Folly Cove (12 page)

“Anyway, Lucy's a perfect name,” Elly said as she considered how to pose the question Laura wanted her to ask Anne. “Look, I need to ask you something else.”

“Sure,” Anne said. “Whatever.”

“Is there something going on with you and Jake?”

“Oh, Christ,” Anne said. “No! I've been trying to avoid him, but Jake came into the pub while I was working. Laura saw us and turned into a screaming witch herself.” Anne narrowed her eyes at Elly. “Wait. Did you come here because Laura asked you to?”

“Don't be an idiot. I would have come anyway. I've missed you.” Elly kept her eyes steady on Anne's face despite the complicated, shifting emotions there. Anne was angry now and Elly couldn't blame her.

“I can't believe she asked you to spy on me! Or that you'd do that for her!” Anne dislodged the baby from her breast, put Lucy up to her shoulder, and patted her back.

“I'm not spying,” Elly said. “I'm only running interference because Laura's hurting and freaking the hell out. She doesn't know about Lucy, so she's still imagining that you're hot after her man. She still hasn't gotten over what happened with you and Jake.”

“That's ridiculous.” Anne rose and paced, the baby curled against her shoulder. “You know there's never been anything between Jake and me!”

“Tell me again what happened that summer,
exactly.
” Elly felt disoriented as she tried to follow Anne's agitated movements. There wasn't much space to walk inside the cottage: her sister followed a short,
U-shaped path from the living room into the galley kitchen, then back through the living room.

The baby's round cheek was turned to one side. Lucy's skin was pink and soft-looking, her lashes like moth wings, dark against that pale skin. Elly felt another sharp constriction beneath her rib cage.

Anne was standing on the braided rug in front of the windows. Behind her, the sky had darkened to violet, nearly the same color as the ocean. It was difficult to tell where the sea ended and the sky began.

“Fine.” Anne took a deep breath, then said, “I was staying at their house and taking care of the horses while Laura and Kennedy were away. Jake was at a conference and came home really late the day before I was supposed to leave. I was sleeping in the guest room upstairs. It was hot, so I wasn't wearing a nightgown. I woke up because I felt cold all of a sudden.”

Anne stopped talking and put a hand over her eyes.

“And Jake came into your room?” Bits and pieces of the story were coming back to Elly now; she was remembering the tearful call Anne had made to her in Los Angeles after it happened. Laura had already called Elly that same evening to describe a very different version. Back then Elly hadn't known who to believe.

Anne said, “Jake was standing next to the bed. He'd pulled the sheet down to look at me. He'd unzipped his pants. He was touching himself.” Her voice was stilted.

“My God.” Hearing her sister's flat tone erased any lingering doubts Elly might have had about Anne telling the truth. “Then what?”

“I yelled at him to get out of my room. Jake ran away like he was being chased by a rabid dog.”

“I bet. What happened after that?”

“Nothing.” Anne shrugged. “I got dressed and took off.”

“You didn't talk to Jake?”

Anne shook her head. “Not that day. He tried talking to me about it a few days later, and apologized. I thought I could forgive him until that Christmas party two years ago.”

Elly nodded. “When Laura saw the two of you.”

“Right. I had tried to avoid seeing both of them anytime I came home, but the inn was having that big anniversary Christmas party and we were all here.” Anne frowned. “Everyone but you. Why was that?”

“I had a singing job.” Elly didn't say that it was only for an advertising jingle, or that she'd spent that particular Christmas Eve heartbroken and drunk and singing karaoke in a bar with a bunch of strangers, because Hans, the man she'd been in love with, had left her.

Anne didn't ask more about it, thankfully. She said, “Anyway, Jake cornered me in the back hallway during that party, said we needed to talk. Then he pulled me against him and started kissing me.”

“You're kidding.”

“No!” Anne said. She made a face. “Well, he didn't really
kiss
me. It was more like he mashed his mouth on mine like you see actors do in the movies. Like they're sucking each other's lips off. Don't you ever wonder who really kisses like that? Well, Jake does.”

“Did you scream or anything?” Elly already knew from Laura that Anne had not.

