Folly Cove (37 page)

“Good.” Kennedy was slouched over her phone, smiling as she tapped something into it. “How's your day been?”

The sight of her daughter, still innocent of what was to come, was nearly Laura's undoing. She hastily turned back to the counter and started chopping spinach so hard the blade left grooves in the cutting board. “Fine.”

By the sudden heat Laura felt on the back of her neck, she knew Kennedy had looked up from her phone to watch her. “What's wrong, Mom? You're, like,
murdering
that spinach.”

“Nothing. Can you set the table, please?”

“Why are we eating so early?”

“Your dad's coming home early.”

“Really? Why?”

“No reason.”

“Where's Aunt Elly?”

“She's having dinner with Anne tonight.”

Laura held her face carefully in check, hoping nothing would betray her emotional state, which was somewhere between volcanic and sinkhole. She told Kennedy about seeing Anne and the baby today
at Flossie's, but decided to wait and tell her about Neil's death later. Kennedy had never even known her grandfather, and right now wasn't the time for more drama. There was plenty coming.

“So now that you and Anne are good again, can I hang out with them whenever I want?” Kennedy was bouncing in the chair with excitement.

“Sure, as long as you ask Anne first.” Laura glanced at the clock. Jake would be here any minute. She felt like something was holding her forehead stretched tight, like Botox gone wrong. “So tell me more about your time with Melanie. Did you have fun? Is she nicer than you thought?”

“She's okay, I guess. But, oh my God, Mom, you would
not
believe her house!”

Kennedy started detailing the wonders of Sandra's home: the couch with its recliners and cup holders built in, the indoor lap pool, Melanie's room with its canopy bed and her own projector television. “It's so cool. Like she lives in a mall!”

“Wow, that's really something,” Laura said, struggling to banish all judgment from her voice.

“I know, right?” Kennedy said. “But it's okay. Melanie's still jealous because I have horses and the beach. Since we're friends, it's like we have a city house and a country house.”

“Sure,” Laura said. “Great.”

The omelets were in the oven now and she was making English muffins. Laura finally allowed herself to pour a glass of wine. It was only as she took the first sip that she remembered drinking the night Ryder called. She'd forgotten to tell Elly about inviting him. Her mind was slipping. Wasn't he supposed to arrive today? Maybe Elly had met up with him and taken him to Anne's.

Jake arrived as she was buttering the muffins, his voice too hearty from the hallway. “Hey, where are my beautiful girls?” he called.

“In here, Dad!” Kennedy said. “You won't believe where I went after school! Try to guess!”

“Let's see.” Jake came into the room and hugged Kennedy. “Spain? Senegal? Timbuktu?”

“Daddy!” Kennedy laughed and pulled away. “I was at Melanie's! It was super fun!”

Jake met Laura's eyes. He looked as exhausted as she felt, his brown eyes dull and bloodshot. “I bet,” he said. “Tell me all about it.”

They sat down to dinner. Laura kept her fork moving and continued to swallow bits of food as she watched her daughter talking, still a child who believed everything would always be this way, the three of them a happy family that sat down to eat dinner together nearly every day.

Laura closed her eyes.
Remember this,
she thought.
At least you gave your daughter this for a little while
.

•   •   •

At the cottage, Anne put Lucy down for a nap after leaving Flossie's, then carried the baby monitor with her down to the dock, shivering in the cold, to think about everything her aunt had told them.

Her father was dead. Anne studied the water, the steady folding of the waves and the light mist rising as they crested, and realized that what she felt—besides the pure grief brought on by his letter so filled with regret—was a sense of relief. She no longer had to wonder where her father was. She could stop wondering if he'd ever return. There was pain in that, yes, but peace, too.

Her mother was another story. Why had Sarah felt so compelled to pretend she was something she wasn't? Anne understood her mother's motivation on a certain level—Sarah was in survival mode, no doubt, as she searched for a way out of her difficult life—but she felt angry at her and, more than that, cheated. She had no father now, and not even the mother she'd thought she had. She knew it didn't make sense to be angrier at her mother than her father—at least her mother had stuck around and provided for them, educated them, and raised them to be independent. Yet she was, for whatever inexplicable reason. Anne chewed her lip in frustration as she mulled all of this over.

