The Ocean Between Us

Whidbey Island, Washington

7:30 a.m.

Lauren Stanton woke up in the same state of mind she’d gone to sleep in—thinking of Josh. He had only been at sea for a few weeks, but it felt like forever.

She grabbed his pillow and hugged it, her eyes shut and her heart about to break. “Josh,” she whispered into the feathery depths. Maybe it was just her imagination, but she believed it still held his scent.

She of all people should know better than to fall for a Navy guy.

Groaning in protest, she swam to the surface of the covers and got out of bed. It was one of those perfect spring days on Puget Sound when winter seemed nothing more than a soggy, unpleasant memory. The sliding glass doors of the bedroom framed a view of the sapphire water and distant Cascades, the fiery pink of sunrise painting the vanilla ice-cream peak of Mount Baker.

She pulled on her robe, lingering at the window to watch a blue heron at the edges of the bank, lifting each foot and setting it down with great deliberation. In its beak it held a wisp of grass; it was nesting season.

She made the bed, which was a simple matter. She slept neatly, disturbing no more than a small portion of the covers. When Josh stayed over, the morning-after bed looked like a rummage sale at closing time—sheets ripped from their moorings, twisted and damp, pillows tossed willy-nilly. Josh made love and slept like he did everything else, with his whole self, with total abandon, his energy boundless and infectious.

Even through the ache of missing him, she couldn’t help feeling a warm spasm of remembered intimacy at the thought of their lovemaking. It was as though he had reached across the Pacific Ocean and caressed her.

“You’re a sick woman,” she muttered, heading into the bathroom. Josh’s toothbrush was still in the holder. He’d planted it there, as though staking a claim, the first time they made love in her bed. His absolute, unwavering self-assurance had both annoyed and thrilled her. “Just so you know,” he’d said. “I’ll be back.”

She dressed quickly for class—no shower for her until afterward—in black spandex shorts and a turquoise top. Then she checked her gym bag to make sure she had music, shoes, towel, water bottle. Everything in order. She had grown so cautious, so deliberate after Gil died. So excruciatingly neat and unobtrusive about everything she did, from sleeping without disturbing the covers to weighing the portion of organic granola she ate with yogurt every morning for breakfast. If Josh were here, he would tease her about it, threaten her with bacon and eggs, and she would start the day laughing at herself.

Ah, Josh. Whether he was in bed with her, on top of her, inside her or thousands of miles away, he dominated her life. He was the blazing sun to her moon. Even when she eclipsed him, moving in to cover his center, he was still so much bigger and brighter; he burned around the edges.

She put out fresh food for the stray cat who showed every sign of turning into a permanent resident. Then she did the breakfast dishes, such as they were—one bowl, one spoon, one juice glass—reflecting on how small her life seemed since Josh left. When he was here, breakfast tended to be an explosion of creativity and hilarity. He might carve through half a watermelon trying to make a model of a fighter plane, or use up a whole box of pancake mix, laughing at her misgivings about the calorie count.

As she wiped the kitchen counter, Lauren burst into tears.

This shouldn’t be happening to her. She’d finally gotten her life on track, her emotions under control after a three-year struggle with depression after Gil died. Now along came Josh, with his burning ambition, lofty dreams and his huge, insatiable appetite for everything in life—most especially her.

“Idiot,” she said, defiantly using two Kleenex to blot her cheeks. “Quit making everything into a tragedy.” She marched outside, filling her lungs with the special flavor of springtime on the island. A hint of raw salt air, new grass and the light, fragrant promise of budding lilacs.

Later it would rain, she knew. The forecast promised a change in the weather, and clouds were moving in on the morning sun.

She picked up her paper, shaking the dew off the cellophane bag, and waved to Mr. Carruthers, her across-the-street neighbor who came out to get his paper the same time she did each morning. To stare at her in her spandex, Josh had pointed out.

The night before he left, he’d asked her to marry him. It was all she thought about, consuming her like a giddy fever that kept her in its relentless grip. She hadn’t given him an answer to his proposal. The issue was not nearly as simple as she wished it could be.

He was not a man to settle for half measures. He wanted everything from her. She wasn’t sure she could live with his intensity, with his rocket-powered ambition. She didn’t know if his dreams could somehow mesh with her own.

In the wake of unbearable grief, she had fashioned a life for herself here. A small and tidy existence she happened to like very much. She had none of Josh’s sceneryeating hunger for adventure, for everything. She wondered why that was—because she couldn’t handle having her dreams come true, or because she was leery of wanting something too much? She couldn’t decide what scared her more, marrying Josh or losing him forever.

