Folly Cove (3 page)

Ryder grinned and stretched out on the grass, toeing off his sneakers. “I'd pay good money to see that photo. And you worked at the inn when? In high school?”

“And elementary school. College, too, even though I was going to school in Boston. But probably the thing we Bradford girls were most famous for was singing.”

“
All
of you? Like, together?”

Elly nodded. “Mom was a jazz singer. That's how Dad met her, when she performed at the inn one summer. After Dad ran off, Mom struggled financially to keep the inn afloat. God knows why she didn't sell up. Anyway, she realized we could provide free entertainment and save money. I was about ten when we started performing. She made us wear matching outfits and the guests ate it up.”

“Like the von Trapp family in
The Sound of Music
! Were you any good?”

“We were, actually. No matter how much we fought, my sisters and I could always sing in perfect harmony.” Elly watched a group of Frisbee players for a few minutes—a ragged bunch of shirtless guys in board shorts—then glanced down at Ryder.

He'd closed his eyes. He had freckles across the bridge of his nose. His brown hair hung nearly to his shoulders and was streaked with gold highlights from the sun. Or did he bleach it? You never knew in L.A. Elly was surprised by her urge to run her fingers through it. She clasped her hands in her lap.

“Are your sisters still in Massachusetts?”

She leaned back on her elbows beside him. “Only Laura. Anne's in Puerto Rico, living the dream, surfing and all that. Laura always planned to leave Massachusetts, too. She's an equestrienne, worked really hard at it. She was on her drill team in college and talked about training for the Olympics before she decided to get married and be a mom.”

“You must miss them.”

“Not really. Our mother's not exactly the warm and fuzzy type. I call on her birthday and Christmas, visit every couple of years. Laura and I still talk once a week. I used to be closest to Anne, but this past year we've been too busy to stay in touch. You know how it goes in families: once you move out, you have to wonder if you'd be friends with your siblings if you weren't related.”

“Sure.”

Ryder had agreed so easily that Elly at once felt defensive. “What about your family? Are you guys close?”

“Not so much. I'm an only child. My parents always preferred each other's company to anyone else's. They're both teachers and raised me in a semipagan cohousing community in northern California, in a town time forgot,” he said. “Where the hippies still sell homemade bread out of baskets on the streets and live in their vans if they can't afford tents. I had lots of kids to run around with, but not all that much contact with my own mother and father. I think they were relieved when I moved away, truthfully.”

“See? People move on,” Elly said.

“I guess. But I always felt pretty envious of people like you.”

“People like me?”

“People with real families: a mother and father, siblings. Presents around the Christmas tree. You know.”

Elly felt him roll toward her and opened her eyes when he began kissing her neck. “Stop!” She pushed him away, laughing.

“Why?” He kissed her again.

“We're not exactly alone here.” She moved away as a Frisbee whizzed by overhead.

Ryder's hand shot up and grabbed it. He tossed it back to one of the
players. “We don't have to be here.” He gestured with his chin in the direction of his truck. “I live only three miles from here.”

Elly insisted on following him in her car. A little frolic would be a welcome distraction from this morning's travesty of a shoot, but she wasn't about to get trapped at Ryder's place.

She expected Ryder's apartment to be something like her own: an overpriced studio in a nondescript building. Instead, he surprised her by pulling into the driveway of a shingled gold bungalow with a teal door and a fence covered in scarlet bougainvillea.

“Nice place.” Elly felt suddenly shy. She was sweaty from setting up and breaking down the shoot, then picnicking in the sun, and her mouth tasted like a pub floor. “Mind if I shower?”

“Not a bit.” He led her through a gate into an enclosed courtyard and handed her a towel, then pointed to an outdoor shower concealed by a latticework fence. “Is this when I'm supposed to leave you alone to do your secret lady rituals?”

She laughed. “Or you could scrub my back.”

“Thought you'd never ask.” Ryder tugged off his T-shirt in one fluid motion.

•   •   •

It was Sunday, but Laura was up at sunrise, replaying last night's conversation with Jake in her mind as she dressed in the bathroom to avoid waking him.

