eyes.

“Do you want to see him?” her mother asked.

Their gazes met, and April thought back to
their conversation that one afternoon on the beach. “Yes, I’d like to see him. I’d like to have him show me the island.”

“We can show you the island,” her father declared.

“Don’t be a wet blanket, Hugh,” her mother said. “We’re just parents. April needs to be with someone her own age. Besides, now that you’re commuting back and forth to New York, you’ll only be here on the weekends. What’s she supposed to do during the weekdays?”

“I only go every other week,” he corrected her, then leaned toward April. “You sure you don’t want to go to New York with me?”

April shook her head. “I like it here.”

“We’ll both go with you on one of the trips,” her mother offered. “In the meantime, I’ve been thinking of spending a few days in the British Virgin Islands.”

The British counterpart wasn’t far away, but to go would mean spending several days there. “Maybe later this summer,” April hedged. “Of course, you can go if you want. I’ll be fine by myself.”

She caught their reluctance to go off and
leave her to fend for herself in their glances at each other. It bothered her that they were so overprotective, but she wasn’t in any mood to start an argument about it. Fortunately, the phone rang just then, and her father answered and handed it over to her. “I’ll bet it’s that Brandon.”

It was. She quickly made plans, and later that afternoon when he came, she made sure her parents met him. Once in his car, she said, “Sorry about that,” referring to the numerous questions her father had asked.

He laughed. “Do I still have arms and legs? I thought your father was going to bite them off.”

“They can’t help it. It came with their parenting lease.” She remembered apologizing to Mark for her family’s possessiveness of her, but he had known about her health problems and made allowances. Brandon did not know.

“They care,” Brandon said. “It’s no big deal. Forget it.”

“So where are we going?”

“Have you driven up into the rain forest?”

“Once. But I was on my way someplace else.”

“Then that’s where we’re headed.”

He drove into the hills, where tangled undergrowth and thick tree trunks lined the sides of the road. Brandon slowed, pulled off to one side, took April’s hand, and led her into the dense foliage. The air felt damp and heavy. Her hair stuck to the back of her neck. She heard a breeze rustle through the tree branches high above but couldn’t feel it. The trees absorbed it, like sponges sucking up water. “It’s so quiet,” she said. “I feel as if we should be whispering.”