Pictures of Emily (12 page)

“I can tolerate fresh air in small doses. Anyway, I brought your mail. People are hounding me, wanting to know when you’re coming back. Carrie Ivy from
Elite Magazine
wants you to do this thing in Ireland. What should I tell her?”

“Tell her, no thanks. Tell her I’m taking a long vacation.”

“The American public has a short attention span. If you’re out of the public eye for too long, somebody else will come along and take your place.”

Sonny took her heavy camera case and slung it over one shoulder. “How ’bout some lunch?”

While Sonny was in the bathroom washing up, Doreen helped Emily put some sandwiches together.

It was nice, sitting in the warm sunny kitchen, talking over coffee and sandwiches. Doreen didn’t mention the magazine article again, apparently knowing that Sonny had meant what he said.

An hour later, Doreen glanced at her watch. “I better be on my way. It’s been fun.”

“Before you go, come and have a look at our garden,” Sonny said.

Every day he checked their garden, just like Babbie. It had been planted two weeks ago, and everything was pushing through the dirt already.

After Doreen admired the garden, they strolled around the yard, Sonny pointing out various improvements he’d made. At one point, when he was out of earshot, Doreen took Emily by the arm and pulled her close. “He’s changed,” she whispered.

“Changed?” That fear again. And Emily wondered if it would always be like this, if there would ever be any settledness to her love for Sonny.

“I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it contentment, but it’s close to that. I’ve never seen Sonny content. It looks good on him.”

They walked Doreen to her rental car, then stood and waved until its taillights disappeared over the dandelion-covered hill that led to the village.

Emily turned to find Sonny studying the freshly painted house with quiet satisfaction. Doreen was right. He did seem content.

“You like it here, don’t you?” she asked.

All along, she’d been dreading the time when he became tired of living on St. Genevieve. All along she’d been thinking there was nothing here he would want, that this was transient.

But on St. Genevieve, there was peace. On St. Genevieve, a person could plant a garden, and repair a lighthouse. On St. Genevieve, there was someone who loved him.

His gaze drifted past the lighthouse, past the blue, blue ocean to finally settle on her. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I like it here.”

It wasn’t much. But from Sonny, it was a lot.

Good things took time. Like Sonny and his garden, Emily could wait.

Sonny stood on the beach, hands in the front pockets of the gray dress pants he’d worn to church. The sun was warm on his face, the salt wind cool as it whipped the hair back from his brow.

He tried not to think too deeply about the turn his life had taken. Not that he was superstitious. He just didn’t want to take any chances.

He knew it was crazy, but he was afraid if he consciously thought about how happy he was, some higher order would pick up on his thoughts and take it all away.

And there was one thing he was sure of. He wasn’t ready for it to end. Maybe his concern had to do with the fact that he’d done nothing to deserve this. He’d done nothing to deserve Emily.

Shrieks of laughter drew his gaze down the long stretch of beach. Emily and her sisters were making their way toward him, looking for treasures as they went, playing tag with the waves and laughing whenever the water swirled about their bare ankles.

They’d invited him to walk the beach with them, but he’d declined, knowing he had to keep some distance, had to hold back. He couldn’t allow himself to become completely caught up in their lives.

Watching them now, the scene before him brought back something he’d completely forgotten.

He’d been about seven or eight, shooting an ad for kids’ clothes. The film crew had run into some technical problems. To keep Sonny out of the way, he’d been stuck in a dressing room where he was told to wait until someone came for him.

The dressing room was hardly more than a closet, with peeling paint and bare pipes and no heat. But on one wall was a huge print of an oil painting—the kind of cheap print that was sold in dime stores, warped frame and all.

Maybe it had been hung to cover a hole, he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. It was the faded picture that fascinated him.

It was a turn-of-the-century painting of a woman and two children. They were strolling on the beach, the woman wearing a long flowing dress, holding a ruffled parasol over one shoulder. The children were dressed in the striped bathing suits people wore back then.

Looking at the picture made him feel good, and it made him feel bad. It made him feel lonely, made him ache for something he couldn’t define, something obscure and unattainable.

