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No ferry service between here and there, so he had to drive a little over an hour to his favorite beach there.But hey, they had grocery stores and great restaurants, while Daufuskie did not.They had a few restaurants, but Harrison considered himself a foodie, and he wouldn’t book a ferry just to go to an eatery on Daufuskie.
“Take our picture,” Bea said, drawing Harrison back to the moment.She stood next to Lauren, the two of them wrapped in each other’s arms, cheeks pressed together.Grant took the picture, and even Harrison could admit how absolutely joyful the two of them looked.
They were obviously close, and he expected Grant to hand Bea’s phone back to her.Instead, he gave it to Harrison.“Take mine and Bea’s, would you?”
“Sure.”Harrison waited a few moments while Lauren stepped out of the frame, and Grant took her spot at Bea’s side.She melted into him in a romantic way, and dang if Harrison’s heart didn’t wail in jealousy.
Claudia had only been gone for two weeks, and he didn’t want a replacement.He just wanted someone.Someone to talk to in the evenings.Someone to run his crazy ideas by.Someone to go to dinner with so he didn’t have to show up and say, “Party of one.I can sit at the bar.”
He couldn’t swallow at the loving sight of Grant and Bea, but he managed to tap the screen and get a few pictures taken.He handed the phone to Bea and leaned against the railing while she exclaimed over them.
The sight of her and Grant, so picture-perfect and obviously made for each other, rotated slowly through his mind.He tried to examine it from every angle, every side, because they weren’t in their twenties.Grant had been divorced for a handful of years now, and Harrison had no idea what Bea’s situation was.
He knew she was older than him and Grant, but once a person reached mid-life, it was hard to pinpoint age exactly.He’d put her in her early forties, maybe up to forty-five.Grant had turned forty-one over the holidays, and Harrison would be forty-two by Independence Day.
Forty-two, he thought, another dose of misery hitting him squarely in the breastbone.He’d done a lot in his lifetime, but losing Claudia seemed to void all of it.
“Ready?”Grant asked, and Harrison pulled his eyes from the horizon.
“Yep.”
Grant let Bea and Lauren go ahead, which was probably a smart move.Harrison wanted to get down the steps as quickly as possible and get out of Harbor Town.He was suddenly ready to be done with people, a feeling that only doubled when Grant asked, “Are you okay, Harry?Something feels…off.”
“Something is off,” Harrison said without thinking too hard about it.“But I don’t want to talk about it today.”
“You sure?”
“Definitely sure,” Harrison said.
Grant was a good friend, because he said, “All right.You have my number.”
“Yep.”Harrison led the way downstairs, and sure enough, he ran into Bea and Lauren looking at something they’d already looked at.“I have to go,” he told them.“It was so great meeting you both.”
“You too,” Bea said with such a genuine quality to her voice, Harrison actually believed she’d enjoyed meeting him.Lauren smiled and nodded, and Harrison took a page from her book and did the same to the two women.He edged by them on the tiny landings in the museum and kept going down.
Down, down, down, until he was out of the lighthouse and back in the sunshine.He took a big breath, wishing the simple act of filling his lungs could erase heartache and change the past.Since it couldn’t, Harrison drove through his favorite hamburger joint on the way home, determined not to work all weekend.
He’d been filling his days with work since Claudia’s departure, and he needed to quit doing that.So, a half-hour later, he sank into the hammock that hung under his deck, the shade great on this side of the house at this time of day.The water lapped a dozen or so yards away, and he unwrapped his first double cheeseburger.
He had no one to talk to, no one to share his morning with, and no one crying in the house.So not a perfect situation, but probably better than it had been three weeks ago when it seemed all anyone did in this big gray house was cry.
Harrison took a bite of his burger, his emotions finally settling down.His life wasn’t what he’d pictured, but he had to stop for a moment and ask himself:Whose was?
That image of Bea and Grant moved through his mind’s eye again, and he clung to the hope that forty-two wasn’t too late to meet someone new.He didn’t have children, and now he didn’t have a wife.
But maybe his life hadn’t crashed and burned around him.Maybe it hadn’t ended.Maybe his life was just beginning.
