by Sarah Morgan
Tonight, she’d let others do the talking.
Mary-Beth arrived first, armed with a bottle of wine and a notepad covered in her sprawling handwriting. “Wasn’t sure about this book—” She dropped her bag on the floor, put her notepad on the table and handed Nancy the wine.
Nancy was about to agree when the rest of her friends walked into the room.
“Your daughter let us in. Lauren.” Sophie kissed Nancy and then Mary-Beth. “She hasn’t changed since she was eighteen.”
Nancy suspected her daughter had changed a great deal. Being a widow tended to do that, particularly when there were unresolved issues.
One of the reasons she’d been so angry that Tom had died in that car was that she’d been deprived of the opportunity to tell him what she thought of his lying, cheating ways.
She’d visited his grave a few times recently and told him what she thought of him, although she had at least checked no one was within earshot. She’d found the experience therapeutic. Maybe it was because he no longer responded with lies and excuses. She had her say and he was forced to lie there and listen.
“I confess I didn’t love the book.” Margie selected a chair by the window. “The heroine was a doormat.”
She’d been a doormat, Nancy realized. She’d allowed Tom to behave the way he had. She’d enabled him.
“I agree.” Sophie took the glass of wine Nancy handed her. “She should have kicked him out and changed the locks.”
Yes, that would have been a good plan.
Nancy imagined herself doing it, maybe swinging one of his precious golf clubs instead of her foot.
Goodbye, Tom. Have a nice life.
Jenna walked in, carrying the canapés. The bruise on her head was still visible if you looked closely, but other than that she seemed back to her old self.
She put the plates down on the low table to a chorus of appreciative gasps.
“Well look at that—” Mary-Beth leaned forward to examine the contents of the plates more closely “—it’s art on a plate. How did you make the pastry look like a seashell?”
“Trade secret.” Jenna handed out napkins and Nancy helped herself to a canapé, agreeing that the food was indeed art on a plate.
She’d always thought Jenna was 100 percent Tom’s child, but now she realized she’d been wrong about that. She’d inherited his warmth, that was true, but she also had Nancy’s creativity and appreciation of the visual.
Why had it taken her this long to truly know her daughter? The acid burn of regret over the past was soothed by the balm of the present and the future.
It was never too late to move forward.
She thought about Ben, and smiled. It definitely wasn’t too late.
“I don’t agree with you about the heroine.” Angela helped herself to a pastry seashell. “She did it to protect her daughter. And kicking someone out isn’t the only valid response to infidelity. She loved him, so she forgave. You need forgiveness in a marriage. Being able to forgive doesn’t make her a doormat.”
Mary-Beth pulled a face. “You also need respect. Where was that? It was missing. And speaking of things that are missing, where’s Alice?”
“She couldn’t make it.” Nancy studied the plate of canapés. Bacon or shrimp?
“Alice has never missed a book group. Is she ill?”
Nancy settled for shrimp. “I don’t think so.”
Mary-Beth reached into her bag for her reading glasses. “Maybe she felt bad because she hadn’t read the book.”
Margie shook her head. “What’s that got to do with anything? Alice comes for the gossip and the company.”
Nancy was fairly sure the reason Alice hadn’t joined them was because she had read the book.
She caught Lauren’s puzzled glance but nothing more was said on the subject until everyone had left and the four Stewart women were clearing up.
Mack’s approach to clearing up was to eat the rest of the canapés. “They won’t keep,” she mumbled, brushing crumbs of buttery pastry from the corner of her mouth.
Jenna took the plate from her. “They won’t keep with you in the house, that’s for sure.”
“I’m a starving teenager.” Mack grabbed the last one and Nancy carried the empty plates into the kitchen.
“What’s going on with Alice, Mom?” Lauren took the plates from her and stacked the dishwasher. “Should we call? Go over there and check on her?”
“No. Don’t do that.”
“Do you know what’s wrong?”
How was she supposed to answer that?
The simplest thing was not to.
“I need to finish clearing up—” She turned to walk out of the kitchen but Lauren caught her arm.
“Are you upset? Has something happened?”
“No. Not in the way you mean. I can’t—” Nancy paused, torn by loyalty to an old friendship and concern for her girls. “It’s something I’m not able to discuss with you. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Fair?” Jenna blocked the doorway. “Fair on you or fair on us?”
Lauren frowned. “Or fair on Alice?”
Nancy foundered. “It’s complicated.”
“So you do know the reason Alice wasn’t here tonight?”
“Yes, I think I do.” Nancy picked up a cloth and started wiping down surfaces.
“Leave the cleaning.” Lauren took the cloth from her and put it on the countertop.
“We said no more secrets,” Jenna said. “Whatever it is that’s bothering you, we’ll handle it. And we won’t mention it to Alice, if that’s what’s worrying you. Why didn’t she come tonight? Is it something to do with your leaving The Captain’s House?”
“No. I’m sure it was because she didn’t like the book.”
