by John Saul
Lenore Van Arsdale shot Eleanor a disapproving look. “It was Berkeley that did that,” she pronounced. “If she’d gone to college at a decent school, she’d have been fine. She was my best friend for years, and I can tell you that there was nothing wrong with her until she went to California. But when she came back, she was never the same.”
“Well,” Kay Fielding said brightly, “at least we’re getting Teri back while there’s still time for her to get off to a good start in life.”
The conversation went on, but Phyllis was no longer listening. Instead, her mind was working furiously. Until a few moments ago, though she’d not said a word of it to anyone, she’d wondered what on earth she was going to do with Teri MacIver in the house. It was bad enough having to cope with one teenage girl, especially one as difficult as Melissa. But two? The prospect had been almost more than she could cope with. And yet, she saw now, there was another side to the coin. These women—these women who never let her forget for a minute that she was not really one of them—were obviously ready to accept Teri MacIver back into the fold, despite the fact that they hadn’t seen her for more than thirteen years. Teri, she was certain, would be invited to all the little parties from which Melissa had been excluded. And there would be parties at Maplecrest now, too, for it would be up to her to reciprocate the hospitality that certainly would be showered on Teri. Yes, perhaps Teri would finally provide the key to acceptance in Secret Cove that Phyllis knew had always been withheld from her.
And it wasn’t fair.
Just as it wasn’t fair that she’d always had to live with the knowledge that if Polly herself had come back, these women would have accepted her back into their circle just as if she’d never left at all.
Just as if Polly Porter had been as good a wife to Charles as she herself was.
But at least in her heart she knew it wasn’t true. Polly hadn’t been nearly the eccentric paragon all these women remembered. Indeed, sometimes Phyllis wanted to tell them what had really gone on at Maplecrest before Polly had finally left. Even now the memories still burned brightly.
One night, in particular.
There was a party scheduled at Maplecrest, and though it hadn’t been Phyllis’s job, she’d done all the planning for it, working out the details of the menu with Cora, ordering the flowers from the shop in the village, making certain every aspect of the party would be perfect.
And all that day Polly, clad in frayed jeans and a sweatshirt, had sat curled up on the sofa in the library, reading poetry.
Poetry, for God’s sake!
An hour before the party was to begin, when Charles had suggested she might want to start dressing, she’d only glanced indifferently up from her book. “Maybe I’ll skip it,” she’d said. “It’s just the same old dull crowd, going on and on about nothing.”
Phyllis, who had happened to be in the library at the time, had seen the hurt in Charles’s eyes. He’d even glanced at her, but it hadn’t been a glance of embarrassment because she was overhearing his wife’s words.
It had been a plea for understanding.
And she had understood.
Understood that Charles needed a wife who would willingly throw herself into the only life he’d ever lived.
He’d needed a hostess who could entertain his business associates without her eyes glazing over from boredom.
He’d needed a partner who understood that the Holloway fortune was something to be appreciated and nurtured, not sneered at.
He’d needed her, not Polly.
But none of them—not one of the women who had been Polly’s childhood friends, had ever understood that. Polly would forever be Polly, whom they’d known all their lives, and she would forever be Phyllis, the outsider.
But now, with Teri MacIver coming back, all that might possibly—finally—change.
As the lunch wore on and the women began discussing the final plans for the costume party that traditionally marked the middle of the Secret Cove season, Phyllis managed to pay attention, if not actually participate in the discussion. But most of her mind was occupied with planning for Teri’s arrival. Perhaps she was wrong, after all, about the small room next to Melissa’s. Maybe Teri should have something larger. It wouldn’t do, not to welcome this second, unexpected child properly into their lives. She made a mental note to talk to Cora again when she got home. No, better to call her now—perhaps she’d stay after lunch and enjoy a martini or two out by the pool. Excusing herself, she left the table and went in search of a phone.
As soon as she was gone, Lenore Van Arsdale leaned forward again, her voice low. “My God,” she said. “Can you imagine what Polly must be thinking now? Not only did Phyllis manage to get hold of her husband, but now she’s got her daughter, too!”
“What I don’t understand,” Kay Fielding put in, “is why Charles stays with that woman at all. The way she treats him—”
“It’s Melissa,” Eleanor Stevens replied. “Charles has always been a decent man, and I simply can’t imagine him abandoning Melissa to Phyllis.”
“But he wouldn’t have to,” Kay protested. “There isn’t a court in the world that wouldn’t give him custody.”
“Of course not,” Eleanor agreed. “But that’s not really the point. The point is that Phyllis would put up a terrible fight, and Melissa would be right in the middle of it. And knowing Phyllis, she’d drag it on for years, even if she knew she’d lose. Charles won’t put Melissa through that, and I don’t blame him.”
“But to stay with Phyllis.” Kay sighed. “It just seems so unfair. And it’s not as if it’s helping Melissa. Living with Phyllis would drive anyone crazy, and poor Melissa just keeps getting stranger and stranger. It’ll be a wonder if—” She fell silent as she felt Kay Fielding kick her under the table, and turned her head just in time to see Phyllis herself standing frozen behind her chair.
