Places by the Sea

by Jean Stone

  Ben wanted to kill him. This was the kid he had spent so much time training, this was the kid he wished had been his son. Now, all he wanted to do was tear him apart, limb by limb, starting with the thing that Kyle hadn’t been able to keep in his pants.

  He stepped on the accelerator of the Nissan and aimed it toward Beauford Terrace. His heart ached for Jill—a frightened mother, who had witnessed her daughter’s innocence crash down around her, shattered in the centuries-old darkness of the 1802 where the ghosts of her ancestors still roamed.

  The worst part was, it was Ben’s fault. If he’d never allowed Carrie to hang around Jill’s while Kyle was working, Amy wouldn’t have met her, wouldn’t have tried so hard to be like her. It was his fault, goddamnit.

  He ripped the Nissan onto the shoulder in front of Kyle’s house, got out of the car, stomped up the walk, and pounded on the door. Within seconds, Rita opened it.

  “Let me talk to Kyle,” Ben seethed, fighting to keep his voice under control and his temples from exploding.

  “He’s asleep.”

  Ben pushed past her into the house. “Then I’ll damn well go and wake him.”

  “Hold it right there, mister,” she said, grabbing the sling on his arm. “You have no right busting in here.…”

  “It’s okay, Mom,” came Kyle’s voice from the top of the stairs. “Send him up.”

  Rita yanked her hand away, exhaled her anger, and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Ben tromped up the stairs, his arm throbbing under the white plaster cast, his shoulder pounding where the chisel had been rammed.

  In the doorway of one of the bedrooms stood Kyle, wearing pajamas and a pitiful look. Among other things, he was obviously hungover.

  “Why, Kyle? That’s all I want to know. Why?”

  “I’m sorry, Ben. I know I let you down.”

  “Let me down? Are you crazy? The girl is fourteen, Kyle. Fourteen. There are laws against this. Is that what you want? To spend the best years of your life behind bars?”

  “She said she was sixteen. Almost seventeen.”

  Ben banged his hand against the yellowed wall. Plaster crumbled to the floor.

  “I was only trying to make Carrie jealous. We had a fight …”

  Ben snorted. “A fight? You had a fight with your girlfriend so you were trying to show her you didn’t need her? Is that how it went, Kyle?”

  “Carrie …” Kyle began, then shook his head. “Never mind. We had a fight, that’s all.”

  Ben bored his eyes into Kyle. “I can’t believe how stupid you are. I can’t believe how stupid I was for trusting you.”

  “I didn’t fuck her, Ben.”

  He raised his fist in front of Kyle’s face. “Only because you were interrupted.”

  Kyle shook his head. “That’s not true.”

  “Of course it’s true. I wasn’t born yesterday.” He stared at the boy, his rage still pumping. But Ben didn’t know what to do next.

  “I suppose this means I’m fired,” Kyle said calmly.

  He quickly thought about all the work that lay ahead. Jill’s house. The estate on Nantucket. The others. Then he remembered the look on Jill’s face. The look of shame, the look of hopelessness. “Yes,” he answered before he let himself think any longer. “You’re fired, Kyle. Don’t bother to come to my house. I’ll put your check in the mail.”

  With that, he spun around, marched down the stairs and out the front door, knowing he had done the right thing, and hoping to hell the pain in his gut would go away.

  Rita leaned against the counter in the kitchen, wishing she had a drink, wishing she’d never been born, and wondering if she and her only child would be imprisoned in the same jail.

  Jill wanted to go back to Boston.

  “You can’t,” Christopher said when she called him that morning.

  “I have to,” she answered. She was lying on the bed of her parents’ room, the phone cord stretched from the hall, the door closed. Slowly, she told him what had happened. When she finished, he was silent. “I have to get off this island,” she said.

  “Look, honey, I know this is upsetting, but it’s not the end of the world.”

  “Not the end of the world? Christopher, she’s fourteen.”

  “Kids are faster today. Their world is faster.”

  “Well I think it stinks.”

  “So do I. But you have teenagers, Jill. You were going to have to face this sooner or later.”

