Beach Girls Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part Two

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part Three

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  About the Author

  Also by Luanne Rice

  PRAISE FOR THE TRANSCENDENT NOVELS OF LUANNE RICE

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  Copyright Page

  To Rosemary Goettsche,

  Maureen Onorato,

  and Suzi Chapman,

  with love

  Acknowledgments

  Sand castles and sea glass to Debbie Buell and Maggie Henry, Karen Covert, Laurette Laramie, Kathleen Stingle, Sue Detombeur, Susan Ravens, Marilyn Gittell, Amy and Molly Gittell-Gallagher, Andrea, Alex, and Jesse Cirillo, Meg Ruley and Alexandra Merrill-Lovett, Sam Whitney and my darling goddaughter, Sadie Whitney-Havlicak.

  Love and thanks to Irwyn Applebaum, Nita Taublib, and Tracy Devine—for their encouragement and kindness, and for being such wonderful friends and publishers.

  Many thanks to Mark Lonergan and Dore Dedrick for the music, and for introducing me to the real Tilly.

  Deep gratitude to Sea Education Association (SEA) of Woods Hole, MA. Many years ago I spent a semester at sea aboard R/V Westward, a one-hundred foot staysail schooner. We sailed the Caribbean tracking humpback whales. Navigating by charts, instruments, and the stars, we learned to use sextants and shoot sun lines. We towed hydrophones to listen to and attempt to analyze whale songs; we studied with oceanographers and towed nets and took sediment samples. We spent Christmas on Silver Bank, and visited beaches on Grand Turk, St. Bart's, and Mona Island. Amy Gittell, my shipmate, became a lifelong friend. SEA nurtures students and their love of oceans; it is a wonderful organization.

  I am very thankful to Karen, Joshua, and Elijah Stone; Jolaine Johnson; and Pam Paikin and Ed Barker for their friendship and support.

  Mia O. and the BDG are great.

  Love and beach memories to Bill, Peg, Lindsay, and Katie Decker; Carmen, Stacy, and Stephanie Decker; Rick and Courtney Decker; Laura, Kevin, Stephen, and Jenny Boyle; Rita Decker, Thomas Decker Sisco, and Michael Decker Sisco; Kathy, Michael, and Julie LeDonne; Kevin, Annette, and Christopher Brielmann; Jim and Kathie Brielmann; Tom and Renée Brielmann; Peter, Joanne, Kara, and Alex Brielmann; Harry Jr., Shirley Louise-May, Isabelle, Gabriel, and Rose Brielmann.

  Just a few of the beach boys: William Twigg Crawford, Paul James, Gene Reid, Martin Ruf, Tom Murtha, David Ryder, Jeff Woods, Scott Phelps, and the memory of Dennis Shortell.

  Prologue

  June, 1976

  THE THREE FRIENDS HAD ARRANGED their towels all in a row, on the white sand down by the water's edge, under an azure sky. The beach was hot beneath their backs, but a fresh breeze blew off the Sound to keep them cool. Small waves licked closer, just beyond their feet. The tide was flooding in, and the girls knew they would have to move their towels to avoid getting wet—but this single minute on a late June morning of their sixteenth year was too perfect, too wonderful, to interrupt.

  Stevie knew how quickly things could change; when she was very young, she had learned lessons of loss. A natural-born artist, she understood how impossible it was to grab onto a moment—something always happened. The wind shifted, or a shadow moved across the sun, or the light turned the water from dark blue to green. You glanced away, and by the time you looked back, everything could be different. The person you thought would be there forever had disappeared. Drawing was the only way she had discovered to hold on. . . .

  Madeleine never had such thoughts. She was the younger sister of the most popular boy in school. Being swept along in his wake had made her feel always safe, always wanted, always part of whatever was going on. He protected her from things she never even thought about—till after it was too late to worry, till the danger or trouble had passed. Maddie savored the hot sun and blue sky, knowing that this was what summer was for—beaching it with her best friends. And when this day passed . . . there'd be another one right behind it.

