Moondance Beach

  But he’d made the decision for her, and Duncan was now escorting her to the dance floor, the singer crooning about the purple dust of twilight and love’s refrain.

  The wind kicked up again.

  “Thank you for dancing with me.”

  Lena kept her eyes anywhere but on his face. “What do you want, Duncan?”

  “I want to apologize. Lena, you have to understand how shocked I was. Here I am, really starting to believe that we’ve got something special . . .”

  Her head snapped up. Duncan looked on the verge of tears.

  “. . . and you dropped the bomb on me—otherworldly signs and destiny and magic. It was all the crap I hated most as a kid. It’s what I ran away from when I left Bayberry.”

  She listened.

  “I’m not usually the kind of man to fall in love like . . .”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I have with you. I swear, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you put some kind of spell on me, like you were a sorceress.”

  Her brain began to buzz. The music became muffled. She reared back.

  “What I mean is it’s almost like you have some kind of power over me. It overrides my rational thought.”

  “So loving me is irrational?”

  “No! Lena, please, I’m not good at this.”

  Suddenly, they both turned to see Mona and Frasier dancing cheek to cheek not far from them. Mona winked and Frasier looked like he knew he was the luckiest guy on earth.

  She was so happy for them. But it suddenly occurred to her how delicate love was. How hard it was to keep alive. How nearly impossible it was to find.

  “Duncan, what are you saying? I think maybe I should just go.”

  “No! I’m trying to apologize. What I’m saying is I don’t understand your world. You see things differently than I do. But you’re sweet and talented and beautiful and kind and wonderful, and even though falling in love was not in my plan, you’ve completely bewitched me.”

  Lena shoved her way out of his embrace. “So I’m a witch now, too?”

  Duncan looked lost. “What? No! I’m just saying that your world is foreign to me.”

  “My witchy world?”

  Duncan looked crestfallen. “Lena, I never wanted to hurt you.”

  “But you did. And you’re hurting me now, too.” By then she was blind with pain. She stormed off the dance floor, leaving Duncan standing there like a white pillar candle in a puddle of sequins. She headed straight to her car.

  What a horrible mistake. She shouldn’t have come. It was the worst decision of her life.

  On the way home, the wind really started in. Only minutes after she’d passed through the automatic garage door and threw her keys on the kitchen island, the power went out. Ondine was under her feet. Lena grabbed a candle from the dining room and a fireplace match from the great room, then stomped upstairs. She stripped out of the mermaid skirt and shells and put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, then went into her studio.

  Lena cracked open a nearby window for air and placed the candle on the floor next to the chaise. Ondine settled in between her legs. And by candlelight she sketched and cried. She looked out on the wind-tossed water. Lena cried until she had no more tears left in her, no more breath, no more strength.

  * * *

  All hell broke loose at the Mermaid Ball. The wind had shorted out some of the electrical lines snaking from the bandstand, which started a good-sized fire by a line of garbage cans. Immediately after, the whole island lost power. Every one of Bayberry’s pumper trucks had pulled onto the scene, lights flashing and sirens going. It seemed like overkill to Duncan, but what did he know?

  Clearly, he didn’t know shit.

  Clancy had his hands full orchestrating the teardown. About two dozen men—rental company employees, police officers, and tourists—were holding on to tent poles, attempting to keep the huge canvases from going airborne before they could be disassembled. Most of the attendees had run for cover in one of the Main Street shops or inside the ferry terminal. When it started to rain, it came down hard and sharp, and the wind gusted to at least fifty knots by Duncan’s estimates.

  Banners began to rip. Tables, chairs, and decorations were knocked over and skidded along the dock. Tablecloths and trash went flying. Clancy yelled for Duncan to help him dismantle the largest of the temporary fountains, which had already started to topple over. As if the rain hadn’t soaked him enough, Clancy got a direct shot from the disconnected hoses, which left him drenched in water.

