The bench shook from footsteps on the pier. She turned her head and squinted at the man walking toward her. Khaki pants and a brown plaid shirt. Dark hair, nice build.
“Hi, Kit,” he said.
It took her a moment to recognize him. “Orrin?” She sat up straight, immediately on guard. “Don’t tell me there’s another lawsuit.”
He laughed and took off his sunglasses. “Nothing like that. I stopped by your house because I wanted to see you. One of your housemates told me I’d find you out here.”
“What did you need to see me about?”
“I don’t need to see you about anything.” He smiled. “I was wondering if we could have dinner together sometime soon.”
She stared at him, at those gray eyes rimmed by dark lashes and his smooth, black hair. Couldn’t he tell she was pregnant? For the first time in weeks she wished she weren’t.
“Orrin, I’m five months pregnant.” No use dragging it out.
He glanced at her stomach, then back to her face. “I didn’t realize you were seeing someone.”
“I’m not.”
“Oh. Well then, the dinner invitation still stands.”
She cringed at the polite tone. “Thanks, Orrin, but I don’t think either of us would feel too comfortable.”
“It doesn’t have to be anything serious. I like you. I enjoyed working with you. Let’s have dinner as friends.”
They made plans for Saturday night, dinner and the symphony in Philadelphia, and she watched him walk back up the pier, smiling to herself. This was amazing. Too bad the timing was off. What could she possibly wear that would camouflage the bulging center of her body? Her baby gave a kick in protest and she stroked her belly. “You come first,” she whispered. “Don’t you worry.”
Orrin arrived at the exact stroke of five. “I’d love a tour of this place,” he said as he walked into the living room. “What a view.” He stood at the back window. The ocean was performing perfectly tonight, the waves a deep glassy blue with just a sliver of white water reaching for the beach.
He wore a gray suit and blue-striped shirt. He looked terrific. Too terrific, every hair in place. She found herself wondering if he’d had his nails professionally manicured. She felt sloppy by comparison. Her blue maternity dress was nondescript. No matter what she wore these days, she felt like a beach ball with stick arms and legs protruding at odd angles.
“I’ll show you around,” she said.
Orrin had something nice to say about everything. The living room had character; the cherry wood dining room furniture was elegant. He studied the tile mural of tropical fish in the kitchen, mesmerized by the color and detail.
She thought twice about taking him upstairs. She would usually show a guest her room with its ocean view and maybe the den. But she couldn’t get through the second story that easily these days. They’d transformed the room next to hers into a nursery and it drew her in. It was hard to walk past it without stepping inside, imagining what it would be like in a few months. She could see herself in the one-armed nursing rocker, coaxing her baby to sleep while she watched the rise and fall of the waves. She doubted very much that Orrin would be interested.
But he was. Or at least he pretended to be.
“My birthday was last week,” she explained, “and as a surprise Rennie and Maris painted and the others bought me the furniture.” The white crib was from Janni and Jay, the rocker from Cole. It already smelled like a baby in here, and she took a deep breath.
“You’re all set,” he said. He touched the rainbow mobile. “Cute.”
This had to be boring for him, but she wasn’t ready to leave the room yet. “This is from Maris.” She held out the gold charm she was wearing around her neck. “It’s called an Ashanti medallion, and African women wear them to ensure the beauty of their babies.”
He held the charm on the tips of his fingers. “It’ll be a lucky baby, with these built-in aunts and uncles,” he said. “Your life is very settled, isn’t it?”
“You mean by the pregnancy?”
“No. By this house. By your friends. You have everything you need.”
She frowned at him, wondering if he was right. What was wrong with her that she felt no sense of contentment?
They had a table by the window at the Liberty Inn. Outside, a thunderstorm sent spikes of rain into the sidewalk.
“Does it feel awkward, being out with a pregnant woman?” She felt awkward enough for both of them.
“I’ve done it before,” he said. “When my wife was pregnant.”
“Are you divorced?” She realized she didn’t know a thing about him.
“Widowed.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” She hadn’t expected that. “How long has it been?”
He leaned back, and it seemed to take all his powers of concentration to remember. “Almost four years.”
“You must have a child then.”
“No. Bruni was pregnant when she died.”
She took a bite of salad. Was that why he was interested in her? Some unresolved thing about his wife?
“Does my pregnancy have anything to do with your wanting to go out with me?”
He looked surprised and then laughed out loud. “Relax. Nothing like that. And you don’t look a thing like her, either. She was Swedish. Very blond.”
“Oh.”
“I haven’t been in a hurry to start another relationship. I want to move slowly. So I wasn’t terribly upset when you said you were pregnant.”
“Drat. And here I was hoping you had some perverse craving for pregnant women.” She laughed, but he barely smiled. God, this was uncomfortable. “How did she die? Or does it bother you to talk about it?”
