Island Girl (42 page)

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Authors: Lynda Simmons

BOOK: Island Girl
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He held up his hands and backed away. “Whoa, settle down. You do whatever you want, but we’re not getting on any ferry for a while. Courtney, you coming?”
“I’m going with Jocelyn.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “And you’re going to tell me what’s going on.”
Jocelyn gave her a small, uncertain smile. “Sure. Why not.”
Alex strolled away with the boys. “Have fun you two,” she said, and smiled at Jocelyn over her shoulder.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“Nothing. She’s just a bitch.” Jocelyn turned to Kylie and Brianne. “You want to come with us? I need to go to a movie. It feels like I haven’t been to one in a year.”
“We’d have to call home first,” Kylie said.
“There’s no time,” Courtney said. “The ferry’s loading now.”
“We can call from the
Ongiara
,” Kiley said to her sister. “Have you got any money?”
“Five bucks,” Brianne said.
“My treat,” Jocelyn said. “You can get me next time. Let’s go.”
Kylie laughed. “Okay.”
The twins parked their bikes in the rack and ran ahead with Courtney to the ramp, the three of them already talking at once. “Does anyone know what’s playing?” “No idea.” “I am
sooo
getting nachos.”
I smiled. They were going to have a great time.
Jocelyn turned to me. “You coming?”
I shook my head. The captain blew the horn. A few stragglers were running full out across the field. A woman picked up a wailing toddler and started to jog. She probably didn’t stand a chance.
Jocelyn took my arm again. “Grace, please. I want you to come. You know I didn’t mean what I said earlier, right? About wishing I’d never met you?”
“Of course I know that. You love me.”
She laughed and pulled me along. “I wouldn’t go that far, but I do want you to come to the movie.”
The other girls were already on the ferry, waving, calling, “Hurry up, hurry up.”
The captain blew the horn. The woman with the toddler was still jogging, still closing the distance. Maybe she’d make it after all. And Jocelyn held on to my arm, leading me along the dock, all the way to the end of the ramp.
I stopped there, my heart pounding, the blood swooshing in my ears. Jocelyn tightened her grip. “Grace, listen to me. There’s no reason you can’t do this.”
I moistened my lips. Told myself she was right. There was no bracelet on my ankle, no poster on the bulletin board, and none of the deckhands were on the lookout for me anymore. I was free to get on that ferry any time I wanted. Like right now.
I took a step forward. My skin suddenly got all hot and tingly as the woman with the toddler ran past me and thundered across the ramp, red-faced, sweating, victorious.
A deckhand came out to meet us. Held out a hand. “Come on, Grace,” he said softly. “You can do this.”
I looked up into his eyes. He knew me. After all this time, he still knew me.
He was tall with eyes so brown they were almost black, and I wasn’t supposed to talk to him.
Pay them no attention, Grace. None at all.
But he smiled and I smiled, and I couldn’t think why I should be rude. “Hi, Joe,” I said and reached for his hand.
His fingers closed around mine. “Hi, Grace.”
He waited while I took a deep breath.
“Come on, Grace,” Jocelyn whispered. “You can do this.”
At the other end of the ramp, Courtney looked confused, but Kylie and Brianne were nodding and smiling. “She’s right,” they said. “You can do this.”
I tried to take a step but my legs were numb, my feet like concrete. I could feel Joe’s fingers against my skin. Rough, strong. I looked up at him again.
His smile was kind, his touch gentle. “Grace, it’s okay. Just don’t look down.”
Don’t look down. Like the lady mockingbird, look up, look up. I could picture her there on the top of her cage, bobbing and dancing, bobbing and dancing, getting ready to fly, to go. Maybe I should bob and dance too. Maybe that would help. If I could have moved my feet, I might have tried.
The horn blew again. The toddler started to cry. “What’s her issue?” the mother said. Jocelyn shot her a nasty look. “What’s
your
issue?”
I let go of Joe’s hand. “Next time.”
“Next time for sure,” he whispered, and stepped back onto the ferry.
Jocelyn came back to the dock with me. “It doesn’t matter. We can go home.”
“Don’t be silly. One of us has to get on that stupid ferry and go to a movie.”
Kylie, Brianne, and Courtney started across the ramp too. “No,” I called. “Get back on.” I pushed Jocelyn forward. “Go with your friends. Have fun.”
They hesitated and the captain blew the horn one more time.
“You coming or not, girls?” another deckhand asked.
“They’re coming.” I motioned to Kylie. “Take Jocelyn with you. Take her now.”
The twins each took an arm and led her across the ramp. Joe pushed the lever and the ramp slowly rose and locked into position. The engine kicked up a notch, the water churned, and the
Ongiara
slowly backed away from the dock.
“Have fun,” I called, and waved my arm in a big arc.
I’m fine, see? Everything is just fine.
The four girls lined up along the railing. Three waved back with equally big arcs.
Okay, you’re fine.
Jocelyn crossed her arms.
Liar.
The woman with the toddler stood slightly back from them, looking at me like I was indeed the crazy woman of the Island. The way things were going, she was probably right.
I sniffed back tears, made my smile bigger. “Be sure to come back,” I called to Jocelyn.
She smiled at last and blew me a kiss. “Count on it.”
RUBY
 
