Footsteps (5 page)

“I know, Pop. You know I’m not ashamed of
this. I love you, and this, and the business. But I don’t love the
work. I love the work I do. I love the design, not the build. It’s
just the other side of the same coin.”

“You love the office, not the job site.”

Well, that wasn’t true, either. He loved the
job site, and, until he and Peter had gone out on their own, he’d
loathed the office. He’d worked for his father from the age of
fourteen until he passed his licensing exam—ten years. And he’d
loved almost all of it. But that job was about building someone
else’s vision. He wanted to be the one who saw the reality before
it was reality.

“Pop. Come on. Cook the burgers. Chronicle
my failures as the family scion tonight.”

Carlo Sr. chuckled. “I’m gonna die, you
know. And then what?”

His father was a couple of years past sixty
and strong as a bull. Built like one, too, with the weathered,
barrel-shaped body of a man who’d lived his life working outside,
using that body as a tool. “Today? You planning on kicking today,
over the grill?”

“Smartass.”

“Good. I’m gonna go intervene before Trey
actually inters Elsa in the sand. I think she’d lie there and let
him do it, too.” With an affectionate slap on his father’s back,
Carlo turned and headed down the beach.

Once he’d freed the dog—and, after some
lingering consideration, his brother—from their sand graves, he
took Trey and Elsa into Carmen’s cottage for a nap. Elsa was nearly
as good a nanny as Natalie was. He could leave them alone in the
house and, as long as he stayed within sight and earshot of the
cottage, he knew Trey would be safe. So he hosed his kid off in
Carmen’s shower and then tucked him in on the daybed in the little
spare room. Elsa, still dusty with sand, lay down on the floor, her
big body against the daybed.

Carlo ruffled Trey’s damp hair and then
Elsa’s sandy ears. “One hour, pal. No less.” He pointed to the
old-fashioned Big Ben clock on the side table. “You stay put until
the big hand is on the one and the little hand is on the three. Got
it?”

“Yes Daddy but I didn’t see a shark yet.”
The only punctuation that sentence got was a yawn at the end.

“You’ve got your whole life to see a shark,
pal. One hour won’t blow your chance.” He kissed his son’s forehead
and, once Trey’s eyes drooped shut, he left the cottage.

Carmen was ambling up from the water as
Carlo stepped off her little porch. He hadn’t seen her since they’d
first arrived. Even more people-averse than Carlo, she tended to
make herself a little scarce on this day—at least until things
quieted down around dusk. The crowd had bled over from the public
beach onto her private space, and usually she hated that, but on
this day, the whole beach was part of the party.

She was wearing a wetsuit and carrying her
board. The surf wasn’t good at this point in the day, but Carlo
knew she’d just been out a ways, finding some quiet, sitting on her
board and watching the party from a peaceful distance. They met at
the fire pit, and she laid her board over one of the Adirondack
chairs that circled it.

As she worked the suit off, revealing a
small, turquoise bikini, she asked, “Did I see you take Trey
in?”

“Yeah. If I didn’t get him sleeping now,
he’d crash before the bonfire, and I’d never hear the end of
that.”

Her brow creased at that, but then smoothed
quickly. “I guess I won’t go in, then.” She pulled her long, dark
hair free of its ponytail and tossed her head to loosen the wet
tangles.

“You still trying to hide?” That was
antisocial even for Carmen. “Are you hiding from somebody in
particular?”

“It’s nothing. I’m just not feeling it this
year, is all.” She draped her suit over a chair. “Did Peter
show?”

“Not yet. He was iffy on coming at all. He
had his hands full last night. You’re not trying to avoid
him
are you?” Peter had made a play for his sister once, a
few years ago. But Carmen hadn’t been interested, and he had known
better than to behave like his usual, Neanderthal self with Carlo’s
sister. But Carmen, a landscape designer, was working a job with
them, and she’d spent some time lately with Peter in that capacity.
If he was getting handsy again… “Is he giving you trouble?”

