Beach Girls Read online

  “I'm so sorry,” Stevie said. If Madeleine wondered why she didn't sound surprised, she didn't show it.

  “She married my brother, Jack. You know they met right here, at the beach.” Madeleine gazed down the hill.

  “Yes,” Stevie said, trying to breathe, picturing Jack and Nell sitting alone on the sofa last night.

  “They met right there, on the boardwalk,” Madeleine said. She pointed at the blue pavilion, a roof built over the boardwalk just for shade. “They went out all through her college and his grad school. Jack went to MIT, became an engineer. Emma went to Wellesley. When she graduated, they got married and moved to Atlanta. She never really worked, but she became a crackerjack volunteer. If you needed something done, and had no money, Emma was the one you called.”

  “Really?” Stevie asked, trying to see Emma in that role.

  “I used to tease her, saying she'd developed a social conscience in order to pay back that woman with the shopping cart in New London . . . she turned out to be very good at raising money.”

  “That shouldn't surprise me at all,” Stevie said, thinking back. “I remember that day, when she got the money in the first place—all she had to do was smile at those young Coasties! She came toward me, holding the two tens . . . that devilish smile on her face. She said ‘easiest thing I ever did,' and we laughed so hard.”

  They both smiled, thinking of Emma's smile and the way she could get boys to do what she wanted.

  “I lost track of you both,” Stevie said. “We were inseparable for those summers, and I never imagined we wouldn't stay in touch forever. But life got crazy. . . .”

  “We all watched you,” Madeleine said. “You were our famous friend. I remember when Disney did a movie of your book on robins in the orchard.”

  “It was supposed to be set here in Connecticut, but they filmed it on Bainbridge Island, in Washington State.”

  “We watched it, hoping to see you.”

  “I was an extra,” Stevie said. “I was a beekeeper, with netting over my face. If you blinked, you'd miss me. Did you and Emma watch it?”

  “Not Emma,” Madeleine said, and something about the way she said it made Stevie's stomach flip. “My husband, Chris, and I.”

  “I wish Emma were here,” Stevie said.

  Madeleine nodded. “I miss her every day. Driving down from Providence, it seemed unbelievable to me that she wasn't with me. Two of us . . . just doesn't seem right. We were always three.”

  “Down there,” Stevie said, staring down at the beach. It seemed a million miles away, all the happy people, families with kids, girlfriends with towels close together, blankets and umbrellas covering the sand. Stevie looked at Madeleine's pale skin, and her own, and thought of how far away the beach seemed to two girls who once had practically lived on it.

  “Emma would have none of this,” Madeleine said. “Sitting up here in street clothes. She'd be in her bathing suit already, slathering our shoulders with sunscreen.”

  “Maybe we should follow her lead—?”

  “No way,” Madeleine said. “I'm perfectly happy on your terrace, watching all those skinny people having fun.”

  “The calorically challenged,” Stevie said.

  “You should talk. Look, let's get down to business. Is the sun above the yardarm? Well, it is somewhere. I brought champagne—I stuck it in the fridge as I walked by. Let's pop the cork and toast to the good old days.”

  Stevie went into the kitchen and took one of Madeleine's bottles from the refrigerator. She filled a glass of ginger ale for herself, grabbed a champagne flute from the back of the shelf, and returned to the terrace.

  “These were wedding presents, and the first time I used them,” Stevie said, placing the flute on the teak table, “was after my second wedding. It was here, on this very terrace. You are sitting in the exact spot where I said ‘I do.'”

  “You were married at your childhood home—how romantic!”

  “That's one way to put it,” Stevie said darkly. She undid the foil, took the wire cage from the cork, and expertly opened the bottle without causing a pop—just a gentle cascading hiss, the way Linus had taught her. She poured.

  “What's this? You're not joining me?” Madeleine asked.

  “I'm joining you,” Stevie said. “It's just that I've had my lifetime quota of champagne. Ginger ale works better for me now.”

  “Well, that's no fun,” Madeleine said, frowning. But she lifted her glass anyway. “Here's to you, Emma—wherever you are!”

