Folly Cove (40 page)

Laura seemed not to have heard the question. And no wonder, with Kennedy bouncing on the balls of her feet like she was on a pogo stick. “Can I push the wheelchair? Can I?”

Monique laughed. “Sure. So long as I have hold of one handle with you. That way we'll make sure we don't dump your grandma out on the street by mistake.”

The rehab center was located next to the hospital and only twenty-five minutes from home. Laura drove like a little old man in a hat. Sarah had to keep telling her to speed up.

“I'm going the speed limit, Mom,” Laura snapped finally. “I can't afford a ticket.”

Sarah felt her own back go rigid. When would Laura finally get a grip on their family finances?

But she wouldn't say a thing. Sarah reminded herself of her vow to be nicer to her daughters. “How's Jake?” she asked. “Still working long hours? I was surprised he didn't stop by the hospital.” All right, that was a small criticism. But only an implied one, and not of Laura!

The car jerked to one side of the road. “Sorry, Mom. Pothole,” Laura said.

Sarah eyed her suspiciously. Her daughter's hands—which could be pretty, if she'd do something about those raggedy nails of hers—were white on the steering wheel. The sight of them made Sarah's jaw clench.

In the backseat, Kennedy had fallen blessedly silent. But that, too, was reason to be suspicious.

“Laura,” Sarah said. “What aren't you telling me? Is something wrong at the inn? Are Elly and Anne handling the wedding all right?”

“They're doing a great job. Everything is fine at the inn.” Laura was breathing noisily, like one of those circus fire eaters.

“Then what's going on?” Sarah asked.

“Nothing, Mom. Just so glad you're coming home.” Laura's hands were still firmly on the wheel.

They were passing through Rockport Center. The road to Bearskin Neck was eerily deserted. Hardly any traffic now that leaf season was nearly over. Christmas shoppers wouldn't be out until Thanksgiving.

“You can tell me,” Sarah urged. “Is it money? Do you need more?”

“No.” Laura's head was cocked at a funny angle.

“Is it Jake?” Sarah said. “Did the two of you have a fight?”

Her daughter jerked the wheel again and shouted, “Goddamn it, Mom! Leave me the hell alone! I'm trying to fucking
drive
!”

“Mom!” Kennedy yelled from the backseat. “Don't yell at Grandma! She just had a
stroke
! What if she has a
heart attack
? Just
tell
her, okay?”

Laura pulled the car over onto the shoulder and threw it into park so fast that the car jerked to a stop.

Not much room, on this narrow road. Sarah cast an uneasy glance over her shoulder. Still no other cars. Was her daughter having a breakdown? Oh, Lord, not that. Anything but that. She knew Laura had her dark days. But let it not be the way it was for her.

Please let my daughters cope with life better than I did,
she found herself praying. To whom, she did not know. Certainly not to that fat Buddha of Flossie's.

Laura was hunched over the steering wheel, gasping like a dying trout. Her shoulders were shaking. Sarah put a tentative hand on her arm. Laura shrugged it off angrily.

Finally Sarah turned around and raised an eyebrow at Kennedy. “Maybe you'd better tell me what's going on.”

Kennedy's eyes were wide, bright blue, and very worried. Sarah flashed to her sister's face. That's who Kennedy looked like: Sarah's own little sister, Joanie. Whom she hadn't seen since God knows when. Joanie would be an old woman now.

But Sarah knew Joanie must remember, as she did, the worst day of their lives. Joanie was so terrified when they couldn't wake Mom on the couch that she was shrieking nonsense words. Mom had a bruise on her forehead and blood on her ear. The pill bottle was on the floor. Sarah had to bundle Joanie up and send her to the neighbors before the cops came.

“Sorry for your trouble,” the officers kept saying. As if they knew anything about the sort of black, seeping swamp of misery that could invade a person's every pore. That Sarah herself had to push back after Neil left her, when she was alone with these children and so much work and the whole world seemed to dim around her.

Please, God, whoever you are, don't let that happen to Laura. To any of my girls. I will not stand for it.

Sarah felt her eyes fill with tears. She undid her seat belt and got out of the car, causing Kennedy to yelp in distress. Sarah walked around the car, opened the driver's side door, and firmly pushed Laura over into the passenger seat.

“Good girl,” she said when Laura put on her seat belt as Sarah climbed behind the wheel. The car was still running.