Carmen huffed impatiently. “No. And do you
seriously think I couldn’t handle him if he were? Don’t be all big
brother on me, Carlo. I’m not avoiding anything but the town of
Quiet Cove. I’m just not in the mood for this today.” She rolled
her brown eyes at him and pushed past him, walking up onto the
porch and pulling a tube of sunscreen from a small cabinet she kept
up there. “Go find something better to do than invent a soap opera
for me. I’m just grouchy. End of story.” She smeared sunscreen over
her arm.

Grouchy was her default setting. As
beautiful as she was, as talented and funny and smart, as great a
life as she had, his sister had trouble being happy. That was
another legacy of their mother’s untimely death. Carmen had been
twenty-four and not much more than a year out of college when it
had happened, and her life had taken a sharp U-turn. She and Carlo
had filled in for their parents—the one who’d died, and the one
who’d stopped. Carlo had already been working in Providence and
settling into a career. Things had changed for him, but not so
drastically. Carmen had been about to move to Europe. She’d had
much bigger plans for her life than Quiet Cove. She’d been the free
spirit of the family, the big dreamer, the one who wanted the whole
world in her life. Instead, she lived a mile from the home she’d
grown up in. He knew that, despite her appreciation of the life
she’d made, she still felt stymied by fate.

He went up onto the porch and took the tube
from her. Understanding, she pulled her hair over her shoulder and
turned her back to him. “Sorry, Caramel. Just looking out for you.”
He smoothed sunscreen onto her back.

“I know. And you know I don’t need a minder.
I’ll hang out here and keep track of Trey. Go mind Joey. I’m sure
he needs to get bailed out of something by now.”

Laughing, Carlo handed her the tube and
stepped out onto the beach.

~oOo~

Carlo spent the day on the beach, mingling
with townsfolk and tourists, playing in the surf with Trey and
Elsa, getting in a few games of volleyball and cornhole, helping
his father at the grill. Luca was the only sibling who hadn’t yet
showed. That would get him some heat when he finally did make an
appearance, but Carlo didn’t expect his brother to care. The sons
had filled fairly predictable roles in their family—Carlo, the
firstborn, was the responsible one. Joey, the youngest boy, was the
goofball. John, second-youngest son, the quiet brooder. Luca, third
child and second son, was the rebel—always on the wrong side of
their father, which was why Carlo’s refusal to stay on with the
company was such a continuing disappointment to their father. In
Carlo Sr.’s highly traditional mind, if Carlo did not want it, then
he had no choice but to groom his second son, the next in line. And
he could not tolerate that idea.

The perfect irony, of course, was that Luca
was the only one of the boys who loved the job and the company like
it was literally in his blood. He was a brilliant craftsman and
savvy about the business. He would be great in their father’s
place. Possibly better than their father. But Carlo Sr. would never
see through the rebellion, and Luca seemed incapable of anything
but.

After dark the night played out as usual—the
crowd dwindled down to a fraction of its peak, bathing suits were
covered with jackets and sweats, and Carlo and John helped their
father build up a big bonfire. Luca had simply never showed; he was
blowing off the whole day, which told Carlo there had been some
kind of fresh dustup between him and their father.

There were s’mores for the kids (and some of
the adults), the beverage of choice shifted from beer to liquor,
and, as always, a few people brought out guitars, John among them.
No matter who had the guitars, no matter whether they’d ever met
before, they always knew enough of the same songs that they could
play together, and enough of the people sitting on logs or blankets
or beach chairs or simply in the sand knew the words that they were
always able to get a righteous sing-along going. It was a
quintessentially summer thing for Carlo. The sort of ridiculously
picture-postcard moment only found in cheesy movies. Or on a beach
in a ridiculously picture-postcard town like the Cove. He loved it
with his whole heart.

His father was settled comfortably in a
beach chair, the happy glow of the day still suffusing his face.
This was always a good day for him. Even the first year after their
mother, he’d done okay on this day. Carmen sat next to him, and
they were holding hands. She looked content, too.

Joey had a little blonde on his lap, his
hand up the leg of her shorts.

