When Light Breaks by Patti Callahan Henry Page B

for them left when they did.
    Scattered throughout the crowd were friends of mine who went all the way back to preschool. They talked loudly, yet all I heard was an overwhelming roar without words.
    A handmade wine-cork backsplash covered the wall behind the bar. I was sure that my soon-to-be mother-in-law had drunk every single one of the bottles of wine from which those corks had come.
    My kind brother, Brian, stood at the end of the bar flirting with Charlotte. No use in that—Charlotte had been avoiding his loving puppy-dog looks since she was nine years old. I smiled. He was persistent and adorable with his head full of blond curls and his quick blue eyes. He was probably trying to talk Charlotte into going to the most delicious place I knew in Palmetto Pointe—his shack behind a bluff on Silver Creek.
    I leaned against the bar as Peyton’s mother, Sylvia, moved next to me. She tapped her red fingernails on the polished mahogany bar. “You having fun?” She leaned toward me, vaguely unsteady on her feet even this early in the evening.
    “Absolutely.” I set my camera on the bar.
    “Great. Just great.” She glanced up and down at my outfit, squinted. “Isn’t that the sweater you wore to the Every-Room-in-the-House shower?”
    “What?” I asked, and glanced over at Peyton. Why wasn’t anyone else sweating?
    “Your sweater.” Sylvia pulled on the sleeve. “You wore that to your last shower.”
    “I did, didn’t I?” I rubbed my forehead with my fingertips; Sylvia wavered, miragelike in her too-tight leather skirt and red sweater.
    Peyton’s voice came from behind me. “Mom, please. Who cares what she wore?”
    I reached for Peyton, but never found his arm as the room spun before me. The last thing I saw as I slid to the floor was Sylvia’s open mouth. The last words I heard were: “Oh, dear God, is she pregnant?” And it wasn’t a question asked with excitement.

CHAPTER SIX

    T he whitecaps are high and crazed, then suddenly calm as if someone commanded the sea to be still. Daddy is building a sandcastle with Deirdre, and Mama is standing over them with an ancient black Nikon, snapping pictures, laughing. Her hair is flying in the wind—brown, sun-licked curls lifting to the sky. A tunnel of white light comes from the cloud above her, settles around her.
    Daddy looks up to her, and there is so much love on his face, around his eyes and mouth, that my heart overflows. The light stretches toward him; Mama touches his cheek, drops her camera on the sand and places both her hands on either side of his face, and kisses him.
    Deirdre squeals and pulls Daddy toward her. “Oh, gross. Stop that.”
    Mama laughs and picks small Deirdre up into the air, into the white light, and kisses her. Daddy plucks a sand dollar and places it at the front door of their gray-white sandcastle. Brian runs toward them, lifts his foot as if to knock the castle down, then falls to the sand, laughing so hard the sound echoes against my chest.
    Deirdre screams at him, but she is laughing.
    I step toward them, but I can’t move, my feet disobedient to the command to walk to my family. I am so hot, waves of fire move across me, through me.
    A boat comes into view behind Mama; three brown sails and a bowed front stern sail across the water.
    A vortex of whirling panic overcomes me; I scream for my family, but they can’t hear me, can’t answer me. They are laughing and loving with such intensity that they do not know what is coming.
    I burst through the immobility, moist sweat covering me. I get to Mama first, throw my arms around her. She turns to me, looks at me, but Maeve’s eyes stare back at me.
    I try to scream again, but find emptiness inside me.
    I turn to beg for help from Daddy, but instead find Peyton walking across an eighteenth green waving good-bye to me over his shoulder, his golf club swinging at his side.
    I grope through the sand and heat to find that love again, to find Mama kissing Daddy and laughing, to