Slow Moon Rising (18 page)

Minutes later, I was rolling into the Cedar Key city limits and to the 2nd Street stop sign. I turned left, keeping my eyes alert for an empty parking spot between the golf carts parallel parked with the occasional car or truck. I settled for turning in on C Street and parking next to the historic Lutterloh Store.

Lutterloh's, according to what I remembered, had been established in the late 1800s, back when sleepy Cedar Key had bustled. Getting out of my car, I stared at the old double doors and the time-stamped screens over them. The wide boards of the door frame had been painted rusty red, a perfect offsetting to the peeling white paint of the long-ago abandoned building and the square board columns straining to hold the second floor balcony aboveground.

I locked the car door, though I honestly don't know why. If ever anything or anyone was safe, it was here in Cedar Key. I scooted up to 2nd, onto the only sidewalk I'd ever stepped upon that I could say “had character,” and into a local artist's shop where, if nothing else, I escaped the heat. I also bought a pair of handmade earrings but stopped short of a necklace outside my price range.

Later, I drove to Dock Street, parking across from the marina. Even though only two blocks from where I'd been earlier, it was much too far away to walk in the late summer heat. Knowing this place as well as I did, I knew warm weather would remain until sometime around Thanksgiving.
I walked the length of the street, darting in and out of shops, made several purchases (Cedar Key tees for Andre and Len, two adorable rope-chain bracelets with conch and starfish charms for Toni and Tyler, but nothing else whatsoever for myself). Upon exiting one of the shops near the fishing pier, I caught a whiff of shrimp frying somewhere close by. Coconuts Sports Bar was directly in front of me. Overhead, the Rusty Rim beckoned me forward; it had been a while, but memory told me the best coconut shrimp ever was a flight of stairs away.

I licked my lips and walked straight into Coconuts, turning left toward the stairs leading to the restaurant. I was nearly giddy with expectation as I stepped through the wooden door and into a room where small tables and chairs lined a wall of windows overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. And, beyond, Atsena Otie, one of the barrier islands. The original Cedar Key.

The room was empty save one person sitting alone—a woman with her back to me, dark hair flowing past her shoulders. From where I stood I could see she was wearing large sunglasses. Her slender fingers played with the base of a glass holding something appearing to be cold and tropical. Alcoholic.

A server standing behind the bar told me to “have a seat wherever.”

I thought to sit as far away from the one and only other patron, but as I did, she turned toward me, hooked her index finger into the nose bridge of the sunglasses, and pulled them to the tip of her nose.

Her dark, red-rimmed eyes blinked in my direction. “Heather?”

I gasped. It had been a long time. Such a long time. “Rosa,” I breathed out her name. “My goodness.”

The server came around the bar, carrying utensils wrapped tightly in a paper napkin. “You want to sit with Rosa?” she asked.

I opened my mouth to speak but was unsure of my answer. I didn't really want to be alone, but perhaps Rosa did. She was obviously upset about something; this moment might not have been the best for a reunion.

But Rosa's hand swept toward the chair on the opposite side of the table. “Please. Join me.”

“Okay,” I said.

Rosa looked at the server. “Bring me another one of these,” she said, tapping the rim of the glass. “And one for my old and dear friend Heather.”

I'd never had a sip of alcohol in my life. Growing up, I had known Mom and Dad drank occasionally. Mom more than Dad. Much more. It was our family secret, Mom drinking as much as she did. Not that she was an alcoholic or anything close to it. She just liked her cocktails at night. And at parties. “I . . . uh . . .”

“Do you want that on the rocks or frozen?” the server—DJ, her name tag read—asked me.

“Um . . .” Oh, why not, I reasoned. My whole life I'd managed to keep alcoholic beverages from my lips, but I was in Cedar Key, for heaven's sake. This was the one place Mom really let her hair down. Why shouldn't I? Why
couldn't
I? After all, I'd worked hard these past months, righting my awful wrong. What would this one hurt? “On the rocks,” I answered.

“Salt?”

“Uh . . . sure.”

DJ walked away. I looked at Rosa. “Hey,” I drawled out. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head. “I got a call today. My father passed away.”

“Your dad? I didn't even know you knew him.”

She nodded. “I looked for him not too long ago. Found him in Colorado.” She gave me a tear-filled smile. “I have half siblings too.”

“You do?”

DJ returned with our drinks. “Let me know when you're ready to order,” she said, pulling the menu from behind the napkin holder and placing it before me.

“Thank you,” I said. “Just go ahead and put in an order for a coconut shrimp basket.” I looked at Rosa, the glasses before her. The empty space on the table before that. “Do you want anything to eat?”

She shook her head no.

I didn't know much about drinking, but what I did know was that it wasn't best done on an empty stomach. I returned my attention to DJ. “Make that two baskets.”

I studied the glass in front of me for a moment. The salt around the rim looked like glitter in the sunlight. I took a sip. Felt the tart play on my tongue and the cold slip down my throat. I looked at Rosa. “I'm so sorry,” I said. “I know what it's like, losing a parent.”

Rosa pushed her half-consumed drink away and toyed with the new one. “I don't know why I'm crying, chica. I didn't really know him.”