Trey had dropped off to sleep in Rosa’s
arms, the remnant goop of his s’mores giving him a white and brown
goatee. Elsa was curled at the end of the log on which Carlo was
leaning, and he dropped his hand to nestle into her warm, soft fur.
He felt a peace he hadn’t felt in months. He’d needed this. He
needed the summer to cleanse the fall and the winter from his mind
and soul.

At this time last summer, Jenny had still
been with them. Things hadn’t been good between them, but he had
not realized it at the time. What he’d thought of as a another
rough patch had, in fact, been the beginning of their end. She’d
already been cheating on him, and by the end of the summer, she was
gone.

He shoved that thought away and turned his
head to look out over the water. As his eyes adjusted to the change
in light from the orange blaze of the fire to the inky blue of the
night sea, he realized that there was someone standing alone at the
tideline. In the faint illumination of mingled moonlight and
firelight, he made out a woman’s figure. Something about her seemed
lonely. Maybe it was that she seemed to be watching the bonfire, as
if wishing she were invited. She would be welcome, of course. This
was the tail end of a town party.

He had no idea from where he’d gotten the
idea of loneliness; all he could see was a silhouette, standing
where the water rushed over her ankles. He had no idea why he stood
and headed down the beach toward her, either. But he did.

As he came toward her, she turned and headed
away down the beach. “Hey, hold up. Join us, if you’d like. It’s
not a private party.”

She turned back, and he got a tickle that he
knew her somehow, but he wasn’t sure. Then she brought her left
hand up to tuck her errant hair behind her ear, and the moonlight
caught the massive ring on her finger. Dressed as she was in jeans
cuffed midway up her calves and a bulky fisherman’s sweater, her
hair loose and tossed by the sea breeze, he hadn’t recognized the
woman who’d worn the plum-colored sparkly dress so well the night
before. But that ring was unmistakable.

“Um…Sabina? Er…Mrs. Auberon, I mean?”

Sabina had merely been out walking. Alone at
the beach house facing an expansive, magnificent week entirely on
her own, with no James, no staff, no obligations for luncheons or
fittings or charity board meetings or galas, nothing but her own
time and her own company for seven—no,
eight
—glorious days,
she’d spent the first couple of hours simply being in the house. In
the quiet. Feeling veritably weightless without the constant
pressure of James’s gaze, or that of the people he’d tasked to keep
track of her, burdening her shoulders. She’d kicked off her pumps,
uncovered the furniture, made the bed, opened the windows. Then,
without bothering to change her clothes, she’d selected a book from
the library and sat out on a dune and read in the waning sunshine
for a while.

At James’s behest, she’d driven to the shore
in the afternoon, shortly after the museum docent’s luncheon. He’d
been gone, at the office, when she’d gotten home to pack. She’d
found her bags already packed for her and sitting neatly at the
foot of the sweeping center staircase. Not even pausing to wonder
what clothes he’d had packed for her week-long vacation from their
marriage, not even changing from her ‘philanthropic socialite on
the go’ slacks and pumps, she’d snatched up her Coach luggage and
trotted happily back to her BMW.

She’d spent the previous few hours thinking
about this fascinating new development, and she continued to ponder
it on the drive shoreward. By the time she pulled her bags from the
back of her car and carried them into the beach house, she’d become
quite certain that James planned to kill her—no, correction, to
have her killed—during this unusual week away. It was perfect,
really. She would have an ‘accident’ on the beach and he would
‘grieve’—
oh my sweet, silly Sabina, this is why I kept her so
close, she was always being reckless and getting hurt, she could
never be trusted to take proper care of herself, I’ll never forgive
myself for not going with her to the shore
—and then probably
open a hospital wing in her name. Then, after an appropriate amount
of time had passed, he would wed whatever hapless twenty-something
he probably had queued up already. One whose breasts hadn’t yet met
gravity. Not the little miss in last night’s white bandage dress.
He’d never deign to wed one of his extra confections, or any woman
who would behave so wantonly in public. He wanted purity in his
home.