“I’ve missed you, bro,” Marcus said. Then his gaze fell on me. Smiling, he reached for me and I hugged him, both of us pulling away after only a few seconds. How different he smelled! Shampoo and soap. Not a trace of booze or tobacco. “I’ve missed y’all,” he said.
“We’ve missed you, too,” I said with stiff formality. I couldn’t look him squarely in the eyes without feeling a tug I hadn’t expected—and certainly hadn’t wanted—to feel.
Marcus leaned over until he was eye to eye with seven-year-old Maggie. “Do you remember me, Mags?” he asked.
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head.
Marcus laughed. “That’s good.” He straightened again. “I wasn’t the best uncle when you were little. And where’s Andy?” He looked at me. “I’ve never even met him.”
I was afraid to have Marcus meet Andy. To me, the resemblance was as strong as a positive DNA test.
“He’s napping,” I said, wrapping my arm around Jamie’s waist to ground myself in him. In our marriage. I’d fought hard for the peace of the past four years. I didn’t want it disrupted now.
My six months in rehab had profoundly changed me. I’d cried my lifetime allotment of tears during those months, tears of guilt and remorse, along with fierce tears of determination. When I got home, I embarked on the adventure of getting to know my three-year-old daughter, the child I’d been so unable to mother. Maggie clung to her daddy at first, cutting her eyes shyly at me. I was a stranger to her. I looked different and I’m sure I smelled different from the woman she’d known as Mommy. I imagined she connected the scent of alcohol to me the way some children connected their mothers with the scent of perfume.
The first night I was home, Jamie and I’d sat with her between us on her bed as we read to her. She leaned against Jamie, and I found my voice breaking when it was my turn to read. I felt her curious gaze on me instead of on the pictures in the book. Jamie rested his chin on the top of her head as I read. Sometimes love is nearly palpable, and the love between my husband and my daughter was like that—a presence I could feel in the room. I was not a part of it, and although my relationship with Maggie grew over the years, I knew I would never have the closeness to her that Jamie had earned.
Although I adored my little girl, my love for her so new and rich, I was preparing for the return of my son. I learned all I could about children with fetal alcohol syndrome. There was precious little information available, but I searched it out. I became an evangelist for healthy, alcohol-free pregnancies the way reformed smokers became intolerant of cigarette smoke.
Sara coached me in what to expect from a year-old boy. She and Steve had recently divorced and she was raising Keith alone. I felt sorry that she was losing her husband just as I was getting mine back. We drew her into our fold, and I delighted in discovering that I had enough energy and love inside me to extend to her and Keith as well as to my own family.
Now that Marcus was back for Miss Emma’s funeral, I couldn’t deny that I was attracted to him. But although that attraction made me feel awkward around him, I wasn’t afraid of my feelings. I’d grown up. In my four years of sobriety, I’d learned how strong I could be. I had a husband spun from pure gold—how many men would stick by the sick, self-destructive, cold woman I’d been in the years after Maggie’s birth? I had two amazing children I was devoted to. And every time I saw Sara, now living in one of the many old mobile homes in Surf City, I was reminded of how precious my marriage was and how far I would go to hold it together.
Jamie couldn’t stop smiling in those first few days after Marcus’s arrival. He lit up around his brother, and the kinship between the two of them was fun to watch. Certainly he was sad over his mother’s death, but his joy in rediscovering his now sober, respectful and thriving brother tempered his sorrow over the loss of Miss Emma.
Both children fell in love with Marcus. He played with them on the beach, tossing a beach ball, letting them bury him up to his chin in sand, roughhousing with Andy in a way that made me nervous but that put a smile on Jamie’s face. Jamie wasn’t the roughhousing sort, but I could see that he admired his brother’s playful rapport with the children.
“He needs to have some kids,” Jamie said to me one night in bed. “He’s great with them.”
“He needs a wife first,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jamie said. “Sounds like he hasn’t had much luck in that department. He told me he’s had a few relationships, but nothing serious.”
