Chapter Nineteen: Love Beneath the Oak
Sometime in the middle of the night, the clouds broke. Brock whipped the sleeping bag over their heads, but soon they were drenched, Daphne’s newly burnt skin unable to keep her warm in the wind. She shivered all over.
They struggled from the bag and gathered their things with the light on Brock’s cap providing little help in the thick rain. The lightning in the distance illuminated the headland as they made their way down toward the east. The rain turned the white stone slick beneath their feet, and, as they scaled down the side, they slipped and half-fell to the next level of rock before finding the path to the beach. They ran across the now-wet sand, past the pier, and through the narrow gaps between the crags, resting for a moment beneath a cliff edge, but because it provided no protection, they ran on until they came upon the sprawling old oak.
They crawled beneath the thick branches and sat with their backs against the trunk, shivering and panting beside one another. Only some of the deluge made its way down to them through the manifold of twisted branches and leaves all around them.
“Are you okay?” Brock put an arm around Daphne.
She nodded. “Just cold.”
“The sleeping bag’s worthless.”
Shivering, teeth chattering, unable to speak, she nestled against his wet, warm body. He lifted her chin and pressed his wet lips against hers, sending shocks of heat through her.
He whispered at her ear, “I’ll take care of you. Go back to sleep.”
Wrapped in his arms, his warm breath against her neck, she relaxed and, despite the torrent, fell asleep.
In the morning, Daphne was awakened by the sound of her own name being whispered near her ear.
She smiled and opened her eyes and stretched under the oak tree with the damp sleeping bag beneath her head and her own hair tickling the sides of her face with the gentle breeze. The water lapped the shore a dozen yards away, and the sun, low in the cloudless sky, hid behind the rocky bluffs. A hundred birds called out to one another from where they roosted in the thick branches above.
Where was Brock? She sat up and looked around, her stomach clenching.
This is not the haunted side of the island.
The whisper came again, this time behind her. “Daphne.”
She jumped to her feet and ran in all directions but saw no one. Could it have been the swaying of the leaves?
Out in the sea, Brock jumped over the waves with his hands in the air, his bare back to her, and he was shouting, “Woo, hoo!” repeatedly.
A smile crossed her face at the sight of his revelry, and she decided she was just tired and edgy and was hearing things that weren’t real. She fished through the backpack for more grapes and then, carrying a bunch, walked across the sand to join Brock in the sea.
The cold water crawled up her legs toward her thighs, and she let out a squeal when it reached her waist.
“Hey,” Brock said. “You look happier this morning.”
“Should we head to Scorpion Anchorage right away?”
“They think I’m bringing you back, remember? They won’t search for us for a while.”
She popped a grape into her mouth. “Want one?”
“No thanks. Sleep alright?”
“Guess so. You?”
“Best night of sleep I’ve had in months.”
Daphne laughed. “You had your best sleep against an old oak tree during a storm, soaked, cold, and without a proper bed?”
“Yep.” He stole a grape from the bunch and popped it into his mouth with a wink.
Even though she teased him, she felt the same way. She had felt at peace in his arms.
“Brock,” Daphne’s mouth went dry. “What if I can’t do this? What if it’s like last time?” She hadn’t meant to ask him that. The words spilled out.
His smile dropped at the corners, and he gazed at the sea. Then he turned his blue eyes to her and said, “Don’t worry about hurting me. I won’t be any worse off the second time.” He moved closer and put his arms around her. “If you’re willing, it’s worth it to me to try again.”
She buried her face in his bare chest, warm and wet and hard with muscle. She wanted to kiss him and to leave him at the same time. “I’m scared.”
“Don’t be. Try to enjoy life as much as you can. Let go of the past.”
She pulled away and took several steps back. “But that’s the problem. I can’t. I don’t know how.”
“If it had been you and not Kara, if Kara had heard but hadn’t gotten up, would you want Kara to be miserable for the rest of her life?”
“Of course not.”
“What if she’s watching you from heaven? What if she has to witness your suffering?”
“Are you going to say I’m selfish again?”
“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.” He stepped toward her.
She narrowed her eyes, unable to control how defensive and angry she felt. “But you believe it, don’t you?”
“No. I understand better now. I’ve done a lot of research on survivor’s guilt, which is what you have.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” She gasped at her own cruelty. “I’m sorry. Oh, Brock. I didn’t mean that.”
He clenched his jaw and walked past her toward the shore. “It’s okay.”
She followed him. “What did you discover, in your research? Anything helpful?”
“Sure.”
