Summer Beach Reads 5-Book Bundle: Beachcombers, Heat Wave, Moon Shell Beach, Summer House, Summer Breeze (6 page)

She took the opportunity to study her father. She hadn’t seen him for nearly two years but he appeared pretty much like he always had, tall and broad-shouldered, with the muscular posture of a contractor.

Her father said a few more words to the woman, picked up the cooler, and came toward the house.

When he was only a couple of yards away, Abbie stood up. “Hey, Dad!”

To her surprise, her father’s face turned bright red. Was he
blushing
?

“Well, my gosh, Abbie, I didn’t even see you there! Sweetheart, you look grand!” Jim Fox strode toward his daughter, dropped the cooler on the terrace, and embraced her in a grizzly bear hug. “Lily told me you were coming, but I didn’t realize it was so soon. How are you?”

“I’m great! How are you? Man, you don’t look a day older! What’s your secret?”

Her father blushed again. And his hazel eyes sparkled.

“So you’ve rented the Playhouse.”

His face continued to flame as he turned toward the bottom of the garden. “Well, yes, in this economy I’ve got to say I can use the money.”

“Who’s the renter? Is she nice?”

Jim Fox cleared his throat. “Her name’s Marina Warren. She’s from the Midwest, and yes, she’s very nice. I just gave her some bluefish, actually. Iggy Holdgate hauled in a large catch and gave me some.” He opened the cooler. “A big guy.”

“Super! I’ll cook it for dinner!”

“You’ll cook? Honey, you just got here.”

“Oh, I’m fine, I had a good nap. I love bluefish.”

As they talked, they went into the mudroom and on into the
kitchen. Her father put the fish in the refrigerator, then said, “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Fine. I’ll get started in the kitchen.”

“Where are your sisters?”

Abbie squatted down to dig through the crisper and found a bag of fresh lettuce and two bunches of asparagus.

She told her father, “Lily’s taken off—I don’t know where—and Emma’s upstairs in her room.”

Worry flashed across her father’s face.

“We had a great talk.” Abbie handed him a cold beer. “I’ll have one, too, while I cook.” With forced enthusiasm, she said, “I’m so glad to be back!”

“Are you really?” her father asked. “I know it’s not London.”

“It’s summer on Nantucket!” she told her father. “Nothing could be better!”

She moved around the kitchen. Everything was familiar, everything was right where it had always been: the knives in the wooden block, with the bread knife space still empty—they never had figured out where that knife went. New heat-proof rubber spatulas hung out with old wooden spoons and slotted spoons in the blue speckled container, while the less popular utensils mingled messily in the top drawer to the left of the sink, along with so many crumbs Abbie suspected the drawer hadn’t been cleaned since she was last here.

The red enamel colander and the salad spinner were on top of the refrigerator, and just inside the pantry door hung their mother’s apron. It said Kiss the Cook and their mother had given it to herself for Christmas, laughing as she showed it off. That had been the Christmas Abbie was fifteen. Whenever Abbie came in from a school event or the beach at dinnertime, her mother would be wearing that apron as she prepared dinner. She’d tap her apron and arch her eyebrow.

“Oh, Mom, you are such a dork,” Abbie would say, and she’d huff over, rolling her eyes, to peck a kiss on her mother’s cheek before stomping out of the room.

Now Abbie touched the apron, allowing the memory to flood back. She wished she had been nicer about kissing her mother.

And there by the far wall, on the low shelf with the cookbooks, was a large white oyster shell she’d found at the beach at Pocomo,
the last time the sisters had gone beachcombing. Abbie picked it up and held it in her hand. She’d wanted, after their mother’s death, to keep up the tradition of the Beachcombers Club, but the first time she’d forced her younger sisters to go to the beach to search for prizes, they had all ended up sobbing in helpless wrenching grief. She marshaled them out to beachcomb the next year, but their hearts weren’t in it; the beach held no magic—it just wasn’t the same with their mother gone. They never tried it again.

