Places by the Sea

by Jean Stone

  She awakened to the feel of something warm against her skin. Lying on her side, Jill opened her eyes and looked down at the arm draped over her, at the hand that caressed her breast. She smiled. “You’re early,” she murmured. “Or I’m waking up late.”

  “A little of both,” Christopher answered, pressing his nakedness against her back.

  His hardness stirred against her as it grazed her buttocks. Below her waist, she began to tingle. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  He pulled her back closer to him. “Me, too.”

  “I must have overslept because the power saw isn’t going today.”

  “Addie’s outside with the photo crew. Give her a minute and she’ll make more noise than a power saw.”

  “Oh,” Jill groaned and moved closer against him. “She gives me a headache sometimes.”

  Christopher laughed. “I know, honey, but …”

  “But she’s only got our best interests at heart.”

  “And her fifteen percent,” he added.

  Jill turned to face him. She took him in her hand and began to stroke. “Speaking of being realistic,” she whispered, “Addie told me I was naive to think Good Night, Boston wouldn’t change. What did she mean? Oh, and how was your dinner?”

  He took a lock of Jill’s hair, entwined it in his fingers. “Dinner was wonderful, but I missed you terribly.”

  “Did you dazzle him?”

  “You would have dazzled him more.” He lowered his head and sucked her nipple.

  “You didn’t tell him about Sam, did you?”

  “I told him you were working on a piece that would knock the socks off the world.”

  She grinned. “Well, that certainly puts the pressure on.”

  He slid his hand between her legs. “I don’t think we need to talk about this right now.”

  “But what about the changes, Christopher? What did he say?”

  “Just a couple of minor things, including that there will be a big emphasis on promotion.”

  “Well, I’d expect they’d promote it.”

  “Not them. Us. I get the feeling we’ll have to do a lot. But don’t worry, honey,” he said as he probed his finger around her vagina, then thrust it into her warmth. “I’m sure Addie will handle all that.”

  She moved with the rhythm of his finger, but her thoughts were on Addie—on how the woman had already handled their promotion, including the use of Jeff and Amy—the same children the woman had been “too tired to deal with” last night.

  “What kind of promotion? More Lifestyles layouts?”

  Christopher’s finger stopped. “Jill. Please. I’m trying to make love to you, not conduct a meeting.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m only concerned about our future. I wasn’t the one at dinner with Fischer, remember?”

  His penis grew soft. She slid her hand away.

  Christopher rolled onto his back and sighed. “Okay, you win,” he said without humor. “He talked about product endorsements. Plus, appearances at film premiers and charity events. They’ll want us to be seen.” He paused. “There. Are you happy now?”

  Ignoring his sarcasm, Jill thought of her calendar that was already too packed with work, with her life. “Are they forgetting we’ll have a show to do Monday through Friday?”

  He sat up, drew up his knees, and folded his hands on top of them. “That’s another one of the changes. We’ll still be on every day, but the workload won’t be as demanding.”

  “We’ll be doing national stuff. How can he say the workload won’t be as demanding?”

  He tented his fingers in an upside-down “V.” “Because we won’t have to write the stories.”

  She thought she must have heard him wrong. “What?”

  “We’ll have a staff to do the writing. And the producing. All we have to do is sit behind the desk and look impressive.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  The warmth he had generated now turned to a chill. “So we’ll be nothing more than talking heads.”

  “Hey, if talking heads is what they want, count me in. For a three-year contract at a million five apiece, I’ll talk my head off.”

  She yanked back the sheet and got out of bed. “That may be fine for you, you were a baseball player. But, God, Christopher, I’m a journalist. Journalists research. They write. They produce their own stories.”

  “Does Barbara Walters do her own research?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “She has a staff, Jill. I keep telling you that you’ve got to think of the big picture. Besides, Fischer isn’t talking Boston. He’s talking Hollywood. L.A.”

