Folly Cove (22 page)

“Lucy and I were living in a rain forest in Puerto Rico, remember?” Anne handed the paper back. “We're used to damp. When I find a job, I'll move closer to wherever I'm working. Not before then.”

Sarah brightened. “Then I'll
give
you a job! You can wait tables at the inn. Tend bar. Or work in the kitchen, if you'd rather.”

It was tempting. Cooking at the inn might give her a foot in the door at other restaurants. “What about Rodrigo?”

“Rodrigo would be glad to have another pair of hands. Besides, he's always had a soft spot for you.” Sarah crossed her legs and folded her arms. It was the posture of someone whose thoughts and emotions were at odds with what she was communicating in words.

But what was her mother conflicted about?

“Mom, are you doing this because of Aunt Flossie? I know you don't like her.”

“I don't
dislike
her,” Sarah said. “Though Flossie is a meddler. The sort who never learned the value of minding her own business. But no. That's not why. I'm doing it because life is too short for regrets.”

Sarah got to her feet and walked over to her coat. She picked it up from the chair and swung it around her shoulders like a matador's cape. “If you change your mind about the apartment, my offer is open. I know what it means to be a single mother. I don't want you to struggle the way I did.”

“I'll think about it. Thanks.”

“Good. If you do insist on staying here, at least let me send in the painters. These walls are ghastly. And the paneling makes the cottage so dark.”

“I love the paneling,” Anne said. “And we can't paint it. This isn't our house.”

“This house is more mine than Flossie's. Let me know when you're tired of pretending you're still living in some third-world country. And come to the inn. We'll talk to Rodrigo about what you can do in the kitchen. Good night.”

Anne watched her mother from the window as she made her way back up the hill to the car. Sarah was hunched against the wind like an old woman, her long coat flapping around her thin legs. If this had been a fairy tale, she could imagine her mother being blown out to sea, the coat turning into an enormous pair of wings to carry her away.

She placed the palm of her hand on the window for a moment, wishing she could call her back and say the things her mother would never want to hear:
I love you. I need you. Please don't go.

T
he morning after her visit with Anne, Sarah chose not to drive down to Flossie's house along the narrow winding road that led from the inn to the shore. Instead, she walked the path her girls always took, from the inn's back porch through her gardens and down the rocky trail to the beach.

She hadn't driven because she didn't want to alert Flossie to her arrival. Not because she wanted to surprise her sister-in-law—both of them were too old for surprises—but because her courage might fail her. She still hadn't found the right words to tell Flossie that Neil was dead.

Not that the right words existed.

Cars were parked along the road outside Flossie's house. She must be giving one of her classes. For decades, Flossie had taught what Sarah still called “New Age” classes, though she knew they were more acceptable now, even mainstream: yoga, meditation, and some sort of Sacred Drumming Circle, perish the thought. These classes had become so popular in recent years that people now, unbelievably, booked rooms at the inn around Flossie's weekend sessions.

Recognizing an opportunity, Sarah had proposed a marketing campaign to Flossie, linking a stay at the inn with meditation and yoga, all at a discount. “We could do retreats for women,” she suggested. “Folly Cove weekends designed to help them find their inner goddesses or whatever it is you think they've lost.”

Flossie had burst out laughing. “Good God, Sarah. Not on your life. I teach people who are far enough along in their journeys to find me. And why would I want more students? I have trouble keeping up with the ones I have.” Then she'd narrowed her eyes. “Of course, I might be persuaded to reconsider if
you
join my classes. A little yoga would unbend that stiff spine of yours.”

That, of course, was the end of that.

Now Sarah wrapped her mink coat more closely around her as she stood on the slight rise above Flossie's tall, narrow gray Victorian, wondering whether she should leave or wait for the class to finish. It wasn't cold here in the sun, but the sea breeze was steady, and she still felt chilled from the shock of the news about Neil's death.

Rhonda had walked her from the office back to the apartment after Sarah read the attorney's letter, where she'd brought her a brandy, then made her take a hot shower and tucked her into bed. “Want me to call Laura?” she'd asked as she hovered at Sarah's bedside. “Elly's staying there, right? They could come over. Anne, too. You should have your daughters by your side at a time like this, Mrs. Bradford.”

“Absolutely not,” Sarah had said. “No need to upset the girls. Not yet. Their father left us thirty years ago. I don't even know why I'm upset, frankly. We can wait to tell them. But thank you,” she remembered to say, waving Rhonda off with a smile. “I'll be fine now.”

