The Beach at Painter's Cove

by Shelley Noble

More wine was poured, the kitchen filled with heavenly aromas.

  “Boeuf bourguignon,” Chloe said, “but we’re calling it beef stew with noodles. I’m determined to develop Mandy and Griff’s palates to appreciate something more complex than peanut butter and jelly, and if I have to use subterfuge to do it . . .”

  Issy got out silverware. “Do you think Leo will want to eat in the dining room?”

  There was a unanimous quiet while everyone pondered the possibility.

  “No,” said Ben. “No one dressed for dinner.”

  “Works for me.” Issy set the table. Ben poured the rest of the wine and suggested opening another bottle.

  “What is that noise?” Issy asked.

  “What?” Everyone stopped to listen. Nothing but the creak of the heated oven, the whir of the refrigerator, and a distant hum.

  “The kids must have the television on,” Chloe said.

  Laughter broke out as she said it.

  “That must be it. I didn’t know you’d brought a television downstairs. Aunt Fae?” Issy looked at her great-aunt but she seemed miles away. And knowing Aunt Fae, she might be, Issy thought.

  “I’m sorry, Issy. I was thinking about something.”

  “Just that the downstairs television is a new thing.”

  “Leo put it in the back parlor. I think she gets lonely with . . . without Wes. Does it bother you?”

  “Heavens no. As long as it isn’t something on its way to breaking down that we have to have fixed, I’m happy as a clam. She misses Wes, I know.”

  “Her other half is gone.”

  “Okay, everybody,” Chloe said. “Let’s not get morose. Ben, will you round up the children then go up to see if Leo wants to come down or if she’d prefer a tray in her room.”

  Fae snorted. “She’ll be down. Mandy . . . now she’s the one who would be having vapors and demanding trays in her room.”

  Ben left, only to be replaced by Griff, Mandy, and Steph.

  “Ben’s gone to get Grammy,” Mandy informed the others.

  “He said to give you this.” Steph put another bottle of wine on the table.

  They all sat down. Ben burst into the kitchen a few minutes later. “She’s not in her room.”

  “Maybe she’s in the bathroom.”

  “I looked.”

  “The other bedrooms.”

  “I did a quick run-through.”

  “I thought maybe I’d missed her when I was in the parlor with these meatheads.”

  “I’m not a meathead,” groused Mandy. “Whatever that is.”

  “Something grown-ups watch on late-night television when they can’t sleep because they don’t have a girlfriend,” Chloe said. “Shall we all go look? I’ll put the food in a warming oven.”

  They fanned out, checked the downstairs rooms.

  “Where could she be?” Issy said, panic beginning to blossom. “It’s not like she could have gotten past us all and gone outside?”

  “Why would she go outside?” Chloe asked.

  “Oh,” Fae said, and walked past them to the front door. They all followed.

  “Do you know where she is?” Issy asked.

  “I have an idea.” Fae set off in the direction of her cottage and the cove, but when they all started to follow she stopped. “Stay here please. I’ll bring her back.”

  Ben stepped up beside her. “If you think I’m going to let two—”

  “Old bags,” Fae finished.

  He glowered. “Two of my favorite people wander around when it’s twilight and easy to pitch over a cliff, you’re—”

  “Crazy,” Ben and Fae said together.

  “Please.”

  The one word and the way Fae said it was enough to stop them from taking another step. But they stayed and watched as Fae marched across the grass past the outbuildings, along the edge of the woods, and toward the shore.

  “Of course,” Ben said. “The knoll.”

  “It’s where they buried your great-grandfather,” Chloe explained to the children.

  Steph moved closer to Issy.

  Now Issy could see the figure seated on the knoll.

  “She goes there a lot to visit,” Chloe said. “Ben even built her that bench so she would be comfortable.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have encouraged her,” Ben said. “It could be dangerous for someone frail to lose her balance.”

  “Boy, you better never let her hear you talking like that,” Issy said.

  “I think it was a nice thing to do,” Steph said.

