Sweet Salt Air (30 page)

“He isn’t alone,” Nicole said as she took a gardening fork to the soil to loosen it up. “He’s in Durham surrounded by doctors.”

“That’s his job, and it isn’t the same. Shouldn’t you be with him?”

Nicole kept working. “It’s been four years, Kay. He and I know what to expect.” She looked up. “Did he call your brother?”

“Johnny?” She make a sputtering sound. “He’s no help. He’s been working on my mom’s cousin’s farm, which is two hours from Des Moines, and they were in the middle of some soybean emergency.”

Nicole twisted the fork in the soil. “How did he take it?”

“Oh, he’s Mister Cool. He says Dad’s a doctor and knows what he’s doing, and I always thought so, too, only he was wrong for not telling us. I mean, like, we have a personal stake here, too, don’t we?”

Nicole pointed at the trowel and, when Kaylin passed it to her, lengthened the hole to allow for three sets of roots. “They don’t know that it’s hereditary.”

“They don’t know that it isn’t,” the girl argued. “Okay, so if MS has to do with the autoimmune system, maybe that’s the hereditary part, which means that I may have the same disorder but it’ll develop into some whole
other
disease.”

She sounded frightened again, clearly needed a mother’s reassurance. But Nicole wasn’t her mother, damn it, and right now, she was emotionally handicapped. Julian really needed to be here answering her questions. Hell, Julian really needed to be here answering
Nicole’s
.

But he wasn’t. And Kaylin was.

Grasping at straws, she eyed the valerian. Handing the girl a bag of fertilizer, she nudged her nearer the blooms. “Mix a little into the soil while I get water.”

“Will I?” Kaylin called as Nicole put a watering can under the nearby spigot.

“I don’t know,” she said when she returned. “None of us knows when it comes to health. Look at my dad. He dropped dead out of the blue.”

“That’s my
point,
” Kaylin said with feeling. “I could kill myself working as hard as Dad always did, then get sick, and, zappo, it’s gone.”

“Excuse me,” Nicole said, darting her intermittent glances as she poured water into the hole, “your father isn’t done working by a long shot, and even if he were, he’s already contributed more to his field than many doctors do in a lifetime.” Nicole might fault Julian’s judgment on personal matters, but she couldn’t fault his work. “He’s made breakthroughs that totally justify the effort it took to get there. Even if he doesn’t discover another single thing, he’ll always have that.”

“Well, he was lucky. He didn’t get sick until he was forty-two, but most people get MS in their twenties or thirties, and I’m twenty-two, which puts me right in the line of fire. If I have limited time—”

“You don’t have limited time!” Nicole cried, unable to bear that thought. Taking one of the pots, she held the flowers to her nose and breathed deeply.

“But if I do,” Kaylin said in a more measured way, “shouldn’t I be doing something I like? I won’t ever be a news anchor or host a talk show, and I know more about set design than my bosses do, because I’ve taken courses that they haven’t. This internship sucks.”

After another inhalation, Nicole gently pulled the plant from its pot, positioned the roots in the hole, and scooped dirt around them. When the stalks stood on their own, she reached for a second pot. “There must be something you can get out of it.”

“Oh, yeah. A line on my CV and maybe a reference, but if it leads to another job like this, what’s the point? I’m not having fun.”

Nicole thrust the pot at her to hold and reached for the third. “There’s more to life than having fun.”

“But look at you. You’re here having fun, while he’s back there alone.”

Having
fun
?
Nicole might have laughed at the irony of that if she hadn’t known the laugh would speak of hysteria, which would open up a can of worms she couldn’t possibly,
possibly
discuss with Kaylin.

So she simply emptied the second pot, secured the roots in the ground, and sat back on her heels. Only then, when she was feeling a little calmer, did she answer the criticism. “I offered to be there, Kaylin. He thought it would be better if he made those phone calls himself.”

“I don’t mean right now. I mean all summer. You knew he was sick. How could you come to Quinnipeague?”

The question was so like one Charlotte had asked, that it seemed only right for Charlotte herself to return from town just then. When Nicole looked up, Kaylin swiveled. “Omigod,” the girl cried. “Charlotte?”