“He’s only twenty-eight,” I said. “He’s got plenty of time.”
Jamie sighed. “I only wish Mom had gotten to see him this way.”
“I know.” I thought of Miss Emma, how her love for her sons had hinged on their achievements, with Marcus never able to measure up to Jamie in her eyes. I kept the thought to myself; it wasn’t the time to criticize Miss Emma.
“I’m going to try to persuade him to move back here,” Jamie said.
I stiffened at the thought of watching Andy grow into Marcus’s image right before our eyes. I wasn’t one hundred percent certain that Marcus knew Andy was his, but how could he not? How could anyone look at the two of them and doubt their relationship?
“Do you think he would?” I asked. “Would it be okay for him? I mean, this is where he got so screwed up drinking.”
“I don’t know. Topsail might make him remember some bad times, but it’s obvious how much he’s changed. I can hardly remember what he used to be like. It won’t hurt to ask him, anyway. Wouldn’t it be great for the kids to have an uncle here?”
“Yes,” I said. It would be. And it would be great for Jamie to have his brother back.
Jamie talked to Marcus the next night over dinner. We were on the deck eating grilled catfish, macaroni salad and hush puppies, and the sun was beginning to set on the other side of The Sea Tender. In a couple of weeks, the mosquitoes would make it impossible to eat outside, but that night was one of those magical June evenings. It was warm but not hot, and the sea was calm—a pale opaque blue—swaying like gelatin. I thought, how can he possibly resist?
Marcus took a long swallow of iced tea, as if mulling over the question. “I don’t know,” he said, setting the glass down on the picnic table. “I do miss it. Being back here…it’s part of me, you know?” He looked at his brother. “I love the mountains, but it’s not the same as living on the water, and it’d be great to see y’all all the time.” He smiled at Maggie and Andy, who was pulling apart catfish with his fingers. “It’s very tempting.”
“So what’s holding you back?” Jamie asked. “There’s an opening coming up at the Hampstead fire station.”
“Move here! Move here!” Maggie jumped up and down on the bench and I put a hand on her shoulder.
“You’re rockin’ the boat, sweetie.” I smiled at her enthusiasm.
“I’ll think about it, Mags,” Marcus promised.
Jamie got the kids ready for bed later that evening, while I cleaned the kitchen. Marcus came in and began to wipe the counters with a sponge. He’d been with us five days, but this was the first time I’d been alone with him.
“How would you feel about me moving back here?” he asked quietly as he wiped the breakfast bar.
I kept my eyes on the soapsuds in the sink. “Jamie really wants you here,” I said. “And the kids are crazy about you.”
“But how do you feel, Laurel? Would you be okay with it?” He lowered his voice. “Comfortable with it?”
“I’d like you to be part of the family again,” I said as though I’d never felt anything other than friendship for him.
“It’s important to me you’re all right with it,” he said.
I didn’t want him to say another word. I was afraid he’d say something about Andy. I looked at him then as though I had no idea why he was so concerned. As though I didn’t share those concerns. “It will be fine,” I said.
“I’m not proud of—”
I put my fingers to his lips, then dropped my hand as quickly as I’d raised
it. “Let the past stay in the past,” I whispered. “Please, Marcus.”
He stared at me a moment, long enough for me to turn away.
“Okay,” he said. “You don’t need to worry.”
Marcus became a fixture in our lives and on the island. He moved into the most unlikely of the properties he and Jamie had inherited from their father: one of the Operation Bumblebee towers. He added on to the three-story tower, remodeling it with amazing speed, painting the exterior a sea-foam-green with white trim.
He was respected at the fire department, and he and Jamie loved working shoulder to shoulder. I respected him as well. I knew how difficult it had been for me to get sober in a structured rehab environment. The fact that he’d gotten straight with only the help of AA earned my admiration.
