I’m sorry! I knew they’d be difficult but I really had no idea they’d be this…mean. They’re not mean people. Just cold. They—”
“Shh.” He put his finger to my lips. “They love you,” he said.
“I…what do you mean?”
“I mean, they love you. They want the best for you. And here comes this big, hairy, scary-looking guy who probably doesn’t smell so good right now and who has a blue-collar job and no car. And all they can see is that the little girl they love might be traveling down a path that can get her hurt.”
I pressed my forehead to his shoulder, breathed in the scent of a man who’d been riding for two days to see the woman he loved. I loved him so much at that moment. I envied him, too, for his ability to step outside himself and into my aunt and uncle’s shoes. But I wasn’t sure he was right.
“I think they just care what the neighbors will think,” I said into his shoulder.
He laughed. “Maybe there’s some of that, too,” he said. “But even if that’s true, it’s their fear coming out. They’re scared, Laurie.”
“Laurel?” my aunt called from the bottom of the stairs.
I pulled away from him, kissing him quickly on the lips. “The bathroom’s at the end of the hall,” I said. “And I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
I walked downstairs, where Aunt Pat waited for me. Her face was drawn and lined and tired. “Come out on the porch for a minute,” she said.
On the porch, I took my seat on the swing again while Aunt Pat returned to the rocker. “He can’t stay here,” she said.
“What?” That was worse than I’d expected.
“We don’t know him. We don’t trust him. We can’t—”
“I know him,” I said, keeping my voice low only to prevent Jamie from hearing me. I wanted to scream at them. “I wouldn’t be in love with someone who wasn’t trustworthy.”
Uncle Guy leaned forward in the rocking chair, his elbows on his knees. “What in God’s name do you see in him?” he asked. “You were raised so much better than that.”
“Than what?” I asked. “He’s the best person I know. He cares about people. He’s honest. He…he’s very spiritual.” I was desperately trying to find a quality in Jamie that would appeal to them.
“What does that mean?” Aunt Pat asked.
“He plans to start his own church some day.”
“Ah, jeez.” My uncle looked away from me with disgust. “He’s one of those cult leaders,“he said, as if talking to himself.
“I think your uncle’s right,” Aunt Pat said. “He has some kind of power over you, or you wouldn’t be with someone like him.”
She was right that he had power over me, but it was a benevolent sort of power.
“He’s a good person,” I said. “Please. How am I supposed to tell him he can’t stay here when he just rode all the way from North Carolina to see me?”
“I’ll pay for him to stay in a hotel for one night,” Uncle Guy said.
I stood up. “He doesn’t need your money, Uncle Guy,” I said. “He has more money than you would know what to do with. What he needed from you was some tolerance and—” I stumbled, hunting for the right word “—some warmth. I should have known he wouldn’t find it here.” I opened the screen door. “He’ll go to a hotel, and I’ll be going with him.”
“Don’t…you…dare!” My aunt bit off each word.
I turned my back on them and marched into the house, amazed—and thrilled—by my own audacity.
In the end, Jamie wouldn’t let me go with him. He told my aunt and uncle that I was a special girl and he could understand why they’d want to protect me so carefully.
“You talk like a sociopath, Mr. Lockwood,” my uncle said, any remaining trace of cordiality gone.
Even Jamie was at a loss for words then. He left, and I sat on the porch steps the entire night, alternating between tears and fury as I imagined Jamie alone in a hotel room, tired and disappointed.
My aunt and uncle tried to coerce me into changing colleges in the fall, but my parents had been very wise. Even though they died in their early forties, they’d left money for my college expenses as well as a legal document stating the money was to be used at “the college, university or other institute of higher learning of Laurel’s choice.”
When I left Toledo for UNC that fall, I took everything with me. I knew I’d never be coming back.
Jamie proposed to me during the summer of my junior year and we set a wedding date for the following June. I exchanged an occasional letter with my aunt and uncle, but the wedding invitation I sent them went unanswered and, as far as I was concerned, that was it. I was finished with them. I didn’t miss them—I was already so much a part of the Lockwood family and knew Miss Emma and Daddy L better than I’d ever known Aunt Pat and Uncle Guy. Daddy L was mostly a benign presence, a quiet man with an uncanny business sense when it came to real estate. Miss Emma couldn’t survive without her three or four whiskey sours every afternoon-into-the-evening, but no one ever said a word about her drinking, as far as I knew. She was the sort of drinker who grew more mellow with each swallow. Marcus was cute and sweet but self-destructive, and he knew how to push his parents’ buttons—as well as Jamie’s. He’d long ago been labeled the difficult child and did his best to live up to expectations. He landed in the hospital with a dislocated shoulder after wiping out on his surf-board because he was so drunk. He got beaten up by a girl’s father for bringing her home late—by twelve hours. And twice before Jamie and I were married, he was arrested for driving under the influence. Daddy L bailed him out once. The second time, Jamie took care of it quietly so their parents wouldn’t know. Marcus was a real challenge to Jamie’s yearning to be empathic.
But I loved each of the Lockwoods, warts and all. I was so happy and full of excitement in those days that I no longer needed to count backward from a thousand to fall asleep. We were married the week after I received my nursing degree. Daddy L surprised us with the gift of The Sea Tender, the round cottage on the beach, my favorite of his properties. I took a job in a pediatrician’s office in Sneads Ferry, where I fell in love with every infant, toddler and child that came through the door. With every baby I held, I longed for one of my own. I felt the pull of motherhood in every way—biological, emotional, psychological. I wanted to carry Jamie’s baby. I wanted to nurse it and love it and raise it with the love my parents had showered on me before their deaths. I had no family of my own any longer. I wanted to create a new one with Jamie.
While I worked in the doctor’s office, Jamie left carpentry to get his real estate license, manage his father’s properties, and join the Surf City Volunteer Fire Department on the mainland. He even cut his hair—a radical change in his looks it took me a while to get used to—and bought a car, although he never did get rid of his motorcycle.
Living on the island in the eighties was extraordinary. I’d commute the easy distance to my job, then drive to the docks in Sneads Ferry