By the metallic scent in the air, she could tell rain was coming. Maybe sleet. The cottage would be cold tonight. Her mother was right about the lack of insulation; the wind fingered easily through the old walls of
the tiny house. She'd have to find another place to live by winter. But she'd be damned if she asked her mother for help. Sarah didn't deserve to be part of Anne's life or Lucy's, either, until she'd explained herself better.

Anne's cell phone rang as she continued looking out at the water, watching a cormorant diving for fish, its sleek black neck long and snakelike as the bird emerged from the waves. It was Sebastian, saying he was back from Washington and wanted to see her.

“I can bring takeout,” he suggested.

Anne smiled at the sound of his voice and arched her back as a warmth spread between her shoulder blades, as if he'd placed his hand there. “No, let me cook,” she said. “You've been on the road for days. I'm sure you're tired of eating out. I'll throw something quick together.”

After Lucy's nap, Anne borrowed Flossie's car and drove to the store. Carrying the baby in the backpack, she bought fresh spinach, arborio rice, and chicken breasts.

She put the baby to bed early—for once, Lucy was cooperative—and started sautéing chicken breasts to go with the spinach risotto she'd made first. They'd have it with a salad on the side and a loaf of French bread she'd baked from the extra dough Sue had given her to bring home from the inn's kitchen. Everything was ready by the time Sebastian arrived with a bottle of cabernet around seven o'clock.

Anne had turned the electric baseboards on—the only source of heat in the cottage—but they still had to wear their sweaters as they ate. After dinner, she made a pot of tea with dried mint from Flossie's herb garden.

Sebastian built a fire in the woodstove while she brewed the tea. The cottage warmed quickly. They shed their sweaters and talked easily. Sebastian had gone to Washington to present a paper at a forestry conference. He told her a little about the research he'd based his paper on—before returning to Massachusetts, he'd been studying the effects of shading and warming on the leaf growth and shoot densities of alpine shrubs in the White Mountains—then asked about Anne's first days in the Folly Cove kitchen.

“So you like it?” he said after she told him a little about what she'd been doing.

“I do,” she answered. “I love cooking. I always have. There's an art to creating food that's as beautiful to look at as it is delicious.” She gestured at the half loaf of crusty bread still on the table. “That bread is so simple, just yeast and flour and salt. Yet with a few touches—maybe you add some fresh rosemary and oregano, or salt the crust—you end up with something unique. I never get tired of tasting food in restaurants and imagining what I'd do differently. I love breaking the rules, even if whatever I make fails a few times before I find flavors that work together. Experimenting with food makes me happy.”

She stopped, her throat tightening, as she remembered something: her mother teaching her to poach an egg.
Something so simple but so easy to do wrong,
Sarah had said, standing beside Anne, who was on a stool in the kitchen, watching and waiting with a slotted spoon.

Her mother had taught her so much. Yet part of what she'd taught Anne was never to trust anyone.

Sebastian smiled at her, oblivious to the change in her mood. He looked tired—he'd just flown into Boston that afternoon, then had driven home to walk the dog before coming here. Mack lay at their feet, occasionally casting hopeful looks toward the table and thumping his tail when Anne gave him a bit of chicken.

“That's great that you're happy,” he said. “I was worried you might resent having to work at the inn, after everything you've told me.”

Anne shook her head. “No. When I was little, the inn's kitchen was the place I felt most at home. It was like this magical giant's house to me. There were all of these huge glass jars of flour and sugar, and long stainless-steel counters too tall for me to reach, with these enormous pots hanging above them or stacked on the shelves underneath.”

It was like watching magicians at work, she thought: Rodrigo and the staff transforming raw ingredients into beautiful food, the waiters moving in and out of the kitchen like dancers, balancing plates on their arms.

