When You Believe Read online

  THE SIGHT OF her uncle’s AM radio on the steps brought Lydia back that Tuesday evening. Such a simple thing, with its bent antenna and its Panasonic speaker that looked like the underside of a George Lucas star-cruiser.

  Every day at Viney Creek Marina, Lydia’s uncle held court surrounded by friends, in a row of musty aluminum chairs, the plastic webbing sagging in the middle from years of use. Now the chairs were empty. She peered into the darkness of the weatherworn boathouse and squinted, willing her eyes to adjust.

  “Uncle Cy? You around?”

  Skeletal remains of a gear case lay in disarray on the floor. A dented propeller listed beside a handful of tools. Behind her, three aluminum fishing boats rocked on their moorings beside a wharf new enough to still reek of cedar.

  The sun already cast long shadows. Lydia knew she didn’t have much time. She thumped a battered gas tank to see if it was full.

  It wasn’t.

  Slowly, she fed in the premix, listening to the glub glubbing, hearing the pitch rise as liquid closed in toward the top.

  Charlie is my life now, Lord. I thought that’s why you made this happen between us. I don’t understand. I can’t turn any other way.

  Then she thought, If he’s done something, if he’s touched Shelby, it will ruin him. She did not dare think, If I tell.

  Just as she lugged the tank to the waterfront and climbed in over the algae-covered fenders, Uncle Cy came around the ancient Coca-Cola chest on the sunset side of the marina. He hollered at her across the collar of rocks and sand.

  “Lyddie?”

  From the rocking, moored boat, she cupped her hands around her mouth to answer. “Hey.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Oh—” She shrugged, standing straddle legged. “Humbert’s Finger, I guess.”

  “It’s late to be going out that far.”

  “I’ll be okay.” She attached her tank to the fuel line of the Evinrude, squeezed the primer bulb once, twice, and pulled out the choke. “You mind?”

  “Course I don’t.”

  “Charlie called out here a while ago. Wanted to know where you were.”

  “Oh.” Oh.

  Three pulls on the starter and the engine coughed, caught, rattled to life. She reversed, banked the metal skiff into a sharp one-eighty as the low sun illuminated rocks beneath water the same russet-red as a robin’s breast. She waved to her uncle and headed away.

  Usually Lydia hugged the shore until she passed Viney Creek Point. This afternoon she steered into open water, running the throttle wide open, the motor churning a fine spray behind her. For the first time since Shelby had mentioned Mr. Stains’s name in her office three hours ago, Lydia felt as if she could breathe.

  She rode the bucking waves the way she rode her bucking emotions. To keep herself steady, she locked her eyes on the opposite bank, where the high-water mark descended into the lake like broad, shadowed steps.

  We can only keep you safe, she’d said to Shelby, if you’ll let us help you.

  Charles Stains had sauntered into the first teacher’s meeting of the year with hands as smooth and big around as rutabagas, a clipped, careful accent from the opposite side of the state, and rich twill trousers—all of this rare and unfamiliar and somewhat questionable in Shadrach. During the full first six months of class, in which his students turned black-oak limbs into candlesticks on the school-district lathe, learned the intricate art of hand-rubbed finishes on wobbly napkin holders, and built unsteady spice cabinets from planks of hickory, he had remained half welcomed and half suspected by them all.

  One Tuesday afternoon late in the spring, he had turned up at Cy Porter’s.

  He’d waited in line for his turn at the marina cash register. As he scribbled down his phone number, Lydia noticed his fingers were torn by splinters and his cuticles dyed brown with mahogany stain.

  “How would you feel about my carpentry students rebuilding your dock, Mr. Porter?”

  “Don’t know about that,” Lydia overheard while she helped Jane unload a cardboard box of trolling spoons. “One I’ve got out there seems fine.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t.” The mysterious professor picked up a Snickers bar from the counter and laid down three quarters. “But it seemed like an idea. I’ve got a lot of faith in these kids. They could do a good job.”

