A half hour later, Rose and Dean stood up in the hot sun. They hugged again. Then Rose turned and walked toward me, and Dean returned to his boat.
“Where’s he going?” I asked, with a touch of concern.
“To call his employees and deal with his business,” she replied. “Mom . . . he says he’s going to turn himself in.”
“I know.” Rose began to cry, so I took her into my arms. “It’s the right thing, sweetheart.”
“Is it?” she asked. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. What he did was wrong, and he knows it. He’s always known it. He needs to face up to it.”
“But it was so long ago,” she argued. “Don’t you think he’s suffered enough? He’s missed out on a life with you and me, and he knows that, and he’s felt guilty about that woman for two decades. He still has nightmares about it. What’s the point in him going to jail now? He’s not a bad man. He just had a hard life when he was young. That’s bound to damage you in some ways, which wasn’t his fault. And he was lonely. That’s why he got involved with her. You understand that, don’t you? He tried to end it, and what happened to her was an accident.”
I watched Rose and waited for her to wipe away her tears. “Yes, I understand that. But hiding her body in the woods and running away like he did wasn’t right. He lied, Rose, and he broke the law. And now that we know he’s here, alive, we can’t lie on his behalf. I couldn’t live with that.”
She turned back toward Dean’s sailboat. “We can’t just let it go?”
The sun moved behind a cloud, and the air turned cool. “Would you be okay with that?” I asked. “Just letting it go?”
“I don’t know.” She hesitated. “I suppose not. I wouldn’t want to lie.”
A part of me understood Rose’s reluctance. Perhaps Dean had been punished enough. But then I thought of Melanie Brown in a shallow grave and his fraudulent disappearance. The Coast Guard search, the theft of an airplane . . .
“I don’t think Dean would want us to lie either. I think he’s finished with hiding, now that he knows we know the truth.”
Rose let out a heavy sigh and looked up at the clouds. “I don’t want him to think we hate him. Because I don’t. I feel sorry for him, Mom, because he can’t undo what he did. It was an accident, and he regrets it, and I believe him about that.”
“I believe him too.” I pulled her into my arms and hugged her. “I’m proud of you, because you’re right. We shouldn’t hate him. I’ve spent too many years feeling angry. It’s been like a poison in my veins. And Dean has spent most of his life living in fear, and he needs to be free of that, even if it means going to prison.”
We both stepped back and looked toward his boat. I hoped he was doing what he said he would do. I hoped he was calling his employees and getting his affairs in order. But it wasn’t easy to trust. I was conscious of Detective Johnson’s business card in my wallet, just in case.
Rose took my hand, and we walked in silence back to the hotel. I was proud of her for her compassion and understanding, but I realized that I still had some work to do in that area. Everything I had learned that day had been a shock, a violent awakening to what had actually happened in the past and a truth I had never wanted to face—that I had once loved a man I never really knew.
The breeze off the water cooled me as I walked beside Rose. I did not let myself look back. I preferred, instead, to look ahead and immerse myself in thoughts of home. When I conjured it in my imagination—with all its comfort and warmth—it was Gabriel’s face that I saw.
CHAPTER 32
DEAN
After sunset, it was a windless calm on the water, so I lowered the sails and lay on my back on the upper deck, letting Jade drift freely across the reef. Below me, in the dark, thousands of species of colorful fish populated the exquisite coral gardens that had become my escape over the past two decades. Lying alone, I contemplated the miracle of life on this planet. How tranquil it all seemed while my boat turned in slow, continuous circles. The fresh fragrance of the sea air filled my nostrils, and I marveled at the splendor of the night sky. The moon was full, and the Southern Cross hung above me in all its glory. The space station went by, like a traveling star. I watched it for about ninety seconds until it disappeared, as if by magic.
I thought of the first time I’d ever gone sailing after sunset. Olivia had taken me out on her sister’s boat in Miami. We spent the night anchored in a little cove, far from the city lights. It was a calm, perfect night, just like this one.
But even then, I was screaming inside.
My mind was not screaming tonight, however, which made no sense considering that I had promised to turn myself in to the police and confess all my wrongs. It was my worst fear. Ending up like my father. Handcuffs. Prison. The shame of it all. It was what I had been running from for more than two decades.
All I could think of was Olivia on the dock, first looking at me with condemnation, then placing her hand in mine and stepping onto my boat. Olivia listening to everything I had done, telling me that she would have stood by me if I had called the police that night. If only.
Then I thought of Rose and Susie and all that I had missed. I’d never held either of them in my arms when they were infants. I never taught Rose how to ride a bicycle or swim. I did not witness the daily miracle of her development as a human being.
The sense of loss was bone deep. The dark shadow of my regret, inescapable. At the same time, I felt some relief and gratification to see the woman Rose had become. Smart, sensible, kind, and compassionate. Astonishingly forgiving toward me. Did my DNA have anything to do with that? Or was it all because of Olivia and Gabriel, who had given her a wonderful life?
And what about Susie? Would I ever meet her? Perhaps it was possible, one day.
I continued to lie there, spinning slowly in the moonlight, and felt a strange inner peace—something I had not felt in over twenty years. How quiet and serene it had become inside my head.
A memory of Olivia throwing the tennis ball for Ziggy drifted into my imagination. Olivia cooking breakfast in our condo. The smell of the bacon. Olivia sleeping beside me in our bed, her hand tucked up under her cheek, her eyelids fluttering as she dreamed. Her kiss. The softness of her skin. Her unfathomable, unexpected love for me. And today, a fresh, new memory of Rose on the bench beside me, telling me about her life and hearing my confessions. Rose, my daughter. Forgiving me.
Beautiful memories . . . all of them.
But there were other memories too. The first painful, devastating night I spent without my mother. The back of my father’s hand and the hot sting of it on my cheek. The mad chaos of running away from a burning car I helped to steal, leaping over a fence to escape police sirens. Melanie pushing me onto the landing outside her apartment.
A light breeze blew across the deck, and Jade began to rock gently. I listened to the sound of my breathing, slow and steady, and looked up at the full moon and the mysterious galaxies that must exist in the great beyond. My life was so small in comparison, but not unimportant. All the atoms in my body had come from somewhere in this vast universe, and I had been shaped and molded by the world into which I had been born. I had played a part in bringing a beautiful person into this world. Rose.