by Mary Simses
The social event of the season? I began to bite my nails. “I feel like our wedding is turning into Entertainment Tonight.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not, honey. I’d never let that happen.”
The waitress returned and placed two straw baskets on the table with our meals in them. I glanced at the fried clams, but I didn’t feel hungry anymore.
Hayden removed the bun on the top of his grouper sandwich and inspected the fish.
I pushed the clams to the side and stared at the harbor. A lobster boat chugged toward the dock.
Hayden touched my chin, turned my face toward him, and kissed me. I couldn’t feel anything but panic. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to dissuade him and I would be stuck with this plan he’d agreed to. I kept thinking, What have I gotten myself into? What am I doing? And then all of a sudden I stopped. What I’d gotten myself into was exactly what I should have expected all along, and I knew it. I was marrying Hayden Croft, and that came with certain responsibilities. I’d told myself in the beginning of our relationship that I would have to deal with this kind of thing when the time came. Well, the time had come.
“Hayden,” I said, forcing a smile, “I’ll do this. I can deal with it and I’ll be fine.” I clasped my hands and hoped I sounded convincing. “And you’re right—the more I deal with these things, the more I’ll get used to it. I’m a little out of my element up here, but I know once we get back to New York and I put my business head on again I’ll click right in and in a couple of weeks I’ll be ready for anything. You can throw the whole New York press corps at me and I’ll be fine.”
Hayden looked down at his grouper sandwich and then back at me, his forehead scrunched up. “Well, here’s the thing…”
Uh-oh; this time it did look like bad news.
“They’re coming here in two days.”
I felt the burn of a headache igniting right behind my eyes. I slid to the edge of my chair. “Who’s coming? And what do you mean, here?”
“The Times. They’re sending a reporter and a photographer to Beacon.”
“Oh, my God!” I stood up, knocking a spoon off the table. It hit the cement patio with a clang. “Why here? Why two days?” I clutched the tablecloth. “I’m not ready for this.” I touched my hair. It felt dry and brittle. I looked at my fingernails, the pink polish chipped, the nails bitten and broken.
Hayden grabbed my hand and pulled me back toward him. “You know,” he said, “besides keeping the press happy, there might be another benefit from the media exposure.”
I looked at him.
“This down-home, small-town thing might be good for us. It could show another side of two hard-boiled Manhattan attorneys.” He took a fried clam and ate it. “Peace offering?”
I tried to smile. I could hear the lobster boat as it chugged closer. My head throbbed. I picked up the spoon that had dropped, and when I looked at my reflection in its curved surface I noticed that my face was upside down.
“You should never have let me eat that clam,” Hayden groaned as he limped through the door of the inn, clutching his stomach.
“Let’s just get upstairs,” I said.
Paula stared at Hayden. “What happened to you?”
He frowned. “Lobster traps.”
“Oh, my word. You got your leg caught in a lobster trap? Were you trying to poach them? That’s illegal, you know.”
Hayden’s face went red. “I’m a law-abiding citizen,” he said. “And besides, I wouldn’t even know how to poach a lobster.”
Paula half closed one eye, as though she were considering this. Then she nodded at me. “You had a telephone call.” She held out a white slip of paper. “A gentleman.” She glanced at Hayden.
The paper had a pen-and-ink drawing of the Victory Inn at the top. Hayden shuffled toward me, reading the message over my shoulder.
2:15
Ellen Branford—
Roy called. Says he’s sorry.
“Okay, thanks,” I said, trying to sound uninterested as I looked at Roy’s name written in Paula’s small, cramped handwriting.
“Let me see that.” Hayden pulled the paper from my hand. “At least he had the sense to apologize—to you, anyway.” He looked at me with a little smirk.
We ascended the stairs like mountain climbers, one slow and deliberate step at a time, Hayden making full use of the banister and my shoulder. I unlocked the door and he shuffled straight to the bed, propping his ankle up with a pillow.
