Summer Beach Reads 5-Book Bundle: Beachcombers, Heat Wave, Moon Shell Beach, Summer House, Summer Breeze (3 page)

And as the years passed and Marina grew older, she discovered that she was beginning to envy Christie, too.

One sultry July afternoon, she confessed a deep and powerful secret to Christie. She told Christie before she told Dara. She told Christie even before she told Gerry. The words felt so odd in her mouth.

“Christie, I want a baby. Actually, I’ve gotten kind of obsessed with it. I don’t want five kids like you have, I couldn’t do that. But I do want a child of my own.”

“Well, honey,” Christie replied, laughing, “that’s one thing you can get without wearing those killer tight suits.”

Christie gave her the courage to confide in Gerry. He seemed amused, but he liked the idea. So in the middle of the hurricane that was their life, Marina and Gerry tried to make a baby.

But the baby wouldn’t come.

They were both shocked. Their history together was one of achievement and success, not failure.

They tried everything. Tests. Charts. Positions. Herbal and hormonal supplements. Nothing worked. They saw several doctors, who all pronounced Marina and Gerry healthy and perfectly capable of reproduction. Yet still nothing happened.

She confided in Dara, and Dara said, “Oh, honey, consider it a blessing. A baby would ruin your figure.”

Marina couldn’t understand it. She tried to be relaxed about it all, but when she saw another woman with a baby, she burned with envy. She dreamed of babies at night and longed for one every waking hour. As each month passed in failure and sorrow, she began to hate herself.

One afternoon she sat in her slick chrome-and-glass office, staring at her computer screen, thinking over and over again in a relentless circle of pain: Why couldn’t she get pregnant, what was wrong with her? She felt something wet on her hand. It wouldn’t be tears. She didn’t allow herself to cry in the office. She glanced down to discover that she had been stabbing the palm of her hand with the tip of her silver letter opener. She gasped and tossed the letter opener onto the desk. She pressed tissues against her hand, grabbed
up her purse, and raced from her office. She didn’t even stop to tell her assistant where she was going. She didn’t even know where she was going—she just needed to be away from the pain.

Once in her car, she understood exactly where she wanted to be, and she drove out to Christie’s house. It was January and a new snow had blanketed the roadsides and rooftops with the pure sparkling white of confectioners’ sugar. The sun was out in a high blue sky and the air was sharp and tangy.

Christie had a fire going in the rec room. Her children were all in school. She was knitting a sweater and listening to music—in the middle of the day! Marina couldn’t imagine living such a life.

Christie told Marina to kick off her shoes and curl up on the sofa. She brought her hot chocolate and cookies, as if Marina were one of her children. She listened to Marina, and she cried with her—how grateful Marina was for that, to have her friend genuinely share her loss.

“I’m so angry, Christie,” Marina cried. “I’m so
hurt.
Why me? What’s wrong with me? I know Gerry thinks I’m at fault, even though the doctors say we’re both physically fine. But it’s turning our marriage inside out. And I’m getting obsessed and bitter and angry; I’m turning into a person I don’t like being. I don’t know what to do!”

Christie was quiet, knitting a row as she thought. “You could stop trying,” she suggested. “You could stop hoping. You could give up. You could adopt.”

“Gerry doesn’t want to adopt.”

“Then let it go.” Christie reached over and put her hand on Marina’s. “Just let it go. You have so much, Marina. You have work you enjoy, you have a husband you love. You’re gorgeous, you’re free. You should love your life.”

“I want a family. I want your life,” Marina insisted. “I want your children.”

Christie burst out laughing. “Are you kidding me? I tell you what, you stay here for the weekend with my bunch. Bob and I will go off on a little jaunt together and leave you in charge.” She saw the alarm on Marina’s face and laughed even harder.

Marina laughed, too. She felt better already, and as she drove back home in the winter twilight, she decided she would tell Gerry
that if she wasn’t pregnant by her fortieth birthday, she was going to stop trying. They would have to move on. And she told him, and he accepted her decision.

