“It’s wrong. But she knows you and I are close. She likes you, by the way.”
“Don’t butter me up.”
“I’m not. But I’m concerned, Liddy. I can’t deny that.”
“Well, don’t be.”
“But I am. I don’t know if …”
“If what?
Silence.
Liddy stood there in the afternoon sun, waiting for Beau to fill in the silence, and knowing the likelihood was rare. He didn’t know if he could take dating someone like her: a woman whose future health was unknown.
“Maybe we can meet to talk,” he finally said.
She shrugged, although there was no one there to witness it. Her surgeon had said the tumor was gone and there was little chance of a recurrence, but the fact remained that weird symptoms continued to persist.
Oh, dear God, let it not be so.
“Liddy?”
At his voice on the line, Liddy startled. “Sorry. I was … somewhere else for a moment.”
A phone rang in the background. “On second thought,” he said, distracted, “I really should work tonight. Okay if I take a rain check?”
She wagged her head at the sky. How could he take a rain check on a date that they hadn’t yet agreed upon? Liddy looked out to the sea, half wishing she could hop aboard a sunset-bound cruise. Any one of them would do.
“Sure,” she finally said. As they said their goodbyes and clicked off the line, Liddy couldn’t help but sense her rebuilt happiness ebbing away.
* * *
She couldn’t sleep. At two a.m., long after respectable people had gone to bed, Liddy pulled on a fleece hoodie and went for a walk. The narrow lane winding along the beach stretched out before her like one long gang plank. Dozens of beach houses illuminated her path, most of them modernized and standing tall, like narrow stalwarts, blocking the late night breezes.
The hotel staff had been on edge all afternoon, and though she had hoped to hear some breaking news about the mysteries surrounding the restaurant, even if it had come, she would likely have been too busy to stop and listen.
“Something’s up,” Trace kept saying, and sniffing the air as if the action could conjure up some news.
In the end, since a writing organization was due into the hotel, and many of their officers had checked in a day early to set up, she’d been swamped. From the moment their president arrived, Liddy had been called upon to offer assistance in everything from making dinner reservations to helping with last-minute administrative tasks. By the time she’d left the hotel, the writer’s conference board had transported more than three hundred convention packets to the ballroom reception area and settled in for a round of Chardonnay.
A second-story window slammed shut and Liddy stopped. She peered up, the sky clear and starlit, and tightened the drawstring at her neck. Apparently, someone else couldn’t sleep.
Wind chimes jostled in the breeze, the lightness of their song keeping Liddy moving. Physically, she’d felt well all day. After work she had picked up her medication, then carefully zipped it into a pocket in her purse, but not before taking out some spares and stashing them in a cabinet. Just in case.
Emotionally she was all tapped out, but not enough to cause sleep to come. So she walked along the darkened street, unafraid of strangers and ghosts, marveling at how loud the waves crashing sounded with nothing but a mostly quiet night as a backdrop. Yet the sounds of water onto shore soothed her, made it easier somehow to hear her thoughts, to voice her worries in her mind.
Though she did not feel ill physically, a kind of apprehension enveloped her. And that alone scared her. Before the divorce, and certainly before the tumor had appalled her with its sudden appearance, the emotion of fear had been ill-defined in her life. Fear meant encountering a black widow while wiping down windows in the desert or the slither of a nearby garden snake, neither of which could not be overcome.
But this new fear, the kind that carried with it endings that could not be revoked, gripped her in a startling way. She was twenty-five, and she had officially crossed over the divide between idyllic childhood dreams and adulthood, with all its neuroses and unwelcome realities.
And then there was Beau. If she were truthful, she would admit that he had not originally fit her idea of a “dream” guy. She’d always been attracted to men with ripples and girth and dark, jet black hair. How shallow was that? When she found herself admiring Beau, talking with him and caring about what he said to her, and when her heart began to race at the caress of his gaze, the smooth texture of his voice, she worried. You’ll grow tired of him, she told herself. You’ll start something you cannot finish. Meg had said as much as well.
But Meg was wrong. The opposite had come true—she couldn’t get enough of him. Smitten was an understatement. Perhaps this is why her fears hurt so much: she had something to lose. If there were to be long-term debilitating side effects from surgery, or—God forbid—a recurrence, she couldn’t stand to drag down Beau with that kind of news. And that would mean losing someone, who in a very short time had come to mean the world to her.
An uncomfortable chill rankled the skin on her arms and she once again cinched her hoodie tighter. By the time she rounded the corner toward home, the foghorn at the harbor’s edge had begun sounding its call. A haze had blown in rather quickly, like a flimsy sheet pulled across the sky, catching Liddy off guard.
Hurriedly, she reached the stairway and took the steps two at a time. Her mind was as awake now as it had been when she’d left, but thankfully, her body was not. Once inside, Liddy stripped off her hoodie, stepped out of her slip-ons, and crawled into bed without removing another stitch.
Chapter 21
“Are you up?” Meg was on the phone, her voice tentative, almost motherly.
Liddy peered at the time with one eye open, then spoke into the mouthpiece. “Sort of. What’s up?”
