Beach Girls (6 page)

“Emma. I know. Thank you.”

He seemed so uncomfortable, and Stevie felt so awkward. Wearing a robe, feeling disheveled, holding a lost bird, the very picture of a crazy artist. She tried to smile. “Listen, can you come inside? I'd like to talk to you—”

He seemed to hesitate, as if trying to think of an excuse. He checked his watch—a huge chronometer—and then shook his head. “I have an appointment,” he said. “I'm sorry, but I've got to go.”

Chapter 5

JACK RETURNED HOME TO AN EMPTY
house. He walked inside, closed the door behind him, looked around. There was almost nothing more depressing than a rented vacation place when you weren't really sure why you'd come there in the first place. Other people's strange taste in art, furniture, rugs. Was it possible that that orange macramé wall hanging had been seriously chosen? Jack scowled—he was well on his way to becoming a permanent, intractable curmudgeon.

He pulled out his briefcase, portfolio, and cell phone. Checked the time: just before four in Inverness. The North Sea, his next frontier. Francesca had paved the way, unintentionally, during her Scotland trip in April. Romanov had liked her, been impressed by the firm's credentials. Bids were being taken, but Jack wanted this chance to talk one-on-one with the guy who would make the ultimate decision.

Waiting for his phone to ring, he tried to settle down. What had him so keyed up? Was it the idea of Nell down at the beach with a bunch of people he didn't know? No—it wasn't that. Laurel seemed steady and responsible, the Hubbard's Point Recreation Program had been in full force since Jack was a kid, and Nell was fine going to school by herself—at home in Atlanta, in Boston. Once she adjusted, she'd be fine.

The phone rang—five minutes early.

“Jack Kilvert,” he said, exactly as if he was sitting in his office overlooking Boston Harbor.

“Hi there,” came Francesca's throaty voice. “Are you on the beach?”

“Not exactly,” he said, feeling a pang of guilt. No one at the firm—including Francesca—had any idea of what he was about to do.

“At the tennis court, on a sailboat, getting ready to tee off? Just tell me you're out in the sun, and not sitting in that house.”

“I'm getting ready to go out,” he said, forcing a laugh, wanting to defuse the call, get her off the line.

“You'd better be. I'm making you my number one project,” she said. “I am going to get you to have fun by the end of the summer. As a matter of fact, I'm calling because I have some documents. Now, I
could
fax them to you—that
is
an option. But I was thinking, wouldn't it be much more fun if I drove them down? Say, tonight?”

“Francesca, that's too far to come,” he began, looking at his watch again. Three minutes till the call . . .

“Oh, you're hopeless! Is it your daughter? Come on, Jack—that beach must be loaded with babysitters. Find a nice kid who needs the money, and take the night off!”

“Look, Francesca,” Jack said. “That won't work for tonight. Fax the papers, if you don't mind—okay? I have to run now.”

She was silent. He knew he'd sounded rude. But the time was ticking by—and wasn't it better for her to get the message now rather than later? She said, “Yes, sure, have fun,” and hung up the phone. Jack's heart was in a vise. The pain was great—in his body, and in his soul. He thought of how Emma had told him to pray. The memory made him shudder. He was like a dead man these days—somehow the imminent phone call was a form of redemption. He sat there in a cold sweat, waiting for the ring.

He bowed his head. He needed respite, a break from his universe. He closed his eyes—and what he saw surprised him.

Stevie Moore. She had looked like he felt: a ghost stuck in this life. What had she been doing, just half-dressed on a bright morning? Those streaks on her cheeks were tears. He knew. He was an expert on tears.

He'd been struck by her firm handshake and warm smile. Also by her size: she was small. About five-three, very slight. Her robe had been about four sizes too big for her, the sash tied tight. She had sleek, chin-length black hair and bangs that parted over wide, violet eyes. Her skin was pale and flawless. Except for those tear marks.

He pictured her cupping that pathetic little lost bird in her hands. What chance did it have? No mother, no father. At least Nell had
him
. . . . He shook his head. What good was he, anyway? He held tight to the vision of Stevie holding that bird. Holding on, holding on . . .

