Folly Cove (6 page)

Rhonda was her favorite staff member. Sarah had hired her for the front desk two decades ago because the girl—well, she must be fifty now, with children in college—was tall enough to be imposing and had such a luxurious mass of dark hair that Sarah had been sure at first that it was a wig. It was not. Rhonda's mother had grown up in England, so she used proper diction and even had a slight British accent. Hers was the perfect voice to advertise the inn's growing reputation as “a place to celebrate life's shining moments,” Sarah's latest advertising tagline. Not original. She knew that, but still, sometimes people responded better to language that felt familiar.

Rhonda appeared in the office doorway again and folded her arms, looking over her blue eyeglasses at Sarah. “I brought him the coffee,” she said. “He said take all the time you need. I told him five minutes.” She tapped her foot for emphasis.

“Five minutes,” Sarah agreed, but she couldn't help sighing after Rhonda left. She wouldn't have agreed to this foolhardy outing if anyone but Rhonda had asked her for this favor, saying her uncle was lonely.

About five years after Neil left, when it became clear that he was never coming back, Sarah had started seeing other men. There had been several businessmen and an architect, a banker, and even an ex-senator over the years. Eventually she'd stopped bothering. Men were too much work. And, after a time, the ones who were interested in her were so old that she knew she'd end up playing nursemaid. No, thank you.

She had never bothered divorcing Neil and continued wearing her wedding ring. By now most people thought she was widowed. Sarah was comfortable financially, physically, emotionally. Besides the inn, she had civic duties, memberships in the art association and the concert hall. Friends. Daughters. (Though, except for Laura, they scarcely seemed to give her the time of day. And sometimes she suspected Laura came around only because of the money.)

Plus, she'd mostly lost her appetite for social intercourse beyond making her guests feel welcome. Her own company and the sanctuary of her tidy apartment at the inn were all she needed to be content.

Then, about a month ago, Rhonda had mentioned her uncle Gil, a widower who had recently moved to Rockport. “I wish you could meet him,” she said. “My uncle Gil doesn't know a soul here, and you could tell him so much about the area. Just lunch at the inn, maybe? I know you'd like him.”

Sarah doubted that very much. She liked few people. However, Rhonda was like another daughter to her, and as Rhonda kept pressing her, she'd realized she'd have to relent to keep the peace.

Lunch at the inn it was, then: she wouldn't even have to put on a coat.

“Mrs. Bradford?”

Sarah looked up and saw Betty, her head housekeeper, standing in the doorway of her office. “Yes?”

“The occupants of room 212 haven't checked out,” Betty said. “I wanted to make certain there wasn't a special arrangement for a late departure before I have the maids knock on their door.”

Sarah shook her head. “Only the honeymoon suite requested a late checkout today. Ask Rhonda, but I don't think we have anyone else coming into that room tonight. We can offer them a half-day rate if they're staying through lunch.”

“All right.” Betty gave her a curious look. “Are you feeling all right? You look pale.”

“Of course. I just need a cup of tea.”

“I'll bring that to you straightaway, Mrs. Bradford.”

“Thank you, Betty, but there's no need. I'm going to have lunch in the dining room.”

Betty expressed surprise—Sarah usually ate lunch in her apartment—but Sarah would bet her best pearls that Betty had known about the date within seconds of her agreeing to it: Folly Cove, like most well-run inns, operated as a single organism. “Have a lovely time, Mrs. Bradford,” she said, and retreated.

Sarah dropped her eyes to her desk, to the stack of brochures waiting to be mailed to people who somehow still couldn't manage to download the pdf from the Web site. She had been mindlessly stuffing them into envelopes for the past hour while she thought about Laura and the awful scene with Kennedy, and about whether she should have told Laura about Anne's baby.

She hadn't done so because something was wrong between those two, and Laura already seemed to be carrying the weight of the world. After they had finished with the flowers on Saturday morning, Sarah had watched Laura and Kennedy trudging up the driveway, their bodies solid and their heads bowed as if they were peasant milkmaids bearing buckets on yokes across their shoulders.