  “To the beach girls!” Stevie said. They sipped their drinks. Madeleine downed half of hers at once. Stevie remembered drinking that way; she could almost feel the sudden, yet fleeting, relief Madeleine would be feeling right now.

  “Beach girls,” Madeleine said, delighted by the phrase. “Remember, it was like a sorority. Just the three of us.”

  “‘Beach girls now, beach girls tomorrow, beach girls till the end of time,'” Stevie said. She looked down the hill. The sands were so white, and the Sound was so blue—as if the calm bay between the headlands was a mirror held to the sky. She watched as Madeleine filled her glass again.

  “Here's to,” Madeleine began, then stopped. She gazed into the distance, as if trying to come up with a suitable next toast. “Here's to . . . what?”

  Stevie's spine tingled as she sat very still, the next toast right there on the tip of her tongue. It's not time, she told herself. You have to wait. As hard as it was, she did. And Madeleine made the next toast herself: “Here's to being together again!”

  “Together again,” Stevie murmured.

  They clinked glasses. Madeleine happily sipped her drink and didn't even seem to notice that Stevie's gaze was trained down toward the beach, on a cottage behind the seawall at the edge of the silver-green marsh. A house with a beautiful garden, and with two women in straw hats standing out in the middle of the road—Bay McCabe and Tara O'Toole, greeting two girls on a bicycle-built-for-two.

  IN BOSTON, Jack sat in his office at Structural Associates, on the thirtieth floor, watching planes land at Logan Airport across the glittering blue harbor. Francesca walked in, closed the door behind her. She looked beautiful, stylish in a perfectly tailored Prada suit and black slingback heels. Her tan glowed, from the last two weekends visiting friends on Nantucket. She leaned against his desk.

  “Hello, stranger,” she said.

  “Hi, Francesca.”

  “Let's see. I sent you postcards from Siasconset, and extremely tantalizing—if I do say so myself—photos of me aboard my friend's boyfriend's hundred-foot yacht, and invitations for you—and Nell—to hop a ferry and come see me, and you ignore me.”

  “I'm not ignoring you . . .”

  “All summer, you've made yourself scarce. You came to Boston from Atlanta months ago, and you've barely showed your face here since June. The boss doesn't mind that you're hardly in the office,” Francesca said. “I'm wondering whether he's figured it out.”

  “Figured what out?”

  “That you're leaving the firm.”

  Jack stared down at the blueprints on his desk. They were for his most recent project, a new highway bridge in New Hampshire. Francesca had worked on it with him. He remembered how she had surprised him, kissing him on site, their first visit after construction began. He felt bad. Not because he was leaving the firm, and her, but because he didn't have any feelings about it at all.

  “How did you hear?” he asked.

  “I haven't heard—I've seen. Seen how you're never around. How the boss gives all the big stuff to Taylor. How I'm alone every weekend. When I thought we'd have lots of fun this summer.”

  “It's not you, Francesca,” he said. Now his eyes fell on the Faneuil Hall Bookstore bag. Inside were more books he'd bought for Nell, both by Stevie Moore: The Red Robin and the North Wind and Gull Island. He didn't think anything could beat Owl Night, but he wanted to buy them all. He raised his gaze from the bag.

  “No? Well, it feels as if it is. I spoke w
ith Ivan Romanov, and he asked me whether I'd be coming to visit you in Inverness. You couldn't even tell me yourself!”

  Jack stared at her. He had no excuse, no justification. She was a wonderful woman, a fine engineer, a great colleague. He had gone behind her back, taken a job with a client of their company. “I'm sorry if you think I've undercut you.”

  “Undercut me? Excuse me, but you're an idiot. I didn't want the job—I knew Ivan was planning to put it out to headhunters—he floated it out there to me at the same time he did you. I just feel—betrayed. We're friends, Jack. I thought we might even be more than that.”

  “I'm sorry.” Jack wanted to take her hand, because he had thought they might be more than that, too. When had his feelings changed? When Nell met her, he knew. . . .

  “What was it?” she asked. “Trying to have a relationship while we worked together? Did I push too hard?”

  “You were, you are, wonderful,” he said. “I told you—it's not you.”

