Return to the Beach House (5 page)

A quick glance at the floorboard where there were three pedals instead of the familiar two was like dropping a lead weight in the pit of her stomach. Christopher’s plane arrived in six hours, and she’d hoped to meet him with a grand flourish of implied independence when she handed over the keys to his own vehicle. “I haven’t driven a stick shift since I was a kid,” she said, fighting to keep the disappointment from her voice.

“It will come back. It’s like—”

She turned to face him. “Don’t you dare say it’s like riding a bicycle. See this?” She pointed to her cheek. “Under all this makeup is a very ugly scar that I got when my husband convinced me I could go on a sunrise bicycle ride down Haleakala Volcano in Hawaii. He said it didn’t matter that I hadn’t ridden in years, it would all come back.”

“Then I guess we better get started with a crash refresher course.” He tried not to laugh, but failed. “Nothing implied by the ‘crash’ part.” He scratched his chin and ran his hand across his face. “I should have thought to ask—what are the chances Christopher knows how to drive a stick shift? I don’t want you stuck with a truck no one can operate.”

“I don’t know for sure, but I have a feeling they’re pretty good. He helps out at a neighbor’s farm, and a lot of their equipment is really old.”

“Then for the moment we’ll concentrate on getting you comfortable driving one again.”

“You don’t have to do this. I can drive the car and make a fool of myself when I’m alone. Besides, don’t you have work to do?”

“When I’m the only one here, I have a sign I put in the window telling people to call my cell if they need something. Otherwise, they can wait for one of my salespeople to show up. I call someone before I leave,” he explained. “It’s one of the perks of owning the place.”

Still, Alison protested. “There’s a beach parking lot not far from the house where I’m staying. I can practice there. And if I don’t have the stick shift mastered by the time I’m supposed to pick up Christopher, I’ll take the car and work on learning how to keep from dropping the transmission later.”

“Then let’s get this show on the road.”

Fifteen minutes later, and a couple of miles from the car lot on a reasonably wide country road, Alison hiked herself up and settled in the driver’s seat, waited for Kyle to get settled in the passenger seat, took a deep, determined breath, and turned the key. The engine started instantly, purring like a cat curling up in its own patch of sunlight. She looked at Kyle. “So far, so good.”

Initially, she killed the engine whenever she tried to stop on a hill. Then she remembered how to play the clutch. The transmission survived going from first to third several times, and she and Kyle survived almost jamming their heads into the windshield before she got the feel of the sensitive brakes. At the end of her lesson, she felt a little like Rocky Balboa after he’d climbed the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She actually experienced a twinge of regret when Kyle announced there was nothing more he could teach her.

She dropped Kyle back at the dealership, and because she still had time before she had to leave for San Jose and the airport, on impulse she stopped by an office supply store where she bought a sheet of lime-green poster board and a set of Day-Glo felt-tip pens. Sitting in the car in the short-term parking lot at the airport, she made a sign with Christopher’s name on it, ignoring the mental warning that what she was doing might embarrass him. He needed to lighten up a little too.

Christopher burst out laughing when he saw his grandmother standing behind a huge sign with his name on it. People looked around for the pseudo-celebrity and quickly realized the sign was a joke. He went to her to give her a hug.

“Been hitting the bottle, Grams?” he asked, putting his arm around her shoulders as he slipped the sign out of her hands and into a nearby trash can. She loved that he was demonstrative, his hugs coming as easily as his smiles.

She slid her arm around his waist and matched his steps as they headed to the luggage carousel. “How was the flight?”

“Okay, I guess. I slept most of the way.” He’d been stuck in the center seat from New York to Denver between two preteen girls who flatly refused his offer to trade places so they could sit together. For the first half of the flight they were up and down, communicating with their parents who were several rows back; the second half they played the same Nickelodeon movie a minute apart on their iPads. With their headphones at maximum, sleep and his own headphones were the only escape from the echoed inanity.

“Have you talked to your mom today?”

It didn’t matter how many times he told his grandmother that he was okay with his mother getting married again, she mentally hovered, looking for signs that he needed to talk about the changes in their lives. Maybe it was because she knew he still hadn’t connected with James in any meaningful way. How could he? They had nothing in common except his mom. Bottom line, despite his mother’s attempts to find ways for them to “bond,” he didn’t know James well enough to like or dislike him.

What he did know was that he was tired of being the center of his mother’s and grandmother’s world. He was a month and a half shy of eighteen, and two months away from starting his first year at Penn State.

College was supposed to be his escape. He’d applied for and been accepted into schools as diverse as Middlebury, Bowdoin, and Carleton. On a lark, he’d even applied to Harvey Mudd, one of the Claremont Colleges, knowing full well there was no way his mother would agree to his going there, no matter how high the school ranked or how difficult it was to get into. Harvey Mudd was in California, all the way across the country.

In the end he had settled on his father’s alma mater, Penn State, not only to follow in his father’s footsteps, but because he knew it would please his mother and grandmother. At least Penn State had a great equestrian program.

“She left a couple of messages on voice mail,” he said. “I was going to call her back when we landed in Denver, but forgot.” He didn’t have to look at his grandmother to know she wasn’t happy. “I’ll do it in the car.”

“It’s three o’clock in the morning in Rome,” she gently chided.

“I’ll leave a message. She just wants to know that I got here all right.” He spotted his duffle bag and lifted it off the conveyor belt. “Did my saddle arrive?”

“It came yesterday. The outside of the box was a little battered, so I checked inside. It was fine. So was your helmet.”

“What about the box with my riding clothes and tack?”

“The box looked like the pilot had hand-carried it.”

