Sandcastles Page 17

  She had said her father filled the world with color. Well, not this world. Regis had always loved living here, but right now it just seemed lonely and full of mystery and disappointment. She floored it, pulling out of the dusty drive, and drove the two and a half miles from the Academy to Hubbard’s Point. She stopped under the railroad trestle to speak to the guard. He waved her through, and she took the first two lefts.

  This section of Hubbard’s Point was built directly on rock ledge slanting into Long Island Sound. The cottages were exquisitely proportioned, wood-shingled with candy-colored shutters, shaded by white pines and scrub oaks, surrounded by small, brilliant gardens. They were built close together, as if somehow the original builders had decided that all the inhabitants should be best friends.

  The families here all seemed so happy. They barbequed together. They had clambakes and birthday parties. Their kids rode bikes in wild packs, just shrieking with fun. The parents all went to the beach together. The dads all mowed the lawns and painted the cottages, shared ladders, hedge clippers, things like that. The parents here stayed together; everyone was so normal.

  Regis’s mouth felt dry. She felt like an outsider everywhere she went. At home, with her mother, and here, at Hubbard’s Point. Her mother had grown up at this beach. Things here felt so safe. Maybe her mother never should have left, if that was what she wanted so badly.

  The kids here had their first kisses with each other. Regis knew that Peter had had girlfriends before. One from two summers ago, with whom he had exchanged love letters. She lived in New York; Regis had recently learned that Alicia was a friend of hers. To Regis, she sounded like the most sophisticated girl ever: she went to the same school as young movie stars, and she had once ridden on a motorcycle with Josh Hartnett. Her father, a surgeon, operated on celebrities. He had once golfed with Derek Jeter.

  In her worst moments, Regis wondered why Peter would want her, after being with the girl from New York. When she’d asked him, he’d just looked at her as if she was a sweet idiot. “Because I love you,” he’d said. “You’re different from anyone I know.”

  Her stomach flipped. Was that why her mother had married her father? Because he was different? Regis knew that she and her father were alike in so many ways—her mother had been right, about liking to walk on thin ice. Well, what if Peter got sick of it, the way her mother had? What if Regis wore him out?

  But then she would remember how much he had loved running in the rain, jumping into the bay. She’d seen the emotion in his eyes, known that she had unlocked more love and wildness than he had ever known.

  Regis had been good for so long. Holding herself back—no cliff diving, no steeple climbing, no across-the-Sound swims. Right now she felt she might explode from being so good.

  Parking at the curb, she climbed out. She heard music blaring from his upstairs window, knew he was home, so she picked up a pebble and flung it upward. Just then she noticed his neighbor, Mrs. Healey, standing on the other side of her hedge, watering her garden. They waved, and Regis smiled.

  “Hi,” Regis said.

  “He’s in there,” Mrs. Healey said, nodding up at his window.

  “I just, I just…” Regis began, embarrassed.

  “You think it’s more romantic that way,” Mrs. Healey said, dimpling as her smile grew. “I understand.”

  Regis nodded, quivering and confused. She wondered whether she could ever be like Mrs. Healey: wearing her husband’s shirt over her turquoise bathing suit, flip-flops on her feet, watering a square of bright pink petunias, not tormented. Was angst a Sullivan family specialty?

  “Regis,” Peter said, coming out the back door.

  She was flooded with relief at the sight of him, and nearly burst into tears. He was six foot two, tan, with dark hair and just the right kind of muscles. He put his arms around her. His lips brushed hers, and her body turned to jelly in his arms.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “You’re shaking.”

  “I’m just so glad to see you,” she said, fighting back tears. “You have no idea how crazy it is at home.”

  “I think I have an idea,” he said. “Considering you’re dealing with a convict for a father.”

  She cringed, as if he’d slapped her. He didn’t mean it, she told herself. He just didn’t know her father yet—no one did, because he was in exile on the beach.

  “How was your fishing last night?” Regis asked, to make things normal again.

