“Dad.” Tuck spoke softly and touched his father on the shoulder, but there was no response to either his voice or his touch.
Tuck gestured for Liddy to step into his father’s line of sight.
“Dad, this is my friend Lydia. You used to take her father, Alphonse Hess, out on your charter boat to fish for tuna, remember? Do you remember Alphonse Hess?”
That was news to Liddy. She did recall her father going deep-sea fishing, but she had no idea Tuck’s father had captained that boat.
“He’s not having a good day, Tuck.” The nurse Tuck had mentioned came outside with a glass of water in her hand. “I’ve been trying to get him to take some water, but I’m not getting through to him. I hate to hook him up to an IV again, because it agitates him, but I can’t let him get dehydrated.”
“Do what you have to do, Irene.” Tuck introduced Liddy to the nurse, then gestured for Liddy to follow him through the garden. He stopped midway and said, “Wait here a sec.”
He ran back inside the house, giving Liddy an opportunity to check out the backyard. The dahlias grew in a bed along one side of the garden. They reminded her of an artist’s palette, the glorious flowers planted in pods of color—shades of red in one place, yellows in another, pinks in yet another. They stood tall and swayed on their thick stalks in the breeze. But Tuck hadn’t been kidding when he said he hadn’t planted anything else. There were beds in which nothing grew but the unidentifiable brown and brittle remains of whatever flowers had once grown there.
Tuck emerged from the house with a quilt draped over his arm. He picked up the bag from where he’d set it on the ground, and caught up with Liddy at the far end of the garden.
“Forgot we needed something to sit on.” He held up the quilt, then held up the bag. “I guess a picnic basket would make this feel more like an actual picnic than just lunch on the beach.”
“It’s fine, no apologies necessary. And for the record, I have a picnic basket that hasn’t been used in years. Available,” she said as she leaned into him slightly, “for future outings.”
“I hope there will be more to come.” He reached for her hand.
They trudged over a dune that was higher than it appeared, and by the time they came down the other side, Liddy was a little out of breath, though Tuck seemed to take it in stride.
“How about right here?” He nodded in the general direction of a section of beach off to their left.
“Perfect,” she said.
She helped him spread out the blanket, and then sat near the middle, looking out toward the water. “I’m disoriented,” she told him. “Am I looking at Buzzards Bay here?”
Tuck nodded. “And if you look off that way far enough”—he pointed to the right—“eventually you’ll see the Atlantic.”
“I didn’t realize you were out this far.”
“Sometimes distance over water can feel different from that over land. It doesn’t for me, but then again, I’ve never known anything else.”
“Your island is beautiful.” She couldn’t stop looking around at the landscape. “It’s wild in its own way, and yet it feels—I don’t know, friendly.”
“That’s because I told it to behave today, that I was bringing a friend over, so no tossing big waves onto the beach, no shark sightings—though you might like that—no greenhead flies, no midges. No swarming gnats or yellow jackets.”
Liddy laughed. “It’s sounding less like paradise when you put it that way.”
“We have the same challenges you have in town, sometimes more because we’re more vulnerable to the weather. We have an extra-large generator that runs on gas—that’s delivered by boat—and we have several fireplaces. I buy a lot of wood and stockpile it for the winter. I’ve thought about a windmill, but I worry about birds flying into it. We have to keep the freezer stocked from November right on through to April, because a really bad nor’easter can keep us huddled here for days. But most of the time, like today, it really can feel like paradise.” He smiled. “Not a tropical one, but still . . .”
“Paradise all the same,” Liddy agreed.
Tuck began to empty the contents of the bag. “I told Tom at the general store to make us some sandwiches and to cut them in quarters in case you don’t like one, you can try one of the others. He said he made up some turkey, chicken salad, roast beef, and ham and swiss.”
“Were you expecting a crowd?” She stared at the pile of sandwiches.
“I figured the kids would eat whatever we don’t.” He unwrapped a few. “What’s your pleasure?”
“I love Tom’s chicken salad,” she said, and he offered her one with the paper still wrapped around it. “I will probably eat this whole thing.”
“Go ahead. I’ll do the same with one of the roast beefs.”
“I think this is a happy place,” Liddy announced between bites. “There’s so much to see.”
Tuck pointed up to the top of one of the pines. “There’s a nesting pair of osprey up there. They’ve been here for as long as I can remember. They migrate south—Central America, South America, as soon as the weather starts to get cool. Every year in the spring, they come back to the same nest—they’re monogamous—and have a chick or two; then you see them out there fishing, bringing food back for their little ones. At times this beach has been covered in parts of dead fish, which Brenda hated. For one thing, you can probably imagine what a beach full of dead fish smells like. And of course then the gulls come to pick over what’s left.”
“I’ve never been close enough to osprey to watch them feed their young.”
“They add a bit to the nest every year, and about three years ago, that one up there got so heavy, it fell right out of the tree. They had to start over, build a new nest.”
“Wow, that’s rough.”
Tuck shrugged. “Just like people, something happens to bring your house down, you start again.” He reached over and eased a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. “Isn’t that what you’re helping your friend Dylan do?”
“Isn’t that what you’re helping your grandchildren do?”
“That’s what you do for family.”
“Well, Dylan’s not exactly my family.”
“Sure he is. You saved him. You took him under your wing.” He pointed upward toward the nest. “No pun.”
They finished eating, and Tuck rested back on his elbows. Liddy could feel his eyes on her, so she turned to look at him, and he pulled her closer to lean against him. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun and let it warm her all the way through. For just a moment, she was seventeen again, having a picnic on the beach with the cool older guy who liked her. There was no Jim, no decisions hanging over her head, no lost children, no heartaches, and for just those few minutes, that was enough.
Tuck sat up when Liddy did, and he kissed her as though he meant it. She kissed him back and thought how free she felt, alone on an island beach with a man who really saw her, who didn’t hesitate to let her know how much he liked her—no Kiss Me, Kale necessary.