Beach Roses

by Jean Stone

  “My name is Rita. I’m not a teacher and I’m not a nurse and I don’t have breast cancer. At least, not that I know of.” She waited for them to laugh. They didn’t.

  She groped through her bag, then handed each of them a card with her phone number printed on it. “If you ever need me,” she said, “well, feel free to call.

  “I’m here because Doc Hastings asked me,” Rita continued. “We have a chance to get funding for a full-blown Women’s Wellness Center. Doc thought a support group would help convince our benefactor of the commitment and the need.” She looked around the room and quickly added, “And help you, too, of course.”

  She did not say that her mother, Hazel, had said “poppycock” when Rita told her about it. “The world actually existed before support groups, Rita Mae,” Hazel had said. “Now nobody pees without one.” Hazel might have been right, but Rita had been startled because she couldn’t recall her mother ever questioning something that Doc said.

  The women looked at her.

  “No offense,” someone said, “but what makes you so qualified to lead a support group?”

  Well, there it was—Rita’s own self-doubt now smack out in the open. “Not many women here off-season,” she replied. “I guess Doc had a lack of choice. And he knew I’d care …”

  Other books by Jean Stone

  Trust Fund Babies

  Off Season

  The Summer House

  Birthday Girls

  Places by the Sea

  Tides of the Heart

  Sins of Innocence

  First Love

  Ivy Secrets

  BEACH ROSES

  A Bantam Book / April 2003

  Published by

  Bantam Dell

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2003 by Jean Stone

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  For information address: Bantam Books, New York, New York.

  Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-48202-0

  v3.1_r1

  To Linda, Nancy, and Cindy—

  leaders by example,

  inspiration to us all, with courage

  they never thought they’d need or

  dreamed that they possessed.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  Dexa-scans and mammo-scans and ultra-scans and everything. It was their chance to build a full-blown Women’s Wellness Center on Martha’s Vineyard, and Doc Hastings had parked all hope in Rita’s reluctant hands.

  Rita Blair Rollins. As if she were anybody special.

  Doc had not told Rita who the benefactor was, the masked man or woman who would hand over a cool, few million if the islanders showed commitment to the cause.

  Nonetheless, Rita stood outside the small hospital conference room, knowing that Doc hoped what she lacked for in qualification she might make up for in commitment because she was an islander and a woman, wasn’t she? A forty-something woman whose red hair still was red, thanks not to God but science, and who, a few years back, had traded in her high-heeled sandals for a solid pair of sneakers, because Rita’s life had changed and now she needed traction to get through her busy days.

  She did not think, however, that she needed this.

  Standing in the doorway, Rita peeked inside. It only took a moment before thoughts of Doc had vanished and she whispered, “Holy shit.” Right there in the room, sitting on a plastic chair, was someone who looked an awful lot like Ms. Katie Gillette.

  Katie Gillette?

  The Katie Gillette?

  Rita squinted to be sure she wasn’t seeing things. But even without the sequins and the strobe lights, the glowing ankle bracelets and the rose tattoo that often graced the singer’s left cheekbone, Rita knew that the raven-haired, big-breasted beauty was the Britney/JLo/Mariah Carey competition of the hour. She knew because of Mindy, Rita’s foster daughter, whose bedroom walls were cluttered with glittering posters of rock stars.

  Rita wondered how old the singer was and if she was in the wrong room.

  Averting her eyes, Rita remembered that the women in the room would expect to remain anonymous. That would not be difficult: The Vineyard had long been known for keeping secrets—its own and everyone else’s. But were traditions still respected by Generation Katie?

  “If anyone can handle them, it’s you,” Doc had added while cajoling Rita into saying yes. “You’re a formidable role model.”

  She knew that he’d been practicing his fine art of persuasion, but old Doc was a good guy who had always been there, who had seen Rita and many Vineyarders through sickness and through wellness, through joyous births and ugly deaths. When Doc Hastings talked, common sense told you to listen. And when he asked a favor, few did not oblige. This time, he’d asked Rita, perhaps because, living on an island, he’d had little choice. He’d asked, so she’d agreed. But Doc had failed to mention Katie Gillette.

  Was she the benefactor?

  If Rita screwed up her assignment, would she blow the deal?

  She drew in an exasperated breath and moved her eyes to a second woman in the room, a plain but pretty blonde in a neatly ironed linen jumper that didn’t quite conceal a well-defined pear shape. The woman also wore an uncertain, pink-lipstick smile and clutched a large cloth pocketbook appliquéd with tiny songbirds who were not singing now. Unlike Katie Gillette, she was an islander, a teacher of the seventh or eighth grade, though Rita didn’t know her name.

  What about her students? Did they know that she was there?

