Kiss River (23 page)

Alec started to answer, but Gina beat him to it. “They sure do,” she said. “But not often. Only somewhere between twenty and fifty a day.”

“Fifty a day!” Jack said. “That’s tons. How come we never see any?”

“It sounds like a lot, but think about it, Jack,” Gina said.
“Let’s say fifty meteorites hit the earth every day. Where do you think they would fall? Think about the earth. About a globe. What does it look like?”

They were all lying down, and Gina’s voice was disembodied, floating in the air. Alec had forgotten she was a teacher, but he heard the teacher in her now.

“It’s round,” Maggie said.

“And what’s that round globe covered with?” Gina asked.

“Land and water,” Jack said.

“Right. It’s actually about two-thirds water,” Gina said. “So what does that mean for the meteorites that are falling?”

“A bunch would just fall in the water,” Maggie said, engaged.

“Right!” Gina said. “So, let’s say two-thirds of the meteorites fall in the water. That leaves around sixteen or so to fall on the land. And picture that globe again. Is all the land populated?”

“You mean, have people on it?” Maggie asked.

“Right.”

“No way,” Jack said. “There’s lots of places without any people.”

“And lots of places with very few people,” Gina added. “About one-fourth of the land is either uninhabited or not very inhabited. So, what does that mean for the meteorites?”

“We’re down to twelve,” Clay said.

“I don’t get it.” Maggie was confused.

Olivia answered her. “The meteorites that fall in those unpopulated areas will go unnoticed,” she explained.

“Right,” Gina said. “And about half those twelve meteorites will fall during the night, when they won’t be seen.”

“You could see a meteorite if it fell, though, because it’s so bright,” Jack argued.

“You would think so, Jack, but something happens to it when it reaches earth’s atmosphere and it doesn’t glow anymore,” Gina said. “So when it falls, it actually looks something like a plain old rock.”

“So, there’s only six meteorites that fall on earth every day during daylight hours,” Lacey said.

“Right,” Gina said.

“That’s still too many if they land on your head,” Maggie pointed out, and Alec chuckled to himself.

“I don’t think you have to worry about that, Maggie,” Gina said.

They grew quiet again. She was a good teacher, Alec had to admit. His kids had hung on her every word.

Jack suddenly sat up. “Hey, Maggie,” he said. “Let’s roll down.”

Maggie was instantly on her feet, tugging on Gina. “You do it, too,” she said.

Gina laughed, and Alec was surprised when she lay down in the sand next to his children and started to roll with them. He sat up, watching them spin down the hill, and he could hear their laughter and his daughter’s yelps even after he had lost sight of them in the darkness.

Clay was sitting up, too, watching, and Alec saw the small, sad smile on his son’s lips, the telltale bobbing of the Adam’s apple in his throat. Clay was so closed these days, so shut down, that it was impossible to know how to help him. They had both been widowed, but watching his child go through that experience was worse than going through it himself.

“Hey, Clay?” he asked softly.

Clay turned to look at him.

“You want to go windsurfing with me tomorrow if the wind’s decent?”

It was a moment before Clay nodded. “Sounds good,” he said.

“Hey!” Olivia leaned forward to call into the darkness. “Are you all right down there?”

There was no answer other than giggling. He could hear the three of them breathing hard, chatting and laughing, as they climbed up the dune again and settled back into their sandy beds.

All seven of them lay there, watching the stars awhile longer, until Olivia fell asleep in the crook of Alec’s arm. He knew Jack and Maggie were asleep, as well. He wasn’t sure about Lacey and Clay and Gina, but everyone was very still. He wanted to stay there with them until morning. His family, together, safe, under the night sky that put everything else,
everything,
in perspective. He wished he could say that to Clay.
Our lives are small—inconsequential—compared to all of this,
he would say.
We just have to make the most of what we’re given.
But of course, he said nothing. It was a lesson Clay would have to learn on his own.

C
lay met his father at the sound-side beach at ten the following morning. A couple of other windsurfers were already there, but this was not one of the more popular beaches and it wouldn’t get too crowded. Once they were on the water, the entire bay would be theirs, if they wanted it.

He hadn’t windsurfed with his father since the summer before, when life had been so, so much simpler. September eleventh hadn’t yet occurred. And on the more personal side, Terri had still been alive. God, he’d taken her for granted. He recalled windsurfing with his father, knowing that when he got home, Terri would have the house clean, the garden weeded, the dogs fed, and dinner on the table. He did his part, too, but she did more. He was coming to think women were more independent than men. The single women he knew were doing just fine, while he needed his sister to take care of him. No wonder Gina and Lacey were not interested in marriage.

“Great wind for July,” his father said as he lifted the short-board and mast from the top of his van.

“Must be twenty miles per hour,” Clay said, although to be honest, he had barely noticed the wind before that moment. Windsurfing was not the main reason he’d agreed to this outing today. He wanted time with his father in a way he’d never wanted it before.

“Thanks for joining us on the dunes last night,” his father said as Clay pulled the boom and sail from the back of his Jeep.

