Beach Colors (9 page)

She answered on the first ring.

“Hi, Mom,” Margaux said, forcing a smile into her voice. “Can you believe this weather?”

“It’s supposed to last for a couple of days. Do you want me to come over? I’ll bring lunch. Or we could go out.”

“Thanks, but I’m set for food and I’m really busy right now. I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Okay, but call my cell phone if I’m not here.”

Margaux scribbled the number on the telephone pad.

“Call me.”

“I will. Bye.”

She didn’t call Jude back that day or the next. She didn’t answer the phone, but she turned on lights so her mother would know she was okay.

Two days passed, the rain kept up, Margaux’s spirits plummeted. Her mind raced at night, but when she tried to think of a plan during the day, that same mind went blank.

She found a copy of
Wuthering Heights,
but even her favorite story couldn’t keep away her demons. Unfortunately, Heathcliff looked an awful lot like the local police chief. She cried anyway and couldn’t decide if it was for Cathy and Heathcliff or for herself.

She ran out of milk and drank her coffee black. She ate dry toast. She finished
Wuthering Heights
. Mostly she just sat in the chintz chair and stared out the window to the shore.

By the third day of rain, Margaux began to go stir-crazy. She caught herself doodling on the telephone pad. It was a drawing of the window, the column of the front porch and the beach beyond. Funny, she hadn’t even been aware of what she was doing. She put the tablet back on the table and realized there were sheets of paper on the floor around her feet.

She leaned over and picked up the closest one. The couch and blanket chest that doubled as a coffee table. She reached for another. The floor lamp, its light falling onto the throw pillow,
Bless This Home.
Another sketch of the oval rag rug, the details picked out in shades of gray with her No. 2 pencil.

She slid off the chair, gathered all the papers up, then spread them out on the blanket chest. She’d drawn the whole room. The old television set. The escritoire with its curved Queen Anne legs. The fireplace surrounded by speckled bricks.

She had no memory of drawing any of them. And they were all defined in shades of gray. Like the day. Like her designs. Like her life.

The light was yellow, the couch a goldenrod tweed, the cabbage roses were pink and green with yellow sepals that had been much brighter many years ago. The rag rug had hints of blue, green, orange, lavender. They were faded, but not gray.

There was nothing black-and-white about this room. There was nothing black-and-white about the shore. Even the clouds and the gunmetal sea weren’t gray. They had shades of mauve and pink and midnight blue.

She’d just bought pastels and watercolors a few days before, but her creativity had defaulted to black and white.

She couldn’t remember when she hadn’t designed in black. Sure there was the occasional silver detail, a hint of gray, but all her designs came from the same palette. She was known for her stark designs; black had catapulted her into the limelight.

But the designs in her old portfolio proved she hadn’t always been that way.

Which was the real Margaux? The cutting-edge, black, Tulle-with-a-Bite designer or the fun, vibrant, colorful designer of her girlhood? Margaux had no idea, but suddenly she knew she had to find out.

She bounded up the stairs two at a time, tore open her closet door. She tugged her suitcase out of the closet, opened it onto the floor. She wrapped her arms around her New York clothes, lifted them out of the closet and dropped them hangers and all into the suitcase, snapped it shut, zipped it up, and rolled it down the hall to another closet and out of sight.

She was left with a bright red Windbreaker. She sat down on her bed, her hands clasped between her knees, and stared into the closet.

Besides the Windbreaker, she had two pairs of faded torn jeans, a few stretched-out T-shirts, and flip-flops. She couldn’t make do with that, but she’d be crazy to buy clothes when she didn’t know where her next penny much less paycheck was coming from. On the other hand, she had to start over sometime. And shopping for clothes was as good a place as any.

She’d be frugal. Besides, she doubted if Crescent Cove Clothiers carried two-hundred-dollar jeans. She’d start with just a couple of pieces to augment her two pairs of jeans.

She shrugged into the Windbreaker and stopped to check herself out in the dresser mirror. The Windbreaker had a certain retro charm, but her hair . . . It stuck out like a rusted scouring pad and clashed terribly with the red of the Windbreaker. She tried to run a brush through it but it was no-go.