She wasn't fine. But, as she'd admitted to Rhonda, Sarah couldn't understand why not. How was Neil being dead different from him being gone? Why did it feel as if the floor were tilting beneath her, or even the earth on its axis?

Perhaps it was because the news had opened a door to so many memories she'd shoved into various corners, labeling them as useless artifacts of a former life. Now Sarah felt as if she'd waded into a dark, disorganized closet of mothballed emotions and she was choking on the smell.

There was the first time she'd met Neil, for instance. He'd seemed like all the other too-young men who had ever flirted with Sarah when she performed in Boston or the Berkshires, New York or New Hampshire: slightly drunk, good-looking, sheltered. Drawn to her, no doubt,
because she exuded sex and confidence in her jewel-tone dresses (bought secondhand and tailored by her own hand to hug her body), with her thick blond hair cascading down her shoulders. When she sang, sometimes Sarah would choose a man just like Neil and direct her voice at him. Audiences loved that sort of thing.

Sarah typically stayed away from these men: too inexperienced and financially insecure to be of interest to her. But Neil was different. Clever, educated, well mannered. And fun! Goodness, he could be fun, with his willingness to laugh at the world. Neil thought everyone should do exactly what they wanted, which made him both the best companion imaginable—and the least responsible.

He didn't introduce her to Flossie until three days before the wedding, when Neil took her aside, his dark eyes ablaze with excitement, and said, “My sister's coming to the wedding after all! I just found out she's arriving tonight. I'm so glad. Aren't you glad? Tell me you are!”

Neil was always excitable. But when it came to Flossie he was nearly out of his mind with adoration. “My sister's my best friend,” he declared.

That put Sarah immediately on guard. She couldn't have her husband thinking Flossie was his best friend. Not if Sarah was going to be his wife. “I can't wait to meet her,” she'd said sweetly, knowing she would have to be very clever around Flossie if she was going to succeed in a contest to secure Neil's affection.

Nothing, however, could have prepared her for Flossie's eccentricity. Flossie arrived at Folly Cove by taxi, having flown all night from France. She'd been living in some convent and was dressed in a nun's crimson robes, her head shaved, a ratty knitted brown shawl over one shoulder.

The Bradfords were obviously horrified by Flossie's appearance, especially Neil's father, who was always in a suit unless he was wearing tennis whites. Neil's mother took to her bed and said she wouldn't get up again, even for the wedding, unless Flossie saw sense and “put on something decent.”

Nothing could have prepared Sarah, either, for the bond between Neil and his sister, forged through years of reading the same books; of traveling with their grandparents through Europe and India; and of going to the sorts of precious, single-sex private schools with their own
dress codes and vocabularies. Sometimes it seemed as though they were speaking in an obscure dialect, Sarah had so much trouble following their conversation.

Flossie had pulled Sarah aside after their disastrous rehearsal dinner, where Sarah had to lie and say her parents were dead and she had no siblings. She'd led them to believe she'd grown up in Back Bay, the college-educated daughter of a wealthy older couple who had introduced her early to opera and the symphony, which was how she'd developed her love of music. Her friend Mabel had agreed to come and back her up; she'd played her role of debutante beautifully, despite the multiple glasses of whiskey she'd consumed while flirting with Neil's father.

Fortunately, the wedding was held in the era before Google. Lying was easier then.

“I want you to know that I only showed up for my brother,” Flossie had told Sarah at the rehearsal dinner. She had changed into a plain pair of black slacks and a black cashmere pullover sweater (both belonging to Neil) with a scarf of her mother's. She still looked like a nun.

“I appreciate you coming,” Sarah had said. “It means a great deal to Neil. And to me, of course. I was eager to meet you.”

“I can tell,” Flossie said, rolling her eyes. “Look, you don't have to like me. We're not going to play at being sisters or anything. I just wanted to lay eyes on you. Frankly, I don't hold much store in the institution of marriage, but you'd better make my brother happy. If you don't, you'll have me to answer to. I intend to return to France, but that won't stop me from coming back to make your life a living hell if you hurt him, understand?”

“I will be everything to your brother,” Sarah had said, relieved to hear Flossie was leaving again.

“Nobody is ever
everything
to another person,” Flossie had said. “All I expect from you is honesty and kindness.”

Sarah had delivered both, in those early years. It was Neil who'd let everyone down.

