Reunion Beach Read online

  He turned and walked out of the restaurant, deliberately, with wide strides, his long legs taking him to the door within seconds. He was a proud man, and there was no way he would sit there in humiliation—he’d left his full champagne glass on the table, yet had taken the velvet box, tucked it in his pocket. The hushed voices around Beatrice rose; they sounded to her like buzzing cicadas on a summer night—if cicadas could be judgmental and appalled, that is.

  Beatrice sat still and quiet, trying to catch her breath while the crème brûlée turned soggy where she’d stuck her fork in it right before Lachlan had slipped the box from his coat jacket. She took a long sip of her champagne he’d ordered (that should have been a hint; he only orders wine, and red at that) and sat back to catch her breath.

  What the hell was wrong with her?

  Why would the word “yes” not rise to her tongue? There were many reasons, she knew. A good marriage gone bad. Or to quote Dorothy Parker, she’d put all her eggs in one bastard, in a marriage she’d thought was good but turned out to be a sham. She’d come to terms with that years ago. She’d wept on a stranger’s couch in therapy and had eventually found her way through the pain and the lies and the deceit. It’d been ten years; a decade since her marriage to Tom had ended. He could not be the reason she didn’t want to marry again. He couldn’t hurt her anymore. She wouldn’t allow it.

  She’d found her way. She’d built a life handcrafted of her own making. But the truth was this: saying no to Lachlan might mean she would lose him. And she loved him. She loved their life together. He had his house and she had hers only two blocks away in downtown Savannah where the cobblestone streets echoed with their two hundred years, where the gas lanterns flickered at night, and the jeweled emerald park squares with their statues and monuments allowed reprieve. From Lachlan’s small roof patio, past the steeple of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, they could spy the Savannah River, its gray and silver body moving toward Tybee Island while they watched the sunset and talked about their day.

  She was an artist who painted birds—birds in habitat, birds in flight, birds in their nests, birds in cages—anything she could imagine. And he taught art history at Savannah College of Art and Design, where he was by far the most beloved professor on staff: Dr. Lachlan Harrison was an icon. His distinguished face and sardonic smile adorned the cover of the SCAD magazine’s student manual. He emanated comfort, reassurance, and bravado all at the same time, and they used his image.

  Beatrice and Lachlan loved Savannah. They loved each other. They loved art. What was the full stop?

  She didn’t know. Honest to God, she didn’t.

  It was a dilemma faced all over the world, she also knew. Was marriage even worth the trouble? She wasn’t special in the face of these larger questions, but so many others seemed to be able to jump in, to make bold decisions one way or the other.

  Beatrice picked up the champagne bottle and didn’t bother pouring it into her glass; she was the only one drinking. She sipped from the bottle and sat back, heard the laughter at a nearby table. Yes, she was a joke. But she hadn’t paid the bill yet; she couldn’t just up and leave like Lachlan had.

  The waitress, she’d said her name was Sandy or Candy, arrived with the bill and a look of pity. Or was it disgust for sending away the handsome man? Sandy or Candy dropped the black padded envelope on the table and walked away. Beatrice pulled out a credit card and slipped it into the envelope before partaking of more champagne.

  There’d been a day, many days, in fact, when she’d dreamed of marriage proposals. In the late eighties, in college, it had consumed hours of conversations with her roommates. Who would get married when? Who first? Who last? How many bridesmaids?

  How ridiculous. As if being chosen as a wife and having a wedding was the epitome of life. As if being proposed to verified one’s worth.

  Ha!

  Beatrice made a noise halfway between a laugh and a choke, and a young man with a very big beard two tables over gave her a look as if she’d just burped. Beatrice smiled at him, and he turned away.

  As the piano player set off on his next song about tomato tomahto, potato potahto, Beatrice smiled. It’d been a favorite of her college roommates, a song that celebrated their differences. Her much-loved roommates, who’d eventually been her bridesmaids.

