Return to the Beach House (22 page)

Angie’s panic returned. “Even this early in the pregnancy?”

“Are you worried about getting home?”

“I’m worried about
keeping
my home. I’m a small-plane pilot. I can’t afford to take off that much time.”

“How important is this pregnancy to you?”

Angie didn’t answer for what seemed like a long time. When she did, there were tears at the corners of her eyes. “It’s everything.”

“Then you have some tough decisions ahead of you.”

Mary put away the ultrasound equipment and gave Angie a towel to wipe off the gel. The doctor reached into her pocket and handed Angie a business card. “Give me a call if you have more questions. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

When the doctor and Mary were gone, Angie sat up and gave her friends a deer-in-the-headlights look. “The thought of having one baby scared the hell out of me. What am I going to do with two?”

“Buy in quantity?” Carrie suggested.

“Oh, that’s helpful,” Danielle said.

Bridget crossed the room and took Angie in her arms. “You adjust,” she said gently.

“I’m so sorry, Bridget,” Angie said. “I had no idea what it was really like for you when you lost your baby. I didn’t know you could be this attached this early in a pregnancy. I hate thinking of you all alone in Hong Kong when you lost your little girl. And then your son when you were in Texas.”

“Miles was with me,” Bridget said. “And Danielle.”

Carrie gathered Angie’s clothes and brought them to her. “Like she said—it’s hard picturing you alone in Hong Kong.”

Carrie put Angie’s shoes on the floor so she could step into them. “Do you suppose we should start working on a secret handshake to cement our promise to always be there for each other?”

“I’ll do it,” Bridget said, unlike the others, taking her comment seriously. “I’m good at that kind of thing.”

They groaned and then laughed and had another group hug. Maybe secret handshakes weren’t such a bad thing after all.

Chapter 9

They did what they could to rescue Bridget’s breakfast when they got back to the beach house. The cinnamon toast was soggy and beyond saving, so Carrie made more and actually ate a piece—without butter—acknowledging that some things were worth the calories.

Adding the grounds for a second pot of coffee while Carrie and Angie cleared the table and Danielle loaded the dishwasher, Bridget asked, “What should we do today?”

“It doesn’t have to be today, but I’d like to do some shopping before I have to leave,” Angie said.

“And I’d like to see San Francisco,” Carrie added. “Maybe we can combine a trip.”

“Danielle?” Bridget prompted.

“San Francisco would be good, but today I’d just like to kick back and spend some time on the beach. Isn’t that why we picked this place?”

“Sounds good to me,” Angie said. “I’ve got a lot to think about and a lot of planning to do.”

“Did you call Darren?” Bridget asked.

“Not yet. He’s getting ready to fly a group of photographers to Brooks Falls, and I don’t want to distract him.”

“How do you think he’ll take it?” Bridget asked, pouring herself a fresh cup of coffee and adding a splash of cream.

“He’ll be ecstatic. He comes from a family where they just add a place at the table when another kid comes along.”

“And his mother? She’s got to know better.”

“She’s the kind of woman who sees a bump in the road as a new challenge. Nothing fazes her. But then she lives on an island where she’s dealt with everything from bears destroying the winter food supply to a storm sinking the family’s fishing boat. She’s faced down a brown bear determined to have her favorite dog for lunch and a moose convinced that same dog was the love of his life.”

Angie smiled and shrugged. “But she’s so much more than the Alaska version of Wonder Woman—she loves to shop more than anyone I’ve ever known, including you, Carrie. She’s going to be thrilled to finally be a grandmother, but she’s also going to see this as an open-ended opportunity to fly to Anchorage to buy baby things every chance she gets.”

Bridget poured a second glass of orange juice. “Is that good or bad?”

“Both. She’s a lot of fun to be around and tries really hard not to push me and Darren about getting married, but I have a feeling that’s one battle she’s going to abandon when she finds out I’m carrying twins. She’s going to want her son to do right by his woman. The sooner the better.”

“And the age thing doesn’t bother her?” Carrie asked.

“Not in the least. But you have to understand the mind-set of Alaskans. We have the highest male-to-female ratio of any state. They even have a standing joke about it up there—‘Alaska is where the odds are good, but the goods are odd.’

“I think most of all she’s thrilled that Darren found someone who isn’t going to try to talk him into following her back to the Lower Forty-Eight.”

“Why would you?” Bridget asked. “You love it up there.”

“Loving the country has nothing to do with what some people go through every winter. No one knows it’s going to happen to them until they experience what it’s like to have the sun come up at ten-thirty and set at three-thirty. Luckily, I’m not one of the sunlamp people. I do fine whether it’s six or eighteen hours of sunlight.”

“Miles is one of those people who need lots of sunlight,” Bridget said. “He loved living in Dubai.”

No one said anything.

“Come on—I lived with the guy almost twenty years. He’s bound to creep into the conversation now and then.”

Danielle rinsed her coffee cup and put it on the counter for later. “Since we’re already talking about Miles, the other day I was wondering whether you ever told him what really happened to his car?”

“I started to once. But then I looked up the criminal codes in Virginia, and there’s no statute of limitations on theft. If he ever found out we were responsible, he wouldn’t hesitate to come after us.”

“Even after all this time?” Danielle asked.

“If he were on his deathbed, it wouldn’t stop him.” Bridget yanked off her scarf to scratch her head.

“Why don’t you just throw the damn thing away?” Danielle said.

Angie reached out to run her hand over the soft matting. “I think you look cute this way—like a brand-new baby. And with your beautiful eyes, there’s no way anyone—”

Danielle groaned. “Please tell me you’re not going to be one of those mothers who makes her bald daughter wear stretchy pink bows around her head.”

