Swans Landing #1 - Surfacing (13 page)

“So work is good,” Lake said.

“Nice,” I said.

“Yeah. Better catch this year than last.”

This was getting ridiculous. Wasn’t there anything we had to say to each other aside from mindless small talk?

Just when the silence had started to get to me, our food finally arrived. Josh appeared with two plates full of steaming lasagna, cheese melting all over. As he sat one plate in front of me, he leaned down, his head only inches above mine. I looked up—I couldn’t help it—and he looked back at me.

His face was blank, stony even, but his eyes showed warmth. I broke our gaze, unable to hold it any longer because of the flush creeping up my skin, and looked down at my plate.

“Thanks,” I said in almost a whisper.

“Do you need anything else?” Josh asked as he set Lake’s plate on the table.

Lake shook his head. “No, thank you, Josh. Excellent service, as always.”

Josh pressed his lips together, but he nodded and then left.

The lasagna was delicious. The cheeses melted in my mouth and the marinara sauce was perfectly seasoned.

“It’s good, right?” Lake asked, beaming at me over his plate. “I knew you’d like it. It’s one of the best dishes on the entire island.”

I twisted a long string of cheese around my fork, trying to block out his voice.

“No one can resist The Sand Dollar’s lasagna,” he went on. “I’m glad you decided to get it. I
knew
you’d love it—”

“You don’t know anything about me,” I said, unable to hold back any longer.

Lake’s fork paused halfway to his mouth. “What?”

“You couldn’t have known that I would like this or anything else because you don’t know me,” I told him.

Lake put his fork down and tilted his head slightly to one side. “Okay,” he relented. “You’re right. But I thought you might like it because everyone else does.”

“I’m not
everyone.
I’m your daughter, the one you don’t know at all.”

I glared at him, waiting for him to make excuses or apologies. But he didn’t. He sat there, looking back at me with an expression I couldn’t decipher.

A laugh bubbled out of me. “You know, I never thought about it before I came here, but I realize now that Mom’s refusal to talk about you wasn’t because she hated you. It was because she loved you. Even until she died, she still loved you. But I sit here with you and you
never
mention her. I look at your house and you have no photos of her. And so I can’t help but wonder did you
ever
really love Mom? Or was she merely something to occupy your time for a little while? Something you could easily toss aside when you were done?”

“Don’t tell me that I didn’t love your mama,” he said in a husky voice.

“Then why didn’t you ever come after her?”
I asked.
“Why didn’t you ever once come to Tennessee to see how we were or called to see if we were even alive?”

Hot tears trickled down my cheeks. Across the table, Lake’
s
Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

“Mara, there are things you don’t know, things you don’t understand yet—”

“Then tell me,” I said.

Lake’s shoulders slumped. “It’s not that simple. It’s not something I can just say.”

“Because you don’t want to,” I accused him. “You’ve never wanted either of us. That’s why it was so easy for you to let us go.”

My chair fell backward, landing on the carpeted floor with a thump as I stood. I tossed my napkin down on the floor and left the steaming lasagna uneaten.

The cold of the early evening stung my eyes and I blinked away tears. I huddled down inside my coat, wrapping my arms tight around my body. It took several minutes before I realized that when I left the restaurant, I turned the wrong away and had been walking away from Lake’s house.

It was funny how I still said “Lake’s house” even though it was now my house too. All of my belongings now filled the loft bedroom. For all intents and purposes I did live there.

But it didn’t feel like home. And Lake didn’t feel like my father. The knight in shining armor I used to imagine was really a pathetic guy with long hair who smelled like fish and lived alone, playing with seashells all day.

The sound of footsteps crunching on the sand and gravel behind me grew close. I walked faster, hoping he’d get the point.

“Leave me alone,” I said. “You’re good at that.”

The footsteps paused, but didn’t retreat.

Oh,
now
he wanted to come after me? Now when I didn’t need or want him? I had wished for him to come after us my entire life. Now was too little, too late. I had long ago given up needing a father.

I whirled around, my fists clenched and words ready to erupt from the tip of my tongue.

But I jumped back, startled. Josh stood in front of me, his hoodie pulled on over his waiter uniform. The light rain left a layer of mist over his dark hair.

“I thought you were Lake,” I said.

“Obviously.”

“What are you doing here?”

He shrugged.

We stood there looking at each other as a couple of cars drove slowly by, sending up a fine spray of water around our ankles. The shrill call of a seagull in the distance shattered the silence.

“Are you expecting a tip or something?” I asked.

The corners of his lips twitched into a small smile. “No, although you have to admit that this is great customer service.” He ran a hand over his hair, shaking off the mist and letting out a long, frosty breath. “I saw you run out of there and you looked upset. Your dad wasn’t coming after you, so I thought maybe someone should.”

Any happiness I could have felt at Josh coming to check on me was buried by the thought of Lake sitting there at the table, alone. He never cared enough to follow me.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I had to get out of there.”

Josh nodded. “I know.”

I hugged my arms tighter around myself and walked past him, back toward Lake’s house. Josh fell into step next to me, his hands buried in his pockets.

“Shouldn’t you be getting back to work?” I asked.

“Because there’s such a starving crowd right now?” Josh asked.

We walked in silence, just the sound of our shoes crunching on the sand and rocks below us.

“I didn’t know you worked there,” I said at last.

“If you did, would you have gone somewhere else to eat?”

I sneaked a glance at him from the corner of my eye. He stared straight ahead as we walked, our sleeves only inches from brushing against each other.

“No,” I answered.