She found a hair elastic and forced the wild frizz into a ponytail. She looked around for a baseball cap to camouflage the rest. She found one in the foyer closet, next to a huge blue and white UConn umbrella.

She tucked her ponytail through the hole and pulled the cap down hard over the rest. She snatched up the umbrella and her purse and hurried out to the car.

She had to lean forward to see past the wipers and through the fog and rain. Slowly, she drove toward town.

In summer, the rain drove everyone from the beach into the shops, the movie house, the bowling alley. But today without the summer people, downtown was virtually empty.

That was fine by her. She found a parking place right in front of Crescent Cove Clothiers. They were having their end-of-winter sale and she bought a pair of khaki trousers, a green sweatshirt with a picture of a palm tree on the front, and two packages of crew socks.

Clutching her shopping bag under the umbrella, she jogged two doors down to a new store in town. They sold two-hundred-dollar jeans. They also appeared to be going out of business. Prices were slashed; the slashes were slashed. Even the price of the two-hundred-dollar jeans.

She bought several T-shirts in various colors, a blue pin-striped tailored shirt, a pair of navy blue capris, and another sweatshirt, this one in magenta. At the last minute she snagged a skimpy knit dress in shimmery moss green.

The salesgirl was ecstatic. Margaux was their only customer.

Margaux was pretty pleased, too. Her whole shopping spree had come to less than eighty-five dollars. She couldn’t think of a single thing in her wardrobe that cost less than eighty-five dollars. Underwear maybe.

Her stomach rumbled, and for the first time in days, maybe weeks, she was hungry. She turned automatically toward Dottie’s diner but checked herself. She loved Dottie and didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but her new state of optimism was too fragile to test in public.

She turned down Barton Street where she saw a sign that looked like it might be a sandwich place and took temporary respite from the rain beneath one of the green awnings that seemed to have sprouted up around Crescent Cove. Two large barrel planters were filled with geraniums and a sandwich board by the door announced
Granny’s Attic Memorial Day Sale
.

Memorial Day was nearly a month away, but Margaux couldn’t blame them for getting an early start. There didn’t seem to be a lot of foot traffic in Crescent Cove, off season, especially down the side streets, especially in the rain.

The drops began to let up and she hurried toward her destination.

There was no green awning over the next door. No flowers, just a window with black lettering,
Grace Holcombe Attorney-at-Law,
and in smaller letters,
Real Estate Agent
. Margaux jumped back. How stupid of her; she knew Grace’s office was on Barton Street. But she wasn’t ready to see Grace. She looked like hell. Her hair was frizzy.

Stop making excuses.
Grace wouldn’t care what she looked like. With any luck she might not even be in the office. But she refused to skulk around just to avoid her. She hadn’t seen Grace in years, and now she felt guilty for not making the effort to stay in touch. They’d been best friends, for hell’s sake. Some kind of friend she was. But then the telephone worked both ways. Grace could have called her.

Well, there was no time like the present. She opened the door to the law office and stepped inside.

She would have known Grace anywhere. She was just an older version of the wiry, nearsighted kid she’d been when they’d met twenty-seven years before. She was still petite, though her blue-black pigtails and severe bangs had been replaced with a sleek face-frame hairstyle. Her long thick lashes were no longer hidden behind thick, black-rimmed glasses.

Grace had followed them around one summer, looking so plaintive, that Margaux and Brianna finally took pity on her and let her tag along. She spent the rest of the summer explaining to them why they were lucky to have her as a friend and promised them that when she was a lawyer they could come to her for free.

Margaux smiled. None of them thought they would ever need a lawyer in those days. Margaux hadn’t even been sure what people hired lawyers to do.

Now she knew all too well.

Grace looked up from her computer, squinted at her, and blinked several times.

“Mags? Margaux?”

Margaux nodded. Grace jumped up from her chair and raced around the edge of her desk, but drew herself up short just before reaching Margaux.

“I can’t believe it. What are you doing here?”

Margaux’s mouth went dry. She shrugged. “I know I look frightful, but I just wanted to see you.” She gave Grace an awkward hug.

