Folly Cove (39 page)

Just then the nurse poked her head in the door. “Your mother's awake and wants to see you girls.” She was the oldest nurse they'd seen yet, but her eyes were a lively green. “What a lucky mom, having three daughters. Please try not to tire her out, though.”

Their mother looked like a porcelain doll. That was Elly's first thought as they crowded back into the hospital room.

Sarah was a tinier version of herself. Her blue eyes were enormous in her narrow face. Without makeup, her eyebrows were gray, nearly nonexistent. Her eyes were lashless, her lips pale and chapped. She looked nearly flat beneath the white hospital blankets.

“How are you feeling?” Elly asked.

“Like a million bucks.” Sarah's speech was only slightly slurred.

Elly was relieved that her mother could speak—the doctor had told them it was a minor stroke and that no surgery was necessary, just medication to dissolve the clot. The drug was being administered now through an IV. She'd also been afraid the stroke might impact her mother's facial expressions, but other than a slight droopiness to one side of her mouth, there wasn't much sign that anything was wrong.

“I'm sorry we argued, Mom. I really am.” Elly touched her mother's hand and was reassured to feel how warm it was.

Her mother went to wave the hand at her, then remembered the IV and put it down. “Don't be ridiculous. I was in a snit over nothing. Here I am, alive, with all of my girls. Who gives a hoot if I'm sixty-five or seventy-five?”

“That's the spirit, Mom,” Laura muttered. “Just keep lying while you're dyin'.”

Elly jabbed Laura in the ribs.

Sarah peered over Laura's shoulder. “Where's Jake? I thought he'd be here.”

“Home with Kennedy,” Elly said quickly, so Laura wouldn't have to lie. Though, for all she knew, that was the truth.

“And the baby? With Flossie, I suppose,” Sarah said. “Flossie's hogging that baby. I do hope you'll bring her to the inn, Anne. At least for a little visit.”

“I will,” Anne promised. “How long does the doctor say you have to stay here?”

“Just two days, and then I go to rehab. Maybe a week in all.” Her mother's mouth opened and shut, as if she were exercising her jaw. “Oh no. My God. The Sanderson wedding is the weekend after next! More than a hundred guests. I forgot all about it!” She jerked her head around on the pillow, agitated.

“Don't worry, Mom,” Anne said. “We'll take care of it.”

“Right,” Laura said. “We'll all pitch in.”

“But you have your business to run, Laura.” Sarah's voice was querulous. “And don't you have a horse show coming up?”

Elly was astonished that her mother could remember so many details
after what she'd been through. “It's fine, Mom,” she said. “We'll all work together.”

“Me, too,” Ryder said from the doorway.

“Good Lord, who brought the Viking?” Sarah asked.

Elly laughed. “I did,” she said, glancing at Ryder, who grinned back. “This is Ryder. My friend from California.”

Sarah lifted her head to look at him again. “Well done.” She dropped her head back again.

“You should just plan on resting, Mom,” said Anne.

“I will if you take care of that wedding,” Sarah said. “Everything you need is in the blue folder on my desk. Rhonda can help you find it.” She closed her eyes.

For a moment nobody said anything. Elly looked at her sisters and they looked back at her, all of them waiting for something to happen next.

“You're dismissed,” Sarah said, opening one eye. “Go! Don't just stand there with your mouths hanging open. I'm not going to die yet.”

•   •   •

To Laura's shock, Kennedy claimed that she had already known about Jake.

“But how?” Laura demanded, disbelieving.

She and Kennedy were sitting on the living room sofa the night after Sarah's stroke, sharing a bowl of popcorn. Before getting the call from her mother, she and Jake had told Kennedy during dinner that her father was moving out. It was a stilted conversation with Jake doing most of the talking. They hadn't told her about Anthony specifically. Only that Jake had been struggling for a while, and that it was time for him to “come out of the closet,” as he'd put it, making awkward air quotes with his fingers.

“We hope you know this isn't your fault, and that we both love you very much,” Jake had added.

Kennedy had rolled her eyes, looking so much like her grandmother when she did it that Laura had thought,
Atta girl
.

