It Comes In Waves (2 page)

Claire lunged across the bed for her phone on the nightstand, too undone to feel any remorse for the late hour.

After three rings, a woman muttered, “Hello?”

Oh, the good old days when her ex-husband's girlfriend was instructed to never answer the phone during their separation; now Nina was Nick's answering service.

“Nina, put Nick on the phone.”

“You can't just call in the middle of the night anytime you feel—”

“Put Nick on the phone,
please
.”

There was a huff, muffled voices, a rustling of sheets, and then Nick's weary voice arrived. “Claire, don't talk to her that way.”

“Lizzie skipped school today.”

Nick sighed. “So she skipped. I skipped classes. I survived.”

Claire frowned up at the ceiling, skeptical. What had Nick skipped? Gym? Lunch? Tonight Lizzie had looked down from that top step with the fierce determination only a teenager in mad love wears on her face. Nick couldn't understand that kind of devotion, how deep love ran when you were young. It burrowed into bones, drowned itself in arteries and veins, hiding in places where no parent could extract it.

She fell back on her pillow and pulled the covers up to her chest. “It's not just that, Nick. She lied to me. And it was a lazy lie. Like she thinks I'm not paying attention. How could she think that?”

“Is this about that kid she likes? Connor?”

“Colin. She's going to run off with him.”

Nick chuckled drowsily. “To where? The movies?”

“Arizona,” Claire said, losing her patience. “Colin has a friend there with an empty RV. They're planning to drive it off into the sunset.”

“Good luck to them. Have they seen the price of gas recently?”

“Nick, this isn't a joke.”

“And Lizzie told you this?”

“No, I—I overheard her.” It wasn't a lie. Reading Lizzie's texts was a form of snooping, wasn't it? No different than catching a conversation in an adjoining room. “Colin took her off campus today. One more unexcused skip, one more and he gets expelled. All I have to do is call it in. He can't very well take her to Arizona if he's expelled, can he?”

“For God's sake, Claire, listen to yourself. You can't do that.”

“Of course I can. I'm a teacher and teachers report unexcused absences.”

“She'll never forgive you. You do realize that, don't you?”

“She doesn't have to know I was the one to report him.”

“Lizzie's not going to Arizona, Claire. It's not in her nature. She's too fearful. She's not like you. We're not your parents. We haven't screwed her up that badly.”

Claire reached across the nightstand to turn a frame toward her. It was a photograph of her and Lizzie at a first grade mother-daughter social, cheek to cheek, each wearing the matching macaroni necklaces Lizzie had made for the occasion. Claire still had hers, the paint long since flaked off on nearly all the rigatoni. She turned to see it wound around the base of her vanity lamp, caked in dust.

Tears pooled.

“I promised her we would be different,” she whispered.

“What was that?” Nick asked.

“Nothing.” Frustration pushed more tears to her eyes. Claire wiped them harshly with the sheet.

“Claire, are you sure you're okay? Did something else happen today?”

“I got this weird . . .” She hesitated, eyeing a hangnail on her thumb. “I got a call tonight,” she admitted, worrying the piece of skin. “From some guy at ESPN.”

“Did you say ESPN?”

“They want me to come back to Folly Beach and film an interview for a show on women surfers.”

“They want you? Seriously?”

Claire pulled roughly on the loose cuticle. It bled; she winced, sucking it clean. “Yes,
seriously
.”

“Don't get defensive. I'm just surprised. You never made a big deal out of all that, so I never knew you were any good, that's all.”

“Well, I am. I mean, I
was
.”

“But you wouldn't honestly go, would you?”

Wouldn't she? Until that moment, Claire had talked herself out of accepting the offer. Nick's discouragement was like a flipped switch; determination sparked, hot and fierce. “Maybe I would,” she said. “I was even thinking . . .”

“Thinking what?”

She glanced back at the photograph on her nightstand. “That I would bring Lizzie.”

“But Lizzie's with us this summer.”

Us.
Two years after the divorce, a year after Nina Bolton had moved into Nick's house, and that one pronoun still made Claire want to jump out of her skin.