“It was as good as I remembered from when we were kids,” Clay said. He had felt full of Gina the night before. Watching her with his young siblings, listening to her laughter as she rolled down the dunes with them. It was a sound he had not heard often from her, part of a playful side he hoped he would see again.

“Jack and Maggie are in love with Gina,” his father said as if reading his thoughts.

Clay lifted his board, holding on to the foot strap as he carried it across the sand to the water. “Yeah, she was good with them,” he said over his shoulder.

Both men were quiet as they put together their windsurfers. It was too warm for wet suits, although his father sometimes wore one when the jellyfish were plentiful. But he was not wearing one today, and Clay had to admire his physique. His father was still thin, although he certainly had no appetite problem, and there was only a hint of extra padding around his middle. He wasn’t as tanned as he’d been when Clay was growing up, but his skin was still a light golden-brown. Clay hoped he looked half that good when he was his father’s age.

Out on the water, Clay felt himself relax as the task of sailing became his focus. They were both exceptional windsurfers. It was a silent sport when you were that good, and maybe that was why Clay liked it. No need to talk. Today, though, he
wanted
to talk to his father and he planned to do so when they were through on the sound.

They raced one another several times, out to a buoy and back to the beach, and Clay won three of the races, his father two. They were well matched. His father’s energy faded before his did, though. Alec waited on the beach, while Clay chop-hopped for a while, using the waves as a ramp to launch himself into the air. In spite of the fact that he wanted some talking time with his dad, he couldn’t resist the lure of the water.

After they had lifted their boards back onto their vehicles and loaded up their gear, Clay asked his father if he had time for lunch.

“Sure.” His father looked pleased at the suggestion. “How about Shorty’s?”

Gina would be working at Shorty’s today, and given the nature of the conversation he hoped to have with his father, he didn’t really want her around. Everyplace else, though, would be packed with tourists.

“All right,” he said, wanting to see Gina as much as he wanted to avoid her.

When they’d returned home from the dunes the night before, Lacey had gone immediately to bed, but he and Gina had been hungry. He made scrambled eggs and grits and toast with marmalade, while she went online to find the site where she could report the observation of the fireball. Then they sat at the table to eat. He had ordered something for her from the Internet the day before, and he was tempted to tell her about it, but that would have spoiled the surprise. He wanted to be able to watch her face when she opened it, so with some effort he managed to keep his mouth shut. Sitting there with her, he’d felt tired and content, a quiet joy inside him that he could not remember experiencing in a long time, if ever. It had been so wonderful to find that lens for her and to see her pleasure in touching it.

Gina had sand in her long hair from rolling down the dune, and she apologized for grains of it falling on the table. Her hair was a disheveled mess, her skin pink from the afternoon in the water, and he thought she looked beautiful. They ate and chatted about Jack and Maggie and what it had been like growing up with Alec as a dad.

“He was the normal one,” Clay had laughed. “It was my mother who was wacky.”

In response to Gina’s probing, he explained about his mother’s refusal to wear a watch or have clocks in the house, her lack of rules for him and Lacey, her sense of spirit and fun. He’d talked on, trying to remember every eccentric and kooky thing his mother had done, using up more words in the space of an hour than he’d spoken in the entire eight months since Terri’s death, not wanting the time with Gina to end. But the conversation was
superficial, benign, focusing on facts rather than feelings. And when they said good-night to one another and went to their separate rooms, he had felt as though he had let something precious slip away from him.

As it turned out, of course, Gina was their waitress.

“I had trouble getting up for work this morning, thanks to you, Dr…. Alec,” she said, pouring coffee into the cups on their table. Her voice was chastising, but she was smiling. She did look a little tired this morning. Her eyes were puffy, probably from her slight sunburn as much as from lack of sleep, and that little touch of humanness in her, that one flaw in her otherwise perfect face, made Clay care about her more than he already did.

“Seems like you had fun, though,” his father said.

“I still have sand in my hair,” she said, running her free hand through the perfectly clean-looking tresses. “Jack and Maggie are great.”

“And you’re a good teacher,” his father said. “Maggie was still talking about meteorites and fireballs when she got up this morning.”

“That was spectacular, wasn’t it?” Gina rested the coffeepot on the table and pulled out her order pad. “Well, what can I get you two?” she asked.

They ordered sandwiches, then Clay watched his father’s gaze follow Gina back to the kitchen.

Clay stirred cream into his coffee, not sure where to start this conversation.

“Last night on the dunes,” his father said, starting it for him, “it became very clear to me that you really like Gina.”

Clay took a sip of his coffee. What had he given away the night before? “Well, first of all, she has no interest in me or in any other man. And second of all…” He looked up at his father. “It’s only been eight months.”

His father nodded. “I know, Clay,” he said, and there was so much sympathy in those words, so much understanding, that Clay felt tears fill his eyes. He blinked them back quickly.

“How long after Mom died did you start seeing Olivia?” he asked.

His father let out a long sigh, sitting back against the bench.
He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, remembering. “We became friends in June,” he said, “so that was about six months after your mom died. But we didn’t get serious for another few months, mostly because I felt so guilty about it.”

