When Light Breaks Read online

  I drove through Palmetto Pointe to the dressmaker and thought about Peyton Ellers—the man I would marry. And I smiled.

  I once believed love was an elusive emotion—coming and going, leaving and staying whenever it caught a whisper of ocean breeze. The kind of love that stays, that sticks in the chambers of the heart, is the type of love that is only a mere longing or remembering. I believed this because it was all I knew, all I understood.

  I loved Mama, but she was gone. I once loved Jack Sullivan, but he was also gone. I loved Daddy, but he was a changed man, and sometimes I thought I only loved what I knew of him, what I remembered of him from the days before Mama died. I watched couples who professed their true love, and I often, very often, wondered if they really loved each other right then, right at the moment they said it, or only that they had once felt it, experienced it and then convinced themselves it was forever.

  I had come to understand that I would never love enough to marry, enough to say, “Okay, yes—let’s spend the rest of our lives together.” I’d become fond of a couple of men, even forced the word “love” from my lips. But never enough, never quite enough to promise forever. As women can do, I’d spent hours discussing my failure with my best friend, Charlotte. “Why can’t I love enough? Well enough?”

  Through the years Charlotte had had many theories about why I hadn’t fallen for someone. In college she believed I missed my mama too much to let anyone in. Then she believed—on college graduation night, when I had had too much red wine—that I was waiting for someone to make me feel just like Jack Sullivan had made me feel. By the time we’d started our careers and moved back to our hometown, she surmised I just hadn’t found the right man.

  I’d worked at my job as a PGA TOUR manager for five years when I met Peyton. I didn’t usually have much contact with the pro golf players or their families—I worked behind the scenes making sure everything was organized for the golf tournaments. Although my job was insanely demanding, it offered me a sincere sense of accomplishment. I did everything from ordering the volunteer uniforms, to picking out the menus for the catered meals, to finding child care for the players’ kids. I arranged the trophy ceremony and the pro-am tournament the day before the major, along with handling a thousand other details associated with the tournaments.

  My many responsibilities—taking care of the house, my daddy, and my job—ensured that I was constantly busy. It wasn’t that Daddy was sick or disabled. As I’d grown up, I had just naturally and slowly taken over Mama’s role at home. Sometimes I felt that I missed her less when I was acting in her place. If I stepped directly into her shoes—did the grocery shopping, prepared the meals, washed the dishes and did the laundry—she was somehow still present, still in the house if those chores were done and done well.

  We did have a housekeeper who cleaned, the same one since I was born, but I took care of everything else, and wasn’t out looking for one more thing to fill my life.

  Then on the tenth green of the Palmetto Pointe Golf Club I met Peyton Ellers. I’d escorted a professional photographer onto the golf course during a practice round for a local golf tournament—called a scramble—to take pictures of Peyton. Of course I knew who Peyton Ellers was—everyone in Palmetto Pointe knew who he was. He’d moved to town ten years earlier as a young pro golfer. He’d played on the Georgia Tech Golf Team, then the Nationwide tour until he moved to the PGA TOUR. News of his arrival was in all the papers, stories of how this gorgeous pro golfer had bought his mother a house on the river and himself one on the golf course. To the shock of the golfing community, he’d moved to Palmetto Pointe, South Carolina, instead of to one of the higher-end Florida courses where most of the professionals lived.

  At thirty-five years old, he was moving toward the top of the earnings list for the PGA TOUR—and he was single. The press loved him, the PGA TOUR loved him, and the girls loved him.

  Peyton’s would be the ideal photo on the PGA TOUR’s brochure to showcase our new Pete Dye-designed golf course, and announce Palmetto Pointe becoming a new PGA TOUR tournament.

  The photographer, Jim, and I walked onto the green as we waited for Peyton to come over the hill. The wind whipped my hair into tangled circles. Jim set up his cameras and asked for my assistance as he filled each one with film and checked the lighting against the river in the background. “Are you using one hundred ASA or higher film speed?” I asked, pushing my hair out of my face.

