For Better, for Worse, Forever (7 page)

“I miss you and wanted to hear your voice,” Kelli said. “The term’s over in three weeks.”

Kelli had a whole year of college behind her. April felt a pang of regret that she couldn’t say the same for herself. “So will you go home for the summer?”

“Not right away.” Kelli sighed. “My folks aren’t going to make it, April. Dad was in Seattle last week on business and he came to see me. He said he and Mom were calling it quits.”

“Gee, I’m sorry.” But April wasn’t surprised.

She’d known that Kelli’s parents had struggled for years to keep their marriage together. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m staying here for the summer term. And I’ve got a job waiting tables at a coffeehouse in town. I figure I’ll take some extra hours and save up spending money. My parents are selling the house. Mom’s going to stay in New York, but Dad’s relocating to Denver. And you’re all the way in St. Croix. I feel like a homeless person.”

April heard a catch in Kelli’s voice, and her heart went out to her friend. “You could come here,” she suggested.

“I can’t. I have to go to New York after the summer term to see Mom. I hate missing St. Croix, but right now I don’t see it happening any other way. When will you go home?”

“I’m supposed to go for another checkup and battery of CAT scans in August, so I guess that’s when we’ll leave here for good.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Sometimes I get light-headed, but no headaches.” The debilitating headaches the year before had been her warning that her
childhood brain tumor had resumed growing.

“Maybe you should get your checkup sooner.”

“I’m sick of doctors. I don’t want to see another one ever again.”

“Yes, but—”

“But nothing. Don’t worry about me. I’m doing fine and I’m having a good time. I go to the beach every day.”

“Do you think you’ll go back to NYU in the fall?” April had been attending New York University when she and Mark had decided to get married.

“Probably … maybe … I don’t know, Kelli, I just don’t know what I want to do.”

“How about the rest of you? Are you feeling better about Mark?”

“I’ll always miss Mark. But I’ve met someone here, Brandon Benedict. He’s been pretty nice to me and it’s helped me sort out what happened to Mark and me.”

“Why, that’s awesome!” Kelli’s delight crackled through the phone line. “Now I really feel bad about not coming. What’s he like?”

April told Kelli as much as she could about Brandon. “I know he’s got some family problems, but I understand how it feels to lose someone you love. I mean, to have his mother die when he was a high-school senior was hard for him.”

“Sounds as if you’re good for each other.”

“I don’t know about that, but I do know I like being with him.”

“April, I have to go. I have an exam in a half hour. Just promise me you’ll get home in August, same as me. I really want to see you.”

“It’s a deal.” The lump rose again in her throat. “I miss you, Kelli.”

“I miss you too.”

April hung up and stared out to sea. New York and her other life seemed far away and almost dreamlike. Sometimes she could hardly recall what her house looked like. Or the faces of her old friends. Or even Mark. Quickly she went to her dresser and seized the framed photo of him. She studied Mark’s face, memorizing every detail until her heart stopped thudding.
I won’t forget you. I won’t!
She hugged the photo to herself until the cool glass warmed from the heat of her body.

“Wow. You look beautiful.” Admiration danced in Brandon’s eyes. He sat across from her at a small table on the restaurant’s veranda, out under the stars.

She smiled her thanks. Brandon looked good to her too. He wore a suit, the first she’d ever seen him in, and she liked the effect. “Nice place,” she told him.

“Nice company,” he returned, giving her a look that made her heartbeat quicken. “We had a senior dance here last year. I didn’t go.”

She didn’t ask why, and he didn’t volunteer. She asked, “Isn’t the school year about over?”

“I’m taking exams now.”

“What will you do this summer?”

“Work until it’s time to go off to school.”

“Have you picked a college yet?” She remembered his telling her about being accepted into several colleges in the States.

“No. But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to know how much longer you plan to be on the island.”

“Maybe until August.”

“Perfect,” he said, leaning forward. “Then
we can leave together—you to go home, me to go off to college.”

It didn’t seem like a bad idea to her. It would be fun to spend the summer with Brandon, and after so many months of unhappiness, she felt in the mood to have some fun. She was sure her parents wouldn’t object—

“Hello, son.”

The man who stood next to their table interrupted April’s train of thought. She saw Brandon stiffen and his expression harden. “Hi, Dad.” Brandon squirmed uncomfortably.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” Brandon’s father stared down at April.

She saw Brandon’s likeness in his face, but his coloring was darker. Saving Brandon the chore, she said, “Hi. I’m April Lancaster.”

Brandon’s father smiled. “I suspected there was someone special taking up Brandon’s spare time. Since you’re having dinner, would you care to join us?” He gestured toward a table across the room, and a deeply tanned, pretty, dark-haired woman dressed in white waved. “If I’d known you were coming here—”

“No thanks.” Brandon cut off his father. “We were just leaving.” He stood, and his napkin flopped onto the floor.

