Beach Glass (23 page)

THE HAZE OF an exhausted sleep falls away too quickly the moment I open my eyes and see the tattoo of a cartoon mouse laughing at me.

Behind me, Daniel shifts as I startle awake. All the events of the past twenty-four hours come rushing back to me as though I’m in a freefall from a great height. Even though I’m safe in bed, the feeling makes me cling to Daniel, who, even in sleep, cuddles me closer.

Slowly, trying not to wake him, I shift onto my back. I can see him now, still fully dressed and on top of my comforter. He was probably cold during the night, and he still didn’t get under the covers with me, knowing that after the ordeal of what happened with my mother, I wouldn’t want to make love.

That’s a lie I’m telling myself. Not that Daniel wouldn’t be so sensitive to my feelings, but that I wouldn’t have wanted to make love with him. I did. I wanted him so much last night. I push myself up to sitting and lean against my headboard. My God, I must be in shock over nearly losing my mother. It’s the only explanation I have for telling Carson I was in love with him yesterday morning and wanting to be with Daniel, needing him more than I’ve ever needed anyone, last night.

With my movement, Daniel shifts sleepily. His long dark lashes and his calm expression make him look like an innocent child. As soon as he opens his eyes, that goes away. With one worried look at me, he sits up. Then his eyes don’t seem to know where to go. It’s so unsettling for us to be this awkward around each other. We know each other so well, but now we act like we hardly know each other.

“Any word from the hospital?” Daniel asks sensibly.

I pick up my phone from the nightstand. A text message from Bethy states that Mom is well enough to be discharged today. Nothing else, meaning no call or text from Carson.

The look on my face makes Daniel ask, “Katy, is something wrong?”

Everything. I broke up with Daniel because I thought he didn’t love me. I fell in love with Carson, and he said he never thought of anything without thinking of us. Now Daniel is here and Carson is . . . Where is he? I swallow hard. Even knowing him as little as I do, I would not be one bit surprised if I found out he was already back in Costa Rica.

“Everything’s fine,” I lie, for my sake as well as Daniel’s. “Mom’s getting out of the hospital today.”

“That’s good news,” he says.

Both of us then turn mute with unspoken, unshared thoughts. I want to take Daniel’s hand just to stop this feeling of falling so fast and so hard. I don’t, because I can’t take him down with me.

After a moment so quiet I can hear pigeons crooning to each other outside my window, Daniel mumbles, “I should go.”

I climb out of bed, following him for some unknown reason. I’m in my underwear, and as many times as I’ve been naked with Daniel, our new status of not being together makes me reach for the dress he so carefully took off me last night. I hold it in front of me as though ashamed. Daniel’s gaze flickers uncomfortably to unfortunate places, from my half-naked body to the blue box with the engagement ring in it on my desk.

But then his eyes lock with mine. He takes a step toward me, and that terrible, selfish hope that he’ll hold me in his arms again and never let go rises in me fast. He reaches up to touch my face, but his hand hovers, and his mouth is so close, but he falters away. I close my eyes to stop the tears, though I can’t, so I only hear him walk out the door.

In A BRIEF conversation with Bethy, who is bringing my mother home from the hospital with Vic, I arrange to meet them all at Mom’s apartment later this morning. I shower quickly and, while I jump into jeans and a comfy, oversized brown sweater, I call Carson.

His rich voice greets me in a recording. “Hey, I’m probably out surfing, leave a message.” He might still be sleeping or in the shower. Or he might be on a plane going to the other side of the world. I call again. No answer.

My nerves are already strung tighter than banjo wire, so I make coffee more out of habit than need. The aroma of the coffee is nowhere near as good as it was in Costa Rica, and yet the scent triggers a memory of Carson so strong it’s as though he’s standing behind me, nuzzling my neck, whispering the word
Us
to me. I call him again. I hear his smooth, deep voice, but not his recording, and not in a way I’ve ever heard it before. “I cannot believe,” he says, his voice shaking with anger, “I was such an idiot.”

“What? Carson, what are you talking about?”

“You never told me there was someone else, Kate. I believed you when you said you were single. And then that guy was in your apartment, acting like I had no right to be with you. And you told
me
to leave! I can’t believe you let me go on and on about us, and I was being so stupid the whole time!”