  Jim paused in adjusting his camera. “Both. I wanted to get some of Peyton in action and some of him posing against the water’s edge.”

  “Will you use the digital or your Nikon F3 for the action?” I lifted the black camera. “And are you using color or the reverse Polaroid I’ve seen you use for some of your portraits.”

  He smiled at me and lifted his camera. “You want to do this shoot instead of me?”

  I laughed. “I wish I knew enough to do it. I love photography.”

  “I see that.” He handed me the Nikon and winked. “Why don’t you take a couple of shots from another angle while I get him from the front?”

  “Really?” My heart lifted.

  “Really,” he said, and pointed. “Here they come. My goal is to get Peyton from many angles; I’d love to get the water and oaks in the background.”

  I nodded. The air thrummed around me and I gripped the Nikon tighter.

  Peyton approached and I stared at him through the camera lens; he had a swagger of confidence, the aura of an athletic man who was perfect to photograph. I snapped pictures of him walking down the fairway with his golf club swung over his shoulder, his hat low on his forehead, brown curls poking out from under his cap.

  Jim stepped to the side and began to take his own pictures.

  Peyton stopped at the side of the hill and lined up to hit the ball. The river behind him glistened like a sage ribbon. I ran to the other side of the green, squatted, and snapped pictures as rapidly as I could.

  Jim made a noise in the back of his throat. I stood and turned. “Did I get too carried away?”

  He laughed. “No, but you were in another world. I need to move us closer to that side of the trees. Can we walk over there?” He pointed to a roped-off section of fairway.

  “Yes, that is just for the crowd control tomorrow.” I tilted my head. “Come on, follow me.” I handed the camera back to him. “I think I used all the film. Sorry.” I scrunched up my face.

  He laughed. “He’s easy to photograph, huh?”

  I blushed. “I guess he is.”

  Peyton came around the corner then, stopped and held out his hand to me. “Hi, I’m Peyton Ellers.”

  I took his hand and shook it. “Hi, I’m Kara Larson, the tour manager for the Open next year. Thank you so much for agreeing to have your picture taken for the brochure.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he said. “It’s always great to have a face to go with the name of the person I’ve been working with for months. No one told me you looked like a green-eyed angel.”

  I couldn’t turn away from his stare—something warm and familiar rested there. I took a step back, banged into a dogwood tree in full bloom, then tripped over an azalea bush shedding its red flowers onto the grass. So graceful of me.

  Peyton smiled, then turned and introduced himself to Jim, asked him how he wanted him to pose.

  Two nights later, at the celebration party for the golfers and their families who had participated in the scramble, Peyton came through the doorway and his arms overflowed with dogwood and azalea blooms he’d stolen from the tenth green. He walked straight up to me, handed them to me, and asked if he could have the honor of seeing me at least one more time.

  He stood there with his dark curls wild around his head, a grin dominating his face, and I said that, yes, I’d see him one more time, but that would be all.

  He laughed. “It’s better than nothing.”

  Of course it was another year of “one more times,” until he got down on one knee and placed that four-karat princess-cut di
amond on my left ring finger.

  When I said yes, everything changed inside my heart, and I didn’t doubt my ability to love. My heart had only been waiting for this—for him. The emptier years of not loving another man had nothing to do with my being unable to love, or missing Mama, or waiting for someone exactly like Jack. They were all about the right man. It was easy falling in love, this open-heart feeling, which made me smile whenever I thought of Peyton, of his touch or his voice.

  I didn’t care so much about having the big wedding, but because of my family’s long history in town—direct descendants of the English duke who founded the seaport of Palmetto Pointe— and Peyton’s status as a professional golfer, a huge society wedding was what we would have in less than two months.

  I steered the car through streets that were as clean as Disney World when it opened first thing in the morning. Palmetto Pointe might have more antebellum homes per square block than any town in America. The U.S. and South Carolina flags flapped in the wind. The benches in front of the stores were freshly painted. The ash and oak trees had been planted at exact intervals down Main Street, Spanish moss hanging from the branches like a brochure for the Lowcountry.