  Issy and Ben both turned to look at her.

  “Well, I do.”

  “I do, too,” Issy said.

  Ben looked from one to the other. “You do?”

  “I’m hungry,” Mandy whined.

  “Me, too,” Griff said.

  “Then let’s go back to the kitchen and get dinner on the table.”

  Wes looked so handsome, dressed in a summer linen suit, the coat unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He stood straight in the skiff as the waves rocked the boat. The sky swirled blue and white behind him. The sky was always remarkable here. Artists came to the cove just to paint the sky. A larger wave lifted the boat and Wes caught the side.

  Be careful or you’ll get a wetting.

  He laughed. Come on down.

  Leo held on to her round belly. We’d sink like a stone. The three of us together.

  A whale would swim by and spout us back onto the shore. A grand adventure.

  Where Graham and Ernest would find them, having come expecting a delicious dinner and instead finding an embarrassingly wet and straggling host and hostess.

  She gestured for him to come to shore. And he sat down and began rowing to the sand. She leaned over the edge of the bluff, her hair whipping about her head in the breeze, and she watched as he jumped onto the sand and pulled the boat above the tide line.

  And the baby jumped in her belly. Hooray! he seemed to say, because his papa was so clever, so strong, so everything in the world to her.

  Fae was out of breath and as angry as a sweating wet hen when she reached the knoll. Even though she wanted to chastise her sister-in-law for being pigheaded, selfish, and worrying them all, she couldn’t. First of all she was out of breath. And second of all . . . there was such a stillness surrounding the knoll that she didn’t dare rush into that solitude and destroy it.

  She stopped, then walked slowly until she was behind Leo. Leo of course didn’t know she was there, didn’t hear her approach, didn’t feel her presence, she never did when Wes was nearby. They were for each other and the rest of the world be damned.

  Wes had been gone nearly three years. Everyone had expected Leo to follow close on his heels. That’s what old people did. First one, then the other. But not Leo.

  Maybe she thought she had unfinished business here. She did, but none that she would ever admit to.

  No, Fae thought, it was because to Leo, Wes wasn’t really gone. She always said she could feel his presence. Fae couldn’t feel him. She’d be angry if she did. Wes had no business hanging around, making life difficult. And he hadn’t. She knew that, because like the good man her brother had been, he’d done the right thing; he’d died and crossed over.

  In a way she wished Leo would accept that. She’d lead a much healthier life if she did. That or she’d have no reason to keep on living. Of course she did have reasons; four of them were waiting back at the house.

  Fae had made up her mind. Let Leo live with her Wes. It was a purely selfish motivation. If Leo died, there would be a haggle over who got the Muses until they found out who really owned it, then they would go in for the kill. Metaphorically of course.

  Fae wouldn’t be able to help, because she would be trundled off to the old-folks home before she could name the first president of the United States. Most days she could recite the first five or six without thinking. There were other days she had to let it bubble to the surface.

  Leo had more of those days. It had
started right before Wes’s illness. Fae had discounted it as caused by stress. And it probably was true. But it didn’t recede.

  At first rare episodes, they could live with that. But now it was becoming more and more common. The doctor wasn’t concerned because Leo always concentrated when she was at an appointment. It wasn’t dementia that worried Fae the most. It was the alternate reality that Leo lived in most of the time. Because between the past, the present, and the normal hardening of the arteries, Leo was becoming more than Fae could protect.

  She sat down next to Leo on the bench.

  “Did they send you to look for me?”

  “They all came. It was all I could do to keep them away. Chloe’s made dinner and everyone is hungry.”

  “I couldn’t wait. I missed him. And he didn’t know where I was.”

  “Of course he did. He always knows where you are. So you don’t really need to worry about him. And we really need for you not to talk about him like this while Issy is here.”

  “I know.” Leo took her hand.

  Fae wished she did know how to cast spells. She would cast a spell of protection around both of them that no one could break. No, she wouldn’t. She would cast just one around Leo and lose her forever. Because Fae belonged out here in the present. Finally. And it wasn’t something she would give up without a fight.