“Like what?”
“Like it’s easier to believe you could have done something to change what happened than to accept your own helplessness.”
She stopped dead in her tracks, the water washing over her calves.
He stopped, too, and looked back at her.
She thought about that. Was that was she was doing? No.
“I could have done something. If I’d gotten out of bed, Kara would be alive.”
“Maybe.” He kept walking. “Maybe not. Maybe you’d be dead, too. We’ll never know.”
She followed him through the waves toward the beach and back to the oak. She thought about what he’d said. Was she fooling herself into thinking she could have prevented Kara’s death?
She wished it had been her instead of Kara. Tears sprang to her eyes as she peeled through the branches and sat against the thick trunk of the tree. Brock dusted off and rolled up the sleeping bag.
“It should have been me,” she said out loud. “I don’t mean to sound like a baby, but it’s true. She was smarter, and faster, and prettier, and I was so jealous of her. I hate that about myself. I wish I could have been happy for her, but I wanted to be better than her, and I wasn’t—not at one single thing.” The tears ran down her cheeks and her body shuddered. “I hate my self-pity, but I really do believe even my parents wish it had been me instead of Kara.”
Brock knelt on the ground and tied up the sleeping bag to the backpack, shaking his head. “No wonder you’re miserable.”
Daphne’s mouth fell open. “Wouldn’t you be?”
He stood up with his hands on his slim hips and looked down at her. “First of all, I doubt they wish it had been you. You wish it had been you. They wish it had been them. That’s survivor’s guilt. But let’s say your parents are cruel enough to wish it had been you instead of Kara. Then they’re assholes and you have to cut them loose and go on with your life, because your life has value.”
“They aren’t assholes.”
“Any parent who wishes one child was dead in place of another is an asshole, Daphne, plain and simple.”
“They can’t help it. Kara was so good.”
“And you’re not?”
“I’m not as good.”
He crossed his arms in front of his chest and frowned. “Why do you say that?”
How had they gotten into this? Daphne wanted to stand up and run away, to the other side of the island—anything but talk about this. Because, that’s why! She wanted to scream, Because! Before she knew what she was saying, she was shouting, “Do you know what the last thing I
said to her was? She had borrowed my favorite Hollister shirt without asking. I didn’t know until we got home from school—she was in junior high and I was a sophomore—and I made her take it off right away, right there in the living room, afraid she’d get her supper stains all over it. When she took it off and handed it to me, I,” she broke into sobs and shouted through the lump in her throat, “I swung it at her and told her she should ask next time. She said she would have asked, but she left for school earlier that morning and didn’t want to wake me up, and Mama said it was okay. I yelled that it was my shirt, not Mama’s, and I was planning on wearing it. She said all her shirts were getting too small.
“I was such a bitch. Who cares about a shirt? I was fifteen and she thirteen and I was hitting her with a stupid Hollister shirt. The truth is she looked better in it. We didn’t speak to each other all night. Joey had heard us screaming at each other, and he sided with me. He wouldn’t have thought she was possessed if I hadn’t gotten so mad at her…wouldn’t have gone to her room. Oh, Brock! Don’t you see? My stupid tantrum, my idiotic jealousy, made him kill her!” Daphne covered her face with her hands, so ashamed. She hadn’t told anyone this and hadn’t meant to. She didn’t want anyone to know how petty she had been, how mean she had been to her sweet sister the day before she died, and how truly, unalterably, Kara’s death had been her fault.
Brock fell to his knees and took Daphne in his arms. He held her so tight that it hurt, but it hurt in a good way, a comforting way, and she was glad. He didn’t say anything, but held her until she stopped shaking and sobbing and was still.
At last he kissed her forehead and said, “Maybe one day you’ll see how typical that was, fighting with your sister over a borrowed shirt, and how impossible it was to know it would set Joey off, if it even did. Now let me put some of this sunscreen on you.”
“Wait a minute.” She searched his eyes. “Are you still saying it wasn’t my fault, even after what I just said to you?”
“That’s what I’m saying.” He took his shirt from the back pack. “Here, you wear my shirt and help me with this sunscreen.”
She sat beneath the oak lathering the sunscreen across his back and her own arms and legs in stunned silence. Brock still didn’t think it was her fault, even after hearing the whole story. She’d told no one, sure everyone would despise her even more than they already did. Why didn’t Brock despise her?
When they finished applying the sunscreen, Brock got up and helped her to her feet, swung the backpack across his shoulders, took her hand, and led her east, toward Scorpion Anchorage.