The High Tide Club

Brooke grabbed Henry’s hand and dragged him in the direction of the gift shop. Surely they sold a few items of women’s clothing, right?

She was in the process of paying for the only top she could find, a hideous bile-green tank top with SAVANNAH spelled out in sequins when Henry spied his heart’s desire. It was a board book featuring his favorite thing in the whole world, the hairless Canadian cartoon character, propped on a display next to the cash register.

“Caillou!” Henry crowed, grabbing for the book at the same moment Brooke was in the process of handing her credit card to the cashier.

Without thinking, Brooke snatched his chubby hand away from the book, which shared shelf space with dozens of tiny cheesy breakable souvenir trinkets. “Henry, no,” she said sharply. “You already have that book.”

Her son’s face crumpled into agony. “I want it!” he cried. “I want Caillou!”

“Anything else?” the cashier asked, her hands poised over the register. “Chips, gum, soft drinks, magazine?”

“Just the shirt, thanks,” Brooke said tersely, keeping an eye on the concourse. It was ten after ten, and a sudden wave of passengers had disembarked their flights and were passing by, laughing and talking.

“Please, Mommy,” Henry whined. “I want Caillou.”

“Can I have your email for your receipt?” the cashier asked.

“No!” Brooke said. “Stop it right this minute.”

“Excuse me?” the clerk said.

“Sorry, I was talking to my son. Just print out the receipt and put it in the bag, please,” Brooke said through clenched teeth. She released Henry’s hand to retrieve her card.

Henry saw an opening and seized it. He grabbed the book with both hands. “Mine!”

Without thinking, she snatched the book back. She knelt down so that she was at eye level with her son. “Absolutely not. You have this exact same book at home, and I am not buying you another one.”

She stood up and tried to compose herself. Another wave of passengers was passing. She saw a familiar face in the crowd. It was Pete, striding down the concourse, one arm flung casually across the shoulder of a young blond woman. She was in her midtwenties, slender and petite with a long Nordic-looking braid cascading down her back. She wore form-fitting green hiking shorts and had a backpack over one shoulder. Pete leaned in, laughing and talking with her.

Brooke felt herself shrink away from the gift shop entrance. She wanted to flee, to melt into the woodwork. As soon as Pete and his friend had passed, she tugged gently at her son’s hand. “Come on, buddy. Let’s go home.”

“Nooooooo!” Henry wailed, throwing himself onto the floor. He grabbed the book and hugged it to his chest. “I want Caillou! I want it, I want it!” His face was scarlet with rage. She bent over and tried to pry the book away. “Noooooo!” he screamed, kicking his tiny feet at her ankles.

Brooke saw Pete pause. He turned, said something to his female companion, and frowned, looking to see where the commotion was coming from. His eyes met hers. People surged around him, but Pete Haynes stopped dead in his tracks.

54

He strode toward the gift shop. Stopped, then wrapped Brooke in an awkward embrace. “I’m so glad you showed up,” he murmured in her ear. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

“I wasn’t sure either,” Brooke said, her voice shaky. “It’s been so long. But I’m really glad you called.” She saw the woman who’d been walking with Pete, standing discreetly nearby, watching their reunion with undisguised interest.

Sensing he’d lost his audience, Henry abandoned his tantrum, stood and raised his arms. “Mama. I pick you up.”

Brooke took a step backward and scooped her son into her arms.

“Who’s this?” Pete asked warily.

“Pete, this is my son, Henry. Henry, can you say hello to Pete?”

Henry turned away, burying his face in her shoulder.

“Hi, Henry,” Pete said, lightly tapping the boy’s back. “How old are you?”

Henry lifted his head and observed the stranger, his expression grave. He held out three chubby fingers. “I’m fwee.”

“Obviously, we’ve got some catching up to do,” Pete said.

“Who’s your friend?” Brooke asked, gesturing toward the girl who was now slouching against a nearby wall.

“That’s Hope, a grad student I’ve been working with. Hey, Hope,” he called. “C’mere. There’s somebody I want you to meet.”

“Hello,” the young woman said, offering a wide smile showing perfectly straight, blindingly white teeth. “You’ve got to be Brooke. Pete’s told me so much about you.”

“Great to meet you, Hope,” Brooke said. “This is my son, Henry, who was doing his best howler monkey impression a minute ago.”

“Oooh, Henry, is that Curious George on your shirt? I used to love him, and the man with the yellow hat.”

Henry peeped shyly at the girl, nodded, then turned his head and hid again. Hope’s face registered a flicker of recognition as she looked from Henry to Pete.

“Okay, well, uh, Pete, I’m going to hit the ladies’ room and then maybe find a magazine for the ride to Miami. I’ll let you two have some private time together,” Hope said.

“Thanks. How about we meet outside at noon?”

“I’ll see you there. Bye, Brooke. Bye, Henry.”

* * *

They found a corner booth at the bar. When the waitress arrived to take their order, Brooke gave her what she hoped was a winning smile. “Is it okay for me to have my little boy in here?”

The waitress looked around at the lounge, which was half-empty at that hour. “Okay by me, but if one of my other customers complains, you’ll have to leave.”

Pete ordered a beer, and although Brooke longed for something to quell her bad case of jitters, she ordered coffee for herself and orange juice for Henry.

“You don’t want any food?” Pete asked, scanning the menu. “I’ve gotta eat something. I’ve been on planes for twenty-four hours, and all I’ve had was some mini-pretzels and a stale bagel.” He ordered crab cakes and french fries, and Brooke ordered a grilled cheese to split with Henry, who was already curled up on the booth with his head in her lap.

They made polite, inane conversation about the weather in Alaska, southern Atlantic hurricanes, blue crabs versus snow crabs, and politics while waiting what seemed like an interminable amount of time for the food.

She tried not to stare at Pete. His hair was longer than she’d ever seen it before, brushing his shoulders and falling across his eyes. He’d grown a thick beard too and had lost weight so that the planes and angles of his face stood in sharp relief. But his biceps bulged beneath the short sleeves of his dark gray T-shirt, and his belly was noticeably flat.

Brooke was vaguely aware that Pete was talking about the GPS devices they’d implanted in the caribou to allow them to track migration patterns, but she was only half listening. Instead, she was mentally mapping the contours of his shoulders, the scar on his lower back where he’d impaled a fishhook in his own flesh as a kid, his chest and the way it had felt to lay her cheek against it that one fateful night more than three years ago.

She longed to reach out, touch a finger to his lips. Shh, she wanted to say. No more talk of caribou or grizzly bears or how they collected blood samples to measure hormone levels in the female caribou. Later. All that can come later. Tell me about you, she wanted to say. Tell me it was lonely without me. Tell me you love me.