“No duh,” Kennedy had said. “You're
gay
, Dad. I get that it's nothing to do with me. How would it be? Can I go upstairs now?”

Jake had wept during the conversation, but Laura had felt numb and surprisingly removed. She'd managed to find him a box of Kleenex. Let him go back to Anthony for comfort. She'd been about to send him on his way when her mother had called. She'd had to ask Jake to stay until she got home from the hospital, and was surprised to find that it was a comfort to have him there to hold her when she returned and told him about her mother.

Kennedy had gone to school as usual today. They'd had dinner separately—Laura had gone to the hospital to see her mother—and now she'd lured Kennedy downstairs with popcorn, hot chocolate, and the promise of watching
Singin' in the Rain
again and teaching her a few more steps. Party plans for her mother were apparently still on. This afternoon the nurses had assured them that Sarah would go to rehab for a few days, but she'd be home soon.

“Seriously,” Laura said to her daughter now, taking another handful of popcorn. “How did you know Dad was gay?”

“You don't want to know.”

Laura considered this. Kennedy was probably right. “Tell me anyway.”

Kennedy picked up her hot chocolate and studied the whipped cream, then dipped her finger into it and licked it. “From Dad's porn,” she said finally.

“What?” Laura nearly choked on her popcorn.

“On the computer,” Kennedy said. “I used his desktop a few times for a project. And, you know, there it was. Gay porn.”

“Kennedy Sarah Williams,” Laura said, “don't you dare lie to me. There has to be more to the story than that! Dad wouldn't just leave a porn site open on his computer.”

Kennedy gave a world-weary sigh. “Yeah, see, there's this thing with Google, where you type in a search term and it starts filling in the letters. You know about that?”

“Of course.”

Kennedy shrugged. “Okay. So, I was on Dad's computer, looking stuff up about reproduction for our biology unit. I typed in ‘penis,' and all these sites with pictures popped up.”

“Oh. I see.” It felt like a wad of cotton was stuck in Laura's throat,
choking her as she tried to mentally block the images her daughter must have seen on Jake's computer.

“It wasn't S and M or anything,” Kennedy reassured her.

“Oh. Good.” Laura put her head in her hands.

“But it was guy-on-guy stuff. You know. Men kissing naked. Penises everywhere.”

“Stop! Enough!” Laura kept her face covered for another moment, trying not to see “stuff,” much less “penises everywhere.”

“Sorry. You asked.” Kennedy slurped more of her hot chocolate.

When Laura was finally able to look at her daughter again, she said, “So from that you decided Dad must be gay.”

“Well, not right away. First I thought maybe the same thing happened to him that happened to me, right? That he'd landed in those sites accidentally. But I tried it again a few times and the same thing happened. On his desktop
and
on his laptop. Dad never erases his search history,” Kennedy added. “
Always
erase your search history if you don't want anybody tracking where you've been online.”

Laura managed a smile, while at the same time worrying about what online activity her own daughter might be hiding. “Thanks for the advice. But why didn't you tell me? Or ask Dad about it?”

“I tried, but Dad denied it. He said it was an accident. And I didn't want to tell you, because, well. I just didn't.” Kennedy shifted in her seat and glanced at the television screen, though nothing was playing.

“Because you were trying to protect me. And maybe a little part of you didn't want it to be true.”

Kennedy nodded, turning back to Laura, her blue eyes bright with tears. “I'm sorry I didn't tell you. What if Dad's been sleeping around and you get a disease or something? It would be all my fault! What if you get AIDS and
die
?” She was sobbing now.

“Oh, honey.” Laura reached over and gathered her daughter into her arms. “Is that what you've been worrying about? Don't! Dad is not sleeping around. I promise. And I've been tested. I'm absolutely fine. So is he.”

Kennedy sniffed and wiped her eyes on her sweater sleeve. “What are we going to do without him, Mom? I hate Dad! But I already miss him, and he's only been gone like an hour!”

Laura moved over and put her arm around her daughter, resting her cheek on top of Kennedy's soft blond hair. She thought of Neil leaving them, of how hurt she'd been that he was no longer at her horse shows and how angry she was that she had to step in and help her mother with the inn and her younger sisters. She was only beginning to realize how furious she'd been with her father.