The sight had infuriated her. Sarah wanted to call them back inside at once. To tell them that they, too, had backbones, despite everything they clearly believed about themselves.

She'd felt such confidence in Laura once. Lately, though, Sarah had felt concerned about her eldest daughter's marriage and mental state. She hoped it wasn't depression reducing her most reliable child to this careworn woman who never wore a stitch of makeup and mysteriously never managed to make ends meet. She suspected Jake was up to something, but what?

Impatient now—wallowing in speculation and emotions was never productive—Sarah slipped a cream-colored cashmere cardigan on over her navy blue wool dress, picked up her handbag, then locked the office door behind her. It was time to get this date over with, so she could get back to work.

•   •   •

“You can't possibly be working today,” Laura said when Jake announced that he was going into the office on Sunday.

They had been reading the newspaper at the kitchen table after
breakfast. This was one of Laura's favorite rituals. Kennedy slept late most weekend mornings, so this gave her time alone with Jake.

Every Sunday, she went down to the stables early to feed the horses and turn them out. Then she made a special breakfast. Something celebratory: waffles and sausages, maybe, or eggs Benedict, the way she'd always done, since they first were married, hoping to remind them of that precious time when they were young and so in love that they had chosen to change their lives for each other.

This morning, mindful of Anne's arrival last weekend, Laura had started a diet to recover her waistline. She'd made poached eggs served on a bed of spinach. No muffins. No hollandaise. Only a guilt-free melon slice on the side.

Jake hadn't complained about the scaled-back meal. Watching her husband wolf it down, Laura doubted he'd even tasted it. Then he'd slipped away from the table while she was nursing a second cup of coffee.

Now Jake was leaning down to kiss her forehead. He smelled of mint mouthwash. His hair, dark and buzzed short on the sides but long in front, was slicked back from his forehead. “This isn't the first time I've gone in on a Sunday, Laura. You know that as well as I do. And it's an emergency extraction. Would you really want this poor woman to suffer until tomorrow?”

Laura set down her coffee cup. He was right: several weekends a year, Jake was called in for emergency procedures.

She tightened the belt of her plaid flannel robe as her husband opened his briefcase and checked its contents. It was the sort of briefcase that doubled as a backpack; Jake rode his bicycle the six miles to his office in Gloucester every day, even in the rain, and typically carried his laptop and lunch in the backpack. Another reason he still looked thirty.

She, on the other hand, could easily pass for someone's grandmother. How was it possible that they'd aged so differently?

“You promised you'd cut back your hours,” she said.

“If I do that, we'll have even less money than we do now, and I already feel bad enough about asking your mom for help with Kennedy's tuition.” He glanced at his watch.

“I know. And I appreciate how hard you're working,” she said. “But we never do anything as a family anymore.”

Jake shifted his feet. “We took Kennedy to the mall last Sunday. And she's older now, Laura. She doesn't want to spend time with us.”

“That's exactly why we should! She'll be off to college in the blink of an eye! When was the last time you had a real conversation with her? Or invited her on a bike ride?”

Or acted like you wanted to spend time with me,
Laura added silently.

Jake laid a hand on her shoulder, gave her a friendly squeeze. “I promise to reserve next weekend. Maybe the three of us can hike in Ravenswood Park or something. Listen, I'm sorry, but I've got to go.” He leaned forward and kissed her again, this time on the top of her head, then closed the door gently on his way out.

Laura knew she should be grateful to have this peaceful Sunday morning to herself, with her daughter sleeping upstairs. She had nothing to do at the stables until tonight, when she'd bring the horses in again, toss them some grain and check their water. No lessons until tomorrow. It was a blessing to have these leisurely hours wide open before her.

The thing was, she didn't
want
to be left alone. She wanted them to be a
family
. Not three separate people peeling off in different directions. She'd grown up with a single mother who was too busy to spend time with her children, and Laura was determined to give Kennedy the stability that she and her sisters had lacked.

And, P.S., why couldn't Jake understand that not everyone in this family would leap at the chance to take another
hike
?