He was everything she wasn’t supposed to want, a Navy man who spent half his life at sea and the other half moving like a gypsy from place to place. He was a heartache waiting to happen.

The cheerful brrring of a bicycle bell sounded. She looked down the street to see Patricia Rivera peddling toward her. She was exactly what people meant when they said pregnant women bloomed. Patricia’s cheeks were flushed the color of a rose. Her slick dark hair shone. Her legs were ropy with muscle as she glided to the end of the driveway and squeezed the hand brakes. Even the bruise-colored starburst of varicose veins behind her knee looked as though it belonged there, every bit as appropriate as her protruding stomach.

Lauren held the plastic-wrapped paper away from her to let it drip on the ground. “You’re looking chipper this morning.”

Patricia smiled and smoothed a hand down her belly, draped in a polyester top that screamed Wal-Mart but only managed to play up her fragile beauty. “I have news.”

“Let me guess. You’re pregnant.” Lauren spoke lightly, but deep in a hidden place inside her, a terrible envy howled.

“Very funny.” Patricia opened the top of her water bottle and took a swig. “Congratulate me. It’s a boy. He was finally turned in the right direction during the ultrasound.”

The knife twisted. Still, Lauren found a smile of genuine happiness for her friend. “Congratulations, Patricia. That’s great.”

“Thanks.” Patricia put her water away. “The doctor says I can keep coming to fitness class so long as I take it slow. No restrictions other than common sense.”

Lauren congratulated her again and watched her friend ride away. Patricia had a husband she adored and a baby on the way. She looked like Catherine Zeta-Jones, but she was impossible to dislike. She was kind and bright, and she’d been one of Lauren’s favorite people since the day she’d walked into the fitness studio last fall. And she was not without her sadnesses, either. Her husband was half a world away on the same carrier as Josh, and she was bursting with the news about their baby.

Lauren looked down, startled to see that she held both hands lovingly on her stomach. She shook her head and went back inside. The phone rang as soon as she stepped into the kitchen.

She glanced at the clock over the stove. It was the middle of the night in Josh’s part of the world. She picked up on the fourth ring.

“Mrs. Stanton?” A vaguely familiar female voice used her married name, which she heard so seldom that the sound of it startled her.

“That’s me.”

“I have Dr. Hendler on the line for you.”

The receiver in her hand was suddenly drenched in sweat. It nearly slipped from her grasp. This was the call she had been awaiting with terrifying hope and dread.

She was aware of everything around her with razor-edged clarity: the pink-toothed profile of the mountains against the morning sky; the perfect flight of wheeling gulls patrolling the beach; the sound of radio music drifting from the bedroom.

“Yes?” she asked in a strange and distant voice she didn’t recognize.

“Your test results are back,” said the doctor.

She tried desperately to read his tone. Was it good news or bad? She stopped breathing. She wanted to stop the world. “Yes?”

“I’m afraid it’s not what we’d hoped for,” he said. Softly, gravely. “Lauren, I’m so sorry….”

CHAPTER 4

Whidbey Island, Washington

2:30 p.m.

Grace Bennett drove off the ferry from Seattle and merged onto the country highway that formed the long, crooked spine of Whidbey Island. Fat raindrops ran backward on the window, like tears blown sideways on a face pushed into the wind. It felt as though the storm was driving her home.

As she sped up the main road, the wind and rain gradually abated. By the time she pulled to the shoulder and paused to get the mail from the box, tentative slices of sunshine shone through the clouds. She turned into the driveway and sat in the car for a moment, gazing at her house. In all her years as a Navy wife, she’d lived in a lot of places, but this was the only one she’d ever loved. It was a little bungalow on a bluff with an arbor of old roses and a view of the Sound. Some would call it dated, tacky. But Grace didn’t care. It was hers.

She couldn’t believe she’d bought it without Steve. But lately, she’d done a lot of surprising things—and the person she surprised most of all was herself.

Especially today. With a pleasant shiver, she picked up her purse and the stack of mail from the seat beside her and slid out of the car. She ducked her head to avoid drops from the ancient cedar trees that arched over the drive and skirted puddles to keep from ruining her new shoes, then let herself in through the front gate. She had just bought the ensemble of expensive skirt and blazer, and a pair of kitten-heeled pumps. The only outfit that had cost her more was her wedding dress.

On the porch, she stopped to sift through the mail, finding an assortment of bills, letters to the kids from prospective colleges…the usual overabundance of junk mail.

In the past, she used to sift through the mail with fevered eagerness, looking for a familygram or precious letter from Steve. These days, no one sent letters anymore, just e-mail. What was gained in speed and frequency with the Internet came at the sacrifice of the cozy, ineffable intimacy of a handwritten letter.