Diane Chamberlain - Before the Storm

He handed me a few others.

“Some are from people I know,” he said as I glanced through them. “And some are from people I don’t know. And some girls sent me their pictures.” He grinned, handing me a photograph he had propped up next to his computer. “Look at this one.”

I did. Yowks. She had to be at least twenty. Long blond hair and wispy bangs that hung to her eyelashes. She wore a sultry look and little else. Well, all right, she had on some kind of skimpy top, but it didn’t cover much. I looked up at Andy and caught the gleam in his eye. He scared me these days. He used to see girls as friends, like his little skew-eyed pal, Emily. Now, he was getting into fights over girls. When did that happen? His voice was starting to change, too, jarring me every once in a while with a sudden drop in pitch. Sometimes standing next to him, I smelled the faint aroma of a man. I bought him a stick of deodorant, but he told me Laurel’d already gotten him one. That was part of the problem. If Laurel would just talk to me about Andy, we wouldn’t be buying him two sticks of deodorant. It had to scare her, too, the changes in him. The temptations he could fall victim to because he wanted to be one of the guys. By the time I was Andy’s age, I’d been having sex for two years and drank booze nearly every day. I didn’t have a disability and I still managed to screw myself up. What chance did Andy have of surviving his teens?

“How about we fly your kite on the beach today?” I suggested.

“Cool!” Andy never turned me down.

Laurel suddenly appeared in the doorway. She had on her running shorts and a Save the Loggerheads T-shirt. Her cheeks were a bright pink. She leaned against the jamb, arms folded, a white sheet of paper dangling from her hand. “What are y’all going to do today?” she asked.

“We’re going to fly my kite,” Andy said.

“That’ll be fun,” she said. “Why don’t you go get it? It’s in the garage on the workbench.”

“I can get it when we leave,” Andy said.

“Get it now, sweetie,” Laurel said. “We should check it and make sure it’s all in one piece. It’s been a while since you flew it.”

“Okay.” Andy walked past her and down the stairs.

So Laurel wanted to talk to me without Andy there. A rarity. I tried to look behind the half smile on her face.

“You won’t believe the e-mail I got this morning,” she said.

“Try me.” I was stoked she wanted to share something with me. Who cared what it was? She looked down at the paper instead of at me. With her head tipped low like that, I could see that the line of her jaw was starting to lose its sharpness. To me, she’d always be that pretty eighteen-year-old girl Jamie brought home so long ago. The girl who played Fur Elise on my electric piano and who took me seriously when I said I wanted to play in a band. Who never made me feel second-best.

“It’s from a woman at the Today show,” she said, handing me the paper. “They want Andy and me to fly to New York to be on the show.”

“You’re kidding.” I took the paper from her and read the short e-mail. She was supposed to call the show Monday to make arrangements. Would appearing on TV be good for Andy or not? “Do you want to do it?” I asked.

“I think I’d like to,” she said. “It’s a chance to educate people. Make them aware they can’t drink while they’re pregnant. And that kids with FASD aren’t all bad and out of control and violent and…you know.”

Once you got Laurel started on FASD, it was hard to reel her in.

“Those bits they do are short.” I didn’t want her to get her hopes up. “They might just want to hear about Andy and the fire and not give you a chance to—”

“I’ll get my two cents in,” she said. “You know I will.”

“Yeah.” I smiled. “You will.” I looked around the room at the cards. Swept my arm through the air. “It’s bound to generate more of this stuff.” I picked up the photograph of the blond from Andy’s desk. “Did you see this one?”

Her eyes widened. “Lord, no!” she said. “Ugh. I’ll keep a better eye on his mail.”

“His e-mail, too.”

“Marcus.” She gave me one of her disdainful looks. “I check everything. His e-mail, where he surfs, his MySpace page. You know me.”

I heard Andy on the stairs and quickly plucked the picture from her hand and set it back on his desk.

“It’s perfect!” Andy blew into the room, the box kite just missing the doorjamb.

“Okay, you two,” Laurel said. “Don’t forget the sunscreen. It’s in the drawer by the refrigerator. You’ll grab it, Marcus?”

“I’ll do that.” I put my hand on the back of Andy’s neck. “Let’s go, And.”

I trotted down the stairs with him, feeling pretty good. It was a step forward, Laurel telling me about the Today show, although she was so psyched, she probably would have told the plumber if he’d been the only person available. Still, it was progress.

For a year or so after Jamie died, Laurel didn’t let me see the kids at all. My parents were dead. My brother as well. Laurel, Maggie and Andy were all the family I had left, and she cut me out. I’d had some shitty periods in my life but that year was my worst. I’m sure it was Sara who got her to let me back in. It was slow going at first. I could only see the kids with Laurel skulking someplace nearby. Then she finally gave me freer rein. “Just not on the water,” she’d said.

I didn’t blame her for her caution. How could I? She had good reason not to trust me.

After all, she believed I killed her husband.

Laurel 1984-1987

JAMIE COULD INDEED KEEP HIS WEIGHT off me when we made love. I discovered, though, that I didn’t want him to. Blanketed beneath him, I took comfort in the protective mass of him. Being with him, whether we were making love or riding his bike or talking on the phone, made me feel loved again, the way I’d felt as a young child. Loved and whole and safe.

We dated my entire freshman year at UNC. When I went home to Ohio for the summer, we kept in touch by phone and mail and made plans for him to come visit for a week in July. I told Aunt Pat and Uncle Guy about him as carefully as I could. They didn’t like the fact that he was four years older than me. I could only imagine what they would say if I told them that there were really five years between our ages. They liked his religious studies degree, jumping to the conclusion that he was a Presbyterian like they were—and like they thought I still was. I’d been swayed by Jamie’s negativity about organized religion and was gradually coming to understand his own deep, personal and passionate tie to God. They didn’t understand why he was a carpenter when he should be using his degree in a “more productive manner.” I wanted to tell them he was a carpenter because he liked being a carpenter and that his family had more money than they could ever dream of having. But I didn’t want them to like Jamie for his family’s wealth. I wanted them to like him for himself.

On the evening Jamie was due to arrive, Aunt Pat and Uncle Guy waited with me on the front porch of their Toledo home. They sat in the big white rocking chairs sipping lemonade, while I squirmed on the porch swing, my nerves as taut as the chains holding the swing to the ceiling. I tried to see my aunt and uncle through Jamie’s eyes. They were a handsome couple in their late forties, and they looked as though they’d spent the day playing golf at a country club, although neither was a golfer and they couldn’t afford the country club.

Although it was July, Uncle Guy had on a light blue sweater over a blue-and-white-striped shirt, and he didn’t appear to be the least bit uncomfortable. He had chiseled good looks accentuated by the fact that he combed his graying hair straight back.