“It would just be for a few days, Nick. They want me to come as soon as school's out.”

“And you think that's the best thing for Lizzie?”

“I think she and I need some time together, away from here. Away from Colin.”

“Have you even asked her if she wants to go?”

“Of course she'll want to go.” Claire kicked off her blankets and crossed to the window. “She can see what my life used to be like, how good I was at surfing. I think it's important.”

“You never wanted her to know about this stuff before.”

This stuff.
As if Claire's years of champion surfing were a box of knickknacks she'd unearthed for a garage sale.

She stared out at the row of quivering aspens lit under the streetlight, their silvery leaves trembling as furiously as her heart. “Why are you trying to talk me out of this?”

“I'm not trying to talk you out of it, Claire. I'm just trying to calm you down.”

“I don't want you to calm me down. I want you to get crazy too. I want you to at least pretend you're scared shitless that we're losing her. I want you to say it's all going to be okay and that I'm a good mother and that she'd still string a macaroni necklace for me.”

“A macaroni what?”

Tears escaped again; Claire licked a fat one off her lip and sighed.

“Look, Claire,” said Nick. “Don't make any decisions tonight. Get some sleep. Let Lizzie cool off. We can talk about this in the morning. After you've had some time to think it over. Things never look the same in the morning.”

“No,” said Claire, “they look worse.”

She hung up and walked to the bathroom, flipping on the light and frowning hard at her reflection in an oversized T-shirt. Okay, so she wasn't as fit as she'd been in those days, those sticky, sandy summer days when she'd been Hot Pepper Patton and able to outcarve any surfer in Folly, but it hadn't been
that
long . . . had it? Claire tried to work the math in her head: seventeen years since she'd last been on a wave? That sounded about right: in Florida, the place she'd fled to after being rushed out of Folly, only to discover her rhythm on the board had been lost with her heart.

Claire hadn't been making excuses to Nick; she really
did
want Lizzie to know this part of her. Maybe it would be the glue Claire had been looking for, the thread to sew their relationship back together—or, at least, tighten the weakest seams. Claire had grown up with a mother who was cold, distant, a mother who wasn't interested in building a relationship with her daughter. But not Claire and Lizzie. They would be the mother and daughter that never broke, never hated, never grew apart.

Claire snapped off the bathroom light and walked back to the window, throwing open the sash to draw in a deep breath of fresh air. The night was crisp, heavy with the rich, mossy smell of the woods. Growing up in love with the water, she never would've imagined the air that filled her lungs would lack that unmistakable tang of salt, the ripeness of a receding tide. Now she could barely remember the feeling of paddling out past the white water, the tickle and itch of stowed-away shell chippings in her suit, catching grains of sand under her nails when she'd comb her fingers through her hair.

Why was she so afraid to go back? It was just a few days. And for all she knew, Jill wasn't even living in Folly anymore. And Ivy: dear, sweet Ivy . . . By now Foster's mother would have to be in her late sixties. Had she stayed in Folly after Foster's death, or sold the shop and left? And what of Shep? Surely he'd fled Folly after the betrayal, just as she, Claire, had. How could he have stayed in the same town with the woman who'd left him for his best friend?

There were plenty of reasons why she should say no to Adam Williams, a hundred excuses she could make for why she couldn't go back to Folly Beach, but in this moment, her heart swollen with longing and worry, the only thing Claire could think of was the one reason she should say yes, the one person. Lizzie.

It had been a long while since she'd compared life to surfing, even longer since she'd existed in that sweet spot outside, past the impact zone of the waves, but it seemed fitting tonight. For the middle of the night, Claire decided, was just like riding a perfect wave; time stood still and the world outside was silenced. All that mattered was the moment.

What was it Foster used to say? Whatever your problems
, the curl doesn't care
.

And so Claire sat down on the edge of her bed and searched her e-mail for the attachment from Adam Williams, the contract he'd promised, filled with legal jargon that swam past her eyes as she scrolled the document. She typed back her acceptance without reading it fully, uncaring.

And just like that, she was going back.