The film crew apparently forgot about him, because Sonny ended up sitting in the room for hours, staring at the picture, wishing he could step inside the frame and become a part of it.

Now, watching Emily and her sisters, he felt the same ache he’d felt that day looking at the painting; that same yearning.

But he knew he could no more be a part of their lives than he could have stepped into that painting all those years ago. He’d been a kid then. Now he was old enough to know that there were barriers that couldn’t be transcended. One was physical; the other emotional.

He wanted what he had here with Emily to be real. He wanted it to be forever. But it couldn’t be. Because he wasn’t who she thought he was, he wasn’t who anybody thought he was.

Sonny was afraid of the day Emily would look deep into his soul with those magic eyes of hers, and see him, really see him.

A pretty package with nothing inside.

And she would see that he wasn’t completely real, because to be real, you had to be a part of life. But that’s the way he liked it, he reminded himself. That’s the way he wanted it.

So he watched, as he’d always watched, on the outside looking in.

He watched as Babbie extended her hand to Tilly, showing her something. Sonny used to think kids were kids. But now, looking at the girls, he was struck by how different they were from one another. Tilly…she was something—a regular tomboy. As soon as she’d gotten home from church, she’d tom off her dress and replaced it with jeans, T-shirt, and high-top sneakers. Claire, on the other hand was still wearing her church clothes. Whenever she thought no one was looking, she’d spin in a circle, watching her dress swirl about her.

And then there was Babbie— The child was disarmingly open and trusting, completely guileless. Like Emily.

Emily.

He must have said her name in his mind a thousand times. Sweet, sweet Emily. She took his breath away. She filled him with a longing. And she made him feel things he hadn’t felt since childhood, things he’d never thought to feel again, things that weren’t safe to feel.

As he watched her, a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and sweet sadness touched his heart. She looked like a sea nymph, a mermaid. The wind teased her. It played with her tangled blond hair; it lifted the hem of her skirt, allowing him tantalizing glimpses of long, slim legs.

When they were together at the cottage, he liked to watch the graceful way she moved around the house. And even if they weren’t in the same room, he liked knowing she was nearby. He would find himself waiting for her soft footstep, listening, hoping to hear her humming softly to herself the way she sometimes did.

It felt so right.

Having grown up with weak roots, with people wandering in one door of his life and out the other, it hardly occurred to him that their life together could possibly be permanent.

Yes, it was going to be hard to leave here. Maybe the hardest thing he’d ever done.

“Sonny! Sonny!”

Babbie.

Her voice pulled his thoughts back to the beach, the sand, the sun, to the child hurrying toward him as fast as her short legs could go.

“Look what I found!” she said in breathless excitement, her Irish eyes shining as only Babbie’s Irish eyes could shine.

Sonny crouched down in front of her.

“It’s a house,” she announced, shoving a shell under his nose.

He drew his head back enough to see the pointed conch shell held in her small, chubby hand. “A house?” he asked, baffled. He’d been around Babbie enough times to know that her mind didn’t function like his. It was best to wait and let her explain.

“A house for Herman Crab.”

She pointed one finger at the shell’s opening. “He’s scared of us, so he’s hiding in there.”

Her voice dropped, as if she’d just reminded herself of the creature’s fear. “Emily said if I’m quiet, maybe he’ll come out.” She plopped herself down on the sand to wait, shell cradled in the palm of both hands.

Tilly and Claire dashed breathlessly toward them, scattering dry sand as they fell to their knees. They dumped the treasures they’d collected near their pile of shoes.

“Did you show Sonny your hermit crab?” Tilly asked.

’‘Herman,” Babbie insisted. “His name is Herman. Herman Crab.”

Tilly rolled her eyes. “Oh, brother.” She leaned toward Sonny, pointing a thumb at her younger sister. “She’s always getting words mixed up. She says the weirdest stuff.”

Claire daintily shook sand from her skirt. “You shouldn’t be talking, Tilly. What about you.”

“I don’t say weird stuff.”

“Oh, yes you do. What about the time Emily asked you to take those kites to the church bazaar and leave them on the miscellaneous table?”

Tilly’s eyes snapped. “Shut up,” she warned.

