Off Season

by Jean Stone

  Rita nodded, and Ben got the feeling she knew more than she was saying. “Does she know that Fern Ashenbach is trying to make trouble?”

  Leave it to Rita to come right out and say what was on her mind. “She can try if she wants,” he replied, holding his throbbing hand. “I can’t stop her.” He didn’t ask Rita what she knew or how she found out. Any second now, she’d blurt it all out.

  Rita went to the counter and plunked herself down, uninvited, on a stool. “Is this so-called scandal about the affair you had with her?”

  Scandal? He laughed because it was safer than crying. He laughed because Rita’s no-nonsense approach to life was so refreshing after the spoken and unspoken stress between him and Jill these past weeks.

  “Want some tea, Rita? I’d offer you a drink, but I suppose—”

  “Tea’s fine,” she said. She rubbed her belly, and the image made him smile. It was nice that she was going to have a baby. That way she wouldn’t have to go through the rest of her life without a child, without Kyle.

  “Nice party the other night,” he said, making tea as if it were just another day, as if everything were fine.

  “Thanks.”

  He dug out tea bags. “Have you heard from Charlie?” He wasn’t sure if he should mention him, what with the baby and everything.

  “He called to say Hugh Talbot was looking for you.”

  Ben set the kettle on the stove and ignited the gas jet beneath. Christ, had Hugh checked with everyone? His knuckles throbbed, and now his head did, too. “Speaking of scandal,” he said, “I didn’t know you knew Fern.” He kept his back to Rita.

  “I didn’t. But Jill told me you’d screwed around with her. Then Fern called and asked me to list the house out in Menemsha. She said she saw my car—and my sign—the day I drove out there after Hugh Talbot came looking for you at the tavern. Anyway, I don’t exactly believe in coincidence. I think Fern found out I’m Jill’s friend, and yours. I think that’s why she wants me to list the house.”

  Ah. So that was what Rita knew and that was how she found out. “Do you think Fern is trying to get to me?”

  “You tell me. But it seems like a lot of folderol for something that happened years ago.”

  The kettle whistled. With mechanical precision, Ben poured water into two mugs where he’d already dropped the tea bags.

  “What else did she tell you?” he asked.

  “Not much. That her father-in-law knew about the two of you.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s all. What else is there?”

  He bobbed the tea bag up and down inside the mug. He slunk down on the stool across the breakfast bar from Rita. Then he propped his elbows on the counter and dropped his face into them. Suddenly he was so tired.

  “Jill’s not here because she left me,” he said through his closed hands. “She left me, and she’s gone to England.”

  Rita squeezed tea from the bag and set down the spoon. Ben thought he could hear her breathing, or maybe that was him.

  “I knew she was upset about you and Fern,” Rita said in a quiet voice, respectful of his pain, “but I tried to tell her Fern was no threat to her. That it wasn’t as if she caught the two of you in bed.”

  Ben pushed out a puff of air and dropped his hands into his lap. He looked at Rita through aching, tired eyes. “That’s not the only problem,” Ben said. “Fern’s trying to blackmail me.”

  Rita had class enough and smarts enough not to press him for more. But as the world closed in around Ben, he had to share the load.

  “Rita,” he said slowly, afraid to look into her eyes, “how good are you at keeping secrets?”

  When Ben was finished telling her, Rita tried to close her mouth, although she wanted very much to gulp.

  “Does Charlie know?”

  He shook his head. “No one but Jill and my son-in-law. Not even Carol Ann. I tried to tell Charlie one night, but he was busy, and now he’s gone.”

  She watched him take a sip of tea and wondered if he felt relieved now, if his burden had been lifted, now that he’d told someone besides his wife, who had too much at stake to be objective. She wished she hadn’t blown off Jill’s troubles as petty jealousy.

  She studied Ben’s drooping shoulders, his pale, gaunt face. This, she supposed, explained it all: the weight loss, the excuses not to socialize. Rita was no shrink, but she would have bet that Ben had not done it. He looked like a man who was caught in a trap not of his making. “Have you talked to Mindy?”