FOLLY BEACH, SOUTH CAROLINA

J
ust before she pushed open the door to the beach house and stepped through, Jill King pulled in a long breath of fresh sea air and held it. She'd already seen the recycling bin at the end of the driveway, overflowing with empty liquor bottles and folded pizza boxes. She could only imagine the mess that awaited her.

She spotted the stain on the couch first. Red wine. The vacationers would lose their security deposit for it; the owner of this particular cottage was notoriously unforgiving, but too cheap to use the money to replace the fabric. Instead he'd have Jill scrub at it until her shoulders ached and pocket the deposit as profit. In the years she and Shep had been in the business of cleaning and prepping rental properties, they'd come to know all the landlords in Folly Beach, only some of whom were locals themselves.

Growing up in Folly, Jill had never imagined she'd be making her living picking up after summer people, cleaning their toilets, changing their sheets. But then, there was little of her current life that was as she'd imagined it.

She rewound the tidy knot of her strawberry blond hair and moved into the kitchen, heading for the sink and the tower of dirty dishes beside it. She threw on the tap and waited for the water to grow hot.

“Oh man . . .” Shep appeared in the doorway, his dark eyes scanning the room.

“There's a wine stain the size of a dinner plate on the couch,” Jill said over her shoulder. “We'll never get it out.”

“I'll get it out,” Shep said, crossing to the sink and planting a comforting kiss on the back of her neck. She turned and relaxed against his cheek, grateful for the pleasing scent of his aftershave. “Are the bedrooms just as bad?”

“Worse.” Jill could never understand what came over some people when they stayed in a stranger's house. Did they leave their own homes in such disarray? She doubted it.

“Where's Luke?” she asked. “I thought he was coming over with you.”

“Ivy asked him over to the shop. Something about a leaky pipe. I told him if he wasn't done by noon, I was going over there to get him.”

“Shep, don't,” Jill pleaded gently. “It's okay if he wants to stay and help her. Let him have his last summer there.” She sank a sponge into the soapy water and sighed. “He's taking the sale so hard.”

Shep reached under the sink for the bin of cleaning supplies. “You're surprised?”

She wasn't, of course. Jill had watched her and Foster's son grow up treating his grandmother's surf shop like his second home. Once In the Curl had been the heart of Folly's close-knit surfing community. Then the megastore Fins had opened on Center Street and business at Ivy's shop had practically vanished overnight. Not that Ivy cared either way. Jill knew that Foster's mother maintained In the Curl as a memorial to her son, which was why she, Jill, and Shep had walked the minefield of its inevitable closing for so long. A parent herself, Jill would never have interfered with a mother's grief. But there were logistics to consider, taxes that were draining limited financial resources, not to mention Ivy's advanced age, and outdated wiring that desperately needed to be brought up to code if the shop was to continue operating.

But there was more to it, of course.

Things between Jill and her ex-mother-in-law had never been smooth. Even before Foster had left Claire Patton to be with her, Jill knew Ivy had never been fond of her. For a time, Jill had hoped she could earn the place in Ivy's heart that Claire had always held, but after years of enduring Ivy's dissatisfaction, even after Luke was born, Jill had relinquished her efforts. Foster had left Claire to be with Jill, and still Ivy kept her photographic shrine to Claire on the walls of the shop as if time had stopped. When Luke was small, Jill had tolerated the pictures as best she could, but when her son turned five and acknowledged the pictures in earnest, Jill had finally asked Ivy to remove one of Claire and Foster enjoying a victory kiss after a surfing competition. Foster's mother had balked before she obliged, but Jill had refused to feel badly for her request.

What wife, what
woman
, wouldn't have found a picture like that hard to bear?

As it was, the concession had been a small one. All the other photos of Claire had remained on the shop walls, images of Claire surfing in her trademark red suit, not as many as there once were, but still enough of them that Jill never felt entirely comfortable going back into the store. How could she? The ropes of betrayal and guilt were too tightly braided to ever be unwound. Claire Patton hadn't just been Foster's girlfriend; she'd been Jill's roommate and best friend too. It had been an excruciating slicing of their shared world, for which they were all, in their own ways, to blame.