She still was, though less so. Now she thought about Neil being an alcoholic and struggling to survive both his own addiction and his guilt, and how, at the end, he'd wanted to come home and hadn't been able to do it after all. She was saddened by that thought, even though Laura knew she would have met his return with mixed emotions.

“The thing about families is that they're very, very complicated,” Laura said. “We think we know our parents, but there will always be some parts of their lives that we can't know, because they're the adults and we're the children. I feel like that about my own mom and dad.”

She pulled Kennedy a little closer, reveling in the solid warmth of her. “You're going to feel angry with Dad for a while. But he still loves you, and I'm sure he misses you already, too. You can see Dad anytime you want. And right now we're going to watch
Singin' in the Rain
and practice our dance moves. Okay?”

“Okay.” Kennedy sniffed. “FYI, nobody says ‘dance moves' anymore, Mom.”

“Oh. Good thing I have you to keep me current.”

“I
like a woman who plays hard to get, but you really didn't have to go to all this trouble and hide from me in a hospital,” Gil said. “Phone tag would've been sufficient.”

Sarah snorted. Ordinarily, she would be horrified to have a man pay her a visit while she was recuperating, but Laura had brought her pretty blue robe with the white satin piping. The blue brought out her eyes, and the sleeves were long enough to cover the terrible sight of her aging arms without being a nuisance. “Don't flatter yourself,” she told Gil.

“Oh, don't worry. I know you've probably got a dozen suitors,” he said, “but I enjoy a challenge. Here. These are for you. Where would you like them?”

He had brought eighteen pink long-stemmed roses arranged in a vase with salal and ivy. Must have set him back a hundred dollars easy, Sarah thought, but she waved them away. “Over on the windowsill with the others is fine.”

She had received several arrangements in the two days they'd kept her in the hospital, though she wasn't about to admit to Gil that they were all from her daughters, except that fat monstrosity of a cactus dish garden from her sister-in-law.

The note Flossie had attached to the cactus dish was the usual metaphor-laden message, something about the cactus representing endurance, hers and Sarah's, and their ability to stand the test of time.
Then the Zen clincher: “We cannot forgive others until we forgive ourselves, and we cannot do that until we look at our own failures and see them as lessons learned.”

Anne had brought the cactus to the hospital. Flossie hadn't been in to see her yet, making Sarah wonder whether Flossie still believed Sarah's threat to kick her off the property. She hoped not.

“What is it?” Gil said, startling her. She'd forgotten he was here.

“Oh, nothing.”

“Your secrets are safe with me. Who else can you tell, if not a nearly perfect stranger?” He leaned forward and touched her arm, his face serious. His eyebrows were still dark even though his hair was going white in places, making him look serious when she knew he probably meant only half of everything he said, just like her. “Come on,
bubbe
, tell me,” he said.

She looked at him suspiciously. “Doesn't that mean ‘grandmother?'”

Gil sat back and laughed. “You got me there. I guess that's not exactly the kind of hot talk a woman wants to hear.”

Sarah moved up a little against her pillows, primly tucking the white blanket and sheet snugly around her waist. “I am in a hospital, in case you hadn't noticed. Your timing for hot talk leaves a little to be desired.”

“I'll work on that. So tell me, Sarah.” Gil wasn't grinning anymore. “What's got you so down?”

Oh, what the hell, Sarah thought. “I'm a liar, and I've been caught with my pants down around my knees.”

He stared at her for a minute, his brown eyes round as marbles, and then Gil let loose with a real belly laugh, causing one of the nurses—the real crabby one, Mrs. Finich—to smile when she walked past the door.

Gil wiped his eyes. “You want to confess them to me? I'll hear you out if it'll make you feel better. And I promise you that whatever lies you've told, they're not so bad.”

“Don't be so sure.”

“Try me.”

And so Sarah told him everything, about her little sister and the
chilly apartment near the airport, about sleeping in a parked car and how her mother couldn't keep a job because of the drinking.