They had spent only that wedding summer together—Kaylin and John here for the first time, getting to know the island, Angie and Bob, and even Nicole—but ten weeks of living in the same house with a person involved more shared time than could be forgotten.

Charlotte smiled. Rather than launch into social niceties, though, she was typically blunt. “Your dad had a full schedule in Durham and wanted Nicki here. It wasn’t her choice.” She glanced at Nicole. “Sorry. I overheard. Do you guys want to be alone?”

“No,” Nicole said. Charlotte, Cecily’s valerian—she would take whatever help she could get.

Kaylin picked up where she’d left off, challenging Charlotte now. “He may say that, but I don’t believe him.”

“He wanted Nicole to work on her book.”

“He was totally lonely. Why else would he have suddenly decided to tell John and me?”

Nicole broke in, puzzled. “Didn’t he tell you why?”

“Tell me what?”

She wasn’t protecting Julian in this when there was a perfectly good explanation. Taking the last of the three pots from Kaylin, she said, “He was outed down there, and word spreads. He wanted to tell you himself before you heard it from someone else.” That someone else would have been Monica, who had been married to Julian long enough to know his colleagues in Philadelphia, any one of whom might be learning momentarily that Julian had MS.

“And anyway,” Charlotte said, playing bad cop to Nicole’s good, “if you’re so worried about his being alone, why aren’t
you
down there?”

“I offered, but he said no. So I’m doing the next best thing, coming here to get Nicole to go.”

Setting down the pot, Nicole caught the girl’s hand. “He doesn’t want that.”

Kaylin’s face crumbled. “You guys
are
breaking up?”

She gave the hand a little shake. “
No.
I talk with your father all the time.”

“Did you agree with him not telling Johnny and me until now?”

As angry as Nicole was at Julian, she didn’t want to bad-mouth him to his daughter. But if she was dealing with character issues in him, this related to one in her.

Releasing Kaylin’s hand, she removed the last plant from its pot and said a quiet, “No.”

Charlotte was less restrained. “Different people handle problems different ways. Nicki wanted to be in Durham; he wanted her here. She wanted you to know way back; your dad didn’t.”

“But he’s right about the internship,” Nicole put in, because he had shared Kaylin’s earlier complaints. “He told you to stick with it, didn’t he?”

Kaylin nodded and, finally calmer, said, “He said I was being impulsive, but he doesn’t understand what I’m feeling. I tried to tell him, but he didn’t get it. Bob would have understood.”

“Excuse me?” Nicole burst out. “Mr. Law and Order? He was a pushover with you and Johnny, because you never tested him on big things, but this is a biggie, which is what he’d tell you if he was here. He believed that if you made a commitment, you had to stand by it.”

“It’s called paying your dues,” Charlotte added.

Smiling, Nicole fitted the plant in the hole. “I already used that one on her.”

“It bears repeating,” Charlotte stated, focused on Kaylin. “I worked for no-name publications, writing pieces
no one
read, before I finally sold to a magazine big enough so that the byline got me better assignments. All that early time, I kept remembering what Bob said.”

Kaylin knew how successful Charlotte was. Nicole had told her back in the spring, had even looked over Kaylin’s shoulder while the girl read several of Charlotte’s articles. Nicole might criticize Charlotte, like Julian, on moral grounds now, but that didn’t take away from the quality of her work.

Kaylin was properly subdued.

“So you’ll go back?” Nicole ventured, tamping soil around the plant.

“I can’t,” the girl said meekly.

“Why not?”

“I called my boss this morning.” When Nicole eyed her in alarm, she hurriedly said, “There was only a month left anyway. They let you go after the first week in August so you have time before school.”

She had quit. Stunned, Nicole sat back on her heels. “What did your father say?”

“He doesn’t know.”

“So you just did it. Can you call your boss back?”

Kaylin looked sheepish. “It wasn’t a good ending. I told him there was a family emergency. He actually asked me what. I couldn’t tell him about Dad, and I think I stammered a little and then finally said it wasn’t really his business—and he and I hadn’t been on good terms anyway, so the discussion went downhill.” Her voice went now.

