she was here, hoping that things would work out for them to be together, or at least have more time together.
I need to paint. But what do I paint, the rain? He had an urge, an inkling. Sometimes a strange way to paint would strike him. Those would often turn out to be his best works. His heart was heavy, but he had to work, to release the pain and the stress.
Ben set the umbrella down on the kitchen counter and went to his paints. He picked an older set of paints and brushes, then hefted a pre-used canvas in his other arm and went toward the deck doors. He opened them, walked out into the steady rain and laid the canvas flat on the porch’s boards. He opened a paint can with a screwdriver and dipped his brush in its royal blue paint, spreading it on the canvas and watching as the rain pushed its hues in different directions.
As he worked he was soaked again, and cold, from the wind coming off the ocean. At times he worked without barely thinking. Other times he found himself crying for Caroline, for what she was going through because of John.
After about an hour’s work the rain dissipated into an almost mist. Then sunlight came down on the deck. He put his paintbrush into one of five small cans that were open and filled with rainwater on the deck. As he stood, he saw a rainbow stretching over the ocean and the distant churning waves.
“That is so beautiful.” He went to the railing and watched it for a moment, then returned to his canvas. With his watery paints he painted the rainbow over what he had already created. Its lines weren’t perfect, because of the water there, but it held beauty over the blue and multicolored designs beneath it that he had already created.
He left it then, out in the new sunlight to dry, and went down to his outdoor shower to wash the paint that was now covering him, from his clothes.
He didn’t hear from Caroline all day, and as he lay in bed that night he found he was cold and alone, wishing he could go back to their last kiss, before the gunshot struck them apart. Please protect her, protect Excelsis and John, watch over all of us, he prayed.
-- --
Around 5 a.m. Ben awoke to his cell phone buzzing on his nightstand. He reached for it, only half awake, and brought it above him. Caroline, he read the sender of the text message’s name in its glowing blue light. He fidgeted with the buttons to access the message.
Ben’s heart raced as he read her words.
I need you. Are you awake?
10
Ben could see the coldness in Caroline’s face as he approached her by the shore.
She said nothing, only stared at him, or beyond him perhaps.
“Caroline!” he called out, watching her hair and clothes move in the wind, as if she were a ghost in the moonlight. She stepped away as he went to embrace her. “It will be alright.”
“No,” she said, looking to him with unexplainable depth in her eyes. “It won’t.”
Ben was baffled as to why she had texted him. His company seemed to do nothing to soothe her.
“I need to leave this place, to escape my mind.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Why do I worry about him? After all he’s done, why do I… why do I love him?”
Something worse than physical pain moved through Ben as he heard those words. He wanted to be here for her, but wanted to leave at the same time. “I know a place on the mainland where we can have breakfast and talk. Maybe that will give us both a breath from this place. We can take my Jeep.”
Caroline hesitated for a moment. “Yes. I’ll leave my mom and Suzie a note to tell them where we are.”
-- --
Caroline was quiet as they drove the long stretch of road connecting Avon to the mainland. She sat, staring hollowly at the beach and ocean blurring beyond the Jeep’s windows.
The sun rose on the ocean’s horizon, spreading its yellow and orange hues across the sea. Dunes of sand rose up to their left and right. Beyond the dunes was the ocean and ‘the sound’, a large body of water that rest between the islands of the Outer Banks and the rest of North Carolina.
What do I do? Ben thought. What can I say? What is best for both of us?
Then, out of the corner of his sight, he saw a group of the islands’ wild horses running beside the dunes. He slowed the car and he and Caroline both watched them run down the road toward them and then up the slope of a dune. There were four of them, their smooth brown hair reflecting in the sunrise. Three disappeared over the dune, and then the fourth stopped, looking back at them as they slowed near where it was crossing.
“It is so beautiful,” Caroline said as the animal turned and disappeared from their sight. “I never knew there were horses here.”
“The Spanish brought them here in the 1500’s, when they attempted to settle the coastline. They’ve been here ever since.” Ben touched Caroline’s hand. Her warm touch reassured him that it was right to be with her.