“How do you know she didn’t like it?”
Oh, Alice, Alice. “Because the book was about infidelity.”
Jenna opened the fridge and stowed a half-empty bottle of wine. “What does that have to do with Alice?”
Everything.
And it felt overwhelming. The emotion, the indecision, the heartache, it all felt like too much to contain.
“I’m guessing she found the subject matter uncomfortable.”
“Alice has a thing about infidelity?”
“Not exactly.” Nancy picked up the cloth again and twisted it in her hands. “Alice was having an affair with Tom. I suspect she was the one you saw him with in the Sail Loft that night.”
32
Lauren
Setback: something that reverses progress,
hinders, or thwarts
Lauren walked out of the bank and kept her head down. She was grateful that the bright sun gave her an excuse to slip on dark glasses. As long as no one spoke to her, she’d be all right. All she had to do was put one foot in front of the other and walk back to her car. Keep moving. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had practice. Wasn’t that what the past months had been about?
Thirty more steps to the car, that was all.
“Lauren!”
The voice came from behind her. She wanted to ignore it, but good manners forbade it, so she stopped and turned, grateful that her eyes were shielded.
“Alice. How are you?” She wasn’t in the mood to speak to anyone. She particularly didn’t want to speak to Alice.
After her mother’s revelation, she had no idea what to say to her.
You were supposed to be my mother’s best friend.
But she understood the guilt her mother had felt in telling them and her concern that it shouldn’t affect Lauren and Jenna’s relationship with Alice, so she made a supreme effort to act normally.
“You’ve moved out of The Captain’s House,” Alice said.
“A few weeks ago.” It was already June. How had that happened?
“
Your mom must have been so busy with it all she forgot to say a proper goodbye.”
Lauren thought it more likely that her mother hadn’t yet decided how to handle the situation.
How did you handle a situation like that?
“She’s only moved a few miles away,” she said. “It’s not as if she’s left the island.”
“It must be hard for you all living in such cramped space after having so much room.”
“It isn’t,” Lauren said. “We’re all enjoying being close to the beach.”
She’d been surprised by how comfortable Nancy seemed in the Sail Loft. Her mother had undergone something of a transformation over the past few weeks. Her clearing out had extended to her closet and she’d thrown out all the drab clothes she’d been wearing for the last decade. In a storage bag she’d discovered clothes she’d bought years before on trips to Europe and worn for the openings of her exhibitions and for city tours. Her old look became her new look. Instead of blacks and grays, she wore white and teamed it with flowing scarves in bright jewel colors. There was a Pucci silk she’d picked up in Florence, and a Chanel jacket from Paris. Bold silver bangles decorated her wrists and Lauren noticed that she’d taken to wearing a touch of discreet makeup.
“You look like an artist,” Jenna had said when she and Greg had visited on their first night there. “I hope you’re not going to wear that to paint someone’s house. It’s asking for trouble. If you don’t believe me you need to read My Sister’s Adventures with Paint.”
Lauren and Jenna had both agreed that something was going on between Nancy and Ben.
The two of them were often together in the garden of the Sail Loft, heads together as they studied something.
Nancy had laughed off their comments on her appearance.
“I decided that if I’m going into business with my daughter I need to upgrade my look.”
If I’m going into business with my daughter.
Lauren blinked. “I have to go, Alice.”
“I’ll visit soon.” There was a note of desperation in Alice’s voice. “Tell Nancy to call. I’m going to miss squeezing through that gap in the fence. We’ve been doing that since we were four years old.”
“I know.”
Years of friendship. One betrayal.
Lauren had no idea what she would have done in her mother’s position, or whether she would have been able to hold on to that particular secret for so many years.
Nancy had told them that she’d suspected for a long time, but hadn’t been sure until that day she and Alice had visited the Sail Loft.
“It’s the reason I took her,” Nancy had confessed one night as they’d all shared a bottle of wine. “I wanted to see her reaction. I needed to know for sure.”
And now she knew.
“I heard you’re starting your own business.” Alice wasn’t in a hurry to let Lauren leave.
“Yes. It’s all very exciting.” And frustrating. And impossible. Why had she thought anyone would give her a loan? She was a terrible risk.
“I heard from Mary-Beth that you even have your first client.”
“Yes.”
Miranda Hillyard, a lawyer from Boston who had moved to the Vineyard permanently a few years earlier, and was in the process of renovating a $8.8 million waterfront home near Chilmark. She’d happened to be walking her dog along the beach path one day when Lauren had been painting pallets to use as nightstands.
Miranda had stopped to talk. Within minutes, Lauren had found herself showing her round the Sail Loft. Miranda had fired questions at her and later, when Lauren had typed her name into a search engine, she’d seen that Miranda had a terrifying reputation as the lawyer who never lost a case. It was easy to see why. She was nothing if not persuasive and when Miranda had asked to see The Captain’s House, Lauren had agreed. She was proud of what they’d achieved there, although she’d kept details of the budget to herself. Turned out she was the queen of recycling and repurposing, but that didn’t mean she wanted to do that with every job.