“We're going to have to ask your mother for Kennedy's tuition money,” Jake had said. “I don't see any way around it.”

“I can't,” she'd protested. “Not again.”

“Laura, I don't see what the big deal is,” he'd argued, running a hand through his hair. “Your mom is the one who insists Kennedy should go to that school. What's the solution? Send her to public school? Fine by me, but you and your mother would hate it.”

Laura pulled on her jacket and hiked down to the barn to feed the horses and turn them out so she could muck the stalls. Lately, the barn was the only place she felt like she had any control in her life.

She took deep gulps of the cold air. Their property was only half a mile from the Folly Cove Inn, but on the opposite side of the street
from the ocean. Trails led from the back of the property into the woods and trails of Dogtown. There was no water view, even when the leaves were down for the winter, but at least there was always the suggestion of salt on the breeze.

This morning, the indigo sky was washed with peach along the horizon. A few oaks were already tinged yellow and the maples were scarlet despite its being only the last week of September. The pasture was still green beneath the low-lying morning mist.

Laura turned all of the horses out except one of the boarder mares, a bay Morgan. The horse had injured her leg on a jump and the owner wanted her kept in for another week.

She crosstied the mare in the stable aisle and felt some of the tension seep out of her shoulders as she curried the horse and picked its hooves clean. The smooth texture of a horse's coat beneath her hands, the smell of leather, the velvet muzzle searching for carrot nubs in her palm were all familiar touchstones, things she'd loved since childhood.

Her father, Neil, had encouraged her to take riding lessons. He'd attended every one of her horse shows until the night he disappeared. Laura was ten years old by then—old enough to know he probably wasn't ever coming back. Even so, she had continued picturing her father in the stands at every horse show, his face ruddy and cheerful beneath the floppy-brimmed hats he wore against the sun, standing and whooping whenever she took a ribbon.

So ironic that she was the only sister who'd stayed on Cape Ann, when she had once dreamed of the Olympics. She usually blamed her failure on meeting Jake, on getting pregnant and dropping out of college, or on her mother's needing her.

But sometimes Laura wondered whether she was here simply because she was still waiting for her father to return. More than anyone, he had always made her believe in herself.

Unfortunately, the fact that Laura owed her mother money meant that she was the only Bradford daughter still expected to drop everything if Sarah needed help at the inn. But what would they do without her mother's financial support?

Laura sighed and walked the mare back to the stall, her mind
going in its usual circles. Her husband's dental practice seemed to be thriving. The riding stables had started turning a profit a few years ago. Yet their debts kept climbing.

Her friends paid for luxury cars, vacations, and new clothes without having to calculate how many glasses of wine they could afford at a restaurant—or whether they could even eat out. Laura socialized with these people. She dressed like them, talked like them, and helped them raise money for the less fortunate. But she was
not
like them.

Even with her mother's help, Laura had to pinch pennies just to pay basic bills. She shopped at consignment stores, even Goodwill. They'd had the same furniture for twenty years. She used coupons at the grocery store.

Whenever she considered what else they could do without, she was flummoxed. Kennedy loved school. How could she deny her daughter the same education Laura and her sisters had?

Her mother also paid their Annisquam Country Club fees, and Jake claimed that being a member of the club was good for business—for his practice and her riding stables, too, since most of her students and the horses she boarded came from families they socialized with there.

Laura pushed the wheelbarrow into the first empty stall and began forking manure into it.
You're here because you want to be,
she reminded herself.

Besides, what problems did anyone ever solve by running away? Elly and Anne had escaped Folly Cove, but neither had a home or a family, or even a steady career.

Still, Laura wouldn't mind having a little more freedom.

She threw herself into cleaning stalls—eight for her own horses, plus a dozen for boarders—and pushed loads of manure out to the cart and tractor. Eventually she shucked her jacket, but her shirt was soaked with sweat by the time she finished.

She was spreading fresh sawdust in each stall when her mother phoned. “I need your help with the flowers for this afternoon's wedding,” Sarah said. “Mindy called in sick and there isn't anyone else. Can you come this morning?”