  She wove her fingers through the black coils of the cord. “I would have preferred later.”

  Christopher sighed. “Listen, honey, Labor Day weekend is only a couple of weeks away. Can you hold out until then?”

  “No. I want to leave today.”

  “It’s not that easy. I’ve made some plans.…”

  “What plans?”

  “With Maurice Fischer. I promised him a weekend on the Vineyard.”

  Jill squeezed her eyes closed. “I wish you’d talked to me about it first.”

  “I didn’t think it mattered. You knew I was coming for the long weekend. You’re coming home with me, remember?”

  She opened her eyes and looked past the Boston rocker in the corner, toward the white curtains adrift in the morning breeze.

  “Besides,” he continued, “won’t you need more time to work with Sam Wilkins?”

  Sam Wilkins. Her stomach rolled. “If it weren’t for Sam Wilkins, Amy wouldn’t be in this mess. If I’d never driven her over there to see Carrie—to make friends with Carrie, for God’s sake—it never would have happened.”

  “Jill, that’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? It’s because of my damn work that this happened. I sacrificed my daughter for the sake of a story.” She didn’t add that the story had been his idea. “This is all happening too fast, Christopher. I have a responsibility to my kids. I probably never should have agreed to the Lifestyles spread. And I’m not altogether sure L.A. is the right place for them. Certainly not Amy.” It wasn’t until she said it that Jill realized how much this had been on her mind.

  “Wait a minute, Jill. You’re overreacting.”

  His words stabbed her.

  “Amy had a small escapade with some island boy,” he continued. “Are you going to let that ruin the rest of our lives?”

  Her head ached, her mind felt as though it had left her body, her breathing became shallow, painful, labored. Overreacting? He thought she was overreacting? It was the same thing he’d said when Jill was upset over Amy’s too-mini-miniskirt. Would he feel she was overreacting if Amy were his daughter?

  “I’m sorry if that sounds a little strong,” he continued. “But you’ve got to think about reality.”

  Up from her heart, tears rose. “The reality is I want to get off this damn island. I want to come home. I want to go back to work.”

  “Your work right now is there. I suggest you take a shower, clean up, and track down Sam Wilkins. You need to get your mind on something else, something productive. If you can pull the story together by Labor Day, it will impress the hell out of Fischer.”

  She didn’t answer because she was afraid she would scream.

  “Have you talked with Amy since last night?”

  “No. She hasn’t come out of her room.”

  “Go easy on her, Jill. This is a tough age for her. And she’s facing a lot of changes. Us included.”

  Jill wondered if there was any age that wasn’t tough, forty-three included.

  “Now pack up your notebook and go to Sam Wilkins. It will give both you and Amy a chance to cool down.”

  She turned on her back and stared up at the canopy ceiling.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  She pressed her hand to her forehead. “Sure,” she answered, “I guess.”

  “It’s for the best, honey. Everything will be fine.”

  They said good-bye, and Jill hung up the phone. She sat on the edge of the bed, rocked back and forth slowly, and realized that even if she wanted to leave toda
y, she couldn’t. She hadn’t finished weeding out her parents’ things, and now there was the problem of making sure the work around here would be done.

  The Sam Wilkins story, however, could wait. Right now the most important thing Jill could do was to try to talk to Amy, try to get this out in the open—face the problem, then move past it—the way Florence Randall never would have done.

  But first, she had to figure out what the hell she was supposed to say.

  She didn’t blame Jill for wanting her out of her life. Rita parked her car, walked to the front door of the nursing home, and wondered if oral sex could be considered rape. She had no idea if Jill would press charges, and the worst part was, Rita wouldn’t blame her for that, either.

  Walking down the long corridor toward Mrs. Parker’s room, Rita realized the only person to blame was herself. She was to blame for setting a bad example for Kyle, for being no better role model than her own mother had been, for allowing him to think that screwing the tourists was fine, as long as it got you what you wanted.

  She clutched the small box of fudge and knocked on the door of Room 114, not knowing whether Mrs. Parker or Rita was the one who needed cheering up.