“You’re on the later shift, right?”
“Ten to seven. Why?”
“Good. Then you can meet me for breakfast.”
“But—”
“No, buts. See you there in half an hour.”
Liddy set the phone down with a groan. “Well,” she said to the rafters, “that was rather ominous.”
She reached the place they always met—The Breakfast Bar—and Meg was sitting outside, looking chic and well-coiffed. As usual. Oversized and heavily tinted sunglasses camouflaged her face.
Liddy took a seat opposite her friend. “You know I love you, but what in the heck?”
Meg smiled, briefly. “Can’t I invite my BFF to breakfast?”
“OMG, JW.”
Meg slid those crazy huge sunglasses down her nose and peered over the top. “JW?”
“Just wondering.”
“Ah.”
The waitress brought them each water and coffee, and Meg said, “I already ordered you an omelet. You’re welcome.”
Liddy nodded once. “Gee, thanks,” she said.
The waitress clucked a laugh and moved on, swinging her coffee pot toward the next outdoor table.
“So I’m guessing there’s more to this breakfast than food. Right?”
“I wanted to warn you that Jackson’s sister, Pepper, showed up this morning.”
Liddy’s lips hovered just above her coffee cup. “Jackson has a sister?”
“Yes. And she’s an angry woman. You know that their father used to run the hotel chain, right?”
“I’d heard that.”
“Well, anyway, they have a strange arrangement in that they are co-owners of the properties, but since Jackson’s the creative extrovert and Pepper’s more of a money whiz, they usually stay in their respective corners.”
“I take it they aren’t close.”
Meg shook her head. “Not at all.”
Liddy finally took that sip of coffee, then sat back, thankful that the haze from earlier in the morning had slipped away. The sun shone warm enough that she wished she had remembered sunscreen. “I take it you k
now Pepper pretty well then from your relationship with Jackson?”
As was becoming more and more the case, Meg’s expression stiffened at the personal question, like shutters snapping shut.
Liddy changed her line of questioning. “Well, thanks for telling me. Good to be on my toes. What was the staff’s take?”
“She swept in late yesterday, demanding spreadsheets and updated budgets on her desk ASAP.” Meg smirked. “She slid into the only empty office, as if she’d always been there. Sally didn’t know what hit her.”
“Do you think this has anything to do with the restaurant rumors?”
Meg leaned her head to one side. “You know what? That’s an interesting observation.”
“How so?”
“I saw Chef wander in there shortly before I left to meet you. He was all poker-faced, but”—she shrugged—“who knows? Maybe something’s about to go down.”
Their waitress delivered two omelets in record time. Liddy surprised herself by devouring the entire egg, mushroom, and cheese concoction without much of a struggle. That walk from the night before must have made her hungry. Or maybe it was the worry that had done so. Whatever the reason, she ate enough to cover breakfast and lunch for the entire day. Maybe even dinner.
When it was time to leave, she stood, and Meg touched her elbow. “Hey,” she said.
Liddy squinted. “Something wrong?”
“C’mon,” Meg said, flicking her chin toward the street that meandered along the ocean, the same path that Liddy had walked toward the harbor in the wee hours of the morning. “You still have plenty of time to get to work.”
They made their way past the morning bustle of residents pulling out of their driveways, ostensibly to head to work, and surfers arriving to catch a wave before the swells became overcrowded with tourists and their unwaxed boards.
Liddy bit her lip. “You haven’t told me everything, have you?”
Meg pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Oh, Liddy. I have something to say and I’m … I’m just wishing I didn’t have to.”
Liddy stopped and turned toward her. “Well, whatever it is, just say it. Nothing shocks me anymore.”
Meg pulled off her sunglasses, the sunlight causing her to squint. “I saw Beau walking with a woman last night.”
“Last … night?”
“Yeah. They were wandering down by the pier. I had worked late—kind of had to after all of Pepper’s demands—and I decided to stop at Kincade’s for a glass of wine, and that’s when I spotted them.”
Liddy’s heart knocked uncomfortably in her chest. “Maybe it was a client. He said something about working late.”
“He did?”
“Yes. We talked about getting together, but then he said he couldn’t after all because he had work to do.”
Meg’s face was anything but closed off now.
“What … what kind of woman?” She tried to keep the suspicion out of her voice.
Her friend sighed and looked away from her, as if searching for words. “I didn’t recognize her.”
“Okay, so it could’ve been anybody. Maybe even a relative. We haven’t talked since yesterday … I’m sure he’ll even mention her to me.” She hoped he was planning on calling her sometime today, although there was no promise of that.
“I guess that makes sense. She was talking-talking-talking.”
Liddy leaned her head to one side.
“I mean, I wasn’t close enough to hear anything, but her mouth was moving constantly and she was gesticulating every which way. She even leaned a hand on his shoulder more than once, laughing about something.” Meg demonstrated by pressing down on Liddy’s shoulder, and laughing nonsensically into the air.
“Well, I’m sure he’ll mention it.” She hoped he would, anyway.