Anyway, as the girls grew older, they lost the time and interest for beachcombing. Months passed, and then years, and the gripping sorrow eased into an ache, and then into something more like the memory of an ache. Their father had changed after his wife died. He’d retreated deep inside himself, and he seldom talked about their mother or shared his own grief with his daughters. But on Danielle’s birthday, he always took the girls out to dinner, and he always proposed a toast. Abbie could remember lifting her juice glass, saying, “Here’s to Mom. Happy Birthday, wherever you are.” It was her father who coined the phrase. The girls knew it was exactly what their mother would have liked them to say. It was what she had believed.

Perhaps once a year, every year, Abbie pestered her busy sisters into giving up an hour from their social lives to go down to the beach together, and two years ago, just before she left for her au pair job, she marshaled them into a trip. They were all in their twenties then; Emma was just home for a week, Lily had finished her junior year of college. They were in their adult lives, but Abbie could be forceful when she got really bossy, so they all went. No one found anything terribly unusual. Abbie won the prize with the oyster shell, a big one with a creamy interior around a spot of deep abalone blue. When she was a girl, she’d used these shells as carriages for her small troll dolls. That summer she’d put it on the trophy shelf and forgot it almost immediately.

And here it was, a little dustier than before. So much time had passed, so many things had changed, yet here, Abbie thought, was this ordinary shell, sitting on the shelf like an ivory platter full of memories.

She touched the shell with her fingertip, then went to the sink to wash the lettuce.

As she put the bluefish in the refrigerator, Marina discovered she was smiling. Jim Fox was really attractive, and the electricity that sparked between them had her blood buzzing.

He was up at his house now, talking with his daughters. She’d been very aware of their presence when she was setting up her little outdoor nest. Their laughter made her smile, even though an awareness of loss plunged through her whenever she overheard any two women laughing together.

She sank onto the couch and put her head in her hands.

Six months ago, Marina had started her period on her fortieth birthday. The moment she woke she wanted to break into a howl of sorrow, but she choked it back as she rose from bed and rushed into the shower. Recently Gerry had been cool, abrupt, even irritated when she talked about her infertility. Their marriage was in one of those distant phases all marriages went through, probably because of problems at the office. Today she and Gerry both had crowded schedules. She needed to ignore her private life and concentrate on her accounts.

Sometimes she and Gerry drove to work in the same car, but he had a meeting elsewhere in the city today, so they drove separately.
She was glad, really. She needed to talk to a friend. Christie was busy with a new baby, so she put on her headset and punched in Dara’s number.

Dara sounded groggy. “Marina. What’s up?”

“Dara, my period started today.”

“Oh, hell. Oh, Marina, fucking damn. I’m sorry. How are you?”

“Not so great. And work is a rat’s nest, which actually is not a bad thing. It will keep me from brooding.”

“Good for you, Marina. Positive attitude. Move forward. How are you celebrating your birthday?”

“Oh, forget my birthday.” Marina sped up and passed an ancient Toyota dawdling in front of her. Dara’s chipper attitude irritated Marina. She needed someone to help her mourn, to help her mark this occasion. Dara remained silent on the other end of the line. “Gerry hasn’t planned a surprise party for me, has he?”

Dara laughed. “And I would tell you if he had?”

“Because I’m not in the mood for a party. I think I’d just like to get hammered. I’d like to sit down with you and drink tequila and wail.”

“No Gerry?”

“No. We haven’t been very close lately. Anyway, he’s sick of me blubbering around.”

“Well, honey, if that’s what you really want to do, let’s do it. Shall we meet at Hoolihan’s?”

“Great. No, wait. I’d better ask Gerry if we have plans. I mean, it is my great-big fat fortieth. I’m sure he has something planned. I’m here. Talk to you later.”

“Marina? Listen, honey—I just want to tell you … I think you’re going to be just fine. I think you’re a tremendously strong person.”

“Thanks, Dar’. I love you, too.” Marina clicked off.

Later, she would remember her final words to Dara, and they would crash a world of humiliation down on her heart. How had she ever been so blind?

How had she ever been a friend anyone could so easily betray?

