Stargazey Point

by Shelley Noble

  “She’s not with me. I’m out at the Howard place tutoring Talia for her SAT.”

  “Who’s at the center? I saw a light on.”

  There was silence, then Sarah said, “Ha. Maybe, just maybe, she’s there.”

  “You sound very satisfied with yourself.”

  “I will be if you find her there.”

  Cab dressed for dinner and took the SUV to look for Abbie.

  The rain was really coming down. Even with the wipers on high he could barely see. He drove slowly and pulled up to the steps of the community center. He should have called Marnie back to see if Abbie had a cell phone, not that she would have reception in this weather. Besides, this way . . . Cab reached over the seat and fumbled for the stadium umbrella he kept in the back pouch.

  He opened the door, unfurled the umbrella, and sprinted up the steps to the porch. Stood for a few seconds to shake off the rain from the umbrella, then leaned it up against the house.

  He tried the door. It opened and he stepped in to find a gang of children all huddled together.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” he asked, suddenly alarmed.

  “Thank goodness,” said a familiar voice.

  The children parted to reveal Abbie holding three sleeping children and surrounded by several more.

  “I could use a hand here,” she said.

  Cab just stood, watching. A reluctant Madonna, he thought, dressed in jeans and sweatshirt, surrounded by a ragtag assortment of children wearing hand-me-downs and bargain-store clothes. She was beautiful. They were beautiful.

  “Sarah’s not back and they’re still here. How do we, um, when do they go home?”

  “They’ll stay forever.”

  The look on her face was priceless. He couldn’t help himself. He smiled, he grinned, he felt exhilarated. “Who needs a ride home?”

  Everyone’s hand went up. Dani and Joe sat groggily up, pushing Jenny to the floor. The three of them raised their hands, though Cab doubted if they even knew why.

  “Why don’t you call Marnie and tell her we’re going to be a little late; this is going to take two trips. Okay, who lives the farthest away? I’ve got room for five.”

  It took Cab over a half hour to deposit the first group. Some lived out from town, either close to the road or up unpaved drives where the rain ran in rivulets through the sand. It was slow going, and he was anxious to get back to Abbie.

  By the time he returned to the center, the rain had stopped and the sun was shining low in the sky. Abbie and the last four kids were waiting by the door.

  “Had enough?” he asked as she handed the smallest ones to him and he strapped them in.

  “Had a lot,” she said. She glanced at her charges. “But we had a good time, didn’t we?”

  “We made a video,” Dani said.

  “All by ourselfs,” Joe added; then he looked sheepish. “Abbie helped.”

  “And she told us a story,” Dani said. “About all of us.”

  “All in a day’s work?”

  “All in a rainy day’s work,” Abbie said. “I’ll be ready for that glass of Millie’s sherry.”

  “I can do better than that. As soon as we drop this batch off we’ll stop at the inn for a quick happy hour.”

  Abbie sat in the passenger seat trying not to look at Cab. She didn’t want to take the chance of feeling that shock she’d felt in the carousel again. She wasn’t so naive as to think she would never love again. At least have sex, though she hadn’t even thought about that possibility until today. Only for the briefest second. And it was only natural. Hell, it had been eight months. Longer. She was young and . . . Why was she thinking like this? It was impossible.

  You have to let that poor man’s soul go.

  Was that what she was doing? Holding on to the past, so tightly that she was going to strangle it? At first it was too raw and painful to share. Later she’d thought she could keep what was precious to her by keeping it to herself. Now she was afraid it had become a habit. Ervina had rattled her.

  She thought with chagrin about the money she had wasted on that therapist. Ervina should set up a shingle. She could finance the community with her advice.

  Cab stopped the SUV in front of a weather-beaten two-story shack. There was a postage-sized porch over the doorway. Several rusted cars sat at various angles in the front yard. Only one appeared to be running.

  Kyle slid out of the car. He turned to wave back at them, then ran around to the back of the house.

  They let the next boy, Pauli, off at the house they had driven by on their way to Georgetown, and for the first time Abbie recognized the boy who had run alongside the car.

  “Thanks, Cab, Miz Abbie.” He trotted off to where the old woman was waiting for him on the porch.

  The twins were the last to be taken home. If you could call it that. The house was small and sagging. The yard was packed dirt; a few straggling weeds were matted down by the rain. Cab got out and opened the back door. Lifted them down and walked them to the front door. None of the three seemed in a hurry.

  A curtain was pulled back in a front window and let fall. A minute later the door opened and the twins went inside. The door closed. Cab stood for a second longer before he turned and came back to the car.

  “Yeah,” he said to Abbie’s unspoken dismay.

  “Did someone bring them to the center today?” she asked.

  “I expect they brought themselves.”

  “They can’t be more than five or six years old.”

  He gave her a funny look. “You don’t have to go to South America to find kids who need attention.”

  She felt as if he’d slapped her. She turned away and stared out the window.

  “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that as a judgment on your work.”

