Beach Girls (8 page)

“I wish they'd been happier for you,” Jack said.

“Well, I needed connection. Emma used to tease me about it. Even here at the beach, when we were kids.”

“Don't blame yourself,” he said.

“It's so unfair,” she said, staring at him. “You had Emma—and she was taken away so soon. And I just threw my marriages away. . . .”

“Losing Emma was unfair,” he said. “That doesn't even begin to cover it. But don't be so hard on yourself. Maybe those guys didn't deserve you.”

She glanced up. His eyes were fierce, and for a second she felt the protection she remembered from her father. The sensation shocked her—it was completely unexpected. She smiled, relaxing in spite of herself. She hadn't had a friend in so long. Opening the door to Nell the other day had been such a gift: she stared at Jack, surprised to feel tension spinning out of her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You're welcome.” They stood up, ready to walk into the kitchen. Her heart was beating hard. She felt something in the way Jack was looking at her that made her gaze back at the beach. The sun was all the way down now; the bay was tarnished silver, nearly black. The sky was growing darker, and Stevie's pulse raced faster.

A look passed between her and Jack with a ferocity of emotion that shook Stevie inside. It embarrassed and confused her. She cast around, trying to think of something innocuous to say. Tilly lay on the windowsill, growling at mice in the underbrush. Stevie touched Tilly's head with her fingertips, and the cat bolted.

“I'd love to see Madeleine,” Stevie said.

Jack didn't reply—she saw his mood change in that instant.

“Could you give me her number? Maybe I could call her—if she comes to see you and Nell, I'd love to have her over.”

“She won't be coming,” he said quietly.

Stevie glanced up at his face and was shocked by the expression. He looked troubled, upset.

“No?”

“It's better that she and Nell don't see each other right now. If it's okay with you, I'd just as soon not talk about it.”

Stevie was stunned. She had no idea what to say and felt completely confused by the shift. The pain quickly left Jack's eyes, but so did all expression. He looked numb, and he couldn't meet Stevie's gaze.

“I think the coffee's ready,” she said after a moment.

“That's good,” he said, seeming relieved. Just then she thought of Nell upstairs. She excused herself, and went up to get her.

NELL WAS TALKING
to the crow, prowling around Stevie's room, feeling so happy. Her dad and Stevie were downstairs—she could hear their voices. It made her feel safe and happy, to think they were talking about her, about her mother. Stevie was almost like another aunt!

To think that Stevie knew what Nell was feeling; that she had lost her mother when she was young. Just like the little crow . . .

Nell stood by the cage, staring at the bird's bright black eyes. She went to the mirror. She had brown hair and green eyes, like her mom. Had her mother ever been in this room? Maybe she and Aunt Madeleine had had sleepovers with Stevie!

Maybe Stevie could get her father to forgive . . . oh, she could hardly let herself hope. With the sun just set behind her, Nell stared into the mirror at her own, her mother's, green eyes and made a huge wish.

Just then, she noticed a picture on the bureau. It was in a silver frame, and it showed a woman and a little girl. They stood beside an easel, both holding paintbrushes, looking solemnly into the camera. Could it be Stevie and her mother?

Hearing footsteps, Nell wheeled around. Stevie stood framed in the doorway.

“Is that you?” Nell asked, pointing.

“It is,” Stevie said.

“With your mother?”

“No,” Stevie said. “With my father's sister. Aunt Aida. She's the reason I became an artist.”

“Is she an artist?”

“A painter, yes,” Stevie said. “A very well known one. She does huge paintings that . . . look like wide-open spaces.”

“What do you mean? Modern art like that picture there?” Nell asked, pointing at a painting that had only two colors in it. It hung on the wall behind Stevie's bed, and it was a very large square made up of two rectangles: one white and one light blue. That was the whole painting.

Stevie laughed, as if Nell had just said the best thing. “Exactly,” she said. “That's from Aunt Aida's
Beach Series
.”

Nell squinted at the picture. The room was dark, so Stevie turned on a lamp. The blue was on top. “Blue sky, white sand?” she asked.

“Aunt Aida would love you,” Stevie told her, chuckling.

Nell grinned. Then she stopped. A bad thought had come over her. “Is she . . . alive or not?”

“Oh, she's alive,” Stevie said. “Very much so.”

“Like my aunt,” Nell said.

“Yes,” Stevie said, but the smile wavered on her face.

Nell's heart seized up. Oh, she had something she had to ask, she'd been getting her courage up. “Stevie,” she began.

“How about some chocolate cake?” Stevie said carefully. “And let me find that book on penguins I want to give you. . . .” She began looking through a bookshelf, peering at every title.