  “Come in,” came a faint whisper.

  Rita straightened the front of her short lavender T-dress and went into the room.

  The first thing that struck her was how dark it was in there. Dark and stale, with, thankfully, no nursing home urine smell.

  “Mrs. Parker? It’s me. Rita Blair.”

  The shadowy bump on the bed responded. “Rita Blair? Oh, my, what a surprise.”

  Rita navigated around the clutter of chairs and tables. “I brought you some fudge. Penuche.”

  “How sweet you are, Rita,” Mrs. Parker said as the motor of the bed whirred, elevating her head. “I’ve always said what a sweet girl you are.”

  A lump rose in Rita’s throat. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “Not at all. I was daydreaming. It helps to pass the time.”

  Rita remembered when the term “passing the time” horrified her, as though people were eager to make the minutes, hours, years fly by, as though they were excited about growing old. Looking at the frail woman in the grayed light now, she supposed that no matter what anyone did, time was damn sure going to pass anyway. Might as well daydream if it took the edge off your problems; might as well stay up all night making fudge.

  “Would you like me to open the drapes?” Rita asked. “It’s a beautiful day.” She set the box on the tray table and walked to the window.

  “That would be nice. How is your mother?”

  “Fine,” she answered, pulling the cord to the traverse rod. Light flooded into the room. She reached over and cranked the window, letting in a gentle, warm breeze.

  “I had so many good times with Hazel. Remember the summers you spent with us? Two or three, wasn’t it?”

  “Three summers,” Rita said. She looked at the garden of get well cards thumbtacked to the small bulletin board across from the bed, then sat in a black vinyl chair. “I was seven, ten, and twelve.” The Parkers’ house had been the one summer retreat she’d enjoyed: Mrs. Parker baked cookies and pies and taught Rita how to make fudge—how to “pass the time,” until Rita and her mother could go home.

  “I miss your mother,” the old woman said.

  Rita lowered her eyes to her lap. Two tears spilled out, tiny dark spots of sorrow staining her dress.

  Mrs. Parker stretched a blue-veined hand toward her. “What’s the trouble, dear?”

  Rita shook her head. “No trouble. I guess I miss my mother, too.” Until that moment, Rita hadn’t known just how much she did miss Hazel—missed having her to talk to, even missed taking care of her. She could have talked to her mother about Kyle and Amy; she could have talked to her about the IRS, about Joe Geissel, about his pain-in-the-ass wife. But somehow, these weren’t the kinds of conversations you had by way of Ma Bell. She wondered if that had been the real reason she’d come today: because she’d needed to connect with an older woman, a mother’s love.

  “I still miss my own mother,” Mrs. Parker said.

  Rita looked up. “You do?”

  She nodded, her pink scalp peeking through her thinning hair. “Imagine that. I’ll be eighty-two this year, and I still miss my mother. She’s been gone thirty years. Nearly thirty-one.” She sighed a shallow, small-lunged sigh.

  “Thirty-one years …” Rita said.

  “Sometimes, when I have problems, I close my eyes and talk to her. She always listens, and I always hear what she tells me to do.”

  Rita’s gaze fell back to her lap.

  “What would your mother tell you now?” Mrs. Parker asked.

  Raising her head, she smiled. “My mother would tell me I should visit Mrs. Parker more often.”

  The woman nodded again. “Have a piece of your penuche, dear. It will make you feel better.”

  Three pieces of fudge and an hour later, Rita walked into the sunlight of the parking lot and knew what she had to do. It was too late to change what had happened between Kyle and Amy, but maybe it wasn’t too late to help herself. She would begin by putting an end to the lies.

  Chapter 19

  The door of the tavern was unlocked: Charlie, thankfully, had come in early.

  “Hey, Rita. I didn’t expect you until six,” he said, wiping his hands on a towel behind the bar. “The damnedest thing happened last night. Someone pried the lock off the back door. I thought maybe someone had broken in. But nothing seems to be missing.”

  Rita sighed and slid onto a bar stool. “Charlie, we’ve known each other all our lives, haven’t we?”