  All four of them had been with her the first time: her first wedding, when she’d been so sure, when she’d walked down the aisle in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Savannah wearing all white, head to toe white, flowing about her like meringue. Her bridesmaids had worn blue velvet dresses with a bow at the back. Her wedding dress had shoulder pads as large and sparkly as a character from Dynasty, and she’d stood in front of Tom and solemnly said, “Till death do us part.”

  Well, they’d parted and there hadn’t been any death.

  Why would she promise the same thing again?

  The waitress returned and took the credit card, her mood not improving one iota. The champagne was doing its job and Beatrice sat back and listened to the music, now onto the truly demoralizing “Let’s Stay Together”—Whatever you want to do is alright with me.

  She didn’t believe in those kinds of sentiments anymore. Yes, at her first wedding she’d believed in all of it, she’d believed in love and in staying together for good and all. She’d made vows while four other women stood by her side.

  Dani.

  Rose.

  Victoria.

  Daisy.

  She closed her eyes and could see each of them in their ridiculous blue velvet that she’d made them wear. “It’s such a beautiful dress; you can wear it again,” she’d told them. They never did. No one ever did. It was, in the end, a common bride mantra that was another sham. So much of what they’d been fed about romance and love, about proposals and marriage, had been a sham. Harry and Sally didn’t help. Neither did Cinderella or My Fair Lady. They’d all believed, though. And waited for Harry or Prince Charming or Henry Higgins.

  She laughed and opened her eyes. The patrons were now openly staring at her. The crazy woman drinking straight out of the bottle with a man who had just walked away with a sparkling, most likely custom designed, diamond ring. A great Savannah story for the tourists, she thought, as she took back her credit card, signed the bill, drank the last of the champagne, and headed for the door. She stopped, a bit wobbly, at the piano and smiled at the man with the obvious black toupee playing, and dropped a twenty in his tip jar before she walked out the door and into the hot July evening air.

  Gas lanterns flickered above the cobblestone streets, and a cloudy sky muted the moon’s soft crescent glow into a smudge of a yellow smile. Beatrice ambled across the street to Reynolds Square, taking a seat on a wooden bench next to a homeless woman eating something greasy from a paper bag, her feet propped on a grocery cart full of coats, bags, and hidden treasures.

  Beatrice sat quietly for a while, and when she stood to leave, she felt the champagne moving too quickly through her blood. In a few steps, she realized she was absolutely drunk, and she would pay for it in the morning. But for now, the bubbles dulled the pain of seeing Lachlan walk away. She lifted her cell from her purse and texted him.

  Please don’t be mad. I love you so.

  . . . .

  The dots of his return typing . . . and then nothing. Beatrice paced the square and then teetered the few blocks up Drayton Street and left on East Broughton toward home, as the ground of her life shifted beneath her. The best thing to do was go home, go to bed, and face it all in the morning. No good came of drunk texting. That was for damn sure.

  Unless of course . . . it was to her flock.

  She stopped in her tracks, realizing she’d passed her home. Had she been headed to Lachlan’s? Probably, but with an unsteady quick turn that almost sent her to the brick sidewalk, she took the few steps back to her home. She reached her address and lifted her gaze to the front door, a blue door set against gray brick in a much loved one-hundred-fifty-year-old house: a
classical Georgian with a hip roof and square façade; four stairs leading to the covered entryway stoop.

  The old and warm house was the only thing she’d wanted from Tom when he’d left her. Fumbling for her key, she climbed the stairs, unlocked the door, and entered the foyer where she’d dropped bags of art supplies that morning, and not yet carried them to her studio at the back of the house. She stepped over the mess and down the limestone-floored hallway to the kitchen, where her laptop sat on the white marble countertop.

  She flipped it open and then grabbed a coconut water from the refrigerator, guzzled it before sitting down. Only four of the flock remained: Victoria, Rose, Daisy, and Beatrice. Dani had succumbed to a horrible and quick leukemia that took her life and stole light from their little group. They all missed her, and in an odd habit, her email remained on the group list. Who knows who ever saw it, if anyone. Although it’d been twelve years, not one of them could delete it.