“The pots on the bottom shelves were so huge,” she explained to Sebastian. “Big enough for me to turn them into furniture. I pretended they were tables and chairs. Rodrigo never minded having me in the kitchen. He'd set me up in a corner out of the way. So many delicious
smells! And so many complicated sounds and rhythms going on above my head! Almost like being at the symphony. I knew my mother wouldn't bother yelling at me, because she was busy conducting it all. She hardly noticed I was there.”

Anne stopped herself from saying more, aware suddenly that her mother's lack of attention had never seemed important to her in the past—she always had her sisters and Flossie—until she'd had her own daughter. Now the idea of her mother being too busy for her stung.

She forced herself to smile at Sebastian, who'd been watching her face as she talked. She was probably talking too much.

Nerves. Anne was anxious, wondering why he hadn't touched her since arriving, other than a brief kiss on the cheek when he greeted her. Meanwhile, her entire body felt like it was electrified whenever she turned toward him. She longed to feel his hands on her thighs and hips, pulling her against him. But Sebastian remained reserved, apart.

“Sorry,” she said. “You're so quiet. You must be tired.”

“It's not that. I mean, yes, I'm tired. But I'm trying to work out what to say to you.”

Her stomach felt suddenly leaden. “About what?”

“A few things. It's complicated.” He got up and took their mugs to the kitchen counter, where he filled the sink with hot water and started washing the dishes. Anne didn't mind this. She understood that Sebastian was the sort of person who had to be in motion to think; she was the same way, her mind always calmer and more focused when she was doing tasks with her hands.

They cleaned the kitchen together, Sebastian's back to her as he scrubbed the dishes and pots after she'd scraped them and put the food away. He told her more about Washington and about an exhibit he'd seen at the Smithsonian.

Sebastian was wearing business clothes of a sort she'd never seen him wear: gray wool trousers and a striped, collared shirt. No tie. He must have taken the tie off on his way over, or maybe on the plane. Imagining this gesture, his competent fingers untangling the knot of his tie, made Anne want to unbutton her shirt right now while his back
was turned. She imagined untucking his shirt and lifting it, pressing her bare breasts against his warm back.

She took a damp paper towel and moved to the other side of the counter, wiping bread crumbs into her hand from where she'd sliced the loaf. “My aunt told us today that our father is dead,” she said before realizing the words were there, ready to be hurled into the air.

Sebastian spun around to face her across the counter. “My God, Anne. I'm so sorry. That must have been a shock. Was it? How do you feel? I know you haven't heard from him in a long time.”

“Thirty years.” She shrugged. “I don't really know what I feel. A little helpless, maybe. I hardly remember him. It was weird, having Flossie tell us instead of Mom. She has his ashes. Did you know you can mail cremated remains in a post-office box? They even have a special sticker they put on it. Black, of course.”

“Oh, man,” he said, and came around the counter to embrace her, resting his head on her chin. “I really am sorry. How did he die? Where was he?”

“Cancer. He'd been living in Florida. Apparently, Mom and Flossie both heard from him once in a while. They just never bothered to tell us. Weird, huh?” Anne felt her breath catch in her throat: another betrayal. And by Flossie, of all people.

“They were trying to protect you, I'm sure,” Sebastian said. “Come on. Sit down. You poor thing. I'm so sorry,” he repeated.

They carried their mugs to the couch. Anne set hers on the table, and noticed that Sebastian's shirt was damp from the sink. She turned on the couch to face him, pulling her knees up to her chest as a barrier between them. Not to keep him away from her, but to make it more difficult for her to reach over and lay a hand where the damp shirt adhered to his skin.

“The thing is, I never really understood why Dad left,” Anne said. “I mean, I know he and my mom fought a lot—I have some memories of that—but I never really knew why. Or why Flossie stayed here with us, when she and Mom never really got along, either.”

“She probably stayed to take care of you,” Sebastian said.

“Mom could have hired nannies for that.”

“Not while she was hospitalized.”

He said this as if he were reminding Anne of a fact, but she knew nothing about this. “When was my mom in the hospital?”