“Carson, Carson, stop!” I say, trying desperately to interject. “Where are you?”

“I’m with Anthea Stanhope,” he answers tartly.

When he says his ex’s name, my heart stops with jealousy it has no right to feel. “You’re where?”

“I’m with Anthea,” Carson repeats. Then he grudgingly adds, “And her husband, Winthrop, and I’m playing with their kids. I couldn’t stay at home last night because my father and I got into it the moment he came back from the office. I drove around for hours waiting for your call, thinking it would only be a little while until we were together again. Kate,” he says, now sounding more hurt than angry, “what’s going on?”

I sit down on my bed, my head in my hand, and tell him everything that happened with my mother. Appropriately horrified, he says, “God, Kate, is your mom all right?”

“She’s fine. They’re even letting her go home today.”

Carson’s sigh sounds both relieved and anguished. “Kate, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I jumped to some bad conclusions.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

“I can be to you in two hours,” he says, renewed urgency in his voice. “I’ll drive you to the city.”

“No, Carson, wait. Please, just this once, slow down. My mother’s coming home from the hospital. It’s not the right time for you to meet her.” He agrees readily and says we’ll talk later, and after reassuring goodbyes, he tells me he loves me.

With a mumbled “Me, too,” I hang up. I feel like I have about as much right to tell Carson I love him as I do to accept the engagement ring from Daniel that’s still sitting on my desk.

WHEN I GET to my mother’s apartment, Vic is unpacking bags of groceries, but a huge bouquet of red roses is taking up most of the space on the speckled grey kitchen counter. He gives me a surprisingly gentle hug for such a burly guy. “You want some coffee and breakfast?” he offers. “I can make you ham and eggs. Actually, reduced-fat ham and egg whites. I’m putting your mom on a new regime.”

“Oh, thanks, but no. My stomach’s still a little jumpy from everything that’s been going on.” I reach under the sink for a vase while Vic puts away the groceries. He doesn’t quite know where Mom puts things in her kitchen. Or maybe, I think with a smile as I trim the rose stems, he has his own way of doing things. I imagine adorable arguments when Vic and Mom move in together about which cupboard the cans of soup should go in, the kind of sweet debates I can’t wait to have with—

With someone, I think as I put the flowers in the vase. I feel Vic’s hand on my shoulder. “You okay, kid?” he asks. “I know this was rough for you.”

Normally I would say I was fine. Vic looks like the type whose kind blue eyes could see right through that. “I’m better knowing you’re with her,” I tell him, and he gives me a very fatherly hug. It feels so good. I may be thirty years old, but I’d still like to have a dad in my life.

I take the roses into my mother’s bedroom. “Oh, Katy, those are beautiful,” Mom says. She’s propped up on a bunch of pillows and wearing a pink silk robe, something uncharacteristically non-functional that a woman would wear when there’s a new man around. “I can’t take the credit,” I say, setting the vase on her bureau next to childhood photos of Bethy and me and many of Celia. “They’re from your beau.” Mom breaks into a girlish smile.

Just then, I hear Bethy’s voice behind me. “There’s my big sister,” she says, but when I turn around and take a look at her, she’s not my little sister anymore. As we enfold each other in a hug, I know it hasn’t been that long since I last saw Bethy, maybe six months? But somehow, she looks more mature. After a long, deep embrace, I hold her at arm’s length so I can look at her. She’s cut her hair sensibly short, and she has a maternal softness about her, but there’s nothing tangible that says she’s aged. I guess it’s just time, I think as I look from her to our mother and back again. Mom’s getting older, Bethy and Ray are probably trying for a second child. And here I am, the eldest daughter and big sister, seemingly stuck in time.

Vic comes in with a glass of orange juice for Mom. “I’ll leave you ladies to catch up,” he says. “I’m going back to my place to get some things so I can stay over and make sure the queen gets some rest.” He leans down and gives my mother a light kiss.

She smiles up at him and gives what graying hair he has left a little pat. Bethy and I exchange smiles and raised eyebrows of disbelief over this new, sweet version of our mother.

Bethy begins updating me on Mom’s condition, relaying information the doctor gave her this morning. I sit on the edge of Mom’s bed, picking up various bottles of medication, looking at the names, trying to understand it all as well as Bethy seems to. My mother regards me for a moment and says, “It’s fine, Katy. I’m okay. I just have to watch my stress levels, make a few changes.”

