The Beach at Painter's Cove

by Shelley Noble

  “Is that really our grandma?” Griff asked.

  “Don’t call her that!” Mandy shrieked. “Her name is . . .”—her voice lowered dramatically—“Jillian.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sakes.” Issy felt in her pockets.

  “I’ve got a twenty,” Chloe said, and handed it to the driver, who snatched it from her hand and drove off in a spurt of gravel.

  “Thanks, I’ll pay you back inside.” Issy glanced at the pile of matching luggage and sighed. “Come on, troops, let’s get the blankety-blank luggage.”

  Between the five of them, they managed to get the heavy pieces up the steps and into the foyer. “She can do the rest,” Issy said. “Or she can come down and dress in the foyer, for all I care.” More outrageous things had occurred in this foyer, some that Issy remembered and some she’d only heard about.

  She didn’t see how Jillian York, for all her airs, could hold a candle to the escapades of the guests at the Muses.

  Jillian and Leo were seated together on the parlor sofa. Stalker and prey, thought Issy.

  “Oops, I can’t believe you put poor Leo to work, and her right out of the hospital. Well, it’s a good thing I came.”

  “Oh,” said Issy. “And just what do you plan to do while you’re here? Cook her food? Wash her clothes? Take out the trash?”

  Jillian’s expression changed comically. “Really, there’s no reason to be sarcastic.”

  “Oh, I’m perfectly serious. Anybody who stays here has to carry their weight.”

  “Tsk tsk, Oops.” Jillian stood, walked to the window, and turned. “Actually I was hoping you would loan me your apartment in the city while I’m meeting with my agent.”

  “My apartment? You should have called first; I would have told you that I sublet it. Sorry.” The lie came so easily to Issy’s lips that it surprised her and disgusted her. She hated that she’d fallen into this game so easily. “So no. You can’t. Maybe they have a vacancy at the Plaza.”

  Jillian threw herself into a nearby chaise. “If you must know, I don’t have a penny to my name. I had to use Henri’s credit card for my flight, but by the time I landed in New York, he’d canceled it. I had to spend the last of my cash to come here.”

  Issy’s knees buckled. What little hope she’d had of getting money from her mother evaporated like smoke in the wind.

  Leo smiled vaguely at her daughter. “Well, I’m sure we’ll be glad to have you . . .”

  “Jillian,” Fae prompted. “And after such a long time. I hardly recognized you.”

  “Dear Aunt Fae.” Jillian went through the air-kiss routine again. “I’d recognize you anywhere. Now, shall I take you upstairs, Leo? You must be tired.”

  Issy was sure she was up to something. And from Fae’s expression, she thought so, too.

  “Thank you, dear, but we were right in the middle of doing an inventory.”

  “Inventory? Why?”

  “In case of theft,” Issy said pointedly.

  Fae stifled a gasp, which might have grown to a guffaw if left to its own devices.

  Jillian lifted an eyebrow, an expression famous in the film world, on and off the screen. Hauteur. But Fae and Issy were inured to it and the children were too young to understand the point of it.

  “Well, I’m tired. I didn’t sleep at all on the plane.” She gave Leo a kiss that almost landed on her cheek and went out into the foyer. Posed, framed by the double door. “Oh, you sweet things, you retrieved my luggage.” She smiled, waited.

  “I’m afraid you’re on your own, Jillian,” Fae said.

  “The Impressionist Room,” Issy added. “I believe that one is free.”

  There was a barely perceptible flash in Jillian’s “cerulean” eyes. An instant of pique.

  “I’m too old to carry bags,” Fae continued. “The children are too young. And Chloe and Issy are busy.”

  “What about the ele—”

  Stephanie’s hand clamped over Mandy’s mouth. “No manners,” she explained, but didn’t let go until Jillian disappeared from the doorway and they heard her bumping one of her suitcases up the stairs.

  “Why didn’t you let me tell her about the elevator?” Mandy whined.

  “Because she’s not nice,” Stephanie answered.

  “She’s a movie star.”

