Return to the Beach House (3 page)

“You wouldn’t know a good used-car dealer by any chance?” Alison asked.

“Sorry, no. But my dad might know someone. He and my mom are recycle fanatics and bargain hunters. They hardly ever buy anything new. I’ll call him and let you know what he says.”

She headed for the door, then stopped and turned back. “I almost forgot—if you or your husband are into surfing or would like to hire a boat for the day, I have a lot of that kind of information that I didn’t include in the folder. I also have a book with maps of hiking trails I’d be happy to loan you.”

There it was—the husband thing. It was a natural mistake, but one that Alison always dreaded. She took a deep breath—might as well get it over with.

“I’m a widow.” Even after more than a dozen years, her throat still tightened a little saying the words, knowing the question that would inevitably follow. “The other Kirkpatrick you were told to expect is my grandson, Christopher. He’ll be here in a few days.”

Before Grace had a chance to say any of the usual platitudes, Alison immediately went back to her need to find a car. “Whatever you can come up with that would interest an almost eighteen-year-old boy would be appreciated. I’d love to entice him away from the horse stables he’s come here to visit. At least for a few days.”

“Horse stables?”

“He competes in dressage. His favorite horse went lame a couple of months ago, and he hasn’t been able to find one to take her place. His coach heard about a couple of horses out here that were considered promising and capable of going to the next level with Christopher. So here we are. Well, here
I
am. Christopher had a show he had to attend before he could join me.”

“So you’re not actually here on vacation?” Grace asked. “You came all this way to look at a horse?”

“That’s why Christopher is coming. I’m here to keep him company.” If Alison were being completely honest, she would admit that her “company” explanation wasn’t as altruistic as it sounded. She’d jumped at the chance to spend what would probably be her last full summer with her grandson. Once he started college, his life and the demands on his time, even the focus of his thoughts and energy, would change. In her heart she knew he would always think of her as his second mother. But he’d been sitting on the end of the branch strengthening his wings in mock flight for a long time now. He was ready for his first journey. Solo.

Grace shook her head. “I knew there were places around here where they raised horses, but I had no idea the horses were anything special. I need to pay more attention. Horses like that must be—never mind. It’s none of my business.”

“Expensive?”

“It really is none of my business. It’s like I have a loose wire between my brain and mouth sometimes, and there’s a disconnect where it’s supposed to tell me about things like boundaries. My mom has these hand signals she gives me when I’m headed in that direction.”

Unconsciously, Alison ran her thumb over the base of her ring finger, as always, feeling a quick jolt of surprise to find it bare. “I’m wired the same way. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said something at a dinner party that turned a lively conversation into dead silence.” She gave Grace a smile accompanied by a what-can-you-do shrug.

“I honestly don’t know what price level Christopher’s coach had in mind when he sent him out here. I leave that sort of thing to him and his mother. What I do know is that dressage horses are a little like cars—they go from the equivalent of a Smart car all the way up to a custom-made Bugatti. Maybe when Christopher gets here he can explain to both of us why he had to come all the way to California to find a horse when there are trainers up and down the Atlantic coast with rink-ready animals for sale.”

“I’d like that. What I know about horses you could put in a tweet and have a hundred and forty characters left.” Grace stopped to clear a eucalyptus leaf from the porch with her foot. “I almost forgot—the gardener comes on Thursday,” she said. “He usually shows up right after lunch. And the water runs on Tuesday and Saturday at four o’clock in the morning. I’ve never been in the house when the sprinkler is running, so I don’t know how loud it is. If that’s too early, I can have my dad make it later. But not after ten. The city has rules about when you can water.”

“I’m sure it will be fine.” Grace’s intense attention to detail reminded Alison of what it was like to revel in the trust and responsibility of a first job.

Grace gave a quick wave and headed down the moss-covered brick pathway through the flower garden and out the gate. Alison watched her leave, mentally noting how she seemed to glide rather than walk the short distance between their houses.

On impulse, Alison followed the same brick walkway Grace had taken, opened the gate, and turned left to go down the wooden stairs to the beach. With the exception of a scattering of sunbathers, the beach was nearly deserted. They, too, would undoubtedly disappear if the fog sitting offshore rolled in.

The half-mile-wide cove was bordered on each side by rocky outcroppings, lending to the feeling of isolation. A half dozen logs washed in by past storms lay high on the beach, mute testimony to the power of the waves that had deposited them.

Despite the presence of other cottages ringing the cliff and another set of stairs a couple of hundred yards to her right, she sensed that this was a beach bypassed by most tourists, one where she could leave footprints that wouldn’t be disturbed until the next high tide played eraser to a constantly transformed shore.

She left her sandals at the base of the boulder-reinforced embankment, then headed for the shoreline.

A salt-laden breeze tousled her pixie-cut hair, a style she’d only lately adopted and was still getting used to. Christopher said her new look “rocked,” and Nora insisted she looked fifteen years younger.

How she wished that were true. How differently she would live her life if she had those last fifteen years to do over. Especially the first two when Dennis and Peter were still alive—when she was still a wife and mother, in addition to a mother-in-law and grandmother. She would make love more often—spontaneously and with abandon. The bedroom would be secondary to a secluded forest clearing, or the pool house at a friend’s party, or in Dennis’s office behind a locked door and in front of a window that overlooked the Statue of Liberty. She wouldn’t stay home from a quick trip to London because she had a board meeting at the museum. Weekends with the family would be sacrosanct.