  Emma yawned and stretched, her legs extended, right foot arched as close as she could get to the water. She loved the feeling of the sea spray on her calves, getting more intense with each wave. Sunbathing could be so boring. Knowing the tide was coming up, surging closer with pure force, excited her. The sea was like a great lover—or what she hoped that would turn out to be. Whenever she wanted to dive in, the ocean embraced her. She loved how it was seductive, elusive, constantly changing . . . to Emma, change was like ecstasy—it let her know she was alive.

  “So?” Emma asked, lying on her back with her eyes closed. Her friends didn't reply at first—if she didn't know better, she'd think she was alone on the beach.

  “I don't want to move,” Maddie said, lying between the other two. “This feels too delicious. The sun is perfect.”

  “Stevie—you're quiet over there,” Emma said, calling across Maddie. “Are you ready to swim?”

  “Only if we can hold hands,” Stevie said. Emma hid a smile. Stevie loved being connected.

  Maddie giggled. “People will think we're weird.”

  “We are—or maybe just I am,” Stevie said.

  Emma listened for her to laugh, but she didn't. Stevie's absence of laughter always made Emma feel sad, and she didn't like such emotions. Her parents didn't approve of them—they liked everything upbeat and attractive, and so did Emma. She did just about anything she could to avoid introspection, which seemed to be Stevie's lot in life; Emma had found several effective ways of blocking sad or upsetting things, and they involved either boys, shopping, or her best friends. She grabbed onto Maddie's hand and tugged.

  They formed a chain—Emma, Madeleine, and Stevie. Holding hands, they faced the sparkling bay. The granite promontories of Hubbard's Point curved out into the Sound, protecting the white crescent beach from ocean waves. The cries of gulls carried from the rock island rookeries; Emma knew Stevie rowed out there at dawn to sketch the baby birds waiting for their mothers to come feed them.

  The knowledge made Emma shiver, just slightly. She had been Stevie's best friend from babyhood. Maddie had come along later, but she had fit right in, completed their circle. Emma knew that, in their threesome, she was “the sassy one.” Maddie was “the happy one.” And Stevie was “the sensitive one.”

  What Stevie—and definitely Maddie—didn't know was that Emma would just about die for them. She was sassy, funny, bossy, pretty, boy-crazy—all the lighthearted things they loved to tease her about. Although she had created the circle ceremony to bond them together, they thought she was casual about it: that they were just summer friendships that Emma took for granted year after year. The truth was, Stevie and Madeleine were her sun, moon, and stars; who needed celestial navigation when she had the beach girls?

  “I thought we were going into the water,” Maddie said, tugging on her friends' hands.

  “I wish, I wish . . .” Stevie said with her eyes squeezed tight.

  Emma held her breath, waiting to he
ar what Stevie was going to say. Stevie saw the beach in such a different way than anyone else. She was so inspired by it—Emma loved the way she took the light, the breeze, the birdcalls, the stars, right into her being, and sent it all back out into the world, down on paper in her paintings and drawings.

  Leaning forward to see around Maddie, Emma felt the waves come up around her ankles. She gazed upon the intensity of Stevie's face—so fine and chiseled, pale from the sunscreen she always wore, framed by sharp black bangs and bobbed hair—and she felt a pang deep inside.

  “What, Stevie?” Maddie asked. “What do you wish?”

  Emma felt her heart tug. She knew that Stevie was going to say something amazing, unexpected. She always did. She was so odd, the way she'd go rowing out to the bird islands before sunrise, or the way she'd go hiking into the marsh at night, listening for whippoorwills, or the way she would disappear for a whole day, and when Emma and Maddie—her fellow beach girls—would go knocking on her door, her father would tell them that she had gone to sketch the flowers on her mother's grave.

  And then Stevie would come back, and she would tell a story about it. She was a true paradox—so solitary, but with intense need for connection with the people she loved most.

