Beach House No. 9

by Christie Ridgway

  His heart jolted. “Gage?” He jumped to his feet. “Something’s happened to Gage?”

  “No, no.” Tess put both hands out. “Not that. It’s your friend. That young man you met yesterday.”

  “Huh? Brian?”

  “That was his mother. She thought you’d want to know….”

  Griffin froze. His tongue felt thick. “Just tell me,” he ordered his sister. “Say it quick.” Like ripping off a Band-Aid.

  “He’s going to be all right, but…”

  “Say it quick.”

  “After landing yesterday, on the way home, he crashed. He crashed his car into a tree one block from his parents’ house. It was raining,” she added. “A big storm.”

  A one-car crash, one block from home. Yeah, it was raining. A big storm. Inside Brian too.

  “His mom wanted to make sure that you knew and to thank you for talking with him,” Tess added.

  Griffin stared at her. “Why the hell would his mother say that?” What had the talking accomplished? Nothing. Not a thing. Dropping the hammer again, he ran down the steps, not wanting to discuss the subject—any subject—anymore.

  Talking did nothing—as evidenced by that look on Jane’s face and by Brian’s latest disaster. Because the fact was, Griffin didn’t have the right words to help, to heal, to explain any goddamn thing in the world to anyone, least of all himself.

  * * *

  IT WAS PAST DARK, and David had a simple plan to assuage the loneliness that assailed him every evening in the sprawling ranch house in Cheviot Hills. It was Friday night, and with the weekend ahead, he couldn’t face the quiet workless days without a little fix of his family. He was going to watch over them, just until morning. No one had to know about it but him.

  He trudged through the soft sand of Crescent Cove, once again in the wrong kind of shoes. Instead of flip-flops or those leather things in his closet that his daughter teased him were “mandals,” he was in his running shoes. Grains poured into the sides until he felt as if he was wearing lifts. Sloppy lifts that made him stumble a little. He almost dropped the pop-up tent he’d borrowed from his neighbor. The sleeping bags he’d found in the boys’ closet bobbled in his grasp.

  It would serve him right to fall flat on his face.

  Since it was exactly what he’d done with his life.

  Between Beach Houses No. 8 and No. 9 was a clear swath of sand. He intended to set up camp there, close enough to his family to ease his spirit, far enough away that they wouldn’t be aware of his presence. Though they all needed to become accustomed to Daddy keeping his distance.

  It took three tries to set up his makeshift camp. Two times the tent popped up all right but then sprang out of his hold. On the third attempt, he tamed it into submission, but when he crawled inside he kneed over a sharp object that made him roll to his back and cradle his bruised skin. Upon scooting back out and clawing the sand beneath the tent floor, he uncovered a hard plastic shovel. It looked very much like the one that came with the set of sand tools they’d put in the boys’ Easter baskets last spring.

  “Thanks, Easter Bun,” he muttered. Then he tossed it aside and dragged the sleeping bags in behind him.

  They didn’t have any adult-sized ones at the house. Neither he nor Tess had grown up camping, and the first baby had come too quickly in their marriage to explore it as a recreational possibility. So he’d grabbed the two that the boys brought to slumber parties. SpongeBob SquarePants and Buzz Lightyear. He unzipped them flat, intending to sleep sandwiched between their layers. Good thing. They were so short and narrow that one wouldn’t have contained half of him.

  As it was, his feet and shoulders stuck out of each end. But it was enough. He was warmed by being able to gaze on the small cottage that housed his four children and his wife. Flat on his belly, he toed off his shoes and stacked his hands to support his chin as he watched No. 8 through the tent flap.

  The low lights coming from the windows wavered in his vision. He was exhausted. Early to work, late to work out, followed by the grinding quiet of the empty house meant he’d slept little since Tess and his children had left him.

  In his dream, he was swimming in the ocean. Two seals floated close, their bodies pressing against his. He put an arm around each, riding alongside them toward shore, as happy as he’d ever been in his life. As happy as he’d been from the day he’d met his wife until the morning he’d turned forty years old.