Perhaps Marina had secretly hoped that her ultimatum to herself—to Fate or Destiny or whoever gave women babies—would make her body sit up, take notice, and get to work. Get pregnant.

Then her fortieth birthday arrived.

And everything changed.

Now Marina reminded herself:
No wallowing! Move on!
She sat up in bed, planted her feet on the cool wood floor, and surveyed her funny little loft bedroom.

Focus
, she told herself.

What was number five? Okay, the fifth thing she was grateful for was to be on this island. The flamboyant, generous beauty both hurt and healed her. Some days the intensity of the wild blue sea, the dense clouds of pink climbing roses, flew straight to her heart like an arrow, spearing her with emotions, so that she had to crouch to the ground, pressing her knees into her chest to keep from crying. But some days the beauty soothed her, even cheered her.

She believed that someday, someday
soon
, she would walk on the beach, and she would smile.

“Abbie!”

The instant Abbie stepped out of Jason’s truck onto the driveway, her youngest sister opened the front door and flew out of the house. Lily had been waiting, watching out the window, and this tugged at Abbie’s heart. Lily was twenty-two now, a grown woman, but she would always be Abbie’s little sister. And Lily
was
little, four inches shorter than Abbie, and petite.

“Abbie, I’m so glad you’re here!” Lily was almost jumping up and down.

“Me, too, kid.” Abbie wrapped her sister in a big hug.

Lily was the beauty of the family, with her red hair and green cat eyes. She was sexy, too, and not unaware of her charms. Abbie felt Lily’s attention shift to Jason, the island man who had been on her plane and offered her a ride home from the airport.

Jason was lifting Abbie’s luggage from his truck. He was two years older than Lily and six years younger than Abbie. He’d just gotten out of the army, and he was grown up and bulked up. He’d been a hunk to start with, with his dark hair, black eyes, and the exotic looks he’d inherited from his Cape Verdean ancestors.

Abbie reached for her duffel bag and roller suitcase. “Jason, thanks for the ride.”

“No problem.” Jason nodded at Lily. “Hi, Lily.”

“Hi, Jason. Thanks for bringing Abbie home.” Lily batted her long lashes at Jason. “Would you like to come in for some iced tea or something?”

“Another time, maybe. Abbie tells me she hasn’t been home for a while. You guys have some catching up to do.” With a smile, Jason climbed up into his truck and drove away.

Lily grabbed her sister’s arm, pulling her toward the house. “I can’t believe you’re really here! I went out to Bartlett’s and got a bunch of their arugula …”

The front hall was cool and dim; the back of the house got the sun. As she dropped her bags down by the stairs, Abbie saw the dust powdering the baseboards, the frame of the mirror, and the etched glass globes of the overhead light.

“Look!” Lily nodded toward the hall table, where a vase of wildflowers stood next to the brass bowl where the family tossed their mail and keys. “Just for you!”

“How nice, Lily! Thanks.” Abbie hugged her sister again, but she couldn’t keep her gaze from sweeping over Lily’s shoulder. She’d been gone for just eighteen months. How could the house have become so cluttered in that short space of time?

“Where’s Emma?”

“She’s in her room. She might be asleep. She sleeps a lot.” Lily studied Abbie’s face. “We haven’t gotten around to washing the windows for a while. I never think about it, until, well, I never think about it.”

And then it was as if the entire house came crashing down all around Abbie, the weight of the windows and the sofa and the chairs and the dust all balancing right on her shoulders, weighing her down so much she could scarcely breathe. And she hadn’t even made it into the kitchen yet.

Since she was fifteen, Abbie had been in charge of the house, taking care of Lily and Emma, cooking and cleaning. She hadn’t been able to go to college, not with the death of her mother and the family responsibilities that had brought her. Sometimes she’d thought she would never be able to have her own family, her own life. She loved her family, but she’d longed to see just a bit of the world.