But for Ivy, the blame had always fallen on Jill.

From the very beginning, only Jill.

“See?”

Shep's husky voice pulled her from her thoughts. Jill turned to find him pointing at the couch, the dark red stain nearly gone.

“Told you I'd get it out,” he said proudly.

She smiled, the heat of affection rushing down her limbs. Sometimes her gratitude for him arrived that way, feverish and frightening, so fast it could bring her to tears. The tender flames of affection set ablaze by guilt, the most powerful igniter of all emotions.

“My hero,” she said.

•   •   •

T
hey finished prepping all six properties with time to spare. At three forty-five, the golf cart loaded down with dirty linens, Jill climbed in beside Shep and headed home down Ashley Avenue, past the line of Jeeps and SUVs parked along the Washout.

The beach was busy. A surprise swell had stirred up the waters, bringing waves to those who'd come looking. Shep greeted familiar faces as they drove past, male surfers changing behind their cars, half-dressed with towels wrapped around their waists and the giddy look of a good day on the water shining on their faces. Jill remembered those looks well.

Shep squinted out at the stretch of uninterrupted beach and the churning surf beyond it. “Some good little barrels out there today. I figured there would be with that system hanging out so long.”

It had been years since Shep surfed as regularly as he once did, and yet he still monitored the weather as obsessively as he and Foster used to when they were younger and surfing was everything, when their biggest worry was who would get the better break or the next case of beer.

Jill knew he missed the sport; she could see the longing ride across his tanned face every time they passed the Washout. Unlike Foster, who had wanted to leave the surfing life behind, Shep had remained a faithful follower, his heart still tethered to his board with an invisible surf leash that was no less binding than a real one.

When they turned into the driveway, Jill searched the lawn for Luke's bike, the sign that her son was home, and her heart settled to see it leaned against the side of the house.

“Don't say anything about staying at the shop,” Jill pleaded as they climbed the porch stairs.

The sweet, peppery scent of cooking spices was strong as they stepped inside. Her son might not have inherited many of her physical traits, but he had inherited her love of cooking, her desire to bring friends and family joy with food, and it pleased Jill tremendously.

They found him at the stove, shirtless and barefoot.

“Yum,” said Jill, slowing as she walked by to catch a fragrant whiff. “What are we having?”

“Fish tacos and jalapeño corn bread,” Luke said, shaking a curly lock of white-blond hair out of his eyes. A soft breeze sailed in through the open screens. Jill was grateful for it.

“We really could have used your help today,” Shep said.

Jill looked at Shep, wishing for him to go easy.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Luke said, his eyes still on his pan. “I meant to catch up with y'all, but then I got working on this long board I found in the garage. Grams said it was one of Dad's. It needs some TLC, but it's gonna clean up great.”

He looked less and less like Foster as he aged, Jill thought, and more like her own father, a fact that at turns relieved her and broke her heart wide open. Sometimes in the car or at the table, she'd search her son's face for reminders of Foster, any hint, however small. The way one side of his mouth rose in a smile before the other, the shape of his ears, the high curve of his eyebrows, as if he were always seconds away from revealing a punch line. Sometimes she'd plead with Luke to keep his hair short, claiming it looked shaggy, when really—and this filled her with immeasurable shame—it was because he looked less like Foster when he wore it too long.

But despite all that, the connection to his father always remained in his eyes—that immediate charge of recognition—and Jill treasured it, the deep blue pools she wanted to swim in, drown in.

“Want me to make a salad?” she asked.

“Sure, Ma. That'd be great.”

She walked to the cabinet, pulled down a bowl, and washed a stack of romaine leaves. “You see Amy today?”

“No. I think she's out of town.”

“You
think
?” Jill frowned. “Is everything okay with you two?”

Luke shrugged. “Yeah, sure. I just didn't see her today, that's all. No big deal.”

“You ever get back to Chuck about that job at the marina?”

“Not yet.”

“He said to call him in June. It's June.”