  He shook his head. “I tried, at the Thanksgiving school play. She screamed. It made the paper.”

  Rita had a vague recollection about a story Hazel had read to her. “Why not try again? There’s no restraining order against you, is there? Aren’t they only for people you live with?”

  He shook his head. “Legal or not, my attorney has advised me not to go near her.”

  “If it were me, I’d want to face my accuser.”

  “She’s just a child, Rita. I don’t want to scare her. For some reason, she’s been scared enough.”

  That answered it for Rita. Whether it was the words he spoke or the way his voice cracked when he spoke them, Rita knew then that Ben positively could not have done this. He was too kind and too good. “Who’s your lawyer?”

  “A fellow named Bartlett. From Atlanta.”

  “Atlanta? For chrissake, Ben, where’d you get him?”

  “Addie Becker knows him. She’s Jill’s old agent.”

  Rita thought a moment. “So that explains why she was willing to do Good Night, USA and team up with those jerks again.”

  Ben took a sip of tea. “Yep. That explains it.”

  Rita looked into her mug as if the tea leaves held the answer. “I’m not going to ask if you did it, Ben, because I know better.”

  “I did have sex with Fern Ashenbach years ago. But I did not touch Mindy. I would never touch a child.”

  “I know,” Rita said. “But it looks like you’re getting in deeper shit each day. What are we going to do about it?”

  “We?”

  “Well, the way I see it, your wife is on the lam in England, and your best friend is sucking up the sunshine in Florida. Your daughter doesn’t know, so that leaves me. Rita Blair. At your service.”

  “I’d kiss you, Rita darling, but I can’t afford the gossip.”

  Chapter 26

  Richard wanted to take them to lunch at a perfect little tavern he knew of right there in Oxford. Jeff and Mick would be in class, it would just be the three of them.

  Thankfully, Amy begged off—jet lag had attacked, and she and her mother needed sleep. So at noon Oxford time, six A.M. on the Vineyard, they’d let themselves into Jeff’s apartment with the key the boys had hidden under the front stoop. They stepped past neatly stacked disarray, found a note with instructions to make themselves at home, and fell into sofabeds that had been clumsily made up.

  They’d slept until midnight, then had tea and scones with Jeff, and finally had a chance to meet his roommate, Mick from the Lake District, who didn’t seem to mind Jeff’s penchant for the computer or that he put empty cereal boxes back in the cabinet. “Cupboard,” Mick corrected, and Amy laughed.

  They caught up on the events of the months since they’d been together—what they hadn’t covered by e-mail—then returned to bed and slept until dawn. Richard phoned shortly thereafter: he had stayed in town, and was determined to take them all to lunch today, jet lag or not.

  Jill decided she was awake enough to handle it. He arrived at one o’clock with a copious bouquet of flowers for “his favorite girl,” Amy. Jill said she’d put them in water and retreated to the kitchen. She emptied a milk bottle that smelled as if it had been there since last month, and parked the flowers in it. Standing in Jeff’s kitchen, she listened to the voices in the other room: her children’s mixed with Mick’s and Richard’s, her ex-husband’s voice still rich with that disarming British accent that had spelled trouble when she’d first met him
so long ago.

  She’d been a news reporter on the streets of Boston then. He’d been in the States in the brokerage business. As a sideline, he’d dealt in antiquities. He’d been robbed in his hotel, but he’d single-handedly caught the thief who’d been absconding with a million pounds worth of rare coins. Jill had covered the story, and that had somehow led to dinner. The remaining history seemed now as ancient as those coins. A few years later, Jill realized that the trait she’d mistaken for bravery was really an overinflated ego that could not tolerate defeat.

  How many more misjudgments about men would she make before her life was over?

  None, if you don’t let them get too close, she thought. Such a warning could have come from Rita.

  But this was not the time or place to start thinking about the Vineyard. There were too few opportunities these days, weeks, and years to have her children both together as a family, plus Richard, plus Mick.