Sarah eased the car back onto the road toward the inn. She wouldn't take them home. She would take them to her apartment at Folly Cove, where she would ask someone from the inn's kitchen to bring them tea and a meal. Rodrigo's cooking could raise the dead.

Which is what Laura looked like, her face gray and puckered as she tried and failed, tried and failed to stop crying. “I didn't think this would happen,” she said. “I'm so sorry, Mom.”

Sarah kept her mouth shut. Kennedy said, “Mom, tell her. Grandma needs to know.”

Sarah waited some more.

Finally Laura gulped hard and said, “Jake and I have separated.”

Sarah felt her stomach lurch. “What has he done?”

Laura was silent beside her, staring out the window.

“Damn it, Laura. What has that man done to you? Whatever it is, I will fix it. I will pay whatever needs to be paid to fix it. You cannot give up on your marriage.”

“It's over, Mom. I'm sorry. There's nothing even you can do to fix this.”

They had arrived at the inn. Sarah pulled up to the door and put the car into park, throwing the gearshift so hard that the car shuddered as if it, too, were tired of this whole dramatic business of being alive.

“I don't think I can accept that,” Sarah said. “I will not have that man cause you pain.”

Laura turned to look at her then, the strangest little smile on her face. “I don't think you have any choice, Mom. Neither do I.”

Sarah watched out of the corner of her eye as her granddaughter's hand, small and white, reached over the seat to touch her mother's shoulder. Then she felt Kennedy's other hand touch her own shoulder. Patting it gently.

So rarely was she touched that Sarah nearly wept from the tender, surprising warmth of it.

B
y nine o'clock the following Saturday night, the Sanderson wedding reception was in full swing in the Folly Cove dining room. Elly led her mother into the pub, where it was quieter. “Now, that's what I call a real ‘man's man,'” Sarah whispered, gesturing with her chin. “So handsome. I could look at him all day.”

Elly had to smile a little. “Glad you're feeling more like yourself again, Mom.”

She followed her mother's gaze to Ryder and Sebastian, who were deep in conversation at the bar. The two had met at the wedding reception, where Sebastian was a guest—he seemed to know everyone—and Ryder had been helping the videographer. Now Ryder was assisting the bartender; they hadn't counted on so many wedding guests surging toward the pub.

Meanwhile, Anne had spent the evening in the kitchen with Rodrigo, and Laura had double-checked the rooms as Rhonda worked the front desk. That left Elly to look out for Sarah.

“Come on,” Elly had argued with her sisters, dreading the idea of an entire evening spent with her mother. “There must be some other job I can do. I don't have your civil veneer. I really am afraid I'll go off on her for all the crap she pulled on us.”

“No,” Laura had said sternly. “We can't let Mom tire herself out, and you're her favorite. She's more likely to do whatever you say.”

“I'm not her favorite anymore,” Elly said. “I'm not a singer and I say what I think. Anne should do it.”

Anne put up both hands. “Don't look at me. Remember, Mom told me I'm the child she never should have had. I'm also the wayward single mom. Besides, I should be in the kitchen helping out.”

“Yeah, and Mom's too used to me being her little slave because I've been getting handouts from her for years,” Laura had argued. “She doesn't listen to a word I say. It
has
to be you, Elly.” Then she and Anne had high-fived each other.

Now it was more than halfway through the night, and so far everything had gone smoothly. Elly watched Ryder with Sebastian, their heads close together across the bar: one light, one dark. Ryder was broader through the shoulders but nearly as tall as Sebastian.

Earlier tonight, he'd told Elly admiringly that “Sebastian knows the name of every damn plant in New England.” He'd met Sebastian that morning in Dogtown to grab some sunrise shots and planned to go there with him again. “Unbelievable light here, man. So different from California.”

Currently, Sebastian was studying a copse of deep woods made up of hemlock, white pine, and cedar that an MIT professor named Frederick Norton began planting in the 1930s, Ryder added. “Wrap your mind around that, right? This dude planted an entire forest, and it's already hundreds of feet tall!”

Elly couldn't wrap her mind around it. She also couldn't believe she was sleeping with a guy who used words like “dude.”

“Are you even listening to me, Elizabeth?” Her mother was urgently tapping her arm. “Who is that good-looking man over there?”