  Maybe not, but it sounded like a judgment. She didn’t want to be one of those people who gave all their attention to third world countries while their neighbors needed help. Is that what had happened to her?

  Cab reached across the console and squeezed her hand. “I swear. I’m not saying anything except these kids need someone to care about them just like every other poor kid in the world.”

  She frowned at him. “Is that what you’re doing with the carousel?”

  “Hardly.” He returned his hand to the steering wheel. He laughed, almost to himself. “I come from a long line of pedigreed money-acquiring Charlestonians.”

  “I thought you were raised in Boston.”

  “Yeah, but I was born in Charleston. We moved to Boston when my father married my stepmother, a Bostonian Brahmin. She hated Charleston, and he pretty much hated Boston. They traveled a lot. I spent summers and holidays with my uncle Ned, my father’s brother, at his carousel.”

  Abbie smiled. “It seems like a wonderful way to spend a summer.”

  “It was, though I worked my butt off. It takes a lot of upkeep. And I had to sell tickets and stuff like that.”

  “But you became an architect.”

  “I love architecture, too.”

  “I can tell.”

  He smiled. It happened again, that warm zap of excitement when you feel a connection, both emotional and physical, to someone else. Not such a shock this time.

  “So that was the brief history of Cabot Reynolds. Are you ever going to tell me about yourself?”

  Chapter 16

  I was born in California,” Abbie said when they were sitting at the nearly empty bar at the inn. “But we moved a lot.” She paused, took a sip of her chardonnay. “My parents worked for different nonprofit organizations. My father is a lawyer—liberal—and my mother is . . .” Abbie chuckled. “An ex flower child.

  “They met in the Peace Corps and now fund-raise for reclaimable water.

  “I have three brothers and one sister. Well, two
brothers now. My oldest brother works for Doctors Without Borders. John runs a group home for runaways. Adam died in Afghanistan; he was an army medic. My sister is over there now, though I think her desire to bring democracy to the Middle East is more about avenging his death than anything else. She was studying to be a special ed teacher.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “My parents didn’t love the idea of him being a marine, but they were open-minded enough to know that we all have our own paths to take.”

  “That sounds like a quote.”

  “My father when mom got on her peace and freedom, antimilitary horse.”

  “All the Sinclairs work in the not-for-profit sector?”

  “Pretty much. So before you ask how I became a weathergirl—I had trouble finding the right ‘path’ for me.”

  “I take it you didn’t find it being a weathergirl.”

  “Nope.”

  Cab turned his glass around, looking at it as if he was contemplating something, and she was afraid she knew what was coming next.

  “And not when you were making documentaries?”

  “I thought I had, for most of eight years. Toward the end I wasn’t sure, but now I am. I learned a lot, maybe did some good, but it was someone else’s path, not mine.”

  “Maybe you’ll find yours here.”

  “Maybe.” She reached for her glass, realized it was empty. “But for now, I’m here, thanks to Celeste and the Crispins’ generosity.” She smiled though it was a little difficult. “Not a weathergirl, not a filmmaker.” She shrugged. “Not even a conniving real estate agent. Just some lost soul on her road to somewhere else.”

  Cab burst out with a laugh. “Sorry, sorry. But did you ever think maybe you should become a writer?”

  She laughed, too. “I tend to get a bit dramatic.”

  “A bit, but it’s a hell of a story.”

  “And not over yet.” She stood up. “But we’ll be late for dinner, I mean supper, if we don’t get going.”

  Beau was waiting for them on the porch. “Millie and Marnie are in the parlor. Millie was worried.”

  “Oh dear,” Abbie said. “We called to say we were taking the kids home and would be late.”

  “That don’t have anything to do with Millie being worried.” Beau glanced at Abbie’s throat and the necklace. A hint of a smile as elusive as a breeze. Then he turned and held the front door for them to enter.

  “I think I love him,” Abbie whispered as they made their way to the parlor.

  “I think I might be jealous,” Cab whispered back.

  Abbie’s step faltered.

  “Here they are. Home at last,” Millie said, beaming on them.

  “Sorry we took so long. But I somehow ended up with the kids at the community center. I didn’t want to leave them unsupervised.”

  Marnie snorted. “I know just how you ended up there.”

  “Yes,” added Millie. “Don’t you let Sarah impose on you. She will, you know. Cabot, fix you and Abbie a glass of something.”

  Cab was already standing by the Queen Anne drinks cabinet, which contained myriad bottles and glasses and where a silver tray held a permanent array of cut glass decanters. He looked as uncomfortable as Abbie felt. Surely that quip about being jealous was just flirtation.

  He poured Abbie a glass of sherry and spent the next few minutes conversing with Millie.

  Marnie excused herself to serve the dinner. Abbie offered to help.

  “We wouldn’t hear of it,” Millie said. “You just sit over here and visit with Cabot and me.”

  Abbie felt she’d already visited with Cab enough that day, told him more than she intended, felt more comfortable than she should. But she stayed put and listened to them chat.

