“You can’t really blame her for trying.” Bobby thought he would feel the same way in her shoes.
“I don’t,” Rick said. “But I think…when someone lets their emotions take over, they can lose sight of reason.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Bobby stood up and carried his cereal bowl and orange juice glass over to the sink and started to wash them.
“So.” Rick was finished eating, but he remained seated at the table. “What are your plans for this morning?”
“I’m going up to Kiss River in a few minutes,” he said. “I’d like to spend some time with Mackenzie and get to know her better, as well as give Lacey a break.” He dried the bowl, glass and utensils and put them away. “I don’t remember where any of the amusement areas are,” he said. “Do you know?”
“I’ve seen a big water park in Kill Devil Hills, if you want to go down that far.”
“Great idea, thanks,” he said, walking into the living room. He picked up his keys from the end table, wished Rick a productive writing day, and walked outside with one thing on his mind: coffee.
Two cups of 7-Eleven coffee and one cigarette later, he pulled into the parking lot near the keeper’s house, where he said a little prayer that Mackenzie would agree to go with him without a fight. He thought back to his conversation with Lacey the day before on the lighthouse stairs. He’d sounded so sure of himself, so confident, as though he knew how to handle a kid and it was no big deal. But it was a big deal and the reality was, he was nervous.
As he walked toward the house, he could see Lacey through the screen door, sweeping the kitchen floor, and he called out his hello. She opened the door for him, her smile so wide, so sexy and so sweet, that he couldn’t help but smile back. The kitchen smelled like coffee.
She saw him eye the pot. “Want a cup?” she asked.
He nodded. “I’ve had two, but could use a third,” he said. “Rick doesn’t drink it and I nearly passed out over breakfast.”
She laughed. “Still have a little monkey on your back, huh?” she asked as she poured the coffee into a mug.
“A kinder, gentler monkey, I hope.” He took the mug from her hand and swallowed a mouthful of the coffee, and only then noticed the stained glass panels in the windows of the kitchen. They sent a blue wash over Lacey’s skin and her ethereal halo of hair.
“Are these yours?” he asked, pointing to the panels. The glass was cut to form delicate stalks of sea grass against a vivid blue sky.
“Uh-huh,” she said.
“So beautiful. I’m going to have to buy something of yours to take back with me.”
“Maybe we can make a trade,” she said. Then she leaned against the kitchen counter, her arms folded across her chest. “Some of Mackenzie’s boxes arrived this morning, so she’s unpacking. I’m not sure you’ll be able to tear her away.” She looked apologetic.
“I was hoping to take her to a water park. What do you think?”
“It’s a great idea, Bobby, but I just don’t know.” She shook her head. “She’s so…” She shrugged. “You know.”
“I’ll give it a try,” he said.
“And Nola called,” Lacey added. “She wants Mackenzie for the night, so if you can actually get her to go out with you, would you mind dropping her off there after your outing?”
He cringed. He knew he would have to see Nola at some point but was not looking forward to it. Even when he’d been with Jessica that long ago summer, he had done his best to avoid her mother. “Is she going to bite my head off?” he asked.
Lacey smiled. “Possibly.”
“Great.”
Lacey led him through the kitchen to the living room, then pointed toward the stairs. “Her room’s a couple doors to the right in the hallway up there,” she said quietly. “Good luck.”
He climbed the stairs and walked down the hallway, noticing the intricate stained glass panels adorning every window he passed.
Mackenzie did not seem to hear his approach, and he felt like a voyeur as he watched her from the doorway of her room. She sat on the floor, two large cardboard boxes on her left side, and the black lab, Sasha, on her right. She was talking softly to the dog, an arm around his back, nuzzling his neck.
“Mackenzie?” he said.
She quickly let go of the dog and turned to face him, looking embarrassed at being caught in a tender moment. Reaching into the box at her side, she pulled out the figurine of a horse.
“May I come in?” he asked.
She shrugged, and he walked in and sat on the edge of her unmade bed.
“Lacey said you got some of your things today,” he said.
She shrugged again. “There’s still a lot more.” She pulled another horse from the box and unwrapped it carefully from a ream of paper towels. “I don’t have anything of my own here. My whole life is missing.”
He nodded. It was a great phrase. My whole life is missing.
“I can only imagine how strange that feels,” he said.
“It pisses me off,” she said, and the hesitancy in her words made him think she was trying that phrase out for the first time—or at least the first time in front of an adult—waiting to see what response she would get.
“I bet it does,” he said.
He motioned toward the box. “Is that whole box full of plastic horses?”
“No,” she said, a truly nasty and impatient edge to her voice as though he were the stupidest man alive. “It’s full of ceramic horses. And resin horses. None of them are just plain old plastic.”
“Do you collect them?” he asked.
“I have twenty-two.”
“Do you like to ride?” He was trying to remember if there were any stables in the area. He hadn’t ridden since the summer he’d spent on a Wyoming dude ranch, years ago. That week was a blur in his mind; he’d been wasted the entire time.
“I’ve never been on a horse,” she said.