  “Stripers are running. We drank a lot of beer, caught a lot of fish, a good time was had by all.”

  She grabbed his hand, wanting to pull something out of him, the love and understanding she needed so badly right now. She started to run, and he followed along, down shady Coveview Road, to the place where the train tracks ran along the narrow private beach. The sun was shining, but she knew if only she could get him alone, to where they could be on their own, they could recapture the feeling of that magical rainy day.

  Scrambling up the bank, they watched a flock of sandpipers scatter along the tide line. They walked along the railroad tracks, past a tidal marsh, golden with silt and tall grass. Regis looked down and saw blue crabs glinting in the shallow water, scuttling into hiding holes. As she and Peter approached the high, rusty train bridge, her heart skittered. The bridge spanned Devil’s Hole, the swift, rocky creek spinning down below in wild swirls and eddies as the tide rushed in.

  “When’s the next train?” he asked nervously.

  “Because you want us to get on board?” she asked, squeezing his hand.

  “The tracks are dangerous,” he said.

  “If something happens, we’ll die together,” she said, and he gave her a dark look.

  This was the scariest place; if a train had come before, they could have just run down the bank to the beach on one side, or the marsh on the other. But if a roaring locomotive came now, when they were on the bridge—they’d have no choice but to jump into Devil’s Hole. Regis’s heart was pounding. She had jumped in before, and felt the powerful, primal urge to do it now.

  Looking both ways and listening for approaching trains, Peter ran as fast as he could across the high, narrow bridge. Regis watched him go and felt disappointment; she had wanted him to feel the thrill with her.

  The railroad ties seemed splintery and ancient. Looking down between them, Regis saw straight into the violent current below. Even the bravest Hubbard’s Point boys, the ones who would sneak onto the catwalk under the Connecticut River bridge at midnight, hang from cables as long as their arms could stand it, then drop into the deep middle of the river, wouldn’t dare jump into Devil’s Hole. She felt like impressing Peter and doing a cannonball.

  But she didn’t. She just leapt onto the smooth granite boulder, leading him up the sloping gray rocks to a pine-covered crest. Even now, the cliff was littered with fallen limbs, stripped of their bark by the harsh sea wind. At the very top, overgrown with vines and small oak trees, was Sachem Cave. Most people didn’t even know it existed, but Regis’s father had shown it to the world in his art.

  They crawled under the ledge. Once inside, they held each other, her heart beating hard and fast. Peter felt like stone.

  “Isn’t this great?” she asked.

  “Why does it always have to be…” he started, trailing off.

  “Have to be…what?” she asked, afraid to hear.

  “Nothing,” he said, pulling her close, kissing her.

  They lay down on the cool rock floor, gazing into each other’s eyes and starting to feel something like calm again. Regis pressed her lips to the sun-warm skin above his collarbone, and she tasted the salt of his sweat. She wanted to drown in his arms, right here and now, and never leave the cave.

  “Who went fishing with you?” she asked.

  “A bunch of guys,” he said.

  “Just guys?” she asked.

  “Regis, cut it out.”

  “Just tell me,” Regis said. “Did the New York girl go?” Insecurity, lodged deep inside, had s
tarted bubbling up.

  “Regis, she’s not the girl I want to marry. You are.”

  “Did your parents like her more than me?”

  “Stop.”

  “Is that why they’re upset we’re getting married?” she asked. She couldn’t help herself.

  “You know the reason. It’s because we’re young. They think we should wait.”

  “Your parents are so happy,” she said. “And they were each other’s first boyfriend and girlfriend.”

  “Yeah, but they keep telling me they didn’t get married till after law school,” he said, holding her, seeming angry as he stroked her back.

  “But wasn’t that a waste?” Regis asked. “When you think of all the time they could have had together but didn’t?”

  “Well, I guess they were going to class and everything.”

  “We’re going to go to class,” she said, kissing him, then pulling her head back so she could look into his eyes. “But we’ll be together at night. We’ll have dinners, and breakfasts, and the whole night in between.”

