Beach Girls Page 31

  They headed out the door, ran across the wide green lawn. A sturdy fence reached across the property, and they unlatched the gate to step out onto the Cliff Walk. Shining with moonlight, the wave-tossed bay was rough silver. They hadn't gone five steps before Jack grabbed Stevie's hand.

  “Why did you really come?” Stevie asked.

  “Nell's message,” he said.

  “What did it say?” she asked.

  “I'll tell you,” he said. “Only not right now.” Instead, he wrapped her in his arms, pulled her hard against his chest, and kissed her. It was a kiss to end all kisses. His mouth was hot and filled her with passion. Her hands gripped his arms—she needed to feel his skin. His body felt hard and strong, and she wanted to press against it all night.

  When they broke apart, they continued on in silence, keeping the moonlit bay on their left. The tide was in, the waves crashing on the rocks below. Stevie felt a sense of vertigo that had nothing to do with the cliff's steepness. Jack was holding tight to her hand, but she felt herself falling—she actually had to catch her breath.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I am,” she said. It was a soaring feeling, as if she had spread her wings, was gliding over the bay. She had always studied birds for her work—their anatomies, their wingspans, the way the air held them aloft—and right now she felt like one of them. This wasn't like other times when she had fallen in love—where she had felt she needed to hold back, when she knew she wanted more than the other person was capable of giving. In flying home from Scotland, Jack had met her more than halfway.

  “You're smiling,” he said. “I can feel it, even though it's dark.”

  “I was just thinking about flying,” she said.

  “What about flying?”

  “You don't know how many times I thought about traveling to Scotland, to do research for the book.”

  “Do you think Nell didn't plan on that?”

  “Did she?”

  “And do you think I didn't know she was planning it, when I bought her art supplies to send you drawings?”

  “But what is it all about?” she asked. She needed to know. “Why are you there? And why am I writing a book about there?”

  “It has to do with distance,” he said solemnly, as if the statement was completely profound instead of just obvious. With a rush, Stevie realized it was both.

  “Is part of it . . . what happened to Emma? Maddie told me the story.”

  “About the accident?”

  “Well, more about what happened before the accident. About Father Kearsage.”

  “It's been really hard to believe,” he said. “She went to him for help—counseling, I guess. I've hated looking at myself in all this. She always told me I needed to communicate better—wanted us to go to a therapist. I always thought people who went to a marriage counselor were one step away from breaking up.”

  “She wanted you to go see him together?”

  “Initially. But I always put her off. I was working hard—traveling for my job, building bridges all over the Northeast. I thought, ‘As soon as things settle down, I'll be more available. She'll be happier.' You know?”

  Stevie nodded, thinking of the many ways she had stayed in ruts, ignored the real problems in her marriages until it was too late.

  “But then he invited her to join this volunteer program he ran. She loved it—and suddenly she was saying she really felt she had a purpose.”

  “Emma was always such an enthusiastic person,” Stevie said. “I can completely see her joining right in.”

  “I was hurt,” he said. “Offended . . . I mean, I thought she already had a purpose—being my wife and Nell's mom.”

  “She was those things,” Stevie said quietly. “But she was also her own person. That must have been the part she needed to bring out.”

  “Well, Father Richard did that for her,” Jack said. “He got her so involved in the world . . .”

  “She did that herself,” Stevie said. “He can't take credit for it.”

  “He tried, though,” Jack said.

  “What do you mean? You talked to him about it?”

  “I didn't just talk to him. I went after him—nearly killed him.”

  Stevie just walked beside him, listening to him open up to her.

  “He attended her funeral. I saw him there, but I was still in so much shock, and I wasn't at all ready to believe Madeleine, so I didn't say anything. He didn't officiate or anything—just sat in the back. He gave me this stare, on my way out of the church. I wanted to throw him down—a priest, right there in church, in his collar.”

  “Why didn't you?” Stevie asked, her own pulse jumping at the idea of that stare.

  “Nell,” Jack said.

  “She was right beside you,” Stevie said, picturing herself as a child, walking out of her mother's funeral with her father.

  “Yes. So it had to wait. The next few weeks were taken up with . . . God, you can't imagine. Getting Nell through. Easing her back into school, picking her up, sitting with her while she cried. All that.”

  “I know . . .” Stevie murmured.

  “Madeleine was in the hospital, having surgeries on her arm. Chris stayed with us, but as soon as she could be moved, he took her home.

  “I heard through the grapevine that Kearsage left the parish. Then I heard that he left the church. I was glad. If he disappeared, I wouldn't have to face anything about Emma.”

  “It doesn't work that way,” Stevie said.

  Jack shook his head. “One day I came home from work and found him waiting in his car outside my house.”

  “Why?”

  “He said it was because he loved Emma. He felt guilty, he said—about ‘sending' her off on a weekend with Madeleine. She hadn't wanted to go, he said. She'd wanted to tell me she was leaving, and then she was going to meet him.”

  “What was his purpose in telling you?”

