Heart Song (35 page)

seat to come up with a small bag. "Kenneth sent it along."
"What is it?"
I opened the bag and dipped my fingers in to pull out a silver heart locket on a silver chain.
"He made it himself, years and years ago," she told me.
I found the tiny lever and flipped it open to look at a picture of Mommy when she couldn't have been much older than I was now. The picture on the other side had been removed. I imagined it had been a picture of Kenneth.
"He told me to tell you he gave that to your mother and before she left with your step-father, she gave it back. I think it meant a great deal to him and it wasn't easy for him to give it away."
"Yes," I said, nodding and staring at the picture of Mommy. She was, as they say, so photogenic.
"Maybe, if she's suffering from some form of amnesia, that," Holly said, nodding toward the locket, "will help revive memories."
"You don't think just looking at me would?" I asked.
"I don't know. I've heard of strange cases where people face people they've lived with all their lives and look at them as strangers: children, parents, husbands, and wives. When the mind wants to shut something out, it slams a door of steel and it takes fingers of steel to open it again."
She laughed.
"A friend of mine," she continued, "thinks amnesia proves we have other lives. She thinks it occurs when something puts us on the border between two existences, and we can't recall either one." She shrugged. "Who knows?"
"Yes," I said as the Cape Cod scenery rushed by, "who knows?"
I looked out the window at the ocean and the tourists on the beaches. In the distance I saw the lighthouse.
"How was Kenneth when you left him?" I asked.
"Back to work." She turned, a soft smile on her face. "Did you expect less? If ever he had to escape reality, he has to now," she added.
"Mommy was always trying to do that, especially when we lived in Sewell. Actually, I shouldn't be surprised by all this," I said and then I sighed. "I forgot to call Alice Morgan to thank her."
"You can call from the motel tonight."
"I want to share all the expenses, Holly. I insist." "No problem. I saw your grandmother give you that pile of loot." She laughed.
Provincetown fell farther and farther behind us.
Mommy had brought me here under false pretenses. Supposedly, we were just visiting Daddy's relatives after his death. She made it seem like the right thing to do, and then she surprised me by telling me arrangements had been made for me to live here until she could send for me.
Well, she never did.
Or maybe she had. Maybe, ironically, she had sent for me through these pictures in the catalogue. Perhaps fate had taken control after all, and those stars and the moon Holly talked about so much had played a role in my destiny.
I had been on a mad and desperate search to discover the identity of my father. During the course of that pursuit, I entered Cary's private world, filled with his sorrows and dreams, and we discovered each other in ways I had not expected.
I would miss our walks on the beach, our talks, our laughter and tears. I knew he would spend all of his nights in his attic workshop while I was away. He would mold his dream ships and he would stop and remember me sitting quietly beside him, watching him work. We were like two people who had been cast overboard by cruel events in their lives, two people who had found each other adrift, and we had joined hands to take each other to our own private beach; our paradise.
On it we sat and watched the twilight sun kiss the horizon and leave us night after night with promises to help us face each morning. It made us stronger, gave us courage, filled our hearts with hope.
I don't want to say good-bye, Cary, I thought, but I'm afraid of where this road leads. You were right in saying we should make no promises to each other. Too often promises were made to us that could never be kept.
I came here to unravel lies, to dig away the sand until I reached the hidden truths about ourselves, and often, like the tide, our family pushed the sand back. Here I was on a journey to unravel more, to push away more sand.
Why bother? Your eyes asked me, Cary. Why care anymore?
The answer is if I can't find the answer to who I am, then I can't be truthful to you, and Cary, my darling, my darling Cary, if there is one thing I will never do, it's lie to you.
Lies are what we have inherited, but it's not the legacy we'll leave our children.
That's why I go on.
And why I looked toward the road west and why, as we passed the sign that read Now Leaving Provincetown, Cape Cod, I smiled.
I knew I would be back, and when I returned, I would be armed with the truth.