Return to the Beach House (29 page)

The sound of the sliding-glass door softly opening roused Matthew. Lindsey was back. He climbed out of bed and into his new bathrobe, knowing if he didn’t beat her to the kitchen he’d have to drink her coffee. That was a torture he’d rather not endure.

But instead of heading for the kitchen, Lindsey had gone for her computer. She looked up and smiled when she saw him. As he came closer she reached out with a hand rosy red from the cold. “Good morning.”

He gave her a kiss. Her face was slick and salty with moisture, and her hair dripped water onto her sweater. He glanced at her backpack and rain jacket and shoes sitting on the throw rug by the door. They were soaked too. “I’ll make the coffee while you get into something dry.”

She smiled. “Two for one. You get to nurture me and protect your coffee sensibilities at the same time.”

He put his hand over his heart. “I’m wounded.”

“And I’m freezing,” she acknowledged.

“Take a shower and I’ll build a fire. I bought you a present. It’s hanging in the closet.”

She put her laptop on the dining room table and shrugged out of her sweater, shivering when her bare flesh hit the cold air. “Let me guess—a robe.”

“How did you know?”

“You’re kidding, right? You’ve been trying to domesticate me for years now. How much more domestic can you get than matching bathrobes?”

“Not exactly matching—” He brought her into his arms and gave her a longer kiss, one he hoped would provide a different kind of warmth. Again, he was startled at how easily he could count her ribs.

She responded with an intensity that told him he’d stumbled into another of her emotional storms. They were as mysterious and unpredictable as a summer cloud that moved innocently across the sky until it dropped a fierce funnel to consume everything in its path.

Usually, Matthew just held on for the ride. This time he took her head between his hands and stared deeply into her eyes. “Talk to me,” he insisted. Even as she’d opened her heart and told him about Sittina, he’d sensed there was more she was holding back.

“Make love to me,” she answered.

“First tell me what’s got you hanging on by your fingertips.”

The playfulness left her eyes. “I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“This is one of those times when it’s the same thing.” She pulled free and headed toward the bedroom, then turned back, hugging herself against the cold. “Why did you start this when what you really wanted was to interrogate me?”

Her fierce response told him more than her words. She was hiding something. “Cut the offense crap, Lindsey. Despite its reputation, it really isn’t the best defense. Remember, I’m the one who knows how you operate.”

“You don’t know as much as you think you do.”

“Oh? Then tell me where I went wrong.”

“You think I’m—” Instantly, she was crying again. She wiped the offending tears with her fingers as if they were scalding her cheeks. “You look stupid in that bathrobe.”

He stared at her. “No, I don’t.”

This time she sobbed. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For everything.”

“That covers a lot of territory.” He went to her and lifted her arms to put them around his neck. He’d seen her in pain, but nothing like this. A clamped jaw, yes. A seemingly unending well of tears, never. Even if it was impossible to go back to what they’d once had, he couldn’t let this be the period at the end of their life story. “Are you talking sorry for the time you shipped my new camera to South Africa instead of South Dakota, or for the time you used ketchup instead of tomato sauce when you made spaghetti?”

The smile she gave him was achingly sad. “I thought you forgave me for the camera thing.”

“I did. It’s the spaghetti I’m still working on.”

She buried her face in his neck. “I can’t tell you. Not now. Maybe never.”

“Okay,” he said softly. “I’ll let it go—until you’re ready.” He had to give her more. “But first you have to apologize for that crack about my new robe.”

She wrapped her arms tighter around his neck. “I love you,” she whispered. “You are my everything.”

He had it on the tip of his tongue to say something about corny song titles when it struck him that there was nothing corny about what she’d said.

Chapter 4

Matthew listened for the water to stop in the shower before he fixed their coffee. He was in the middle of adding the repulsive hazelnut flavoring Lindsey had adopted after talking him out of his cream and sugar when he caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to see her standing with her arms outstretched.

“Pink?” she questioned. “As long as you’ve known me, have you ever seen me wear anything pink? And who did you think you were buying this for? A Macy’s Christmas balloon?”

“Okay, so it’s a little big.”

“And the color?”

“It’s you, babe. As a matter of fact, now that I’ve actually seen it on you, I think you should consider switching everything over, including your flak jacket.”

“What were you thinking?”

“That I only had twenty dollars in my wallet and this was the one on sale?”

“I don’t believe you. You did this on purpose. You’ve always secretly wanted a woman who would snuggle up to you in pink chenille after you brought home the bacon.”

“Not true—at least not since I became a vegetarian.”

The playful look disappeared. “You
what?
When did that happen?”

“The last time I was offered snake stewed with fish heads. I’d been leaning that way for a long time, and I finally reached the point where I decided it would be a lot easier to just commit. This way I can stop making excuses for filling up on beans and rice when I’m offered giraffe.”

“What about when you’re home?”

“I thought about doing that, but then—” He shrugged. “I feel better not thinking about it. It’s easier all the way around.”

“I’m not in the same place on this, Matthew. I don’t know if I ever will be.”

“I’m not asking.”

“I know. It’s just that I don’t want to feel guilty chomping down on a hamburger while you’re munching on sprouts.”

He laughed. “I hate sprouts.”

“You haven’t stopped drinking coffee, have you? Please promise me that’s not going to happen. Or at least promise me that if you do, you won’t stop making it for me.” She reached for the cup he offered and took a sip. “I’m in heaven.”

“Coffee’s still on the list. As long as it’s fair trade.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s only been nine months since we saw each other. Why no mention of any of this vegetarian stuff in your texts or emails?”

