Places by the Sea

by Jean Stone

  As my own mother before me, I only did the best I could.

  “Jill? What are you doing sleeping up here?”

  Jill rubbed her eyes. Christopher stood over her, looking down. She pulled the throw pillow close against her shoulder, then remembered where she was, what she had done. An empty mug of hot chocolate was on the floor beside her; the quilt insulated her against the cold wood floor; and she was tightly wrapped inside her mother’s old chenille robe. The robe and the hot chocolate had warmed her after Ben had left, after the air became chilled by his absence.

  She closed her eyes again. “I came up here after I got home last night. I was going through some things.” She was not going to tell him that Ben had been here, too, that she had made love to him, and he, to her.

  “I didn’t hear you come in. I assumed you were still with your friend.”

  Rita. Jill’s head began to ache. “No. I was home. I was here.”

  He stood in silence.

  “How was dinner?” she asked.

  “Fine,” was all he said.

  She opened her eyes and sat up. “I guess you’re angry at me.”

  “Not angry, Jill, just confused. I can’t believe you slept up here. On the floor.”

  She wondered what Christopher would have done, if his best friend’s son had just died.

  “Did you forget we’re leaving at noon?”

  Jill ran her hands through her tangled hair. “No. No, I didn’t forget.”

  “Then I suggest you get a move on. We’ve got places to go, things to do, and the career of your dreams to get under way.” He looked around the widow’s walk, then his eyes fell on the diary. “What were you reading?”

  Jill quickly picked up the diary, lightly caressing the unsealed lock, the cracks of the leather, the edges of time. “Nothing special,” she said as she replaced it in the trunk. “Just some old family recipes.”

  She pulled herself up and closed the lid of the trunk, then followed Christopher down the stairs to prepare for her new life.

  Ben stood on the cliffs of Gay Head and stared out across the sea. “I fell in love last night,” he said to his friend, Noepe. “Kyle died and I lost Menemsha House, and I fell in love last night.”

  “Love is good,” Noepe answered. “It is what keeps us all alive.”

  Ben tugged the visor of his Red Sox cap closer over his eyes. “She cannot love me back. She is in love with someone else.”

  “Perhaps,” Noepe answered. “Perhaps not. The important thing is that you feel again. Your inner soul has now returned.”

  Rita turned on her side and stared into the morning light, surprised that she had slept at all, surprised she had not awakened screaming, crying out for her only son.

  She did not know how long the pain would last. She did not think that it would ever go away. She stared into the hollowness of the room where she’d been raised, and wondered what life was all about, and why it was at all.

  And then she felt an arm around her, Charlie’s arm. Charlie’s safe, warm arm. Still clothed in yesterday’s now-wrinkled shirt, not groping for her body, only there to hold her, only there to bring her peace.

  “Good morning,” he whispered quietly. “I’m glad you slept.”

  “Have you been here the whole time?”

  He laughed. “Except when I answered the door.”

  “The door? Who was here?” A thought flashed into her mind. Had it been Kyle? Was he still alive? Then, the pain returned.

  “Well, Jesse Parker for one. And Hattie Phillips. And about a dozen others—neighbors, people you’ve been supplying with fudge all these years.”

  Neighbors, Rita thought. Good island neighbors. “What did they want?”

  “Let’s say there’s enough food downstairs to feed the tavern customers for a whole week in August. Breads, cookies, casseroles.”

  Rita sucked in her cheeks. “For me?”

  “For you,” Charlie whispered softly and kissed her hair. “For us.”

  The tears spilled from her eyes and the ache grew once more in her heart, and then Rita let herself move close against him, where she was safe, at last.

  Chapter 28

  “This is the hottest story of the decade, and you’re saying you won’t do it?” Maurice Fischer’s eyes popped as he spoke, their pupils jumped up and down. He aimed a piercing look at Christopher. “Talk to your bride-to-be. I think she needs a lesson in the facts of life.”

  They were crammed into her dressing room, awaiting the first show after her return. Jill hugged her back against the chair, and did not dare look at Christopher.

  “Ten minutes until Good Night, Boston,” came a voice from the tin speaker in the ceiling.

  “Honey,” Christopher’s voice tried to sound soothing, “it’s only one story. It’s a once-in-a-life-time break. We can’t walk away from it.”

  “I can,” she answered. “I can, and I will. I refuse to exploit my best friend for the sake of my career.”

  “Sweet Mother of God,” Maurice moaned.

  “If you don’t do it, someone else will,” Christopher continued. “Would you rather have a stranger hound Rita? Someone with no compassion for what she’s been through? They’ll chew her up, Jill.”

  “It won’t matter what I do. The media sleazeballs will find her. Rita can handle it.”