  Then something kicked him in the nuts. He awoke with a jerk and a curse. What the…?

  “Knock knock,” his brother-in-law’s voice said from outside the tent.

  “Griffin?” David craned his neck to peer out the flap. There he saw the other man, flat on his back on the sand, staring up at the sky. “What’s going on?”

  “Just a little stargazing.”

  It was then that David realized the “seals” he’d dreamed of were instead his middle children, Duncan and Oliver. At some point during his doze, he’d turned over. One of his little guys was plastered against his right, the other his left. The knee to his nuts had to have come via Oliver, who’d been a restless sleeper since the womb.

  Tess had despaired during the pregnancy that he was going to be one of those kids who could never sit still. But while Oliver was all boy and as fidgety as the rest of his gender, he became even more active in sleep. When off in the Land of Nod, he twisted and turned and flipped and flopped. His rowdy nocturnal gymnastics were what she’d experienced while he’d grown in her belly.

  When Oliver crawled into bed with his parents following a nightmare, they’d learned to stuff pillows around him. David didn’t have any such protection now.

  “How come they’re here?” he whispered to Griffin, even as he tightened the arms he’d placed around his sons while dreaming.

  “Tess and your daughter are at a movie. Jane—” the way Griffin said the word held a wealth more information than four letters should allow “—said we would watch your boys. Russ is snoozing back at the house with her, but these dudes were still squirrelly. We went for a walk, saw the tent, and while I thought you might be a vagrant, they recognized the sleeping bags.”

  “Ah.” David hesitated. “You’re probably wondering what’s going on.”

  “Actually,” Griffin answered, “I’d rather not know. Keep it your business.”

  His avowed disinterest surprised David. Maybe his brother-in-law had his own surfeit of problems. “This Jane…”

  The ensuing quiet spoke yet another volume. Finally, Griffin broke the silence. “She’s worried about Rebecca.”

  “‘She’? Your Jane—”

  “Not my Jane.”

  “But she’s worried about my daughter.” David drew his boys a bit closer. “Why?”

  “Jane says girls of Rebecca’s age are prone to rebellion. Your teenager is threatening to get pregnant out of boredom.”

  It surprised a laugh out of him. “Tess wouldn’t let that happen.”

  “You sure?”

  Of course there were no absolute guarantees, but his wife had her reasons to be on the watch for unexpected babies. And as for his daughter… “Girls of Rebecca’s age are prone to dramatic statements too.”

  Griffin made a sound of assent. “Christ, they grow up too fast.”

  “Yeah.” David felt that familiar claw tearing at his insides. His little girl was a teenager! They were talking about college, and she was talking about pregnancy, and if he blinked a time or two more, both would be real. He was on the verge of losing one of the precious jewels in his life, and finding a way to survive the idea of that kind of loss was why he’d taken to staying late at the office and racking up marathons on his bike in spin class.

  “It seems like a second ago that she was as small as Russ,” Griffin said.

  Russ. So small and so dependent. David squeezed his eyes at the raking pain in his gut.

  “Dad.” A sleepy Duncan squirmed in his hold. “You’re hurting.”

  “Yeah, buddy,” he murmu
red.

  “You’re hurting me.” He wriggled again.

  David loosened the arm that was clutching his oldest son. “Sorry.”

  “Watcha doing out here?” He butted his head against David’s ribs.

  “I wanted some fresh air,” he said. “Can we keep that our secret? Not tell Mom?”

  “Sure.” Duncan’s voice slowed. “Have a secret too, with Unc’ Griff.”

  David didn’t think he was awake enough to share what it was. “Okay, son,” he said.

  “We been peeing in the ocean.” Oliver popped up.

  “You’re awake too?” David said, glancing down at his second boy.

  “Nope. Jus’ wanted to tell you our secret. Our man secret.” As he settled back down, Oliver kicked David in the shins.

  Wincing, he said, “Is that right?”

  “Unc’ Griff says there’s stuff we don’t tell girls.”