“Do you think it looks worse?” he asked. “I do.”
I couldn’t really tell. “I think it looks a little better,” I said. Hayden was a bit of a hypochondriac. It was best to err on the positive side.
“Well, it feels worse,” he said. “I could really use some more ice.”
“I’ll find some,” I told him as I dumped the watery remains from the plastic bag into the bathroom sink.
“It really hurts, you know,” he told me as I put my hand on the doorknob. “And my stomach is killing me. Really bad pains. From that clam. I know it.”
“Do you want me to get you a doctor?”
He shook his head. “No, no. I’ll be all right.”
I walked downstairs, trying to figure out why men were so confusing. It really hurts, but don’t get me a doctor. I’ve got terrible pains, but I don’t need any help. It was more fun to complain, I figured.
One of the maids filled the plastic bag with ice. When I returned, Hayden had both pillows under his leg. I placed the bag of ice around his ankle.
“Oh, that’s great,” he said with a sigh. “Thanks, honey.” I was about to sit down next to him when he added, “I was just wondering…”
“Yes?”
“If maybe an Ace bandage would help, and a bottle of Pepto-Bismol for my stomach.”
An Ace bandage. Pepto-Bismol. I glanced around the room, as though they might pop up out of nowhere. “Okay, I’ll go to the pharmacy downtown.”
“Ellen, you’re the best.” He patted my hand. As I got up again he added, “Could you please pick up some Alka-Seltzer, too? I might need that.”
I gazed at him, lying there. He looked so pathetic, so uncomfortable, the bag of ice melting around his puffed-up ankle. “It’s all right,” I said. “I just want you to get better.”
Chapter 14
Kenlyn Farm
I plodded down the three flights of stairs, my mind heavy with worries about the invasion of the press in two days. I got into the car and sat for a minute, staring at the fine coating of salt on the windows. Then I drove toward town and found an empty parking space in front of a shop called the Wine Cellar. The sign was pretty—a burgundy wine bottle under an arch of purple grapes. Opening the door to the shop, I stepped inside a cozy room filled with old mahogany wine racks. Hundreds of bottles sparkled under tiny lights set in the ceiling. I spotted a sign for French wines and walked toward it with no expectations. To my surprise, I found several good Bordeaux selections, including a Château Beychevelle 2000 Saint-Julien. I picked up the bottle, the familiar single-masted ship on the label like an old friend.
On the far wall of the store was a long oaken counter with a varnish job that would have put a bowling alley to shame. Behind the counter, a man with a round, sunburned face was reading a boating magazine.
I walked over and placed the bottle on the counter. “I’ll also need a corkscrew, please.”
“That’s a nice Saint-Julien,” the man said, looking at the label. “Have you tried it?”
I told him I had.
“Yes…very nice.” He grabbed a plastic corkscrew and a paper bag. “I love that nose of licorice and black currant.”
I pulled a fistful of twenties from the bottom of my purse and set them on the counter. “Yes,” I said. “So do I.”
“I don’t sell too much of that,” he said, putting the bottle and corkscrew in the bag. “We do get the occasional tourist who buys it, and there’s a fellow in town who orders a couple of cases every now and then.�
�� He passed the bag to me.
Must be a good customer, I thought, knowing the wine was pricey. I thanked him and walked toward the door.
“Miss? Uh, miss?” The man called to me and I turned. He waved something in the air. “Is this yours?”
I walked back and saw that he was holding the phone message Paula had given me. The one from Roy.
“It was stuck to your money,” he said.
I looked at Paula’s scrunched-up writing:
2:15
Ellen Branford—
Roy called. Says he’s sorry.
I thanked him and left.
Outside in the sunlight I looked at the note again and wondered what Roy was apologizing about. Leaving so abruptly? The lecture on developers and their supposed effects on small towns? I did think he was being overly sensitive about any changes happening in Beacon. Why Roy got his nose out of joint in the first place was beyond me. Hayden was only joking about that golf course idea. I had tried to tell him that.
