“He is,” I said.
“I’m small for my age,” Andy said.
“Why did you have a lighter in your sock?” the officer asked.
“Because of the sign.”
“And what sign is that?”
“The one that said don’t carry guns and knives onboard. It said don’t carry lighters, too.”
“Oh, no,” I said under my breath. “He took it literally,” I said to the officer.
“Ma’am, I have to ask you to be quiet.” Then to Andy, “If you knew the sign said not to bring lighters onboard, why did you have a lighter in your sock?”
I saw tears in Andy’s eyes. “I put it in my sock so I wouldn’t be carrying it,” he said.
I reached over and rested my hand on his knee. “I can explain—”
“Ma’am.” The officer gave me a warning look. Then he sat back in his chair, tapping a pen on his desk. “We have these regulations in place for your protection, son,” he said, looking at Andy. “We don’t take joking about them lightly.”
“Please, Officer,” I said. “He has a disability.”
The man ignored me. “What were you planning to use the lighter for?” he asked.
Andy darted his gleaming eyes at me. “In case I wanted a cigarette.”
“Do you know you can’t smoke on the plane?”
“I wouldn’t smoke on the plane.”
“And where are your cigarettes?”
“I don’t have any.”
“But you had a lighter that was so important to you that you carried it on your person.”
Andy had had it. “Mom?” He looked at me for help, one tear slipping over his lower lashes.
“Sir, Andy has Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder,” I spoke quickly. I wouldn’t let the man stop me again. “He doesn’t understand the fine point of what you’re saying. If he sees a sign that says ‘don’t carry something,’ he takes that literally to mean he shouldn’t carry something. You carry things in your hands. I didn’t know he had a lighter. I didn’t even know he smoked.” I darted my eyes at Andy with a look that said we would talk about that later. “But I can assure you, he had no idea he was doing anything wrong. We’re flying to New York to be on the Today show tomorrow morning, because Andy saved some lives in a fire in Surf City.”
The man’s eyebrows shot halfway up his forehead. “You’re that boy?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Andy said in a small voice. “People followed me out the window.”
The man pursed his lips. He picked up the lighter from the desk in front of him, flipped open the top and thumbed the wheel to produce a long slender flame. “Well,” he said, snapping the lid closed. “Needless to say, we’re confiscating this lighter. We have some paperwork to attend to. And—” he looked at the computer monitor on his desk, clicked a few keys on his keyboard “—there’s another flight to LaGuardia at ten-ten.”
“Three hours from now?” I was nearly whining. “That’s the next one?”
“Yes, ma’am. There’s room on it, though, so you’re lucky.”
It was nearly seven-thirty by the time we returned to the main part of the terminal. “Let’s get something to eat,” I said. “That’ll kill some time.”
We each got a muffin and a bottle of water, then found seats at the gate.
“Okay, Andy,” I said, once we’d arranged our belongings on the seats around us. We were the only two people at the gate. “We need to have a talk. You promised me you’d never smoke.”
Andy studied the toe of his well-examined sneaker as he chewed a mouthful of blueberry muffin.
“Andy?”
He swallowed. “I sometimes do,” he said, “but I don’t suck the smoke into my chest. Just my mouth.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s cool.”
“Which of your friends smoke?” I asked.
He hesitated again. “Do I have to tell you?”
I thought about it. What difference did it make?
“No,” I said, sighing. “You don’t. But you do have to tell me where you got that lighter.” It hadn’t been a cheap little Zippo.
“I traded for it.”
“What did you trade for it?”
“Mom, I don’t want to talk about it!”
“You have to, Andy.”
“I traded my pocketknife.”
“What pocketknife?” I hadn’t known he had one.
He rolled his eyes. “The one I’ve always had.”
I sighed. “I know you want to fit in,” I said. “I know you want to be…cool. But teenagers do some stupid things.” As disturbed as I was about the lighter, I was more upset to realize there were parts of my son I didn’t know. If he’d lied to me about not smoking, what else was he lying to me about? “What about drugs? You also promised me you wouldn’t do drugs. How do I know you’re not doing them, too?”
“I would never do drugs,” he said with such vehemence I believed him. At least, I believed that he meant it at that moment in time.
“I’m tired,” he said, slumping low in the seat.
“Me, too.” I thought we’d had enough heavy discussion for one morning. I reached into my pocketbook for the novel I’d brought with me. “Why don’t you close your eyes and take a nap?”
He leaned his head against my shoulder, my angelic little boy again. I let the book rest in my lap and shut my eyes.
How were we going to survive the rest of his adolescence? I wondered. I didn’t like to think about what next year would be like without Maggie at home. She was a second set of eyes watching over him. Her own commitment to education—to excellence in everything she did—influenced him. She would be as surprised as I was to learn about the lighter.
We were both bleary-eyed by the time we filed into the small jet.
“Do you want to sit next to the window?” I asked, pointing to the two seats reserved for us.
“Yeah!” he said, sliding into the seat.
“Buckle your seat belt,” I said as I buckled my own. He popped the buckle together and then I pulled it tight.
The flight attendant, an Asian woman with sad eyes and a bright smile, stood up and began going through her motions.
