“City girl like you? No A/C. No Wi-Fi. No Starbucks. You’d lose your ever-loving mind.” She laughed. Let out the breath she’d been holding. I continued, “Think I’d better do this one on my own.”
“How long will you be gone?”
I didn’t have an answer. “Week. Month.” I rubbed my eyes. “Don’t really know.”
“Last time you were down there a year.” She faked a laugh. “Don’t make me come down there and find you.”
“You’re good at that.” The memory of the bar returned. “Might be tough to find me this time.”
“I did it once.”
I laughed. “True. But I think that was luck.”
I heard her smile and light a cigarette, which meant she was remembering something she’d not told me. “I think love had more to do with it than luck.”
I smiled. “Strong words for a woman who swore off any affection for the male race.”
She laughed. “Murph?”
“Yes.”
“The obituary . . .” A pause. “Beautiful. I’ve never . . . She would . . .” Her voice faded.
I waited.
“I want to . . .” She choked up. Silenced a sob and said, “Thank you for . . . Without you, I’d never have known either of them. Fingers was the father I never had. He taught me what a man should be. What it looked like to be loved by a man.” A pause as the line fell silent. “Maybe that’s why it’s been so tough to find someone who measures up. He set the bar rather high.”
“God broke the mold when He made him. One and only.”
She held back a sob. “Marie . . . if I could be anyone, I’d be her.”
I couldn’t answer. The urn stared at me. Silently.
“You will come back, right?”
My teakettle whistled as the water boiled. “I’d better get going.”
“Murphy . . . ?”
I knew what was coming. One last attempt. She had to try. “You sure? I mean, really. You don’t have to . . .”
I stared at the boat and then south at all the miles staring back at me. There and back again. “I promised him.” A long pause. “I owe him.” I wiped my eyes.
“Still keeping your word.”
“Trying.”
“He taught all of us that.”
“You’re the best. I’ll be seeing you. Take care.”
The emotional tug she held on my heart convinced me of what I already knew—I needed to cut all the tethers. If I didn’t, I’d never make it to Daytona. Much less the southern tip of Florida. I couldn’t do what I had to do looking in my rearview. And once I got there, I had to return. Marie was here waiting. The view out the windshield would be painful both going and coming. Pain waiting on me there. Pain waiting on me here. I read Call Ended across the faceplate of my phone, walked to the water’s edge, and skimmed it like a stone out across the shallow waves.
Daylight found me walking the perimeter of the island. I care for more than two hundred rose and citrus trees, so I fertilized each one and checked the automatic sprinklers, making sure they were functional. Over the years, I’d run miles of rubber tubing and PVC pipe to bring water to the roots. Something else Fingers taught me. I didn’t know how long I’d be gone, so I locked up my apartment in the barn but not the chapel. I never locked it. Fingers and I had rebuilt much of it, and I had hundreds of hours of sweat equity invested, but I didn’t consider it mine. Who really owns a church? If someone needed shelter, they were welcome to it. I certainly wouldn’t stop them. I left a note pinned to the door:
If you are looking for the priest, he died. If he were here, he’d tell you that he’s gone home and you can read the details in the obituary. If you need God, you’d better talk to Him yourself. He’d like that. And he’d wish that for you. It’s why he lived the life he lived. The door is unlocked. —Murph
I wound down the path to the water, stepped onto my small dock, then onto my boat.
I stood a long time staring at the water. Marie and I fell in love here. In these waters. Knee-deep. We’d met as kids. Shared our secrets. Watched each other walk over from kids to man and woman. Then there was that night. The party. The riptide. How they were all looking in the wrong place and how I found her washed out to sea. Back onshore, tender and trembling and full of hope, she put her hand in mine and we waded in. Love washed over me. A riptide. I’d like to think it washed her too. We dove to the bottom—where the water is clear—then climbed up on the bank and let the moon and fire dry our skin. In the weeks that followed, we combed the beach looking for shells and each other. Just two hearts reaching for each other, standing against the world, wishing the tide would stay out forever.
But that’s the thing about tides. They always return. Nothing holds them back. And when they do, they erase the memory of what was.
A week before our wedding, she had tugged on my arm. “I need to tell you something.” Her eyes were glassy.
“Sure.”
“Not here.”
We climbed into my Gheenoe, a sixteen-foot skiff, and she brought me here. We beached the skiff just over there and walked these woods. Into the chapel. I had proposed in there. The place held a thousand tender memories. She pushed open the massive doors and led me up the center aisle toward the altar. Abandoned years ago, the chapel lay in disrepair and ruin. We stepped over and around pieces of the roof that had caved in decades ago. She held both of my hands and through tears said, “I just wanted you to know . . .”
I waited. She was hurting and I needed to let her talk.
“Just wanted you to hear from me that . . . I will and I do.” She patted her chest. “With all of the broken pieces of me.”
I brushed the hair out of her face. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t give you what I promised you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean . . .” She looked away. “Something was taken from me . . . when I was younger. Once it’s gone . . .” She shook her head. “It never comes back.”
“What’re you—”
“My father.” The tears broke loose and she reached for me. Clinging. “Please don’t think I’m dirty. It was a long time ago.”
Wasn’t tough to put the pieces together.
She spoke in my ear. “Mom found out. Divorced him. I haven’t seen him since he got out of prison.”
I held her, and what started low and quiet became loud, angry, and painful. Something she’d been holding a long time. Maybe since it happened. I held her face in my hands and kissed her. Her lips tasted salty. “I loved you from before the moment I met you. Always have. Nothing changes that. Ever.”
“You still want me?”
I wrapped my arms around her waist and smiled. “Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if—”
I pressed my finger to her lips. “Stop. I love you. All of you. Just the way you are. I’m not making light of any of this, but love . . .”
Desperation wrecked her eyes. “Does what?”
I searched for the words. “Writes over the old memories. Makes beauty out of pain. Love writes what can be.”