“But you're going back?” He looked confused, she had already told him she was going back to school after Christmas.

“Yeah. I've got to get back to school,” she said matter-of-factly, as the road curved lazily toward the lake. His fishing pole was in the truck behind them.

“Why don't you go here?”

“I can't,” she said, not wanting to elaborate further. And then to change the subject for a little while, she looked at him, wondering what his family was like, and why he never seemed to want to be with them.

“Do you have brothers and sisters?” she asked casually, as they arrived, realizing again how little she knew about him. He turned off the engine, and looked at her, and for a long moment there was silence.

“I did,” he said quietly. “Annie. She was five. She died just after Christmas.” He got out of the truck then, without saying anything more, and went to get his fishing pole as Maribeth watched him, wondering if that was the pain one saw so easily in his eyes, if that was why he never went home to his parents.

She got out of the truck, and followed him to the lake. They found a quiet spot at the end of a sandy beach and he slipped off his jeans. He had bathing trunks on, and he unbuttoned his shirt as she watched him. For the flash of an instant, she thought of Paul, but there was no similarity between them. None. Paul was sophisticated and smooth, and very much the man-about-campus. He was also married by then, and he was part of another life. Everything about Tommy was wholesome and pure. He seemed very innocent, and incredibly nice, and she was startled by how much she liked him.

She sat down on the sand next to him, while he baited his hook.

“What was she like?” Her voice was very soft, and he didn't look up from what he was doing.

“Annie?” He looked up at the sun, and then closed his eyes for a second before glancing at Maribeth. He didn't want to talk about it, and yet with her he felt as if he could. He knew they were going to be friends but he wanted more than that from her. She had great legs, and great eyes, a smile that melted him, and a sensational figure. But he wanted to be her friend too. He wanted to do things for her, to be there for her when she needed a friend, and he sensed that she did now, although he wasn't sure why. But there was something very vulnerable about her.

“She was the sweetest kid that ever lived, big blue eyes, and white-blond hair. She looked like the little angel on top of the Christmas tree …and sometimes she was a little devil. She used to tease me, and follow me everywhere. We made a big snowman right before she died….” His eyes filled with tears and he shook his head. It was the first time he had ever talked about her to anyone, and it was hard for him. Maribeth could see that. “I really miss her,” he admitted in a voice that was barely more than a croak, as Maribeth touched his arm with gentle fingers.

“It's okay to cry …I'll bet you miss her a lot. Was she sick for a long time?”

“Two days. We thought she just had influenza, or a cold or something. It was meningitis. They couldn't do anything. She just went. I kept thinking it should have been me afterwards. I mean, why her? Why a little tiny kid like that? She was only five years old, she never did anything to hurt anyone, she never did anything but make us happy. I was ten when she was born, and she was so funny and soft and warm and cuddly, like a little puppy.” He smiled, thinking about her, and moved closer to Maribeth on the warm sand, laying his pole down beside him. In a funny way, it felt good talking about her now, as though it brought her back to him for the briefest of moments. He never talked to anyone about her anymore. No one ever brought her up, and he knew he couldn't say anything to his parents.

“Your parents must have taken it pretty hard,” Maribeth said, wise beyond her years, and almost as though she knew them.

“Yeah. Everything kind of stopped when she died. My parents stopped talking to each other, or even to me. No one says anything, or goes anywhere. No one smiles. They never talk about her. They never talk about anything. Mom hardly ever cooks anymore, Dad never comes home from work till ten o'clock. It's like none of us can stand being in the house without her. Mom's going back to work full-time in the fall. It's like everyone's given up because she's gone. She didn't just die, we did too. I hate being home now. It's so dark and depressing. I hate walking past her room, everything seems so empty.” Maribeth just listened to him, she had slipped her hand into his, and they were looking out over the lake together.

“Do you ever feel her there with you, like when you think about her?” she asked, feeling his pain with him, and almost feeling as though she knew her. She could almost see the beautiful little girl he had loved so much, and feel how devastated he had been when he lost her.