  He frowned. “What’s wrong, Rita?”

  She closed her eyes and wished that things were different now, that things could have been different years ago. “I need your help.” She opened her eyes to see his reaction.

  Setting down the towel, Charlie leaned toward her. “Anything. You know that.”

  The furrows on her brow deepened. “It’s about Kyle,” she began. “He brought Jill’s daughter here last night. We caught them in the act in the secret room.”

  Charlie’s eyebrows raised. “Here?”

  She winced and gestured toward the bookcase. “There.” She hoped he wouldn’t comment that it wasn’t the first time the room had been used for such purposes. But Charlie said nothing, as she should have known. He was, after all, a gentleman—something Rita had too little experience with. She squirmed on the stool and wrapped her feet around the legs. “Jill’s daughter is only fourteen.”

  Charlie whistled. “No shit.”

  “I’m afraid there might be some consequences.”

  “Jesus,” he said with a shake of his head. “What was he thinking?”

  “He was thinking about himself. The way most men do.” If her words hurt his feelings, he didn’t show it. Anyway, Rita reassured herself, he probably knew it was true. “But that’s not the point,” she continued. “The point is, I’m …” Her words choked out, squeezed by the sudden constriction in her chest … “I’m scared, Charlie. I don’t want my kid to go to jail.”

  “How can I help? Should I talk to Jill?”

  She shook her head. “No. I’m the only one who can help Kyle. But in order to do that, I’ve got to get my own act together.”

  Charlie smiled. “I always thought you’ve been in control of things.”

  Rita snickered. Mrs. Parker thought she was sweet. Charlie thought she was in control. She rubbed her hand across the shiny mahogany and wondered if anyone ever really knew anyone else. “I’m hardly in control, Charlie. I’m surprised the Vineyard ‘grapevine’ hasn’t learned that yet.”

  “I don’t listen to gossip, Rita.”

  She narrowed her eyes and studied him. “No, I don’t suppose you do. Well, the truth is, Charlie, the IRS is banging on my door, and I haven’t got a pot to piss in.”

  “The IRS? Jesus, Rita. Do you have any more good news this morning?”

 
“Please, Charlie. This isn’t easy for me to ask.”

  He softened his tone, lowered his voice. “Do you need money, Rita? How much?”

  “I was wondering if we could consider it an advance against my pay …”

  “How much, Rita? I’ll do what I can …”

  “Twenty grand,” she said quickly, before she lost her nerve.

  Charlie looked like he’d swallowed a quahog, shell and all. “Twenty grand?”

  She slid off the stool. “Never mind,” she said, “I shouldn’t have come.” She turned to walk away.

  “Rita, get your ass back here.”

  Rita stopped. She couldn’t believe that gentleman-Charlie-Rollins had spoken to her that way. She turned with a half smile. “Get my ass back there?”

  He grinned. “Yeah. If you get your ass back here I’ll give you the twenty grand. You can pay me back a hundred years from now. I don’t care.”

  Slowly, she edged back toward the bar. “Charlie, do you mean that?”

  “Of course I mean it, you idiot. You think I don’t give a shit what happens to you?”

  Rita swallowed hard. No, she wanted to say. I never thought you gave a shit what happened to me. Then Jill’s words came back to her mind. I think Charlie is still a little in love with you.

  She ran her hand through her short red curls and wondered if there was any chance that Jill had been right.

  It was almost noon before Jill knocked on the door to Amy’s room. There was no answer.

  She turned the knob and pushed against the door. It didn’t open. There was, she knew, no lock on the door: this, after all, had been her room, and Florence would never have allowed it.

  “Amy, I don’t know what you have in front of the door, but move it. I want to come in. We have to talk.”

  Silence.

  She shoved the door again. It opened only a couple of inches, enough for Jill to see that the solid cherry bureau was wedged against it, that no one lay on the rumpled bed, and that the window was wide open. Beyond the window stretched the arms of an oak tree—limbs close enough, sturdy enough to provide swift escape.

  “God,” Jill moaned, and pressed her forehead against the door. “Amy. Amy. Where are you?”