  “Then, what?”

  “It's us—me and Nell,” he said. “We've been in a hurricane. That's what it feels like. A big storm that knocked our house out from around us. Nothing feels safe or right anymore. It's not fair for me to invite anyone else into the storm.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Beautiful metaphor.”

  “It's the best I can do.”

  “Your child is so traumatized you can't date, so you uproot her from America and take her to Scotland? That makes sense.”

  Jack thought of Stevie and what she had said about “geographics.” His gaze went back to the bag.

  “My parents were divorced,” Francesca said. “Nell's a big girl now. She'll get over you dating. She really will. You don't have to protect—”

  Jack felt ice in his veins. Francesca's words went straight through him. He thought of Emma in her hospital bed, Madeleine in hers, the huge hole in his and Nell's family. “Divorce?” he said. “Nell's parents aren't divorced. Her mother is dead. She was killed, suddenly, one beautiful Georgia day, driving home from the beach with my sister.”

  “I don't mean to be insensitive. I get what you're saying. My point is, you're off base. A father starting to see other women is the same as far as a girl is concerned—it's going to suck no matter what.”

  Jack shook his head hard. He knew that the exchange was just making it very easy for him—much easier than he deserved.

  “No, you don't get it,” he said. “Nell comes first. Period. She's having a problem with us. She's not ready for this—for me seeing other people. Seeing you. I'm sorry, Francesca.”

  She put her hand on the door and stared at Jack. “You should be,” she said.

  Plenty of comments ran through his head, but he stayed silent and let her have the last word. He was relieved when she walked out and closed the door behind her.

  He leaned back in his chair. Looking around, he realized that this place had never felt right. He had come to Boston hoping to escape the grief and loneliness of Atlanta. Francesca had tried to be a good friend, but it wasn't enough. He opened his desk drawer, took out his and Nell's passports.

  What would she think of Scotland? Suddenly he couldn't even imagine what he'd been thinking, making these plans. He pictured standing in Stevie's kitchen, talking about Dr. Galford. Nell had had two sessions since then. Suddenly she was sleeping a little better. Would they have to find a new doctor in Inverness? And who would Jack have to talk to, when he felt overwhelmed by everything Nell was going through?

  At the beginning, Scotland had seemed like a good place to take a little girl. Jack's parents had traveled there with him and Madeleine when they were young. He remembered that they had bought Maddie a tartan kilt. Muted red-and-green plaid, it had a big silver thistle pin in front.

  They had gone to the northwest highlands, seen the ancient, rounded mountains at the edge of the sea, taken a ferry out to the Isle of Harris to buy tweed. They'd returned to the mainland, staying in a hotel overlooking a sea loch. Their father had hired a gillie to take them salmon fishing on the river. He remembered the low mist, the green hills, the river winding its way into the loch.

  “I'm not catching anything. I never catch anything,” Maddie said.

  “Be patient,” their father said. Maddie caught her brother's eye, and he made a face and shrugged.

  “Jack, if you catch a fish, I'll kill you,” she said.

  “You'll get one before me,” he said. “I'll bet you.”

  “Does the Loch Ness Monster live in there?” Maddie had asked, tugging Jack's hand. She was ten, and he was fourteen, wishing he was back in Hartford with his friends.

  “No,” he'd told her, just to keep himself amused. “A worse monster lives in there. The River Creature.”

  “What's that?”

  “Trust me, Maddie—you don't want to know.”

  “No, I do! I do want to know!”

  Their father and Murdoch, the gillie, fished in earnest while Jack and Maddie held their rods and talked. Jack described the River Creature: long and slimy, like a snake, a white snake that lived in the deepest hole in the river. It liked to eat salmon, so when the fish were biting, the River Creature was right behind them—to spring out of the water and catch the fish and the fisherman.

  “See?” Jack said. “We're lucky we're not catching anything.”

  Madeleine had laughed—seeing right through him, knowing he was just trying to make her feel better. Now, holding his and Nell's passports, Jack hoped he could do the same thing for Nell.

