He disappears up the stairs. Charlie watches silently until he is out of sight and then he turns to me. His smile from earlier is gone, but he doesn’t look mad. “Look, kid. You fucked up.”
“I know.”
He puts both elbows on the counter and marries his hands. They’re thick, wide, rough hands made up mostly of nicks, scars and callouses. Charlie Hawkins has worked hard his whole life using those hands, and he wouldn’t want it any other way. “We all still love you. You need to know that. Even Lucy, who is letting her anger get the best of her right now. She still loves you. And not just for what you did for Terra with the whole donation thing. We loved you long before that, son, and we’ll love you long after no matter how this plays out.”
This whole conversation will be really comforting sometime in the very near future, but right now it’s just surreal and I can’t seem to grasp it’s even happening. Charlie isn’t a talker. He’s a jokester on a good day, a grunter on a bad one, and a stoic observer on the average ones. This … I have never ever seen this. Not when Logan ended up in rehab. Not when Declan tried to kill himself. Not when Terra was diagnosed with lupus. Never. He is generally the strong, silent man who gets things done. He’s booked plane tickets to rehab, he’ll spend seventy-two hours next to a hospital bed. He’ll remortgage his life’s work to get any one of his loved ones out of trouble, but he doesn’t dothis. Talk. Share feelings.
“Do you have feelings for Aspen again? Still?”
“No. She’s a friend and that’s it. What happened was…”
He untangles his hand and holds one up to stop me from continuing. “I don’t need to know any details. I just know that I’ve watched Terra push you away for what feels like eons, and I’ve watched you let her. I recognized it because Lucy did the same thing to me back in the day.”
“Really?” I almost smile. “But you two have been together forever.”
“Married when she was twenty-five and I was twenty-four,” Charlie says and then he grins. Big, bold and sheepish. “I would have married her right after high school if she would have just dated me.”
I laugh. I know little tidbits about their life before kids but not details. “She wouldn’t date you then? Why? Because you were younger?”
He chuckles. “Nah. I was way better looking than any guy in her year. Every girl in school wanted me, but Lucy always played it cool and I was too worried she’d shoot me down to take a chance and ask her out. While I was building my courage, Nellie Green asked me to the Sadie Hawkins dance and I said yes. Turns out Lucy was gonna ask me but I had no clue and then … well Nellie told everyone we were an item after that, and Lucy believed her. She also hated Nellie, even back then, so I was in the dog house. Then she ran off to college. Not something I had in my future because I knew I was taking over the family business.”
I nod. He grins again. “Never stopped thinking about her, though. Every summer she came back I turned on the charm and she pretended she didn’t care. It was a very long, very frustrating dance. And then she came back from school engaged.”
“What?” I almost shout because I’m so shocked. I knew nothing about this. If any of the Hawkins kids know about it, they never mentioned it.
Charlie leans closer and lowers his voice. “To Stanley Dyck.”
I gasp. “Stan, the owner of Stan’s Seafood?”
Charlie nods. “At that time, he was a baker. He made bread and rolls and had a little shop on Seaside Avenue. Lucy worked with him. I convinced my dad to change suppliers. Buy our rolls from him because she was the one who took and delivered the orders. I knew she was miserable. I knew she was making a mistake. She knew it too, but she was willing to let me go over foolish pride and stupid hurt feelings she used like a shield. The week before her wedding, when she delivered our rolls, I asked if she wanted to see the sunset from the water. Took her out on the boat, told her flat out I was her only shot at happiness, and kissed her like I wanted to do for over half a decade.”
“You dog!” I laugh.
“She called me something more spirited and slapped me across the face,” Charlie recalls and winces at the memory but then the grin is back. “But the next day word got out she’d broken off the engagement, Stan had fired her immediately, and so I walked right over to her house with flowers and offered her a job and a husband. She took both.”
“Oh my God, this story is amazing.” I think of the wedding pictures they have framed on their mantle, the one next to the picture of Terra dressed as Tinkerbell. They got married on the fishing boat by Charlie’s brother Jimmy, who is a priest. They both look positively elated in the photo.
“I have a point to rambling on with our little rocky road to true love,” Charlie says quietly. “And it’s that if you love her—and I know you do—don’t let her go easy. That Tom kid already did. You haven’t yet. And if Aspen’s having your kid, we’ll figure it out. The thing I know about love is that it’s complicated, it’s messy, but when it’s true and real, it makes space.”
“It’s not mine,” I tell him. “We found out when we were at the hospital when she had that scare. I was going to tell Terra everything yesterday but she left with Tom.”
Charlie nods. He doesn’t look relieved or anything, which I find interesting. He really truly believes that baby or not, his daughter loves me and will continue to do so. That gives me a sense of calm I haven’t felt since I moved back if I’m honest with myself.
“If you love my daughter the way I think you do, you’ll tell her.Reallytell her. Tom or no Tom.” He turns and starts back toward the door. “Tell Logan bye and you two be safe tonight. Oh and son, don’t ever make me see your naked ass in my house in the same room as my daughter again. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” I feel my face heat as I watch him go. When the embarrassment subsides, my head and heart are filled with a lot of emotions, but for the first time in a while, none of them are bad.
24
Terra
All I want isto make it through the day without bursting into tears. I thought maybe coming to my happy place, the beach, would give me a better start to the day than staying in bed until my alarm went off, staring at the ceiling while my body fills with despair like high tide climbing up the beach while I’m chained to a brick on the shore.
The sun has just crested the surf, and the weather is cold but not freezing. The rain that started last night turned to flurries, but it didn’t really stick everywhere. The roads are clear but lawns and such are lightly coated. I’m wearing so many layers I don’t feel cold at all as I crest the board walk and make my way over to one of the benches in the snow dusted sand. I take a moment to dust off the name plate with my mitten clad hand.Eammon C Hawkins & Saoirse F Hawkins.
“Hi Nana and Pa,” I say softly and then sit. There’s very little wind, which is a blessing, and the sun has escaped one of the multiple clouds for the moment so I close my eyes and feel its warmth on my face.
I love seeing snow on the beach. High tide, like right now, is my favorite because I love the idea of solid and liquid of the same form meeting. I have no idea why, but I’ve found it fascinating my entire life. I remember being five and my parents would bring us down here at the beginning of December and we’d build a snowman on the beach for Ocean Pines annual beach snowman contest. But my brothers would do all the work and I would just watch the waves as they creeped higher and higher until finally touching the snowy edges and melting it, reclaiming more and more of the beach.