Flossie returned from France around the time Elly was born. Nobody knew why. But even she couldn't stop Neil from leaving Folly Cove.

Thirty years ago, almost to the day, he had abandoned them.

Or, alternatively: thirty years ago, Sarah had thrown Neil out of the house.

Both things were true, depending on who was telling the story.

Neil had been drinking steadily since they'd gotten an offer to purchase the inn, unsolicited, from a developer. He'd always been a heavy drinker, but he was never mean or abusive. He favored beer with whiskey chasers, and the more of those he drank, the jollier he got.

Her husband's drinking hadn't worried Sarah at first. She'd grown up expecting men and bottles to go together. In her Irish neighborhood, which featured a dog track and a horse track and triple-decker apartment buildings that shuddered beneath the planes taking off from Logan airport, children routinely had to collect their fathers from the bars at suppertime.

Not that she'd ever known which one was her father. “He was a rotter,” her mother told her. “That's all you need to know.”

Sarah could handle a man who drank. She'd learned that as a child, coping with her mother's boyfriends, and, later, on the road with the Sweet Tones. Some member of the band always seemed to have had too much. The patrons, too.

For the first ten years of their marriage, Neil drank only after five o'clock and was sober and cheerful during the day. A “functional alcoholic,” Flossie called him. Sarah was inclined to agree.

But when Neil saw she wouldn't budge and agree to sell the inn, he began drinking with abandon and turned on her.

“I won't stay on this cold rock a minute longer,” he'd exploded their last night together. “Can't you see this place is killing me?”

“They'll tear the inn down if we sell it to a developer,” Sarah had said. It was the same tired argument. “This is your home. Home to your sister and daughters. The Bradfords built this place! Doesn't your family's legacy mean anything to you?”

“I don't give a rat's ass about Folly Cove!” Neil bellowed, his handsome face bright red and angry. “This inn is a curse on the Bradfords. If we take this offer, we could pay off the debts and start over again. Buy a condo in Manhattan or a bungalow in Tampa!”

“You forget that we have children in school. Besides, I
want
to live
here! And I am not a quitter!” Sarah had finally shouted back. She didn't say that it was the only home she'd ever known—he still didn't know that about her.

“But what about me?” Neil had pushed his face close enough so that she could smell despair like an extra scent on his skin. “I won't ever be happy again if I stay here!”

“My God. Listen to you! Don't be such a baby,” she'd said. “What about the girls? Don't they matter to you?”

He'd waved a hand. “The girls would be fine anywhere. And Anne's not even mine.”

This wasn't the first time Neil had implied that Sarah had cheated on him. He'd been suspicious of every man she'd been friendly with through the years. But it was the first time he'd said something so directly accusatory.

“Of course she's yours,” Sarah had said, but even to her own ears it sounded improbable.

Neil's oldest high school pal, Garth, had started coming around the inn in the evenings after Elly was born. He was a widower, quiet and bookish, balding. Garth had taught Sarah to play Scrabble. She'd enjoyed his company, even more so because he was one of the few of Neil's friends who didn't make her feel stupid for not having been to college. (Neil, who was still under the illusion that she had a degree, always joked that Sarah must have slept through most of her classes, especially history.)

Garth seemed to enjoy teaching her; with his help, Sarah mastered the basics of bookkeeping and marketing. Many weekends, Neil drank in the inn's pub while Sarah and Garth played cards or Scrabble in the library, worked together on the accounts, or simply walked through the gardens.

Then, one night, Garth had leaned over to kiss Sarah when she'd excitedly played a seven-letter word at Scrabble. A congratulatory kiss, misinterpreted by Neil. He had immediately, drunkenly banished Garth from the inn with a solid left to the jaw, sending the other man sprawling onto the pavement in front of a group of astonished guests gathered for dinner.

Sarah hadn't ever been unfaithful. But shortly after that night she'd
discovered she was pregnant with Anne, and Neil had become convinced the baby wasn't his.

During his final rampage before leaving, Neil also accused Sarah of not loving their youngest daughter. “I've seen you push Anne away. You don't make time for her because you can't stand the sight of your own mistake!” he'd shouted.

“Don't be an idiot,” Sarah said. “I don't have time for Anne because I'm the one doing everything around here!”

“Everything?”
Neil had yelled. “Who takes care of the girls? They're practically motherless! If Flossie and I weren't around, they'd have nobody. You work them like dogs. I can't believe you have them cleaning rooms. Laura's only ten!”