“Stevie!” Nell said again.

As if she knew what Nell was about to ask, Stevie began searching even more diligently. She reached for a pair of half-spectacles, like Nell's father sometimes wore, and put them on.

“Nell!” her father called from downstairs. “Come on, now. It's getting late, and I think we'd better be getting home.”

“Where's that book?” Stevie asked.

“Come on, Nell,” her father called louder.

“She's your dear friend,” Nell said suddenly, quickly.

Stevie paused, but immediately resumed looking.

“A best friend, from the beach,” Nell said. “Friends like that never stop being friends. . . .”

“Here it is,” Stevie said, pulling a thin volume from the shelf. She looked so steady and wise with her dark hair and bangs and half-glasses, and Nell had a swift, urgent longing to throw herself into her arms. But she held herself back, even as the tears came flooding out.

“My aunt Madeleine,” Nell said, unable to keep herself from weeping. “I miss her so much, so much! You have to call her! She's your friend! Madeleine Kilvert, just like before, the same name as ours! My father hates her, but I love her! Just like you love Aunt Aida!” Her voice rose to a cry, and Nell felt herself enveloped by Stevie's arms. Stevie lifted her up, holding her so tightly, kissing her neck the way Nell's mother used to, the way Aunt Madeleine used to.

Her tears felt hot on the skin between them, and her sobs shook the air. She heard her father's footsteps and felt him take her away from Stevie. Nell lost track of whether she was just tired or too full or overcome with the grief of missing the women in her life, but she heard herself wailing as if the world was ending, and she heard her father whispering, “That's okay, Nell. Don't cry, honey, don't cry . . .”

“I'm so sorry,” she heard Stevie say.

“It's okay,” she heard her father say in his cross voice that said,
No, it's not okay.

“I want Aunt Madeleine!” Nell wept.

“I shouldn't have let her upstairs,” Stevie said. “Showed her
the picture . . .”

“She's very emotional,” her father said.

Then Stevie said something about understanding, not wanting to intrude again. Nell felt Stevie's lips brush her tear-soaked cheek, then felt the hard edge of a book pressed into her hand. One arm slung around her father's neck, Nell sobbed the whole way back to their rented cottage, clinging tightly to Stevie's book about penguin babies and the fathers who loved them.

Chapter 7

A JULY HEAT SPELL DESCENDED ON THE
beach, with long hot days and barely a breeze. Jack grabbed the morning hours—when Nell was at recreation—to do his work. Sitting on the screen porch, he talked to Ivan Romanov at IR in Inverness, typed out pages of ideas for that project, drew up plans for his Boston office, wished he was in an air-conditioned office somewhere, anywhere but here.

He wished he could walk up the hill and talk to Stevie.

Nell had recovered from the scene at Stevie's house. She had eventually cried herself to sleep that night, and woken up the next morning quiet and withdrawn. But she had gone to recreation—Jack had been afraid she wouldn't—and seemed happy the minute she saw Peggy. She had a friend, and they played together all day long.

Jack wanted to apologize to Stevie, but he wasn't sure what to say. He didn't want to open a door that was better left closed. Stevie, for her part, left them alone. Jack knew it was better that way. But the strange thing was, he found himself thinking of her anyway. He wished that he and Nell could go back there for dinner again, drink from the mismatched glasses, watch the sunset from her window. He wanted to see that beautiful smile again.

What was he thinking?

Dealing with Ivan Romanov, he thought of what Stevie had said about geographics. It was human nature to think a change of scene could solve everything, when the real problem was inside—he'd learned that when he was just a kid. He and Madeleine had run away together when she was eight and he was twelve. Their grandfather had come to visit from Providence—he took over Jack's room, smoked a pipe, and watched TV programs that no one else liked. He had hair in his ears and nose. He was deaf and refused to use his hearing aid. Maddie was afraid of him, because he talked in a really loud voice and had a wart on the top of his bald head.

Running away seemed like a good solution; Jack and Maddie hopped a bus to Elizabeth Park, checked out the rose garden, and scouted out places to build a tree house where no one would find them. Jack began to look for branches to lash together for the tree house floor, and Maddie started to cry—thinking of how much their mother would miss them. Jack pretended to be exasperated, but he was secretly glad for the chance to return home.

It killed him to think that this time he'd be running away
from
Maddie—not with her. He frowned, turning back to his work and his plans, putting his sister out of his mind.

Coming to Hubbard's Point had, in some ways, been a good plan—Nell was like her mother. She loved the beach, had salt water in her veins. She dragged Jack down for a swim every afternoon. It was elixir to him, the cool water, swimming to the raft with Nell. He found himself glancing up the hill at Stevie's house, wondering what she was doing.