“Who is that lady?” Andy asked loudly.
“She’s the flight attendant. She’s explaining some things about the plane. Let’s listen.”
The attendant showed how to undo the seat belt and Andy obediently undid his.
“She’s showing how for later,” I said. “So buckle it back up now.”
She demonstrated the use of the oxygen mask and Andy leaned forward, tongue pursed between his lips as he concentrated on her instructions.
He turned to me when the attendant had finished.
“Why did she say adults traveling with children should put their mask on first?” he asked.
“Because the adult can’t take good care of the child unless she takes care of herself first,” I said.
For some reason, that made him laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’d put mine on before yours,” he said with certainty. “You always take care of me before anybody else.”
Chapter Twelve
Maggie
LIGHTS WERE ON IN SOME OF THE HOUSES as I drove to The Sea Tender. It was the first week in April, and people were starting to take vacations. In a couple of months, the island would be totally different. The everybody-knows-everybody-else feeling would morph into wall-to-wall strangers with new faces every week as they moved in and out of the rental houses and mobile homes. I dreaded it. There’d be people in the houses near The Sea Tender and they’d be snoopy and curious.
I didn’t have to lie to Mom about where I was going tonight, since she and Andy were in New York. I hated lying, but that seemed like all I did anymore. It looked like my little brother had been doing some lying himself lately. Mom called from New York to tell me about the lighter. I had a feeling Andy smoked. I caught a telltale whiff on him sometimes, but when I came r
ight out and asked him if he smoked, he said, “Of course not, Maggie!” I fell for it.
Andy’s screwups scared me. So far, they’d been little things. As he grew up, the chance for him to make bigger mistakes would grow along with him.
Like I had room to talk.
I parked down the street and kept my flashlight off as I walked along the road. I turned up the little boardwalk between two of the front-row houses to where our old cottage sat on the beach.
I lugged the cinder block beneath the steps and climbed up to the front door. Inside the cottage, I didn’t head for the rear deck like I did when trying to make contact with Daddy. I was there for a different reason tonight—a worldly reason, one that made lying absolutely necessary.
The bedroom that had been my parents’ was smaller than the other two, but it was the only one with a view of the ocean. It was also the only room in the entire house without a broken or boarded-up window. I could see a couple of lights far out on the water. I watched them long enough to see that one was sailing north, the other south. Then I lit all six of the jasmine-scented candles on the little plastic table in the corner of the room. The full-size bed—just a saggy old mattress, box spring and rusty frame—was one of the pieces of furniture Mom left behind when we deserted The Sea Tender. I pulled back the covers on the bed and took out the sheets of fabric softener I’d left on the pillows. I never knew how long it would be before I came back, and I hated the smell of stale linen.
I just finished plumping up the pillows when I heard footsteps on the front deck, then the creak of the sticky old door.
“Anyone home?” Ben asked quietly.
I tore through the living room to get to him. He pulled me into his arms and I buried my face against his chest, suddenly crying.
“It’s okay, angel,” he said, stroking my hair. “It was too long this time. I know.”
I couldn’t stop blubbering. Total meltdown, like I’d been saving it all up for him—for the moment I could finally let it out. I always had to be the strong one in my family. With Ben, I could just be me. He held me till I stopped crying. He always knew what I needed.
“It’s been torture,” I managed to say.
We hadn’t been together—not this way—since before the fire. We coached the Pirates together, acting like we hardly knew each other so no one would wonder about us and start gossiping. We talked and text-messaged and exchanged a few e-mails, but no way could that substitute for being alone together.
He leaned back from me and ran his hand over my cheek. A little candlelight spilled out of the bedroom and I could see his chocolatey-brown eyes and the gory new scar on his forehead.
“How is it?” I touched the scar lightly.
He winced and I pulled my hand away.
“Sorry! Sorry!” I hated that I’d hurt him.
“Just tender,” he said. “Got the stitches out this morning.” He touched the scar himself. “I’ll always have a reminder of that night.”
“You’re safe, though,” I said.
“Others weren’t so lucky.”
“I was so scared.”
“Shh.” He kissed me, then suddenly lifted me up, the way an old-fashioned groom carries a bride over the threshold. He carried me into the bedroom. The jasmine smell was so strong, I felt drunk. Ben put me down on the bed and started undressing me. My throat still felt clogged with tears. I didn’t want to start crying again, though. I wouldn’t. Ben needed a woman tonight. Not a little girl.
I wasn’t one of those wide-eyed girls who believed in love at first sight, but the first minute I saw Ben, something happened to me. It was my seventeenth birthday, nearly a year ago, and I was in the lounge at the rec center waiting to meet the new coach of the older kids. Their old coach, Susan Crane, was moving to Richmond, so a new guy was taking her place. Susan was thirty-five, so I don’t know why I expected the new guy to be my age, but I did.