  Rita blinked and turned toward the final woman, a svelte, silver-haired lady poised in fresh-pressed, pewter linen pants and a matching sleeveless top. Her lips and nails were polished a perfect powder pink and her silver brooch and earrings looked exquisitely handcrafted, not by someone on the Vineyard, but from somewhere more exotic such as Lisbon or Peru. She might have been in the VIP lounge at JFK, waiting to board the Concorde now that it was flying once again. A summer person, no doubt, from Chilmark or West Chop. Perhaps she, not Katie Gillette, was the mystery benefactor.

  Three women—only three—who sat with empty chairs between them, as if not wanting to crowd one another’s pain. Or have their own be crowded.

  Then Rita realized she did not know where to look. It was
so tempting to stare at the half-dozen breasts that crowned the plastic-molded chairs, to stare and wonder which might be foam rubber, saline, or the old-fashioned flesh kind.

  She could stare or she could leave. But Rita had promised Doc. A full-blown Women’s Wellness Center. This was their opportunity, and it was up to her. All Rita had to do was get up the nerve to go inside, and then the group of three would become four—three women with breast cancer and one formidable role model.

  ONE

  JANUARY—THREE MONTHS EARLIER

  “Katie-Kate, we did it! We locked up Central Park!” Cliff Gillette tossed down the phone and whooped toward the tall, tinted window that overlooked the wide expanse of lawn where he’d been trying to book his daughter for-fucking-ever—his favorite made-up word, not hers. “July Fourth! Finally, we did it!”

  Katie gulped. No. Not July Fourth. Not this July Fourth. Her heart began to race. “Oh, Daddy!” she cried as her thoughts scrambled for an excuse. Her father, of course, did not know the concert was impossible. He did not know because Katie had not, would not, could not have told him why.

  “Oh, Daddy,” she repeated, because she didn’t know how to just say “no.”

  He turned to her and held out his arms. “Surprise,” he said.

  Surprise. An understatement.

  She gulped again and smiled her best fake smile. Then she moved across the penthouse floor and wrapped herself around the gray-haired, gray-eyed man. Beneath her hands she felt the bony angles of the once-muscled, sturdy body that now was thin and gaunt. Too many nights spent on the road, too much stress of being both Katie’s father and her manager, the man solely responsible for their fortune and her fame.

  She’d need a good excuse, one that would sound plausible. She pulled back from her father and moved her eyes from him. “But what about Katie, Live!?” she asked. Katie, Live! was her next CD, scheduled for a fall release. The sound tracks would be cut from her six-week, fifteen-city tour, the tour that would begin next week, despite the tiny, nubby knots now forming in her stomach. She hated lying to her father who had sacrificed so much. “Let’s put off Central Park until Labor Day. It will make CD sales stronger. Besides,” she added as a hurried afterthought, “it’s almost February. July’s too soon to plan such an important concert.”

  He paused as if considering her suggestion. She turned and looked back at him. She hardly dared to breathe.

  “Central Park, Daddy,” she said, her words smothered with her guilt. “This is our dream!” She did not say that it was more his dream than hers. She pretended to remove a piece of lint from the shoulder of his black T-shirt. Black had been Cliff’s uniform for as long as Katie could remember. Always black, from hat to boot, in summer and winter, day and night. At the Grammys’ last year, his black suede sports coat made him look Hollywood as he crossed the stage with Katie to help accept her five awards.

  Five Grammys.

  Because of him.

  Katie sighed. “You’ve waited a long time for this, Daddy.”

  There was no need to mention the other concert in the park, when Katie’s mother, the great Joleen, the undisputed rock-’n’-roll queen of the seventies and eighties, the first star Cliff had created, packaged, and sold to the public, had bailed out on her fans and simply not showed up.

  He moved to the window and looked out at the Great Lawn where Joleen’s concert should have been: the great, rolling stretch of land now reserved only for the philharmonic and the opera. Recent restoration to the grounds had cost a New York fortune, and park officials no longer allowed destructive rock-star fans. Katie would perform, instead, in the East Meadow at Ninety-seventh and Fifth. It was a few blocks farther north, but still in Central Park.

  For several moments, Cliff said nothing. Katie stood silent, hating her deceit, yet unable to confess. She could not, would not, hurt him. It was a pledge she’d made on that late spring day when her mother had gone away, when Katie witnessed Cliff Gillette crumble from a tower of confidence to a heap of nothing that cried for weeks, then days, then not at all, which somehow had seemed worse.

  She could not, would not hurt him. Yet now …

  “Labor Day?” he asked.

  “It’s perfect for the park,” she whispered. “So many people are back in the city; kids are getting ready for school …”

  “It can get cold,” he said.

  “Or warm. Summer’s last hurrah.” She flinched. It was what they used to say about September, the weeks they’d loved to spend out on Martha’s Vineyard, the welcome gap between Joleen’s summer concerts and the holiday shows, the time they’d be together, just the three of them.

