Summer Shadows (7 page)

When Marsh pulled her to a stop beside a dark green Taurus, she put out a hand to steady herself. You’d think after all the medicines she’d taken over the last three years that she’d be better able to tolerate them, but no. She still got loopy so easily. She hated it.

“Do you like your parents?” she asked.

Marsh looked at her, eyebrow raised.

She frowned. “I’m fine. Tipsy on Tylenol with codeine but fine.”

He grunted his disbelief, opened the door, and held her arm while she slid onto the seat.

“Buckle up,” he ordered and slammed the door.

What a charmer
.

They drove home in silence, but she noticed that he didn’t drive down Central. He went down Bay until they reached Forty-third Street, then cut across to Central. Did he follow that route because he thought passing the accident scene would upset her or because it was quicker? She wouldn’t have thought him so perceptive, so sensitive, but maybe he was.

As soon as they parked in the driveway, she climbed out of the car before he had a chance to come help her. Then she had to lean for a moment to get her balance. She looked past her steps to the beach, past the beach to the sea. She smiled. In spite of her recent
ordeal and her present company, she wouldn’t trade being here for anything. She was surprised at how much this place already seemed like home, staircase, grumpy landlord, and all.

She walked to the stairs without a single lurch in any direction. She took a deep breath and began the upward trek, her knuckles white from grasping the banister in a death grip. If the second floor had seemed a long distance before, it looked miles away now. Her bad leg was throbbing and her sedative hangover was still making her dizzy.

If Madame Guyon could handle all the terrible things that happened to her and still believe God was in control, so can I
. Abby pulled herself up another step.
At least I don’t have a terrible husband and mother-in-law making me miserable. I also won’t be spending a good portion of the rest of my life in prison as she did
.

A strong hand gripped her elbow, making Abby jump in surprise. Marsh stood beside her, a look of patient martyrdom on his face. More than anything, she wanted to shake him off, but she knew that would be foolish. She needed his strength now, just as she’d needed his comfort back in the emergency room. Was there such a thing as independence?

Silently they labored up the steps. At least she labored. He never even took a deep breath. When they reached the porch, Abby forced herself to smile. “Thank you for your help. Thank you for coming to get me. You’ve been very kind. I’ll be all right now.”

He raised that skeptical eyebrow again but said nothing except, “Um.” He turned and ran nimbly down to where Fargo sat waiting. Abby watched the reunion between man and beast with amazement.

For Pete’s sake, dog, he’s only been gone an hour
. Suddenly she wanted Puppy to greet her like she had been missed.

“Hey,” she called to the cat who lay curled on the one porch chair in the full sun. “I’m home, slightly wounded but otherwise well.”

Puppy twitched an ear but didn’t move.

“Yeah, I’m glad to see you too.” She dropped onto the chaise and lay back with a groan. She closed her eyes. Sometime later she awoke with a jerk, her heart pounding wildly, though she couldn’t remember what had scared her. She sat up and looked around. Where was she?

Recognition came quickly. Seaside. Her apartment. The hit-and-run accident.

She shivered. Was the little girl really all right? They said she was, but was she? Maybe they just told Abby that so she wouldn’t have hysterics on them. She wished she had thought to see for herself before she left the hospital.

She rose, walked to the railing, and looked out over the beach. The lowering sun cast long shadows of the houses across the sand. She glanced at her watch. 7:15. With the longest day of the year less than a week away, it’d still be light for quite some time. She loved the long days of summer.

The water demanded her attention. She watched the waves roll in, breaking white with spume, mildly disgruntled to be reaching shore and the end of their journey across countless miles of open water. Their muted grumbling made her think of the man downstairs.

She looked down over her porch rail. There he sat, leaning back in a red Adirondack chair, feet on the second rung of his railing, golden hair muted in the shade cast by her porch. He had a laptop computer in his lap, and he was typing like crazy.

Not that it was any of her business, but what in the world was he writing? She realized with a start that she had no idea what he did for a living. She tried to imagine him as a salesman or an engineer or a CPA. Nothing seemed right. Maybe he was independently wealthy and played the stock market on-line all day. After all, the typical man couldn’t afford a place on the beach. The costs were prohibitive. Why, the hurricane insurance alone would more than break the bank of the average person.