Ben stood at the check-in counter, filling out paperwork and laughing with David Arowitz, one of the managers. I thought he was opening a membership at the center, and I took him in in one big gulp. He wore blue-and-green-striped jams, like he was checking in to use the pool, and a short-sleeve blue shirt and sandals. He was big. He’d probably been one of those boys who had to wear those “husky-size” clothes. His hair was short, dark and wavy. He had a straight nose, dimples—at least on the side of his face I could see—and long, heavy-duty eyelashes. I swear, I took in all those details in one instant and literally felt something happen to my heart, like someone squeezed it hard enough to send tingles down my arms.
I knew what he was like just by looking at him. He was kind, he loved animals, he’d rather play volleyball than golf, he believed in God but wasn’t religious, he loved scary movies, he could talk about emotional things, he smoked marijuana but never cigarettes. I knew all of this in the time it took the tingling to run from my heart to my fingertips. I also knew he was way too old for me, but I didn’t care. I was in love.
Suddenly David pointed in my direction. Ben said something to him, then started walking toward me. The one thing I hadn’t figured out about him was that he was the new coach.
“Maggie?” He held out his hand. The dimple was only on one side of his mouth. “I’m Ben Trippett.”
I wasn’t all that used to shaking hands with people. When I shook his, I felt heat coming off his palm, like he ran a few degrees warmer than everyone else on the planet. I would learn that about him—his hands were always hot. Maybe it was the heat that did it to me. All I knew was that I was completely, totally lost.
He was all I could think about. I suddenly understood why my girlfriends developed tunnel vision when they were hung up on a guy. I couldn’t wait for our twice-weekly swim team practice. Sometimes he and I would stop at McDonald’s afterward. I’d get a soda; he’d get a milk shake. We’d talk about our swimmers—who was strong, who needed more work on a certain stroke. We’d set goals for our team. The whole time, I’d be thinking I love you, I love you, I love you.
He lived with Dawn Reynolds, but I tried not to think about that. I didn’t know Dawn well; she’d only been on the island for about a year. I didn’t believe in breaking anybody up, but I couldn’t help what I felt for him. I made up reasons to see him. He worked at the Lowes in Hampstead, and sometimes after school I’d think of an excuse to go there. I bought paint for my room that I never got around to putting on the walls and a lamp I knew I didn’t like and would have to return.
We started talking about other things when we went to McDonald’s. Movies—we both loved scary ones, as I predicted. His divorce, which was “messy,” and his seven-year-old daughter, Serena, who lived with his ex-wife in Charlotte. He missed her a lot. I could tell he was a good father. I loved that about him.
Then one night, he said he wanted to talk about Dawn.
“When I first moved here, I rented one of the mobile homes in Surf City,” he told me. “I was in Jabeen’s Java one day and started talking to her. She was about to tack a flyer on the bulletin board looking for a housemate. She’d gotten divorced around the time I did and she was going to lose her house on the beach if she didn’t find someone to share expenses. So it was a no-brainer.”
“So…you and Dawn are just housemates?”
When he nodded, I felt like I was sitting on a cloud instead of a molded plastic bench at McDonald’s.
“Except it’s a little more complicated than that,” he said. “She’d just gotten divorced and I’d just gotten divorced and…” He looked straight at me with those chocolatey eyes. “Have you ever broken up with anyone?”
“Not really.” I’d only had three dates in my life.
“Well then, it might be hard for you to understand, but when a marriage ends, especially if you tried hard to save it and you still care about the person, it leaves you really raw…and very lonely. Dawn and I were both in that place when I moved in.” He took a sip of his milk shake. Then another. He wasn’t looking at me. “She’s a pretty woman,?
?? he said finally, “and I was attracted to her physically.”
I cringed. “Am I gonna get TMI here?”
“TMI?”
“Too much information.”
“Oh.” He smiled. “Probably.”
“Oh, no.” I sat up straight and got ready to hear the worst. “Okay,” I said. “Go ahead.”
His cheeks had turned pink. I loved that he wanted to talk to me about something personal enough to make him blush. “Well, you’ve figured it out,” he said. “I screwed up. We slept together the first week I moved in. By the second week, I knew it had been a mistake. She’s a nice woman, but we were never going to be right for each other. I told her I just wanted to be friends and offered to move out. She was upset. In her mind, she thought—she still thinks—we’re a good match and she didn’t want me to leave. Not only that, but she needs the financial help. So that’s why I’m there.” He blew out his breath and poked down one of the little raised bumps on his milkshake lid. “And the reason I’m telling you this is because I have very strong feelings for you, Maggie.”
Oh…my…God. “Me, too.” I was amazed I got the words out. My mouth was so dry I thought they’d stick to my tongue.
“I know you do,” he said. “There’s such a connection between us. You might be seventeen chronologically, but you’re no kid. No immature teenager. I don’t really want to fight the feelings I have for you. But…you’re seventeen.”
“You already mentioned that.”
“And I’m ten years older. I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
“Ben.” I hated the table between us. “I love you. I’ve loved you for months. And you’re right. I’m not an immature teenager. I hardly ever date because guys my age are such—” I shook my head “—total losers. The way I feel about you is different. It’s like the way I love my brother and my—”
“What?” He laughed.
“I mean, it’s really, really deep and…” I was afraid I was starting to sound like an immature teenager. It was hard to explain how I felt about him. “It’s…pure,” I said finally. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”