  A flash of lightning struck a transformer, and sparks went spraying over the bandstand. And just as Duncan ran over to help, the most horrific feeling of doom cut through him. He went still. His back shot ramrod straight and all his senses went on alert. He scanned the area to figure out the source of the danger, but that’s when he realized the rush of foreboding had nothing to do with the chaos at the public dock.

  Something was wrong with Lena.

  “I’ve gotta go!” he screamed to Clancy.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure—hate to do this to you, but I have to leave!”

  Duncan turned toward the public parking deck to get his mother’s car and found that the fire trucks had blocked any exit. He began running up Main Street to see if he could catch a ride with someone to the north end of the island, but the traffic was moving far slower than he could run.

  Duncan cut through the three side streets to get to Safe Haven Beach, and took off. Almost immediately he realized his heavy, wet uniform was restricting his movement, so he paused long enough to rip off his dress shoes, socks, and his clothes except for his undershirt and trousers.

  And then Duncan began to run, churning through the sand, his mind fixed on his only objective: getting to Moondance Beach. He did the math in his head. He had five miles of beach to cover, and his best four-mile timed run was just over twenty-three minutes in Bates 922 combat boots, a time considered stellar by Navy standards but not nearly fast enough now. But what choice did he have with the traffic?

  He dug his heels into the sand and pushed himself, careful to avoid the violent and steadily rising surf.

  If his feeling of impending doom had been strong back at the public dock, it was nearly choking him now. Something was horribly wrong with Lena. He knew it. His knowledge was irrational, unrelated to any kind of recognizable evidence, but it was real. And it wasn’t the first time he’d felt this. The night of the ambush, seconds before the explosion, he knew what was coming. That sick feeling . . . he knew.

  Duncan pushed himself harder and faster, not questioning the accuracy of his instinct. He was sure he was running for Lena’s life.

  * * *

  She woke up to the sound of Ondine yapping and the taste of smoke in her mouth. Lena shot up to a sitting position and jumped up in the air. The chaise was on fire! The flames were licking across her arms! The pounding of her heart in her ears nearly drowned out Ondine’s hysterical barking. She took a second to try to clear her mind. She’d fallen asleep.

  The candle.

  Just then the smoke alarm went off.

  She grabbed Ondine and ran with her across the studio, tossing her to safety in the hallway. With only the light of the flames to guide her, Lena raced into the brush room to find the fire extinguisher. She began to panic. Where had she put it? When had she seen it last? Why wasn’t she more prepared for something like this?

  She flailed around blindly. She ran her hands along shelves and counter space, knocking over God knows what in the process. She got on her hands and knees and checked under the sink a second time, finally finding it shoved in the back behind a large jug of dish soap. She grabbed it. She couldn’t see well. She’d never used one before! She held it up to catch more light, and with shaking fingers she wrestled with the unlocking pin. It pulled free.

  Ondine barked louder. The fire alarm pierced her eardrums.

  Lena turned, ran from the brush room, and was stopped in her tracks by
a wall of smoke and heat. What had happened? Oh, God! The whole studio had gone up while she was looking for the goddamn fire extinguisher! She heard a loud popping sound, and she watched as flames engulfed her wall of stored canvases.

  The solvents! They were everywhere. On everything. Oh, God, no . . .

  Duncan’s pencil drawing! Her painting!

  Fire licked up the walls and across the floor. It moved in endless liquid waves, eating away at everything it touched. Tears ran down her face as she tried to aim the extinguisher at anything and everything. It was useless.

  She felt a rush of air and realized the window she’d cracked had been pulled open by the wind, now howling outside . . . and inside.

  This was all her fault. It was a perfect storm of stupidity—wind, flame, solvents . . . She’d just burned down her beautiful studio! Her beautiful home!

  There was no more time. She had to get out.

  Just then she heard the sound of breaking glass. Lena looked up in time to see the skylight crack. She gasped in horror—this could not be happening! She watched the glass come loose in large, ugly shards. It was coming down on top of her . . .

