Page 48 of Ebbing Tides (The Lighthouse Duology #2)

TWO YEARS LATER

It was funny how your perception changed as you grew older.

For example, as a kid, I’d thought being fifty was akin to being a decade away from being old. I’d thought fifty years was a long time.

Turned out, I’d been sorely mistaken.

“What are you thinking about?” Melanie asked, coming up from behind me and sliding her hands over my shoulders and down my chest.

She leaned in to kiss my neck as I captured one of her hands in mine.

“Time,” I said, looking out over the water toward the lighthouse in the distance.

Everything had changed, but that lighthouse stayed the same.

Much like my love for Laura, my first wife … despite how much I loved the one who came after.

Some things never changed, no matter how much time passed. Others … it didn’t take much time at all.

Take Melanie and me, for example.

That night, a little over two years ago, she had invited me into her home, and that was where I stayed for two whole weeks. And there was nothing overly special about those weeks. No wild excursions or out-of-the-norm adventures. We simply lived.

She introduced me to her parents, who I instantly loved and felt a connection with—and the feeling, much to my surprise, was mutual.

Melanie was astounded and told me how much her parents hadn’t liked Luke, how they’d simply resigned themselves to the fact that there was nothing they could do to deter their daughter’s affections for the orphaned rebel.

And I thought about Laura and how much her family had never liked me.

For them, I was that rebel. The kid who had broken her heart time and time again, only to return and, five years later, break all of theirs.

I was convinced that, once Melanie’s parents knew about my past, they’d also hate me. I was sure they would see me as nothing but a Grim Reaper in civilian clothing, and I’d braced myself once again for the impact of losing someone else … and it never came.

Guessed I was worth something after all.

“Time,” Melanie repeated, resting her chin on my shoulder to follow my gaze. “God, what a view.”

I nodded slowly. “Isn’t it?”

Then I pointed toward the bridge. “That right there is where I almost jumped off.”

Her hands stilled on my chest, and her body stiffened against mine.

“I hate when you talk about that,” she whispered, tipping her head softly to press her temple to mine.

“I want you to talk if you need to—of course I do—but …” She sighed.

“I hate the thought that you almost weren’t here.

And I would’ve spent forever thinking about that hot Army guy who had walked into the shop and rescued me from Ritchie and bought me dinner and made me question every little fucking thing about my relationship … ”

A gruff chuckle rumbled through my chest. “Every little fucking thing, huh?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, a hint of suggestion in her tone.

“And I would’ve spent the rest of my life wondering what ever happened to him, not knowing you had …

” She gestured toward the bridge, sitting atop the horizon, and I gripped her hand tighter, anchoring myself to this moment, to her, and not to my bleakest moment on a dark, cold Christmas Eve night.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I didn’t.”

“No, you didn’t,” she replied, breathing out with relief. “Thank God for Laura.”

My gaze shifted to the spot beside me, where her chair should’ve been. It was packed away now, stuffed in the back of a moving van full of furniture to be used at Melanie’s house—our house—in Connecticut if it fit or donated if it couldn’t.

Fifty years wasn’t a long time, and Laura hadn’t even gotten that much.

I had spent a year agonizing over this house. Whether to keep it or not.

Two years ago, after spending two weeks exclusively in Connecticut with Melanie and the boys, I had returned to Massachusetts, where everything no longer felt like home.

That was how long it had taken to change my entire brain chemistry.

Two weeks.

I put in my two-week notice at the cemetery; told my sisters, Sid, and Ricky I was moving for good; packed everything I needed; and went back to Connecticut, where I found a job working at a new cemetery.

Watching over the grave of a man who haunted me with cigarette smoke, one who had given me three boys to protect and raise and a woman to love for the rest of my life.

It was my honor to protect him as well.

The change had been easy. But deciding to sell the house tortured me.

It no longer fit in my life, and I knew damn well I wasn’t coming back to live in it.

But the memories it held kept me tethered, kept me making payments month after month for an empty home while I rebuilt my life miles away.

Melanie never pressured me, never criticized, but she listened to every moment of indecisive agony until I finally, over a year later, asked her what she thought I should do.