“Never? Not even one of those rides where they lead you around?”
She shook her head.
“Well, maybe we can find a place to do that. Last time I spent a summer here, wild horses roamed the area around Kiss River. It was very cool. They’ve moved them up north and Lacey says there’s a tour you can take to see them.” To hell with his water park idea. The tour would probably be four times as expensive, but it was a much better plan. “How about we do that today?” he asked. “You and me?”
“I have to stay here and unpack and fix up my room,” she said, reaching into the box again without looking at him. “I have to go to my grandmother’s tonight, so this is the only chance I have.”
“It won’t take us all day,” he said, “and I’d really like to see them. Please come with me.” He made it sound like she’d be doing him a favor. She rolled her eyes at his insistence.
“Okay,” she said, shoulders sagging. “You win.”
He wanted to argue the win/lose point, but decided to let her save face if that’s what she needed to do.
“Let me ask Lacey where the place is, okay?” He got to his feet. “And you can continue unpacking.”
She went back to her horses, and he left the room, feeling pretty damn smug about his success with her.
Lacey was no longer in the kitchen and he called out her name.
“In here,” she said.
He followed the sound of her voice through the living room and dining room to a sunroom filled with light. Stained glass panels hung from a multitude of window panes, and Lacey sat at a broad worktable wearing green safety glasses and holding a cutting tool above a piece of amber glass. Bobby was awed by the sunlit space and instantly filled with envy.
“This is perfect!” he said. “Look at the natural light you have.”
“It’s not great at Rick’s, is it,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.
“The cottage is fine. The lighting is not. But I’m going to get a good lamp and—”
“Work here,” she said. She motioned to a second, smaller w
orktable. “Would that give you enough space?”
“It would be perfect,” he said. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Of course. I don’t need both tables at once.”
“Well, I may take you up on it.” He sat down at the second table, liking that the chair swiveled. “Right now, though, I need to get directions from you to that all-terrain tour place you told me about. Mackenzie and I are going to go look at the horses.”
Her jaw dropped open, and when she spoke, she was nearly whispering. “She said she’d go with you?”
He nodded. “Not with any great enthusiasm, but yes, she said she would.”
“Well.” Lacey grimaced. “There’s a problem, though. You need reservations in advance.” She reached into a wooden box beneath the table, pulled out a phone book and began leafing through it. “I doubt you can go today.”
“Hmm. I didn’t think of that,” he said, disappointed. It was unlikely that he could get Mackenzie to agree to an alternate plan. “This place is crawling with tourists, isn’t it?” he asked. “I thought it was crowded when I was seventeen, but when I drove up here and saw all the houses along the way, I—”
“I know, I know.” Lacey started dialing the phone. “That’s why I’ve loved living in Kiss River. It feels like it used to out here.”
He turned the chair back and forth while Lacey pushed a couple of extra buttons on the receiver, obviously waiting to talk to a human being.
“Yes,” she said finally. “Hi. I was wondering how soon I could get a reservation for an ATV tour to see the horses?”
He watched her face light up as she heard the answer. She had some major dimples. The sight of them made him smile.
“Great,” she said. “Two people at two. That’s perfect. Okay, I’ll tell them.”
She hung up the phone. “You are a lucky man,” she said. “They had a cancellation at two o’clock today. But it’s hugely expensive.” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s forty-four dollars for you and half price for kids twelve and under.”
“And time with Mackenzie—priceless,” he said, and she laughed. “That’s excellent, Lace,” he added. “Thanks.”
Upstairs, he told Mackenzie she was free to fix up her room until one o’clock. Then he carried his scrimshaw case from his bus into the sunroom. He opened it on the second worktable and watched Lacey’s eyes widen at the sight of the engraved and incised pendants and pins, belt buckles and knife handles, all spread out on black velvet.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” she said, touching one of his favorite pieces, a pendant bearing a picture of a calico cat curled in a ball on a fireplace hearth. The colors were vibrant, the design intricate, the cat realistic. She looked at him. “I thought you meant the kind of scrimshaw…you know, the usual kind…the ships on whales’ teeth and that sort of thing.”
He laughed. “I started out that way and got bored very quickly.”
“Oh, my God, Bobby.” She lifted one of the pins and held it close to her eyes. “You’re so talented. I just weld bits of glass together.”
“Don’t put your own work down, Lacey,” he said. “It’s exceptional.”
“Even if you just drew these designs on paper, they’d be beautiful,” she said. “But you’ve etched them into—”
“Engraved,” he corrected her. Everyone made that mistake.
“What’s the material?”
He pointed to the pin she was holding. “That piece is ten-thousand-year-old wooly mammoth tusk,” he said.
She laughed. “You’re kidding? Is that legal?”
“It’s legal,” he said. “And expensive.”
He spent the next couple of hours telling her about scrimshaw, trying to keep his mind off the fact that Elise had not called. Twice during his conversation with Lacey, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket to check that it was on and the battery charged.