“No. I thought about it,” Anne said. “But I didn't want Kennedy and Laura to be upset, so I just tried to shove him off me. Then Laura walked in and saw us.” Anne frowned. “That was bizarre, too. It was almost like Jake wanted her to catch him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for instance, why didn't Jake wait and try to corner me upstairs in my room? Or even outside? Why do it with his wife in the next room?”

“Maybe he didn't have a chance to think things through,” Elly said. “Or he'd had too much to drink.”

“He didn't seem drunk.” Anne went into the bedroom to lay the baby down.

Elly stood up and followed her. “Wow. She's out like a light.”

“Yeah, Lucy turns into a drunken sailor after she eats. That's why I always sing her that song.” Anne sighed. “I'm pissed off at Laura for
not believing me, but I feel bad for her, too. If Jake did these things to me, what's he doing to other women?”

“I never thought of that,” Elly said. “Maybe you and I should do some detective work.”

“No way! I'm staying away from him. From Laura, too.”

“All right. I'll do it,” Elly said. “If I can find some other women Jake has approached, Laura will have to believe you.”

“Don't bother, Elly. Really. I'm done with Laura.”

Elly raised her eyes to meet Anne's furious gaze and smiled. “No, you're not,” she said. “We're sisters. We won't ever be done with each other.”

T
he riding lesson seemed to last forever. Laura glanced around, looking for her daughter.

She'd forced Kennedy to come out to the barn with her after school. Laura had tacked up the horses herself because she was afraid the ornery bay mare, Zelda, might blow up her belly if Kennedy saddled her. The clever animal would then expel her breath after her rider was seated, causing the saddle to slip upside down and dump the rider unceremoniously onto the ground. Laura had found this out the hard way: once, a student had gotten dragged across the ring when the saddle slipped and her boot was caught in the stirrup. Fortunately it was one of her tougher riders, a girl with a good sense of humor. One lawsuit could shut down the stables.

Today she'd put Kennedy to work cleaning stalls. Now her daughter looked pickle-faced with misery as she pushed a wheelbarrow of manure out onto the pile behind the barn.

It was good for children to do chores after school, Laura reminded herself, trying to tame the anxiety that so often flared up where her daughter was concerned.

Lately Kennedy seemed to have lost interest in everything, dragging through the days like a daydreaming geriatric. Was that really due to impending puberty and the roller coaster of heavy hormones?
Or was something going on at school? Maybe Laura should see the guidance counselor, check in with the teachers.

Or—and this was Laura's worst fear—maybe Kennedy was being affected by the fact that her parents weren't getting along, or by Laura's own stupid guilty secret.

Guilty or not, to cheer herself up, Laura allowed herself to dwell on Tom for a few minutes. Each time she did this felt like a welcome reprieve from her own life where, no matter how hard she worked or how determined she was to be cheerful, everything felt like a slog. Sometimes it felt as if her family were living on top of a sinkhole that only she could feel caving in, yet Laura didn't know how to warn them. And maybe warning them would be worse, anyway, because that would mean acknowledging that the problems between herself and Jake were too numerous to overcome.

She'd met Tom in high school, back when he was the skinny kid who sat next to her in algebra class. Glasses, braces, acne, a stutter: Tom was every jock's punching bag. He was so miserable at their private school that by the end of sophomore year he'd transferred.

Laura, on the other hand, was a high school standout. Top grades, involved in school council and various clubs, a popular girl who managed to dodge most of the bitchy infighting among the alpha girls because she spent most of her free time at a riding stable in Gloucester.

You were the only one at that school who ever had a kind word for me,
Tom had messaged Laura a few months ago on Facebook.
After my wife died last year, I vowed to reconnect with people I cared about. I wanted to tell you how grateful I am to you for making my time in school a little less hellish.

Laura had been touched but surprised by his message. She'd had to dig out her high school yearbook to even remember who Tom was.

It wasn't altruism,
she'd messaged back.
You're the one who got me through chemistry. Did you stay in science? You were good at it.

He had. They quickly graduated from Facebook to e-mailing, exchanging updates about their families and work lives. Tom had started an environmental company; one of their products was a cost-effective water-treatment system that removed mercury, lead, arsenic, and other harmful chemicals.