Meg let her hand fall away from Liddy’s shoulder. She wound her hair into a ponytail as they walked, then let it flop down again onto her shoulders. So unlike her. “Sorry if I scared you. I guess—I guess I’m just sensitive to things.” She paused. “Well, you know, after all that went down with you and Shawn.”
Liddy peered at Meg. A flash of something—like a wince—crossed her friend’s features, and she wondered if some other unwelcome memory had surfaced in her mind.
“Yes, so, like I said, I was just relaxing with a glass of wine, and the next thing you know, I see this woman jabbering on and on to Beau, dropping a familiar hand on his shoulder like they were old friends. If I hadn’t been two floors up and only a quarter way through my wine, I might have chased after them and introduced myself.” She laughed then. “How hilarious would that have been?”
Liddy cracked a smile, but that’s as deep as the emotion went. This … this must be why she hadn’t slept much the night before. Deep down, she had sensed something shifting beneath her already shaky foundation.
“So … you’re not mad that I brought all this up, I hope.
Liddy gave her friend a sad smile. “No, of course not. I’m just …”
“Sad?”
“No. Distracted. I’m really, really distracted these days.” She blew out a breath and looked away from Meg before the tears came.
“Yeah, me too,” Meg said, her expression equally sour. “Me too.”
* * *
She held off contacting him, hoping Beau would call her first and have a good explanation. A really good explanation. But the closer it came to the start of her workday, the more she knew that would not be happening. Her anger simmered all the way to work, which thankfully was not that far. No matter; she was still seething when she reached the parking lot.
She found a spot in the employee lot, threw the car into “Park,” and yanked the keys from the ignition. How could he do this to her? She grabbed her phone from her purse and stared at it. What good would doing something rash bring to her? No good at all. Reacting out of sheer emotional trauma—she considered this to be in that category—would solve nothing. She had learned this one sad and lonely day when she mouthed off to Shawn’s girlfriend and received nothing but more heartache in return. She’d told her to return his photos, the ones she inexplicably left behind.
And had she ever. Something inside her still wept at the sight of her memories cut to shreds in the FedEx package she received one lonely night last winter.
Still, Beau had told her he would be working last night, and apparently it wasn’t true. Unless walking along the pier with some woman who felt comfortable enough to publicly fawn all over him could be considered work. She weighed that. Perhaps in some circumstance, it could.
Liddy had a long day ahead of her. In a short time, the inn would be overrun with creative types who found a story around every corner. Oh, to be able to retreat from reality like that! Anger, no matter how justified, would not help her serve hotel guests today. So she compartmentalized. She folded up her indignation, slid it into her pocket, and began making her way across the long parking lot with her chin up.
She almost made it, too, until encountering a puddle just deep enough to infiltrate her flats when she accidentally stepped into it. As the water flooded her favorite trouser socks—the ones Meg had given her last year from the Kate Spade outlet store—something inside of her flared.
Liddy pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, and typed a missive to Beau.
* * *
Beau’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his desk drawer and read the screen:
Working last night? Really? Of all people, I thought you were honest.
He blinked and read the words again. The text from Liddy landed like a punch to his midsection. Bile oozed in his gut. She’d seen them. She must have seen them. The gasp he heard was his own. He shook his head, disgusted with himself. I thought you were honest …
Wendy had called him, right after he’d told Liddy he had to work. And he really had planned to work. He owned a home now. The proposals were piling up, and if he didn’t do something soon to convert them from the proposal stage to the active stage, he woul
d eventually have trouble with his mortgage.
True, that was a long while away. Still, when he’d sensed Liddy’s indecision over seeing him last night, it seemed easier to hole up in his office and get some paperwork done.
Or maybe he had been practicing avoidance.
Then Wendy called. Said she had something she wanted to discuss with him. They had ended their relationship amicably—not that they’d spent enough time together to consider anything between them all that serious. At least in his mind. He’d run into her in church on occasion, too. Sometimes with Liddy by his side. She had always been pleasant, friendly, never showing any sign of animosity toward him.
So when she’d called asking to meet for a brainstorming session about a business venture, he’d said, “Sure.”
They met on the boardwalk just outside of the Java Cafe. Two hot coffees and five minutes later, they began walking. She loved art and knew how much Anne had loved it, too. He was always too busy coloring inside the lines to be considered artistic, but he’d grown to appreciate fine works. Anne had taught him that. Besides, he’d built a good business for himself. Wendy knew that about him, so it hadn’t surprised him that she’d asked to meet to talk.
“I have an idea to open a wine bar that features both local and out of the area artists,” she’d told him. “My plan is to rent wall space to the artists for a nominal fee.”
A light breeze rustled his shirt collar as he considered her venture. “Or you could charge them commission.”
“Hmm, yes, that’s an idea. That way starving artists could be featured next to those who have marketing money available to them.”
“True.” He sipped his coffee. “How do you plan to vet the works you display?”
“Well, I haven’t formulated all that yet. I do think it would be a good idea to organize some kind of panel with local experts—and maybe even those with more of an appreciation of artistic forms, rather than only those who create it themselves.”
Walking on Sea Glass Page 18