Off Season (26 page)

Quickly, she turned her head so he would not see, hoping he would not recognize her red, red hair. Then she cursed herself for not removing the SurfSide Realty magnetic sign from the car door.

But when she looked back, Talbot was nowhere in sight.

She sat there for a moment, not knowing what to think. Perhaps her imagination had been running rampant on her again. Perhaps Hugh Talbot only wanted to ask Ben if he knew something about … nothing. Island cops, after all, often had far too much time on their un-callused hands off season.

Just as she decided to leave, a young girl came down the driveway of the house next to the museum. Rita
remembered that next door lived Dave Ashenbach, the guy who had died, whose granddaughter had found him. “Must be her,” Rita said, and watched with sadness as the little girl slowly walked away from what looked like an uninviting house.

They were home. Ben cranked down his window and inhaled a deep breath of Vineyard air—a little breezy, a little salty, a little damp. He smiled as the old Buick lumbered from the parking lot of the Vineyard airport, where he’d left it. This time, however, he wasn’t alone: his wonderful, beautiful wife sat beside him, and a heap of neat Christmas gifts—New York–bought Christmas gifts—were in the backseat: toys for the grandkids, pashminas for Amy and Jill, a Gucci bag for Carol Ann, and even a baby quilt for Rita’s baby, not that she’d need it with all the booties Hazel was making.

But the gifts did not matter. What mattered to Ben was the renewed spirit in his heart. With his life stretched out before him once again, he was charged with energy, as if he’d gone to bed a leper and awakened with clear skin.

First, he would reopen the museum. Now that Ashenbach was dead, Ben had no idea what would become of Mindy—poor kid—but chances were she’d be taken from the island or at least from the house next door. That sure would make things easier.

Next, he’d put in a separate shop on the grounds,
where kids could learn to make lobster traps and fishing nets and other fun useful crafts. And in the spring, he’d plant a garden, where they’d grow corn and squash and pumpkins that they could harvest in the fall, as the Indians had done in John, Jr.’s school play.

The best part was, Ashenbach wouldn’t be there to thwart the expansion.

He’d throw more effort into Sea Grove, too. Now that Charlie had up and gone, it was up to Rita and Ben to nail down those last two permits and get ready to break ground by tourist season. Six months would pass mighty quickly with so much to do.

As he reached the outskirts of town, he pulled over and stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Jill asked.

He leaned across the seat and gave her one gigantic kiss. “I love you,” he said when he was finished. “In case you didn’t know.”

She laughed and tugged down the visor of his hat. “You make me crazy,” she said.

“I know. Shall we go home and make sweet love?”

“Later, okay? I want to stop by the studio first and check the mail.”

He refused to let his good mood dissipate. “As madame wishes,” he said, pulling back onto the road. “And I won’t take it personally. In fact, I shall also check on Sea Grove, my investment properties. But be prepared,” he said, “that later I will fuck madame’s brains out.”

She snatched off his cap and swatted him with it.

Rita sat across from Hazel, watching her mother knit baby booties: acrylic orange fingernails flicked in and out of soft white yarn and little plastic needles. She must have made five or six pairs already.

“You never did that for Kyle,” Rita said.

“Never had the chance.”

Oh, Rita thought, that was right. Rita had been off-island when Kyle was born, staying with Hazel’s sister up in Worcester, hiding out in her illegitimate condition. She’d returned to the Vineyard when Kyle was four, but she had said he was three. Big for his age. Advanced. With White-Out and a copier, she’d doctored up his birth certificate and told everyone the sad, sad story about Kyle’s father, a GI who’d she met in Worcester who had been killed in Vietnam.

Ah, she thought silently now as she listened to the click, click of the needles, those were the days. When people were either too dumb to learn the truth, or too busy to care once the gossip-mongers ceased.

Now, there was no such thing as gossip—there was nothing to hide. Everything and everyone was “out there,” including single mothers and single grandmothers.

She—Rita Blair, for God’s sake—was beginning to feel all cozy and maternal and about to suggest tea when the telephone rang.

She pushed aside a pile of magazines and reached across the maple end table that had seen much better days, though Rita could not remember when. “SurfSide Realty,” she said with her most proper business voice. It was, after all, the middle of the morning and, who knew, maybe this was a client. Thankfully whoever it was could not see her in her pink chenille robe which, like the maple end table, had been purchased long ago.

She tied the long sash around her bulging middle.

“Rita?” the voice on the other end asked.

It was not a client. It was, speaking of babies, the unknowing father of her own. “Charlie,” she said. “How hot is it in Boca?”

“Hotter than Dick’s hatband,” Charlie replied, using an old saying that always drove Rita crazy because it
made absolutely no sense. “I just wanted to check up on you, see how you’re doing.”

Over the braided rug and across the room, Hazel put down the half-made booties. Rita turned from her and faced the window.

“Doing just fine, thanks,” she replied, then waited for the next beat.

“Have you talked to Ben?”

“As in Niles?” she asked. “As in our partner who’s married to the woman who once was my best friend? No. As a matter of fact, you’re not the only one looking for him.”

There was a pause. “Do you know where he is?”

“I think he’s off-island. I think he’s with Jill. I think she’s in New York.”

“Good,” Charlie replied. “Because Hugh Talbot called, and I thought it was kind of strange. He didn’t say why, but he was looking for Ben.”

Rita scowled. “I saw the sheriff, too. He told me the same.”

“It must be something out at Menemsha.”

“That’s what I thought, so I checked it out. The museum is fine.”

“Well,” Charlie said distantly, “good. I was afraid—”

“Yeah, well, no need. Everything’s fine, I guess.”

Another pause, and another breath drifted uncomfortably across the twelve hundred or so miles from his front door to hers.

“How the heck did Hugh find you way down there?” she asked.

