"You have got to be kidding me. Why would I do that?"
"I don't know. Why did you do that?"
"I didn't do that. I never wrote you a letter. I never got a letter to respond to in the first place."
"That you can remember."
"Laura. I'd remember a letter from you. My God. And can you honestly believe that I'd send something so unfeeling? After what I saw in the woods, can you?"
"You were fourteen," she reminded him. "It's a weird age."
"Oh, come on," he said, dismissing her theory.
"I suppose it was coincidence that after that, you suddenly disappeared?" She was more than a little put off by his condescending tone.
He was obviously still trying to puzzle it out. She could see it in the look on his face, far more focused than it was at the bank, when the mere granting of money had been involved.
He got up from the bed, too agitated to sit, and began pacing the tonal carpet that covered most of the floor. He said, "Right after the episode in the woods, my parents shipped me, shiner and all, to Switzerland for the summer to stay with my aunt and uncle."
"Just for fighting?" she asked, awed that there were parents around who would resort to such an extreme.
"It had already been arranged," he said, without the slightest smile at her cluelessness. "Although I did, in fact, catch big-time hell for fighting."
He added, "I got back from Switzerland at summer's end, just in time to be sent off to Winton Academy in the Berkshires." Mid-pace, he stopped to look her in the eye and say, "During all that time, there was no letter."
"There was. I sent it." She sat up with her legs over the side of the bed and smoothed her wrinkled yellow dress, painfully aware that her panties were still looped around one ankle. She reached down to slip them off and then stuffed them in a pocket of her dress. It seemed more discreet than trying to put them on again.
Obviously he saw her do it. How he interpreted the gesture, she had no idea.
"There was no reply from me," he insisted.
"There was. I have it."
That stopped him in his tracks. "You have the letter? Where?"
"Not on me, I'm afraid," she said dryly. Or he would by now have found it on his own, given the way things had just gone between them.
"I'd like to see this letter." He rubbed his hand across his jaw, pulling skin on the return stroke. "Damn, but I'd like to see it."
"And so you shall, since it's so important to you." She stood up, feeling emotionally raw after this second dramatic encounter under the trees with Kendall Barclay III.
She glanced around the bedroom with its subtle, neutral tones and thought, Heck, I'd rather see more color when I open my eyes, anyway. "Well," she said with a rueful smile, "I think we can assume that my work here is done."
She began to leave the same way she'd entered, but Ken got to the door before she did.
"Laura," he said, blocking her way. "I promise you I'll get to the bottom of this. I'm wondering now whether my dad—damn, it's way too possible. I remember that my father was all over the principal, what was his name?"
"Smith." He'd come and gone in a year.
"Yeah. Smith. At the time, I assumed that my dad did everything he could to make sure Will and the others were punished—humiliating as it was for me to have my father fight my battles. Now I'm wondering whether he wasn't even busier than I was aware. He could easily have intercepted your letter and then answered it—although it burns my gut to think it."
His father had been dead six years. They would never know.
Laura said wearily, "I have to go."
He was inclined not to let her; she could see it in the way he got hold of the door lever before she did.
The surprise was passing now, and in its place a surge of ridiculous self-pity overtook her. The insult of that letter, heaped on top of the injury of the assault, had been the work of an arrogant grown-up, not an arrogant juvenile. She didn't even know Kendall Barclay's father; she'd been rejected by him merely on principle.
Ken stroked his fingers across her cheek, as if he'd seen tears there. "I'll get to the bottom. I promise," he repeated. He lowered his head to hers and brushed her lips in a gentle kiss.
After that, he opened the door for her and she made a break for the rusty pickup parked at the end of his drive. Into it she scrambled, but not before catching her new yellow dress on one of the truck's rusted edges, tearing a triangular rip in the skirt.
Perfect.
In a mood as glum and confused as any she'd felt in her life, she took the long way back to Shore Gardens through Chepaquit. She wanted to face Snack and Corinne with something like normalcy, and she needed more than five minutes to pull herself back together.
