Look away.
She couldn’t.
It was bad for her, maybe even dangerous, to watch Rye with his family, but she couldn’t get up, couldn’t stop looking at him and the easy, loving way he was with his daughter. It had been a day just like this when Rye had shown up in Kauai, standing over her, saying, I swear I’m not engaged.
God, how she loved him.
She heard his wife—Melissa, her name was Melissa, Frankie knew from reading about them in the newspaper. Melissa yelled something, and Rye and Joey moved toward her, him limping. They were close enough now that Frankie could see he was gritting his teeth. Ugly scarring encircled his wrists and ankles.
He knelt awkwardly in front of his wife, grimacing again in pain.
Help him, Frankie thought. Melissa, help him. But his wife just sat there, packing food back into a wicker picnic basket.
They look unhappy.
No.
He looked unhappy.
The thought was there before she could protect herself against it. And after all he’d suffered.
“Stop it,” Frankie muttered. They were a family, the Walshes, and their happiness—his happiness—had nothing to do with her. She knew their true story now, how they’d met, how they’d married, the hardware store that her parents owned in Carlsbad, the managerial job that waited for him when he left the Navy.
Look away, Frankie.
This was wrong. Sick. Dangerous.
Frankie finally forced herself to get up. She turned her back on them, folded up her chair, and walked off the beach.
“Damn it, Melissa, slow down.”
She heard Rye’s voice behind her and froze. Then she gritted her teeth and kept walking, over the mound of greenery and down to the side-walk and across Ocean Boulevard. On the other side, against her best intentions, she turned slowly, stared at them from beneath the brim of her hat.
He and his wife and daughter were leaving the beach, heading toward the street.
Frankie had to leave. Now. Before she called out to him. She clamped the chair to her side and walked resolutely down the block toward her house.
All the way there, she thought, Don’t look back, Frankie. Just let him go.
But he knew she lived on Coronado, or at least that she’d been raised here. Did it mean something, that he’d brought his family here, to the beach she’d so often talked about?
She stopped at her car, which was parked in the driveway at her house, and looked back.
Now Rye was opening the trunk of a metallic midnight-blue Camaro, putting the picnic basket inside. Melissa opened the passenger door and helped Joey into the backseat.
Rye closed the trunk and limped toward the driver’s-side door.
Frankie opened her car door, tossed her things in the backseat, and slid into the driver’s seat. She plucked her keys from the visor, started the engine, and backed into the street. Slowly, her foot light on the accelerator, she drove forward, edged toward the stop sign on Ocean Boulevard.
Rye got into the Camaro. The engine started up with a roar.
She followed him. Them.
All the way across town, up Orange Avenue, over the bridge, she berated herself. This was stalking. Embarrassing. He didn’t love her. He was a liar.
Still, she followed them, drawn by an obsessive need to see his life.
If he was unhappy …
No. That was something she couldn’t think.
In San Diego, Rye turned onto A Street, which Frankie could see instantly was a street full of Navy families. American flags hung from many of the porches, a few lonely yellow ribbons still fluttered from the tree branches. Most of the POWs were home, but “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” was still a radio hit. On this summer afternoon, the street was full of kids and dogs and women walking side by side pushing strollers.
He pulled up in front of a pretty Craftsman-style bungalow. The yard was a scrabble of discarded toys and roller skates and doll clothes. The poorly cut grass was brown.
Frankie pulled over to the side of the road, the engine idling as if she might come to her senses soon and drive off.
But she didn’t.
Melissa got out of the car. Holding Joey’s hand, she walked up to the house, pulling Joey inside, leaving Rye to carry their stuff.
Rye moved slowly in his wife’s wake, obviously in pain, carrying the basket and blanket. In the middle of the path to the front door, he stopped.
Frankie slunk down in her seat.
“I’ll never do this again if he doesn’t turn around,” she promised herself, and maybe God. She peered up through the window, saw him start walking, limping in a hitching, painful way. He slowly climbed the porch steps, holding on to the handrail.