“Of course,” Laura said. “I'm nearly done in the barn. I'll bring Kennedy with me.”

An hour later, she was in the Folly Cove kitchen, trimming and arranging flowers. Kennedy had helped Laura collect them from the garden; now, as Laura glanced up, she saw her daughter hovering in front of the inn's enormous stainless-steel refrigerator, the door open.

“For God's sake, Kennedy,” Laura said. “Shut the refrigerator! Don't stand there mooning. You're wasting electricity.”

“Sorry, Mom.”

Laura watched Kennedy slink into a corner of the inn's kitchen, an éclair in each hand. At only thirteen, she already had a muffin top blooming above the waistband of her jeans. Laura worried about her daughter's tendency to binge, especially because she didn't like sports.

Kennedy didn't even ride the expensive mountain bike they'd given her last Christmas. That bike had cost three months' worth of groceries. Lately, Laura had been tempted to sell it. She and Jake could use the money.

Thinking of money made her remember that she still had to ask her mother for help paying Kennedy's tuition. The prospect made Laura's throat feel clogged, as if a web had been spun at the base of her throat.

She glanced at Sarah again, assessing her mood. Not good: her mother had stopped trimming flowers to watch Kennedy wolf down the éclairs like a starving refugee in some desert camp.

Don't say anything, Mom,
Laura silently begged.

Seconds later, Sarah said, “Kennedy, darling, should you really be eating that junk for breakfast? You're in seventh grade now. Fat girls don't have fun in junior high.”

Kennedy ran out of the kitchen, weeping.

“Mom!” Laura said, longing to follow her daughter and offer comfort, despite knowing all too well that Kennedy cried the way other people sneezed: suddenly, loudly, and often without provocation.

“Yes, dear?” Sarah said over a trio of blooms in her hand.

“What were you
thinking
?” Laura said. “You can't say things like that to her!”

Sarah arched a penciled brow. “Why not? Someone has to tell it
like it is. Do you really want her to keep piling on the pounds? She should be having yogurt for breakfast, not ice cream. What are you now, Laura, a size fourteen? Kennedy looks even larger than you do and she hasn't hit puberty. Or has she? Has Kennedy gotten her period yet? I've read that puberty starts earlier in girls these days.”

Her mother often couched her opinions in research, or even in pseudo research picked up from morning talk shows. That way nobody had the nerve to question her.

The worst part was that Sarah was right: Laura was an undeniably solid size fourteen. And she could hardly blame this on baby weight anymore, since she was forty and her child was a teenager. “No, Kennedy hasn't started her period,” she said.

“But soon, do you think?” Her mother plucked another dahlia out of the flowers heaped on the counter.

“Yes. And her doctor thinks she'll probably experience a growth spurt then and slim down naturally. Meanwhile, we shouldn't fuss over what Kennedy eats. The doctor says lecturing her could backfire and turn her into an anorexic.”

“Oh, well. A little anorexia never hurt anyone.” Sarah tucked one last scarlet dahlia into a crystal vase already bursting with bold scarlet, orange, and white blossoms. “These days everybody wants to pathologize a woman's responsibility to maintain her figure. In my day it was expected.”

“Yes, and before that, women wore whalebone corsets,” Laura joked through gritted teeth.

Her mother smiled. “I still miss my girdles. Spanx just don't measure up. I know what! How about if you and Kennedy join a mother-daughter Weight Watchers group? I'd be happy to fund that. Or any other healthful activity.”

For a single thrilling moment, Laura imagined taking the vases they'd filled with flowers and hurling them, one by one, against the kitchen's tiled floor. But she reined herself in: she still needed a favor. “Maybe I
will
look into Weight Watchers,” she said. “Good idea, Mom.”

Sarah smiled and smoothed her hair. Her blond hair had gone
white, but it was still long and thick. She typically wore it coiled into a neat French twist at the nape of her slender neck. Somehow, even while arranging flowers or doing the inn's accounts, Sarah managed to look like an actress in a French film—the sort who would take two lovers at a time, one of them much younger.