“Cancer,” he said, setting his fork on the empty salad plate. “And yes, it really does. Bother me, I mean.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You weren’t.” He smiled at her. “You know, I only make it to Blair a few times a month, but they send the Communicator to my home and I have to say that since you’ve been working on it it’s improved one hundred percent. I used to feel embarrassed for the editor when I read it, it was so cutesy. Now it’s readable and it gets the facts across without insulting the reader’s intelligence.”
“Thank you. That was exactly my goal, so it’s nice to hear I’ve succeeded, at least with one reader.”
“How long have you been divorced?” he asked.
“Nearly two years.”
Orrin tapped his wineglass with his finger, and she wondered again about his smooth, square nails.
“Someone told me you ran in the Boston Marathon,” he said.
“Next year, I hope. I’ll have to requalify in another marathon first.” She pressed her hands together in her lap. Her palms were as wet as the rain coating the window.
The waiter brought their entrees, and she was relieved to have the food to attend to. This was intolerable. How would they ever rise above this superficial plane? It was hard to imagine ever telling him a secret, a treasured thought. He was too polite, too squeaky clean. She took a bite of salmon dripping with hollandaise, and thought with some dismay that she’d rather be at home with the others, eating tuna fish casserole.
33.
Cole was edgy. He sat on the living room floor, in the middle of the Persian carpet, playing Hearts with Rennie and Maris. He was barely able to focus on the game. Every minute or so he needed to shift position. He was getting too old to sit on the floor. Outside, the rain spilled through the darkness.
The others were jumpy, too. Maris was on her second glass of wine, and Rennie cringed each time lightning pierced the sky outside the window. Janni sat in the overstuffed chair, a book upside down on her thigh, and her eyes on Jay, who was trying to get a second wind out of the dying fire.
It wasn’t the storm that had them tense, Cole thought. It was what he was coming to think of as the Kit’s-not-home syndrome. It was midnight. They should be on their way to bed, but here they sat, draggin
g out their activities in the unacknowledged ritual of waiting for Kit to come home.
They all started at an ear-splitting crack of thunder. With this rain it could be another couple of hours, he thought. The phone rang, and he set down his cards and walked toward the library.
“Please don’t be the hospital,” Janni said.
It was Kit. There was laughter in her voice. “Cole? We got out of the symphony and Orrin’s car wouldn’t start. So we’ve taken a room in a little bed and breakfast place and we’re trying to dry off. I’m going to have to stay here tonight. There’s no way to get home.”
“No, of course not. I was worried about you two driving in this storm anyway.” His mind was racing.
“You should see this room, Cole. There’s a fireplace and it’s very homey. So don’t worry about me. I’m not sure what time I’ll get home tomorrow, though.”
“You don’t need to hurry. Just be good, okay?” He grimaced. Why did he say that?
“Do I have to? I mean, is there any reason, physically speaking, why I have to be good?”
Damn it. She wanted to sleep with Orrin. He forced a laugh. “No, of course there isn’t. Enjoy yourself.”
The rain wouldn’t let him sleep. It sounded like waves breaking on his balcony. He tried to block out the picture taking shape in his mind—Kit and Orrin alone in a room with a fireplace and just one bed. Well, it would be good for her. She wasn’t feeling that great about herself lately. A little body image problem. This was probably just what she needed.
Was he jealous? He rejected the word, told himself it didn’t fit the situation. They were friends, very good friends, nothing more. He just missed knowing that she was right across the hall.
She came home the next afternoon, still wearing the blue dress she’d left in the night before. He thought she looked secretive. She was craving bouillabaisse, she said. She wanted to make it for dinner. She invited him to go to the fish market with her, and he jumped at the chance. He wanted some time alone with her.
He climbed into the passenger side of her car. She’d changed into a white jersey, sleeves pushed up above her elbows, a blue silk scarf tied at her throat. She’d pinned her hair up in back and it fell around her face in soft, honey-colored wisps. He studied her profile, the nearly perfect nose with its five or six pale freckles, the truly perfect lips. What had those lips done last night?
He looked back at the road. “How was the symphony?”
“Wonderful. Philadelphia’s not that far. We should go more often.”
He wondered who she meant by “we”. He felt so far away from her, so separate. He wanted to bridge the gap between them but had no idea how to go about it.
She parked the car in front of the pier, where shirtless men scrubbed the deck of a fishing boat. She switched off the ignition and turned to look at him.
“There’s an unasked question hanging in the air of this car,” she said.
“There is?”
She nodded. “And the answer is: I slept in the bed, he slept on the couch.”
He smiled, the muscles in his face giving way before he could stop them. “Oh,” he said. She had done it for him—cut through the distance.