  He hoped he could take her to Scotland, chase her sorrow and worries away. He'd never forget how happy Madeleine had seemed on that trip. She had loved the heather, the bagpipes, even the streams of clear brown water tumbling over the peat. If Scotland could do that for his little sister, it might weave the same magic for Nell.

  It had to.

  He rolled up the blueprints, put them into the tube. Then he packed up his briefcase with a few travel documents and Stevie's books, and he left the office. He hoped he wouldn't run into Francesca on the way out, and he didn't. Saying goodbye to the receptionist, he got into the elevator and headed down to his car. Nell was safe at the beach with her friend Peggy and her family. He knew she'd be anxiously awaiting his return—she didn't like him gone for too long.

  Most of all, he was glad to have new Stevie Moore books to read to her. He really loved Owl Night, but he couldn't bring himself to pick up the one about emperor penguins again. That book had come to remind him of the talk he and Stevie had had in her kitchen. When he'd had to hold himself back . . .

  He had been reading the penguin book to Nell over and over, the nights just before those three incredible mornings, when he would go down to the beach to watch Stevie swim.

  He missed those mornings, more than he could believe. The memory of seeing her silhouetted against the rising sun gave him goosebumps, even now. Watching her dive into the dark water, come up for air, swim all the way out to the rock. Why hadn't he just gone for it—swum out to meet her?

  She had to have seen him there, yet she hadn't mentioned it when he'd dropped by her house. How did she feel about it? If she'd been upset or mad, wouldn't she have mentioned it to him?

  The memory was like a hidden vice—something no one had to know about, the fact that he pined for those mornings, spying on Stevie. He felt it in his skin, his groin, every inch of his body. He told himself that he wasn't looking for a relationship—he and Nell were nowhere near ready for that. The fact that Nell liked her had nothing to do with anything. The fact that she understood losing a mother didn't really mean much; or that she'd reassured him about Nell needing help, needing to go back to see Dr. Galford. She had helped him through a hard time, but it didn't really count.

  Or did it?

  No, desire seemed safer than anything that might lead to a real relationship. This thing he felt for Stevie was pure desire.

  It was, in spite of the fact that his daughter loved her.

  If only Stevie hadn't been so
insistent about Madeleine—to the point of inviting her to visit Hubbard's Point. Jack's stomach flipped, wondering when that would happen. He just wanted to be left out of it. That was one subject closed to Jack forever. As far as he was concerned, he used to have a sister. The little girl he loved so much—in Scotland, at school in Hartford, playing tennis at the beach—was gone.

  Nell couldn't understand why he wouldn't see or talk to Madeleine—and Jack prayed she never would. If that moment ever arrived, she'd be grateful to him for keeping them apart.

  He got into the car, pulled into Boston traffic for the long ride back to the beach.

  The great thing about longing, about fantasy, about the picture in his mind of Stevie climbing out of the water, silver drops streaming from her lean, lithe body, was that reason had nothing to do with it.

  Chapter 11

  THE FIRST BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE TASTED so good going down, Madeleine could hardly wait to open the second one. It wasn't much fun to drink alone—especially while Stevie just nursed her ginger ale. Madeleine pretended not to notice.

  “Tell me all about you,” Madeleine said. “Do you live here all year round?”

  “No,” Stevie said. “I spend the winters in New York City, come out here at the end of May.”

  “I guess that's the beauty of being an artist—flexibility. I work in the Brown development office, raising money.”

  “Providence is a great city. I went to school there, RISD. It's where I met my first husband.”

  Madeleine hadn't wanted to ask about the husband situation, but she was glad Stevie had brought it up. She sipped her champagne.

  “Kevin was so bright and talented,” Stevie said. “We fell in love the first week of freshman year. He had such raw talent . . . no one could do with a line what he could. Just so simple, and spare . . . he cut away all the bullshit. RISD can be so progressive, avant-garde . . .”

  “The graduate show is certainly eye-opening,” Madeleine said.

  Stevie nodded. “It is. It's wild and wonderful. But Kevin did work that was almost classical. He loved the figure; he worked in charcoal and paper. His best work reminded me of Picasso. Not cubism, but line . . .”