  If Cliff made the connection, he didn’t say. Instead, he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and turned back to Katie. “It’s taken years to get the park again. If I start asking favors … well, it’s not a good idea. We can mix the CD off the first few roadshows. Then I’ll push the studio for a July Fourth release. You’re a star, Katie-Kate. But even stars have to know when to push and when to compromise for the sake of the big picture.”

  He walked away from the window and toward the closet in the foyer, where he took out his heavy black wool jacket. Then he left the apartment for a place unknown to her. He often did that without explanation, and Katie did not ask because she was his daughter not his keeper.

  She touched her stomach and gently rubbed the knots, dreading what he’d say when he learned about the baby that would ruin all his plans.

  Even in baggy sweats, a parka, and a blonde ponytail wig that stuck out from the back of a New York Mets baseball cap, Katie felt exposed to the public and the media when she left the apartment. But she needed to see Miguel, and outdoors seemed oddly more private.

  Brady, naturally, followed closely behind, because Brady was well-paid to keep his six-foot-six-inch, bodyguard-body behind her at all times. His sharp eyesight and quick instincts compensated for the fact that he’d lost most of his hearing from too many venues where the decibels exceeded those allowed under the law. Loyal, quiet, and kind, he tailed her like a bad but dependable detective whom time had proved would not run back to her father and report the where-she-went’s and what-was-said’s when she was with Miguel.

  “I have to tell my father,” Katie said now to Miguel. Her words danced on little clouds of crisp, cold, winter breath. “I must tell him today.” They strolled along museum mile, past the Met and into the park, a seemingly ordinary couple on an ordinary day.

  “You can’t,” Miguel replied. They rounded the curve and headed toward the reservoir. “Not yet.”

  They had talked about it countless times: about their baby that was due at the end of June, about how Katie would be nearly six months pregnant once the tour was over, and, by that time, the world would see the situation for itself. The world, including Cliff.

  Then it would be too late to make “other arrangements.”

  “He booked Central Park for July Fourth,” she said. “How can I do Central Park if the baby’s just been born?”

  Miguel stopped. Brady almost slammed into his back. “O Dios mío,” Miguel said, then his voice dropped. “I didn’t think he’d get the Fourth.”

  Katie blinked. “You knew that he was trying?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And you didn’t stop him?”

  “What could I have said? Should I have told the truth?”

  Brady stepped away, as if wanting no involvement in a quarrel.

  “Maybe the baby will come early,” Miguel said, then added, “can’t they make that happen?”

  “Miguel, this is a baby. Our baby.”

  “And this,” he said, with a flourish of his hand, “is Central Park. A million singers would give anything for this.”

  Heat rose in her cheeks. “I’m not a million singers!” she shrieked, then turned from him and ran up the incline toward the fence.

  “Kate!” he shouted after her.

  She reached the fence and clung to the wrought iron. Brad
y silently appeared on her right side. A bowl of tears threatened to spill out of her eyes. She stared across the water at the pristine lake that always seemed so out of place, as if it should be on the Vineyard and not here, not uptown.

  From her left side, Miguel reached out. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  This time Brady did not move, and Katie did not care. For two years Miguel had been her video producer and her road manager. All that time, she’d slept with him. She thought he would have understood her needs by now.

  “Forget about the concert. Let’s get married, Katie.” It was not the first time he’d suggested it.

  She moved away from Brady. Miguel was at her heels.

  How could she tell him she was not convinced he loved her the way that she loved him? Were her doubts because his dark eyes sometimes flicked away when she was talking to him, as if something or someone more interesting had captured his attention? As if she were not the center of his life?

  Her father hadn’t said Miguel was only using her for her money and her connections, that secretly Miguel wanted to be a singer, too. He’d said that about the others, the few men who had come and gone, in and out of Katie’s life. He’d said that about them, but not about Miguel.

  Perhaps Miguel was fooling both of them.

  Or perhaps Katie didn’t want another man putting more restrictions on her.

  The dry, winter air chilled her nose, her ears, her eyes. She held her breath, tried to be strong. “I’ll tell my father now,” she said. “We’ll do the six-week tour. He’ll change the date for Central Park.”

  Miguel did not reply.

  “No matter what,” she added, “this baby will be born. My father will not force me to have an abortion. Not this time, he won’t.”

  Miguel nodded slowly, then he jogged away. And Katie was left alone to wonder why life had to be so complicated, and why it was always up to her to make up for the wrong done to her father by Joleen.

  Sequins: pink for the first set, to rev the audience; purple for the second set, to build their passion; black for the last set, to lure them into thinking of nothing but pure sex, because that was what live performance was totally about.