I guessed I hadn’t asked before because I was afraid of what she might say.

But there, over coffee one morning, while the boys ate breakfast I had made for them, she’d said, “I chose to live here, in Luke’s childhood home, because of the memories it’s filled with.

I could never criticize you for clinging to yours, no matter how many or few there might be.

But I will say that, if we had to leave here tomorrow, for whatever reason, my heart would be broken, but it would be okay.

Because at the end of the day, Max, it’s just a house.

I know it doesn’t feel like it; I know it feels like letting go of her, but it’s not.

Because the memories come with you, even when the rest of it can’t. ”

I knew she was right. I had known it for months. But hearing her say it was the push I had needed to drive up to Massachusetts and set the ball in motion to sell the place. Hopefully to a family. Hopefully one that would appreciate the view of the lighthouse, along with the sunrises and sunsets.

Now, here we were, on the cusp of my fiftieth birthday.

The boys were with their uncle Charlie and aunt Stormy while Melanie and I finished the rest of the packing.

It was surreal. The end of an era. And, no, it wasn’t a bad thing.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say it was good.

But even the good things hurt sometimes, and this one … it hurt a lot.

Melanie pressed her cheek to mine, our eyes glued to the lighthouse across the still waters. She sighed and held my hand tight. “You okay?”

“Sad,” I replied, feeling no need to lie. “But that’s all right.”

She kissed my cheek, pressed her forehead to my temple, and whispered, “I love you, Max. So much.”

I closed my eyes, relishing in the sound of her voice and those words. God, those words …

“I love you too,” I replied.

Two years of saying it—verbally, physically, emotionally—and I still wasn’t quite used to it. I hoped I never was. I hoped I never got used to the realness and purity of our love for each other. A love so true that it spanned miles and decades and endless amounts of heartache and pain.

If Laura was my lighthouse, Melanie was my anchor. Keeping me still, keeping me calm, controlled. Ensuring that, no matter how rough the ocean, I would ride it out, tethered to her heart and soul, and we would be okay.

Together, we would be fine.

We could be fine forever.

***

It hadn't been my idea to celebrate my fiftieth with a birthday party.

I would've been fine having dinner with the family who had taken me in and called me their own, like a stray dog being brought in on a cold winter's night.

I would've been fine spending the night playing video games with my three favorite boys and making love to the woman who had hyphenated her last name to mine.

But my sisters had called a month or so before the big day and asked if they could throw a party.

They reminded me that I'd never had a birthday party, that I'd seldom done much to celebrate another year around the sun in the past, and that I should commemorate such a milestone with something big.

I then reminded them that I hated parties, that there was a reason why both of my marriages had been celebrated quietly, and that the last thing I wanted was to surround myself with a bunch of people I barely knew and celebrate a birthday they cared little about.

So, Sid suggested that we do something but keep the guest list limited to family only, and that sounded like an okay idea, one I could get behind if Lucy and Grace were going to be insistent on doing something.

But I hadn't expected then that I would now be surrounded by a house full of people. To me, the thought of family extended to little more than Melanie, the boys, my sisters, their husbands, their kids, and Lizzie and Jane. That alone was a crowd.

But I hadn't expected my grandfather, Maxwell Benjamin Meyer, and his children—my aunt Carrie and uncle Jack—to join us.

I hadn't expected Lizzie and Jane to bring their boyfriends—a couple of nice guys their mother would've loved.

I hadn't expected Brett to come with them—happily.

I hadn't expected Melanie's parents to drive up from Connecticut to meet my sisters and the men I'd called my brothers for many, many years.

I figured Charlie and Stormy would come by, and I was happy to have them there.

But I never would've expected them to bring Stormy's sister and brother-in-law—Rain and Soldier—along with their kids.

Stormy said they were visiting and didn't want to hang out in the cemetery all night.

But when Charlie introduced me to Soldier, the big, tough-looking guy shook my hand and said it was a pleasure to finally meet me.

As if he'd been wanting to.

As if I was someone worthy of meeting, of knowing.