  She opened the group list called “The Flock” and wrote.

  My birds, I need you. Lachlan asked me for the second time, and again I was as speechless as the time Victoria took that bet and streaked across the quad. I must give him an answer and I need you. You were there the first time I married and . . . Here’s my proposal:

  Beatrice looked up to the glass-fronted cabinets of her kitchen and then out the window to the dark backyard where an oak tree’s uplighting cast shadows on the Spanish moss. The sharp tang of oil paint lingered in the air where she’d left open a tube of paint. She looked back down at the flickering cursor.

  A proposal to her from Lachlan.

  What was her proposal to the Flock?

  It was right there on the front of her fizzing mind.

  Could they take a trip together? The others might help Beatrice figure this out. Like in the old days.

  She started typing again.

  I will rent us a beach house for three days next weekend in South Carolina. My treat. I will buy your plane tickets, rent a house, and provide all the food and wine. Please abandon all responsibilities and commitments and say yes or lose me forever. Pegasus.

  If they agreed, Victoria would come from Atlanta, Daisy from Charleston, and Rose from North Carolina. No one lived so far away they couldn’t get to Savannah. There were no good excuses, as far as buzzed Beatrice was concerned.

  2

  The Other Proposal

  Morning sun burst through the window like swords of light. Beatrice squeezed her eyes against its glare as the memory of last night rushed in with nausea.

  Oh, dear God, the champagne. The walk home. The text to Lachlan that he hadn’t answered. She rolled over for a glass of water on her bedside table and found only a pile of books. Guzzling down almost an entire champagne bottle had been a terrible mistake. She cursed her choices as she shuffled to the kitchen and made the coffee, gulped water, and downed two Advils.

  Surely Lachlan had answered her by now. He’d never ignored her completely. Not once. Their disagreements came with quiet words and long talks; their hurt feelings dealt with head-on and kindly. Sure, there had been times when they’d both needed a breather: when her girls met him and acted rude; when his son inferred that she would never add up to his dead mother; when the art show took her on the road and she stayed longer than she’d said because Tucson was so beautiful. And more. But nothing that ever had him ignoring her; nothing that felt like this, like her heart was twisted in knots.

  The first proposal had been casual, not even a proposal at all if you wanted to diminish it, which she did. Two years before, while they cooked Sunday brunch at his place, he’d said, “I think it’s time to get married, combine our lives. Your daughters are off and my son is happy and . . .”

  She’d looked at him with a confused expression. Yes, she loved him. Yes, she’d thought about marriage—who doesn’t? But, no, she didn’t want a logical ask. This kind of proposal that assumed that life circumstances and not the heart determined marriage? That’s not what she wanted. Not at all. And that’s what she’d told him.

  “Okay. That’s fair,” he’d said. And then he’d dropped to one knee, using a kitchen chair to help him as his battered knees from an old marathon-running habit kept him from being limber. “I love you with all my heart and soul, Beatrice McLain. Let’s get married. Please.” He’d grinned up at her.

  She’d held out her hand. “Lachlan, get up.”

  He stood. “Well?”

  “We aren’t ready,” she’d told him, her heart pounding against her ribs like a ten-pound hammer.

  “You aren’t ready,” he’d said and turned back to the eggs he’d been casually whisking only moments before.

  They’d talked about it all morning—why she wasn’t ready (she wasn’t sure); how her reticence had nothing to do with how much she loved him; how their life was just as beautiful as any she’d dreamed of, so why change it? They were more of a couple than any married couple they knew.

  In the end, every last bite of their breakfast gone, and the dishes done, he’d told her. “When I ask again . . . if I ask again . . . I won’t ask a third time.” The words weren’t said cruelly, but with a soft kiss and the truth.

  She’d be ready next time; she was quite sure.