So she meandered through the quaint village, parking in front of the ice-cream shop that had gone up in place of the old pharmacy with its granite-countered soda fountain, and on a whim she went inside and ordered a Sprite to go.
Only she didn't go. She sat at one of the tiny Formica-topped bistro tables in a daze, wondering what, exactly, had sparked that wildfire back at Triple Oaks. What had happened there was not only sudden but ... well, suspect. Obviously she had been acting out some teenage fantasy, seducing the knight who had spurned her.
Except that he hadn't spurned her.
But he had been a knight.
But a young one: fourteen.
But he wasn't fourteen anymore. He was a grown-up, filled-out, full-fledged, totally sexy hunk.
Which obviously had been the problem.
Her mind bounced between Ken in the bedroom and Kenny in the woods until she couldn't separate the two events anymore; she was numb from the effort to sort out her emotions. So she decided not to try, but simply to place all of them on a shelf until she was ready to take them down again, and look them over carefully, and decide which ones to keep and which ones to toss. She had got through life using that system; it was the one sure way to reach her goals.
Don't get emotional.
She had eased that rule exactly three times in her life. The first was with Will Burton, and look where it had got her. The second was with Max: she hadn't fared any better. And now, Ken. Did she really need to go out on that ledge again? She already knew the view from there: down, down, down.
Making a success of Shore Gardens was her current goal. There was only one way to achieve it.
Do not get emotional.
Feeling finally calm enough to face Snack and Corinne, Laura drove at last to the nursery. She was greeted by the wildly upbeat sale banner which now hung triumphantly above the long window boxes spilling over with bright red geraniums. The tidy graveled parking area, the stile fence tumbled over with beach roses, the outdoor carts filled with flowering strawberries and loaded with spring-blooming perennials—what a difference two hard weeks and an infusion of cash had made.
The irresistible sight helped steady Laura and set her firmly back on course. She honked a greeting to Snack, who was attacking the compost pile with the tractor, and got a preoccupied wave from him in return. Gabe's big hound Baskerville was running back and forth alongside the mound, urging Snack on with noisy barks. Maybe Gabe was around. Hopefully he and Snack had buried the hatchet.
Laura was impressed: at the rate he was going, Snack was going to have the pile out of there in time for the sale. She felt like giving him a hip, hip, and a big hooray for being as good as his word.
She parked the truck in front of the kitchen, where she caught a glimpse through parted curtains of Corinne as she moved with ease from sink to stove to fridge, preparing supper. Despite her workload, Corinne had been cooking better and better suppers for them; they had become the highlight of the day. Tonight she had promised to make old-fashioned stew with dumplings, just the way their mother had.
Laura's heart lifted a little. She felt good to be in this new and improved version of home. With a lighter step, she went directly into the kitchen, where her sister was laboring over a pastry board.
Chapter 13
She laid her rolling pin aside, then went up to Laura and pressed the back of a flour-dusted hand to her forehead. "You're not clammy. How's your stomach?"
"My stomach's fine," Laura said, slipping out from under her sister's scrutiny. So much for disguising her distress. "That smells great, by the way. I'm starving."
"Go wash. You probably haven't eaten a thing all day," Corinne grumbled. "This is why I can't trust you to grab lunch on your own. You don't do it. How'd it go with Kendall Barclay?"
"Oh ... okay. He could use some work—his garden, I mean."
"Don't I know it. The house is gorgeous; the grounds are a mess. Have been, ever since his mother moved out and he moved in. A gardener he ain't."
Corinne began shaping the dough into a long roll for cutting into thin, chewy dumplings. "I don't know why the man doesn't just break down and hire a service. He can afford it. But no; I see him pushing that ridiculous old hand-mower over that pathetic patch of grass, and I say to myself, why? Why does he bother?"
"Maybe he wants people to feel sorry for him."
