Summer Light: A Novel (5 page)

May laughed nervously. He sounded serious, but she knew he had to be kidding.

“I wish you would,” he said.

“My party dress needs ironing,” she joked. “And my daughter’s fast asleep.”

“How is Kylie?”

“She’s great.”

May heard someone call Martin’s name as he quickly covered the phone. Bits of muffled conversation came through, something about a limousine, some friends, a restaurant near East Twentieth Street.

“You have to go,” she said when he came back.

“They’re waiting for me,” he said.

“Okay.” Her heart was pounding.

“Did you ever feel that something was meant to be?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“I can’t explain it,” he said. “Ever since I saw you on the plane…”

“You mean after the crash, when you came back to help us?”

“No, before that,” he said. “When I turned around and saw you sitting there. I knew I had to talk to you, but I just didn’t know why.”

“A mystery.” May tried to laugh.

“For now,” he said. “I know you said you’re busy, but will you have dinner with me tomorrow night? I’ll be back in Boston, I can jump on ninety-five and be there by seven.”

“Okay,” she agreed, prodded on by a vision of Tobin. “I will.”

When May hung up, she found that her hands were shaking. She started to call Tobin, to tell her about the conversation and to joke that Martin Cartier remained the NHL’s most eligible bachelor, with dinner invitations and romantic talk about how things were meant to be. But instead May just sat very still in her bed, listening to night birds and locusts in the meadow, wondering how anyone could ever know what was meant to be, whether it was possible to find out.

Twilight the next night was cool and peaceful, and the music of a thousand tree frogs filled the air. The sky was lavender with several stars already showing. Kylie sat on the top rail of the old fence, watching for Martin’s car. Mommy had told her he was coming, but she wouldn’t believe till she saw him with her own eyes. Overhead, a plane flying high above left a white trail like a magic chalk mark. Kylie followed it with her eyes, watching it pass, knowing that her great inspiration had happened in the air.

Now she heard a car engine. Coming fast from the main road, it sounded loud and powerful. Breaking out of the trees into the field, the car sped along the lane and stopped short in front of Kylie. Balancing on the rail, she leaned down to look into Martin’s face. The car was a black convertible, very small, and Martin was alone in it.

“Hello,” Martin greeted her. “It’s the young lady who spoke to me on the plane.”

“I asked you to help and you helped,” Kylie said. “Are you coming to pick up my mother?”

“Yes. Am I near your house?”

“It’s over there.” Kylie pointed toward the hollow across the meadow. “If you give me a ride, I’ll show you.”

“
Bien sûr
. Hop in.” Martin reached across the seat to open the passenger side door. As Kylie scrambled in, she felt her heart beating very fast. She had to say the right things, to make everything happen the way it was supposed to.

“My mother looks pretty tonight,” Kylie said.

“Yes, I imagine she does,” he replied.

Sometimes Kylie saw things other people didn’t. At night, she swore she saw her great-grandmother walking through the house, lighting her way with a candle. She saw the winged ghost of her puppy Tally, who had been hit by a car. On the plane she had seen an angel, and sometimes she sensed the spirits of children who had died. But mostly she saw quiet things, signs that were visible to everyone.

Like an expression deep in a person’s eyes, or the hint of a smile behind someone’s mouth, or a wish shimmering in the air just above the person’s head. For a long time, Kylie had seen a wish floating around Mommy, and the strange thing was, she saw the same wish glowing like a halo around Martin. It had to do with loneliness, with finding someone. Kylie felt it herself.

“Do you believe in evil spirits and good angels?” she asked, testing him.

“Well, I’m not sure….” he said.

“Because they’re everywhere.”

“In stories, you mean?”

“No,” Kylie said. “In real life.”

He laughed as if he understood. “Maybe I do. I meet evil spirits on the ice,” he said. “My opponents on the other team.”

She nodded. Although she didn’t know what “opponents” meant, she felt satisfied. There was good and bad in the world, and for the job Kylie had in mind for Martin, she wanted someone who knew wicked and wonderful when he saw it.

“I like your car. It’s like a spymobile in the movies,” she said.

“It’s a Porsche,” he told her.

“Yes,” Kylie said, feeling the wind blow her hair out behind her. She had never been in a car with the top down before, and she had to agree: It was a lot like a porch. Like sitting out under the stars with her mother and Aunt Enid, the crickets singing in the tall grasses, the stars coming out above. “I like your porch,” she said.

“I’m glad,” he said with a wide smile.

“My mother’s prettier than any bride,” she said.

He glanced over, but he didn’t say anything.

“Any bride that ever was,” Kylie said.

The restaurant was dim and romantic, halfway down a country road behind the old stone abbey. Salt breezes blew though the open windows, the warm night air enveloping them like a silken shawl. No one seemed to recognize Martin. Perhaps it was because they were so far from Boston, or perhaps it was the type of place he had chosen—too quaint and old-fashioned to be frequented by serious hockey fans. He had found it listed in a guide of shoreline restaurants.