But without knowing what was going to happen, would she live those years any differently? Were there days or weeks or months she would change?

And what if she had known what was ahead? Could she have borne relinquishing even one day knowing it meant their time together was ticking away like some macabre clock? Could she have maintained her sanity?

Better that it happened the way it did. Impossibly naive in contentment one minute, devastated the next.

She came to the ocean’s edge and stopped to let a wave wash over her feet. It was cold. No wonder there were so few people in the water. She thought about the current that had brought the frigid water to sunny California, how it had swept past glaciers and picked up calved ice filled with microscopic nutrients. It was the beginning of a food chain that ended with the largest mammal on earth, the blue whale.

Looking past the obvious was a gift Dennis had given her. He’d been one of those rainbows-are-your-reward-for-going-through-the-rain kind of guys who remembered a hike not by how long or rigorous it had been, but by what he had seen. He took as much pleasure watching a hummingbird gather spiderwebs for her nest as he did witnessing a female lion introduce her cubs to the pride for the first time.

She’d met him her first year of college and hadn’t understood then any more than she understood now what he’d seen in her. She was his complete opposite, caught up in fashion and parties and determined that her college years would be the best of her life. Dennis saw college as a means to an end and carried more units in a semester than she did in an entire year. Working the same shift at the campus bookstore served as their introduction. A shared, off-kilter sense of humor led to a first date.

When she fell, she fell hard, waking up one morning and realizing she didn’t want to be anywhere he wasn’t. Their love never followed the prescribed ups and downs for such things. There wasn’t a day she longed for a break or a day she didn’t miss him when he went home to see his parents.

When he died, she immediately understood what she’d lost. It was the irony of losing Peter too that almost destroyed her. Dennis had gone to work early that day, September 11, 2001, to welcome the firm’s newest employee—his son, his only child, his beloved Peter.

She would not have survived the loss had it not been for Christopher and his mother, Nora. The depth of their need provided the lifeline to her sanity.

Alison hugged herself as she gazed at the horizon, her vision blurred by unbidden, achingly familiar tears. It had been months since she’d had one of her private meltdowns. She knew what was happening now, and why, and allowed herself these brief, self-indulgent moments, though she was careful not to do so around Nora or Christopher.

She shifted her gaze to a line of pelicans skimming the water and heading north, fleetingly indulging the fantasy of what it would be like to join them.

We’re going to make it, Dennis.
I’m not unscathed, but I’m able to see the beauty of a sunrise that you promised would be even better when I turned sixty.

Nora met someone, just when I was beginning to think she would never get over losing Peter. His name is James Howard Duggan III. Luckily, he’s not as stuffy as his name, and he adores Nora. He arrived too late to be a father to Christopher, but they’ve managed to become friends, and I think he will be a good grandfather, if and when the time comes.

What I’d hoped for and feared at the same time happened six months after they met. Nora and James were married in a small, private ceremony at his summer home on the coast of Maine. I cried, but you would have been proud of me. I had no trouble convincing everyone they were happy tears. And for the most part, they were.

I’ll miss my time with Nora. Once we got past that really rough period, the six months after you and Peter died, she became more daughter to me than daughter-in law. Even though she’s found the second love of her life, she’s determined that nothing will change between us.

But how could it not?

Now I have to figure out how to keep her from feeling guilty when the inevitable happens and she becomes so busy that we go days instead of hours between phone calls. Guilt is the fertilizer that feeds resentment. I can’t let that happen, no matter how much I miss her.

I could use some of your sage advice about now. Is there any way you could give me just a small sign that you’re paying attention? Of course, you’re going to have to tell me where to look for this sign. You know how obtuse I can be at times.

A sanderling chased a receding wave and came running back toward her with its prize, almost stepping on her foot. She inwardly smiled at its antics as she carefully moved out of the way.

One more thing—while you’re helping me get through this stretch, could you figure out a way to keep Christopher frozen in time? Not forever. Just long enough for me to get used to losing him too.

Other than those first few weeks after you died, I’ve never been alone. Not once in fifty-nine years have I faced going home to a house that I know will never shelter anyone full-time but me. Would you mind adding that to the list of things I could use your help with?

Chapter 2

Alison stood on the sidewalk across the street from Tanner Motors in Monterey. It was the fifth used-car lot she’d visited that morning, and she was pretty much convinced she was on a fool’s errand. The salespeople who had attached themselves to her the instant she entered each lot had wandered off as soon as she told them what she was after. Not only was no one interested in talking to her about a month-long lease, but two of the salesmen had actually laughed at her when she’d offered to buy a car outright—if they would put it in the contract that they would buy it back in thirty days.

She thought she’d handled everything that they’d need to make sure Christopher could use his New York driver’s license in California, even making an appointment for him to get his nonresident minor certificate at the Department of Motor Vehicles within the required ten days.

But she hadn’t expected the other stumbling blocks she’d run into, and if she didn’t get them worked out, she was going to spend a good part of the next thirty days hauling Christopher around the countryside trying to entertain herself while he looked at horses—not exactly her idea of a great vacation, or Christopher’s. She loved watching him compete and had never complained during all the years she’d sat in a lawn chair reading a book while he practiced, but she drew the line at the long, drawn-out process of testing and buying a new horse. And he drew the line at knowing she was sitting and waiting for him everywhere he went. He needed his space, and luckily she’d learned to give it to him. It had kept their relationship going despite the forty-plus years that separated them.