  Lena reacted without thought. She dived under the worktable in the middle of the room, thinking it would at least protect her from the falling glass.

  She hit the ground with a thud. Everything went black.

  * * *

  He was flying in the darkness. In the zone. Running faster than he’d ever run in his life. His mind was trained on Lena.

  Duncan got about a quarter mile from the chain-link fence marking the entrance to Moondance Beach when he saw the flames.

  He put his head down and ripped into the sand, feeling his body move like a machine, perfect rhythm, combat breathing. Power. Speed. Focus.

  Duncan barely slowed down, flying over the fence, then digging into the sand to the dune steps. He took them two at a time, breathing in the smoke now, hearing the crackle and pop of a huge fire. He took half a second to assess the situation—the exterior shingles were engulfed. In an upstairs corner he could see some of the building’s framing, black bones against the orange flames. It was the studio. The fire had started in the studio.

  He raced across the property, jumped on the back deck, and reached the kitchen door. Locked. He kicked it down with his bare feet.

  “Lena!”

  He quickly scanned the downstairs, all the while sensing the dread in his gut—she was upstairs. In the worst of it.

  “Lena!” He screamed her name over and over again, running through the smoke. As he reached the foot of the staircase, Duncan did two things.

  First, he took a second to locate his mental trigger, the reason he would push himself to do whatever had to be done in the next few moments, no matter how impossible. His trigger was Lena. Holding her in his arms again. Hearing her husky laugh. Seeing the spark in those dark eyes. He loved her, and he would have one more chance to tell her that. There was no other option.

  And then, because he had no idea what awaited him upstairs, he screamed out her name one last time and took a giant breath of air, aware it might be his last.

  Duncan pounded up the staircase. On the second floor, he was met by thick smoke, fierce heat. He turned toward the studio, hoping to God he hadn’t made the wrong choice, when he heard Ondine’s piercing little bark. It was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.

  He pushed through the smoke, a surreal, dim fog, through the double doors. His eyes went low, and he saw her. She was on the floor, half under the worktable and half under the huge easel, which had trapped the lower part of her body. There was no time to think. There was no air. Glass everywhere. In one seamless movement Duncan lunged forward, ripped the easel from her body, and threw it aside. He grabbed her—but he couldn’t tell if she was alive. She was limp. In a glance, he saw her leg was covered in blood and lying at an odd angle. And in that last second he heard a whimper and reached out into the black smoke toward it. Grabbing the dog’s collar, Duncan charged down the hall, down the steps, and kicked down the front door.

  Once he had cleared the structure, he stopped to breathe—exhaled, inhaled—then carried Lena and the dog far away from the building, near the gate, as the wind whipped around them like crazy, the flames shooting into the sky.

  Duncan lowered himself to the ground, cradling Lena in his arms. He reached into his pants pocket for his cell phone, turned on the speaker, and placed it on the ground.

  “Lena. Can you hear me?”

  She was breathing, but there was a streak of gray saliva around her lips. She had breathed in a lot of smoke.

  The phone came to life. “Nine one one, what’s your emergency? Police, fire, or—”

  “Ambulance and fire. North Shoreline Road. Bayberry. House fire with serious injury, compound fracture, and smoke inhalation. One ambulance. Hurry.”

  “Sir, what is your name? Sir? Do you have a—”

  Duncan gently propped Lena in his lap. He made a second quick scan of her body, immediately reaching around to his side to tear at his undershirt. In a one-handed burst of fury, he ripped off a strip about eight inches long—it would have to do—and gingerly tied it tightly around her lower leg. It would slow the bleeding. He knew the reality of the situation. The entire Bayberry Fire Department was busy at the dock, and that meant help would not be coming quickly.

  Thank God not all the blood soaking into the ground was from Lena. Some of it was his—his feet were raw hamburger from running across broken glass.

  “Lena. Sweetheart, can you hear me?”

  She didn’t respond.

  He stared at her wide-eyed. This cannot be happening. She cannot be gone.