  “Are you ready to come back?”

  Leo sighed. “If I must.”

  “You must.” For all our sakes, Fae added to herself. You must.

  Chapter 11

  Issy waited on the front porch until she saw Fae and Leo approach then slipped into the house to tell the others.

  “Now don’t make a fuss,” Leo said as soon as Fae led her into the kitchen and Ben hurried over to seat her at the head of the table.

  “I hope you don’t mind that we’re eating in the kitchen and I’m serving from the stove,” Chloe said.

  “Not at all,” Leo said. “We’re lucky to have you.”

  “We are,” Issy agreed as she began filling plates for the kids. “But she goes back to her own work tomorrow, so enjoy while you have her. After tomorrow you’ve only got me.”

  “I’m sure that will be fine, dear,” Leo said, already distracted by the plate of beef Chloe put before her.

  Between the two of them, everyone was served quickly, salad would be served at the end, European style, the way it always had been in the Whitaker household.

  “This is yummy,” Mandy said, her mouth full.

  Griff nodded as he stuffed a piece of roll in his mouth.

  Issy had visions of having to perform the Heimlich maneuver before dinner was over. And a cold wind of panic swept through her. Tomorrow there would be three kids and Leo—and her.

  She’d deal with it when she had to, but tonight, Leo or no, there were some things that needed to be discussed and it might as well be now when they were all more or less captive at the table. And Issy didn’t know any better way to do it than to just ask, so she did.

  “Kids,” she said. “Did your mom call today?”

  They all stopped in various poses of eating, a perfect Norman Rockwell moment except that it wasn’t.

  Three heads shook the answer.

  “She’s probably busy,” Leo said. “Is anyone going to pour me a little of that wine?”

  Ben looked at Issy. She’d glanced at the doctor’s instructions. It hadn’t said no alcohol. She nodded.

  Ben poured out a glass and set it at Leo’s hand.

  “I wanna see my mommy,” Griff whined.

  “Not as much as Issy does,” Ben quipped. And strangely the boy stopped crying.

  “And so you will as soon as she returns,” Leo told him. “And until then we’re going to have so much fun. Remember the plans we were making.”

  “Picnic on the beach,” Mandy said.

  “Fun Town,” Griff said.

  “If we can get Ben—oh, we have Issy’s car,” Leo said.

  Issy had no intention of taking them to Fun Town. There was work to do and her two-week vacation was already slipping through her fingers. She hadn’t even called Paolo to check on the exhibit.

  “If we have time after we do some housecleaning.” Issy gave all three kids pointed looks. They groaned, even Leo groaned. “And you,” she said, pointing to her grandmother, “don’t even think about sneaking off with my car.”

  Leo smiled. “I haven’t driven in years.”

  “And you’re not going to start now.”

  “Which brings us to . . .” Ben interrupted. “How did you get past us tonight to get outside? I swear no one saw or heard you come downstairs.”

  “I didn’t come down the stairs.”

  Fae dropped her fork on the floor and bent down under the table to retrieve it.

  “I took the elevator.”

  “An elevator? When did you put in an elevator?”

  “Oh, several years ago, when . . . Wes first . . . so I use it when I feel like it.”

  “How did I not know there was an elevator? Where?”

  “Around behind the back staircase,” Leo said.

  “No more leaving the house without telling me.”

  Leo looked down her nose at Issy.

  “Please, Grammy.”

  “Very well.” Leo went back to eating. It seemed that for someone just out of the hospital, she had a very healthy appetite. That was a good thing.

  “And don’t you three get any ideas about using it,” Issy said, pointing a finger at Griff, Mandy, and Steph each in turn. “I guess we’d better have it inspected. Ben, do you know—”

  “A guy? Yep.”

  As soon as the kids were finished, they were excused to go look for fireflies outside.