  I let up on the gas and braked at the red light in front of the five-and-dime; Mrs. Harold waved at me from the bench in front. She’d lost her husband five years ago and had slipped into a time and place no one in town contradicted—that it was 1964 and she was waiting for a letter from her husband in Vietnam. I waved back and smiled. Maybe someday this town would smile at me when I went crazy.

  Probably not, though. I was Porter Graham Larson’s youngest child, and certain things were expected of our family.

  I pulled my car in front of the Palmetto Pointe Bridal store-front. Through the plate-glass window I saw Gretchen pacing inside. I slid out of the car and walked toward the shop, satchel in hand. As usual, my day was exactly on schedule.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The bridal shop was completely walled in mirrors. Gretchen stood in the middle of the circular room with her hands on her hips, staring down at me from the podium. My daddy had hired a dressmaker from Atlanta—said he wanted the best for his little girl. There was no avoiding my figure from any angle in this space; I noticed how much thinner I’d become over the past few months.

  Good stress, Charlotte called it, but it most definitely did not feel good. I couldn’t sleep as I envisioned a misplaced name card at the reception dinner, or discovered the bridesmaids’ dresses had been shipped to Parague instead of Palmetto Pointe.

  I attempted to turn away from my image in the mirrors. “Humph,” Gretchen said. “My flight leaves in two hours, we must finish this now.”

  I nodded like an obedient child and walked back to the dressing room, where my wedding dress hung on a padded hanger. I slid the curtain shut and stripped down to my underwear. I traced my finger along the lace-covered buttons running down the back of the dress and sighed. The dress was exactly as I had sketched it, and suddenly I wanted Mama there to see it. If there was ever a time in a girl’s life when she wanted her mama, it was when she was trying on her wedding dress.

  I slipped the dress over my head, but left it open in the back for Gretchen to fasten.

  Your feet will bring you to where your heart is.

  I rolled my eyes. Poor old woman—rambling on about the past and lost love. It had nothing to do with me—so why did the words make me feel sad? I stared at myself in the mirror. Without the veil, makeup, and flowers, I looked like a little girl playing dress up. I cinched the dress in at the waist and stood on my tippy-toes. A little better.

  Peyton had had only one request about the dress: “Please don’t let it look like a prom dress with whipped cream on it,” he’d said. “Golf USA magazine will be there with photographers.” I’d told him that surely, by now, he knew I had better taste than that. He’d kissed me and told me that I’d picked him, so surely I had absolutely perfect taste.

  My gaze slid down to the skirt, covered in the thinnest silk made, as light and transparent as angels’ wings. I hadn’t known they made a silk so sheer—but Daddy had said he’d pay for it.

  I lifted the dress higher from the waist, avoided touching the skirt, and slipped on the white pumps provided in the dressing room. I hadn’t bought my shoes yet. One of the many unfinished tasks that kept me up at night was choosing whether to hand sew water pearls onto the shoes or leave them plain.

  I stepped out of the dressing room and walked up onto the podium in the center of the room. Gretchen stood in front of me, pins sticking out of her mouth, two deep parallel lines furrowed between her eyebrows. “If you keep losing weight, we will have to alter this dress every month. My God, child, eat something . . . anything.”

  “I am,” I said, and bit my lower lip.

  “And your hair,” she said. “You must get some highlights. The cream in the dress does your brown hair no good. No good at all.” She yanked at the back of the dress and began inserting pins.

  A pin poked my hip. “Ow.” I jumped.

  “Stand still, Kara.” Then she mumbled something incoherent about brides and decisions and the South—a bad combination altogether.

  “What?” I glanced down at her.

  “Stand still.”

  “Hmmm,” I said, and cracked my neck to the left. I should have taken a nap instead of fulfilling my hour’s duty at the nursing home. But I was six hours behind on my volunteer quota, and I’d be placed on suspension soon if I didn’t catch up.