  “Stephanie is correct,” said Leo, startling them all. “She isn’t very nice.”

  “Do you think Leo knew it was her daughter?” Chloe asked as she and Issy were making sandwiches for lunch. “She didn’t seem the least bit moved by seeing her.”

  Issy shrugged. She’d been wondering that herself. Actually she’d been wondering about a lot of things in the last few days. Leo confusing Issy with Wes in the hospital she had put down to the drugs. There were times since she’d come home when her grandmother seemed vague, but other times when she seemed as sharp as a tack. Especially about the past. She remembered everything that Steph had asked her about the various pieces they’d cataloged. A huge help.

  And it was pretty clear by the way Fae had jumped in that she, too, wasn’t sure whether Leo understood what was happening. Issy would have to have a talk with Aunt Fae before long. She might act like someone stuck in the sixties. Who was more comfortable in “the Otherworld,” but Issy had long thought she wasn’t as flighty as she acted.

  “Issy, do you think Leo’s . . . you know, all there?” Chloe asked.

  “Not at all. Every time you give her a chance she’s off with Wes, living in the glorious past. God, I hope I never have a love like that.”

  “What do you mean? Their love story is legend.”

  “And binding. I don’t think she’ll be happy—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Wasn’t going to.” Issy looked out the kitchen window. “They’re not at the picnic table. Better pack up the lunch.”

  “Grab a tablecloth,” Chloe added. “It’ll be just like old times. Picnic at the cove.”

  Not quite, thought Issy. Now there would be no Wes, at least not in person, though he and Max would stand guard from their graves on the knoll.

  “I’ve got your back, Is.”

  “Thanks.”

  “That was Jillian?” Leo asked.

  “Yes, your daughter,” Fae said. “Are you focused on this?”

  Leo chewed on her knuckle. “How could I not have known? Of course it was Jillian. Those eyes alone.” She looked up at Fae and Fae saw the fear in them.

  “You’re not losing your mind. You just keep wandering away. Plus her arrival was unexpected. It took me a second to figure it out.”

  Two actually, Fae thought. As soon as Jillian’s second foot hit the ground, the feeling of dread that came over her was enough to know who was attached to those high heels.

  “Now you know. Don’t forget. And try to stay in the present for as long as she’s here.”

  “She’s staying?”

  “She’s broke.”

  “No. How can that be?”

  And so are we. How can that be? Fae looked to heaven and then looked across the cove, where she could just see the top of her own roof. How she longed for just a moment to be on the front porch looking out to the sound and beyond to the open sea. “I don’t know. We have Netflix. We keep up with the movies. She hasn’t appeared in anything for a couple of years. Actually she hasn’t worked steady since she divorced Trevor York.”

  “And brought the children here,” Leo said dreamily. “I suppose we’ll have to give her some money.”

  “Leo. Those children are grown now. We have no money. One of those children has cleaned out the estate and disappeared. The other just left her job to come save our butts.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t understand you.”

  Fae huffed out a sigh. Threw caution to the wind and hoped she wasn’t about to give her sister-in-law a heart attack. “Brace yourself. I didn’t want you to know, kept hoping we could clear it up before it came to this. But things are out of hand.”

  Leo’
s gaze drifted away.

  “Look at me.” Fae took Leo’s shoulders in both her hands and held her steady.

  “Dan and Vivienne have stolen all the money Wes left in the estate accounts. And your personal account.”

  “No.”

  Fae held on to her. “We have no money. It’s dire. Issy is trying to do what she can.”

  “No. Vivienne said she had something to do and she would be back. She wouldn’t lie to us.”

  Fae sighed and let go of Leo’s fragile frame. “Fine. Believe what you want for as long as you can.”

  Leo grasped at Fae’s sleeve. “But we should send Issy back. She’ll just get stuck here.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Fae said to herself. “She won’t be bullied this time. She’s determined to help. But she only has two weeks of vacation, and will have to go back to Manhattan, so just hold out until then. Okay? Just try to stay with us, please.”

  “But—”

  “Or George will make good on his decision to put us in an old-folks home.”