“Sometimes. I talk to her sometimes, late at night. It's probably a dumb thing to do, but sometimes I feel like she can hear me.” Maribeth nodded, she had talked to her grandmother that way after she died, and it had made her feel better.

“I'll bet she can hear you, Tommy. I'll bet she watches you all the time. Maybe she's happy now …maybe some people just aren't meant to be in our lives forever. Maybe some people are just passing through …maybe they get it all done faster than the rest of us. They don't need to stick around for a hundred years to get it all right. They get it down real quick …it's like …” She struggled to find the right words to tell him, but it was something she had thought about a lot, especially lately. “It's like some people just come through our lives to bring us something, a gift, a blessing, a lesson we need to learn, and that's why they're here. She taught you something, I'll bet …about love, and giving, and caring so much about someone …that was her gift to you. She taught you all that, and then she left. Maybe she just didn't need to stay longer than that. She gave you the gift, and then she was free to move on …she was a special soul …you'll have that gift forever.”

He nodded, trying to absorb all that she'd said to him. It made sense, more or less, but it still hurt so damn much. But it felt better talking to Maribeth. It was as though she really understood what he'd been through.

“I wish she could have stayed longer,” he said with a sigh. “I wish you could have met her.” And then he smiled. “She would have had a lot to say about whether or not I liked you, who you were prettier than, and whether or not you liked me. She was always volunteering her opinions. Most of the time, she drove me crazy.”

Maribeth laughed at the thought, wishing she could have met her. But then maybe she wouldn't have met him. He wouldn't have been going to the restaurant to eat three or four times a week, he'd have been home with his family, having dinner.

“What would she have said about us?” Maribeth teased, liking the game, liking him, comfortable sitting on the sand near him. She had learned some hard lessons in the past few months about who to trust, and who not to, and she had sworn she would never trust anyone again, but she knew to the bottom of her very soul that Tommy Whittaker was different.

“She'd have said I like you.” He grinned, looking sheepish, and she noticed freckles on the bridge of his nose for the first time. They were tiny and almost golden in the bright sunlight. “She'd have been right too. Usually she wasn't.” But Annie would have sensed immediately how much he liked her. Maribeth was more mature than the girls he knew at school, and the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen. “I think she would really have liked you.” He smiled gently, and lay back on the sand, looking at Maribeth with unconcealed admiration. “What about you? You have a boyfriend back home?” He decided to ask her now so he'd know where things stood, and she hesitated for a moment. She thought about telling him the fiction of the young husband in the Korean war, but she just couldn't. She'd explain it to him later on, if she still had to.

“Nope. Not really.”

“But sort of?”

She shook her head firmly this time in answer. “I went out with one guy I thought I liked, but I was wrong. And anyway, he just got married.”

He looked intrigued. An older man. “Do you care? That he's married, I mean?”

“Not really.” All she cared about was that he had left her with a baby. A baby she couldn't keep, and didn't really want. She cared about that a lot, but said nothing about it to Tommy.

“How old are you, by the way?”

“Sixteen,” and then they discovered that their birthdays were only weeks apart. They were exactly the same age, but their situations were very different. However useless to him they were at the moment, he was still part of a family, he had a home, he was going back to school in the fall. She had none of those things anymore, and in less than five months she was having a baby, the baby of a man who had never loved her. It was overwhelmingly scary.

He walked out into the lake after a little while, and she went with him. They stood together while he fished, and when he finally got bored, he walked back to the shore and left his fishing pole, and dived into the water, but she didn't join him. She waited for him on the sand, and when he came out, he asked her why she hadn't gone swimming. It was a hot sunny day and the cool water felt good on his flesh. She would have loved to swim with him, but she didn't want him to see her bulging belly. She kept her father's shirt on the entire time, and only slipped her jeans off while they stood in the water.

“Can you swim?” he asked, and she laughed, feeling silly.

“Yeah, I just didn't feel like it today. I always feel a little creepy swimming in lakes, you never know what's in the water with you.”