  Cab left right after supper, and Abbie, after yawning through a half hour of television, took herself off to bed. She was exhausted, but oddly content. She opened the notebook, turned past the page that said Guatemala and the pages with her notes on the gazebo, and wrote down the date. She started her journal with the decision to paint the gazebo, then moved on to the carousel, the twins, the storm, and the way the children lived.

  They were a motley group, different ages, races, attitudes, from homes not even close to middle class. When she’d mentioned it to Cab, he’d said, “Of course we have rich kids. They just don’t come to the center.” He paused. “They don’t need to.”

  That had to be the longest Crispin dinner in history, Cab thought as he kicked off his shoes and began to channel surf. Not timewise, unless you counted the way it seemed to crawl after his unthinking quip about being jealous.

  It had just slipped out. Ordinarily it would have been the kind of flirtatious remark that women were flattered by. Not Abbie—she’d seized up, right back to where she’d been until the last couple of days.

  And the hell of it was, he meant it. When he’d walked into the center earlier that night and saw her surrounded by children, her pale blond hair haloed by the reading lamp in the semidarkness, his world tilted.

  And later in the car, watching the twins return to that wretched hovel, the look in her eyes pierced straight to his heart. And he knew in that moment that while Abbie Sinclair was in Stargazey Point those kids would have a champion. And so would he.

  He’d once compared her to Bailey, but he’d been dead wrong. She required just as much energy, maybe more, but unlike Bailey, Abbie gave back, even though she might not want to, even when she didn’t realize it.

  Hell, Beau had carved her a star, gone to Bethanne’s and bought a silver chain to put it on. And she wore it in full view, seemingly unaware that it was the first Beau sculpture to see the light of day, at least since Cab could remember.

  All three Crispins came alive when Abbie entered the room. Bethanne, the kids, even Sarah, though she’d deny it if pressed, him—they’d all been touched by her in some way. And it wasn’t just pity or compassion or curiosity. Abbie had come here to get her life back on track. Heal her wounds. But she was doing a lot more, and they were all benefiting from it.

  She had a lot more strength than she gave herself credit for. They all saw it, now if only she would.

  Or maybe he was full of shit. He got a beer from the fridge, put his feet up on the coffee table, and settled down to watch the last half of a Celtics game. Even down here he couldn’t leave Boston completely behind.

  Abbie didn’t remember dreaming. She wasn’t ready to hope the nightmares might be going away, but she awoke refreshed and tripped down the stairs just like her life wasn’t still in shambles.

  She had toast and coffee and went out to check on the gazebo. Jerome had said it would take several days for the whitewash to cure. And they’d only had two before the storm. It looked okay from where she was standing. Better than okay. It was charming.

  Marnie didn’t need her in the garden, so she grabbed a hoodie and hair elastic and took her notebook out to the beach. The day was warm and sunny. A breeze blew in from the water, and she stopped to pull her hair back into a ponytail. The waves seemed a bit choppy, probably left over from the storm or maybe from a storm farther out to sea. At least the storm within her had subsided a bit.

  She had no doubt it would be back. But for now, she just breathed in the air and decided to stay at least another week. She sat on the end of the wooden walk and took off her shoes. Wiggled her toes in the sand. It would be nice to be at the shore when the summer began, put on a
swimsuit, splash in the waves. Be here for the carousel opening. Beau’s birthday.

  She’d have to get a job long before then, but every time she thought about calling Celeste and asking about work in Chicago, her stomach tied itself into a knot.

  Soon, she would decide what to do. Soon but not today. She pushed herself to her feet, rolled her jeans up above her ankles, and tied her sneakers around her neck, which gave her a momentary sense of déjà vu. How many times had she forded a stream with her shoes tied about her neck?

  She pushed the thought away and walked to the water’s edge. Stepped gingerly into the surf. Cold but not freezing. She began to walk north, letting the sea air take away her thoughts almost before she thought them.

  Before she knew it, she was standing in front of the old pier. She wondered if it would ever be rebuilt or just left to rot away. As she stood there, two men came to stand at the edge of the parking lot. She recognized one of them as Robert Oakley, the tax assessor. They stood side by side, while Oakley pointed at the pier, then swept his hand in a wide arc from the carousel to the point of land beyond Crispin House.

  Heart suddenly beating faster, Abbie headed toward the parking lot, trying to look like she was just out for a stroll, straining to hear what they might be saying. She even stopped to put her shoes on just below them. But they stopped talking, and she had no choice but to continue on.

  Feeling an inexplicable sense of urgency, she hurried across the way to the carousel. The lock was off; she pulled on the doors and let herself in.

  Cab looked up, surprised.

  She motioned him toward her. “Come here.”

  His incipient smile changed to concern. He dropped a paintbrush, and wiping his hands, he walked over to her. “What?”

  “The tax assessor is out there with another man.”

  Frowning, Cab peeked around the edge of the open door. “Ah, shit.” He strode out the door and across the parking lot. He stopped Oakley as he got into his car. They seemed to be chatting amiably, and Abbie wondered if she had overreacted.