Every evening, things were just the way they'd been since the accident. Not even salt air could change the fact that Nell could never fall asleep right away. She began getting panicky an hour or so after dinner. Now that she had Stevie's book, she wanted to hear it every night. Jack read the story of the penguin father tending the egg, over and over, till he knew it by heart.

He'd kiss Nell goodnight, and then the drama would begin. She'd toss and turn, call Jack in to read to her some more, talk to her, rub her back. They had a pattern where he'd go in six, seven times before dawn. Some nights Nell would start to cry with frustration and exhaustion, and she couldn't stop—she missed her mother with every cell in her body.

One night a huge thunderstorm roared down the Connecticut River valley. Murderous thunder shook the trees. Jagged bolts flashed. The storm accelerated, dread and immediate. The crashes terrified Nell. She clung to her father like a koala bear, shrieking and trembling.

Jack held her, unable to comfort her. Somehow Stevie's book had highlighted the emptiness he felt—defined his life in a new way, put it into words and pictures. How could he deliver, be both mother and father to Nell? Yet seeing Stevie, talking to her that one time, made him feel as if he was on the right track.

He was incredibly selfish, to be keeping Nell away from Madeleine—and to be making plans for Scotland. He tried to tell himself that the move made sense career-wise. That it was a step up, to work directly for such an important client. But he knew, deep down, that he was running—and taking Nell with him.

Suddenly, rage at Emma boiled through him. Not Madeleine—
Emma
. He rocked Nell, trying to remember a lullaby—any lullaby—overcome with hatred for his dead wife.

Whom he had loved more than his own life. He had fallen in love with Emma right here, at Hubbard's Point. She had been so pretty and funny, with such a sharp edge. They had met on the boardwalk. He was just standing there after a basketball game, covered with sweat and grime, trying to cool off in the breeze. She came walking along, took the towel off from around her waist and handed it to him.

“You need this,” she said drolly.

“Excuse me?” Taken aback, he stared at her standing there in a pink-checked bikini, a gold chain around her neck and others around her wrist and ankle. She had cleavage. Serious cleavage. He'd never paid attention before—she was one of his younger sister's friends. She'd been over at the house the weekend before, when a bunch of Jack's friends came down from Hartford. Jack's girlfriend, Ruth Ann O'Malley, was there, and he'd noticed Emma talking to her about colleges.

They were both beautiful girls. He had certainly been aware of that about Emma since the first time Maddie brought her home. Ruth Ann wasn't a serious student—and she didn't pretend to be. She had gotten into Pine Manor, a junior college not far from Jack at MIT. Jack had pegged Emma as having the same sort of college path, but he was wrong—he'd heard her telling Ruth Ann that her first two choices were Wellesley and Smith.

“You're sweating,” she said.

“No kidding. I just played one-on-one.”

“Who won?”

He laughed in spite of himself. She seemed completely sure of herself—she had more confidence than most girls his own age—she was, in fact, in the same league as Ruth Ann.

“I did,” he said.

“Hmm,” she said. “I didn't know math majors could play ball.”

Was that as double-entendre as it sounded? Jack's head spun; he didn't want to let on that he had made wrong assumptions about her, too: he'd noticed her looks, not her brains, and he'd been surprised to hear she was aiming for the Seven Sisters. He'd finished using her towel. She took it from him, then stood on her tiptoes and wiped his brow.

“You missed a spot,” she said.

His knees had practically given out when she'd passed the towel across his skin, pressing her breasts against his chest. She was Madeleine's friend, he already had a girlfriend . . . the reasons he shouldn't be feeling what he felt were legion and severe.

Ruth Ann was gorgeous, athletic. She had been the head cheerleader at South, Jack's old high school. Jack could see her now: the way she always did her hair, put on lipstick, wore a sarong to match her bathing suit. All his friends thought she was hot and he was lucky. He told himself that as he stood on the boardwalk. Young Emma must not know the effect she had on men. It couldn't be intentional.

A few mornings later Jack was at the cottage, sit-ting at the kitchen table drinking OJ and reading the
Hartford Courant
's sports page. A knock sounded at the door, and it was Emma—coming to pick up Maddie. She wore a yellow alligator shirt, tight cutoffs, and huge movie-star sunglasses, and she grinned when she saw him.

“Played basketball lately?” she asked.

“Every day.”

“And you didn't come to me, to dry off?” she asked.

“Nope. I used my girlfriend's towel,” he said, trying to ignore the shaking in his bones.