  Jill threw on her robe and went to the window. She moved the thin sheer drape and looked outside. A small army of blue-jeaned-clad people—women with short hair, men with ponytails—swarmed over the lawn, setting up tripods and umbrellas. Close by, watching them intently, stood Amy. “So, it’s L.A.? Not New York? Or Atlanta?”

  She heard the familiar rattle of Christopher’s belt buckle as he pulled on his pants. “A little Hollywood life might be exciting. If you think you can manage to let yourself get excited.”

  “Just what Amy needs,” she said quietly, “life in L.A.” She looked down at the life below her, listened to the fervor of voices, felt the pulse of activity. Then she glanced over to her mother’s hydrangea bushes and thought about their predictability, the fact that year after year, they had blossomed there, would continue to blossom there. They were island flowers, rooted in the land. They flourished in the salt air and grew colorful in the limy soil. But Jill Randall had not flourished on this island. She had been an unwanted child, whose roots had never quite taken hold. She had needed something, somewhere different. She had needed to find somewhere where she felt she belonged. Yet even still, deep within her, lay the seeds of the hydrangea, in the soil of the Vineyard.

  She turned to Christopher; he was putting on his shirt. She went to him and straightened his collar. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she meant it. For Jill knew her life was about to change, about to become everything she had ever dreamed of and more. She couldn’t let the doubts of her childhood ruin it now.

  “No problem,” he answered. “I’ll see you outside.”

  As Jill watched him go, she decided that later tonight, when they were safely alone in bed, she would make it up to him. They would make long, wonderful love, and then she would read to him from the pages of her mother’s diary. She would share her pain with the man she loved. Maybe then the ache inside her would subside. Maybe then, once and for all, she could move on.

  Chapter 16

  The backyard looked like the spring flower show at the National Gardens. How Addie had come up with the pots and pots of daisies and sweet williams and nasturtiums that were now tucked between Florence’s rows of blossoms, Jill had no idea. She also had no idea how long it would be before the flowers—and the people—would wither in the August heat. Addie kept splashing her face and throat with water from the outside spigot, and though she seemed to be perspiring more than the rest, Jill suspected Addie Becker would be the last to cry uncle.

  Jeff had been the first.

  “Mom,” he wailed long after noon as he flopped beside her on the stairs between takes. “Do we have to do any more? They’ve already taken a billion pictures.”

  They had photographed the four of them—the family of the new millennium—having a simulated picnic by the water, packing their bikes as though they were about to set out on an island exploration, and sitting on the back steps. They had photographed Christopher playing volleyball with the kids while a smiling Jill looked on; they had photographed Jill and Amy clipping fresh flowers supposedly for the family dinner table. Jill did not mention her failed family brunch, or the fact that the only time they ate together was when they were out.

  Thankfully, Addie had quickly dismissed her thought to shoot at the tavern (“Too dark, too dreary,” she’d remarked) as well as Christopher’s suggest
ion to use the Chappy ferry for a backdrop (“Quite tasteless and inappropriate”); Jill, in turn, had refused to let her recruit a neighbor’s golden retriever to “round out” the all-American look of the family.

  “Hang in a little longer,” Jill said to Jeff now. The back of her neck was baked from the sun, her cheek muscles were sore from smiling, and in her heart she agreed with her son that enough was enough. She looked across the yard at her daughter, who was having her makeup replenished by Carrie—a visitor to the “set.” Amy, at least, was enjoying the day.

  She shifted her gaze back to the cameras, where Christopher stood with Addie, their mouths moving, their heads nodding, conspiring about the next setup.

  Just then the sound of a truck in the driveway drew Jill’s attention. It was a white van, with black letters that read “White Glove Catering” emblazoned on the side. It was, she realized, another part of Addie’s grand plan.

  “Break for lunch!” Addie shouted to the crew of nine, ten, eleven, Jill had counted.