  “He went on about ‘luminous mysteries.' He wanted to purge his conscience, and he wanted to—see Nell—wanted to know her, because she was half Emma.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “I went crazy. I told him he was a pathetic narcissist. That it wasn't enough that he wanted to break up my family, take my daughter's mother away from her—but that now he had the fucking nerve to show up at our house and want to see Nell. I . . . well, I knocked him down. I was in a blind rage—I don't even remember doing it. I just felt my fist in his face, and next thing, I was beating the shit out of him.”

  “Even he had to know he had it coming,” Stevie said, their feet crunching over pebbles on the path, the waves breaking down on the rocks.

  “It was pretty bad,” Jack said. “Not just because he was a priest, but because I didn't know I had such violence in me. I told him to get in his car, drive away, and never come back. I'm lucky he didn't call the cops on me. The next day, I put in for a transfer to Boston. That was no problem—moving within Structural was always easy. And since most of my projects were based in New England, it made a lot of sense.”

  “But Maddie,” Stevie said quietly. “If Kearsage admitted that what she'd said was true, then why did you have to shut her out?”

  They walked in silence for a while. The mansions on the right were getting bigger; Italianate palaces of marble, their tile roofs glowed blood-red in the moonlight. Stevie could feel Jack struggling with her question. She reached for his hand.

  “I shut her out because she loved me so much,” he said when he could talk. “Because she knew the whole story, and was so completely on my side. I couldn't bear how angry she was at Emma, on my behalf. I wanted to shut it all out—to close off everything but Nell. The truth was too devastating—I couldn't take any chance at all that Nell might find it out. She's smart—you know how quick she is. She'd have picked up on Madeleine's bad feelings about Emma in two seconds. I didn't want her losing her memory of her mother.”

  “I think you underestimate them both,” Stevie said.

  Jack didn't respon
d, as they approached Marble House and entered the tunnel beneath Mrs. Vander Gilt's Chinese teahouse. Inside, the darkness was total. They had to walk slowly, holding each other's hand.

  “Madeleine would never hurt Nell—she completely honors her love for Emma. And even if that wasn't so, there is nothing, nothing, anyone could ever do to change the way Nell feels about her mother.”

  “How do you know?” Jack asked.

  “Remember how she first found me?” Stevie asked. “She was on a quest—looking for a woman who lived in a blue house. Because that's where her mother's best friend lived. She wasn't really looking for me . . .”

  “She was missing her mother,” Jack said.

  “Yes.”

  “It may have started out that way,” Jack said. “But she's fallen in love with you.”

  “The feeling's mutual.”

  They emerged from the tunnel, into almost blinding moonlight. As they strolled along, Stevie thought about how people have to find their own ways to the light. People take as long as they take, and there wasn't any use trying to rush them. As much as she had wanted to push Jack back to his sister, he had to find his way in his own time.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “That right now I feel very grown up. Terrible things happen in life, and they're not fair, and we don't ask for them. But once we've stopped reeling from it all, we realize we've grown from it.”

  “Life shapes us,” he said.

  “Yes. One little bit at a time.”

  “What has it shaped you to be?” he asked.

  She had to think. They paused to lean on a wall, look out at the great silver expanse of ocean stretching all the way to Scotland. “A woman who trusts herself. Who's getting to know her own heart. And who loves the people in her life very much. How about you?”

  “A man who was running as fast as he could from where he most needed to be. And who's making his way back.”

  Stevie put her arms around his neck and kissed him long and hard. He held her tight, so their hearts were right up against each other. In the mysterious chemistry of love, much of these transformations had happened from a great distance. Her fear had disappeared. His fear was draining away.

  Love changes things, she thought. Nell had come to visit her, and two whole families were transformed. For so long, Stevie had looked to birds—the smallest of creatures—for lessons worth learning, worth painting, worth passing on. Why shouldn't a child, the newest beach girl, turn out to be the wisest of all?

  “Should we go back to the inn?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Henry's staying with Doreen. I have my room to myself . . .”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “We can't have all night,” he said, his mouth hot against her neck. “Nell will be waiting up for you.”

  “I can handle that,” she whispered, feeling the shiver go down her spine again. They walked along, looking out at the sea. When they got to the tunnel again, it didn't seem as dark as it was before. Stevie thought of how much easier it all was, once you knew that you really were coming back out into the light. It was easier to have faith when someone was holding her hand in the darkness, and she knew that he wasn't going to let go.

  And neither was she.

  WHEN THEY GOT back to the inn, it was nearly midnight. From outside, Jack could see that all the upstairs windows were dark; maybe Nell had fallen asleep after all. Only the porch and lobby lights were still lit. He and Stevie slipped inside, and went quietly upstairs, laughing when the stairs creaked beneath their feet.

  Stevie went into her room, to check on Nell. Jack waited, leaning against his door, all the way at the other end of the hall. He watched her, coming toward him smiling. Shadows played on her face, softening her fine cheekbones, the sharp cut of her hair.

  “She's asleep,” Stevie whispered. “They both are.”

  “Good,” Jack said, opening his door. “Then they won't notice you're gone.”