Wow! You're saving the world,
she'd told him.

One drop of water at a time,
he'd agreed.
I'd feel prouder, except my work is so fun it doesn't feel like a job.

By then she had trolled through his Facebook photos. Most were postings of gadgets his company had patented. Among the few personal photos were some of his two children, both boys in high school. There were no photographs of Tom's deceased wife, but Laura had Googled the obituary and discovered she died of a brain aneurysm at age thirty-nine.

The only two pictures of himself that Tom had posted showed him astride a mountain bike against a woodsy backdrop. It was difficult to tell what he looked like, because he was wearing a helmet and sunglasses. When Laura clicked on a link to his company, there were glossy pictures of the company's products and high-tech labs. Nothing personal.

There was a lull in their communication in June and July. Not because Laura felt guilty about their correspondence—not then, not yet—but because she was busy. Then, last month, Tom had e-mailed her to ask how her summer was going, and Laura e-mailed him to ask advice because she needed a new laptop. At least that was the reason she gave him: in truth, she had begun to realize how much she missed their correspondence. How much she needed a friend who had nothing to do with her life.

Laura loved hearing Tom's thoughts on everything from robots to politics. He was curious about everything; recently, he'd inspired her to buy an astronomy map for her phone and had texted her once before a meteor storm.
I'll watch the sky show with you.

Laura still hadn't felt guilty. She had even mentioned Tom in an offhand way to Jake, who said he was pleased that she'd reconnected with a childhood friend.

The turning point came a few weeks ago, when Tom sent her an innocuous photo of a red bicycle with a message more personal than any of the others:
We rode bikes at my house one day after school. You borrowed my sister's bike. You didn't know it, but that day was my birthday. You were my best present.

One warm spring afternoon at the end of sophomore year, Tom had offered to help Laura with geometry. It all came back to her: she'd
gone to his house after school, where they'd studied at the kitchen table. Tom was a patient tutor.

They'd ridden bikes to the park after finishing their homework. By then she'd stopped noticing the braces, the acne, Tom's occasional stutter. Instead, Laura saw him as someone who made her feel so comfortable in her own skin that she didn't care what her hair looked like or whether her laugh sounded like a “dying crow's,” as one particularly vicious girl in her class had told her. Being with Tom was as easy as being with herself.

Tom transferred schools soon afterward and she never saw him again. But seeing the photo of the red bicycle, Laura experienced a sudden pang of nostalgia for the girl she had been. For how free and hopeful she'd felt back then, and how convinced she was that the best years of her life were still ahead of her.

Communicating with Tom wasn't just about catching up with a high school friend. It was a way to travel back in time, to recapture that rapturous sense of possibility.

Laura had texted him back after seeing the photo:
Now it's your turn to keep me going. Things aren't so great in my life right now.

And so it had begun: her confessions to him and his support of her, no matter what dumb things she wrote. She poured out her worries: money, Kennedy, the stables. Funny anecdotes interspersed with fears about aging. Her concern that she'd taken on too much and wouldn't ever make her family happy.

The only topic Laura considered off-limits was Jake. She did not want to be unfaithful to her husband in any way.

Still, her conscience bothered her. She couldn't go a day without some communication with Tom. She had bought the prepaid phone a month ago and had come to think of it as her lifeline.

Tom had suggested meeting in person, but she'd refused.
I'm not interested in an affair,
she had texted back.

Sorry if I gave you the wrong idea. Just coffee,
he replied
. I respect your marriage, but I want to look at you while we talk. To hear your wild laugh again.

She'd smiled at that but had refused him anyway.
I'm not in a good place right now. And anyway, I don't laugh like that anymore.

What she hadn't said, even to Tom, was that there were many days when she didn't laugh at all. That, lately, depression had set in, and she'd been going back to bed after Jake was at work and Kennedy was at school, once the breakfast dishes and barn chores were done. She slept for hours and woke only when her alarm went off in the early afternoon, feeling drugged and heavy.