But the real thing gnawing at her was this: Laura didn't believe Jake was really going into the office. Wouldn't he have taken his laptop with him? His computer sat on the kitchen counter, silver and sleek. Mocking her.

Jake hadn't mentioned Anne this morning, even when Laura had vaguely said over breakfast that her little sister “might be visiting.” Yet now Laura felt anxious, her caffeine-fueled imagination shifting into overdrive. What if Anne had secretly been texting Jake? What if they'd been in communication all along?

It was possible. In the past few months, Laura had learned it was easy to deceive your spouse. Just this morning, she'd answered three texts from Tom while she was down at the barn, then deleted them all, even though they'd arrived on the burner phone she'd bought so the bill couldn't possibly appear on their family plan.

Laura quickly cleared the breakfast dishes, forcing her mind away from Tom. He wasn't a problem, she reminded herself. It was an online friendship. A virtual flirtation, at most. She could stop anytime she wanted.

At least Elly would be here tomorrow. She was the only person Laura had ever confided in about Jake and Anne. As she rinsed the dishes and moved like a robot through the kitchen, clearing and cleaning, Laura replayed that horrible day, exactly as she'd described it to Elly.

Three years ago, she'd taken Kennedy to visit friends in Maine for a weekend while Jake was at a conference. Anne had a teaching job with summers off, so Laura had asked her to stay at the house and look after the horses. She'd even offered to pay her, but Anne had refused the money.

“It's a vacation for me, too, getting out of my hot little apartment,” Anne had said. “And you deserve time off.”

Anne had always been generous. But she was also a man magnet: a combination of fierce and vulnerable, a tomboy with movie-star curves and dusky skin. Her eyes could go from blue to silver depending on her mood, and she had red hair—not that horrible ginger-carrot color, but a rich auburn. Laura had often been jealous of her, growing up. Much more so than of Elly, even though her middle sister was the traditional beauty, with her long legs, sharp cheekbones, and straight blond hair.

Still, Laura had never imagined that Anne would try to poach her own husband.

Anne had taken off surprisingly early on the morning that Laura and Kennedy returned from Maine. Laura had felt a sting of disappointment; she'd been looking forward to a sisterly night out to thank Anne for house-sitting.

When Laura asked Jake why Anne had left so soon, he'd shrugged. “No idea,” he said.

Laura sensed something was up from his potent silence and continued to press him. Finally her husband became agitated and said they needed to have “a serious talk” after dinner.

Despite that warning, Laura was blindsided. Money was usually the subject of Jake's “serious” talks: how they needed to tighten their belts, cut back on restaurants and clothes, et cetera. She knew the drill.

Laura put Kennedy to bed early, then poured herself a generous glass of wine before joining Jake in the living room. Too generous: the wine sloshed over the rim of the glass. It was impossible to scrub the red stain out of their white Berber carpet.

Later, she would pull up the rug in a fury, hacking away at it with kitchen shears. She wouldn't have been able to stand looking at the stain and knowing what it represented.

Once Laura was seated on the living room couch, Jake pulled the hassock over and perched on it in front of her, hands dangling between his knees. “Look, I'm sorry about this, but I need to be honest,” he began. “First of all, you should know that I would never do anything to deliberately hurt you and Kennedy.”

Laura's stomach had immediately started roiling. She drank the cheap wine anyway, finishing it in a rapid series of swallows that made her throat burn. “Wow. That's a rough merlot,” she'd said, not wanting him to continue.

He did anyway, clasping his hands and rubbing his thumb over his plain gold wedding ring. Jake's bangs were too long. She wanted to yell at him to stop hiding behind his hair, the way she often scolded Kennedy.

But Laura had remained silent despite instinctively knowing that the conversation was headed straight off the cliff of domesticity and into the frigid black waters of troubled marriages. She had also known that she would forgive Jake for whatever he'd done. Laura couldn't imagine life without him. She had loved him since college. They'd helped raise each other into adulthood.

Jake told her that when he'd returned from the airport at two
o'clock in the morning, the lights were off downstairs, but there was a light on in the guest room. “I didn't want to scare Anne, so I called her name as soon as I went upstairs.”