The phone rang. It jangled, making him jump. His pulse leapt, and he felt his heart crashing.
This had to work. . . .

“Hello,” he said. “Jack Kilvert . . .”

NELL AND PEGGY
won the relay race. They beat all the girls
and
all the boys. They looked like teammates in their navy blue bathing suits—as if they had planned it that morning, as if they were already best friends.

Peggy had bright red hair and lots of freckles, and she wore a cool sunhat to keep the sun off her face except for when she went swimming. She kept hold of Nell's hand practically the whole time—they even did the floating contest, on their backs in the calm bay, holding hands.

“It's like having a sister!” Nell said when the contests were over and the whole rec class took a rest break on their towels.

“
Better,
I'm telling you,” Peggy said. “My sister Annie's a teenager, and she can't be bothered with me! All she wants to do is hang out with her boyfriend. My mother always says about her best friend, Tara, ‘You can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends.'”

Nell felt her shoulders collapse a little. “I'd choose my family, just the way it was,” she said.

“Well, me too,” Peggy said. “But best friends are second best. A
close
second best—you should see my mom and Tara. They do everything together.”

“My mom had friends like that,” Nell said. “They grew up here, at Hubbard's Point. That's why my dad and I came here. Because there were so many happy times.”

“You and your dad?” Peggy asked, blinking slowly; the unasked question:
what about your mom?

“Yes,” Nell said, her shoulders caving in a little more. She could never say the words:
my mom died.

“You miss your mom,” Peggy said.

Nell glanced up. How could she possibly know?

“I miss my dad,” Peggy explained. “I could tell about you . . . at least, I thought I could. And when you said it was just you and your dad here, I knew for sure. . . . It rots, doesn't it?”

“Big time,” Nell said.

The girls were sitting on the edge of their towels, their heads so close together that Nell's face was in the shade of Peggy's hat. The sand was so warm; they burrowed their feet down as far as possible, till they got to the cool, damp layer. Nell wished they could just sit there for the rest of the day. But just then a long shadow fell across their towels, and she looked up—into the freckled face of a boy who looked a lot like Peggy.

“Hey, squirt,” he said.

“Billy—where's the bird?” she asked.

“I left it up there.” He gestured up at the cottages on the stone hill—at the House That Used to Be Blue. Nell felt a shiver, remembering Stevie.

“Not with the witch!” Peggy said. “Are you crazy? She'll pluck its feathers to make a hat, or a cape, or something! Crows are black,
hello
!”

Nell felt the first instant of doubt regarding her new best friend. She wanted to defend Stevie, but the boy—the way he looked and acted meant he had to be Peggy's brother—beat her to it.

“I don't think so,” he said. “She's not the bird-plucking type. She seems, like, depressed or something. Eugene was spying on her, like, looking in her windows? And he saw her crying. All alone, in the middle of the morning. It was weird.”

“Depressed?” Nell asked. She knew she had found a family of kindred spirits: that word was part of their language, too.

“Yeah,” the boy said. “And who might you be?”

“Nell Kilvert,” she said.

“Nell, this is Billy, my brother,” Peggy said. “It sounds
just
like something a witch would do—crying on a summer day. Excuse me, but that's strange.”

“Maybe someone she loved died,” Nell said.

Peggy and her brother Billy just stared and stared as if she'd just said the most unspeakable thing in the world. Billy shrugged and walked down the beach.

Peggy decided to laugh it off. “Hah! Like her black cat, or her pet newt. Or maybe she's getting divorced again, for the fifteenth time. Or maybe she lost another huge diamond ring . . .”

“She's special,” Nell said.

“She wants you to think that,” Peggy said. “To lure you in!”

“I don't think she wants to lure anyone in,” Nell said. “She has that ‘Please Go Away' sign in her yard.”

Peggy frowned—Nell had her there.

“She and my mom and my aunt were really close. They even had a name for themselves,” Nell said. “I was thinking . . . we could call ourselves the same thing!”

“What is it?” Peggy asked.

“Beach girls,” Nell said.