  “Lena!” he cried, shaking her.

  And just when he thought his mind would explode from the pain of her silence, her eyelids fluttered. Her lips parted and she whispered, “Duncan.”

  Oh, Jesus. She was alive. “Lena, I’m here.”

  “Duncan,” she whispered again.

  He put his face next to hers. He kissed her cheeks and forehead and tried so very hard not to jar her body or squeeze her, but the joy he felt was overwhelming.

  “It happened so fast . . .”

  “Shhh. Baby. It’s all right. You’re hurt, but you’re going to be fine. I promise.”

  “Is Ondine . . . ?”

  “I’ve got her. She’s right here.”

  The dog toddled up to Lena and began licking her hand. Duncan looked down at the poor thing to see her fur was singed and black, but otherwise she didn’t seem injured. He scratched her behind the ears.

  “Bravo Zulu, Ondine,” he said.

  Lena began to cry. He felt her shake and tremble. He held her close, covering her body with his.

  “I love you, Lena. So much.” Duncan’s tears fell on her face, rinsing the soot away in narrow streaks. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I will never doubt you again. I get it now—sometimes you just know. Like just now I knew something had happened to you. I can’t explain it . . .”

  “Shhh,” she said, cutting off his rambling. “I love you, Duncan. Thank you for not giving up on me.”

  Epilogue

  One year later . . .

  Lena lay on a blanket in the sand and watched the high evening clouds float along, pastel wisps of red and orange making their way across the horizon line. Though beautiful, she knew the passing clouds were an illusion. The sky was still—they were the ones in motion down here on earth, spinning through time, the tides and seasons always in a state of change.

  A warm breeze ruffled their hair and clothing. Ondine continued to chase seagulls up and down the surf. And Lena reveled in her husband’s touch. One of his hands gently stroked her hair while the other protected her enormous belly.

  Sometimes Lena cried when she recalled last year’s fire and the chaos and pain it had caused. But mostly she looked back on herself a year ago with bittersweet amusement. Right here on this beach, she’d dug her heels into the sand and informed Duncan that she cou
ld take care of herself. She didn’t need his protection. Thank you very much.

  As it turned out, she’d missed the mark on both counts. In the moment when all was lost, she had needed Duncan. She hadn’t been able to do it by herself. And he had been there—to take care of her and protect her. He still was.

  “I love you, Adelena Silva-Flynn.” Duncan’s voice was low and gentle as he leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Are you getting tired? We can go in if you’d like.”

  “Naw, I’m great. I’ve got at least ten good minutes left in me.”

  They laughed. Lena was due with their daughter any day now, and she had become grumpy, uncomfortable, and exhausted from not being able to sleep. Duncan had cleared his schedule for the next month so that he could be with her for the birth and then stay at home with his girls.

  It was not something Lena had asked him to do, but after the fire Duncan had resigned from the Navy. He’d accepted a job as director of a national nonprofit that brought together his two passions, wounded warriors and competitive water sports. Duncan had resigned while Lena was still in the hospital recovering from her injuries, which had allowed him to stay in Boston to be at her side.

  Sanders took care of everything else—all the insurance hassles and all of Lena’s finances. “Just get better,” he’d told her.

  The first time she’d asked Duncan about his decision not to return to active duty, he’d explained his thinking this way: “I listened to others. I listened to my heart. And I realized I could still serve in honor of my friends. It’s just a different kind of service to my country and to those I love. I think my friends would approve.”

  So, in this last year, not only had Duncan started a new career, but he had acted as general contractor in the rebuilding of their home. He’d also provided expert personal coaching for Lena as she got back on her feet—literally.

  Her right leg had been broken in two places, and she now sported a screw in her ankle and knee, with a metal rod at her tibia. Though it wasn’t planned, Lena had become pregnant just three months after the fire, while still in the thick of physical therapy with the always-energetic and competent Brandy. Lena and Duncan now affectionately referred to her as “the Perky-nator.” Just not to her face.