Finally, after Lauren had bitten her nails to the quick, the woman had called and asked Lauren to come and look round her house and give an opinion.
Lauren had spent half a day with her, walking through the place room by room, absorbing Miranda’s vision for the place and translating that into ideas. It had been exciting to think about decor without first thinking about whether they could afford to do it. Miranda was wealthy and had big plans.
Lauren had left with her first client and a major problem.
The Hillyard project promised to be huge and Lauren had no capital with which to fund her new business.
Her mother couldn’t contribute because she needed all the rental money from The Captain’s House to get through the winter.
If Miranda had been more approachable, maybe Lauren could have discussed it with her, but the other woman was so terrifyingly competent, Lauren didn’t want to reveal the horrible mess that was her life.
She’d worked into the night drawing up business plans and Mack had helped her produce a professional-looking document, but it hadn’t been enough to satisfy the bank who had turned down her request for a loan. Although she was deeply disappointed, she could hardly blame them. She had no collateral and no business track record. Given the facts, she probably wouldn’t have loaned herself money either. They’d suggested she talk to her mother about either loaning her the money or acting as guarantor, but Lauren knew neither was an option.
She was going to have to call Miranda back and say she couldn’t take on the project.
That was a call she was dreading on so many levels.
“I should go, Alice.” She turned away, holding back the emotion that threatened a serious assault on her dignity.
The sun was hot and the streets were noticeably busier. The island smelled of summer. The thick scent of colorful blooms mingled with the smell of sunscreen. Summer on the Vineyard meant the shrieks of happy children, strawberries piled like jewels in the farmer’s market, the slow drip of ice cream melting in the heat. It meant cooling dips in the sea, a barefoot run on the beach with a salt breeze cooling your face. It meant sitting on the harbor’s edge eating lobster claws while butter dripped down your chin.
There was a buzz in the air and an energy that was absent in the winter. The population of the island exploded and people moved at a slow summer pace. The locals would mutter and complain and some would secretly wish for the season to be over, but Lauren didn’t wish that.
The Captain’s House had been rented for the whole summer right through until Labor Day and the amount they were earning would enable her mother to stay in it for the winter.
The place wasn’t going to be sold. It was still the Stewart residence, as it had been for well over a century.
She would have felt hopeful for the future, if it weren’t for the meeting she’d had at the bank and the phone call she’d had the night before from London.
What was she going to do if she couldn’t get her business off the ground?
Blinded by the combination of dark glasses and misted vision, she walked slap into someone.
Strong hands clamped her shoulders to steady her and she muttered an apology.
Instead of releasing her, those hands tightened.
“What’s the rush?”
Scott.
Of all the people she didn’t want to bump into right now he was probably top of the list.
“Sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
Since that day at the Sail Loft, she’d carefully avoided him, timing her visits so they weren’t ever alone together. Every time she thought about that evening in the kitchen she felt remorse, and not only because she’d been having wild, abandoned sex while her sister was trapped in her car in a ditch. She knew that by allowing herself to get close to Scott again, she’d opened a door that
was going to be hard to close. The realization that she wanted him badly was as frustrating as it was unsettling. Not only was it the wrong time, but he was also the wrong person. She was smart enough to know that Scott had an effect on her that no other man did. That hadn’t changed, but neither had he and she wasn’t going to allow herself to believe differently.
“How’s Jenna doing?”
“She’s good, thanks. Almost back to her normal self.”
“And you?” His voice was low and intimate and stirred memories she didn’t want in her head.
“I’m good, too. We’ve moved in to the Sail Loft. The kitchen is great. The countertops are—” She gasped as he lifted his hand and gently removed her glasses. “What are you doing?” She snatched at them but he held them out of reach with one hand and cupped her face with the other.
He angled his head and studied her, his gaze searching. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Can I have my glasses back?”
“Not until you tell me why you’re upset.”
She was conscious of her reddened eyes and the flow of people who passed them. “Scott, please—we’re in a public place.”
“Then we’ll go somewhere less public. I’m parked across the street.” He slid her glasses back onto her nose and took her hand. “Come with me.”
“People will talk.”
“Yeah, they have a tendency to do that. Doesn’t mean you have to listen.” He tightened his grip on her hand and led her to his truck.
Too despondent to argue, she slid inside.
She’d be okay. This was a setback, that was all, and she’d become an expert on dealing with setbacks. Fall over, get up again. She hoped her thigh muscles were strong enough to take it.
She heard a panting sound behind her and turned her head to find Captain wagging his tail so hard it smacked against the back of the seat.
It was impossible not to smile. “Your dog is adorable.”
“Yeah, he’s a keeper.” Scott slid into the driver’s seat and pulled out of the parking space. “No one can resist him.”
And she’d never been able to resist Scott.
She shouldn’t have climbed into a car with him. That had been a mistake, but it was too late to do anything about it now.