When she turned twenty-eight, two years ago, she accepted an au pair job with a summer family and traveled with them to London.
She was being paid for work, yet she’d never had so much time to herself. The children she took care of were ten and twelve, good-natured and easy. With them she went to museums, concerts, plays, and to watch the changing of the guard in front of Buckingham Palace. At night, she helped herself to a book from Mr. Vanderdyne’s library. She read Dickens, Hardy, and T. S. Eliot. She watched DVDs of Noël Coward plays and Truffaut movies. She sat with her charges during their French lessons and began to learn French herself—the Vanderdynes were going to France this summer.

Then Lily’s worried emails arrived. Abbie had to come home.

It had felt good, at first, to feel needed. Yet how good a job had she done of raising Lily if Lily was still dependent on Abbie?

Sensing the drop in Abbie’s mood, Lily was babbling, “We’ve been too busy working to pay attention to stuff like dusting. Even before the stock market crashed last fall, Nantucket was kind of falling apart. People have stopped building new homes. Several of Dad’s clients backed out of deals. He always has some work, but you know he puts his crew first, and he’s kept paying their salaries and health insurance. I’ve helped out financially as much as I can. I pay for some of the groceries and stuff like that.”

Okay,
this
was a change, and a good one. When Abbie had left eighteen months ago, Lily hadn’t had any idea about the amount of money it took to run a house. With both her big sisters gone, it sounded like Lily had learned a lot.

Lily went on, “I want to talk to you about money. You’re always so good with stuff like that.”

“Okay, sure. We can ask Emma, too, since she’s the money expert.”

“I don’t think Emma’s feeling too
expert
about anything,” Lily said.

Abbie’s attention was caught by the photograph on the mantel. Their Aunt Stella had taken it at her daughter’s wedding ten years ago. The three sisters were dressed in matching bridesmaid’s gowns, lavender tulle fantasias.

Abbie’s curly brown hair was feathered close to her scalp, accentuating the elegant shape of her head, and the length of her neck. She’d inherited her father’s tall, lanky, wide-shouldered swimmer’s body and stood with an ironic tilt behind the froth of dress. Abbie
had worn her hair short all her life. It was easy to keep—she often trimmed it herself—and it made swimming easy. She was twenty then, but clearly she was an adult. She held herself with authority. Her smile was genuine but perhaps just a little sardonic.

Emma was a few inches shorter than Abbie—it was always remarked upon, how the three sisters were like stair steps. Like Abbie, she had big hazel eyes. Unlike her older sister, she was round, as their mother had been. Not fat, not even plump, just
round.
Her bosom bulged at the strapless neckline. Her waist was small, her hips wide. Her brown hair was as curly as Abbie’s but Emma had freckles sprinkled over her nose and cheeks and her face was less angular than Abbie’s. She was the “cute” one, and it drove her crazy. She set and rolled and ironed and blew her hair dry, and for photos she jutted her chin out, trying to look sophisticated. She always just looked cranky.

Lily had been only twelve that year. She’d sleeked her wild red curls into a formal chignon and lined her gorgeous green eyes with kohl. She was the shortest of the sisters as well as the youngest, and the most dainty. For the photo she’d turned a bit sideways, curling her shoulder up to her cheek in a kittenish come-hither gesture. She looked like a child playing dress-up.

“Why is this thing on the mantel?” Abbie wondered aloud. “We all look so young.”

“Dad likes it there,” Lily said. “It’s the last formal photo taken of the three of us together.”

Abbie did a slow turn around the room. “It’s like entering a time machine.” She quickly held her hand up. “Not criticizing! Just saying.” She took a moment to study her baby sister. “Wow, you have really turned into a bombshell, haven’t you?”

Lily blushed. “Do you think so?”

“How could I not? You’ve got some Rita Hayworth stuff going on for you now.”

Pleased, Lily hurried to return the compliment. “And you look like—Audrey Hepburn.”

“Ha. I think I’m more Sigourney Weaver in
Alien.
”

Lily nodded enthusiastically. “I can totally get that!”

“What’s Emma looking like these days?” Abbie idly ran her fingers over the piano keys—it was just slightly out of tune.