Barefoot in the Sun (Barefoot Bay)(28)

“Wow!” Ashley’s eyes popped as she looked at Pasha. “Can you believe that?”

“I’m not lying,” Evan said, his tone rising in self-defense.

“I know you’re not,” Ashley said. “I’m so amazed at that. I don’t think I even owned a five-hundred-piece puzzle when I was your age, or even older. I might have, but if I did, it’s somewhere in Barefoot Bay now.”

Evan easily fit the new piece in place and looked up. “You threw it in the ocean? I mean, the Gulf. It’s not the ocean, I know.”

Pasha noticed very quickly that this boy couldn’t stand to have his facts wrong. One more trait that didn’t remind her of Matthew, but it didn’t matter. She was already smitten.

“I lost everything I owned in a hurricane almost two years ago,” Ashley told him.

“Oh, that was you! Zoe told me. I thought she said it was her friend.”

“She meant my mom. I was fourteen and we lived about half a mile from here, down where the main building of the resort is now. During the storm, my mom and I spent the night in a bathtub with a mattress over our heads.”

Evan looked suitably impressed. “That is so cool.”

“No,” Ashley said with a sarcastic roll of her eyes. “It was totally not cool. We lost everything, which is why the only puzzle I have left from when I was a little kid is this one. It was at my grandma’s house.”

Evan sat up, tucking his feet under his little body. “Was it a real hurricane, like a category five?”

“Four and, yes, trust me, it was so real.”

“Was it loud? What did it feel like? Did you get hurt? Was there lightning? Were there tornadoes? Did you see them with your own eyes?”

Ashley laughed, and Pasha did, too. “Um, yes, it was as loud as a train. I don’t remember any lightning or the tornadoes and, as a matter of fact, I was certain we were going to die. Why are you so obsessed with this?”

“Because I love weather,” Evan said, shifting his attention back to the puzzle.

“He’s going to be a meteorologist,” Pasha told Ashley, getting rewarded with a gorgeous smile from the young boy. “What is it you like about weather so much, little one?” she asked.

“Everything, but I’m not that little.”

“Of course not. Force of habit.” She rose from the chaise and ambled over to the glass-topped patio table, taking a seat and resting her chin on her hands to watch him and remember.

She and Matthew used to do puzzles and play games like Hi Ho Cherry-O and Barrel of Monkeys. They’d play cards and take long walks to the lake for picnics. And, of course, they’d read the messages from Mother Nature, making up all kinds of funny things together. Every time she made a “prediction” now, it was really a secret whisper to heaven.

Could Matthew hear her—forty-seven years after that horrible night?

“The thing about weather,” Evan said. “It always changes.”

“It does indeed,” Pasha agreed.

“And there’s a reason why I like it.” Evan hesitated with a puzzle piece, but not because he didn’t know where to place it. There were only about six pieces left, and she had no doubt he knew where every one of them fit.

“Weather is the neatest thing in the world.” He looked up, his eyes very much like his father’s, keen and earnest, fringed with black lashes and bright with the emotion of talking about something he loved.

“It’s certainly one of the most powerful,” she agreed.

“Right!” He dropped the piece of the puzzle on the table. “Like nobody in the whole world can do anything about it,” he said. “Weather just does what weather wants to do. And it does some really neat things. Did you know that if a butterfly flaps its wings in Hong Kong, it can change the weather in California?”

“That’s not true!” Ashley said, earning a dire look from him.

“Oh, yes it is. You can look it up on weather.com or any of the really good weather Web sites.”

Ashley gave another eye roll. “Like that’s my idea of a fun time.”

“Well, it’s obviously his,” Pasha said gently. “So you should respect that, Ashley. And, Evan, that might be the most interesting thing I ever heard.”

“Oh, I know all kinds of things like that,” he told her. “Like, do you know that if you weighed all the rain that falls on the earth in one year, it’s like five thousand million million tons? That’s two millions.”

“That’s a lot of rain,” Pasha said.

They’d lost Ashley, who started putting in the last pieces of the puzzle, but Evan was on fire with excitement. “And you know what else?” he asked.

“Tell me,” Pasha said, fighting the urge to reach out for his little cheeks and squeeze them. “What else?”

“Did you know the temperature of a lightning bolt is hotter than the surface of the sun?” He pushed himself up so he was practically kneeling.

“I did not know that,” Pasha said. “Did you know that, Ashley?”

“That’s super hot,” she said, utterly bored. “You want to do the last piece, Evan?”

“No.” He was locked on Pasha now, the two of them connected. “Did you know there’s such a thing as a moonbow?”

Every cell in her body—the sick ones, the healthy ones, the old ones, the near-dead ones—froze for a moment.

“A moonbow?” Her voice shuddered a little.

“It’s like a rainbow, but at night from the moon. Isn’t that cool?”

She tried to swallow, but her damn wretched throat made it impossible.

“As a matter of fact…” Heavens above, maybe Mother Nature really did talk to her! “I saw a moonbow once.” The announcement came out hoarse, and she had to work not to go into a coughing fit. She didn’t want to ruin this blissful moment.

“Really?”

“Do you know what a moonbow means?” she asked.

“It means it rained and the moon’s light is reflected through the water, creating a prism.”

She shook her head, smiling. “It means that your one true love will return.”

He squished up his face. “Ewww.”

Ashley giggled. “You don’t have a true love back at school in Chicago? A little third-grader you have your eye on?”

He curled his lip. “Hell no.”

Ashley gasped. “Watch your mouth.”

He ignored the warning and turned to Pasha. “That’s not what a moonbow means.”

“Yes it is.”

“Aunt Pasha knows,” Ashley said. “She can predict the future by looking at the clouds or dirt or even the foam at the beach.”

Evan looked from one to the other, clearly not buying it. “I don’t know anything about that. I only know what’s real and scientific, not that kind of woo-woo stuff.”

“Finally, something you don’t know,” Ashley said, pulling out her phone to tap on the screen. “Oh, Aunt Zoe texted. They’ll be here in ten minutes.”

“Good, ’cause I want to go on my computer and look up moonbows.”

“You won’t find what I told you on the Internet,” Pasha told him.

“Then it’s not true,” he shot back. “ ’Cause everything in the world that’s true is on the Internet.”

Ashley snorted. “Not hardly.”

“It’s true,” Pasha assured him. “I know things like that.”

He looked uncertain, but then he smiled, revealing his too-large teeth and a gleam in his eyes. “ ’Kay,” he conceded. “I like to learn things.”

“Then we’ll be a great team.”

His smile was so real, so heartfelt, and so much like Matthew that for the first time in months and months, Pasha almost wanted that black pressure in her chest to go away. She almost wanted to live.

“Hello, we’re home!” Zoe came breezing onto the patio, her green eyes sparking like she had a secret, her hair wild from the wind.

Home? She thought of this as home already? Of course, with Zoe’s life, she could think of a motel room on a rural highway as home. That was the sad, sad legacy that Pasha had given her.

Zoe came to the table, leaning over to give Pasha a kiss, her cheek warm from the summer air. Or was it that Oliver Bradbury gave her a flush of love?

The moonbow promised the return of true love. But whose love? A little boy like the one Pasha had lost, or a man like the one Zoe had lost?

The one Zoe had lost because of Pasha. “How was your ride, honey?” she asked Zoe.

“Amazing.”

Pasha couldn’t help but grin. “I like the sound of that.”

Zoe slipped into one of the empty chairs, and Pasha got a good look at her face. Her sweet cheeks high with color, her ever-present smile as wide as ever. “I have so much to tell you.”