They ate filet of sole with tiny spring peas and white truffle pasta, and they drank water instead of wine because Martin was in training. They seemed nervous together, and neither had yet mentioned last night’s phone call. May told herself he’d been kidding, that his words hadn’t meant anything. This was just a first or maybe only date, nothing at all extraordinary.

But her body was saying otherwise: her heart was racing, and her cheeks felt hot. Her hands wouldn’t stay still, and every time she looked into Martin’s eyes, she had butterflies in her stomach.

“I’m glad you were free tonight,” he said.

“So am I,” she said. “Did you have a good time last night?”

“Maybe a little too good.” He sounded embarrassed. “The team went out to celebrate.”

“Sounds fun,” she said.

They told each other the basic facts of their lives: that May was single and Martin’s marriage had been annulled, that she lived in Black Hall and he had a town house in Boston, that she planned weddings and he had played hockey since he was a child.

“Did you grow up on that farm?” he asked.

“Yes and no,” she said. “Yes, I grew up there, but it was never a farm. My grandmother built the barn to house her business—she was a wedding planner. One of the first, she always said. She considered herself an artist, and I guess I do, too. She always said it takes creativity to plan the perfect weddings, even more to make a marriage last.”

“So, you’re wedding-planning artists?”

“She said so. And Black Hall
is
home to lots of artists.”

“Why would you need a barn for that profession?” he asked. “A store, I can imagine. Or an office.”

She smiled, sipping ice water. “You think we just help people pick out dresses.”

“No, I don’t know,” he said. Then he smiled, as if she’d caught him. “Yes, I guess I do. Pick out dresses, the cake, things like that. But I suppose that’s like thinking hockey’s just a game.”

“It isn’t?” she asked innocently.

He shook his head, ready to explain, then saw she was kidding him. She liked the feeling of teasing each other, as if they were talking around their real reason for having dinner together. It felt half like a game, half like a mystery they weren’t ready to solve yet.

“Tell me about the barn,” he said.

“We grow our own herbs,” May said. “Our own roses.”

“I know.”

“That’s why we’re having dinner tonight, isn’t it?” she asked, laughing. “Because my roses brought you luck, and you want me to give you more.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe that’s why. But keep talking. Tell me more.”

May told him about making beeswax candles from the bees they raised, about drying herbs and making sachets and perfumed oils, about supplying the brides with homemade products for love and luck, how she still had her grandmother’s tattered book of potions and recipes.

“We like the big space for designing ceremonies, rehearsing processions, trying on gowns. My mother collected old gowns, and once a year we hang them from the rafters, every one—” May loved the tradition; it was one of her favorites. She could tell Martin was really listening, hanging on every word, and she suddenly felt embarrassed.

“Do you like barns?” she asked.

“Yes. I grew up on a farm in Canada, and we had plenty of barns. My grandfather flooded one once, and we had the first indoor rink in my part of the province. So we both had innovative grandparents….”

“You lived with your grandfather?”

“My mother, and my father’s parents, yes. After my father left.”

“He left?”

“To play pro hockey,” Martin said. “He was a great player. A great role model for me, when all I wanted to do…He taught me to skate before I could walk. But that was a long time ago.”

“He’s still alive?”

“Yeah, but we don’t speak. Never mind about him. What about you? You lived with your grandmother?”

“Yes,” May said. “My parents died when I was twelve. A truck hit their car. Moving so fast they never saw it coming. At least, that’s what my grandmother told me, what I’ve always wanted to think…”

“Things happen fast.” Martin covered her hand with his when he saw the tears in her eyes. His own face was filled with emotion, as if all his features were connected straight to his heart: his eyes, his mouth, his jaw.

“They missed out on seeing a great girl grow up,” Martin said, holding her hand.

“Thank you. That’s what my friend always says.”

“Your friend?”

“Tobin Chadwick. We were inseparable then, and she’s still my best friend. She knew my parents well; I can’t explain why that means so much to me.”

“You don’t have to. I have a friend like that—Ray Gardner. He’s like my brother, always has been. He knows the whole story, inside and out. I don’t even have to talk—he just knows. We’re teammates now.”

May touched her glass of water, felt the icy drops with her hand. She saw the shadow pass across his eyes, the darkness she had seen that first time.

“I lost my daughter, just as you lost your father,” he said. “I have many regrets myself.”

“You can tell me.” May was watching his eyes.

“I have the feeling I can.”

May waited.

“Some things are meant to be,” he said steadily, using the words he’d said on the phone last night.

Her hands were trembling, and she didn’t reply.

“There was a connection I can’t explain,” he said. “I looked back and saw you. And then your daughter came over, spoke to me. She knew about Natalie.”