I got into the car and headed away from town, ignoring the turn onto Prescott Lane, which would have taken me back to the inn. I headed toward Dorset Lane and Roy’s house, telling myself I was just going there to let him know I’d gotten his message and that I wasn’t upset with him.
Halfway down the street I saw the Audi sitting in the middle of Roy’s driveway like a green light at an intersection. I pulled my car in behind it, walked up to the front porch, and rang the doorbell three times. Nothing.
I drove back to town, past the shops and along the beach, to the place where the new house was being built. There, parked in the dirt area in front, sat Roy’s blue pickup, the late afternoon sunlight glinting off its hood.
Walking around to the back of the house, I expected to see the door open, to hear the whir of a saw or the ping of a hammer, to see Roy with a tool belt slung around his hips. But the house was quiet, and then I remembered it was Sunday.
As I looked toward the ocean, I saw someone standing on the rocks, throwing stones into the surf. Although his back was to me, I could see it was Roy. I called his name, but he didn’t hear. I walked toward him, the surf crashing, salt spray hanging in the air, and called to him again.
He wheeled around, a couple of stones falling from his hand. “Ellen. What are you doing here?” His hair looked wiry and windblown, his face sunburned, like he had spent an afternoon on a boat. His eyes looked tired or maybe mad. I couldn’t tell.
Oh, no, I thought. This is a bad idea. I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “I got your message.” A wave broke over the rocks, and I stepped back to avoid the spray.
He held a gray stone in his hand and rubbed it between his fingers. “Yeah, okay. I’m glad you got it,” he said, hurling the rock into the ocean.
A valley of silence slid between us. “I didn’t have your number,” I told him. “And I wanted to let you know I’d gotten it. The message, I mean. Thanks for the apology.” I picked up a blue mussel shell from a pile at my feet. It was dark and smooth. As the waves whirled toward the rocks, I thought about the feel of Roy’s arms around me and the determined look in his eyes the day I fell through the dock.
“Yeah, well, okay,” he said, tossing another stone. It flew far out, made a graceful arc, glistened for a moment in the sun, and then disappeared.
“I drove by the house,” I went on, “but you weren’t there.” I shivered as the wind blew through my shirt.
“I called,” Roy said, “because I wanted to tell you I was sorry. I know I walked off in a huff.”
“Yeah, we couldn’t figure out what happened.”
“I just got a little upset…about what your fiancé was saying.”
I shivered again and rubbed my arms. “He didn’t mean anything.”
“Is he a developer? Is he some kind of wheeler-dealer?”
“Hayden?” I started to laugh. “Wheeler-dealer?” I thought about his work as a litigator, his charity involvement, the run he would soon make for city council, the New York Times reporter and photographer who would be here in a couple of days. He was a wheeler-dealer, all right. “He’s an attorney.”
“Same thing, isn’t it?”
I sighed.
A seagull veered overhead, banked, circled, and flew off. Roy turned to me. “I want to show you something. Do you have a couple of minutes?”
I looked at my watch. It was five fifteen. Hayden would be waiting for me, waiting for the ankle bandage and the Pepto-Bismol and the Alka-Seltzer. I needed to get back.
Roy’s keys dangled in his hand, sunlight flickering off the metal.
“Yeah,” I said. “I do have a couple of minutes.”
We drove down roads now familiar to me, Roy shifting the truck and fooling with the radio, trying to tune in a station. We came to the stone wall I’d driven past three days before and drove on, the road running parallel to it. The sun was a yellow haze on the horizon, beginning its late afternoon descent. Finally the wall opened up, just enough to allow the intrusion of a dirt path, and we turned in.
“This is Kenlyn Farm,” Roy said, the truck rattling over a patch of bumpy ground.
“Yes, I’ve passed this several times,” I told him.
“My grandparents used to own this land.”