Lacey studied every piece he’d made, looking at many of them under a magnifying glass to see the delicate stippling, shaking her head in awe, asking him questions about technique. She was fascinated. If he stuck around Kiss River long enough, he thought, he was quite certain he’d be giving her lessons.
At one o’clock he and Mackenzie were sitting in the bus, pulling onto the gravel lane leading away from the keeper’s house. Her small overnight bag was in the back seat and her grumpy mood had accompanied her into the front, where she’d insisted it was not safe for her to ride until he informed her that the bus had no airbag. It did, however, have seat belts, which he’d installed himself years ago. She’d been annoyed to discover the bus was not air-conditioned, and although he’d opened every window that was capable of opening, the interior of the vehicle was undeniably steamy.
“I hope no one sees me in this tin can,” she said as they jostled over the ruts in the gravel road.
“A lot of people think it’s pretty cool,” he said.
“Like who?”
“Your mother did, although that was a long time ago.”
“My mother wouldn’t be caught dead in a car like this.”
She turned her head away from him quickly, and he knew her words had jolted her. He didn’t know what to say to ease her pain.
After an awkward moment, she turned to look at him again. “You are, like, totally bald,” she said.
“You’re kidding.” He looked in the rearview mirror, feigning alarm. “When did that happen?”
She rolled her eyes.
“I’m a little sensitive about it,” he admitted.
“I didn’t say it was bad,” she said. “Just a fact.” It seemed as close to an apology as he was likely to get from her. He longed for a change of subject.
“You really love animals, don’t you?” he asked.
She shrugged. “They’re okay.”
“Did you have any pets in Arizona?”
“My mother was allergic.”
“Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He turned on the radio. “Have you found any stations here that you like?”
She reached toward the console. “Where’s the scan button?”
He laughed. “I’m afraid it’s a manual scan,” he said. “You have to use the dial.”
She turned the dial until she found a song he’d never heard before, sung by a boy who sounded as though his voice had not yet changed.
They listened to music all the way to the tour location, and he was relieved for the distraction. At some point he knew he should have a serious talk with her, but it didn’t need to happen now.
The tour was not half-bad. They piled into a Chevy Suburban with six other people, a couple of them close to Mackenzie’s age, and bounced along the beach. The female guide, dressed in safari gear, described the ecosystem of the maritime forest, which clearly bored the kids. Once the horses appeared, though, Mackenzie came to life.
“Can we get out and pet them?” she asked the guide, who shook her head.
“They’re wild,” the young woman said. “They look gentle, but looks are deceiving.”
The horses appeared to be healthy. Fat and happy and safe from traffic, and he supposed moving them up here to noman’s-land had been the only solution.
Once they’d returned to the overheated air of his bus, Mackenzie immediately pulled her cell phone from the waistband of her shorts and flipped it open.
“Mackenzie,” he said, “could you not talk on the phone right now?” He doubted the signal would be strong enough for her to use her phone this far north, anyway. His was not. He had checked his phone several times in the past hour.
Mackenzie looked at him, then let out her breath in exasperation, lowering the phone to her knees. She turned her head toward the window again. “I haven’t talked to my friends all day,” she said under her breath.
“Well, I want to talk to you,” he said.
“Everyone wants to talk to me,” she said. “Aren’t I lucky.”
He ignored the comment, although he was starting to understand Lacey’s annoyan
ce with the girl. “I keep trying to imagine what it’s like to go through all that you have,” he said. “How it feels. But I can’t imagine it. I just can’t. I wish you’d tell me what it’s like.”
For a long time, she didn’t speak. Finally, she turned to look at him. “Was my mother a slut?” she asked.
Yikes. The question was not what he’d expected. “Why do you ask that?” he asked.
She turned her head away again without responding.
“No, your mother wasn’t a slut, or anything close to it,” he said. “When you’re young, you sometimes make mistakes. That’s part of growing up.” He knew instantly that he’d chosen the wrong words.
“I was her biggest mistake,” she said.
“I bet that she never thought that for even a minute,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
“Did she ever act like you were a mistake?” he asked.
She shook her head, and he noticed tears on her cheek. Shit.
“I just want my mom back,” she said.
He didn’t know what to say. He thought he should pull off the road, but then what? Hugging her seemed inappropriate and, he was sure, would not be welcomed by her. He kept his foot steady on the accelerator.
“It’s hard,” he said. “It’s unfair. She was too young to die, and you’re too young to be without her. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t answer, but her crying turned to sniffling and after another minute, she reached for the power button of the radio and turned it on.
It was a long drive to Kitty Hawk, and once they reached the outskirts, he struggled to remember which street Jessica’s old house was on. Everything looked different to him. More houses, many more stores. He slowed as he neared the intersection of a street he thought might be the right one, steeling himself to see Nola Dillard for the first time in twelve years. He’d been in Jessica’s house plenty of times. Nola had always been working and her bed had been big.
“Where are you going?” Mackenzie asked as he started to make the turn.
“Taking you to your grandmother’s,” he said.
“She lives in Nag’s Head,” Mackenzie said.