Claire started laughing uncontrollably. Her face turned red and her eyes filled with tears as she struggled to relate the story to Sonny. “Hours later, she came back with the kites and said…and said…” She doubled over and clutched her stomach, gasping for air. “She said she couldn’t find anybody named Miss Alaneous!” The sentence was spewed out in one long burst, then Claire collapsed in a hysterical heap.

“Quit laughing!” Tilly shrieked, her face red with rage. She dove for her sister. Sonny lunged, grabbing Tilly around the waist, holding her so her arms flailed at nothing but air.

“Stop!” Babbie wailed. “You’re scaring Herman! Now he’ll never come out!”

Sonny was at a complete loss. He’d never been in the middle of such a squabble, such noise. He’d never had to deal with a bunch of fighting girls.

“Emily!” he shouted, frantic. He scanned the beach and was relieved to see her hurrying in their direction.

“What’s wrong?” Her gaze flitted from one to the other, inspecting them all for injuries. “Is somebody hurt?”

“I wish!” Tilly said through gritted teeth, taking another swing in the direction of the now smirking Claire.

“She’s making fun of me!” Tilly shouted.

“I only told Sonny about the time Tilly spent all afternoon looking for someone named Miss Alaneous!”

Emily’s hand went to her mouth in an attempt to hide her own smile. But Sonny could see the sparkle in her blue eyes. Then her shoulders began to shake.

“Now everybody’s laughing at me!” Tilly squirmed out of Sonny’s grip, glared at them all, one at a time, then stomped off—as well as she could in the loose sand.

Sonny started to go after her.

“Let her go.” Emily placed a hand on his arm. “Tilly always has to have the upper hand. When she doesn’t, she gets mad. She heats up fast, but she cools down fast, too. In five minutes, she’ll have forgotten all about it.”

“I’m going to feed the birds.” Claire grabbed up the plastic bag of bread she’d brought and flounced off.

“Claire, on the other hand,” Emily said as she watched her sister make her way down the beach, “keeps things inside. She can stay mad at somebody for a month.”

They watched as Claire tossed bits of bread to the hovering gulls.

Two minutes later, Tilly joined her. Claire held out the open bread sack. Tilly reached inside. Soon they were both laughing and tossing crumbs, friends again.

Sonny shook his head. “Amazing.”

“I don’t know if there’s any truth to it,” Emily said, “But child psychologists claim that sibling rivalry teaches children to deal with people in later life. It would be easier to tolerate their fighting if I knew they were gaining something from it.”

“If it is true, then Claire and Tilly should grow up to be a couple of well-adjusted adults,” Sonny observed dryly.

Emily turned to look directly at him, surprise on her face. And it occurred to him that he’d never teased her before.

Then she smiled. The sun reflected in her eyes, shimmering in the flaxen curls of her windblown hair. He decided right then and there that he would have to make her smile more often.

Sonny knew that the press portrayed him as a hot sexual dynamo who was always on the prowl. He’d read interviews by women he’d never met who claimed he’d made mad, passionate love to them all night and all day.

He couldn’t deny that he had normal urges. But he was nothing like the press made him out to be. Sexual encounters usually left him feeling unsatisfied, even used. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that they wanted the personified Sonny Maxwell, and once they’d found him he was simply a trophy, a notch on their bedpost.

During an interview he was once asked what it was about him that made women go wild. Sonny answered, saying it was everything he wasn’t that attracted them. The interviewer hadn’t understood.

His encounters with women had left a bitter mark. It had been years since he had wanted to touch someone for the sake of touching them.

Until now. Until Emily.

At times like these, when Emily was so close, he could feel himself tumbling headlong into the blueness of her eyes. He felt as if she could see into his mind and heart, and was coaxing him to take that step.

She stood there watching him in that quiet, unsettling way of hers. Then, as she watched, her smile faded, became a little unsure. Her pink lips trembled slightly. Lips he knew would be soft, would open sweetly under his.

He struggled to shut down his thoughts, shut down his feelings, pull away—something that used to be so easy. But with Emily…things were different. They no longer followed the same time-tested patterns. He couldn’t understand.