  “Well, you just take another look out there. Tell me why you think I need something better than what I’ve already got.”

  “Folks everywhere are putting in those galvanized metal docks that move with the waves. I’d hate to see you do that. My kids would learn a lot, updating what you’ve got now.” Stains tore open one end of the Snickers and bit into it. “There’s just something about a wooden dock,” he said around the glob of chocolate and peanuts in his mouth. “It adds to the atmosphere of a place.”

  Cy pushed the cash drawer shut.

  “You build it, son, you got to guarantee it. I’m not paying one red cent to fix something if you go crazy and mess things up.”

  It had been a big project from the very beginning, the seniors hauling in treated redwood and cedar in the bed of Johnny Nagle’s rusty Dodge Power Wagon, the juniors saying that they ought to be the ones who got to go waist deep in water to extract rotted pilings from the mud.

  “Why are you doing this?” Lydia had asked him one evening when she’d gone to deliver groceries to Jane. She’d found Charlie wearing an unlikely ragged T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, tightening huge bolts that must have still been hot from the sun.

  She stood on shore as if she was afraid to set foot on the planks he’d laid. He torqued down with his pliers, the muscles in his shoulders twisting like cables of wet hemp rope.

  “I’ve been studying this, Mr. Stains,” she announced to his sunburned shoulders, “and I think you’re out to prove something to somebody. Only I can’t figure out what, or who.”

  He torqued down harder.

  “Pardon me for saying it, but it seems like you’re trying to rebuild something that you don’t need to rebuild.”

  “Why does everybody think I’ve got to have some reason?”

  “We’re just trying to figure out who you are.”

  “Well, I’m Charlie. That’s who I am and I wish you’d call me that.” He laid down the pliers. “Who you see is who you get.”

  “I guess I was one of the only people in town who didn’t live here when you did. I just made it out for summers as a kid.”

  His blistered shoulders rose and fell. “You know he would have put in a metal pier eventually.” Finally, he turned halfway toward her. “And metal docks spook the fish. Minnows don’t like them as well, either. The pylons need to be low in the water. Moss needs to grow.”

  “Uncle Cy’s always liked wooden docks.”

  “You ever do any night fishing? You ever come out here at midnight and see what the crappie will do when they see the light?”

  “Used to,” she told him. “My uncle and I used to come out here all the time. No more, though. Don’t have time for late nights anymore, now that I’m at the school.”

  Without meeting her eyes, he hefted himself over the side and splashed thigh-deep in water. He retrieved his tools, waded out, and worked his way under the hewn lumber. He went at the nuts and bolts from beneath.

  “You ever think I might be rebuilding this dock so I’d get an honest chance to talk to you?”

  His words surprised and flattered her. In one quick moment, she couldn’t help comparing him to Brad Gritton, the other single teacher at the school, who had been trying to date her ever since she’d been hired on at Shadrach. Brad had even asked her to the Shadrach Democrat Reflex Christmas party last December. She’d turned him down, wanting to be fair. Brad, who had always seemed like more of a buddy than someone she could be passionate about, with his self-conscious habit of retucking his shirt every few minutes and his affinity for verifiable and undistorted fact.

  Charlie said, “There’s nobody out here but you and me. W
e aren’t at Shadrach High School today.”

  “No, we aren’t.”

  She wondered what he meant to do about that. For a long time, they stood silent. Then, “Can you hand me that extra pair of pliers? I forgot and left them up there.”

  “Sure. Here you are.”

  Finally she set foot on the dock. When she poked the tool between the planks of cedar, their hands touched.

  Hands, someone had said in the teacher’s lounge. I always notice a man by his hands.

  The rubber handle grips wouldn’t fit between the boards. She pulled them back out again. Deep inside, Lydia, a woman who longed to be cherished and needed by someone, to be found beautiful by someone, felt her heart begin to unclench. She climbed over the side with the pliers, into the water. Dozens of minnows darted away from her in an odd, ordered formation.