  I groaned; a twenty-seven-year-old woman on suspension. It sounded ridiculous. But being a member of the league was part of my pact with Palmetto Pointe—a covenant all young women with deep roots in town adhered to. Grandma and Mama had both been members—who was I to break the chain? Charlotte and I talked of quitting, but hadn’t. Maybe now would be a good time to do so.

  Where was Charlotte? She was supposed to meet me for this fitting.

  “Damn,” I mumbled.

  “What now?” Gretchen stood from her crouched position and stretched her back.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud. My friend Charlotte was supposed to meet me here. I wanted to see how she likes the dress.”

  “Ugh . . . young women are always needing reassurance. You’re twenty-seven years old. It only matters if you love the dress. You do, don’t you?”

  “Yes, yes.” My hands flew through the air as they tended to do when I spoke emphatically. My brother and sister always said I looked like I was trying to fly when I was only attempting to make a very strong point.

  “Put your hands down,” Gretchen said through clenched teeth.

  “Sorry. It’s not that I don’t love the dress. I do. I really do. I just wanted to know what Charlotte thinks. Jack doesn’t want the skirt to look . . . oh, forget it.” I rubbed at my eyes—one of the many reasons I didn’t like to wear makeup, as my mascara came off on my fingers.

  “And who is Jack?”

  My head snapped around; a pain shot through the cramped muscles in my neck. “What?”

  “You said Jack.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  Sunlight shattered into the room as though someone had thrown broken glass. Warm coastal air filled the air-conditioned space and Charlotte burst through the doorway—all light, all energy. Her blond curls seemed to need a minute to catch up to the rest of her as she came to an abrupt halt in front of the podium.

  She placed her hands on either side of her face, covered her dimpled cheeks. “Oh. My. God.” Tears filled her eyes. “That is the most beautiful, amazing dress I have ever seen. And except for those dark circles under your eyes, you look absolutely, freaking amazing in it.”

  “Really?”

  “Like a dream, a dream about an angel.” She winked at me, and I rolled my eyes. She knew I’d had dreams about angels since I was a young child, since Mama died.

  Gretchen snorted. “She’s worried Jack won’t like it.”


  Charlotte raised her eyebrows, then dropped her chin as her tongue curled out into the corner of her mouth. “What?”

  “She”—Gretchen waved her hand at me—“needed—”

  I held up my hands. “Whoa, everyone. Gretchen . . . this is my best friend, Charlotte.” I nodded toward Charlotte. “Charlotte, this is Gretchen. She made this amazing creation from my sketch.”

  Charlotte held out her hand and shook Gretchen’s.

  “Nice to meet you,” Gretchen said. “Now, who is Jack?”

  I groaned. “Long story.”

  Charlotte looked up at me on the podium. “Please tell me you’re not talking about Jack Sullivan.”

  “Can we please talk about this later?” I nodded toward Gretchen.

  “No, we cannot,” Charlotte said.

  Gretchen laughed and poked more pins into the dress.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I said. “The Irish woman at Verandah House asked me about my first boyfriend and . . .” I stood as still as possible beneath Gretchen’s pins.

  “The woman the league assigned you?”

  I nodded. Gretchen finished and glanced at her watch. “Girls”—she clapped her hands together—“Enough. I have a schedule to keep.”

  Charlotte and I looked at each other and stifled a laugh. Then she mouthed, “Jack?”

  I shrugged my shoulders and stood taller, shook my head. “It’s nothing, really.”

  Charlotte took two steps backward, sat down on the cream velvet couch and crossed her legs, then shook her finger at me like one does at a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

  But I hadn’t gone into anyone’s cookie jar. Not at all.

  I left Charlotte and Gretchen and returned home, parked the car in the drive and glanced at the red numbers on the dashboard clock: 11:45 a.m. I had exactly fifteen minutes to grab a snack and the papers I’d left printing on my home computer, then get to the PGA TOUR offices by noon, as promised.