Elly glanced at her worriedly. Why didn't she recognize Sebastian? She was relieved to see that her mother's color was good. Sarah was wearing a vibrant blue suit that brought out her eyes and a diamond brooch shaped like a bird.

“I am listening, Mom. That's Sebastian Martinson. Paige's older brother. You know him.”

“No, no. Not him. Of course I know Sebastian! I meant the
other
man. Your Viking friend from California. It's
his
name I can't remember.”

“Oh,” Elly said, surprised. She'd been sure her mother would write Ryder off as a drifter or worse, because of his ragged appearance and long hair. Not to mention the earring. “That's Ryder.”

Had her mother really called Ryder a “man's man”? And “handsome”? Elly grinned. Ryder would be thrilled if he knew.

Ryder must have won her mother's heart when he'd bowed low in greeting her when he'd arrived to work the bar tonight and kissed her hand.
Kissed her hand
.

“Mom's not going to knight you for that or anything,” Elly had teased him. “You're laying it on a little thick.”

“What?” he'd asked innocently, lips twitching. “I thought that's how things were done in proper New England. But what do we lowly Californians know?”

She'd punched his arm. Now, though, she watched Ryder talking animatedly to Sebastian at the bar and was pleased that he was here. She felt a slow heat spread through her body as she thought about every small thing they'd done together in bed. Of every small thing that she wanted him to do to her next. Of his hands. His hips. His . . .

“And does your Viking have a last name, too?”

Elly flinched. Mom was going to love this one. “Argenziano.”

But all Sarah said was, “Goodness. That's a mouthful. You'll have to think hard about whether to take his name when you marry.”

“Mom, we're not getting married. I told you. Ryder's just a friend.”

“That's certainly not how it looks to me. But what do I know? I'm an old woman. Much, much older than I appear, as you very well know.” She gave Elly a sly look, then rose abruptly from the chair where Elly had parked her with a glass of seltzer. “Excuse me, dear. I see someone I absolutely must say hello to.”

Elly watched in astonishment as her mother patted her hair and then sashayed—yes, that was the right word for it—over to the bar. Who was she going to see?

There were the Sanderson brothers, making a lot of noise at the bar. And in the far corner was a wedding guest, a paunchy guy in his forties, flirting loudly with Laura. Did her mother mean him? Elly wondered, even as she admired how attractive her sister looked tonight.

Laura's hair was back to a rich chestnut after Elly had practically dragged her out to a salon yesterday, and she looked sexy but classy in a snug black dress with a sweetheart neckline that Elly had found in a vintage shop last week.

But Sarah ignored the Sandersons and Laura, too. Instead, she headed straight into the arms of a short, balding guy standing near the pub entrance. He embraced her, grinning, then pulled away to look at Sarah. He said something that made her laugh.

Elly had no idea who he was. Since they were in the pub, the guy could have just stopped in for a drink. And was that Rhonda from the front desk, coming over to stand with the man and her mother?

Yes, it was Rhonda. She waved at Elly from across the room and made a gesture at their mother and the man, indicating that Elly should join them. Elly smiled and waved back, but went to the opposite side of the pub to talk with Ryder and Sebastian. From here, she could keep an eye on her mother without being intrusive.

Elly still didn't know how she felt about any of the things she'd learned about her parents recently. She had to give Sarah credit for doing her best to keep the inn going and give them a home. But it was hard to love someone who never removed her shiny suit of armor to reveal the soft flesh underneath.

And Dad. She wasn't sure how she felt about him, either. They hadn't yet talked about a memorial service, As far as Elly knew, the box of his ashes was still being stored in Aunt Flossie's closet with her yoga mats.

Despite his weakness for alcohol, her father had given Elly childhood memories that still comprised some of the happiest moments of her life: hiking in Dogtown, building incredibly intricate beach sculptures out of found objects, riding bikes into Rockport for ice cream and teaching her tricks. Elly could still do wheelies and bunny hops on a bike because of Dad, which had made Ryder nearly fall over laughing when she showed him these stunts on Kennedy's bike the other day.

Elly had given up thinking about her father years ago. But the knowledge that he was truly gone made her feel old even now, in her snug and sparkly silver dress with all of her silver bracelets and long
earrings. Losing a parent was like losing one more layer between you and whatever lay beyond, which in Elly's mind felt like emptiness.