  The cold water bit into her skin, gave her gooseflesh, exhilarated her. It smelled of duckweed and fish and diesel. For a moment, she braided her arms across her midriff, as if to protect herself from him and the cold water both.

  Such a crazy thing, being this pleased and spontaneous. She would never have done anything so impulsive with anyone else. Certainly not with Brad, who asked too many questions and was interested only in precise details and data.

  “Here.” She unfolded her arms and waggled the pliers over her head at him, her heart pounding. “You want these?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  He came around the corner of the dock and sloshed toward her. “On whether you’re willing to give them to me or not.”

  Lydia stood still holding the pliers overhead, waiting for him as he moved between the moored boats. Brownbranch water rushed against her when he came close and brushed against her, the hem of his shirt scalloping like the edge of a jelly fish. And there, in the waning sunset, waist-deep in water with their wet clothes clinging, the much-talked-about Professor Charlie Stains took the liberty of kissing her.

  He felt his way at first, questioning her with his mouth but not his arms, his hands poised skyward as if somebody in a Western had said “Stick ’em up.” He kissed her without committing anything, as if wanting to give her an easy chance to step away.

  She didn’t.

  And so, he kissed her again.

  His lips… yes, she’d thought about them and wondered how they would feel on hers. Sometimes when she’d seen him at Shadrach High, his mouth had been so cracked and chapped that she’d wanted to offer him her Blistex. But for now his lips were as wet as the rest of him, a surprise, soft and cool where she’d thought they’d be rough and dry, and pink-red in a way she’d never seen them before.

  She didn’t feel self-conscious as he gripped her shoulders. Charlie seemed so sure of what he was doing. His belt had turned dark in the water. She loved the way she felt small as he drew her against him. Maybe, she realized, she was more than pleased and flattered. Maybe this could be what she had been praying for. And here she stood against Charlie’s sodden belt buckle in her red-print dress with spaghetti straps—the one that made her feel less like an aging teacher and more like a girl in springtime.

  Oh Lord Oh Lord Oh Lord.

  There had been a hole in her heart for so long. Since she’d been in high school, she had never thought that she deserved to be loved this way.

  “I could do this,” she’d said to him very quietly that day. “I could.”

  Tuesday evening, only thirty minutes since Shelby had left her office and, already, all that had changed. She held her course in the lake, not hurrying to Humbert’s Finger. The moment she took herself to the protection of a cove, the moving water wouldn’t carry her anymore. For the next few hours at least, she would bear Shelby’s disclosure alone.

  She waited until breakers began to slop up over the ribs of the boat. She waited until her feet got wet before she throttled up the Evinrude and headed into the narrow, protected inlet. The boat stilled as she passed between two ridges. It glided on a mirror. Farther ahead, at the edge of the bay, an old, abandoned house, its porch overgrown with hawthorn, sat on cleared ground in the shape of a warbler’s wing. No road could be seen in or out, only a faint track choked with brambles and milkweed.

  She’d walked these paths often during the months she and Charlie had quietly fallen in love. Thank you thank you thank you God, she’d whispered over and over again as she searched the sky, the reflections in the water, for Him. You heard me, didn’t you? You knew what I’d wanted above all things.

  Because, at the bottom of everything else, she stood on her faith. The Lord was somebody she talked to and sought and asked questions of. She looked for answers in His Word. She knew He had created her to need someone loving her and standing beside her. She had always told others how she could trust Him.

  Evening was coming on, heralded by the ringing throb of crickets and cicadas that had survived the early October frosts. On the sand at the far edge of the inlet, she made out the hump of an enormous lake turtle lying almost invisible against the rocks.

  Motionless, finally, away from the discord of voices. Away from lockers slamming like cymbals in the hallway. Away from Shelby Tatum’s horrid story and her eyes, as desperate and as sad as death.

  One evening. One sunset alone on the Brownbranch to deliberate and, she knew, a state court could already charge her with negligence.