“You think I like being on welfare? Do you?” her mother would scream whenever Sarah asked why she didn't get a job so they could pay the bills.

Her mother traded the welfare stamps for a pint every week, Sarah told Gil. “She thought I didn't know this, but of course I had to grow up sharp, observing every little thing she did. It was a matter of self-preservation.”

Her poor sister, Joanie, had never been sharp. Had simply said, “Yes, Ma,” to anything their mother said or did. Joanie had married that old fart when she was just seventeen so their mother would have a roof over her head.

Even when Sarah told her the truth, Joanie hadn't believed the marriage was a setup, one their own mother had dreamed up to get them out of that dump. Ma had pushed the man at Sarah first, but when Sarah wouldn't let him up her skirt, there was Joanie, younger and even more innocent.

“Joanie was as blond and pretty as I was,” Sarah told Gil, “but as dumb as a post and soft as soap.”

When Sarah tried to warn Joanie about their mother's plan to move in with them after the wedding, Joanie had said, “You're just jealous because I'm the one who got a husband first. And a house of my own! And what do you have, Sarah? Nothing at all!”

“I told my sister she didn't have to marry that toad,” Sarah said, “but she wouldn't listen. She was afraid our ma would go hungry if she didn't do it.”

Not long after that, Joanie was pregnant. “She had five kids before her husband finally died,” Sarah said. “God, the picture of that horrible man lying on top of my pretty little sister still turns my stomach.”

She looked away from Gil, pretending to catch her breath when really it was the tears she was trying to catch. All this time, she'd been missing her sister, she realized. Had felt bad for leaving her.

“I still feel guilty,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because it should have been me! I was the oldest. If I'd married the guy, Joanie would've been spared. She always tried hard in school. Maybe she would have even made it to community college.”

Gil reached over and took her hand, stroked the back of it with his thumb. “You need to let that go,” he said. “You were a kid when all that happened. A kid trying to survive.”

“Maybe. But it gets worse, see. I tried to forget about everything so hard, I never even told my own family,” Sarah said. “My husband, my girls? They didn't know any of this. Not because I was ashamed of Joanie, but because I felt so bad that I wasn't strong enough to help her. I ran away. Just like Neil.”

“Did your sister's life turn out okay?”

“I don't know. I think so. She's a widow with five kids. Flossie says she lives in a nice house.”

“Good. And do you forgive Neil for leaving you?” Gil asked.

Sarah sniffed and nodded. “He couldn't help it.”

“Right. So now you have to forgive yourself,” Gil said. “I want you to remember yourself as that scared little girl. You can help her by saying, ‘It's okay, honey. You did the best you could, and things turned out fine.' Can you say that for me?”

“Don't be stupid,” Sarah said, feeling cross and scared, too.

“Say it,” Gil urged. “Come on. I know you can do it.”

Sarah closed her eyes. “I can't.”

“You can. Repeat after me: ‘It's okay, honey. You did the best you could, and things turned out fine.'”

Slowly, he said the words again, halting after each phrase until Sarah repeated it after him.

When she opened her eyes again, Gil was smiling at her with a light in his eyes that looked suspiciously like love.

“God, you're a sentimental jerk,” she said.

“I am what I am,” he said. “Lucky for you.”

•   •   •

When they told Sarah she was being moved from the hospital to the rehab center after two days, she'd been horrified all over again by the idea.

“I need to be back at work!” she complained to that bossy child doctor
with the square black glasses that made him look like a cartoon character. He'd suggested that she attend the chair yoga session in the PT room, too, and she'd been livid. Yoga was for people like Flossie. People who had time to lie on their backs with their legs in the air.

Ultimately, though, rehab was a pleasant surprise. The PT was adorable, a young man just out of college with dimples. The food was tolerable, and she was able to catch up on Fox News in her sunny private room, where she didn't have some commie roommate moaning at her to change the channel.

Flossie finally showed up on her third day in rehab. For once, the woman was in something other than yoga pants, but Sarah wasn't sure the wide gray wool trousers and oversize white wool sweater paired well with red Chinese slippers. She looked like a knitted sock monkey.