Five minutes later, behind the wheel of her Mercedes, Phyllis vented her cold anger as she slammed the accelerator to the floorboard and heard the rear wheels screech as they lost their traction. She shot out of the parking lot and started down the coast road, rolling the window down to let the wind blow in her face.
The words she’d heard Kay Fielding utter as she came back to the table still burned in her mind: “… poor Melissa just keeps getting stranger and stranger.” No wonder she’d had so much trouble breaking into the world of Secret Cove. Everyone in town thought there was something wrong with her daughter! And why shouldn’t they? Ever since the day she was born, Melissa had been different from the rest of the kids in Secret Cove. She hadn’t been like Teri at all.
Teri, in the few months during which Phyllis had been her nurse, had been a perfect baby. Blond and blue-eyed, she’d never fussed at all, instead smiling happily up at anyone who happened to be there. She’d seemed to watch whatever was going on around her, smiling and laughing, reaching out for everything and everybody.
Not like Melissa, who seemed to spend most of her time crying, except when her father picked her up. And while Teri, even as a baby, had been so outgoing, Melissa had been painfully shy, refusing to play with the other babies on the beach, always preferring to be by herself. Always shutting herself away. Behaving strangely. Making her mother a laughingstock.
Since the day she was born, Phyllis thought, Melissa had kept her from being part of the Secret Cove Crowd.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t how she’d planned it at all. She’d taken Polly’s place as Charles’s wife and as the mother of his child. It was only right that she should also have had Polly’s place in the Crowd. But it had never happened.
Except that now Teri was coming, and Phyllis would have one more chance, if Melissa didn’t ruin it for her. Silently, she prayed that Teri hadn’t changed, that she was still as perfect as she remembered her.
Charles Holloway switched off the television set in his room at the Red Lion Inn and rolled over, checking the alarm clock on the nightstand. It was eleven-thirty, and the alarm was set for six. He p
unched at the too-hard pillow that modern hotels seem to specialize in, then picked up the murder mystery he’d been putting himself to sleep with for the last month. So far he’d only managed to get through a hundred pages, which meant he’d been sleeping pretty well. But tonight he suspected he’d read at least twenty-five more. Well, just a few more days and he’d be back home.
He read a couple of paragraphs, then found himself distracted by a muffled sound from the next room. He listened for a moment, put the book aside and went to the door that separated his room from Teri’s. A moment later he heard the sound again. This time he recognized it.
Teri was crying.
Pulling his bathrobe on and tying the belt around his waist, he opened the door and slipped into the other room. The lights were out, but in the glow of his own table lamp he could see Teri, curled up tightly in her bed, her arms clutching at the pillow. He moved to the bedside, eased himself down onto the bed itself and laid his hand on his eldest daughter’s shoulder. “Teri? Honey? Are you all right?”
Teri rolled over onto her back and stared up at him through moist eyes. “I—I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just feeling sort of lonely. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“You didn’t,” Charles assured her. “You should have come in.”
“I didn’t want to bother you,” Teri breathed. “I mean, you already had to come all the way out here, and—” Her voice broke and she choked back a sob.
Charles gathered her into his arms, rocking her gently. “It’s not a bother at all, and I don’t ever want you to think that. I’m your father, and I love you.” He felt Teri stiffen slightly in his arms, and then she pulled away enough to look searchingly up into his face.
“You do?” she said, her voice tinged with uncertainty.
“Of course I do,” Charles said.
“Th-That’s not what Mom said.”
Charles frowned in the half darkness of the room. “What do you mean, that’s not what your mother said.”
Teri choked back another sob. “Sh-She said you only loved Melissa now. She said that’s why you never sent me letters, or presents for Christmas or my birthday.”
Charles froze. Was it possible? Could Polly really have said something like that? But it wasn’t true. “Honey, what are you talking about?” he asked. “I’ve always sent you letters, and I never forgot your birthday or Christmas at all. Every year I’ve sent you a package. Didn’t you get them?”
Teri shook her head. “I—I wasn’t even sure you’d come today.”
“Oh, Lord,” Charles groaned, pulling her close once again. “No wonder you were crying. You must have been terrified.”
“Y-You don’t have to take me home if you don’t want to,” Teri said. “I can stay here—I have friends, and I can get a job.…”
Charles gently pressed a hand over her mouth to stop the flow of words. “I don’t even want to hear anything like that,” he said, feeling a sudden flash of anger toward his ex-wife. It was one thing to cut herself off from her past, but to try to alienate Teri from him was unforgivable. No wonder he’d never gotten a letter from Teri—she thought he didn’t want to hear from her. “Now listen to me,” he said, doing his best to keep the anger out of his voice. “I don’t know why your mother would tell you something like that, but it isn’t true. I never stopped loving you, and I never stopped thinking about you. And there was certainly never a question about my coming for you. You’re my daughter, and you always have been. I’ve missed you every day you’ve been gone, and I’ve hated never seeing you. As for the letters and the presents, I can’t imagine why your mother kept them from you. Why, just last Christmas I sent you a pearl necklace. It was beautiful—pink pearls, perfectly matched. And there were others, too. Toys when you were little—clothes—all kinds of things. So you mustn’t think you’re alone. You still have a father, and now you have a stepmother, and a sister, too.”