  One still hour while she weighed the misery in her heart with the fresh gift of what had been given her with the graveness of a girl’s claim.

  Shelby Tatum could have gone to anyone. But she knew she was safe, coming to me.

  Along the shore of Humbert’s Finger the water had turned from blue to penny-gilded copper. If Lydia didn’t head toward the point now, she wouldn’t make the marina before dark. She saw the silhouette of someone kneel down and then get up again, holding the enormous lake turtle aloft by the shell.

  Behind the figure holding the turtle, another person wadded newspapers and pumped a metal lighter-fluid can over a stack of driftwood. The flicker of a match, and a bonfire erupted. People always did this in Shadrach. Probably high school kids partying on the shore.

  From far away the fire looked beautiful. Driftwood burned in its own elegant shapes, the flames as graceful as a dancer’s arms. She imagined Charlie’s face in the dancing shadows. Remembered his expression when he’d lifted the box from Hocklander’s Jewelry and handed it to her like it had been a nagging child tugging at his pocket.

  I can’t stand it any longer.

  Can’t stand what, Charlie?

  Wondering what you’re going to say.

  About what?

  About this.

  This what?

  I’d planned to buy you a sundae after the game and put this inside the whipped cream. But I was afraid you would eat the ring.

  What ring? What are you talking about?

  There had been no need to whisper, even though they were. Above them the Friday-night game had packed the football stadium. From where they stood in the dark beneath the bleachers, everything around them seemed to roar.

  What are you doing?

  Lydia Louise Porter, what do you think I’m doing? I’m asking you to marry me.

  Right now?

  Yes. Right now. And if you don’t watch out, some of our own students are going to sneak under here to neck and they’re going to find us instead.

  They don’t call it necking anymore, do they? Is it all over town that my middle name is Louise?

  If you don’t like this ring, we can take it back, but it looked like you, and I wanted to pick it out and I thought it might be better to do it here so everybody in Shadrach won’t know by tomorrow morning and… and… we’ve waited too long, both of us. Lyddie, would you just open it up?

  Her answer had been yes yes yes, and the ring, given so quickly, had been tucked away in its velvet Hocklander’s box for the past four long, careful days. They’d decided to live with their gentle secret awhile because it would be such a huge point of
discussion once the teenagers found out. It would be amazing for the kids, they’d decided. They’d have to learn to call her Mrs. S instead of Miss P.

  Not even Maureen Eden knew yet—not Mo, who prized herself on knowing everything and sharing it with glee in the nurses’ office and the teacher’s lounge.

  Nor did her parents, who resided in their comfortable colonial home in Lichen Bridge, Connecticut. Just last week Lydia had been an hour on the phone with American Airlines, juggling her schedule so she and Charlie could get tickets together into Hartford over Christmas break. How joyful her parents would be when she took Charlie’s hand and announced, “Mom, Dad, we have something we need to tell you.”

  “I close my eyes, Lyddie,” Charlie had said Friday night and she couldn’t stop hearing him, “and the only thing I can see is your face.”

  Lydia reversed the boat and opened the throttle wide.

  The old motor rooster-tailed to life.

  And she leaned forward, unable to breathe again, catching the first open waves. She headed back toward the cedar marina built by a man that everybody in Shadrach wondered if they knew.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Someone had left the sprinkler in the schoolyard running all night. On Wednesday morning, a skin of ice coated the grass like shards of glass. Hugging another stack of college-admittance exam booklets to her chest, Lydia walked a broad circle around the ticking, frozen sprinkler and used her derriere to push open the double glass doors to Shadrach High School.

  She’d gotten here early enough, she hoped, to avoid staff that might strike up a conversation or ask questions about her long office hours yesterday. Her slip-ons made little rubbery squeaks on the machine-polished floor.

  “Whatever you do, don’t look up,” came a man’s voice high overhead that made adrenaline surge through her.

  She looked up, her heart in her throat. “Charlie?”

  “Hi there.”