Free Around the Bend by Shirley Jump Page B

either I took the one with Nick, or went on alone. Every time before, Alone Avenue had been the more attractive route. This time, though, I wavered, thinking of Nick on the beach in Mexico, scooping me up and striding into the water so that I wouldn’t have to step on the conch shells lining the island, a natural barrier to the pristine ocean beauty. He’d cut his foot, bled like a Red Cross donor, which set off some lady on the beach. She’d run screaming to the lifeguard, sure there were sharks in the water.
    The lifeguard, a kid fresh out of swim school, had panicked, and waved everyone out of the water. Nick and I triedto tell him there weren’t any sharks, but our Spanish was bad and his English was worse. Finally, we’d given up, and collapsed on the sand in a heap of laughter. Nick had showered me with kisses and a dusting of pure white sand, then, without a word, carried me back to the room, stripped me down, showered off every tiny grain, then made love to me until I forgot what country we were in.
    That was Nick’s specialty. Taking care. But every time, when we were done, I’d wake up in his arms, and panic would grip me as surely as Nick had an hour earlier. I’d bolt from the room, wander the beach alone, and make plans to fly out on the next plane.
    Before I relied on that care. Started to count on him being there tomorrow. And the day after that. Did exactly what he wanted me to do—make plans.
    Because I knew how easily people you depended on could take it all away, could wash that foundation out from under you, like the tide sucking the sand back into the ocean, greedily eating the very thing you’d been counting on building your life upon.
    “Hilary, you should have seen the Little Richard—” She stopped talking midsentence, and I turned to look at her. My mother shaded her eyes against the sun, even though she had her visor down. “Is that what I think it is?”
    I followed her gaze and squinted. No way. “On a highway? In broad daylight? On a Wednesday? ”
    “We should stop.”
    “Or get someone else to. There are psychos on the highway. Don’t you ever watch horror movies?” I glanced in the rearview mirror. Not another car anywhere. Yet a second reason to hate the state of Ohio.
    “Hilary, we have to stop. We’re the only ones around for miles.”
    She was right, and truth be told, this was about as far from psycho as you could get. I traveled across the two empty lanes of highway and braked behind a Dodge minivan with its hatch up—
    And holding a fully geared up, ready-to-go bride sitting on the back, her dress hiked to her knees, baby’s breath sticking out of her blonde hair like trees gone wild, and her veil clutched in one wadded up ball.
    “Whatever happened to her, it’s not a happy ending,” I said.
    “You think?”
    We shared a laugh, the same one we’d shared over coffee. And for just a second, I felt that bridge between myself and my mother again.
    I got out of the Mustang, my mother doing the same, and together we approached the weepy bride. “Do you need some help?”
    She looked up, mascara running down her face in squiggly black rivers. Her blue eyes were red rimmed, looking like an ocean at sunset. “What I need is a lawyer. A divorce lawyer.”
    “But didn’t you just—” I gestured toward the dress. The veil. The obvious signs of a wedding.
    “I can’t be married to him. I just can’t.” She dabbed at her face with the veil, but being made out of tulle, it didn’t do much more than leave a tiny basket-weave imprint of mascara on her face. “He said, and did, such awful things.”
    Ma settled on the carpeted edge of the van beside the bride. She laid her hand on the girl’s. “What could he have done that was so terrible?”
    “I can’t even talk about it. If I do, I’ll…I’ll…” She inhaled, a jerk of a sob, “cry again.”
    And she did exactly that, blotching and crying, her whole body shaking with the effort, the shoulder ruffles