He could have pointed out that he’d been moving in this direction a lot longer than nine months, but she’d been too consumed in the world she occupied when they were apart to pay attention to something as mundane as his eating habits. Catching up on things they no longer shared was a conversation for another time. Instead, he nodded toward her camera and asked, “Did you get anything this morning?”

“I hope so.”

“Want to show me?”

“Yeah—as a matter of fact, I’d like your opinion on something.”

Although he knew dozens of photographers, Lindsey was the only person he went to for criticism. It was the same with her. They both dealt with editors who judged their work in the context of the story they were working on, and luckily, they’d both had several who were the best in the field. But Matthew had never gone to any of them with his personal work, and Lindsey had never shared the pictures she took for herself with anyone but Matthew.

She rolled up the too-long sleeves on her bathrobe and pulled the belt tighter around her waist before she opened her laptop and turned it on. With the memory card in the card reader, she sat on the sofa, angling to give Matthew room to sit beside her. In the time it took to download the pictures, he added another log to the fire.

She put her hand possessively on his thigh when he sat down. He liked it when she showed this kind of natural and easy communication, and he hungered for it more often than he had in their early years, when being apart was an exciting novelty. This easy intimacy was the way his parents interacted. They saw each other every day, but it seemed they were as excited when they were together as he and Lindsey were when they saw each other after months apart.

Lindsey clicked on the first picture, the one that out of habit she always took to check exposure and settings and to be sure the camera was operating the way it should. She moved to the second picture, stared at it for several seconds, and then wordlessly turned the screen toward Matthew.

What he saw was a mist-shrouded child, no more than four, her arms flung wide, her face glowing with unmitigated delight. “She’s beautiful,” he said, struggling for a better word. “What was she doing out there?”

“Gathering seashells to surprise her parents.”

“Where were they?”

“I’m assuming they were still asleep.”

“She was there alone?”

“Her grandparents were with her.” Lindsey turned the laptop back to search the picture more closely. She frowned and clicked on the next picture. And then the next. “They were right here,” she said. “They were right beside her the whole time.” She enlarged the picture and looked for aberrant pixels. “She talked to them. She gave her grandmother the shells to hold.”

Matthew took the laptop and made some adjustments to bring out details hidden by the fog. “There’s nothing here, Lindsey. Not even a shadow.”

She ran her hands through her wet hair. “I saw them, Matthew. I can describe them down to the kind of shoes they were wearing.”

He went through the remaining pictures, carefully searching the hundreds of images. What he saw was a child filled with the pure, raw joy that comes with the innocence of not knowing how bad the world can be and believing love doesn’t have to be earned, it just is. “Is this them?”

Lindsey glanced at the screen. She shook her head. “That’s her parents.”

“Did they talk to the old couple?”

She considered his question. “No . . . they were gone by the time Abbey told her parents about them.” She started to get up. Matthew tugged on her sleeve and brought her back down.

“Look at this.” He scrolled through the images until he found the one he was looking for, then pointed to the girl. “She’s definitely talking to someone.”

Lindsey stared at the screen and then scrolled further back. “Here,” she pointed. She skipped to another picture. “And here. She’s plainly listening, Matthew. And she’s laughing in this one.”

“Maybe she’s one of those kids who have imaginary friends.”

“And where does that leave me? Remember, I saw them too.” She enlarged another picture and studied it. “Look at this one—her hand’s outstretched. She’s giving something to someone.” She enlarged the picture further. “It’s a shell.”

Lindsey flipped back and forth between the picture of Abbey holding her hand out and the ones that came before and after. She’d been shooting on burst, and yet she hadn’t captured the actual handoff. In one frame Abbey was holding something, in the next she wasn’t. Lindsey enlarged the picture even further, looking to see if the shell was sitting on the sand. It wasn’t—at least not that she could see. Lindsey turned to look at Matthew. “What’s going on?”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

“Mutual hallucinations?”

“More likely ghosts,” he said jokingly.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said, staring at the screen.

“You have a better explanation?”

Before she could answer, her cell phone rang. She handed Matthew the laptop and headed for the kitchen, where she’d plugged in her phone the night before. She hadn’t even tried to hide what she was doing. Matthew had known there was no way the gesture of handing over her phone at the airport was anything but a way to say how sorry she was for all that had gone before. “It’s me,” she said in lieu of hello.

“No, I haven’t been watching CNN, David. We don’t have a television here. Just tell me what’s going on.”

Matthew closed the laptop and put it aside. Calls from David were never good news.

“Shit.” The word was more an expression of pain than profanity. “When?”

The silences were followed by rapid-fire questions until finally there was a silence longer than the others. “I can’t,” she said, her voice dropping low. “I mean it, David—I can’t.” This was followed by, “All right, then, I won’t. You’re going to have to find someone else this time.”

Matthew opened a cupboard door on the wall opposite the fireplace, touched a button, and stood back while a large-screen television came forward and angled itself toward a pair of recliners. He hadn’t been hiding the fact that there was a television at the beach house, he just hadn’t gotten around to telling Lindsey.

He glanced at the cable lineup and tuned in to CNN. Familiar faces filled the screen behind the reporter, one was a writer Lindsey had worked with in Afghanistan and another was a photographer she’d shadowed when she had her first assignment in Iraq. The third face that scrolled across the screen was a young Arab journalist Matthew didn’t recognize, and the fourth hit him with the force of a physical blow. Ekaterina Bradford was the wife of Matthew’s best friend, Zach. She was an award-winning photographer who specialized in human-interest stories, not battlegrounds. What in the hell was she doing in Syria? He turned up the sound.