  “But you’re the one with the goddamn exclusive!” Maurice screeched as he bolted from the vanity stool and pounded his fist on the dressing table. The tiny white bulbs surrounding the mirror rattled. His neatly trimmed mustache quivered as he spoke. “You’re the one he lied to, you’re the one his daughter told the truth to. You’re the goddamn one, Jill. Nobody else!”

  She rose from her chair and walked to the window. From the thirty-second floor, Boston looked small, insignificant. It hadn’t always been that way. Once, it had seemed so big, so awe-inspiring, that her greatest goal had been to own it, to ride the wave to media stardom, to catch the all-American dream.

  “Talk some sense into her, Christopher. And do it goddamn fast. We’ve got a show to put together. It seems your young lady doesn’t understand the stakes.”

  “She knows what they are, Maurice, and she knows what to do,” Christopher said. “Come on, I’ve got a bottle of bourbon in my dressing room. Jill? I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  She did not turn to face them as they left. Instead, she folded her arms around her waist and thought about all that she had done to rise to meet the stakes: agreeing to the Lifestyles article, agreeing to write the Sam Wilkins story, agreeing to subject her daughter to a world that was out of touch with Jill’s values, and out of sync with reality.

  She knew the stakes, all right, and this time she was standing firm. Standing firm, the way she promised herself when she walked out of the Gay Head Police Station, three days ago.

  Carrie had agreed to speak to Jill before they left the island, to give her the answer to one final question: what had Carrie meant when she’d said she was tired of all the lies?

  “Did my father tell you I was a crack addict?”

  They were seated on hard wooden chairs in a small brown room at the station. Carrie was dressed in a loose blue smock; the dark roots of her hair were evident as it hung over her shoulders like a limp spaghetti mop.

  “Yes,” Jill answered.

  Carrie gnawed at a fingernail. “It’s not true,” she replied. “It’s a lie.”

  Jill didn’t know what to say.

  “It was part of his comeback plan,” the daughter of one of the world’s most cherished rock stars confessed. “He came to me one night and said he had it all worked out. That all I had to do was go along with it, and we’d be filthy rich again. It would help my career as an actor take off.”

  “What was the plan, Carrie? What was the rest of it?”

  “He said he’d explain that a private detective had found me in a crack house, that he wasn’t home, and that my mother, wild with rage, jumped in her car and took off to get me. That wo
uld have been when she had her accident.”

  Jill bit her lip. “And you’re saying none of it was true?”

  She shook her head. “He said the world would forgive him their doubts if they felt he was trying to protect his daughter. As long as he found a sucker reporter to be on his side. You fell into it, Jill. Hook, line, and sinker, as the Vineyard fishermen say.”

  A knot formed in Jill’s stomach. “What happened to your mother, Carrie?”

  The room grew silent. She lowered her head. Her hair hung down, covering her face. “All I know is they had a fight that night. I was there. She stormed out of the house and peeled down the driveway. I’ve always suspected he tampered with her brakes. But the car was demolished. No one but him will ever know the truth.”

  “So all these years, you’ve been the one protecting him.”

  She raised her eyes. “He’s my father, Jill. I’d already lost my mother. I didn’t want to lose him, too. But after all that business with Amy … and when I realized what I’d done to Kyle … that I left him trapped in the fire …” Her voice trailed off, her confession complete.

  Jill stared out at the skyline now, at the glass and gray buildings, at Boston Harbor beyond. Maurice, she knew, was right. The story of Sam Wilkins had erupted into one of sensational international scope: from the Saudi money man who tried to blackmail Sam for the Menemsha House property; to the island boy who was killed trying to save the land and, perhaps, save his conscience as well. Add to that the mix of the scandal over the mysterious death of Sam’s wife, the wayward daughter’s need to protect her father, and the near death of Ben Niles, an acclaimed celebrity home renovator, and it was definitely the stuff of which juicy television features were made.

  But Jill McPhearson was not going to be the one to make it. It would hurt too much those people whom she loved: Rita, Charlie … and, she admitted to herself, Ben.

  It would also turn the Vineyard into Chappaquiddick all over again.

  And, no matter how much she tried to deny it, Jill was not a sensation-seeker. She was a journalist. Nothing bigger, nothing more. The daughter of George and Florence Randall, who both had loved her after all.

  “Five minutes ’til air,” the ceiling screamed again.

  Jill glanced down at her gold Movado watch. Soon, it would, indeed, be airtime, another show, another night.

  Then the door to her dressing room opened. Christopher stomped in.

  “Are you nuts?” he asked. “Why are you being so stubborn?”

  She took a deep breath, then let it out. “I’m not being stubborn. I’m doing what feels right. For me.”

  His handsome face twisted in anger. His cheeks reddened. He walked to the vanity and picked up a brown package that had arrived earlier that afternoon.

  “Does it have anything to do with this?” he demanded to know.