  All activity predictably ceased. Jill had been on enough photo shoots to know that when food arrived, nothing else mattered. It wasn’t that way in journalism. When there was a story to get, the story was gotten, no matter how long it took, no matter how many lunch breaks were missed. The story was the only thing that mattered—the story, and the deadline. She wondered how long it would take her to accept that journalism wasn’t Hollywood, and that once the RueCom deal was sealed, she’d never have to worry about that sort of thing again.

  Addie instructed the crew to clear the two long tables set up on the lawn, then directed the caterers to spread them with white tablecloths. In moments, the tables were covered with a plethora of plates and bowls of salads and vegetables and fruits, plus a heaping array of colorful butter cookies and what appeared to be brownies with huge chocolate chunks. As her eyes grazed the table, Jill realized she had no appetite at all.

  “It’s too hot to eat,” she said, though she noticed Addie’s plate was filled. Christopher seemed satisfied with a spoonful of red potato salad and a slice of steamship round.

  “Try to eat something, honey,” he said. “We’ve got a long way to go this afternoon.”

  She wanted to protest, but quickly remembered that when the cameras were on you, and your future was at stake, you smiled and did what you were told. You grinned and you bore it. The way the Lizette Frenches of the world surely did. She ladled some fruit into a dish and went to sit on the back steps. Christopher followed.

  “It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the heat,” he said as he settled in beside her.

  Jill pushed the spoon around the fruit, selected a ripe strawberry, and raised it to her mouth. “I can’t imagine how many more shots they want.” She wished the sun would go down, she wished the crew would leave, she wished she were alone in bed with Christopher. Alone, to share the diary.

  “Addie says they have enough out here,” he said as he took a mouthful of salad.

  “Out here? I thought this was the only place she wanted them to shoot.”

  “She changed her mind. She wants one in the living room.”

  “Inside the house?”

  “Yeah.” He said, smiling. “Beside the fireplace.”

  “The fireplace? Oh, no. Don’t tell me …”

  He laughed. “You got it. She wants a roaring fire.”

  Jill groaned. “Are you sure this is the way to L.A.?”

  “You can take it,” he said as he playfully poked her shoulder.

  She winced from the sunburn that had penetrated her shirt and wondered what made him think she was so tough. Was it because—except for this morning—she adapted to him so easily in bed? Did he think her physical needs and her needs for success were more important than her emotional ones? Tasting another strawberry, she wondered if he’d think she was so tough once he heard excerpts from the diary, once he learned about the real Jill Randall McPhearson—the Jill underneath the makeup, far from the camera lens, the Jill who had been hurt so much.

  “This doesn’t look like such hard work to me,” came a voice from the side of the yard.

  Jill turned to see Rita, standing, one hand shielding the sun’s glare, her eyes surveying the elegant luncheon buffet.

  “Rita!” Jill cried and stood to greet her. “I’m so glad you came!”

  If Jill didn’t know better, she’d say that Rita held back a little, as though she were shy, as though she were intimidated. “Rita,” Jill said as Christopher stood, “this is my main man. Christopher Edwards. Christopher, I’d like you to meet Rita Blair. My best friend.”

  The two shook hands; Jill looked for approval on Rita’s face. She could not tell if it was there.

  “Well, you’re going to have your hands full with this one,” Rita joked.

  “That probably works both ways,” he answered.

  Jill smiled, but wondered if he really believed it.

  Rita laughed and turned to Jill. “So how’s it going? They get enough pictures of you yet?”

  “No,” she answered, “Christopher keeps breaking the camera.”

  “Just remember our deal. Tonight’s Illumination Night. I’m here, so you owe me.”

  Illumination Night. Jill had forgotten. She wanted to say no to Rita. She wanted to be with Christopher. Alone. But she could not say no, not to Rita, not to her best friend. “You’re right,” she said, tucking her arm through Christopher’s, “and Christopher is going to love it.” Thankfully, Rita didn’t remark that having him along would “cramp their style.”

