The Summer We Came to Life by Deborah Cloyed Page B

him.
    Jesse burped and turned her face away. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and knew she probably thought she looked awful. Automatically, she freed her hair from a ponytail and smoothed her satin nightgown with sweaty palms.
    Arshan knew just what she was thinking. He couldn’t help but smile. “You look gorgeous,” he said before he had time to think better of it.
    Sarcastic, Jesse thought, but her defenses were down. Being seen without makeup was actually physically painful for Jesse in front of a man. Not a man. Arshan.
    Again, Arshan read her thoughts as nakedly as a child’s fear. Ten years of being a person’s bridge partner teaches you a thing or two. Ever since the accident, Arshan’s feelings for Jesse had crystallized and taken on a delicious urgency. He was both thrilled and terrified, two sensations he’d thought were long dead to him. The past thirty years could best be described as waiting. Waiting to die? Or waiting to live again? He sat down before she could leave.
    â€œYou must know,” Arshan said, and looked to see if she did.
    Jesse listened to the words and weighed their meaning but still wasn’t sure. She kept her eyes on the deck floor.
    â€œI must tell you—” He hesitated for the briefest moment, hoping she would look up. He looked at the sheen of her hair in the moonlight instead. “Jesse, I’m old and I’m damaged. On top of that, I’m haunted.” Arshan felt a chill in the humid air. “And even after all this time, I’m not sure that I’m ready.”
    First, Jesse smiled at the old, weathered floorboards beneath them. Then she lifted her chin so that the moon could unveilevery wrinkle Jesse Brighton had earned in laughter and tears and dashed hopes and dreams. She looked into Arshan’s sad, crinkly eyes and said, “Welcome to the club, honey.”

CHAPTER
16
    WHEN I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING, EVERY-body was still asleep. I tiptoed into the sunshine. I walked off the porch and through the palm grove until I arrived at a fence. I put my hand to my throat and gasped. Stunning. It was possibly the most perfect beach I’d ever seen. The sun was still low in its early morning splendor, casting diamonds across the waves and bathing the sand in glittery warmth. A proud palm tree posed jauntily at the beach’s edge, begging to be made into a postcard. To the left, I saw the beach run along unfettered until a jutting tip of jungle and rock. From what I’d read, I knew that was the biggest settlement area of the Garifuna.
    I tried to run over everything else I remembered. Aboriginal peoples from mainland Central and South America migrated to the Antilles Islands and intermixed. Columbus “discovered” the islands, so Spain colonized and enslaved the population. So many died off from disease and mistreatment that African slaves were shipped in. Runaway slaves andshipwreck survivors were taken in by the Carib population and the new blend constituted the Garifuna. Then Britain gained the island of St. Vincent in a treaty. The Garifuna resisted valiantly, but Britain rounded them up and shipped them to the Honduran island of Roatan. More than half died at sea, but the survivors persevered and even flourished. Finally, many migrated back to the coast of Central America in places like Tela. But to this present day, the Garifuna people maintained native South American and African customs. They make casabe (yucca) bread and dance punta—a frenzied ritual expressing all the joys and sorrow of their past.
    I shielded my eyes from the sun to count seven canoes along the beach, all painted in bright teal and bloodred. The Garifuna were fishermen and lived off the sea and the land. I’d seen pictures of the settlements just down the road—small thatched huts by the sea. I looked around. The area we were staying in was so isolated. I wondered what would happen with the arrival of the outside world.