As for me, I felt as though I had my cake and was eating it, too. I loved my husband, but I also loved being around Marcus once it was clear he’d keep his promise not to bring up the past. I loved his spirit and sense of fun, and any attraction I felt for him I filed neatly under i for in-law.
With Andy in preschool, I took a part-time job in a dermatologist’s office. The rest of my energy went into fetal alcohol projects—developing a Web site, writing a newsletter and speaking occasionally at a medical or education conference. Maggie and Andy loved it when I went out of town on a speaking engagement because Marcus would stay at the house, and he and Jamie would take them to the movies and play games with them and feed them pizza and other junk food that was forbidden when I was around.
About a year after Marcus moved back to Topsail Island, he picked me up at the Wilmington airport when I returned from an out-of-town conference.
“Where’s Jamie?” I asked, surprised to see him waiting for me in the terminal.
“He and the kids wanted to sleep in, so I volunteered to come get you.” He took my rolling carry-on and pulled it behind him as we walked toward the exit.
“Did y’all have a good weekend?” I asked.
“Great.” We were walking across the parking lot toward his pickup. “Only I deserted everybody yesterday to buy a new boat.”
“A new boat?” I laughed as I got into the passenger seat. I rolled down the window to let in some of the sticky June air. I’d flown in from New York. It had to be fifteen degrees hotter in Wilmington. “What was wrong with your old one?”
“It was old, that’s what.”
We pulled out of the parking lot, and he told me about the movie they’d watched the night before and how many times they let Andy win at CandyLand.
“Maggie’s such a little honey-bunch,” he said, looking over his shoulder to change lanes. “She’d let Andy win every time if she could.”
“I know,” I said. “I worry about her that way.”
“Well, I don’t think you have to worry about her.”
“I think she has Jamie’s…you know…his empathy thing.”
“Oh.” He understood. “I hope not.”
I was thinking about his statement—that he hoped Maggie didn’t have Jamie’s overdeveloped capacity for empathy—when I realized he’d fallen silent.
“Thinking about your boat?” I asked him. “Have you named her yet?”
He licked his lips, flexing his hands on the steering wheel. “I have to ask you something,” he said as if he hadn’t heard my question.
Oh, no. Was this why he’d wanted to pick me up at the airport? I’d finally relaxed about the subject of Andy’s parentage; Marcus never seemed to concern himself with it. Finally, though, the question was coming, and I braced myself.
I watched his Adam’s apple bob in his tanned throat. “I thought it would be okay when I moved here,” he said.
“Thought what would be okay?” I asked cautiously.
“I thought I had my feelings for you under control.”
That was not what I’d expected. “What are you talking—”
“Stop.” He glanced at me. “Don’t say anything. Just let me talk for a minute, okay?”
“No,” I said. “I—”
“Every time I see you, my feelings get stronger,” he said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the past, all right? It has to do with the here and now. Not with the people we used to be. We were both sick then. Now we’re healthy and…I admire you, Laurel. The way you deal with Andy. The way you’ve taken on the whole FASD cause, and—”
“Marcus, please don’t,” I said. “I mean, thank you. For the compliment. I admire you, too. We both turned our lives around. Let’s not do anything that could screw that up again.”
“I’m in love with you.”
“Please don’t say that.” I looked out the side window, not wanting to see whatever had been laid bare in his face.
“I’ve been fighting it all year,” he said, “and I’m tired of fighting it. I need to know if there’s a chance. That’s all I’m asking. You tell me there isn’t and I’ll shut up and never mention it again. But I need to know if you’d ever consider—” He shook his head. “I’m not talking about an affair. I wouldn’t do that again. I’m talking about you and me, out in the open. With you divorced from Jamie.” Although my gaze was riveted to the side of the road, I felt him looking at me. “I love my brother,” he said, “and I hate the thought of hurting him, but I don’t know how to keep my feelings for you hidden any longer. Every woman I go out with…I keep wishing she was you.”