Then again, maybe he had a large family and got lots of e-mail which he was answering.

Deciding that Marsh Winslow’s career path was not an issue worth wondering about, Abby went inside. She felt more alert, less dopey than when she’d come home, but still she stopped in the bathroom and splashed cool water on her face. It cleared the last of the cobwebs, though not her memory’s fog. In her bedroom she grabbed her cane with the four prongs at the base and pulled a fleece jacket over her T-shirt. The sand and surf were calling.

It was wonderful to walk directly from the pavement that ran beside the house onto the sand. She ignored Marsh sitting on his
porch, Fargo lying at his side, as she slowly made her way over the gentle dunes. The prongs at the end of her cane sank into the soft sand until the horizontal plate they were attached to rested flat on the ground. Her bad leg tended to drag as the sand pulled against it, and the uneven, shifting surface made the cane necessary for balance. She didn’t mind. Walking difficulties were simply part of her life.

She kept her eyes fixed on the sea, on the constancy of the grumbling waves, the never-ending pattern of ebb and flow.

“Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea—the L
ORD
on high is mighty
.”

Remind me over and over of that truth from Your Word, Lord. Remind me!

The soft grains of dry sand gave way to the packed sand that the tides kissed daily. The walking immediately eased, and she put her cane down. She stood at the very edge of the water, watching the waves throw themselves at the shore, their energy driving them forward until there was nothing left but the tiny wavelets that licked the tip of her shoe.

But there were always more waves and then more still. They never gave up. Their strength was beyond comprehending, their quest to eat the shore unremitting. And they were winning. Ask anyone who knew anything about the ocean. If it weren’t for the unceasing efforts of man as he pumped sand from the ocean floor onto the beaches to replace the sand eaten by the relentless tides and the ferocious storms, barrier islands like Seaside would gradually diminish until nothing was left.

She closed her eyes for a minute, breathing deeply, savoring the sea air, feeling her spirit revive. The Lord was mightier than both the sea and the men who tried to circumvent it. Little girls got hurt, sometimes little girls even died, but God was mightier than any and all difficulties.

She had to believe that, or there was nothing.

She turned to walk along the water’s edge only to have her solitude broken by a pair of little boys who ran, shrieking for joy, across the beach and up to the edge of the water. The smaller one, a little tyke of four or five, was so excited to be on the beach that he ran in circles, waving his arms and yelling for the sheer bliss of it. His older brother looked at Abby.

“We just got here,” he explained. “We’re staying for the whole summer.” He pronounced
whole summer
with an emphasis that Abby understood completely.

“Me too.” She smiled. “Sounds like forever, doesn’t it?”

He nodded. “We never stayed that long before.”

“Me neither.”

“Just a week, you know?”

She nodded. “Two weeks tops.”

“But Dad got rich. Now we can stay and stay and stay.”

“Sounds wonderful to me.”

“Is your dad rich too?”

Understanding that he meant her husband, not her father, she shook her head. “I don’t have a husband anymore.”

He nodded. “Neither does my mom.” His young face looked sad for an instant, then brightened. “But I still got a dad.”

“I’m glad.” Divorce, Abby thought, fascinated by this little fount of information.

“Me too,” he said, his floppy brown bangs hanging over his eyebrows. “Do you live near here?”

“Right up there.” Abby pointed.

“That’s where we live too,” the boy said excitedly. “We live in the white one with all the glass.”

Abby nodded. She’d admired the remodeled house next door to Marsh’s with its wide decks and modern windows. “I live on the second floor of the house to the right of yours, the one with the awning.”

The boy squinted. “The old green-and-white house?”

She smiled. “The old green-and-white house.”

The little guy came to stand by his brother. Sand covered his dimpled knees and a streak of grains ran down his left cheek. He pulled on his brother’s shirt.

“Walker, we’re not supposed to talk to strangers,” he stage-whispered.

Walker looked down at him, condescension dripping. “Come on, Jordan. She’s not a stranger. She’s a neighbor.”

Jordan peered at Abby from the safety of the far side of his brother. “If she’s not a stranger, then what’s her name?”

“My name’s Mrs. Patterson,” Abby answered, delighted at the
child’s logic. “Your mother gave you good advice about not talking to strangers.”