“I should have been here,” I say, my voice trembling. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to upset you. You’re supposed to be resting.”

“Katy.” My mother’s voice is stern, the same tone she used when I was a child to tell me to stop fussing, but her smooth, plush hand wraps around mine. “There’s nothing you could have done to prevent this, even if you had been here.” I quickly grab a tissue and dry my eyes, determined not to upset my mother. She smiles and pats my hand. “Were you working?”

Bethy climbs onto the bed next to Mom and makes a small, disgusted noise. “She was with Daniel, even after he gave her the worst birthday of her life.”

“No, I wasn’t,” I say.

“Were too,” Bethy insists, turning to Mom. “Her phone kept going to voicemail, and I had to call that commitment-phobic jerk to see if he knew where she was, and she was right there with him.”

“It wasn’t like that,” I say, feeling like we’re kids again, each trying to convince Mom we didn’t break the vase. “I came home with Carson, and Daniel was waiting there.”

“You came home with Carson?” Bethy asks, wide-eyed. “He’s here?”

My mother looks from Bethy to me. “Who’s Carson?”

I hesitate, looking at Mom and biting my lips, wondering if this is all too much for her. She answers my unspoken question. “Katy, I could use a distraction from medical drama.”

So I sit cross-legged at the foot of my mother’s bed and start at the beginning. I get chills as I relive the lightning-strike attraction I felt for Carson and how beautiful and charismatic and compelling he is, and that he was the reason I stayed the extra week in Costa Rica. Bethy’s eyes get even bigger when she hears that he followed me home, showing up unexpectedly a few days later. When I get to the part about Carson being the heir to the Wakefield throne, Bethy exclaims, “You’re making this up!” I raise my hand in silent oath and then sadly recall the story of returning to my apartment with Carson and finding Daniel waiting there with an engagement ring.

“Too late!” Bethy cries, clapping her hands. “Disqualified by a super-romantic publishing heir posing as a surf god!” She laughs, but my mother’s face is cautious, verging on suspicious.

“This Carson person followed you home from Costa Rica?” Mom asks. “Is he giving up his job and planning to move back here?”

“I’m not sure,” I admit. “But he says he’s in love with me and that whenever he thinks about the future, he thinks about us.”

“OMG,” Bethy sighs, her hand over her heart. “He’s almost too good to be true.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” our mother says, pulling herself up straighter on her stacked pillows.

I roll my eyes, prepared for the kind of speech I endured as a child about why I couldn’t have a puppy. “What, Mom, you think he’s after my millions? He’s the one who’s rich.”

“I’m just wondering what his intentions are,” my mother says. “You just met him a few weeks ago, and already he’s in love with you and giving up his life for you?”

My knees draw up and I wrap my arms around them protectively. “You make it sound like he’s insane for doing that.”

Mom gives me an exasperated look. “I’m not trying to say you don’t deserve that kind of love, Katy. I’m just saying it’s all happening very soon. Would you give up your life for someone you just met?”

“She almost did,” Bethy says, straightening out Mom’s pillows. “She was ready to give up writing and move to the jungles of Costa Rica for this guy. Better that than waiting around for Daniel ‘Five Years and I’m Still Not Ready’ North.”

I send a harsh look Bethy’s way. “You and Ray were together for eight years before you got married.”

“We were young, and we weren’t ready,” Bethy says.

“So maybe Daniel wasn’t ready until now,” I retort.

“Only after you broke up with him,” Bethy shoots back. “You hated Daniel for not stepping up to the plate, and now you’re defending him?”

“Girls, please,” Mom says, holding her hands up. “Do I have to give you both a time out? You’re not too old for one, apparently.”

Her admonition, however infantilizing, makes me pout, and Bethy very appropriately sticks her tongue out at me. This makes me smile in spite of myself, just as it was intended to.

Mom settles back against her pillows. “Katy, all I’m trying to say is, be careful. Your father and I had a whirlwind romance, and then one day he said he needed time to go find himself. I told him to take all the time he needed, because I wasn’t going to wait around for him.” She makes a disgusted noise. “There are passionate romances meant to be remembered forever, and then there are stable people you can settle down with.”