  “Wes wouldn’t let him,” Leo said indignantly.

  “Wes is dead. You’re sitting at his headstone.”

  “I know that. But he set up the estate so that you and I would be provided for. That the Muses would be provided for. Would stay in the family.”

  “Well, unless you have a spare million or two hidden in your garter, Vivienne and Dan are living off the estate money in some South American country, and we are toast.”

  “Silly. No one wears garters anymore.”

  Gods and goddesses, give me patience. Fae caught sight of Issy and Chloe coming across the meadow. “Good. Here’s lunch. Now remember. You were so surprised to see Jillian it’s taken a while to sink in.”

  “It has.”

  “And don’t mention the money situation.”

  “No.”

  “And whatever you do, don’t talk to Wes while they’re all here.” Fae leaned back and looked at the sky. How on earth had they gone from peacefully living off the radar to becoming the Hotel Disaster-waiting-to-happen? And was there any way they were going to fake their way through it?

  Issy and Chloe carried sandwiches, salad, chips, and a container of iced tea and cups across the lawn to the knoll where Fae and Leo were seated on a bench near Wes and Max’s headstones.

  “Ben made the bench for them?”

  “They kept bringing down lawn chairs and he thought it was just asking for an accident. So he made them a bench.”

  Thoughtful as always. Issy could imagine the “family” barely waiting long enough for the will to be read before leaving without a thought for the wife and sister Wes left behind. But Ben and Chloe had stayed around to keep a watchful eye on them.

  And what about you? asked a niggling voice she’d rather ignore.

  “What?”

  “What what?” Issy asked.

  “You kind of growled. Don’t you like the bench?”

  “Huh? Oh yeah, it’s great. Thank Ben for me.”

  “Thank him yourself.” Chloe shimmied, as much as anyone carrying a bag filled with sandwiches could shimmy. “At the Den tonight.”

  Issy started to say she couldn’t go out when her mother had just arrived. But why not? It wasn’t like they intended to make up for twenty years of silence with a gabfest tonight.

  Issy found a flattish place on the ground and spread out the tablecloth. Then stood and took a deep breath. She hadn’t been this far out on the property since she’d returned. And as the salt air filled her lungs, a sense, not of peace but of belonging, filled her being.

  The sky was blue as only a Connecticut beach sky could be. “Cerulean like your grandfather and mother’s eyes,” Leo used to tell Issy, and Issy was so jealous because Vivienne had those eyes, too. It wasn’t until she went to college that she learned that cerulean covered a score of shades of blue. But to Issy the Connecticut sky would always be cerulean blue. And her eyes would always be brown.

  To her left, the grassy knoll rolled down to the sandy beach of the cove, a teardrop-shaped inlet carved by the waves. Farther along, the sand turned into rocks, with lots of sheltered niches where the trees overhung the water, where painters painted, writers wrote. The water near the knoll was shallow and sloped down before disappearing into the depths of the far side, where a boulder that jutted out from the land and the woods and meadow began. Where years ago a young woman had thrown off her clothes and dove in. And surfaced where Wes Whitaker was waiting for her, where they’d both fallen in love.

  Issy had done her share of skinny-dipping in the cove, but so far she’d never fallen in love.

  She turned in the opposite direction toward the path that led down to the stretch of sandy beach that ran along the open waters of the sound. She could see the children’s heads, bent over, looking for shells. Except for Stephanie, who stood near the point, ankle-deep in water, scanning the trees of the opposite shore.

  Issy cupped her hands to her mouth just at the breeze kicked up, ruffling her hair and the sleeves of her shirt. She wanted to yell, I’m home! but settled for “Lunch is ready!”

  They all scrambled up, though Steph moved more slowly, reluctantly, Issy thought. With only a half-eaten bran muffin for breakfast, she had to be starving. Issy certainly was.

  She waited for Steph to catch up, wishing she knew something to say that would make her feel . . . what? Happier? Safer. Loved by her mother?

  “Do people live in the woods over there?”