  A family, of which Ben might or might not still be part.

  Determined to make this visit an improvement over life back home, Jill poured water into the bottle and returned, vase in hand, to the living room. She looked at Richard and smiled. “I’m starving. How far is it to the restaurant?”

  • • •

  They walked down a narrow alley that Jill doubted anyone could have found unless they knew it was there.

  “I thought this place might remind you of the tavern you always talked about,” Richard said, “the place your family owned.”

  Amy jumped in and said how cool the 1802 was, and that her goal was to own it again one day. Jill pondered Richard’s comment that she’d “always” talked about the tavern. Had she done that? In that moment she remembered that not once, in the eight years that they were married, had her parents ever met him, had he ever gone to the island. It had been as if she could not afford to let her two worlds—the present and the past—come together, merge as one. It had been as if she’d been afraid to interrupt her dream.

  The alley suddenly opened to a garden, where remnants of a flower-filled autumn were now trimmed to winter’s lifeless remains. Like her garden back home. Home—that place she refused to think about.

  To the right was a small stone building. A low, narrow doorway welcomed them inside.

  “Watch your head,” Richard warned as they made their way through a bar area, where low beams stretched across the ceiling. It was most difficult for Jeff and Mick, who each stood over six feet. “This place was built in the fourteen hundreds,” Richard continued above the din of afternoon pint-drinkers who decorated the bar. “People were shorter then.”

  They ducked to the back and climbed a few stone stairs. “Find a table,” their leader said, “I’ll go order.”

  There was one free table, actually half a table, as the other half was taken by some serious Oxford-looking types with philosophy on their minds. Jeff squeezed between the table and the wall, and Amy went next, sandwiched between the boys. That left Jill to share close quarters with her ex-husband, the father of her children.

  The small room reminded her of her own college days—carefree, indulgent, loud. It was packed with people, and the air was filled with laughter and jolly-goodness so indicative of Europeans at feeding time, even the English, who had not exactly been known for fine cuisine until recently.

  The fine cuisine Richard offered was fish and chips and shepherd’s pie. He set overflowing baskets on the uncovered wooden table, then returned to fetch beer. Jill wanted to comment on his hostmanship, but knew it would come out sarcastic and upset the kids. Instead of saying anything, she shoved a french fry into her mouth.

  The beers were large and slopped over the rims. Richard set them down and set himself beside the woman he’d once said he loved.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Isn’t this great?”

  “I didn’t know it was here, Dad,” Jeff said.

  Amy pushed her beer over to Mick. “Too strong,” she said. Mick smiled appreciatively, and Amy smiled back. Jill suspected that the spark that flashed between them was only her imagination.

  She cleared her throat. “It’s a wonderful place.”

  “I’ll bet I could get some ideas here,” Amy said. “For authenticity. Old English stuff.”

  Jill smiled and settled back to be the listener, not the speaker, to savor the camaraderie of the busy, laughing people at their table and all around them and know that none of them—not one—had heard anything about Ben. There was no possibility that after they left, the others would gab about them or call their phone number and hang up. Until now she had not known how much those possibilities had nagged her, and how much energy it had consumed to pretend it didn’t matter.

  “So how’s married life, Jill?” her ex-husband asked. She chewed a piece of fried fish, pretending to have a mouthful, when in reality she was trying to figure out how to answer.

  She faked a swallow. “Fine,” she said, and took a swig of beer.

  Richard laughed. “Well, I guess some of us do it better than others. I’m divorcing Becky.”

  She nodded with slight amusement. She’d thought his wife’s name was Brenda. Maybe that had been the previous one.

  “I’m never going to get married,” Amy announced. “That way I’ll never have to get divorced.”

  Jill and Richard looked at each other, then at Amy. Jill wanted to say something to Richard about the great example he was setting for their children, but decided she wasn’t one to talk.

  “My parents are still married,” Mick contributed. “Thirty years this summer.”