“It is amazing that they are still free.” She smiled at him, and as they drove on he felt the tension between them calm.
Soon they were on a vast bridge linking the series of islands and the mainland. The Jeep bumped rhythmically on the road beneath them and gulls swooped along the edge of the bridge. The Bodie Island Lighthouse, with its black and white horizontal stripes, rose in the distance beside them and they soon entered the mainland and the town of Nags Head.
Ben let the tension within him relax as he turned up into the parking lot of The Dunes. “We’re here, and just in time for them to open.” He smiled and got out. He could almost taste the waffles, eggs and corned-beef-hash he was about to order and devour from the restaurant’s buffet. He walked with Caroline past the restaurant’s white wraparound deck and then inside.
-- --
After finishing his syrup drenched waffles, Ben grinned wildly at Caroline. Somehow they had gotten completely off topic from what they had experienced the day before and had gotten carried away with silliness. He had been laughing like crazy. “So you’re telling me that all these are jokes you memorized off of popsicle-sticks? Surely you had something better to do!”
Caroline had been telling him joke after ridiculous joke. “Care for another?” She smirked.
“I don’t know if I can handle another.”
“Why don’t seagulls fly by the bay?” She was holding back a huge, contagious grin.
“I give up. Why?”
“Cause then they’d be called bagels!”
Ben almost spit out the water he had just drunk. It wasn’t that the jokes were that funny. Caroline’s excitement and humor just made him need to laugh. “Alright, one more, and then I think I’m through.”
“Then you won’t want to eat popsicles with me later, because there’s no stopping me with fresh artillery. Alright… let’s see.” She hesitated a moment, eating her last strawberry as she thought. “What did the banana say to the other banana?”
“Oh goodness, that’s just fruity!” He let out a chuckle.
“Nope. I’m afraid you’re wrong Charlie Brown, the banana said…”
Ben made a drum roll with his fingers against the edge of the table.
“I find you a peeling!” She winked at him and giggled as he laughed.
Ben held back his laughter and sat up with a grin. “That was so a-pear-ant!” He returned her wink.
“I see you are apple-lying yourself.”
“Orange-n’t you going to come up with something else?”
“My Mango-al was to make you smile!” Caroline sat back with her arms crossed, a huge smile on her face.
Ben was laughing uncontrollably but was trying to hold back.
Their waitress returned to them, a smile on her face and her apron stained with kitchen grease. “Will that be one check or two?”
“I’ll take care of it.” Ben took the check and gave the woman his debit card. “If I don’t she may kill me with laughter.”
Caroline kicked him playfully under the table as the waitress walked away.
He tipped the waitress well when she returned and he and Caroline walked, smiling and talking to each other, a
s they left the restaurant.
“So what do we do now?” she asked as they got in Ben’s Jeep.
Ben checked his phone, hoping that Mason would be released and would call him. He decided to give it until noon and then call in to the police station. “Have you been to the Wright Brothers’ Museum?” he asked her.
“Not yet, but I saw that it was here when we drove in. That’s crazy to think that this is where people first learned to fly.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool, and actually pretty fun to see. They have replicas of the Wright Brothers’ first ‘planes’. Maybe I’m a dork, but I think it’s interesting.”
Caroline smiled. “Let’s go. It sounds good.”
As Ben parked his Jeep in the museum parking area, he smiled, watching people flying kites nearby over a vast field of grass. People would often meet here to fly kites because of the strong winds that gusted through where the Wright Brothers had first taken to flight.
“I wish we had kites,” Caroline said while stepping out of the Jeep. “They sure are beautiful up there. Look!” She pointed to a group of five kites being flown in a synchronized pattern. “That’s amazing! How do they do that?”
Ben went to his trunk and took out his own vibrant orange kite. “I can’t do anything like that.” He brought it to her as the wind was already catching in its fabric. “But I’ll bet we can have a lot of fun!”
They brought the kite to the field and soon Caroline was letting out its string, letting the beautiful fabric of the kite soar high into the sky and be pulled in whatever direction the currents of air took