  “We could just wait,” he said. “Three more years, till we graduate.”

  “Three years!” Regis said, stung.

  “I’m not saying we should,” he said quickly. “I’m just telling you what they said. You know they’ll help us out with money and all, but they keep asking all these practical questions. Insurance, and a car, stuff like that.”

  She shook her head, and the movement dislodged hot tears. She closed her eyes, to keep the tears inside. Who cared about those things? Didn’t Peter know that it was impossible to make up for lost time? Three years was half of six years; every day, every minute in life was all its own, and could never be replaced with another.

  “When you love someone,” she said, with her eyes shut tight, barely recognizing her own voice, “you want to be together whenever you can. If you want it badly enough, you just make the practical things work out.”

  “Regis…”

  “Insurance, cars,” she said. “Who cares about them? Love fills the world with color, and if you lose someone you love, one day you’ll wake up and the world will be black and white.”

  Peter touched her cheek, kissed her mouth. Everything was so smooth and hot, and she and Peter were flowing into each other.

  “We could be doing this at Little Beach,” he said when they broke apart. “A whole lot easier. And it would be just as colorful.”

  “But it wouldn’t be as magical,” she said. “It wouldn’t be so private—and we wouldn’t have this view.” She pointed over the treetops at the Sound, an explosion of light and every shade of blue—azure, slate, turquoise, navy, cobalt. Sunlight sparkled on the surface, and white birds, seagulls and terns, wheeled in slow circles through the bright sky.

  “It’s just…” he said. “Just this…why does everything with you have to be such a big ordeal?”

  “Ordeal?”

  “Walking on the railroad tracks. Crossing Devil’s Hole. There are plenty of places to go on Hubbard’s Point. Little Beach, the marsh, even the cemetery. But you always want to do the most dangerous thing.”

  Regis squeezed her eyes tight. Thin ice, her mother had said. But why couldn’t Peter feel the sweetness and magic, just like that day in the rain?

  “Is it because of your father?” Peter asked. “Because he brought you here that time? Why do you want to be like him so much?”

  “It’s not that I want to,” Regis whispered. “It’s that I am.”

  Regis closed her eyes. Peter was right: without her father, she wouldn’t even know this place existed. He had once climbed this cliff to build one of his wood and stone sculptures.

  “I want to go with you, Daddy,” she’d begged. Her mother and Agnes sat on the curved beach; he had his camera bag slung over his shoulder, getting ready to carry his supplies across the tracks and bridge. “You need me to help you build the castle.”

  “I know, sweetheart,” he’d said. “And I want you to. You help me build the best things in the world. But remember what I told you about children walking on railroad tracks?”

  Regis had shivered, because she did remember. When she was five, her father had held her in his arms, pointing at the rail bed and telling her that when he and his sister were young, a friend of theirs had been killed walking the tracks.

  “Then don’t you go either!”

  “I’m an adult,” he’d said. “And this is my work. Look at all that fallen timber up there, caught in the rocks. I want to make something fast, today, and take the picture just before sunset. Won’t it be pretty, with the whole Point stretching out into the bay?”

  “Then you should take me!”

  “Regis,” he’d said. “There are some places fathers can’t bring their daughters. I don’t like it, but it’s the way life is. I told you about that boy I knew, who got hit by the train. I want you to promise me that no matter what happens, you’ll never walk on the tracks.”

  “I won’t promise unless you do,” Regis had said.

  “John,” her mother had said, and even then Regis had heard the edge in her voice. “Maybe your daughter has a point.”

  Oh, Regis remembered the look in her father’s eyes as he’d smiled back. Those glinting blue eyes had been so happy. Regis had watched him waver; take in his wife and daughters, then sweep his gaze across the train bridge, up the granite cliff. He had wanted to promise, but he couldn’t; he chose his work, and the risks that came with it, instead. Or maybe it was his love of those risks that had made him choose that work in the first place.

  Regis had had to make her own choice: stay safe on the beach with her mother, or climb to the sky with her father. She loved them both equally, but she knew that adventure was in her nature, part of her spirit.