  She’d nodded in agreement and stood, walked over and slipped onto his lap, kissed him. “I love you. I hear you.” His kiss tasted like cheese and croissant, soft and buttery. They barely made it to his bed to make love, stumbling down the hallway and sloughing off their lounging Sunday sweatpants and T-shirts. They didn’t leave that bed until late afternoon and only for a long walk to the river.

  Beatrice now stood in her kitchen and remembered it all with a flush of love. He would not ask again. That was clear.

  So she would ask him. That’s what she’d do.

  She searched the kitchen for her reading glasses, found them by the computer, and picked up her phone.

  Nothing. He hadn’t answered.

  She’d really done it this time. There she stood: hungover and ridiculous in her too-sunny unrelentingly cheery kitchen because the word “yes” wouldn’t fall out of her mouth.

  She would seek him out today and tell him yes. Fear or no fear, this was absurd. She loved him. Her reluctance to marry had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with the past, like echoes that wouldn’t end.

  It was almost inconceivable that he hadn’t answered: to be ignored was an insult worse than rudeness. To be ignored—she’d felt it before: the memory of Tom’s abandonment that crawled across her skin in a cold sweat.

  She poured her coffee and sat at the kitchen counter, and noticed she’d kept her laptop open to email where there blinked messages from the flock. She wondered, briefly, if something was wrong. Her heart hammered—the last time there were that many messages in a string had been twelve years ago when they’d lost their beloved Dani, their oystercatcher, their fragile and beautiful friend.

  Her heart picked up a pace and she opened the string to make sure nothing was wrong.

  I can do it!, wrote Rose.

  I’m in. Booking flights now, wrote Victoria.

  Absolutely. See you in four days in Savannah. Details?, wrote Daisy.

  Then a barrage of questions—what time should they fly in? Daisy would drive—she was only two hours away. Had a house been found and booked?

  It took Beatrice longer than it should have to stare at these messages, to wonder where they were all going and why.

  Then the memory of her own proposal came rushing back. She’d invited and promised her “birds” a beach reunion, a house where they’d all meet; an all-expenses paid trip to help her decide whether to marry Lachlan.

  What had she been thinking? Or more rightly, what had the champagne been thinking?

  She didn’t need them to help her decide. She would go tell Lachlan “yes” today, and this trip would be null and void. She didn’t have that kind of cash and that kind of time. She didn’t . . . and yet it seemed she did.

  Beatrice ran h
er hands through her hair and groaned. She’d done it this time. To back out would not only be embarrassing but also rude, and with Rose now alone in what had once been a very full nest, she had been the first to say yes. And Victoria booked her flights?

  After pacing the house, putting away the art supplies in the hallway, and eating a plate full of scrambled eggs, Beatrice called Lachlan. This was fixable with a single call to him. She could reimburse Victoria her ticket, and they’d all laugh about her drunken night wandering Savannah. She’d tell Lachlan about it, too, about her drunk emailing with the flock.

  He’d laugh softly and kiss her.

  But he didn’t laugh. He didn’t even answer the phone.

  She knew he wasn’t teaching on Wednesdays and there was no reason to ignore her phone call, except to ignore her.

  What the hell now? Okay, play a bit of the ridiculous hard-to-catch and then make it up to him? Send a gift? Show up? She had no idea what to do next. She paced; she checked her phone; she cleaned up the kitchen, and then she decided.

  She would go to him. She would show up on his doorstep only a few blocks away and he would never turn her away. Even the thought of him turning her away made her dizzy. She pressed her hand over her stomach and waited for it to calm. She’d felt this blooming panic and fear before—when?

  Ah, when after fifteen years of marriage Tom had told her he didn’t love her anymore. When Tom had told her and their two—then twelve-and fourteen-year-old—daughters, Paige and Emma, he needed to find his way in a new world. When she’d stood on the front steps of a shambled life and couldn’t catch her breath. When Tom had packed his suitcases and emptied half the bank account. That’s when.

  That was the last time Beatrice had felt this way. But this time it was her fault. She had no one else to blame, and she would fix it. She rushed to the shower, thinking of Harry’s line to Sally: “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”