We never spent any time together outside of Pirate’s Cove, other than passing in the hall at school. It was different out here away from our hidden world, where we had to face the realities of our lives.

We didn’t speak again throughout the rest of the walk to Lake’s house. The Jeep was still gone when we got there. Maybe Lake was still at the restaurant, waiting for me to come back. He would be waiting forever. This was one time I would not come to him.

“I should get back to the restaurant,” Josh said when I started up the steps toward the house.

I paused and looked back at him. He stood at the end of the dilapidated wooden stairs, his hands buried in his pockets, and his face turned up toward me, almost as if he was waiting.

My feet seemed to move on their own, back down the steps. Overhead, gray clouds swirled in dizzying patterns, letting loose a harder, colder rain that quickly soaked me through. I stopped on the bottom step so that we stood eye to eye. He was close enough I could feel the warmth of his breath on my cheek. Raindrops trickled down his face, collecting at his chin before dripping onto his feet.

“Mara,” he said in a low, shaky voice.

I shivered slightly as his hands reached for me, clasping around my arms and pulling me toward him. My ears filled with a roar like the ocean. I closed my eyes, waiting to feel his lips on mine.

But the kiss never came. He jerked backward, letting go of me and putting distance between us.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. My lips tingled from the almost-kiss, telling me to reach out and pull him close, and my teeth chattered together in the chilling rain.

“I have to go,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. His lips looked dry and cracked despite the rain that fell on them.

“Josh,” I said.

But he turned and didn’t look back at me. He walked quickly across the yard, leaving me to watch him disappear down the street.

Chapter Fourteen

“Well, hello there, sugar,” Miss Gale greeted me as I slid into the starfish-painted bar stool at Moody’s Variety Store. “Come back for another one of my famous peach milkshakes?”

I was relieved to see she was working today. I had almost left when I walked into the Variety Store only moments ago. Two men and a woman had stood near the register, chatting with Jim, the old man at the front counter. They all stared at me when I walked in, their conversation forgotten. The men leaned against the counter, slowly chewing a wad of tobacco stuffed in their cheeks, while the woman shifted a bag of flour from one arm to the other.

Their accusing eyes had followed as I squeezed past them, trying to disappear into the maze of duct tape and MoonPies. I didn’t let out my breath until I’d reached Miss Gale’s counter and heard the tinkle of the bell on the door as the other customers left.

“No, thanks. I’ll have a Coke instead.”

Miss Gale shook her head, letting her long white braid fall over her shoulder. “You got to have more than that to put some meat on your little bones. I insist on it.”

I’d never exactly been a skinny girl—one thing I had inherited from my mom was an ample set of hips—but Miss Gale’s hips were bigger and so in her mind I must have been a bit scrawny.

“I just fixed a banana pudding this morning,” she said. “You can have a bowl of that.”

Once Miss Gale had slid the gooey concoction of bananas, cookies, and pudding toward me, she said, “So what are you up to today? Making everyone talk about you again?”

My eyebrows shot upward. “Who’s been talking about me?”

Miss Gale leaned over the counter, stretching her sun-spotted and wrinkled arms across the battered wood. “My granddaughter for one. Since you arrived, I ain’t heard the end of her ranting.”

I rolled my eyes as I licked a bit of meringue off my finger. “Figures. She never thanked me for helping her out with those kids at school, not that I expected her to.”

Now Miss Gale’s eyebrows rose, deepening the lines along her forehead. “What happened at school?”

“Sailor didn’t tell you?” I had assumed Sailor and her grandmother were close enough to talk about anything, much like I used to be with my mom. “Elizabeth Connors seems to really have it in for Sailor. Or maybe Sailor has it in for her, I can’t really tell.”

Miss Gale nodded slightly. “What was it this time?”

“I don’t understand what it was all about,” I admitted, stirring the softened bananas and cookies around with my spoon. “We were in the library doing research and Elizabeth started harassing Sailor. Stupid stuff that doesn’t make any sense, like does she cry when people eat fish?” Sailor ate meat during lunch in the cafeteria, so I knew she wasn’t a vegetarian.

Miss Gale pressed her lips together as she wiped the countertop with a damp cloth. “Uh-huh,” she said. Her movements were tight and controlled and her bright eyes had darkened a little. She didn’t look as smiling and sparkling as she had moments ago. “And what did Sailor do?”

“That’s just it. She sat there and took it. She said a few words back, but nothing that would make Elizabeth back off. I don’t get it. You know she threw a basketball at Elizabeth in gym class to stop her from going after me? Why wouldn’t Sailor fight back against her this time?”

One side of Miss Gale’s lips curled into a half-smile. “Sailor has put up with a lot from that little Miss Connors. Sometimes she gets tired of fighting back.”

I swallowed a sip of Coke and then replaced my glass on the counter. “So what’s the story with them? Why is Elizabeth saying those things to her?”

But Miss Gale didn’t answer my question. Instead, she wiped the countertop again with her washcloth, sweeping away a few crumbs. “How do you like Swans Landing so far?”

I let out a long sigh. “Is that a hint to drop the current subject?”

“Maybe,” Miss Gale said, her eyes twinkling a little. “Or maybe I really am concerned.”

“Everything’s fine,” I said, clenching my teeth together. For a year now, people had asked how I was doing and if I was okay. Sometimes it was out of genuine concern, but sometimes it was because they couldn’t think of anything else to say. Sometimes it was only asked to fill the uncomfortable silences and make themselves feel good, as if they’d done their good deed for the day by spending two seconds showing concern for the girl with the dying mom.