“Because he was your father, Rosa. And fathers are special.”

“Your father, yes. My father . . . not so much.”

I took another swallow of the drink, appreciating the saltiness mixed with the sweet. “This is good,” I said finally.

Rosa shrugged. “I'm not much of a drinker. Just . . . sometimes it takes away the sting of life, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

But I didn't. With all the heartaches of my life, turning to alcohol to numb the pain had never been my way of doing things. I pouted. I cried. I stomped my feet like a three-year-old. Then, if all that failed, I turned on the charms Mother Nature and Mother Joan had given me. In the end, it was always being alluring that got me through.

But now, truth was, I'd just come face-to-face with the first thing I couldn't control with tears or feet-stomping or “being pretty.”

I just didn't know it yet.

Kimberly
March 2008

Central Florida springs bring many things. The Easter season. The start of warmer weather. Budding flowers. Hordes of tourists to the theme parks. A renewed mass exodus of swimsuit-clad beachcombers heading east to such places as Ormond by the Sea, Cocoa Beach, and Daytona. But my family—my childhood family—used to take off for Cedar Key with renewed vigor during the springtime. Now, my husband, sons, and I spend our afternoons and Saturdays on soccer fields.

Charlie, my husband, doesn't put in the time I do. He used to. There wasn't a practice or a game he'd miss. Then, about a year ago, all we heard about was how busy he was at work. How much extra time he needed to spend at his family's landscape nursery.

Any comment from me was met with a defiant, “You want nice things, don't you? You want that our sons are able to stay
in private school? That we can afford this oversized magazine cover house we live in?”

It always came back to me. To how I failed as a wife simply because I wanted my husband with us more than somewhere else.

But this evening, with its thick warm air and the occasional no-see-ums swarming up from the overgrown grass beneath the bleachers, Charlie had promised to be here.

I sat third row from the top, where I could watch for his car when it finally came in. I'd be able to see him slide out from behind the driver's seat, all six-foot-three of him. I'd see the familiar adjusting of his pants' waistband over narrow hips, the straightening of his broad shoulders. With the sun edging closer to the horizon, I'd witness its light skip across the premature silver of his hair and the casting of bronze over his skin.

Mad as I could get at the man, the very thought of his arrival motivated me to try to be a better wife. To give more of what he needed and, in turn, he'd then
want
to spend more time with me. With the boys.

I'd loved two men in my life, other than my father. What I mean to say is, I've been in love only twice in my life. I often wonder if the first time could even be considered love. I was sixteen at the time and . . . oh, who am I kidding? Puppy love, some would call it, but I was as crazy about Steven Granger as any sixteen-year-old had the ability to be. And, I'd thought, he was just as nuts about me.

We were a year apart in age; Steven was seventeen to my sixteen. His father owned a tour boat company in Cedar Key, and we—Steven and I—had practically grown up together. For years he was my “older brother” of sorts. Then,
it happened. I cannot fully recall how or when, but one day I saw him . . . quite differently. With the tick of time, he went from
some
one to
the
one.

As that summer rolled in, I'd done everything I knew how to make myself irresistible to him. The right bathing suit. The right haircut. Poring over fashion magazines for just the right “look.” And, my efforts had not been in vain. Steven had nearly stumbled over himself where I was concerned. We became “the item” that summer. I was hopelessly in love, and I thought he was too. But I was wrong.

The following year he went away to college, met a fellow student, got her pregnant, and got married. I'd never been so devastated about anything in my life. It was a heartbreak I thought I could never recover from.

And then in my junior year of college . . . I met Charlie.

We were a team, he and I. We talked and talked and talked . . . about everything. No emotion, no memory, nothing was hidden from the other. And, just when I thought any higher level of happiness could not be achieved, he proposed by putting a one-karat diamond ring in one of the hollow eggs of my Easter basket, the one Mom put at the foot of my bed until I was no longer a child in her home.

We married the following Christmas.

Our oldest son, Chase, was born in 1996, and three years later, Cody rounded out our little family.

After a couple of years of apartment living, Charlie and I purchased a Mediterranean-style home in Windermere, Florida, not far from my parents. I will be forever grateful for the close proximity of our homes during the time of my mother's illness and subsequent death.

Only months after Cody's birth.

And Charlie, God love him, was there for me the whole time. I didn't know fully whatever happened to Steven Granger, but I couldn't imagine anyone being as emotionally strong and supportive as Charlie had been. Now, he just seemed distant.

I rested my elbows on my knees and leaned forward, allowing my hands to cup each other. I tilted my engagement ring to the west and watched prisms of color escape it. Then, with Chase's team scoring another goal, I stood and cheered with the rest of the parents, siblings, and friends of the players. Watched my son, so handsome in his uniform, dance about the field and then chest-bump another player. I scanned the sidelines for Cody, who was standing with several other younger siblings, cheering as though he'd been the one to kick the ball.

As I returned to the hard metal bleacher, I turned again to see if Charlie might be pulling into the parking area of the rec department. Sure enough, his silver Acura 2008 MDX bounded in. I smiled. Breathed in, pleased. He was here. A glance at my watch told me he'd made it to see almost the entire last half of the game. Better than none at all.

