your fiancé’s?”
“Okay.” I held up my palms in surrender. “If you don’t want me here, just say so.”
“No, you’re more than welcome. Can I do anything?”
“I’d love a drink.” I pushed him back with my hands, then gave his left biceps the deserved pinch from the front-door conversation.
He jumped back. “Kara Larson, you are so lucky I’m your brother.”
And as his footsteps echoed down the hallway, I whispered, “Yes, I am.”
I threw my suitcase on the guest bed pushed up against the wall, which doubled as a couch in Brian’s half-used art studio. I touched the edges of a just-begun long-abandoned painting of sea oats. Were any of us Larson children listening to the hints of our heart, or were we all hiding our desire in the back corner room?
I sighed and walked out onto the porch. The dark creek spread before Brian’s porch like the silver-edged infinity I’d imagined my mama had slipped into all those years ago. The moon hid behind the house. I took a deep breath and settled into the rocking chair.
“Well,” I said to my brother, imitating my dad’s voice, “I just don’t understand why you would live in such a place.”
“I know, it’s a dump.” Brian sat down next to me, handed me a glass of scotch and ice.
“You are so lucky.” I took a long swallow of the drink, let my head cloud over with its warmth. I wanted the questions to take on a fuzzy edge.
“I am lucky,” Brian said, “and so are you. So tell me why you’re here.”
“You really don’t have to listen to it, Brian. I just needed a place to crash and think things through.”
He sat with me for a moment, and we absorbed the sound of the incoming tide we couldn’t see in the darkness, flowing over the oyster shells with a wind-chime song. These tides had gone on before me, and would go on after me. They had gone on before Maeve and before Mama and before life.
“Brian—go on your date, I just need to be quiet anyway.”
He hugged me before he left. “Wake me if you want to talk.”
The dream is clouded; I make out the shapes of the landscape, but not the details. I am late for my wedding, and I can’t find the correct turn off Magnolia Street to the church. I go up and down, up and down, walking on the sidewalks I’ve known my whole life, but they are different, shifted to the right or maybe the left and the turn is gone. I am starting to panic, running and ruining my hand-appliquéd water pearls on the silk stiletto heels. The turn is gone. I run back to the garden shop—the one where I bought the angel—and call for Mrs. Marshall, but she isn’t there; she’s gone to my wedding.
I startled, awakened with a cold panic.
Confusion drifted over me like dust settling on a windowsill. I couldn’t pull past the wondering—where was I? Why? Where was Peyton and why was he mad at me? Why couldn’t I find him?
I opened my eyes to an art easel in the corner of the room—Brian’s house. I jumped from the bed and dressed, went outside to the rising morning to yank a rowboat from beneath the porch.
I launched the boat, leaned back to watch the sun rise over the cordgrass blowing sideways inside the wind; I trailed my fingers along the water. Be careful what you believe . . .
I spoke out loud, “I believe . . . ,” and found a vacant space as empty as the discarded shells on the mud banks.
I tried again, lifting my face to the wind. “I believed . . .” And I realized that, this time, I spoke about the past—about what I had believed. “I believed that Mama left us willingly, I believed that I loved Peyton with a full heart, I believed Jack was gone forever.” I took a deep breath, lifted my voice to the sky. “I believed I knew my heart, I believed Maeve’s story. . . .”
The sun burst from the horizon in a streak of pink light and the world unfolded; it opened and spread its wings wide and broad, and for the briefest moment, I saw it all—all the questions. I didn’t see any answers, but the questions, which had been rattling around in my brain like pieces of broken china I couldn’t put back together, became as delineated as the coastline: What was my story? Why was I here?