But Laura couldn't stop thinking about him. She sneaked in phone time, hiding in the bedroom or bathroom to text Tom even while Kennedy was watching television or doing God knows what on her computer.

Last night she'd done something that made her face go hot with shame even now, as she stood in the center of the riding ring watching her students: on a whim, she had texted Tom a picture of herself with her shirt unbuttoned. She'd taken the picture with her hand caressing the curve of one breast, because she had been thinking of his hand on her skin.

Tom's reply was instant:
I want to kiss you there. And everywhere.

Laura shivered now, thinking of these words, and folded her arms over her breasts. Her husband made love to her only when she initiated things; they hadn't touched each other in months. How wonderful, and how terrible, that as a result, she had gotten herself into this strange position of longing for a man she hadn't seen since they were children. How wrong was that? She didn't want to think about that. She only knew that she had to stop feeling this way if she was ever going to fix her marriage and find some measure of contentment in her life, which at the moment felt like all drudgery, all the time.

She began barking orders at the riders, the same commands over and over: “Heels down, everyone! Straight backs! No, Melanie, post on the
diagonal
. Watch your horse's shoulder! Cara, up out of the saddle! Up, up, up! Heels down! Back straight! Tully, don't ride the reins. No, don't let the horse crowd you against the rail, Jennifer. Use your legs to guide your horses, people!
Legs!
”

This was a full class—six riders, all middle school girls. Laura felt like she was getting whiplash trying to watch them trot around the ring. Finally she put Blizzard, an obedient palomino gelding, up in front. Melanie was riding him; she picked things up faster than the others. She and Blizzard would help pace the other horses.

The afternoon had turned damp and gray. Fog was blurring the woods of Dogtown beyond the riding ring in a way that reminded Laura of the “end of the world” game she'd played with her sisters: one of them would claim that the end of the world lay beyond the fog, and they would dare each other to run down the lawn below the inn toward the cliff.

Sometimes, if you ran fast enough with your eyes squinted shut against the damp, it did feel like you could tumble off the edge of the earth and plunge into nothingness. This was especially true if they ran toward Aunt Flossie's house and cottage, where there was the real danger of hurling themselves off the rocky cliff.

The cottage: Anne was there! “She's got a baby. Did you know Anne had a baby?” Elly had demanded when she returned to Laura's last night after visiting their little sister.

At first Laura didn't believe it. Why hadn't their mother told her? Surely she must have seen the baby when Anne arrived!

Finally, when Elly convinced her, Laura was so shocked that she had to pour herself a second glass of wine. She'd opened the bottle before dinner. Always a mistake. If she opened a bottle while she cooked, then poured two or three glasses for each of them at dinner, the bottle was gone in an evening. As if the calories weren't bad enough, there was the expense that didn't bear thinking about. Laura bought only the cheapest wine tolerable. But even at ten dollars a bottle, a bottle of wine a night translated into $310 a month. She and Jake couldn't afford that. Not if they wanted to buy groceries.

Though some nights Laura would rather have had wine than food.

To Elly she'd said, “I never even knew Anne wanted kids.”

“I'm not sure even Anne knew that,” Elly said, and told Laura about the writer dumping Anne and leaving her to go back to New York.

Laura was sympathetic at first. Then the wary look in Elly's eyes caused her to suspect her sister was holding something back. Finally it hit her. “He's married, right?”

Yes, Elly had admitted, adding that the guy had gone back to his wife, which was why Anne had left Puerto Rico.

“Anne really did believe he was getting divorced,” Elly said. “He
told her he was separated from his wife and working on it. I guess we all believe what we want when it comes to love.”

By then Elly was on her second glass of wine, too, and dinner wasn't even on the table. Luckily, Jake had called to say he'd be later than usual.

“What a fool,” Laura had said to Elly. “How could Anne let herself get pregnant? Especially when he was
married
?”

“She was in love,” Elly said simply. “Really, you should see her. Anne's a hot mess.”

“She should have been smart enough not to get involved with a married man in the first place,” Laura snapped, though inwardly she had flinched, thinking of herself and Tom. But no: she was not involved with him. Just acting stupid because she was lonely. All of that was about to stop.