  “Peeing in the ocean seems to qualify,” David agreed aloud, though from Oliver’s sudden bonelessness, he figured the boy had drifted back to dreamland.

  “For the record, there’s also been some burping and armpit farting,” Griffin confessed. “We had a contest.”

  “Sure you did,” David said, unsurprised. “You and Gage never do anything without making it a competition.”

  “Yeah.” Griffin sounded unhappy about it.

  “Hey. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “No apology necessary.” Griffin stirred. “You want me to leave them with you?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” David said. “And I also wish…”

  “Another man secret, I get it. I won’t tell your wife where you were tonight.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tess’s voice said. In the moonlight he could see her bare, elegant feet. She was standing just beyond Griffin. “Because your wife already knows.”

  * * *

  TESS SAT ON THE sand outside David’s tent as Griffin carried Duncan and Oliver to No. 8. He’d promised to tuck them in and tell Rebecca she was in charge until Tess returned to the house. Why David was camping on her doorstep she didn’t yet know, but she was going to get to the bottom of it. Her avoidance of speaking with him about any serious subjects had merely postponed the inevitable. Tonight she was going to strip every pretense away.

  The half-moon cast cool light on the beach, but her husband was little more than a dark shadow inside the confines of the small tent. She nodded at it. “Where’d you get that thing?”

  “Borrowed it from the Kearneys across the street,” he said. Then he started crawling toward the open flap. “I should take it back to them.”

  “We should talk first.” Tess shifted closer so that he’d have to push her out of the way in order to get out. He froze, as she expected he would. He’d been avoiding touching her for weeks.

  “Fine.” His sigh was audible. Then he started speaking in a conversational tone. “What did you and Rebecca see at the movies tonight?”

  “I don’t know. My mind was elsewhere.”

  “While I ate dinner, I watched an interesting program on the Nature Channel.”

  “Really?” She stared at him. Married for thirteen years, separated for several days, and he wanted to engage in small talk?

  “Really.”

  “No, I mean you really want to talk about fauna or flora instead of our family?”

  “It was on solar variation—which is neither animal nor vegetable, of course.”

  David had a dry sense of humor that some people mistook for dullness. She didn’t. She knew exactly what he was up to, and it was all about dodging important matters. If she was going to get him on point, he was forcing her to flat-out ask him the tough questions.

  Suddenly she felt cold, and she rubbed at the bare skin of her arms beneath her short sleeves. Though she wore jeans, she was shoeless, and she crossed one set of chilled toes over the other. She tried peering into the tent. “Do you have a jacket in there?”

  “No.” But then he moved, and she could just make out him stripping off his sweatshirt. He scooted closer to the tent entrance to pass it to her, and the moonlight revealed his bare skin.

  The material was warm from his body heat. “But you—”

  “I’m fine.” He drew folds of SpongeBob SquarePants around his torso. “Put it on.”

  It was a mistake. Once she slipped the sweatshirt over her head, the scent of him enveloped her. You’d think she’d be accustomed to it, but thanks to their separation it was both wholly new and wholly familiar. She and her daughter had sniffed two dozen scents last Christmas before settling on this one. One day two weeks ago, Russ had gotten into it after his bath, and she’d cried smelling David on her baby’s skin.

  It was the closest he’d been to his father in months.

  Tears stung her eyes now, but she pinched the bridge of her nose to keep them at bay. How could David have done this to her? To them?

  She drew up her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. Her gaze drifted to the right, and she watched the calm surf spread its white apron across the sand with a soft shush. Any other time it would be a comforting sound.

  But only the truth would comfort her now. “Are you having an affair?” she blurted out.

  His stare poked at her. “What?”

  “Are you— No! Don’t answer that!” What was she doing, she thought in a panic. A “yes” wouldn’t comfort her at all. She drew her legs closer and squeezed shut her eyes. “I can’t do this,” she muttered against her knees.

  “Then don’t do it,” David urged. “Come back to the house. Move back in with the kids, and it will be just like before.”