I turned again to see him do exactly as I'd imagined he would. Slide out. Adjust. Walk proud.

I started to look back to the field when, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Bunni Berno walking between the parked cars, making her way toward my husband. She waved, he waved back, detouring toward her.

Bunni Berno was younger than most of the soccer moms who attended practice and games. Or perhaps she just
appeared younger. Everything on her had been sucked out or otherwise enhanced. I often wondered if anything about her was real. Her hair was bleached blonde, her teeth were capped, her skin was the finest golden brown a tanning bed could give, her nails were acrylic, and her body was either plumped up with silicone or as firm as a sixteen-year-old football player's.

I watched her from behind, tight jeans curving around her hips just so. The wide leather belt that made her waist seem only that much tinier. The clinging white cami.

I narrowed my eyes and pulled my sunglasses from my face just in time to watch them come together. To see her fingers splay along his abs to his sides. He seemed to glance up as though to ascertain his surroundings, then look back to her upturned face where he planted a kiss on her lips. It was brief, but it was unmistakable. And when it was over, her hands remained where they'd begun.

On my husband.

It was happening again. A year before I'd suspected his late hours at the office were nothing more than time spent hanging out where he didn't belong. He admitted he'd been with some of his employees from work, just having a beer with the boys. I wanted to believe him. I did. And I had nothing to weigh my suspicions on, but now . . . with this. And with Bunni, no less.

My only hope was none of the other moms were watching.

“I know what I saw.”

“You don't know anything, Kim. You're imagining things
just like you did last year.” Charlie pulled his belt from the loops of his pants and tossed it on our bed. Kicked off his leather boat shoes.

I pulled the belt from atop the comforter and walked it to Charlie's closet, where I hung it on a hook. I returned to our bedroom, jaw aching from being locked so long, in time to watch my husband pull his polo over his head and throw it to the same place the belt had been. I stooped to pick up the shoes, muttering.

“What?” he said.

I straightened. “Keep your voice down, Charlie Tucker. I do
not
want the boys to hear us arguing.”

He jutted his face to inches from mine. “And just how do you think they could do that, Kim? They're downstairs and we're upstairs. There's approximately thirty-five-hundred square feet between us and them.”

I snatched the shirt from the bed. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“What did you say? A minute ago? What did your smart mouth say?”

I walked away from him. Put the shoes on the shoe rack in his closet and the shirt into the dirty clothes basket before returning, again, to see him stepping out of his pants. He threw them toward me. I fumbled but recovered.

“Nice,” I said.

“May as well. You're going to pick them up anyway, Miss Perfect.”

I started to drop the pants to the floor, thought better of it, and instead put them in the same hamper as the shirt. I came back to the bedroom to see that Charlie had pulled his
dorm pajama pants out of a dresser drawer and was slinging them over his forearm.

“You know what, Charlie? You are
not
going to make this about me. And, for once, you are not going to bully me into anything. I. Know. What. I. Saw. And with Bunni?
Bunni?
The tart of Windermere?”

Anger flashed across his face; for a moment I felt fearful. I'd not seen Charlie angry too many times in our years together but enough to know I didn't want to be on the wrong end of his fury. “That's real Christian of you, Kimberly. That kind of talk should get you nominated for sainthood.”

I shoved my arms together. “Charlie, do not do this. I'm not kidding. I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry I said that. But everyone knows about Bunni. Everyone knows what kind of person she is.”

“Maybe you don't know
everything
. Ever stop to think of that?”

I sat on the corner of the bed, crossed my legs. “All right then, Mr. Know-it-all. I'm all ears. Tell me what I don't know.”

Charlie walked away from me, toward our bathroom. “I'm going to take a shower. Get the boys to bed, will you? I'm in no mood for any of this right now.”

An hour later I returned to the dark bedroom I shared with my husband. The light spilling in from the hall revealed a lump under the covers. Hopefully, Charlie was as much asleep as our boys; I wanted no more than to undress, get into my nightgown, and ease into my side of the king-size bed. Back turned to Charlie, I'd fight for every second of sleep I'd get.

I left the door open so I could see without switching on a lamp. I went into my closet, the twin walk-in of Charlie's, undressed, slipped my gown over my body, and then made a silent entry into the bathroom to wash my face, brush my teeth, and apply the natural night cream Anise insisted I try. So far, I was impressed.

I ran a large-toothed comb through the straight blonde hair that fell past my shoulders as it had since I was a teenager. In fact, I surmised while looking at my mirrored reflection, little about me had changed since college. In high school I'd worn my hair longer, but in college I'd had it cut by several inches. Even having had two children, my body had changed little. Maybe five extra pounds, but I needed every one of them. I'd always been slender. Tall and not overly curvaceous.

I turned to the side, keeping my eyes fixed on my body. I jutted my chest out, pulled the nightgown tight with my fists at my sides. My shoulders slumped. There were thirteen-year-old girls out there with more than I had to offer. No wonder Charlie had succumbed to Bunni Berno with her 38Ds.