Friday night, a casual wave, dinner on the stove and knowing the woman you cared for would smile when you gave her purple tulips.
And she did.
The tulips stood along with candles on the terrace table with the surf crashing, the stars winking on. Champagne bubbled, and right there, right then, Eli felt all was right with his world.
He’d come back, he thought. Shed the too-tight skin, turned the corner, rounded the circle—whatever analogy worked. He was where he wanted to be, with the woman he wanted to be with and doing what made him feel whole, and real.
He had colored lights and wind chimes on the terrace, pots of flowers and a dog napping at the top of the beach steps.
“This is . . .”
Abra lifted her eyebrows. “What?”
“Just right. Just exactly right.”
And when she smiled at him again, it was. Just exactly right.
Later, when the house lay quiet and his body still thrummed from hers, he couldn’t say why sleep eluded him. He listened to the rhythm of Abra’s breathing, and the muffled yips from Barbie as she dreamed, he imagined, of chasing a bright red ball into the water.
He listened to Bluff House settle, and imagined his grandmother wakened late at night by noises that didn’t fit the pattern.
Restless, he rose, thought to go down for a book. Instead he climbed up to the third floor to the stack of ledgers. He sat at the card table with his legal pad, his laptop.
For the next two hours he read, calculated, checked dates, cross-referenced from household accounting to business accounting.
When his head throbbed, he rubbed his eyes and kept going. He’d studied law, he reminded himself. Criminal law, not business law, not accounting or management.
He should pass this to his father, to his sister. But he couldn’t let go of it.
At three in the morning he pushed away. His eyes felt as though he’d scrubbed his corneas with sandpaper, and a toothy vise clamped over his temples and the back of his neck.
But he thought he knew. He thought he understood.
Wanting time to process, he went downstairs, dug aspirin out of the kitchen cabinet. He downed them with water he drank like a man dying of thirst before walking out onto the terrace.
The air glided over him like a balm and smelled of sea and flowers. Starlight showered and the moon, waxing toward full, pulsed against the night sky.
And on the cliff, above the rocks where men had died, Whiskey Beach Light circled its hopeful beam.
“Eli?” In a robe as white as the moon, Abra stepped out. “Can’t sleep?”
“No.”
The air rippled her robe, danced through her hair, and the moonlight glowed in her eyes.
When, he wondered, had she become so beautiful?
“I have some tea that might help.” She came to him, automatically reached up to rub at his shoulders, seek out tension. When her eyes met his, her look of concern turned to one of curiosity. “What is it?”
“A lot of things. A lot of big, unexpected things in one even more unexpected bunch.”
“Why don’t you sit down? I’ll work on these shoulders and you can tell me.”
“No.” He took her hands, held them between his. “I’ll just tell you. I love you, too.”
“Oh, Eli.” She gripped his fingers with hers. “I know.”
Not the reaction he’d expected. In fact, he thought, it was a little irritating. “Really?”
“Yes. But God.” Her breath caught as she wrapped her arms around him, held tight with her face pressed to his shoulder. “God, it’s so wonderful to hear you say it. I told myself it would be okay if you didn’t say it. But I didn’t know it would feel like this to hear it. How could I know? If I had, I’d have hounded you like a wolf to drag those words out of you.”
“If I didn’t say it, how do you know?”
“When you touch me, when you look at me, when you hold me, I feel it.” She looked up at him, eyes drenched. “And I couldn’t love you this much without you loving me back. I couldn’t know how right it is to be with you if I didn’t know you loved me.”
He brushed at her hair, all those tumbled curls, and wondered how he’d ever gotten through a single day without her. “So, you were just waiting for me to catch up?”
“I was just waiting for you, Eli. I think I’ve been waiting for you ever since I came to Whiskey Beach because you’re all that was missing.”