It was done then, Nicole realized in dismay as she pounded the last of the loose soil with her palms. She wondered if Kaylin had picked her timing, thinking that Nicole would be more understanding than either of her parents. As flattering as it was, it put her in the position of having to call one of the others.

But no. Kaylin was of age. The decision had been hers.

“You can’t stay here,” she warned, gathering up the garden tools. Kaylin couldn’t ever know about Charlotte and Julian.

“Why not?”

There were plenty of innocent reasons. “We’re getting ready to put the place on the market, which means weeding out and cleaning up. Besides, the summer’s just starting. You can’t do nothing for the next six weeks,” she said as Julian would have, though she did agree with him on this. Having Kaylin hanging around, watching, listening, already worried that her father was heading toward his second divorce—it would be beyond dismal for Nicole.

“I could hostess at the Island Grill like I used to,” Kaylin offered.

Nicole stood. “The season’s underway. They’ve already hired their staff.”

“I could help with your book.”

“I have Charlotte for that.” She grabbed the watering can with her free hand.

“I could help pack up the house,” the girl tried, adding a timid, “or babysit Angie.”

“Angie won’t stay long,” Nicole said, though it suddenly occurred to her that she had no idea how long her mother would stay. It suddenly occurred to her that she might have
two
more houseguests for however long, watching her every move through what had to be the darkest period of her life.

For the first time since Kaylin stepped off the ferry, she felt a moment of panic.

“I can work with Kaylin,” Charlotte offered quietly, beside her now. “We’ll make it a journalism internship. There are personal stories here that have nothing to do with the cookbook—like Oliver Weeks and Isabel Skane. Kaylin can hang around with them on my behalf. She can even do online research for my fall assignments.”

Nicole was uneasy, but she was in a bind. As wounded as she was herself, she did love Kaylin. None of this was her fault. She had deserved better from Julian, too.

Besides, much as she didn’t want it to be so, Charlotte’s plan made sense.

*   *   *

Nicole was no pushover. But as soon as it was decided that Kaylin would stay, she knew she had to call Julian. Sure, Kaylin could do it. But Nicole owed him a call, and here was something relatively neutral to discuss.

Not wanting to be overheard, she took her phone to the beach and, facing the house to make sure no one came, punched in his cell number. With each digit, she grew more tense, but that was a good thing. Anger kept her spine straight, her hand steady, and her resolve intact.

He picked up after a single ring. “Hey. I was starting to worry. You okay?”

She had been abrupt the evening before and hadn’t called him back. Hearing his voice now, it all rushed back. She wanted to tell him what a bastard he was, wanted to scream and carry on about betrayal—and maybe she would have done that once. But the ocean was at her back, grounding her to a world she had been safe in long before Julian had entered it, and as for the anger, rather than pushing her into hysteria, it gave her control.

She refused to apologize for not calling sooner. Nor could she get herself to ask how he was. “Kaylin’s here,” was all she said.

He was silent for a beat, then resigned. “I figured she’d try that. She wants to quit the internship. She wasn’t happy with me when I said she couldn’t.”

“She’s twenty-one.”

“And thinks she knows everything. I assume you told her she had to go back.”

“Actually, she’s staying here.”

“For the rest of the summer? Who made that decision?” he asked, marginally indignant, the father whose child hadn’t behaved.

Nicole refused to cower.
She
wasn’t his child. “Kaylin did. She’s twenty-one.” It bore repeating. “She called her boss and quit before she ever got here. Charlotte offered her an internship. She’ll help with interviews.”

“There?”

“Yes.” With Charlotte. If that made him nervous, so be it.

He was silent again. Then, “Are you all right? You don’t sound like you.”

No more childish voice? Funny, how disillusionment made you grow up fast. In many ways, his betrayal was worse than MS. At least, MS hadn’t been his fault.

“I’m fine,” she said, and the steadiness anger gave her was only the half. The other had to do with stem cells. She knew something that Julian did not. That was empowering.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Does this have to do with Charlotte?” he asked in a way that might have been casual if she hadn’t known what she did.

She couldn’t resist. “What could Charlotte have to do with anything?”

Problems with the book, he might have said. Or getting under each other’s skin at the house. He might have even come clean. But he let it pass and simply said, “Nothing. You just sound strange. I worry.”