“They owned this?” I said, taking my first glimpse of what the wall had hidden from view.
Acres of wildflowers and tall grasses grew unimpeded. I hung my head out the window, gazing at the black-eyed Susans, buttercups, Queen Anne’s lace, purple lupine, and goldenrod running riot up and down the hills. I suddenly understood a lot more about Roy and why he’d been so sensitive about this place.
“It’s been out of the family for a long time,” he said.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, afraid I might break the spell. “Is it all right that we’re in here?”
He shrugged, ignoring the question. “I’ll show you the best view. It’s at the top of that slope there.”
He pointed to an incline ahead of us, and we drove toward it, stems and branches crunching and crackling under the truck’s wheels, rustling beneath the metal frame. He stopped a few yards from the wall and stepped out of the truck.
Then he came around and opened my door. “Be careful.” He took my hand and helped me down. The wildflowers were dense and high, almost to my knees, and from them came the steady hum of grasshoppers, crickets, and bees.
“Is it true that this all used to be blueberries?” I asked, turning around to take in the view from every direction.
“Yeah, it was once all blueberries,” Roy said.
We walked to the stone wall, which stood about three feet high at its tallest point. Much of the wall was lower, due to the effects of time and weather and obvious indifference on the part of its owners. Rocks and boulders had scattered to the ground as though they had jumped overboard to freedom.
Roy found a foothold and climbed up. Then he offered me his hand again, and I scrambled up and sat down on a large flat rock, swinging my legs over the wall next to his.
I gazed over the field, down the slope to a grove of pine trees at the bottom. “You’re right about the view.” I would have loved to photograph it in the late afternoon light.
Roy moved a few loose rocks from a pile on the top of the wall and placed them in some of the gaps around us.
“There’s a poem about fixing a wall,” I said.
He nodded. “Robert Frost. ‘Mending Wall.’”
I picked up a loose rock. “‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.’”
Roy looked down the length of the wall, with its lichen-covered boulders and tufts of green weeds sprouting in gaps between the stones. “‘That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,’” he said. “‘And spills the upper boulders in the sun, and makes gaps even two can pass abreast.’”
I sat there with my mouth open. “Do you know the whole thing?”
He smiled sheepishly. “Used to. Memorized it once for school. Could probably dredge it all up if I had to.”
“Impressive,” I said. A bee buzzed lazily at my feet.
Roy stared across the field. “I thought maybe if you saw this you’d understand why I got upset this afternoon.”
“Oh…you mean your lecture on developers?”
He nodded.
“I think I do understand. I know development can be a double-edged sword.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m not one of those crazy activists, those people who are against every new idea. I don’t think all development is bad. But I’ve seen some bad things done in the name of progress and improvement.”
He moved a little closer to me on the wall. I held my breath.
“And I come from a long line of stubborn Maine Cummings folks who felt the same way,” he said.
“Really? How far back does your family go in Maine?”
“Five generations.” He pointed to the sun, which had become a soft ball of putty on the horizon. “Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Very.”
“My people were all from Augusta,” he said as he fit another stray rock into a small crevice between us. “That’s the state capital,” he added with a wink.
“Yes, I know that.”
He stared at me again. “You’ve got nice eyes. A little green, a little blue. I can’t really figure them out.” He continued to look at me, leaning in closer.
“They’re green-blue,” I said, pulling back.
“I think I just said that.” He smiled, letting his gaze rest on me a little too long.
I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. I couldn’t let him make a pass at me. No, that would be horrible. But then why did I come here? Just to tell him I’d gotten his message? Or was I feeding my ego with his attention? “So your ancestors were from Augusta?” I asked, turning the subject back to his family.
Roy picked up a small stone from the top of the wall and pointed to a shiny pink streak down the middle. “Yeah, until my grandfather broke the mold and moved to Beacon.”
“Why did he do that?”
“He met a woman from Beacon,” Roy said, “and he fell in love.”