“Told you.”

“Shut up, Jordan. Go build a castle or something.”

“Come with me.” He tugged on Walker’s shirt again. His eyes slid beyond Abby, and she could see his interest stir. He pointed down the beach. “Who’s he?”

Abby turned to see a man with a white ponytail sticking through the opening at the back of a baseball cap. He was waving a metal detector back and forth. “He’s looking for things people have lost in the sand,” she explained. “His machine shows him where they are.”

“Yeah?” Both Jordan and Walker were fascinated. “How’s it work?”

“I don’t really know, but somehow it registers metals. I think he finds mostly money.” Abby smiled at the little boys.

“I want to see,” Walker said.

Jordan grabbed his brother’s Flyers T-shirt. “We can’t. He’s a stranger too.”

Walker looked at his brother with exasperation. “You listen too good.” But he didn’t pursue the man.

Abby sighed with relief. Strangers were always a risk.

Walker pulled off his sneakers and socks, then walked cautiously into the shallows, letting the little waves roll over his feet. He didn’t seem to feel the pain that by rights should be shooting up his legs from the cold water. What was the temperature of the sea this early in the season? Low sixties? Abby shuddered at the thought.

Jordan stared, bedazzled and bothered by his older brother’s daring. “Walker, Mom said no.”

Walker looked toward the houses. “Mom’s not watching. She’ll never know unless some little twerp tattles.”

“I’m not a twerp,” Jordan defended. “I don’t tattle.”

“You’d better not. That’s all I can say.” The older boy turned back to the water.

Jordan sighed deeply, for all the world like a mother who doesn’t know how to handle a recalcitrant child. “You’ll be sorry, Walker,” he muttered, dropping to his knees, his back to the
water. If he didn’t witness the disobedience, he could make believe it wasn’t happening. He began to mound handfuls of sand.

“Don’t you go in any farther than your ankles,” Abby said. Once a mother, always a mother, even with someone else’s child. “It’s too dangerous.” And this child was too independent.

Walker nodded absently. He bent over to study a shell rolling back and forth in the waves.

“I mean it, Walker. It’s too dangerous.” Abby’s tone, the same she used to quiet little people at StoryTime, brooked no nonsense. Walker recognized her authority; with an unhappy face he backed out of the water.

“Thank you.” Abby smiled to show there were no hard feelings. Walker sank down beside Jordan and began digging. He wouldn’t look at her.

I do have a way with men, don’t I?
With a wave to Jordan she began walking south. She took a deep, invigorating breath. The dependability of the sea and the ordinariness of two little boys had made the world steady on its axis once again.

Lord, these tilts. Why? Why, if You’re mightier than the sea
, since
You’re mightier than the sea, do You let the world go crazy? That little girl—why?

A
BBY WALKED ALONG
the beach until her hip complained too much for her to ignore. Looking back she estimated she’d walked four blocks. Not bad for a gimpy lady. She moved to the edge of the dry sand and sat. She closed her eyes, listening to the sounds of the breakers, and picked up a handful of sand, letting it slide through her fingers. Endless waves, countless grains of sand. She looked up at the sky, limitless and beyond comprehension.

God was so obvious, yet all the questions she tried to contain, the uncertainties and doubts about His care, about life, about pain, about Maddie and Sam, washed over her once again. They threatened to sweep her into what she called the Sea of Heresy, a place where good little Christians who dared to doubt were swamped and drowned.

I’d never have survived these past three years without You. I know that. I also know You love me. The Bible says so. But I don’t understand why You let such unloving and hurtful things happen. I believe in You, Lord. I do. But please, Father, help my unbelief. Don’t let me drown
.

She stared at the horizon, her eyes unfocused, her mind in free fall as questions tumbled. How far away was the horizon? Was it always the same distance when you looked out to sea, or did the distance vary from
vantage point to vantage point? What about the waves? She watched them foam and froth. Why did they advance and then recede? Why didn’t the ocean keep coming and inundate the land? She knew there were answers in the pull of the moon and the rotation of the earth, but why did the earth rotate and the moon pull at the sea to begin with? Why was the sand here on the Jersey shore so soft? How did the Gulf Stream that warmed these waters come to be?