  She remembered that day every time she crossed the high trestle. She thought of it every time she looked at the photo he had taken that day. Sepia-toned, it appeared as if it had been taken a century ago. The shot showed the fallen, wind-silvered pine boughs he had gathered and made into a castle, the flat rocks he’d stacked like crenellations at the mouth of the cave.

  He must have set up his camera just inside. The photo had a feeling of shelter. Yet it also had a sense of outlook; as her father had planned, the Point jutted out into the cove’s golden water, giving the right side of the picture a solid edge. His sculpture reminded some people of an earthly sandcastle, others of something more spiritual. One review had used the phrase “yearning toward heaven.” Aunt Bernie said the tower was Celtic, like a standing stone or dolmen. To Regis, it had always been a ruined castle, just like the one he eventually found at Ballincastle.

  “Didn’t you learn your lesson, over in Ireland?” Peter asked now. “You could have died there—on a cliff that was probably just like this one. Your father didn’t protect you then, and he ended up in jail.”

  “That’s why he ended up in jail,” Regis retorted. “Protecting me!”

  “He killed someone. My father called a friend of his in Dublin. He looked the case up, and he said your father pled guilty. He didn’t even try to claim self-defense. He beat that guy, then pushed him off the edge.”

  “Your father checked up on him?”

  “What do you expect, Regis? My dad’s a lawyer—of course he was going to find out the details. That’s what court documents are for.”

  “Your father wasn’t there,” Regis said, shaking. “And neither were you. You don’t know what happened!”

  “How am I supposed to know what happened,” Peter said, “when you won’t tell me? You’ve never talked about it. Never told me about that day, about Gregory White…”

  “Stop it!” Regis said. “And don’t ever call him a convict again, like you did before.”

  “But he is one. And he should have done a better job of keeping you safe.”

  He did, Regis thought. More than anyone knows…She shook her head. Where did that thought come from? It was like a half-remembered dream, shimmering in her mind, just beyond
consciousness.

  “Never mind Ireland,” Peter went on. “Even this place—instead of letting you follow him up the cliff, he should have been happy with you staying on the beach with your mother.”

  “He didn’t let me,” she said. “That’s the whole point.”

  Regis wished she’d never told Peter. When she had begged her father to let her help him build his wood and rock castle, he had told her to stay with her mother and Agnes and play on the beach instead.

  And then he had set off. Regis had stood there, watching him get smaller and smaller, walking down the railroad tracks, his folded-up tripod over his shoulder. She had built him a sandcastle, waiting for him to return. Her mother and Agnes had drizzled wet sand for the turrets. Twenty minutes later, the waves had washed it away.

  Just now, her gaze fell upon a piece of wood, scoured of its bark and needles, weathered silver and white as a bone. Regis wondered how long it had been there, whether maybe her father had gathered it as part of his castle tower thirteen years ago.

  “I love you, Regis,” Peter said. “I want to take care of you. Instead of scaling cliffs, I want to stay on the beach and build sandcastles in the sun with you,” he said. “What do you say to that?”

  “I’d say sandcastles don’t last,” she whispered, looking deep into his clear blue eyes as a train whistle sounded in the distance, droning high and long and mournful, seeming to announce that something terrible was about to happen.

  Fourteen

  One thing about running a convent, school, and vineyard, Sister Bernadette was used to making lots of decisions and, to a large degree, running a lot of lives. She set the curriculum, holiday schedules, prayer times, fasting policy, dates of release for the new varietals.

  Certainly, she couldn’t affect the weather—a dry spell made for sweet grapes, and that could wreak havoc with the chardonnay. Just as too much rain could cause root mold, and once an entire hillside of vines had been compromised. Still, she had gotten Tom to help her dig drainage trenches that year, and the crop was saved. As she always told the incoming freshmen, “God steers, but you row. And rowing is what will get you into the colleges of your choice.” And the grape harvest of your dreams…