I smiled. There was no argument about that. The man hadn’t let me down yet. I sighed and told him about Caroline and the money and what had happened to it. “I just don’t want her image of her father to be ruined,” I said. “That’s all.”
“You have to tell her the truth,” he said. “Maybe not the whole truth. Maybe a watered-down version, like the market took a downturn after nine-eleven, which is true, and it affected all the values, and you didn’t get what you thought you would.”
I nodded. “So you don’t think I should take the blame? I mean, I’m still here to defend myself.”
He shook his head. “No, of course not. With all due respect, he’s gone, and you’re still here. It’s not your fault.”
“Yeah, that’s true technically. But I should have been more involved. I always let him handle everything, and I shouldn’t have.”
“Well, marriage is complicated.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
“I wasn’t very good at it.” Jack smiled. He looked into my eyes. “My heart wasn’t in it.”
I could feel those nervous butterflies building. “Jack, I—”
“No.” He cut me off. “I understand your reservations. Truly, I do. But I don’t see how my being in your life changes anything. I’m still the same guy I always was. It’s not like if this whole thing doesn’t work out, I’m going to do anything to hurt you. I would never.”
I knew that was true.
“We aren’t getting younger, Ans. Let’s give this thing a shot.”
I nodded.
“Wait. Is that a yes?” He looked genuinely stunned.
I grinned at him. “I don’t really have anything to say yes to, now, do I?”
“Will you please have dinner with me?”
“How about next week when I’ve recovered from the complete and total lack of sleep that comes along with grandmotherhood?”
He squeezed my hand. “Next week can’t come soon enough.”
I hated to ruin the happy moment, but I held my hand out to stop his joy all the same. “This is not a green light for you to be a part of my family. This is maybe we’ll have dinner and take things really slowly and see how they go. OK?”
He rolled his eyes. “Read you loud and clear.”
I held up two photos. “Plain or fancy?”
Jack, completely ignoring me, stood up and wiped his hands on his khaki shorts. “You decide,” he said. “I have a dinner to plan.”
I clasped my hands together in front of my chest, closed my eyes, took a deep breath, rocked from side to side a little, and raised myself to standing from crossed legs—no hands. I smiled triumphantly.
“What in God’s holy name are you doing?” he asked.
“Oh,” I said, suddenly realizing that was, perhaps, a little odd. “It’s very important to be able to stand from a cross-legged seated position with no hands. It says a lot about your long-term strength.” At least, that was what the article Caroline had sent me said.
He squinted at me. “You’re serious?”
I crossed my arms. “You try it, smarty pants. It’s not as easy as it looks.”
Jack laughed. “Next time.”
It wasn’t until the door had fully closed that I realized I was a little nervous. I hadn’t been on a date in more than thirty-seven years.
TWENTY-TWO
the suit
caroline
“Do you remember the day we lost our fairy stones?” I asked Sloane, as she was lying beside me in my disheveled bed in the guesthouse. She was sipping coffee, I was sipping tea, and for the moment, the world was still. And mercifully quiet.
She just nodded. “Of course I do. It was like losing a part of who we were.”
It really had been, though I couldn’t explain why. It made me feel better to know that even after all these years, Sloane still felt that way, too. Of course, things gain their meaning when we ascribe meaning to them. But I swear it was more than that. Even now, twenty-five years after I had weighed one of those dense, heavy stones in my palm, its mineral flecks sparkling in the daylight, I could still feel the magic coming from it, the power it had. Grandpop told us those stones would keep us safe. And losing them had meant losing a part of our childish invincibility.
“Do you remember the little bag I made to carry them in?” Sloane asked, looking over at me.
“Of course.”
Grammy had taught us to sew that summer—or at least attempted to. Sloane had made a little bag, misshapen and uneven, with a pink satin ribbon threaded through the top. Grammy had embroidered all three of our initials onto that bag in a matching pink, and inside we had placed our fairy stones for safekeeping.
“I was never meant to be a seamstress,” Sloane said seriously. We both laughed.
We had been playing at Starlite Island one day, Mom and the three of us girls. Emerson was two, Sloane was eight, and I was ten. We had built a tall sand castle and placed our bag of fairy stones on the very top.
“The fairy stones reign over the kingdom of Starlite,” I remember Sloane saying.
We all laughed, even Emerson, who repeated, “Fairy stones, Sissy.”
She had run back and forth with her pink bucket that day from the sea to the castle to the sea to the castle, filling it up and dripping the water over her sand kingdom just so. Even then, she had such a determined little spirit.
I had realized that Mom wasn’t playing with us, and when I looked over, brushing the hair out of my face, I saw her, maybe twenty yards away, talking to a man. I remember that she wasn’t smiling, that she didn’t seem happy. And neither did he. The look on her face unnerved me.
“Who was that man on the beach that day?” I asked Sloane, lying beside her in bed.
She shrugged. “I have no idea. But I remember who you’re talking about. And I remember Mom coming over and making us leave when she was finished talking to him.”
Mom had seemed almost scared that day, something we hadn’t seen much. I remember wanting my dad to be there, feeling like something wasn’t right, as she scooted us all into the skiff we had used to putter over to the island. Emerson was screaming as we got into the boat, because of course, you can’t just grab a two-year-old off the beach and take her home with no warning without a tantrum. It’s Parenting 101, and the mother of three daughters would have well known that.
“She seemed kind of frantic, didn’t she?”
Sloane nodded, taking a slow sip of coffee. “I hadn’t really thought about it, but yeah. So much so that we left the fairy stones.”
Grandpop had taken us back to the island that evening, and we had searched high and low for our little bag with the stones. Maybe the tide had washed them away, or maybe a bird had snatched our bag. But I remember how devastated I felt, how empty. It was different from the feeling of losing a toy or misplacing a piece of clothing. It was a sadness I felt in the core of my being.
“Remember how we cried over losing those stones?” Sloane asked.
“Of course. And Grandpop said—”
Sloane interrupted. “All that meant was that the fairies sent those stones to someone who needed them more than we did.”
I laughed. “I found that strangely comforting.”