Keys to the Castle (2 page)

Sara pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes to stop the flow of tears, and drew in a breath through parted lips. “It isn't fair.”

She whirled away from her sister then, facing the ocean, and she screamed into the oncoming tide,
“It! Isn't! Fair!”

The thunder of the water swallowed her words, and when the surf sucked outward again it seemed to take her fury with it, leaving her only tired, and drained. Her shoulders slumped.

Dixie passed her a crumpled tissue from her pocket, and Sara blew her nose. After a moment, they started walking again.

“It's just that . . . I feel like I've used up all my chances, you know?” Sara's voice was quieter now, resigned. “I'll be fifty in a couple of years. Can you believe that? And there's nothing left for me to do, no one for me to be. No more surprises. No more possibilities. I had my shot. And this trip to France . . . it just seems like someone forgot to tell me it's over.”

Dixie was shaking her head, curls bouncing in the wind, before Sara finished speaking. “That's why you've got to go, Sara. You know that. Because until you deal with it—with every last single detail that Daniel left you to deal with—it won't be over. And you'll spend the rest of your life wondering why it ever was at all.”

They walked in silence for a while, the heavy sand sucking at their sneakers, the whoosh and grumble of the surf their only companion. And then Sara said, “Do you have any idea how jealous I am of you?”

Dixie stopped in her tracks, staring at her. Her astonishment was genuine.
“Me?”

Sara nodded. “Jeff, the twins, the way your phone is always ringing and it's always someone you want to talk to, the way your house always smells like cinnamon rolls—”

“And wet laundry and burned popcorn,” Dixie finished, with a small shake of her head. She looked up at her sister, doubt and puzzlement in her eyes. “I always thought you were disappointed in me,” she admitted, shifting her gaze briefly, as though embarrassed. “You worked so hard to get us both out of here . . . it was so important to you that I go to college . . . and what do I do after two years but drop out and marry Jeff and spend the rest of my life trying to have babies?”

Sara and Dixie had grown up in a single-wide trailer home on the outskirts of a fishing town on the mainland. The whole town smelled like diesel fuel and fish guts. Though less than thirty nautical miles from where they stood, it was a lifetime away from the peaceful resort island of Little John.

Sara said, “You live in a place where people ride their bicycles to town. You work in a bookstore. You can walk to the beach. You have macaroni and cheese for dinner.” Sara stopped, and took a breath, not wanting to sound maudlin. “You're right. When we were kids, all I wanted for both of us was to get away from this godforsaken coast. I just never intended to go quite so far. That's why I came back here. I know I've stayed too long. But . . . what's here, what you have, is everything I've always wanted. And for a while I almost believed I could have it, too.”

Dixie slipped her arm around Sara's waist, hugging her briefly. “Remember how, after school, we used to ride our bikes over to Sandy Point and build sandcastles on the beach?”

Sara smiled, remembering. “Some of them were really out of control. Huge.”

“And you used to tell me stories about the princesses that lived there, and make believe we were them.”

“I remember,” Sara said softly.

“You,” Dixie told her, looking into her eyes, “are the reason I have everything I've always wanted. And you can stay with me as long as you like.”

Sara was silent as they climbed the sandy wooden steps that led up to the street, away from the surf and the wind, and made their way back home.

Sara had met Daniel at one of those ultra-exclusive Manhattan parties for which you had to have not only an invitation, but three references and a bodyguard to get in. Sting was there, and someone said Oprah was supposed to show, but she never did. Sara was there as a guest of a prospective client who wanted to impress her with his connections—or, more likely, didn't want to miss the party and, since Sara was only in town for one night, saw no choice but to bring her along.

There must have been two hundred people in attendance. The party spilled out of the penthouse apartment and onto the rooftop terrace, which was decorated with thousands of tiny white lights and exotic orchids that would never survive the cool, windy spring night. Sara preferred to remain indoors where the party was slightly less raucous, and she was glancing at her watch for perhaps the fifth time in the past half hour and wondering whether she had been here long enough to politely take her leave, or whether anyone would notice at all if she simply slipped out the door, when a voice spoke behind her. It was male, faintly but exotically accented, and gently chiding. “No, no—it's far too early for you to leave. If you do, you'll never be invited to an A-list party again.”

She forced a polite professional-party smile to her lips before she turned to greet the intruder. “I can't tell you how unhappy that would make me.”

She remembered thinking that he wasn't particularly handsome. His nose was too sharp, his forehead too high, his lips a trifle too full. He wore his dark hair unfashionably long and loose about his shoulders. He was tall and thin, and wore a white silk shirt, light enough to see through, untucked over faded jeans. She thought the embroidery at the cuff was pretentious. But there was warmth in his cocoa eyes, and something that she could only describe as an intense and brilliant interest, as though everything about the world fascinated him; as though he couldn't get enough of learning about it.

She, on the other hand, was carefully cool and precise and disinterested. She wore Vera Wang. Her dark hair was upswept to display her long neck—which she knew was her best feature—and teardrop diamond earrings. Her makeup was impeccable. She was elegant, in control, and unapproachable, a look that she had mastered, along with so many other lies, over the years. Yet somehow the look had not worked with him.

