Safe Haven

5

Saturday morning dawned with blue skies, but soon clouds began rolling in. Gray and thick, they swirled and twisted in the ever-rising wind. The temperature began to plummet, and by the time Katie left the house, she had to wear a sweatshirt. The store was a little shy of two miles from her house, maybe half an hour’s walk at a steady pace, and she knew she’d have to hurry if she didn’t want to get caught in a storm.

She reached the main road just as she heard the thunder rumbling. She picked up the pace, feeling the air thickening around her. A truck sped past, leaving a blast of dust in its wake, and Katie moved onto the sandy median. The air smelled of salt carried from the ocean. Above her, a red-tailed hawk floated intermittently on updrafts, testing the force of the wind.

The steady rhythm of her footfalls set her mind adrift and she found herself reflecting on her conversation with Jo. Not the stories she’d told, but some of the things Jo had said about Alex. Jo, she decided, didn’t know what she was talking about. While she was simply trying to make conversation, Jo had twisted her words into something that wasn’t quite true. Granted, Alex seemed like a nice guy, and as Jo said, Kristen was as sweet as could be, but she wasn’t interested in him. She barely knew him. Since Josh had fallen in the river, they hadn’t said more than a few words to each other, and the last thing she wanted was a relationship of any kind.

So why had it felt like Jo was trying to bring them together?

She wasn’t sure, but honestly, it didn’t matter. She was glad Jo was coming over tonight. Just a couple of friends, sharing some wine… it wasn’t that special, she knew. Other people, other women, did things like that all the time. She wrinkled her brow. All right, maybe not all the time, but most of them probably felt like they could do it if they wanted to, and she supposed that was the difference between her and them. How long had it been since she’d done something that felt normal?

Since her childhood, she admitted. Since those days when she’d put pennies on the track. But she hadn’t been completely truthful with Jo. She hadn’t told her that she often went to the railroad tracks to escape the sound of her parents arguing, their slurred voices raging at each other. She didn’t tell Jo that more than once, she’d been caught in the crossfire, and that when she was twelve, she’d been hit with a snow globe that her father had thrown at her mother. It made a gash in her head that bled for hours, but neither her mom nor her dad had shown any inclination to bring her to the hospital. She didn’t tell Jo that her dad was mean when he was drunk, or that she’d never invited anyone, even Emily, over to her house, or that college hadn’t worked out because her parents thought it was a waste of time and money. Or that they’d kicked her out of the house on the day she graduated from high school.

Maybe, she thought, she’d tell Jo about those things. Or maybe she wouldn’t. It wasn’t all that important. So what if she hadn’t had the best childhood? Yes, her parents were alcoholics and often unemployed, but aside from the snow-globe incident, they’d never hurt her. No, she didn’t get a car or have birthday parties, but she’d never gone to bed hungry, either, and in the fall, no matter how tight things were, she always got new clothes for school. Her dad might not have been the greatest, but he hadn’t snuck into her bedroom at night to do awful things, things she knew had happened to her friends. At eighteen, she didn’t consider herself scarred. A bit disappointed about college, maybe, and nervous about having to make her own way in the world, but not damaged beyond repair. And she’d made it. Atlantic City hadn’t been all bad. She’d met a couple of nice guys, and she could remember more than one evening she spent laughing and talking with friends from work until the early hours of the morning.

No, she reminded herself, her childhood hadn’t defined her, or had anything to do with the real reason she’d come to Southport. Even though Jo was the closest thing to a friend that she had in Southport, Jo knew absolutely nothing about her. No one did.

“Hi, Miss Katie,” Kristen piped up from her little table. No dolls today. Instead, she was bent over a coloring book, holding crayons and working on a picture of unicorns and rainbows.

“Hi, Kristen. How are you?”

“I’m good.” She looked up from her coloring book. “Why do you always walk here?”

Katie paused, then came around the corner of the counter and squatted down to Kristen’s level. “Because I don’t have a car.”

“Why not?”

Because I don’t have a license, Katie thought. And even if I did, I can’t afford a car. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll think about getting one, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. She held up the coloring book. “What do you think of my picture?”

“It’s pretty. You’re doing a great job.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll give it to you when I’m finished.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know,” she said with charming self-assurance. “But I want to. You can hang it on your refrigerator.”

Katie smiled and stood up. “That’s just what I was thinking.”

“Do you need help shopping?”

“I think I can handle it today. And that way, you can finish coloring.”

“Okay,” she agreed.

Retrieving a basket, she saw Alex approaching. He waved at her, and though it made no sense she had the feeling that she was really seeing him for the first time. Though his hair was gray, there were only a few lines around the corners of his eyes, but they added to, rather than detracted from, an overall sense of vitality. His shoulders tapered to a trim waist, and she had the impression that he was a man who neither ate nor drank to excess.

“Hey, Katie. How are you?”

“I’m fine. And yourself?”

“Can’t complain.” He grinned. “I’m glad you came in. I wanted to show you something.” He pointed toward the monitor and she saw Josh sitting on the dock holding his fishing pole.

“You let him go back out there?” she asked.

“See the vest he’s wearing?”

She leaned closer, squinting. “A life jacket?”

“It took me awhile to find one that wasn’t too bulky, or too hot. But this one is perfect. And really, I had no choice. You have no idea how miserable he was, not being able to fish. I can’t tell you how many times he begged me to change my mind. I couldn’t take it anymore, and I thought this was a solution.”

“He’s okay with wearing it?”

“New rule — it’s either wear it, or don’t fish. But I don’t think he minds.”

“Does he ever catch any fish?”

“Not as many as he’d like, but, yes, he does.”

“Do you eat them?”

“Sometimes.” He nodded. “But Josh usually throws them back. He doesn’t mind catching the same fish over and over.”

“I’m glad you found a solution.”

“A better father probably would have figured it out beforehand.”

For the first time, she looked up at him. “I get the sense you’re a pretty good father.”

Their eyes held for a moment before she forced herself to turn away. Alex, sensing her discomfort, began rummaging around behind the counter.

“I have something for you,” he said, pulling out a bag and placing it on the counter. “There’s a small farm I work with that has a hothouse, and they can grow things when other people can’t. They just dropped off some fresh vegetables yesterday. Tomatoes, cucumbers, some different kinds of squash. You might want to try them out. My wife swore they were the best she’d ever tasted.”

“Your wife?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I still do that sometimes. I meant my late wife. She passed away a couple of years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, her mind flashing back to her conversation with Jo.

What’s his story?