“I know,” said Luke.

“But you haven't called him,” she pressed gently.

“I will.”

“When?”

“Ma.”
He stopped stirring and leveled a look at her, and there, for a fleeting moment, was Foster, staring back at her. Jill shivered. It was as if a bird had landed on her heart. “I said I'll call him and I'll call him, okay?”

She waited a few beats, waited for him to resume his even strokes around the pan, before she moved closer to him, considering her son before she reached out to slide a loose curl behind his ear. It had been reflexive to reach out for him when he was young, to convey her love in touch. Now she hesitated, understanding the boundaries of age.

Shep returned with two bags of laundry over each shoulder and dumped them at the bottom of the stairs.

“I just saw Chris and Ellie walking Pretzel. They said ESPN is coming here to do some kind of documentary on women surfers. You heard anything about that, Luke?”

“ESPN? No way!” Luke spun from the stove, spoon lifted, his eyes huge. “You think they'll come to the store?”

Jill quartered a tomato. Bless his heart, but her beloved son was delusional.

Shep smiled. “Maybe, kiddo,” he said gently. “You never know.”

“Hey, what about that old friend of yours?” Luke asked. “You know, the one Grams has pictures of all over the shop, Pepper Patton? You think they'd interview her for it?”

Jill stopped her cutting and shifted her gaze to Shep; their eyes locked.

“That was her name, right?” Luke said. “Pepper?”

Shep nodded. “That was her nickname. Her real name was Claire.”

“They couldn't do a show about girl surfers in Folly and not show her, right? I mean, she was, like, the best chick surfer in Folly.”

Jill and Shep shared another look, modifying Luke's claim in silent agreement: Never mind gender. Girl or guy, Claire had been the best surfer in Folly, period.

“Man, how awesome would that be if she came for it, huh?” Luke said. “Y'all could talk about the old days. I could hear all kinds of stuff about Dad. Wouldn't that be awesome?”

He stared between them, waiting, his eyes shiny with excitement.

Jill swept her gaze back to Shep, wanting to see his expression before offering her son an answer. Shep's smile was steady but far from matching Luke's.

“It would be,” she agreed, deciding it was the best reply. Then she set down her knife, wiped her hands on a dish towel, and rescued them all. “Let's eat.”

•   •   •

A
fter they'd scraped off every last flake of blackened fish from the pan and cleared their dishes into the kitchen, when the house had settled into the quiet of night and the sea breeze had picked up, Jill slipped into bed and watched Shep at the sink, shaving after his shower.

At forty-three, he was still every bit as handsome as he'd been at twenty. His red hair—copper in summer, mahogany in winter—was shorter now but still enviably thick, showing only the slightest threads of gray around the ears, his body still muscular and trim. His beauty was of great comfort to her, the part of him she'd first wanted. Something primal had settled inside her when she met him: a hunger to belong to someone so beautiful, that there was a safety and a purpose in becoming Shepherd Craven's girlfriend. In those days, he had been far from ambitious, but he was still young, Jill had told herself, and with enough encouragement and love he would surely take on the responsibilities of age. She wasn't the first woman to think she could change the foundation of a man.

When Shep had taken her back, fourteen months after Foster had died, Shep told her that nothing had changed, that he'd never stopped loving her, not once in all the years she and Foster were married, and Jill knew he meant it. In their years apart, the eight years she and Foster had been married, Shep had had only one serious girlfriend—not that every available woman from Folly to Charleston hadn't thrown her hat into the ring for his heart.

He'd even remained in the same house he and Jill had shared, a cramped two-bedroom rental with chronic roof leaks, but he never sought to move and Jill never judged. Shep had every right to hold on to what he could of their life together, the reminders of the promises she'd made to him. She'd done the same herself in the months after Foster's death. Old surfing magazines, shoe boxes of board wax—after Foster was gone, everything seemed precious and desperately—
deeply
—important to her. It's all for Luke, she'd tell herself when she stood in the middle of the garage or in the doorway of a closet, looking out at a sea of paraphernalia that she might never have missed had someone come along and removed it all for her.