And although she generally would have, at that point, politely excused herself and moved away, she was intrigued enough to add, “How do you know how long I've been here, anyway?”

“Because I've watched you since you entered,” he replied, “forty-two minutes ago. I've watched you check the time on five different occasions and I've watched you finish that silly orange drink a little too fast. So I've brought you another. What is it, anyway?”

She lifted an eyebrow, hesitating a moment before setting aside her empty glass and accepting the full one he offered. “It's a mango martini,” she said.

“Sounds dreadful.”

“It is.”

He laughed. “Then you shall simply stand here and hold it and pretend to enjoy the hospitality and inventiveness of our hosts,
eh bien
?”

“You're French,” she observed, placing the accent.

“I used to be,” he admitted. “I've lived in North America now for so many years that I have to practice my accent for ten minutes in the morning before I can go about in public.”

That made her laugh a little, and the small lines at the corners of his eyes deepened a little as he observed, gently, “There, now. That's so much better. You have the saddest smile I've ever seen.”

And before she could even react to that, he thrust out his hand and announced, “I am Daniel Orsay. I am a poet, and currently the darling of the avant-garde literary set, or so I've been told. Please don't apologize that you've never heard of me. I'm a very bad poet.”

She accepted his hand, and he held her fingers, in the way of Europeans, as she tilted her head at him in skeptical amusement. “But charming.”

“Which is precisely how one gets invited to parties such as this without being either rich or famous.”

He held her hand a little too long, which threatened to make her flustered. She withdrew her fingers and dropped her eyes, taking a sip of the too-sweet martini. “I'm Sara,” she said, looking up at him again. “Sara Graves. And I'm not rich or famous either, I'm afraid.”

“Impossible.”
He seemed to use French pronunciation solely to amuse her, his accent exaggerated. “Do you think we might have stumbled into the wrong party by mistake? Surely, it is so!” Then, smoothly lapsing back into easy cocktail chatter, “What do you do, Sara?”

“I sell things.” The stupid martini was giving her a headache, possibly because she was sipping it too fast again.

“What kinds of things?”

“Things that people don't need and don't want.”

“You must be very good, then.”

Her lips tightened in acknowledgment. “I am.”

“But not very happy, I think.”

She was annoyed, and wanted to argue, but she didn't know what to say. So she took another gulp of her drink and drew a breath to take her leave but he forestalled her in the very instant she was about to speak. Head inclined toward her curiously, eyes filled with that deep and genuine interest, he inquired, “Where is it that you sell these unwanted things to people who don't need them?”

“Chicago,” she told him, finishing off her drink. “I work for Martin and Indlebright Marketing in Chicago.” She flipped a business card from her tiny vintage evening purse and gave it to him. “Call us sometime. We'll make people believe you're a
good
poet.”

“Chicago?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “How can you be happy there? You have the sea in your eyes.”

That took her aback, but she recovered quickly, plastering another determinedly distant smile on her face. “It was nice to meet you, Daniel. Good luck with your poetry.”

He fingered her business card thoughtfully as she turned to move through the crowd. “Good-bye, Sara Graves of the sad smile and the sea-watching eyes,” he said softly. “I will call you.”

But it wasn't that casual promise, which she did not expect to be kept, that caused Daniel Orsay, poet, to linger in her memory long after she left the party, after she left Manhattan, after she returned to Chicago and tried, with grim determination, to step back into the routine. It was that he knew. Even before she did, he knew that the life she had always believed she was meant for was over. And by the time he tried to call her, it was too late.

Behind her, Sara heard the sliding glass door open, and close. She was surprised, because she knew Dixie was upstairs, wrestling the boys into the tub. And then she heard the click of a lighter, and smelled the first whiff of tobacco on the chill night air. Dixie liked to pretend she didn't know Jeff came outside to sneak a smoke after dinner every night. Jeff liked to pretend he kept a secret. And Sara just kept quiet.

She was in the lawn chair on the patio, bundled up in gloves, a wool scarf, and a stadium blanket, watching the wind toss the stars around overhead. The sound of the surf was like a distant sigh, in and out, in and out. And, from inside the house, there were muffled giggles, Dixie's stern mother-voice, and a television somewhere in the background. Jeff stood silently in the shadows cast by the kitchen light on the patio, and smoked.

In a moment he said, “It's no trouble, you know. To drive you to the airport.”

“It's a lot of trouble,” Sara said, “and I appreciate the offer. But I'd rather have my own car. Thanks.”

After a moment, he came over to her. He was a big man, a high school football star now twenty pounds overweight thanks to Dixie's good cooking. He owned his own construction company, which was no small thing on an island whose off-season sustenance depended entirely on construction and development.

He sat down at one of the little café chairs drawn up at the bistro table near her, dwarfing it with his bulk. The tip of his cigarette glowed orange in the dark, and the fragrance drifted through the night. He said, “You know, it's been good for Dixie, having you here.”