“Great.” He shouldered his bag and turned to leave.

“You only brought one suitcase?”

“An extra pair of jeans and a couple of shirts—what else do I need?”

“Socks and underwear?”

“We’re in California, Grams. They don’t bother with things like that out here.”

“I hate to burst your bubble, but not everyone in Santa Cruz is chasing a wave.”

He pulled her to him and planted a kiss on the top of her head. “Are you shrinking?”

“Could it be you’re growing again?”

“Impossible. Didn’t Dad reach his full height by the time he turned sixteen? How could I possibly be different?” She covered it well, but he could see the quick flash of pain his flippant remark had created.

“You’re not a carbon copy of your father,” she said, at the same time offering him a sad smile.

“Since when?”

She put her hand against his chest. “Let’s not do this—okay?”

“Sorry.” Because it was the millionth time he’d apologized for this kind of remark, or something similar, didn’t mean it wasn’t sincere. The older he got, the more he felt trapped in a box without even a pinhole of light to show him the way out. His grandmother was the only person who seemed to understand, the one person who would forgive and forget his outbursts.

“I have a surprise for you,” she said, doing what she always did when he backed himself into a corner, changing the conversation.

“First, I have one for you.” He took her in his arms again and gave her a long, intense hug. “I really am sorry. I promise to work on my attitude and not screw up this vacation for you.”

She touched his cheek. “It’s okay. I remember how hard it is to be a teenager.”

“Really?”

She gave him a questioning look.

“I mean it’s been soooo long.”

She couldn’t help but laugh.

Almost at the end of the row in the parking lot, Christopher looked around, confused. “Where are we headed?”

As Alison pointed at the truck she realized there was no way he could see anything but the chrome bumper and a small portion of the back curve of the fender.

“You rented a
Hummer
?”

“Not even close.” But something almost as bizarre, she abruptly realized. “Look behind it.”

He moved closer. “The Jeep?”

She shook her head, not sure if he was teasing her or was too incredulous to even consider the truck a possibility. “Look again.”

Puzzled, he stared at the truck, at her, and then at the truck again. What started as a low chuckle ended with a laugh so deep and uninhibited that he had tears in his eyes before he stopped. “Rent-a-Wreck, I assume?” he asked, wiping his eyes with the tail of his T-shirt. “They saw you coming, Grams.”

“You don’t like it?”

“You’re serious?” When she nodded, he added, “What were you thinking?”

“That I’m tired of being predictable,” she said with stark honesty. “So it needs a paint job. Use your imagination. Picture it candy apple red.”

He tossed his bag in the back and took his time circling the vehicle, examining everything from the whitewall tires to the rims to the windshield wipers to the beautifully restored wooden bed. He held out his hand, and she gave him the keys. “Okay, so I can see the potential,” he acknowledged. “And since you got here in one piece, I’m assuming it will hit freeway speed without falling apart.”

“To be honest, I was a little surprised at how well it drives.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her.

“It does,” she insisted. He unlocked the passenger door and waited for her to climb inside. “You’ll see.”

She snapped the seat belt closed and adjusted the length while she waited for him to get in the other side. She used to be able to read his moods as easily as she read the morning paper. Now she was never sure about his moods, or about him. She remembered the summer before she left for college as one of the most exciting times in her life, being filled with a mixture of anticipation and angst and the sweetly melancholy knowledge that nothing would ever be the same. Half the time she bristled at still being treated like a child, the other half she spent terrified of being on her own.

As far as she could tell, Christopher took it all in stride—with the exception of his beloved horse, Josi, turning up lame just before a qualifying competition that last May. When none of their regular vets could find a reason for the lameness, Christopher had trailered Josi to Tufts University Veterinary School in Massachusetts. The vets at Tufts performed a spiral CT scan that revealed a cyst in the coffin bone. The treatment involved injecting stem cells grown from Josi’s own bone marrow. While everyone told Christopher the prognosis was good for a full recovery, he needed another horse while he waited.

Christopher had ridden borrowed horses for the next two competitions, and his scores were the lowest they’d ever been. After several failed attempts to find a horse on the East Coast he felt drawn to the way he’d been to Josi, his trainer had tracked down a couple of promising leads in California.

Christopher settled into the driver’s seat and stared at the dashboard. “Sweet,” he said softly.

A smile played at the corners of Alison’s mouth. “Wait until you see the house.”

Chapter 4

“Sweet,” Christopher said for the second time that day. Now it was in reaction to the view outside the sliding-glass door in the living room. “I could live here.”

“I’ve been on the beach every morning since I arrived,” Alison said. “You know your father had a real connection to the ocean too. He even insisted that when he retired he was—” She caught the look in Christopher’s eyes, and her heart sank at her thoughtlessness.

“I’m sorry.” She touched his shoulder. “I really am trying to do better.” Her voice a gentle plea, she added, “Don’t give up on me.”

He shrugged, dislodging her hand either by accident or on purpose. “It’s no big deal.”

But it was. Enough so that he’d walked out of his own graduation party three weeks ago when she’d made the seemingly innocent comment about how much he looked like his father in his cap and gown.

With foolish certainty that she was doing the right thing, almost from the moment Christopher’s father and grandfather died, Alison set out to do everything she could to ensure they wouldn’t be forgotten. She talked about Christopher’s father, Peter, and his grandfather, Dennis, as if they were about to walk through the door at any moment. Every day, sometimes every hour, she found something about them to integrate into the conversation, from their favorite books and movies to their favorite food. Reliving memories of birthdays and Christmases and vacations became second nature to her. She even used the weather—Peter loved rain, Dennis hated fog. Nothing was off-limits.