Never having been married, I had no idea a wedding, even a simple one, required so much organization, documentation, and tulle. Tulle for decorating, favors, headpieces—as far as I could tell, no wedding was complete without miles and miles of white, frothy tulle. Apparently brides sold it on eBay after the big day. People who made a living planning such events knew these things. Lucky for me, Mary Anne had been planning hers since the day she turned ten.
Within twelve hours of our engagement, she had a wedding checklist in front of us with stars beside the first three items:
Fix a date. Book the church. Rent the clubhouse.
By Sunday night, Mark and I had completed items one and three. However, because he is stubbornly Catholic and I am third-generation agnostic, we skipped item two and hired a justice of the peace to do the honors instead. It was either that or risk having me burst into flames at the altar, which might have made Jocelyn smile, but would have meant a messy cleanup for the church ladies, and that hardly seemed fair.
Along with the checklist, she had also gave me a file marked VENUE with pictures cut from magazines, showing me how fabulous the clubhouse would look with white tablecloths, satiny chair covers, and all of that tulle draped and pouffed on every conceivable surface.
Mary Anne hadn’t mentioned tiny white lights, but judging by the pictures, I would doubtless be looking for miles of those on eBay as well because as unlikely as it was, I admit I had been sucked into this wedding madness. Entranced by fairy-tale settings, swept up in the search for a theme, and amazed that cakes could be art. She had not yet tried to convince me that I needed someone to walk me down the aisle, which meant that so far, the only point of contention had been our choice of date.
“You cannot pull a wedding together in three weeks,” she’d said. “It takes longer than that to print the invitations.”
“Why don’t we just put the invitation on the phone chain?” I suggested.
“Or why not run off a few flyers and staple them to lampposts.” She lowered her chin and looked at me over her reading glasses. “This is not a rave, Ruby. This is a wedding. And the invitations are always engraved.”
I was beginning to understand the terror her students must know on a daily basis.
Now, on Monday morning with a rush order about to be placed for invitations, and two and a half weeks to go, the biggest decision facing us now was the menu. A file with our choices was sitting in the middle of the table when we came back from canoeing this morning. Right next to the large manila envelope Lori from Algonquin had dropped off as well—the envelope containing her offer to buy the assets and client list of Chez Ruby.
“Mary Anne left that for you,” Grace said, taking a sip of tea and disappearing around the corner into the storage room to join Jocelyn in a search for sponges.
The two of them were getting ready to take down the mockingbird cage and eating breakfast on the run—morning glory muffins from the clubhouse instead of eggs, which had left me staring at the stove for a moment. Grace didn’t seem bothered by the change, however. In fact, she looked happy as she rooted around in the cupboard under the sink.
Reminding myself to be grateful for small things, I put it down to wedding madness and poured tea for myself, coffee for Mark.
“These are really good,” Grace said, retuning to the table to pop the last bit of muffin into her mouth. “You should try one.”
Jocelyn said nothing, of course. Just kissed her dad on the cheek, curled her lip at me like a mongrel, and followed Grace out the door. But as mad as she still was at me about the wedding, she had not resorted to covering her face with white makeup and black eyeliner. And she stopped wearing her Hated skirt after only a few hours on Friday. Seems it was not conducive to birding in the bush. I learn something new every day. And usually forget it the next. But not today. Not so far.
“They do look good,” Mark said, peering into the muffin bag. “You want one?”
“Why not?” I shook this morning’s pills into my palm and swallowed them down with pomegranate juice, pleased that Big Al had not yet joined us for breakfast.
In fact he’d been rather lax about coming down at all these past few days, leaving me with most of my marbles, most of the time. Perhaps he was taking a vacation. Resting up after our last dance. While it would be nice to believe Dr. Mistry’s latest shift in meds was finally paying off, I knew better than to count on anything where Al was concerned. Told myself not to get excited. Take things day by day and keep that notebook handy at all times.
Speaking of which, I took the notebook out of the back pocket of my shorts and set it down in front of me.
Open me, you stupid cow
. That sticker still made me smile, but Mark had been horrified the first time he saw it. “Why would you write that?”
Because it was the first thing that came to mind. No longer confident that there would be a second thing, I’d scribbled it down right away, only later realizing I’d come up with a theme without my even trying.
I flipped open the book, printed
Today’s List
at the top followed by:
Sign papers. Meet Lori. Find out about cuckoo
. I laid the pen down. What kind of cuckoo? Not the clock kind. Something else. A black something. Close enough. I crossed out
cuckoo
and printed the more precise, if not entirely complete,
black something cuckoo
.
Mark set a muffin in front of me. Kissed the side of my neck and sat down. “What’s Mary Anne have in mind for the menu?”
It was more curiosity than a genuine need to be part of the wedding madness that had prompted the question. His involvement in the process had ended on the night of his proposal when he handed me his credit card and said, “Whatever you want is fine by me.”
He hadn’t shown any sign of regret either when he climbed into bed with me the following morning—his first foray up my stairs since he arrived on the Island, possible only because the girls left for their bike ride before I was even up—still searching for the elusive black something cuckoo as I understood it.
Seemed that bird was proving harder to find than any of the others, and I was beginning to wonder if there was more going on during those morning bike rides than Grace was telling. But the worry drifted away when Mark started kissing my lips, my throat, the ticklish spot behind my ear. And when his hands moved down the length of my body, only to come right back up, sliding my nightgown up and off, my mind filled with memories of other mornings, other nights when he’d kissed me just this way before starting the slow, tender trek down between my breasts to my stomach and beyond.
I was grateful that Big Al slept on, mercifully oblivious to the sighs, gasps, and occasional hoots of laughter going on all around him. And that he stayed that way while Mark and I lay in each other’s arms afterward, sweaty and smiling, waiting for skin to cool and breath to calm. It was with a clear head that I decided then and there that I really did want to get married. Not just to save the house or to protect Grace but for myself. For Ruby Donaldson who could finally admit she’d been an idiot to throw him out and wanted a chance to make up for all the lost years. To have him there in her bed every night and every morning for as long as possible. To go out remembering the touch of this man, this love, on her skin.

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