“How
is
little ‘Pith' Ann?” Emma asked, the invisible quotation marks around the name both wicked and seductive.

“
Ruth
Ann,” he corrected.

“Oh, right.”

“Watch what you say, little girl.”

“I'm not a little girl, and you know it.”

“You're my sister's friend. Let's leave it at that, okay?”

“Okay with me if it's okay with you,” she said, giving him a smile that set his skin on fire. What was she—a professional Lolita?

“How old are you, anyway?”

“Same age as your sister. Half a year older, actually.”

“Seventeen?”

“Nearly eighteen.”

“Why'd you call Ruth Ann that?”

“Because she's a little fluff—exquisite to look at, but dumb as the day is long.”

Jack's mouth dropped—okay, so she was nearly eighteen. Somewhere along the line he'd forgotten to notice that Maddie—and her friends—were growing up. But what was she doing, putting down Ruth Ann—his girlfriend and the most popular girl at South Catholic?

“She doesn't seem your type at all,” Emma said, taking a step closer, pulling her sunglasses down her nose, looking right into his eyes. “I would have thought you were too smart to fall for a girl like her.
Pine Manor?
Really!”

“Just because you're going to Wellesley . . .”

“A-ha! You
were
paying attention!”

“Why do you want to go there?”

“Because I want a brilliant career and because I want to date boys at MIT,” she said, smiling wickedly. “What are you doing going out with a girl who's going to
finishing
school, better known as ‘Pine
Mattress
'? That's not enough for a smart, smart boy like you.”

“What would you know about it?”

“I've grown up watching you, Jack Kilvert,” Emma whispered. “I know more about it than you do. . . .”

Jack had wanted to kiss Emma right there. He had fallen in love with her three days before—the minute she'd handed him her towel. He'd fought the feelings for seventy-two hours, and he'd continue to battle them for another few days. He and Ruth Ann had been going steady. But Emma was right—Ruth Ann wasn't enough for him. He'd felt guilty by how bored he felt talking to her. He tried to tell himself that her beauty would be enough to make any man happy—and that what he had with her would be enough for just about anyone. Why not for him?

And then, along came Emma . . .

She had the most brilliant way of twisting his heart by flattering and putting him down, all at the same time. The practice had never failed. She'd won him over by making him want, more than anything in the world, to make her believe the best about him.

The crazy thing was, Emma had more in common with Ruth Ann than he was sharp enough to see. So much, in those early days, had to do with the outsides of things. They looked like such a good couple, they forgot to actually become one. Their hearts were completely alien to each other. Jack had never guessed what Emma really wanted, the importance of what—eventually—would steal her from him and Nell.

Had she ever really loved him? Or had she just wanted to prove to herself that she could get him?

Now, alone in the night with their daughter, he was racked by the storm inside him, a storm that put the lightning bolts and thunder cracks outside to shame: to make up for it, he rocked his little girl as gently as he could. “It's okay, Nell,” he said. “Everything's fine. . . .”

The words sounded so feeble. Could Nell feel his heart crashing against his ribs? If she had any idea of the thoughts in his head, the words he'd like to scream at her mother for leaving them like this, she'd never rest again.

The storm trailed away across Long Island Sound, leaving peace and cool, clean air behind it. The humidity had broken. More amazing, Nell was sound asleep. Her breath was as steady as it used to be when she was tiny and Emma was there. She didn't even flinch when Jack lay her down in her bed.

“Nell?” he said out loud, to test her. She snored quietly and didn't stir.

Jack knew exhaustion when he saw it. She had tired herself out. Outside, the sky was clear. He checked his watch: five-thirty. He was wrapped so tight, he thought he might explode. Although the heat was gone, he was burning up. If he hurried, he could run down for a quick swim. The beach was less than a minute away.

Tying on his running shoes, he checked on Nell once more: out cold. He slipped out silently, closing the door behind him. He began to jog down the winding road, but it turned into a sprint. He raced against the feelings inside. His feet pounded, loud in his ears. The beach was asleep. Overhead, the stars blazed in the dark blue sky. He wanted to shout and wail, wake up the world. Wake up Emma.

When he got to the boardwalk—the place he had first met his wife—he slowed down. His chest hurt, and he slapped his hand over his heart. What if he died right now? It would be so easy, the pain would stop, the confusion of hating Emma, resenting her for leaving him with Nell and no idea how to do it all. But the idea of abandoning Nell made him straighten up, shake his head to clear the bad thoughts.

A layer of gray hung in the east, lightening the sky with approaching dawn. The stars were white globes, with the morning star shining brightest of all. Jack sat on the boardwalk bench to take off his shoes. Then he saw Stevie.