Teri sat up now, propping herself up against the headboard. Nervously, she peered at Charles. “A sister,” she whispered. “What’s she like?”
Charles smiled in the darkness. “You’ll love her. Yesterday was her thirteenth birthday, and she’s the nicest girl you’ll ever meet. In fact, she wanted me to tell you how sorry she is about what happened, but that the one thing she’s always wanted is a sister. Now she has one.”
Teri shifted uneasily in the bed. “But—But what if she doesn’t like me?”
Charles reached out and took her hand, squeezing it gently. “Of course she’ll like you,” he said. “She’ll love you just as much as I do.”
They talked for a few more minutes, and slowly Teri calmed down, her sobs dying away. At last Charles tucked her in and kissed her good night. “And remember,” he said, “if you get lonely again, you come in and wake me up.”
Teri nodded. When Charles left the room, closing the door behind him, she lay still in the darkness for a few minutes, thinking.
Thinking about her mother.
Her mother, and her stepfather.
And her real father.
In a way, tonight was no different from all the other nights when she’d lain awake in her bed, trying to figure out why her mother had left her real father. It seemed to her that everything had been perfect back when they had all lived together in the huge house by the sea. Of course, she couldn’t remember it now—she had been so young when the divorce had come. But even though she’d been away from Secret Cove for most of her life, deep inside she still thought of it as her real home, the place where she truly belonged.
And now she was going home again.
If only her mother could be going with her. Then everything would be the way it had been when she was a baby. Everything would be perfect.…
She determinedly put the thought out of her mind, refusing to dwell on the impossible.
She rolled over and tried to go to sleep, but sleep would not come. Finally, she reached out and turned on the lamp on the nightstand. Leaving the bed, she padded over to the closet and reached into the pocket of her bathrobe. When she went back to bed, she was carrying the only thing she had taken with her when she’d fled the blazing house.
She held it in her hand, studying it carefully.
It was a string of perfectly matched pink pearls.
She stared at them for a long time, fingering their smooth surfaces, rubbing them gently against her face. When she finally went to sleep an hour later, the pearl necklace was still in her hand.
CHAPTER 5
“Teri? We’ll be landing in twenty minutes.”
Teri blinked, then opened her eyes and stretched awkwardly in the first-class seat of the DC-9. Her mouth felt dry, and though she knew she’d fallen asleep for a while after they’d changed planes in Chicago, she felt as if she’d been awake all night. Her eyes stung and every joint in her body seemed to be aching. Her father smiled at her as if he knew exactly how she felt. “I hate night flights,” Charles Holloway said ruefully. “Especially going east in summer. You get on when it’s still light, and then it’s morning when you arrive, but you don’t feel as if there was any night. Why don’t you go up and wash your face? You’ll feel better.”
Still not trusting her voice, Teri nodded and stepped across her father to the aisle, then went forward to the tiny lavatory, carrying the purse her father had bought her two days ago. She splashed cold water on her face and tried to comb her hair. She winced as she looked at her image in the mirror—her eyes looked puffy, and it seemed as if she’d somehow lost her tan overnight. The person who gazed back at her had a sallow look, as if she’d been sick for a long time. She fumbled with the clasp on the leather bag and groped inside for her lipstick. Washing her face once more, she applied some color to her lips, then looked at her image once again.
A little of the puffiness had disappeared, and she didn’t look quite as bad as she had a few minutes ago. Deciding she’d done the best she could, she returned to her seat and gratefully took a sip of the orange juice her father had ordered whi
le she was gone. Then she raised the blind on the plane’s window and looked out.
They were descending rapidly. As the plane banked for its final approach, Teri had a startling view of the Maine coastline, a series of rugged cliffs broken here and there with coves cut into the mainland, and an occasional strip of beach. She searched her memory, trying to recall any feeling at all of having been here before.
But there was nothing—it was all totally unfamiliar to her. “I keep thinking I should remember it,” she said, turning back to her father.
Charles offered her a wry smile. “It would be pretty surprising if you did,” he observed. “When you left, you weren’t even three years old, and you went in a car.”
Teri shook her head. “But there are things I remember. Not much, but a couple. I remember a big lawn, and a beach.”
Charles chuckled. “Well, there’s plenty of big lawns in Secret Cove, and we certainly have a beach,” Then, as he saw Teri nervously take a small mirror out of her purse to study her face one more time, he was certain he knew what was on her mind. “Stop worrying—no one looks her best after flying all night.”
“B-But what if Phyllis and Melissa don’t like me?”
Charles took her hand in his and squeezed it affectionately. “How many times do I have to tell you that you aren’t going to have a problem? I talked to Phyllis yesterday, and they’ve been getting a room ready for you. In fact, they’ve gotten a couple of rooms ready, so you can choose. And apparently Melissa hasn’t talked about a single thing except her sister for the last two days.”
Teri heard the words but wasn’t certain whether to believe them or not. For the last two days she’d been trying to convince herself that it was going to be all right, that her father really did want her, that he wasn’t going to send her away somewhere.