"Yeah, right. The most eligible bachelor on the Cape, a man who's rich, smart, and handsome—who's going to feel sorry for him?"
Laura dipped a spoon into the stew and blew on it to cool it down. "Why hasn't he married?" she asked very casually. "No one in Chepaquit's good enough?"
"Funny you should ask," Corinne said, amused by the very question. "A couple of months ago, I was getting my hair cut at Tess's, and his mother's old cook was going on with one of the hairdressers about him. He's dated plenty of women, but the cook says he's very particular—not that you'd know it, looking at his lawn."
"Well, cheer up about that, at least. He plans to order all of his landscaping needs from Shore Gardens, and he wants you to oversee the planting."
That got Corinne's attention. "Really? Oh, don't toy. Really?"
When Laura nodded, she said joyously, "This could be it, Laura—the break we've been looking for! Maybe everyone will take their cue from him and come to us instead of taking their business to Chatham. Maybe they'll stop regarding us like a bunch of weirdos and murderers. Maybe we'll finally get some respect!"
"We'll have a better idea the day after tomorrow," Laura said, not as confident as she'd like to be. "A good crowd would go hand in hand with lots of orders."
"I know what we can do. We can serve more serious treats than cookies. Brownies. I'll make up a few batches and cut them small. We'll have them set up at your seminar on how to dry flowers. That should do it. Now go change, and then call Snack; supper's in fifteen minutes."
She looked so pleased with herself, so hopeful. Laura didn't have the heart to tell her that the real reason she suspected they were getting Ken's landscaping order was so he could talk it over with Laura in bed.
Okay, that was unfair. But for whatever reason, Ken had a yen, and what did he care if he threw a little business their way to indulge it?
Okay, that was also unfair. Although he seemed mystifyingly attracted to her, Laura had seen evidence that he felt an obligation to his family homestead. His desire to have it properly landscaped seemed sincere. Still, the best way to test that sincerity was to stay out of his bed.
Which was an excellent plan all the way around. "Do I have time to change?" she asked Corinne.
"Laura! Have you heard a thing I said?"
"No," she admitted. "Nothing after the word 'brownies.' "
****
Ken had to cool down before he punched in the number of his mother's Boston condo. Camille Barclay was very protective of her late husband's memory, and she was convinced that Ken had competitive feelings about his father besides.
Well, she was right. Ken did feel as if he had something to prove. He was determined to be his own man and not just his father's son when it came to running the bank. It was the reason he'd painted it red, the reason he'd pushed for a major upgrade of their data management system.
It was even the reason he'd hesitated about moving back to Triple Oaks, once his mother had made the decision to move to Boston. He didn't want to be a carbon copy of the Old Man; it was such a cliché. But then his mother had gone and called his bluff by threatening to sell out to a developer, so here he was, the owner of the house after all.
And mad as hell. It was one thing to be encouraged and guided and even blackmailed, another thing altogether to have mail intercepted, an answer faked, and his life turned around. Damn it to hell!
His mother sounded delighted, as she always did, to hear from him. He had to give her credit there; Camille Barclay never nagged if, unlike his sister, Ken happened to slip out of touch for a few weeks. In fact, the only guilt he'd had to endure was over his taking his time on the marriage-and- grandchildren front, and Ken knew that he wasn't alone in his generation to do that.
"Darling, you're going to have to make it fast," she said. "I'm on my way out to dinner."
"All right, I'll cut to the chase. Did Dad once intercept a letter to me and then answer it himself?"
The ripple of cultivated laughter was both reassuring and troubling.
"Ken, your father never opened his own mail. Why would he have opened yours?"
"When I was fourteen."
He expected more laughter, but instead he got silence.
And then, finally, an answer: "No. I'm absolutely sure that your father never did any such thing."
Suddenly someone pulled back the blinds in a back room of Ken's mind, and light began flooding in. "Mother. For God's sake. You were the one."