  She lifted her head. “Like it was a week ago? Like it’s been for months?”

  He hesitated. “I’m a good provider.” It sounded defensive. Guarded.

  As he’d been since his fortieth birthday.

  Then words she hadn’t planned tumbled out of her mouth. “I’ve been thinking of having an affair myself.”

  “What?” David erupted from the tent, then rocked back, so that he was half in, half out. “Has that bastard Reed Markov been after you?”

  “No,” Tess said, waving a hand. “Geez, David, he’s sleazy.”

  “You were the one cozying up to him at lunch.”

  “Because he actually might have work for me. And the sleaze is automatic with him. He puts it on in the morning when he gets up, just like you put on your…your dress shirts, lightly starched.”

  She thought she heard her husband’s teeth grind. “So the other half of this affair you’ve contemplated is some fantasy man?”

  Agreeing to that would be the easy path. But hell, if she wanted no barriers between them, then she couldn’t lie. “Tee-Wee—Teague White. He had a crush on me when he was a kid.”

  “Him and probably three hundred thousand other men thanks to that damn OM commercial,” David said, his voice tight. “I’m going to kill him.”

  “You can’t do that. He’s been a perfect gentleman. As far as I know, I’m the only one with naughty thoughts.”

  David twitched at that. It drew her gaze, and she could see more of him in the moonlight. The sleeping bag had pooled at his hips to bare his torso. Since all the gym time, she’d only caught glimpses of him as he’d crossed from the shower to his closet. Yes, those fifteen pounds he’d grumbled about were gone, but until now she hadn’t made note of what had taken their place.

  His chest was chiseled. Slabs of pectoral muscles were situated above rippling abdominals. His shoulders were heavier and wider now, with biceps that bulged when he shifted to lean back on his hands.

  Whoever said women weren’t aroused by visual stimulus were full of baloney.

  Except, she thought, her heart contracting, she’d take her softer, loving David any day over this finely cut stranger who wouldn’t look her in the eye or hold their youngest child in his arms. I’m sorry, she thought. I’m sorry that I got pregnant when we weren’t planning another.

  Just like
they hadn’t planned the first.

  She wondered now if that was the explanation for the change in him. He’d never expressed feeling trapped into marriage after she’d told him about Rebecca, but maybe when baby Russ arrived those feelings had finally arrived too. Of course it took two to make new life, but she’d hated the pill, and the diaphragm was clearly not as effective when it came to them. After both unplanned pregnancies, she’d had the guilty yet pleasurable notion that their exciting, vigorous sex was to blame.

  “So you’ve been having thoughts about another man,” David ground out.

  She shrugged. “You haven’t denied thinking about women.”

  “Oh, I’ve had plenty of carnal thoughts, Tess.”

  Her heart squeezed.

  “About one woman in particular.”

  Her lungs contracted.

  The stranger who had once been her husband spoke again. “I’m going to get my hands on her.”

  Dying on the beach might be all right. The tide would come in and sweep her and her pain away.

  “I’m going to get my hands on her right now.” And then he had her in his grip and was tugging her into the tent before she could comprehend his meaning.

  It was just sinking in as his mouth latched onto hers. Without thinking, her palms slid over those pumped biceps and those new, heavy shoulders. If the recently acquired muscles made him look like a stranger, touching them only enhanced the unfamiliarity. Then she curled her fingers in the short, velvet nap of his hair at the back of his head, and her pulse settled a little. This was recognizable. And so were his lips, the sure thrust of his tongue, the taste of the kiss.

  It spun her away from the present.

  She was nineteen again, her birthday just the week before. She’d had one lover before him, the summer after senior year, the king of the prom who’d bumbled his way through her virginity. But David was a man, and he was the steady, mature kind who didn’t feel it was an ego blow to ask for directions.

  Do you like this? he’d whispered in her ear, pinching her nipples just hard enough to make her gasp. His hand had traveled lower. Shall I rub light and fast or hard and slow? Just the words had enflamed her.