  “Sorry, honey,” Christopher said. “I forgot to tell you. I have to go back to the city tonight. I’ve got to do that story on that new Red Sox pitcher.”

  Jill frowned. Yes, she remembered the story: it had been Addie’s idea—the life of a major league hotshot compared with the life of a little leaguer. It was going to be poignant and appeal to the male audience. Christopher, of course, was perfect to handle it. “Right,” she said, “that will be a great story.” She turned and told Rita about the concept, trying to mask her disappointment that he would not be there for Illumination Night, to hold her later in bed and to listen as she read the pages of her past.

  The chisel had nearly severed an artery. On top of that, his arm was broken, and the doctor had told him he was lucky to be alive. If Carol Ann hadn’t found him, Ben could have bled to death.

  He stared at the IV bag that dangled from the metal pole and counted the drips down the snakelike tube. It was a pointless exercise, he knew, but the distraction kept his mind off the pain, if not off the realization that someone had actually tried to kill him.

  The worst part was, he didn’t believe Dave Ashenbach was behind it. Dave was a loudmouth: the sort of man who gets his satisfaction by trying to prove he is louder than everyone else. But was he a murderer? Ben just didn’t buy it. Even though, in the dim light, he hadn’t had a good look at his assailant, Ben was certain the man didn’t have Ashenbach’s jiggling hulk. And he was hard-pressed to believe that Dave could have convinced anyone else to do the job over a strip of abutting land that no one but him would give a damn about.

  On the seventy-ninth drip, Ben realized he had no idea who had done this to him, or why, or what he was going to do next. He had not told the police about the threat over Menemsha House. He preferred to believe the attack had nothing to do with it; that it was the work of a lone vandal, looking only to steal something. After all, the ski-masked figure hadn’t brought a weapon. It’s not as though trying to kill Ben was premeditated.

  Then again, he reminded himself as he squeezed his eyes shut against the pain, the Vineyard had little crime. It was one of the reasons he and Louise had loved it so much. There was little crime, simply because there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. It wasn’t as though someone could knock off a bank and beat feet to the next county. Not without a plane or a boat.

  The door to his hospital room opened and Carol Ann walked in, carrying his lunch tray. She was dressed in an of
f-white shirtdress that made her skin seem even creamier, her copper hair more vivid.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  Ben smiled. It had been a long time since she’d called him Daddy.

  She set the tray on the tall table and swung it over the bed. “Did you get much sleep?”

  He reached for the bed control and pressed the button, raising his head, causing his shoulder to throb, and making him wonder if the damn pain medication was ever going to kick in. “A little,” he answered. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

  She pulled a chair close to the bed, in strictest adherence to hospital regulations: Carol Ann would never have dared to sit on the edge of the bed. “The doctor said you can go home today. The nurse will be here soon to take out the IV.”

  Ben nodded and, with his tube-attached hand, raised the silver dome on the tray. A gray-white lump of what he supposed was fish jeered back at him. Beside that lay a sad clump of mashed potatoes and a pile of limp-looking carrots. He replaced the dome and reached for the cup of juice. Carol Ann quickly moved forward and peeled back the lid.

  “How long will this damn cast be on?” He looked down at his right arm, plastered white from his forearm to above his elbow, and tried not to think about what would have happened if Carol Ann hadn’t gone to the zoning board meeting, if she hadn’t been alarmed by his absence, and if she hadn’t had the daughterly need to check on her father.

  “Three or four weeks. It depends on how quickly you heal.” She stuck a straw in the cup and moved it closer to him. Ben leaned down and sipped like a helpless child.

  “Great. I’m sure Jill McPhearson will be delighted to hear that.”

  “It’s not your fault, Dad. You didn’t plan this.”

  “It is my fault, Carol Ann. Your mother always told me I was too independent. If I’d hired more people, the work could still get done if anything happened to me.”

  “So why didn’t you?” Carol Ann asked with a slight smile curving her lightly glossed lips.