  He put his arms around her, just holding her for a few moments. They rocked back and forth together, and he thought about how he had flown all the way from Scotland, just for this chance. White moonlight slanted through the windows, illuminating the room. He pulled back, to see Stevie's face.

  He smoothed her bangs back so that he could look into her eyes. They were violet, mysterious, but glowing with a warmth that cracked his heart. The feeling scared him. He wouldn't admit it out loud, but his heart had been under attack these last few years. He had screwed up so badly, he'd driven his wife into the arms of their priest. How could Jack have loved her so badly? How could he have made such mistakes?

  “It's okay,” she whispered to him.

  “How do you know?” he whispered back.

  “I can just tell. Can't you feel it?”

  “I feel it so much—that's what worries me.”

  She laughed. He kissed her. She was so small—her head only came up to the middle of his chest. He always expected her to feel fragile, but she didn't. She felt strong and sexy, full of tensile strength. He kissed her mouth, wanting all of her.

  They went to the bed and eased each other down. He unbuttoned her shirt, kissing her collarbones, feeling the pulse between them, and touching her side, rubbing his hand down her ribs, seeing her nipples harden and darken, and then lowering his mouth to them.

  She moaned, and he was crazy with desire. He wanted her body—he'd wanted that ever since he'd seen her on that first morning, diving into the waves when she'd thought she was alone. Perhaps it had been that—her aloneness—that had touched him most, had drawn him to her, made him know that he had to find out, had to know her better, had to see whether she had the answers he needed.

  She reached down, unbuttoned his jeans, laughed a little with embarrassment because she couldn't do it with one hand. He helped her, his eyes open—hers, too—thinking how much he wanted this, how wild his desire for her was. Not just for her body, which was beautiful and so sexy it made him dizzy, but for every other bit, for the hidden parts, for whatever it was in her that made him know that she'd been alone, too—in spite of other marriages, other men, in spite of Emma, in spite of their whole histories and dramas and tragedies—that they were somehow here together, alone together, starting from scratch.

  Her hand was small, hot where she touched him. She pushed his boxers down his hips, made him harder than he'd ever been. He reached down, the heel of his hand curving up on her hip bones as he slid her black panties down her legs. The last time they had made love was on a raft. They'd been too shipwrecked to figure out how to swim to shore together. But here they were now, on dry land.

  She was wet. He entered her, her thighs hot around him. His heart was pumping hard, like water rushing through a channel. She gripped his back, lifting her head from the pillow to kiss his lips. She held on so tight, he'd never felt this close, this physically one, never that he could remember, but he was past thinking, he was just joined with her now, steel on steel, they weren't going anywhere, they were right here, right here . . .

  She held on so tight, he felt her chest rise into his, her back arching, spine curved like a bow, pushing her upward, right into him. They came together, crashing into something new. Moonlight spinning, reflecting off the sea down below, her violet eyes luminous under thick black lashes.

  “I don't want to let this go,” he said, smoothing her bangs off her damp forehead.

  “Do you think we could, even if we tried?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This feels bigger than we are. We both tried as hard as we could to push it away and make it not happen.”

  “Like your sign,” he said. “Please Go Away.”

  “You had one of those, too,” she said. “It was bigger than mine. It was a billboard—in neon. I could see it flashing, all the way from Scotland.”

  “I've made a mess of things in my life.”

  “So have I,” she said.

  “I've read all your book
s,” he said. “Night after night, to Nell. They're wonderful. But you know, they upset me. Every last one of them. Because even the goddamn birds are smarter than I am about their lives.”

  “Me, too,” she said. “My characters always know so much more than I do. Even the avian ones. Which tells me . . . since I actually wrote them . . . I must know more than I think.”

  “That makes sense. I must, too. Considering I'm here right now—instead of three thousand miles away.”

  “As Aunt Aida would say, we've got a lot of Louis Vuitton between us,” Stevie said.

  Jack shook his head, not getting it.

  “Baggage,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “That we do have.”

  “I guess what really counts,” she said, touching his face, “is that we also have something else.”

  “What?” he asked, really wanting and needing to know.

  “Well, each other,” she said. “And Nell.”

  And since that was just so true, there didn't seem to be anything else, for the moment, to say. So they didn't talk at all.

  Chapter 29

  THE WEDDING WAS AT ST. MARY'S, ON Spring Street. The imposing second-period Gothic church spire rose above the seaside town. A vine of red trumpet flowers grew up beside the front door, as if announcing tidings of hope and joy.

  John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier had married in the church on September 12, 1953. Doreen Donnelly had been baptized there, had made her first communion and confirmation there, and her parents had had their funerals there.

  Henry could barely hold himself together.

  “I'm going to lose it, Lulu,” he said to Stevie, standing outside on the steps. She and Nell had walked up from the inn to be with Henry while Aida helped Doreen get dressed. “You know how much it means to her to get married here? She's only been waiting for it her whole life. Doreen and Jackie Kennedy, married at the same church. I'm going to take one look at her standing up there with her veil and flowers, and I'm going to turn into a total blubbering fool.”