  It reminded Jill of the freelancer from Providence. She wondered if it were possible that the divorce rate wasn’t nearly what she’d thought, and if, in reality, she—and Richard—were among the few people left in existence who couldn’t seem to get it right.

  Suddenly the room grew warm; the noise around them grew louder. She took another sip of beer and wondered how soon lunch could end and she could get out into the fresh air.

  Rita told Ben she’d stay out of it.

  They’d talked until way past dark, when Rita said she’d better get home or Hazel would be frantic. She tried to get it through his thick, balding head that by not sharing this with others, he was selling his friends and family short. “Secrets suck,” she said.

  He’d nodded and pointed to her belly. “Don’t they, though.”

  She’d said, “Touché,” and felt like the pot calling the kettle a lousy shade of black.

  But women handle secrets much better than men, she reasoned. Except, apparently, for Jill, whose response had been to run away even though Ben needed her—her support and her love.

  The next morning when Rita tried to call Jill, all she got was the machine. Even in England, her friend could be elusive.

  So now, as Rita took off in the Toyota, again headed up-island for Menemsha, she knew that fixing this might be solely up to her.

  Sure, she’d said she’d stay out of it.

  But, well, she was Rita, after all.

  She decided to befriend Fern Ashenbach. Maybe that would allow her to get close to Mindy and carve a pathway to the truth.

  As the old car rumbled up-island, Rita felt good to have a mission, like a sleuth in a detective story, a private eye. But when she turned into the driveway at the Ashenbach three acres, she thought it sad that Jill wasn’t here to share this. It was the kind of escapade they would have relished when they were kids.

  Fern greeted Rita in a fancy bathrobe, waving her fingernails into the wind. “Manicure,” she explained. “Not quite dry.”

  Rita hoped it was dry enough for Fern to sign the contract for the listing. She had planned to check with probate first, to see who really owned this house, but decided it could wait: a signed contract warranted reason for being there, and right now being there was all that she needed.

  “Hap was supposed to come up this weekend from Barbados, but he took a charter to Cuba instead.” She blew on her nails. “Hap is my boyfriend.”


  Rita wondered if Hap knew about the “scandal” and was in on the blackmail attempt.

  “Ever been to Cuba?” Fern asked.

  “No,” Rita replied, and did not ask if Hap was going to come back on a raft. She followed Fern into the kitchen and took a seat at the table across from a collection of polish bottles and removers and little pieces of cotton.

  “Are you going to marry him?” Rita asked.

  Fern laughed. “Who knows?”

  “Well, I think being married is even scarier than being a single parent.”

  “No shit,” Fern agreed. “So you’re not married. Is this your first baby?”

  “My first one died. So this will be my one and only.”

  Fern plunged her fingers into two water glasses that were filled with chunks of ice. “Mindy’s my one and only.”

  Rita pretended that she and Mindy had been properly introduced. “I have this lousy feeling that raising a kid isn’t as easy as it used to be. It’s like the world is different, you know?”

  Pulling her fingers from the glasses, Fern examined them closely. “Kids are a pain in the ass,” she said with perfect clarity. “Well,” she added, as if realizing she’d sounded harsh, “sometimes they’re okay. But they’re kind of like dogs. I mean, your life changes, but theirs doesn’t. Know what I mean?”

  No, Rita did not know. She had never considered Kyle a pain in the anything. It was obvious why the little girl on the roadside had seemed so forlorn. “Well, Fern,” she said quietly, then plunged in, the way Fern had plunged her fingernails into the ice, “I guess nothing’s ever perfect, and things change all the time. How does your daughter feel about leaving the Vineyard? I assume that’s what you’ll do.”

  “Right now she thinks I have to sell the house because her grandfather left some debts, that it’s the only way we can survive.”

  Excited that Fern was taking her into her confidence, Rita knew she must go slowly so she wouldn’t seem suspiciously eager. She must be concerned, but not nosy.

  “Dave Ashenbach worked hard all his life,” Rita said, not knowing if it was true or not, but knowing that few fishermen had it easy. “It’s hard to believe he didn’t have any money.”