“You look like you'll live,” Flossie pronounced, handing Sarah a strangely shaped gift. Wrapped in newspaper, of course, because Flossie was the queen of recycling. “How are you feeling?”

“Like somebody cut my puppet strings.” Sarah dangled one arm. “I'm still too weak on one side to pick up my applesauce spoon.”

“Well. You never did like applesauce.”

“True enough.” Sarah opened the newspaper and discovered a handmade driftwood frame—Flossie had been making these for years—and, inside it, a photograph of Sarah and Joanie. Sarah was six and Joanie was in her arms, a chubby baby in a white sundress that matched Sarah's. Both of them had bows in their hair.

Sarah's eyes filled. “Where did you ever dig up this artifact?”

“I had to ransack your bedroom closet.” Flossie pointed to a small suitcase near the door that Sarah hadn't noticed her carrying. “Ostensibly, I was gathering your coming-home outfit.”

“Thank you,” Sarah said, setting the picture down gently on the bedside table with its box of scratchy tissues and plastic cup. Why did hospitals and rehab centers insist on buying the same things people did for preschools?

“So, are you tossing me out on my ear?” Flossie crossed one short leg over the other, knocking her foot into the side of the bed. “Have you put my house up for sale?”

“You know better,” Sarah said.

Flossie nodded once, sharply. “How are the girls?”

“They're like scared little rabbits. Not one of them has said a thing to me about any of it since my fall.”

“They're worried about you, Sarah,” Flossie said. “Every mother should be so lucky.”

“And every sister.” Sarah reached out to touch Flossie's hand. “You've always known how to take care of me and my girls. Thank you.”

Flossie nodded. “It'll be good to have you back.”

They finally discharged her two days after Flossie's visit. “All set, Miss Sarah? Last day, dear! You must be so glad to be going home.”

It was her favorite aide, Monique, that little brunette with the very white smile and an engagement ring with a diamond bigger than a tooth. Some doctor had snapped her up, most likely. Good for her.

“Ready when you are,” Sarah said. “My daughter should be here any time now.”

“She's just outside in reception,” Monique said. “Your granddaughter, too. She looks just like you!”

Heavens, Sarah thought. If Monique saw a resemblance between herself and Kennedy, she'd better sign up for double sessions of Pilates next week.

But Kennedy looked different. Her new hairstyle was very becoming, cut above the shoulders and with a new slant to the bangs. She actually looked like she had a neck. She wore black leggings under a bright green tunic with birds on it, and chunky boots.

Not Sarah's idea of high fashion, but she knew girls wore these sorts of outfits now, playing hippie because the hippies were dead. Thank the Lord.

“Hello, Kennedy,” Sarah said, smiling from her wheelchair, which of course wasn't the least bit necessary, but the hospital insisted on it.

“They'll give you a wheelchair so you don't fall and sue their hind ends,” Flossie had warned her. “Don't freak out about it. Just enjoy the ride.”

“How do you feel?” Laura was asking. She looked thinner, too, but
other than that, no change: she was dressed as if she'd come straight from the barn, and smelled of horses and hay.

Laura must have seen her noticing this, because she said, “Sorry, I just came from mucking stalls. They said I had to be here by ten o'clock. But they've taken forever on the paperwork. I bet you're hungry, Mom. It's nearly noon.”

“Not very, no.” Sarah tipped her head up to smile. “Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to fetch me.”

There. In the hospital, Sarah had had plenty of time to think, even with her daughters visiting her, sometimes one at a time, or occasionally all three arriving together like a gaggle of geese, honking their laughter down the hall so that the noise reached the room before they did. And during this strange thinking time, Sarah had decided she must find ways to be kinder and more grateful, especially to her daughters. Flossie would be gone one day and she would need to rely on them.

Laura looked surprised. “Of course, Mom. I'm happy to do it. Elly and Anne would have come, too, but they're busy at the inn, getting ready for the Sanderson wedding tomorrow.”

“And Jake? I imagine he must be busy at work,” Sarah said. Really, you'd think her daughter's husband would have come to see her at least once, after everything she'd done for his family.