Peggy's nose wrinkled, and she squinted into the sun. Her gaze swept up the rocky point, toward the House That Used to Be Blue. Nell could almost read her mind: she'd been seeing dark magic and crystal balls and pointy black hats, but those images were being replaced by beach balls, bright towels, and blue bathing suits. Nell smiled.

“Witches aren't beach girls,” Peggy said doubtfully.

“Beach girls aren't witches,” Nell countered, and Peggy cocked her eyebrows in a thoughtful way.

Just then Laurel came running over from the lifeguard chair, where she'd been talking to a bunch of her friends, and clapped her hands.

“Okay, everyone into the water for one last thing—we're going to tread water for ten minutes! Find your partners!”

Peggy grabbed Nell's hand, and together they ran into the water, diving under the first wave. Their bodies, hot from the sun, felt the saltwater shock, and they came up squealing. Nell thought of her mother holding Stevie's hand. Or Aunt Madeleine's . . . Peggy's gaze was directed over Nell's head, to the cottage on the hill—as if she, like Nell, was wondering what could be making a beach girl cry on such a beautiful day.

AS BABIES,
crows, blue jays, and starlings were insectivores. Their parents would catch mosquitoes and gnats, eat them, and regurgitate them. Their offspring would grow, eventually turning into omnivores, the goats of the avian world: birds that would eat anything. Stevie credited her editor for that bit of knowledge: Ariel Stone was a stickler for scientific details, and she loved emotional love stories. The combination made her a great editor—and had led her to push Stevie into writing
Crow Totem.

“Crows are intensely loyal,” she said to the baby, quoting from her own book, trying to get the bird to eat a crushed fly. “Did you know that?”

The bird refused to budge, or open its beak. Tilly hovered outside the bedroom, scratching at the door. Stevie wondered how refined the bird's responses were, whether he registered the noises as direct threats upon his young life. She kept trying, until finally—perhaps trying to squawk—the bird opened his beak, and she shoved the fly in.

“There you go,” she said. “Wasn't that good?”

It must have been, because the baby opened wider, and she dropped in a pair of mosquitoes and another fly, snagged in a spiderweb by the back door. Country life, she thought . . . Trumpet vines, hummingbirds, spiderwebs, a motherless crow: nature at her back door, inspiration to do her work.

“This is for you, Emma,” she said, giving the baby crow another dead fly.

Emma would have laughed at that. “Thanks, Stevie,” she'd have said. “A dead fly.” She'd had a strange, dark sense of humor. Stevie spun back in time . . . the warm breeze brought it all to the fore.

The air on their skin, driving in Stevie's convertible Hillman, on their way to pick up Maddie at the New London train station, coming back from visiting her aunt in Providence. Two sixteen-year-old girls, wearing wet bathing suits under T-shirts, damp hair blowing in the wind—nothing could have torn them away from the beach, except the arrival of their friend.

Downtown New London had been different back then. Crumbling beauty and abject poverty had defined the old whaling town. Driving along Bank Street, they'd seen a homeless woman curled up in a doorway across from the Custom House.

“We have to help her,” Stevie had said, pulling over. The woman had cracked skin and dirty clothes. Her hair was matted, unwashed. A shopping cart from Two Guys held her belongings.

“And do what?” Emma had asked. “Pick her up and take her back to the beach?”

“Yes, and feed her,” Stevie had said.

The two friends had stared at each other, Emma realizing that Stevie was serious. Their families were very different. Stevie's father taught Stevie that all human beings were connected, and that art and poetry held them together. Emma's parents taught her that life was one big case of keeping up with the Joneses: you looked at your neighbors not to help them, but to judge how well you were doing in relation to them. Emma gently took Stevie's hand.

“I love you,” she said. “But you are a crackpot.”

“No, Em—we have to . . .”

“Don't you know that there are ways . . . and there are ways? That's what
charity
is for. My mother taught me that . . .” Emma trailed off, the unspoken, unfinished, mournful part of the thought being that Stevie didn't have a mother to teach
her
. “Suburbia isn't built for people like her, not even passing through. Can't you imagine the beach ladies flipping out? No—we have to help her here, on her own turf.”