  The adults sat around the kitchen table drinking coffee, except for Fae, who sipped chamomile tea. Which Issy should be drinking. Between caffeine and adrenaline she was on overload.

  “We need to discuss what to do about Vivienne. She was supposed to call today but she didn’t call her kids and she didn’t call me. I told Detective Griggs that if we hadn’t heard from her by Saturday, I’d call in and report her missing.”

  “Well, she isn’t missing,” Leo said.

  “Then where is she?”

  “I don’t know exactly. When she dropped off the children, she just said she had to go out of town and could they stay here. I said of course.”

  “Did she say when she expected to be back?”

  Leo put down her cup. “She didn’t know, but said not to worry about her. I think she and Dan may be having some marital problems. I know she’d wanted another child and he was dead set against it. I told her to take all the time she needed; we would be fine. And we would have been if I hadn’t taken that fall. I’m so sorry, Issy, to drag you away from your party. You looked so lovely.”

  “Party? Oh, the opening. I was happy to be able to come.”

  “You’re probably in a hurry to get back to work.”

  “No, I have vacation time. I thought . . . If you wanted . . . I would stay and help get things in order.”

  She hadn’t expected to get derailed so easily. Leo was smiling at her, but Fae’s eyes were trained on Leo, almost as if she didn’t dare look at Issy. Is this why things felt so screwy? They didn’t want her here. They were still nursing whatever bad feelings they had toward her because of the funeral?

  How did they expect her to get to a funeral she knew nothing about? Or was it from before that? But she had visited whenever she could get away. Which, granted, hadn’t been that often, and practically never since her grandfather died. Was it her fault? Had she estranged herself from the only people who loved her from some misplaced sense of being slighted?

  “Of course they want you,” Chloe said. She frowned at Issy, then at the two women. “They just don’t want to be a burden.”

  Fae perked up at that. Obviously that feeling hadn’t occurred to her. Ever since Issy arrived, it seemed Fae yo-yo’d between relieved to have her home and anxious to ge
t rid of her.

  “Grammy, do you want me or not? I totally understand either way.”

  Leo’s lip quivered. “Of course I want you. Don’t we—Fae?”

  “Of course, we just don’t want you to have to take off time from work.”

  “There, see?” Chloe said. “And Ben and I want you to stay, too. And whenever Leo and Fae can do without you, I plan on spending that time with you having fun. Some of the old crowd still lives in town and we meet nights at the pub and there’s a new coffee bar in town, cute barista . . .”

  Chloe babbled on while the air cleared, and when she finally trailed off, Issy said, “Well, regardless, I promised Detective Griggs I would call him and let him know if we hadn’t heard from her by Saturday. And it’s Saturday.”

  “I really don’t think that’s necessary,” Leo said.

  “Well, don’t you think it’s odd that she hasn’t gotten in touch with her children at all?”

  “I suppose, but Wes and I used to go down to the Keys. That was before cell phones, of course. We only called the children to let them know we had arrived. Then they saw us when we returned home laden down with gifts, piñatas, and huge straw hats and coconut dolls . . .”

  More likely, Issy thought, Vivienne and Dan were on a romantic island spending Leo’s money.

  Leo seemed to have no inkling of what they had done. And the longer they waited, the harder it woud be to get the money back. George had said to stay out of it. But Vivienne was her sister. “One more day.”

  Leo stood. “I think I’ll go say good night to the children and make an early night of it.”

  They all stood.

  “Do you want me to escort you up the stairs?” Ben asked. “I’d rather you not use the elevator until I can get someone in here to inspect it.”

  Leo patted his cheek. “Thank you, Ben, but I can manage just fine. Really. You stay and enjoy your coffee.”

  “I’ll be going home,” Fae said.

  They all said good night, then Issy, Ben, and Chloe sat down.

  “I’d suggest we all run down to Fisherman’s Den for a nightcap, but Issy looks dead on her feet.”

  “I’m not on my feet.”

  “I know, but I couldn’t very well say ‘dead on your butt.’ My sister would yell at me.”