I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(21)

“Give me a sec.”

He placed his hands on top of his head, fingers drumming, and shut his eyes. When he opened them, he said, “I get it.”

“You do?” Heaven help me, I felt relief at the possibility that I’d be let off the hook so easily, even though no one had ever deserved it less.

“You need more time. And, come on, of course you can have it.”

The relief flipped over and died.

“Honestly, I’ve been worried that I rushed you. I almost said something the other day, but I chickened out, which was wrong of me,” said Zach. “And screw all this, the big wedding, our families. Bad idea. My family alone is too much. What was I thinking?”

“Don’t,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “Don’t take the blame.”

“We should’ve run away. But now here’s the thing: to hell with them all. We’ll wait and do it alone, just the two of us, whenever you’re ready. On a moment’s notice even.” He ran a hand through his hair, excitedly. “How could I not have seen that just the two of us would’ve been so much better? The whole point of getting married is to be just the two of us, making a new family on our own terms. Forget the rest of them.”

“No, it’s not them. It’s us. It’s me. I love so many things about you.”

“Well, I like the sound of that,” he said, with a shaky smile.

I shook my head. “But I can’t spend my life with you. I can’t envision it all, and I promise you I’ve tried.”

“But I can fix that! I can change, and you’ll change, too. That’s what happens in a marriage, you adapt to each other!”

“Zach, please listen to me,” I said. “I never feel completely like myself when we’re together. I can never quite relax. I’ve always known this deep down, but I wouldn’t admit it. You’re a good guy, and I wanted to make you happy. But we aren’t home to each other.”

“I’m a good guy?” Zach winced and slapped a hand to his stomach, as if he’d been punched.

“That came out wrong. You’re decent and kind; you try so hard to always do the right thing. That’s what I meant.”

“You’re home to me. You are. I swear.”

“But,” I said, “you aren’t to me. You’re a lot of wonderful things, but you’re not home.”

He opened his hands and with a sweet, almost childlike certainty, said, “I can be.”

Very, very gently, I said, “No, you can’t.”

“What? You mean ever?”

“Ever. I’m sure of it. I’m so sorry.”

He seemed to consider this, then shook his head. “You don’t mean it. You’ll change your mind.”

“No.”

“It might take time, but once the dust has settled from all this big wedding bullshit, you’ll change your mind.”

“Please don’t—”

Zach cut me off. “Clare, just go now. No wedding right now. I get it. It’s fine. But we’ll talk soon. I’ll be patient; I’ll do anything to fix this, which is how I know it’s going to be okay. Plus, I love you.”

Without a word, feeling every inch a monster, I left.





Chapter Seven

Edith





June 1951



Joseph became a photographer for the local paper, one that served not only the string of beach towns, but the entire southern portion of the state. Before he offered him the job, the editor, Beau Fleeger (cigar chomping, fast talking, bighearted, all of five foot four), warned Joseph that it’d be pretty damned tame stuff after what he’d been doing in Europe, but Edith knew that her husband would delight in it. Holiday parades, high school football games, fireworks, society weddings (as much as there was a society), political rallies, ribbon cuttings, even the occasional funeral or petty crime (trespassing, break-ins, public drunkenness, a gas station attendant robbed at gunpoint): it was what Joseph had missed most during the war, all the small, scattered pieces of the precious and luminous ordinary, evidence that life insists on continuing.

Then, on a summer afternoon, one week shy of Edith and Joseph’s first anniversary, the Driver twins, Robbie and Susie, twelve years old, were out in their dinghy checking their crab pots when a storm hit. Except for its sudden and unexpected arrival—bruise-colored clouds materializing along the tree line to the east, then a rush of wind spilling them like ink across the sky—the storm was unremarkable, no hail, no flash floods, no miles of downed power lines. Wild, tree-snapping winds, some stomps of thunder, spatters of lightning. A typical summer squall, short-lived as a tantrum, certainly not the kind of weather event that kills people. Except that the Driver twins never came home, a fact their parents discovered only when they returned from work, hours after the storm had fled the scene, blowing out as spasmodically as it had blown in.

John Blanchard, the town’s chief of police, hastily put out a call for a search party, and half the town showed up, men, women, teenagers. Known for his cool head, blond hair, and perpetual air of calm, John was Joseph’s friend. The two men ran into each other at crime scenes and town events, and occasionally, John called when he needed photos for a police file. In the case of the search party, he left the role Joseph would play ambiguous, saying only, “Better bring your camera.”