“We serve together on a couple of island commissions. I left my number in a few places.”

Leave it to good old, reliable Charlie not to skip town.

“What about Sea Grove?” he asked. “When do the next permits come up?”

Rita gave him the information she knew he already
had: that eight construction permits were doled out on the first Tuesday of each month. They had missed November and December, but Ben had sworn he’d be in line next month.

“Well, we could start without the last ones,” Charlie was saying. It was a boring topic, and Rita really didn’t care.

“Sure,” she said. “Whatever.”

“Okay then,” Charlie said. “How’s Hazel?”

Rita told him Hazel was fine, but did not mention booties. “And how’s—what’s her name?”

“Marge,” Charlie said. “Marge is fine, too.”

“Good,” Rita said. “Well, thanks for the call. If I see Ben, I’ll tell him you were checking up on him.” She hung up before she could become more comfortable. Or more uncomfortable. On a whim she dialed Jill’s number, hoping there would be an answer, hoping to talk to her wandering friend.

But the telephone on North Water Street rang four times, then voice mail kicked in. Rita did not leave a message.

Mindy hated it that her mother had made her move back into the house with her. It was not the same without Grandpa. The smell of fish had been replaced by a cloud of perfume and cigarette smoke, and the soft static of Grandpa’s favorite two-way radio was now noisy bells and buzzers and people laughing and applauding on the television, on game shows mostly, people who wanted to be millionaires, though most never would.

But she didn’t want to tell Dr. Reynolds, because her mother said she had a plan, and if Mindy rocked the boat, the state would put her in a foster home like the kids in school who no one liked. Not that anyone liked Mindy, but at least she wasn’t an orphan.

Well, she still wasn’t sure her mother
wanted
her, not as a kid to raise. But her mother did say it was most important for their future—for her
plan
—if Mindy kept seeing Dr. Reynolds, if nothing happened that would piss off the people at the court.

Mindy didn’t really understand, but she decided it was best not to mention it to the doctor, who sat in Mindy’s room now and smiled as if the fact that Mindy was “home” would make everything all better.

“How do you feel about having your mother home?” Dr. Reynolds asked.

“It’s okay,” Mindy replied. “She shops a lot.” The money for all the clothes she bought was coming from the cash that Grandpa had always kept inside the kindling box for an emergency. Mindy did not think a “fashion crisis,” as her mother called it, was an emergency, but Grandpa was gone and he would never know.

Besides, her mother said there would soon be a lot of money coming. As long as Mindy kept cooperating. As long as she didn’t rock “the goddamn boat.”

“You’ve had a lot of changes in your short life,” the doctor went on. “Losing first your father and now your grandfather. And this awful incident with Mr. Niles.”

She wished the woman wouldn’t call him “Mr. Niles,” as if Ben didn’t have a first name. But instead of rocking the goddamn boat, Mindy said, “Yes.”

The doctor gestured outside. “Have you seen him at all? Mr. Niles?”

Mindy shook her head. With all the people around her lately, she’d almost forgotten about him. “He wasn’t at the funeral,” she blurted out.

“Did you expect he’d be there?”

She shrugged. “No. I guess they never liked each other.”

“Are you disappointed that he wasn’t there?”

Mindy shrugged again. She did a lot of that with Dr.
Reynolds because it was easier than answering her stupid questions.

Dr. Reynolds leaned back in her chair. “Sometimes it doesn’t seem that you’re very angry at Mr. Niles,” she said. “Are you?”

This time Mindy stopped herself from shrugging. She thought about it a minute, wondering how she was supposed to answer. It was the perfect time to tell Dr. Laura that Ben hadn’t done anything, that Grandpa had made her say it way back in the beginning, that it was all a big, stupid mistake. It was a perfect time because, like the money in the kindling box, Grandpa would never know.

If she told Dr. Reynolds the truth, this would all be over. Ben could reopen Menemsha House, and everything would be like before.

Except that Grandpa was dead.

And her mother was here.

And she didn’t have a clue what the hell would happen to her, because the boat would be rocked and she’d wind up an orphan. So she closed her eyes and bit her lip and said, “I hate Ben Niles now.”

It was going to be a wonderful Christmas if it killed her, if she could pretend, like Ben, that all things were resolved, if she could spend time with Rita and act as if it didn’t matter that Charlie did not know the baby was another Rollins; if she could act as if it were okay that Jeff was thousands of miles away, and Amy might as well be.

It was going to be wonderful, if she did not allow herself to think about Christopher.

Jill juggled her suitcases into the kitchen and dumped a pile of red velvet bows onto the counter at North Water Street. After she’d scanned the messages at the studio and rifled through the mail, Ben had brought her home, then gone to check on Sea Grove. As they drove from Oak
Bluffs to Edgartown, he reassured her that life would be much better now, if she could just relax. If she could just believe.

What he didn’t seem to understand was that believing was the easy part; relaxing was what was tough. It didn’t help that two dozen phone messages awaited her at home.

Three were for Amy—friends who had not yet learned that she’d “left home.”

Three more were from subcontractors of Ben’s; two were from Carol Ann.

One was from Christopher, announcing that fan mail was pouring in by the Santa sackful, now that the word was out.

Four calls were from Rita, whose last message said, “I can’t seem to find you, so I don’t know if you’ll get this, but I want you and Ben to come to my Christmas party on the twenty-third. And I want you to bring those chicken things your mother used to make. Can you?”

Jill forced a tight smile at the red flashing light. Yes, this was going to be a wonderful Christmas. And no, it would not kill her.

Of the eleven messages that remained, two were not important, and nine were hang-ups. She feared that the hang-ups were harassment, from a person—or people—who knew about the accusation. Were nine hang-ups realistic to receive in one week? She’d never kept track before. She’d never needed to.