  Jill stared at the package. Her hands grew moist. “Put that down, Christopher.”

  He laughed. “I knew it,” he said, untaping the end of the box that Jill had opened earlier. “What’s in here, anyway? I wasn’t aware that builders sent going-away gifts.”

  She wanted to lunge at him and rip the package from his hands. But it would not, she knew, make a difference. She doubted he would even care once he discovered what it was.

  She watched as he tore back the brown paper, then opened the lid of the box. Then he pulled the contents out.

  “Please be careful,” she said calmly. “It’s quite old.”

  He held it in his hand a moment, then turned back the leather cover. “What the hell is it?”

  “It’s a diary,” Jill answered. “My mother’s. Ben found it when he was packing up my mother’s things for Mrs. Sherman. He knew that I would want it.”

  Christopher smiled. “You are far too sensitive, Jill. It’s amazing that you ever got into this business.”

  Crossing to her vanity, she took the diary from his hands. Then she sat down. Her eyes moved to the black-and-white photos tucked around the edges of the mirror: Jill and Christopher accepting a plaque from the Associated Press, honoring the “innovation, insight, and warmth” of Good Night, Boston; Jill and Christopher with Jeff and Amy, receiving congratulations from Senator Kennedy at a charity fundraiser; Jill and Christopher in the Grand Ballroom of the Copley Plaza after the first ratings came out—smiling, celebrating, happy, with nowhere to go but up.

  Her gaze drifted to her Emmy—the shining symbol of her success, her inroad to stardom, there, waiting, hers for the taking. She touched its cool, smooth edges, caressing what could have been the future. Then she reached for the pear-shaped diamond on her hand, slipped it off her finger, and held it out to Christopher.

  “I won’t be needing this anymore,” she said.

  In the mirror, the reflection of shock was on his face. “You really are crazy, you know that?”

  “No, Christopher. I am not crazy. I am not part of this world of yours, I never could be. Give the ring to someone who will appreciate its worth. Someone like Lizette.”

  His nostrils flared. “There was never anything between Lizette and me.”

  Jill steadied her eyes on the glistening stone. “If she’s not appropriate, then I’m sure Addie can find someone who is. You don’t need me, Christopher. I am just an island girl after all.”

  He snatched the ring and stormed from the dressing room.

  She closed her eyes and felt the pressure ease.

  “Jill, we need you on the set,” the ceiling called again.

  Rising from the chair, Jill knew what she would do. She would do the show as planned, but it would be her last. There would be no L.A. for Jill McPhearson, no RueCom syndication. She was going back to the Vineyard, back to where her life had form and shape and substance, back to a place where she wouldn’t be afraid to raise her children.

  She would do some freelance stories—good stories, of the things she loved best, stories like the one about the Shermans and their household filled with love, and the one about the intriguing home renovator, with his tiny trademark whale etched in the glass over so many, many doors.

  Then Jill closed her eyes and smiled, and hoped that when the ferry chugged into Vineyard Haven, an old Buick would be waiting on the pier, and a gentle man in a Red Sox cap would be there to welcome her home.

  About the Author

  A New England native, Jean Stone has spent considerable, memorable times on the Cape and Islands, including at her summer home in Falmouth for many years. Her previous Bantam books—Sins of Innocence, First Loves, and Ivy Secrets—have been translated into several languages. She currently resides in southeast Michigan, where she is at work on her next novel.

  The Editor’s Corner

  May marks the halfway point between the first day of spring and the summer solstice—I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely ready for the warmth of spring and the heat of Loveswept romances! And you can always count on Loveswept to have the perfect gift for you and your mom this Mother’s Day.

  Let’s see what’s on sale this month:

  Small-town romance is first on the list with Laugh—Mary Ann Rivers continues her Burnside family series as two people try to share their hearts without losing their cool. Outlaws and daredevils are up next when the Justiss Alliance returns in Tina Wainscott’s Wild Ways, and the search for a missing woman forces two brave souls to tap into their wild sides. And in her Loveswept debut Against the Cage, Sidney Halston turns up the heat as a sexy cage fighter shows a former bookworm how delicious a few rounds between the sheets can be.

  Moms everywhere will certainly enjoy Loveswept’s Classics, beginning with Bonnie Pega’s back-to-back releases: Wild Thing, Then Comes Marriage, The Rebel and His Bride, Only You, and Animal Magnetism. Then Jean Stone weaves together an emotionally charged story of friendship and betrayal, forgiveness and love, in Places by the Sea. And, in #1 New York Times bestselling author Iris Johansen’s electrifying Blue Skies and Shining Promises, two hearts are thrown together by fate and united
by irresistible desire—don’t miss it!

  ∼Happy Romance!

  Gina Wachtel

  Associate Publisher

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