"Oh, Ken, don't start. I've told you: I'm on my way out the door."
"How could you do that? Why would you do that?"
"You were just a boy; you don't remember—"
"The hell I don't!"
"It was an awful event; it could have dogged you for the rest of your life. You meant well, of course you did, but you managed to get involved with the worst sort of—really, I have to go," she said. He could see her drawing herself up to her full statuesque five feet and nine inches. "We can discuss this at some other time."
"I'll be up there tomorrow night," he said in a steely voice. "Don't make plans."
"I've made plans."
"Then cancel them."
"I will not! I—"
The regal tone collapsed in a puddle of motherly irritation. "Oh, all right," she said. "This is such a non-issue. But if it makes you feel better to throw a tantrum in front of me instead of over the phone, then fine. Be here."
He hung up in a retroactive fury. As an only son, he'd always had to put up with a certain amount of control and manipulation by both his parents. His father had discouraged his original desire to become a naturalist, and his mother had never given up trying to match him to the Right Sort of woman. He understood and accepted that; they were only being parents.
But this was different. This had been behind his back. The fact that he'd been a kid at the time was irrelevant; this was the first instance he'd seen of either of his parents being guilty of deception. Now, suddenly, he was forced to wonder if there had been other times.
Damn it.
The couple of times that he and Laura had crossed paths in town, she had looked away and then run away. He hadn't run after her because he was tongue-tied and shy. He saw her only one other time, although that time, she hadn't seen him. He'd grown taller by then, and he'd put on some muscle. Didn't matter. He was still tongue-tied and shy.
It wasn't until he went to college and lived free of parental and private-school constraints that he'd had a chance to grow and bloom. He went a little wild, his grades sank, he ran a risk of being kicked out as a classic non-performer. But he turned it around in time and graduated with honors and, more importantly, with a minor in ornithology. Laura was long gone by then.
Had he been happy since? He hadn't been
unhappy. But now all bets were off. When he finally went to bed, the same bed that he'd so fleetingly shared with Laura just hours before, he was aware that he was more miserable than he ever had been as a geeky little rich snot in Chepaquit Elementary.
And he didn't like the feeling at all.
****
"It's some kind of plot, that's what it is."
"No, it's some kind of blown gasket. I'll go to town, get a new one, replace the lost hydraulic fluid, and we'll be back in business."
Laura, Snack, and Corinne were standing in front of the ancient John Deere tractor, which looked as if someone had come during the night and stabbed it to death: a pool of dark liquid stained the rich earth beneath it.
"But the tractor was working fine last night when you were moving the compost," Laura said, ready to scream. "How could it just go and collapse in the middle of the night?"
"It's old. It's tired. I've been flogging it for days."
Corinne said, "Whether or not you finish moving the compost, we need the tractor. We have to fix it, Snack. We won't be able to move or load any of the bigger shrubs or trees without it," she went on, her voice getting higher and more anxious. "What if you can't get the right gasket?"
"I'll get it, I'll fix it, you'll have it, okay?"
"That'd be great, Snack," Laura said in a soothing tone. "Just ... do what you can."
She was worried about him. He'd been doing the work of two men, and the strain was beginning to show. The compost project was taking far too long for him, and he'd become increasingly snappish; even Corinne's hearty stew the night before hadn't been enough to restore his mood.
It was a stretch to picture him in twenty-four hours wearing a clown's outfit and twisting balloons into cute little animals for kids. A real stretch. Laura gently set her hand-wringing sister back to pricing the truckload of annuals that had just arrived; gave her brother some money for town; and went back to the house and her laptop, where she was preparing a list of gardening dos and don'ts.
After the sale—and assuming Shore Gardens was still in business—she intended to compose a Tip of the Week ad for the nursery in the Chatham Herald. It was a great way to establish brand loyalty with the gardeners in the area, and once she was back in Portland and getting paid again, the cost of carrying the ads would be nothing for her.
A Month at the Shore Page 12