There
was
a surprise fortieth birthday party, thrown at Dara’s house. It was a mob scene, with champagne and every other kind of liquor flowing like Niagara Falls, and music pumped up by a DJ and
people dancing and getting properly smashed and yelling out all sorts of inappropriate things. In the midst of such revelry, Marina hardly saw Gerry or Dara. She got good and hammered, and she thought her husband had, too, so when Dara insisted they sleep at her place because they were too wasted to go home, Marina accepted gratefully.

Saturday morning she awoke in Dara’s guest room with a dry mouth and a bad headache. She expected to see Gerry snoring in bed next to her, but she was alone. She pulled on a robe of Dara’s over her naked body and shuffled down the hall to the kitchen, toward the smell of coffee.

Gerry and Dara weren’t kissing or embracing or even touching. They were sitting on opposite sides of the kitchen table, quietly talking.

Yet something about the way they were leaning toward each other slapped Marina wide awake.

She said, “What’s going on?”

Their heads snapped toward her in identical rhythm.

“Marina. You’re awake.” Dara stood up, poured a cup of coffee, and put it on the table.

Marina sat down. She took a sip of coffee—it was strong and rich. Dara was a good cook.

She looked at Gerry, whose mouth was pulled tight the way it always got during an argument, especially when he was in the wrong.

Slowly, Marina said, “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“I don’t know,” Gerry countered. “You might like it a lot, if you stop to think about it. I want a divorce, Marina.”

She stared at him. They’d been married for ten years. They must have made love a million times. She knew everything about him, how stupid he looked when he was flapping around the office in a tantrum because of something at work, how tender he could be when they were alone together. He was handsome, and he worked hard at it, exercising at a gym, spending lots of time buying clothes and moussing his hair, he was even considering having a face-lift because he needed to keep his image young and fresh. She knew how his older brother’s success as a physician overshadowed Gerry, how his parents scarcely
saw
their younger son because of the blinding light of their older son’s brilliance. She’d held Gerry in her arms as
he wept bitterly after they spent Christmas with his parents. Her love for him had been the motivation, really, for the fury with which she attacked her own part in their business. She had wanted to protect him.

True, they weren’t getting along very well recently. Their time and conversations together revolved around work. He was probably sick of her relentless failures to get pregnant, and for her own part, Marina had to admit she hadn’t felt close to him for a long time. Still. To bring up divorce like this, in front of Dara—what was he thinking?

“Gee,” she said snidely, “nice of you to wait till I had my birthday party to tell me.”

From the other side of the table, Dara spoke up. “Marina. There’s something else.”

Marina turned toward her friend. Christie and Dara had been the first to know when she’d gotten her period, the first to know when she’d lost her virginity, the first to know when she’d fallen in love with Gerry. Marina had been Dara’s go-to person during her two marriages and grisly divorces. Dara was a beauty, apple-cheeked and bosomy, sensual and seductive.

Oh.

Gerry had found comfort with Dara. Which was why Gerry was talking in front of Dara.

“You and Gerry,” Marina said flatly.

Dara nodded. “Yes.” She raised her chin defiantly. “And Marina, I’m not going to apologize. You’re not in love with Gerry anymore. I know that.”

“Really. Did I ever say that?” Marina demanded.

Dara blushed. “Marina. There’s something else.”

“Good God,” Marina cursed. “What more could there possibly be?”

Dara’s eyes flew to meet Gerry’s. Her face became radiant. Her smile was absolutely Mona Lisa.

It felt like a knife slicing through her entire torso. The pain made her breathless. “You’re pregnant.”

“With my child,” Gerry added, unable to keep the pride from his voice.

It was almost dazzling, how quickly Marina’s life changed after that. Of course, Gerry and Dara, in their eager selfish joy, had
already plotted the path. With Dara’s money, Gerry bought out Marina’s half of the business. Gerry had already spoken to an agent who had a buyer lined up for Marina and Gerry’s condo. With no children or financial issues, the legalities of the divorce were dealt with in a flash.