“Marcus, please stop!” I said, turning to face him. “I won’t ever divorce Jamie. He stood by me through so much. He—”
“Are you saying you have feelings for me?” he interrupted. “That if it weren’t for Jamie, you’d—”
“I love you like a brother-in-law,” I said.
“I don’t think I believe you.”
“Why not?”
“I catch the way you look at me sometimes.”
Had I been that transparent?
“I love Jamie, Marcus,” I said evenly. “He and I have a family together. Please support that. Don’t…” I let out my breath in frustration. “This year’s been so much fun with you here. Please don’t mess it up.”
He was quiet for a moment. “You’re right,” he said then. “Absolutely right. I’m sorry, Laurel. I had to ask.”
“Now you know.”
“Now I know.”
An awkward silence fell between us. Finally I spoke.
“You need to find yourself a woman who’s free and who’ll love the dickens out of you,” I said, wondering how it would feel to see him touching, loving another woman.
“You’re right,” he said grimly. “I’ll do that.”
The next day was Monday and both Marcus and Jamie had time off from work. The sun had just broken over the horizon, sending a pink glow into our bedroom, when the phone rang. Jamie answered it from his side of the bed. I listened to his groggy end of the conversation.
“Yeah,” he said after a few minutes. “I’d like that.” He set the phone back on the night table.
“Was that the fire station?” I asked. No one else would call that early.
“No. It was Marcus.” He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I’m gonna meet him at the pier and check out his new boat.”
“Now?” I asked. “It’s your only day to sleep in.”
“Yeah, but look outside.” He motioned toward the sunrise and I could understand his desire to be on the water. He leaned over to kiss me. “You go back to sleep. I won’t wake the kids.”
A few hours later, Marcus called me from the police station in Surf City. He was sobbing, and I could barely understand him. There’d been an accident on the boat, he said. A whale had lifted it into the air, tossing him and Jamie out. Marcus had searched the water, trying to find his brother, but had to finally give up.
I hung up the phone, trembling and nauseated. The kids were right there, and I did my best not to show the terror I felt. I called Sara to come stay with them, although she was nearly as upset as I was. She blew into the house with six-year-old
Keith and hugged me, crying, while the three children anxiously tried to figure out what was wrong.
I sped to the police station and when I looked into Marcus’s eyes, the eyes of the man who only the day before had asked me if I’d leave my husband for him, I realized exactly how well I knew him—well enough to know that the story he was telling was a lie.
Chapter Forty-One
Laurel
THE PROBABLE CAUSE HEARING WAS SCHEDULED for Wednesday, two short days away and too soon for my comfort. I knew that the hearing could literally mean the end of Andy’s freedom forever, “given the seriousness of the charges.” Dennis sounded more and more certain that Andy would be bound over to adult court, and less and less certain that he would get any sort of reasonable bail. That meant he would stay in prison until his trial, which could be months, if not years, away. His sentence could be life without parole.
“He can’t get the death penalty, though,” Dennis said, “so don’t worry about that.”
What an asshole! I only needed to worry about my FASD son getting life in prison. I should have gotten a new lawyer when I first started having doubts about Dennis.
I thought he should make a case at the probable cause hearing that Andy shouldn’t be bound over to the adult system because of his FASD, and I tried again to educate the lawyer about the disorder, but it was like trying to educate Andy himself. It was as though Dennis’s brain shut down when I talked about it now.
“It’s a very weak argument,” he said. “It used to hold water as a defense, but now every Tom, Dick and Harry claims their mothers drank before they were born. Andy’s IQ is in the normal range, he’s not insane, and he knows right from wrong, and that’s what the judge will be looking at.”
“Whose side are you on?” I was losing it with this man. Every time I spoke with him, I felt panic bubble up in my chest. “You’re not hearing me! First of all, I’m not talking about his defense. I’m talking about why he shouldn’t be tried as an adult. He may be a teenager and he may have a IQ in the normal range—the low normal range—but he thinks like a child. I’m an expert in FASD. I speak to groups about—”