  Issy jumped. She hadn’t expected Steph to actually speak to her. “Well, it’s all Whitaker property. Great-Aunt Fae has a cottage there, but she doesn’t like unannounced visitors. There used to be quite a few small cottages hidden away in the woods. Though we weren’t allowed to go there.”

  Steph turned her head to really look at Issy.

  “They weren’t dangerous or anything; some served as storage places, others held the artists’ supplies, the cove was a favorite painting place. There were others for contemplation, or just to get away from the craziness of the houseguests. Occasionally someone would rent them for a few weeks or a whole summer. I don’t think they all had running water. And, of course, sometimes they were used for, um . . .”

  “Sex,” Steph volunteered, then smiled that “gotcha” smile.

  All right, twelve-year-olds were pretty sophisticated these days.

  “This was an art colony, I was thinking more along the lines of late-night trysts, more romantic. Though I don’t see why anyone bothered. Muses by the Sea was a free-love zone,” Issy finished smugly.

  “Did you or my mom ever use them?”

  “For sex?” Issy’s reaction ended on a squeak.

  Steph gave her a “too dumb to live” look.

  “No . . . No.” Issy sighed. Embarrassed by a tween, it was pitiful. “Your mom always hung out with her rich friends at their places. And I . . . I never had a boyfriend until I went to college.”

  “What about Ben?”

  “Ben wasn’t my boyfriend. He’s Chloe’s brother.”

  “Chloe wants you to hook up with him.”

  “I’m not ‘hooking up’ with anyone. I may consider falling in love, if given the opportunity and the right person.”

  “So why not Ben, like Chloe wants. I think he’s hot. Except for the stinky smell on his clothes when he comes in from the marsh.”

  Issy laughed. “Chloe wants to be my sister. We used to call each other the sister we never had. Because she only has brothers and because my sister didn’t like me.”

  “Hates you,” Steph said. “Don’t take it personally. She hates the whole family. That’s just because she’s jealous.”

  They had almost reached the others and Issy stopped her. “That may be. Just promise me you’re not planning on hooking up with anybody in any of the cabins. They’re probably run-down and filled with spiders. If they’re even still standing.”

  “Aunt Issy, I’m twelve.”

  “Just saying.”

  Chloe had
the lunch things spread out on the tablecloth, and as soon as they sat down, she handed out sandwiches and tea like a pro. Fae joined Leo on the bench, but Issy stood.

  Now that she’d started work on the art collection she didn’t want to stop. Plus she needed to do some serious grocery shopping for this crowd, but she didn’t want to have to go to the big chain stores out on the highway and slight Mr. Ogden’s market. She’d just have to pay off some of their account and start having their groceries delivered.

  And how long is your money going to last, paying for everything? Groceries, utilities. There were probably taxes. If you’re going to steal someone’s estate, you probably wouldn’t be nice enough to pay their taxes first.

  Anger surged up inside her. How could Vivienne do this? Grammy and Wes had given them a home, loved them, paid for everything. They’d sent them to college. Even Issy, who would just as happily have stayed home with them.

  That was when the first crack in the fairy tale of her world view occurred. The first time she realized that maybe her grandparents had just been biding their time until they could be free of their responsibility and go back to their old life. Just the two of them. A ten-year chunk out of their life. More than ten—fourteen until they pushed Issy out the door.

  Artists still came, the house was always filled with interesting people, especially in the summer. Issy had never felt like she’d cast a pall on the festivities. She never complained about the late-night noise that sometimes kept her awake, or the cigar and cigarette and pipe smoke. Or eating in the kitchen when a big party was going on. She liked the kitchen and Mrs. Norcroft.

  Whom she would have to visit soon with her abject apologies. Maybe ask her to come back to work. And pay her with what? She had about enough money saved to feed the family over the summer, and if she didn’t go back to her job she would have nothing left once that was gone.

  All conversation had stopped and everyone was contentedly eating their lunch. Everyone but Issy. And when the others had eaten their fill and made signs of going back to the beach or taking a nap, Issy announced, “Okay, back to work.”

  “I’m ex-hausted,” Mandy moaned, and fell onto her back in the grass.