  So she would tell—in such great detail Emma and Maddie would feel they were right there with her—about riding her bike past the salt-bleached cottages with bright, candy-colored shutters, to the little graveyard in among the wind-shaped cedars and oaks; about the scarlet trumpet vine growing up the base of the angel overlooking the grave where her dear mother slept. . . .

  How the red flowers attracted hummingbirds, tiny one-and-a-half-inch-long birds with emerald feathers, to be with her mother . . . and how Stevie loved the birds beyond all reason, for keeping her mother company.

  Stevie would say things like that—just out of the blue! The tale would unfold, with Stevie's words as evocative as her paintings—almost like the beautifully illustrated children's books Emma had grown up loving. And Emma had told her, too. “You're going to be famous, Stevie. Don't forget me and Maddie, after you've written a bunch of books—okay?”

  “Never,” Stevie promised.

  Emma loved Stevie for her talent, but she also felt . . . she hated to say it . . . envious. Because what would it be like—to see the world like that? To love nature and people in such a pure way that it would never occur to her to ask what they could do for her? Emma knew that Stevie was terribly vulnerable—things made her cry so easily.

  Emma guessed that that was the trade-off—to be as creative and feel things the way Stevie did, she had to open her heart so wide, to let everything in. Sometimes Emma thought of Stevie as Snow White and herself as Rose Red . . . and Madeleine as their nice, normal, happy friend with a really hot brother.

  “What do you wish?” Emma asked now.

  “Just,” Stevie said, “that this moment could last forever.”

  Well—after all that, something so simple. Emma sighed with relief. She had expected Stevie to say something profound about birds and people, summer and love, best friends and life's journey. To her surprise, Madeleine was the one who got philosophical.

  “It's the Bicentennial,” Maddie said. “We're part of history.”

  “All I know is, we're sixteen and ready to be kissed, kissed, kissed,” Emma said.

  “The beach girls of 1976,” Stevie said.

  “Write a book about our summers,” Maddie said. “We'll read it to our children, and it'll become a classic, and people will read it to their kids for the next two hundred years.”

  Emma shivered to hear that—she didn't like to think of Stevie writing books, becoming famous. It would make her feel second best.

  “Come on—what are we waiting for?” Emma said, just to get them off the subject.

  Holding hands, the three of them ran into the water, all at once, without stopping or flinching from the cold. They held tight, diving into the curling silver wave. When they came up for breath, they formed a circle—just like the one Emma had drawn in the sand. Their legs kicked underwater, buoying them up.

  Once again, the sea had done its mystical work—washed away all unwanted feelings, made everything right again. Emma took the salt water into her mouth, spit it out. Feelings could come and go, but these were her best friends, and she loved them, and she would love them forever.

  “What are we doing tonight?” Madeleine asked.

  “Watching the moon rise,” Stevie said.

  “Going to the beach movie to see who's there,” Emma said. “Watch out, boys . . .”

  “Maybe we can do it all,” Maddie said, laughing. “The moon and the movie.”

  “That's what I was thinking,” Emma said, watching Stevie gaze up at the sky without replying. The waves beat against the curved beach. Last night's half moon was still there, a white shadow marring the perfect blue. Emma shivered and turned her back on the moon, just taking in the blazing blue sky arching overhead, embracing all the beaches and all the beach girls.

  Summer had barely begun.

  Chapter 1

  June, 2003

  HER MOTHER'S BEST FRIEND LIVED IN A blue house, and that was all Nell Kilvert knew. So, from the minute she and her father had arrived at the beach for their summer vacation, Nell had kept her eyes peeled for a blue house. When she asked her father where it might be, he said that after so many years away, his only strong memory of Hubbard's Point was of falling in love with her mother on the boardwalk.

  Beach girls now, beach girls tomorrow, beach girls till the end of time . . . Nell still remembered her mother's stories about Hubbard's Point, where she'd spent her childhood summers. She said that she and Aunt Madeleine and her best friend—what was her name?—were happiest with their feet in salt water. Her mother had said that no matter where they were, no matter where life took them, they would always be united by blue summer skies, high winds and sudden gales, and hot beach sand under their bare feet.