“Hey, you all right?” Ryder had come out from behind the bar. He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “You're shivering. Want my jacket?”

“No. I'm okay. Just thinking about my dad.”

He kissed the top of her head. “It'll keep hitting you, sweetie. That's what grief does.”

Like Ryder would know, she thought bitterly. His parents were both alive and well and still schoolteachers in northern California.

“Who's that guy walking with your mom?”

“Walking?” Elly blinked away her tears and looked around frantically. If she lost Mom, her sisters would have her head.

Sure enough, her mother was sauntering out the door on the short guy's arm, leaning her head in his direction and giggling like a prom queen.

“She can't leave on her own,” Elly said, and started after them.

“Wait.” Ryder put his hand on her arm. “She's not exactly on her own, right? I think you should let her go.”

Elly tried to wriggle free of his grasp. “No. She's my responsibility. I don't want Mom having another stroke!”

Ryder's expression was sympathetic, but he held on to her. “She's not going to have another stroke just because she's with someone who isn't you, Elly.”

“But I don't even know who he is!”

Ryder sighed and released her. “All right. Calm down. Let's follow at a discreet distance.”

Elly nodded and waited for Ryder to ask the bartender if he could handle things on his own. When the man nodded, they left the pub, tracking her mother and her companion. Her mother's pale hair was like a flame in the dark. The cold air bit into Elly's bare shoulders and she started shivering harder; Ryder took off his jacket, and this time she put it on, welcoming the warmth of it and the smell of him around her.

“You don't know who your mom's with?” Ryder said, whispering though they were a good distance away.

“No idea. But Rhonda seems to know him.”

“So he's a regular at the inn, maybe?”

“Could be,” Elly said.

She relaxed a little as her mother and the stranger approached the door to her mother's apartment on the far side of the inn. Probably Sarah hadn't wanted to admit to Elly that she was tired, so she'd asked this man to walk her back.

Then, to her astonishment, instead of saying good-bye at the door, the man followed her mother inside!

“They're probably just having a nightcap,” Ryder said, but he was grinning as he put an arm around her and pulled her close.

“I'm giving them ten minutes, and then I'm knocking on the door,” Elly said, gritting her teeth against the cold.

“Yeah, and they'd better have both feet on the floor,” Ryder said.

Reluctantly, she laughed and pressed her face against his shirt to warm her nose. The shirt had shocked her: it was striped and had a collar. She was used to seeing Ryder in T-shirts.

They were quiet for a few minutes. Elly realized that the two of them had started swaying a little, dancing to the distant strains of the wedding music, their bodies close enough that she could feel his shirt buttons and hip bones. Ryder's hands were locked behind her waist.

She turned her head and saw gulls roosting on the garage roof in front of the inn, like small white ghosts in the dark. “I guess my mom's a widow now, officially. That's such a weird thought. Think you'll ever get married?”

“I haven't ruled it out.” He pulled her a little closer. “I mean, what's the alternative? Live alone? Avoid the ordinariness of making dinner every night?”

“It's so crazy, though, to think we're expected to choose one person and be happy forever,” Elly said.

“I never knew you were such a romantic,” he teased.

“No, I mean it. It's crazy to think that way, isn't it? The whole idea of marriage is insane. I wonder what would have happened if my dad had stayed here instead of taking off. Probably they would have gotten divorced, because Mom was always so disappointed in him. Maybe he
knew that, and that's partly why he left. Really, why do we even bother falling in love? It never lasts.”

“I don't know.” Ryder's voice was thoughtful. “Humans can't seem to help falling in love. We give our hearts. Our whole selves. We can say all we want about how cool it is to have so many hookup options, to swipe people we like on Tinder or whatever. We can have sex without commitments or children or, sometimes, even without kindness. Is that really better than trying to stick it out and grow old with somebody?”

“I don't know.” Elly laughed uncertainly. “Probably.”

Ryder leaned back a little to look at her. “Do you really think that? I don't. I think we're all searching for the same thing: that one person we think we can't live without. And, if we find that person, the next thing we want is a family, because otherwise life can get pretty damn lonely. Look at you, now that you've come back. I can see how you are with your sisters. You're feeling whole now, because you're with people who've known you all your life. Maybe it's pointless for us to fight against that bonding urge, Elly. Maybe we should just go with it. Couple up and make a family.”