When Light Breaks - By Patti Callahan Henry Page 0,3

that at thirteen years old I could not define. A kind of touch I didn’t know how to ask for and didn’t know how to give. But I tried.

I held out my left hand; it wavered in the air before I knew what to do with it. Then I reached up and touched his cheek; my palm against his skin, my thumb ran over to his top lip, and stopped there. He stood still, stiller than the snow-white egrets on the marsh, which looked like statues. Then he reached up and put his hand on top of mine. Fear—the kind that makes your stomach loose like you’re on a dropping plane—overcame me; fear that he’d remove my hand.

But he didn’t; he closed his eyes and let our hands stay there—together. In the next second, he opened his eyes and leaned toward me, dropped his forehead onto mine. Our noses touched, then our lips. It was my first kiss, and more gentle and kind than I had expected after watching spin the bottle at our middle school parties. It lasted only a moment, a split second of time that could repeat itself over and over if I allowed it, like the waves coming one after the other even if you weren’t watching.

Neither one of us said a word; we stood back and stared at each other as if we’d just met, as if we’d just discovered something so new and strange that we didn’t know what to call it.

We turned together and walked toward the sand dunes, over the footbridge covering the sandburs, which dug themselves into your bare feet and stung worse than a bee. When we reached the beach, we sat and watched the sun disappear in a hundred colors and patterns of light below the horizon.

I lay on my back and he sank down next to me. Instinctively, as we’d done a hundred times, we made silent snow angels in the sand, brushing our arms back and forth, allowing our fingertips to graze against each other. We lay like that in silence, knowing the game we were playing: the first one to see a star in the disappearing day won. I focused on the sky . . . wanting to find it, wanting to wish upon it. Then a small speck rose above me—appearing like it always did, as if it had always been there, but I hadn’t paid enough attention. Usually I hollered when I won this game, but this time I whispered. “There it is.”

Jack touched my elbow. “I see it.”

“Did you see it first?” I whispered.

“Nah. You win. Come on, we best get to dinner or we’ll be grounded for sure.”

And I knew that for the first time he’d let me win the game, and this was the one fact, beyond the kiss or the brush of his fingertips, that let me know he loved me. Yes, he most definitely loved me. And I loved him.

I stood, and he took my hand inside his, and I thought how perfectly it fit, custom-made for me, like one of Daddy’s tailored suits from the seamstress on Magnolia Street. Jack glanced at me with a question on his face. I smiled at him and immersed myself in the new openness I felt below my breastbone; maybe, just maybe this emotion would fill some of the empty space where Mama’s absence ached.

My definition of love did not, then, extend beyond familial devotion, so when I felt the opening, the possibility of another kind of love—my heart stretched as if it had been taking a thirteen-year nap, and it was just beginning to fully awaken.

I pondered this feeling for weeks and months afterward, wondering why it had changed between this boy and me, this boy from next door whom I’d known ever since I could remember. Had I always loved him or did I just miss my mama and want his?

Even now, at twenty-seven years old, I couldn’t answer that question, but thankfully it didn’t matter anymore. Jack was gone and had been for a very long time. I now understood true love, lasting love—not just adolescent angst and want, not the kind of love that would leave me like Mama and Jack had. I was now comfortable in my world, one I did not need to run away from.

CHAPTER TWO

I met Maeve Mahoney two months before my wedding. The sweet promise of warm spring days and fragrant evenings followed me through the front door of the Verandah House and