  Hot beach sand . . .

  Nell felt it now, scalding the soles of her tender feet. “Ouch, ouch,” she said out loud.

  A girl about nine—her age—looked up from her beach towel. “Stand here,” she said, moving over so Nell could get some relief from the hot sand.

  “Thanks,” Nell said, standing on the very edge of the girl's towel.

  “Do you live here?” the girl asked.

  “We're renting a cottage,” Nell said. “My father and I.”

  “That's good,” the girl said. “What's your name?”

  “Nell Kilvert. What's yours?”

  “Peggy McCabe. I live here. Year-round.”

  “Oh,” Nell said. She felt funny standing on the corner of the strange red-haired girl's towel, and thought how cool and fun it would be to live at the beach all year. Then, realizing that she had a Hubbard's Point expert on her hands, her eyes widened. “Do you know any blue houses?”

  Peggy looked puzzled. “Well—that one,” she said, pointing.

  Nell looked over. Tall grass grew at the end of the beach, holding the sand in place so that no storm could ever wash it away. A big blue house nestled on the low dune—Nell had thought it had to be a beach club, but her father had told her it belonged to some lucky family. He had told her that it was built on pilings, to keep it above the highest tides, and that when they were young, he and her mother had gone underneath to kiss. Did it belong to Mom's best friend? Nell had asked, tingling. No, we didn't know the owners, her father had replied.

  “A different blue house,” Nell said to Peggy.

  “Oh,” Peggy said, getting a funny look on her face. “The witch's house.”

  “The witch?”

  Peggy nodded, scooting over even farther on her striped towel, inviting Nell to sit down. She pointed across the crescent of white sand and sparkling bay to a house on the Point, hidden in lacy blue shadows of oak and fir trees. Nell peered, shielding her eyes from the sun with visor-hands. “That house looks white to me,” she said.

  �
�It is now,” Peggy said. “But it used to be blue. When I was really little. I remember, because my sister Annie had a song about it:

  Heart of stone, house of blue,

  If you come in my yard

  I'll make you a witch, too. . . .”

  Nell stared up at the house. She was skeptical: her mother's best friend couldn't be a witch. On the other hand, Nell had ruled out just about every other cottage at Hubbard's Point. She had ridden her bike up and down all the roads with her father. And she'd gone back to the only two blue cottages she'd found and asked the people if they remembered her mother, Emma Kilvert. Both times, the answer was no.

  “Why do you call her a witch?” Nell asked.

  “Because no one ever sees her,” Peggy said. “She lives in New York all winter, and when she's here, she stays in her yard till after dark. She talks to owls. She writes children's books about all different birds. One got made into a movie. People who don't know how weird she is come from outside the beach to look for her—but she doesn't even answer her door! And every morning, before the sun comes up, she walks along the tide line to look for shorebirds and her lost diamond ring.”

  “Her lost diamond ring?” Nell asked.

  “Yes. She's a divorcée. She's been married lots of times. No kids, even though she writes kids' books. She collected the engagement rings, and wears them on all her fingers. But she lost the biggest one while she was swimming in a storm, and she has to find it. It's worth thousands. She puts spells on the men who cross her! And on kids who trespass in her yard. They read her books, and she chases them away. You should see the sign she has by her stairs. . . .”

  Nell frowned, hugging her knees, making herself small. She didn't like the sound of this woman. Maybe it was a mistake to want to meet her. . . . But then she thought of her father and his new girlfriend, Francesca, and she thought of her mother's soft blue eyes, with the gentle sun lines around the outside corners, and of the way she used to talk about her best friend, and Nell felt a hole in her stomach.

  Beach girls now, beach girls tomorrow, beach girls till the end of time . . .

  Just thinking of the old saying made the shiver worse, and the hole bigger, and made Nell miss her mother so much she thought the sorrow might crush her right there on the beach. She stared up at the house on the hill, holding her knees tighter.