“You did?” Clay was surprised.

“Hell, yes.”

Clay let out his breath. “That’s how I’m feeling. It seems wrong that I could even look that way at another woman. I feel like I’m cheating on Terri.”

His father smiled. “I remember that feeling very well. It goes away in time.”

“I’m not sure I want it to go away. Or that I even…I don’t know. That I deserve to have it go away. I wasn’t the best husband.” There. He’d said it. Then he realized how it must sound to his father. “I didn’t cheat on her or anything like that. I just—”

“There are no perfect husbands,” his father said. “Or wives, for that matter.”

Gina picked that moment to reappear at their table to top off their coffee. “Sandwiches will be up in a minute,” she said.

When she walked away again, his father leaned across the table toward him. “I understand how you feel,” he said. “But you know, Olivia and I became friends first. I had no intention of it becoming anything more than that. I was still deeply in love with your mother. Our relationship had a natural progression as we got closer. So don’t try to push romance. Just let yourself be friends with her. That way, your conscience can be perfectly clear.”

His father had no reason to feel guilty, though. Clay didn’t want to say that to him, didn’t want to invite more questions, but his father seemed to read his mind.

“I felt particularly guilty because your mother asked me once to promise that if she died before I did, I wouldn’t go out with anyone for a year,” he said.

“She did?” It was unlike his mother to put a restriction on anyone.

His father nodded. “She was…I don’t know…agitated about it, I guess would be the best way to describe it. And of course, I
made the promise just to get her to chill out. So I had that weighing on my mind as I started falling for Olivia.”

Clay stirred his coffee again. There was a lot he didn’t know about his father. “It’s good with you and Olivia, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Wonderful.”

“As good as it was with Mom?”

He watched his father’s smile grow wistful. “Different, Clay,” he said. “Just very different. But even if your mother had lived, my relationship with
her
would be different now than it was ten years ago. People grow and change and mature.”

He looked up as Gina delivered their sandwiches.

“Can I get you two anything else?” she asked, hands on her hips.

“We’re fine,” Clay said. “Thanks.”

Neither of them spoke until Gina had moved away from their table.

“I don’t know that Gina’s the one for you, though,” his father said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, for one thing, she lives in Washington State, and I don’t want you to move that far away.”

“That’s jumping the gun a bit, don’t you think?” Clay laughed.

His father nodded. He took a bite of his sandwich and swallowed it before continuing. “Something’s bothering me about her, and I’m having trouble putting my finger on it,” he said. “I just don’t understand why someone who calls herself a lighthouse historian wouldn’t have known that the Kiss River light’s been gone for ten years. Even as an amateur lighthouse aficionado, she would know that. And she didn’t know the lens had a panel missing.”

“Yes, she did.”

“Before or after I mentioned it to her?” Alec asked.

Clay knew the answer to that question, but didn’t want to feed his father’s suspicions. “I think she’s had other things on her mind,” he said, although he remained troubled by the subject himself. He could not forget her pronunciation of Fresnel. Still, he felt himself bristle at the implication. He thought of telling his father about finding the lens the day before, but he didn’t want to test his ire right then. “She’s trying to adopt a little girl from India,” he said.

His father looked understandably surprised. “To raise alone?”

Clay nodded. “She went over there to pick the little girl up, but there was a sudden crackdown on adoptions and she had to leave her there until it’s straightened out. The girl needs heart surgery or she’s going to die. So, it’s a big mess.”

“That’s terrible.” His father frowned.

“I think the whole thing with the lens is her way of keeping her attention on something else while she’s waiting. She’d go crazy, otherwise.”

“Like you,” his father said.

“What do you mean, like me?”

“You focus on your work,” his father said. “But that’s okay. Everybody has their own way of coping. I took the other tack. I wore my grief like a shroud, all the time. Do you remember? I took months off from work. I moped. I took endless pictures of the lighthouse because it reminded me of your mother. You, on the other hand, have lost yourself in your work, and even when you play, you play so hard it’s like I can see you trying to keep yourself from thinking. On the sound today, you wanted to go faster, sail farther, catch more air. But you hide your sadness well, if that’s your intention. No one would guess you’re torn up inside. Unless they really know you. And I do, Clay.”

Clay swallowed hard. He felt like a little kid, and didn’t know how to respond.

“Just tell me one thing,” his father said. “Try to be honest, okay?”

Clay nodded.

“Is it just her looks? Gina’s?”

“Not at all,” Clay said, although her looks certainly had something to do with his attraction to her. “It’s…she’s very smart, she’s kind, she’s interesting.” The words sounded weak, but they were the truth.

“Then if you truly care about her, open up to her,” his father said. “Let her know who you really are and see how she reacts to that. You’re all closed up inside. I mean, this is the first time you’ve told me anything about how you’re feeling, do you know that? You’ve always been…always kept things to yourself,” he said. “But it’s been almost impossible to get you to talk since Terri died. People care about you, Clay. They want to help you. Don’t shut them out.”