April questioned him with her eyes. They hadn’t even ordered. What was so terrible about joining his father for dinner?

“Come on, April.” Brandon held out his hand, and she took it hesitantly and stood.

She saw color in his father’s cheeks and realized he’d been stung by Brandon’s rudeness. “Um—nice to meet you,” she called as Brandon hustled her out of the dining room.

Outside, in the humid tropical night, he skidded to a stop and took a couple of deep breaths. She saw that he was trembling. “What’s going on?”

“I didn’t expect my father to pop in on us.”

“He just said hello,” she said, defending him. “Was it seeing him with another woman? I mean, if your mother’s been dead for more than a year—”

“And it’s his fault!” Brandon blurted out hotly. “She’s dead and it’s all his fault.”

S
hocked by Brandon’s accusation, April gasped. “What are you talking about?” He’d never openly discussed his mother’s death with her, nor had she asked him for details.

“Let’s walk,” Brandon said. “Would you mind?”

“I don’t mind.”

He led her through well-lit paths to the garden area, where the accent lighting was noticeably dimmer and stars peeked through palm branches. He found an empty bench and sat, his forearms resting on his thighs, his head bowed. “I’m sorry,” Brandon said, sounding subdued. “I didn’t mean to sound off back there.”

Sitting beside him, she asked, “Well, now that you have, tell me what you meant. How is your father responsible for your mother’s death?”

“I’ve never told you how my mother died.”

“No, you haven’t.” She imagined a car wreck with Brandon’s father driving.

“My mother committed suicide.”

Just the sound of the word made her stomach lurch.
Suicide
. It sounded violent, irrevocable. And she couldn’t imagine anyone choosing to die. “How?”

“She took the sailboat out one afternoon. She wrote a note to us, swallowed some pills, and died. The coast guard found the boat drifting and went on board and found her. She loved that boat. She turned it into her coffin.”

And April knew that Brandon had loved the boat too. He’d learned to sail on it, and now it held bad memories. “Is that why it’s in dry dock?”

“Yeah. Dad hauled it out of the water after Mom’s funeral and it hasn’t been wet since.”

“Would you want to be on it again?”

“Yes.” His answer was so soft, she had to lean forward to hear it. “It was the only place I remember her being happy. We spent a lot of time on it together when I was a kid. We sailed for hours and … and … I miss it.”

“Maybe if you talk to your father—”

“Forget it. He didn’t care when Mom was alive. He doesn’t care now.”

“Are you sure?” She remembered when she’d thought her parents were against her union with Mark and how she had attempted to plan her wedding on her own. She’d needed her mother, but believed that her mother was ignoring her by staying uninvolved. It hadn’t been true, but the rift between them had turned into a gulf in no time. “I mean, how do you know?”

“I know because he’s never home. His business”—he fairly spat the word—“is much more important to him than we ever were. She was so lonely. And it got worse and worse as I grew up.”

“Maybe you just noticed it more and more.”

He snapped his head up to glare at her. “I know how things were at the house. My
mother didn’t have any friends except for my father, and he ignored her. She started drinking just to get his attention, she told me. But that didn’t work either. Suicide became her only way to get noticed.” Brandon shook his head. “It was his fault, all right. He could have stopped her if he’d only paid attention to her. If he’d only seen how much she was hurting.”

April didn’t agree with his reasoning. “But don’t you think she had a choice, Brandon? Don’t you think she could have gotten help if she’d really wanted it?”

“My mom wasn’t like that. She didn’t want the whole world to know her problems. No, my father should have been more sensitive to her.”

“
You
were sensitive to her, and that didn’t stop her,” April said before she realized how her words would hurt him.

He pulled back in horror. “Don’t you think I tried? I wanted to help; I skipped school some days when she was really low just to keep her company. But other days I got caught up in the things I wanted to do—seeing my friends, dating, having fun. In the end, I let her down too.”

“But you were a kid. You
should
have been busy with those things.”

He grunted his disapproval at her willingness to let him off the hook.

April’s heart went out to him. He was tortured by thoughts and feelings that didn’t seem valid to her. She’d talked to Mark enough to know that some things people can change and some things they can never change, and that it did no good to beat yourself up over the things you couldn’t control. “It’s like hating yourself because you have blue eyes,” he’d told her during one of their discussions about their illnesses. “I was hurt by the way people treated me because I had CF, but while I couldn’t control their feelings, I could control mine. I learned to live with it and to be friends with the kids who did overlook my disease.”

She knew illness wasn’t an easy burden to carry. She hadn’t wanted to be pitied or to be made to feel like a freak by kids she knew, but when the truth had come out about her tumor, her real friends stuck by her. Others, like her onetime boyfriend Chris Albright, had dropped her.
His loss
. She said, “Brandon,
don’t blame yourself. And don’t blame your father.”