“Daughters, with an
s,”
Angie reminded her.

“Or sons, with an
s,”
Danielle added.

“Or could be one of each,” Carrie said. “Which seems like the perfect solution—no sibling rivalry.”

“Oh yeah?” Bridget folded her scarf and tucked it under her leg. “Miles and his sister still argue over which one of them their mother cared about the most. It’s pathetic.”

“Which, as I remember, is why losing the car was such a big deal to him.” Carrie hiked herself up to sit on the cool granite counter, crossing her legs at the ankles.

“Remind me,” Angie said. “I forgot about the sister part.”

“The car belonged to Miles’s uncle, and when he died, Miles’s mother gave it to him. His sister threw a fit, even though she always said she hated Corvettes. Once he found out how pissed she was, he drove it to every family function he knew she’d be at, even the big get-together his family had in North Dakota every other year. He always arrived late to make sure she was already there, then he’d honk the horn all the way up the street to announce his arrival. Until—”

“We stole it,” Angie finished.

“We didn’t exactly
steal
it,” Carrie said. “We were just borrowing it for a while.”

Bridget inwardly smiled at the back-and-forth as Carrie, Danielle, and Angie manipulated the truth, creating different versions of the same story as they had for almost twenty years, trying to explain away a simple prank that could have landed them in jail.

It had started on a spectacular fall day with Angie overhearing Miles talking to a girl in his econ class, making plans to meet her later that night for dinner. Since Bridget and Miles had been unofficially engaged for over a year, there was no way to interpret what she’d heard as anything but what it was—Miles was screwing around.

Angie showed up at the restaurant early, which gave her time to park so that she had a direct view of the front door. The girl and Miles arrived at the same time and were instantly all over each other, his tongue down her throat, his hand on her butt to pull her tight against him.

Angie started to get out of her car to confront them, then changed her mind. Instead, she went back to the dorm and recruited Danielle and Carrie to help construct a suitable retribution. Finally, after much heated discussion, they decided that Bridget deserved to know what was going on, so they included her.

Bridget desperately sought an explanation for what Angie had seen, even suggesting that she had only seen someone who looked like Miles. How could it be him? He loved her. She loved him. It was inconceivable that he would have cheated on her when they’d made love just the night before.

Angie, Danielle, and Carrie sat by silently as Bridget reasoned it out, their hearts breaking for her, but secretly more than a little happy that Bridget would finally see Miles for what he was.

Over the following week, Bridget’s denial turned to acceptance, and her pain to anger. She wanted to confront Miles, but the others convinced her there was a better way.

It only took an afternoon, holed up in their favorite coffee shop, for the four of them to come up with a plan. Three days later, Bridget had succeeded in having a duplicate key made for the Corvette. Now all they had to do was wait another two days for Miles to cancel a date he’d made with Bridget.

They borrowed a car—Carrie’s ancient green Volvo would stand out like a cheetah at a dog show—and followed Miles to a restaurant on the opposite side of town from the university. Almost as if it were scripted, he put on the same display Angie had witnessed the first time. Somehow Bridget managed to control the fury that rose from her chest like a dragon’s fiery breath.

Five minutes later, Bridget was behind the wheel of the Corvette and headed for the hills.

The original plan had been to leave the car on a deserted road near a reservoir, figuring hikers would find it in a few days—but not before Miles had made a complete fool out of himself trying to involve every law enforcement agency in the greater Charlottesville area in the search.

While they’d scouted the area, what they hadn’t paid attention to was the lack of pullouts on the abandoned, weed-choked logging road.

They finally settled on a wide spot that could be seen by a car coming in either direction, but as they started to drive away Bridget insisted the car had to be farther off the road to be safe. So they went back. Fatefully.

Bridget was unusually quiet as she reached into the driver’s side and released the emergency brake. With a look of sober determination, she joined the others at the back and pushed. The car moved a lot easier than any of them had expected. And then easier still as it broke through the thick brush and picked up its own momentum, leaving the four friends gaping in surprise as it teetered on a mounded rock for a half second and then tumbled down a hundred-foot, boulder-strewn cliff. The noise was like a series of explosions as the car tumbled from one rock to another.

Wide eyes and dead silence followed. Bridget fought to control a secret smile while the others looked like they were going to be sick.

Angie moved closer to the edge, staring over the side. After scattering chrome and pieces of bright red fiberglass on rocks and in bushes, the Corvette had landed on its top, wedged between a tree and a boulder. “Oh shit,” she said, struggling to take in what she saw. “Now what are we going to do?”

Danielle came up to stand beside her. Needing something to hang on to, she bent and braced her hands on her knees and then lowered herself to her haunches. “What the fuck? How could it just shatter like that? It’s like it was made out glass.”

“Fiberglass,” Bridget said. “I knew it was fragile, but I had no idea something like this could happen.”

Carrie didn’t say anything as she stood and stared into the canyon, her wide eyes and frozen expression the only clue to the frantic workings of her mind.

Bridget made her way down to the first outcropping, where she stopped to examine a piece of fiberglass before stuffing it in her pocket.

When she started down again, Danielle shouted, “What are you doing? You’re going to kill yourself if—”

Bridget looked up at her. “I want to make sure it’s not leaking gas. There are homes down there. The last thing I want is arson on our records too.”

“Too?” Angie said under her breath.

“Along with car theft,” Danielle said.

Carrie groaned. “Imagine what that’s going to look like on a job application.”