“You look . . . great.” Grace looked around the tiny office. “Here, sit down.” She reached for a chair. A pile of papers slid to the floor. “Oh hell. I’ll put the closed sign up. Let’s go to lunch. But not Dottie’s. I want you all to myself.”

“Good. I’m starving. There’s a place at the end of the block that looks nice.”

Grace flipped a sign over, grabbed a huge overstuffed purse, and scuttled Margaux out the front door.

“I bet you’re a good lawyer,” Margaux said as she was force-marched down the sidewalk while trying to hold the UConn umbrella over both of them as well as her unwieldy bunch of shopping bags.

“Thanks. I am, but not a very busy one at the moment.”

“That’s where the real estate part comes in?”

“You got it.”

Margaux shook her head. Leave it to her childhood friend to figure out how to eke out a living in a small town whose populace would rather argue over a beer at Deke’s than go to court, and who for the most part had owned their homes for at least two generations.

They went to a cute little bakery called Cupcakes by Caroline. Grace had always had a sweet tooth; it looked to Margaux as if that hadn’t changed either. Grace was packing a few extra pounds. Well within the normal limit, Margaux reminded herself. She was just used to anorexic models.

It turned out that Caroline, who was definitely packing a few extra pounds, also served lunch as well as cupcakes, homemade bread, cookies, and a variety of pastries. They chose a table in a brick alcove and ordered the special. Salad niçoise and mint iced teas.

“I loved that spread in
Vogue
last year,” Grace said, reaching for a fresh breadstick and slathering it with butter. “I bought two copies. There was a run on them at Dingley’s Drugs. I had to go all the way to one of those mega bookstores on the highway. I took a copy to Brianna—”

“Brianna was here?”

“Still is. You
have
been out of touch. She moved back seven or eight years ago. Long story.” Grace looked pensive for two seconds before she was off and running again. “Oh Lord. Remember how you used to dress her up in your fashion concoctions?”

“I remember, unfortunately. You guys were good sports to put up with me.”

“Remember the wedding dress you made out of your grandmother’s tablecloth?”

“How could I forget? Bri stole her mother’s negligee to use for a veil and we went outside to take pictures. Then the lifeguard laughed at her and she got all huffy and snatched the negligee off and tore the strap.”

Grace’s face sobered.

“What?”

“You know the lifeguard?”

“Yeah, skinny guy, kind of cute, and had it bad for Brianna.”

“He died.”

“That’s terrible. How?”

“In one of those wars—Iraq, Afghanistan. Nobody was real clear on the details. It happened a couple of years ago. Brianna was upset. Not that she’d seen him in ten years or ever did anything more than giggle in front of him. But you know Brianna. She’s sensitive.”

Margaux knew. Brianna could go from Little Miss Sunshine to Lady Macbeth in a heartbeat. She’d been a successful model. Then her name had dropped out of the public eye, and Margaux had lost track of her.

“I didn’t know she’d moved back. What happened?”

“I’ll let Bri tell you. She bought that big farmhouse near Skilling’s Ice Cream. The one that used to have horses. She’s renovating, little by little.”

“A huge job if it’s half as bad as I remember.”

“Huge,” Grace agreed.

A young waitress brought their salads. Grace dug in but Margaux had lost her appetite. “I’ve been a terrible friend.”

Grace looked over her fork of tuna. “Nah, just unmindful. We kept expecting you to come home for a visit and you never did. Then life happened. But what the hell. We’re all here now.”

By the time the waitress cleared their plates, both salads were gone, along with two Key lime cupcakes and two skinny cappuccinos—to make up for the cupcakes—and they were chattering away like they’d never been apart.

Grace looked at her watch. “Yikes. We’ve been here two hours. I have to be in court.” She pushed her chair back. “How long are you staying?”

The inevitable question. Margaux hesitated. She’d made it all the way through lunch without divulging her true situation to Grace. Which was easy because they’d been reminiscing about the past.

“Well. I’m not sure.” And suddenly she didn’t want to be keeping secrets anymore. She took a breath and plunged in. “I’m getting a divorce. My husband cleaned me out, I’ve lost my business, my studio, everything. I’m here because, dear Grace, I have no place else to go.”

Grace sat down. “Shit. Do you have a good lawyer?”