She squeezed his hand. “Let’s buy some fish.”
He watched her in the crowded fish market, using skills she must have learned in Seattle—rapping clams together, sniffing scallops, lifting the gills of whole fish to peer inside. He stood apart from her, lighthearted, drinking in the rich smell of the sea. Occasionally she held up a crab leg or a handful of mussels and looked over at him for his opinion. And each time he nodded. He wanted to prolong her shopping so he could continue to stand there, leaning against the rough wooden wall, feeling good.
She paid for the seafood and handed him the heavy paper bag, but he blocked her path when she headed for the door.
“Let’s not go yet,” he said.
She looked surprised. “Why not?”
“I like it here.”
She laughed. “Come on, our fish will rot.” She pushed past him through the door, blue silk catching the breeze, but he took his time. He wanted to stay there for the rest of the day, with Kit, in a cold little shop filled with fish and crushed ice.
34.
The sun was a thin gold thread on the horizon when she spotted Cole. She wasn’t surprised to see him. He’d been meeting her for a couple of weeks now, since she’d started seeing Orrin. Yet she ran tensely those few minutes before she caught sight of him, dreading the possibility that he’d slept in.
He walked toward her with his hands in the pockets of his green warm-up jacket. “Good morning,” he called.
“I’m winded.” She slowed to a walk. “I feel as though I ate lead before I ran today.”
He put his arm around her, his fingers warm against the bare skin of her arm. “I wish you’d pay better attention to what your body’s trying to tell you and slow down a bit.”
She hated him to talk that way. It made her feel guilty.
They were nearing the house and they walked silently for a few minutes. The sand looked like it contained a billion tiny lights, and somehow the scent of flowers had found its way to the beach and mingled with the salt from the ocean. She wished that every morning could begin like this one.
“Cole?” She hooked her thumb through the belt loop of his jeans.
“Hmm?”
“Will you be my baby’s godfather?”
His arm tightened around her shoulders. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”
“I don’t think I do, but I’d like you to have a special connection to my baby and that’s the only way I know to institutionalize it.”
“I would be honored. And I really see no conflict between atheism and god parenting.”
“You don’t?”
“The godparent’s supposed to make certain that the child is raised in the faith of the deceased biological parent, right? Since you have no faith that would be quite simple.”
She laughed. “Actually, I’d just like you to lavish presents on her and give her piggyback rides and let her call you Uncle Coley.”
“Pretty sure it’s a girl, huh?”
“I hope so.” She felt her eyes begin to burn. “Will you help me with her, Cole? She’s not going to have much of a father.”
He pulled open the sliding glass door to the kitchen. “It’s a promise,” he said, his face as serious as she’d ever seen it.
“I’m out of my element,” she said to Orrin as they smiled their way through the throng at the Devlin Foundation dinner. She had the feeling everyone else in the hall had spent the day on their yacht.
“You look like you fit right in.” Orrin led her by the elbow to the head table, where Cole was already seated. He looked relieved to see them. He was probably as nervous as she was. They would both be expected to perform tonight. He stood up and pulled out a chair for her, a few seats from his own.
“It’s better politics if we spread out a bit,” he whispered.
She knew he was right, but she would have preferred sitting next to him, nestled safely between him and Orrin.
The hall was peculiar. Dozens of round tables were set with white tablecloths and glittering silver and crystal. Yet the room itself with its woody scent and exposed rafters reminded her of a boathouse.
George Calloway, the red-nosed and jowly president of the Devlin Foundation, pumped her hand and took his seat next to her. His wife was already sitting next to Cole, talking in his ear and gripping the sleeve of his oatmeal-colored suit in her hand as she spoke. He looked mouth-watering in that suit. It made his eyes more startling.
Winn Meyer, her white hair knotted at the back of her head, sat next to Orrin, scooping him into conversation with the skill of the PR professional that she was. How did she do that so effortlessly? The Devlin Foundation had a real find in her. Some people were born knowing how to handle other people, Kit thought. And here she sat, smiling at George Calloway’s veiny nose and feeling obscenely pregna
nt.
Cole had told her she looked good pregnant. “You have this tight, muscled body, and your belly just looks like one more muscle,” he said.
She loved the description, but right now she wondered if he saw her as a liability. How did he explain her pregnancy to people like these? Maybe they would think that Orrin was her baby’s father. That would probably be worth hoping for. Let them think she was married to Orrin but had kept her own name. She looked down at her ringless fingers and dropped her hands into her lap.
Ridiculous to worry about it, she thought. Who cares what they think? She looked around the table. There was one empty chair left, between Cole and Winn Meyer’s husband. She was certain Cole had told them he’d be coming alone. The empty chair gaped at them.
“Will this be your first?” George Calloway leaned toward her.
“Yes.” She smiled.
“When . . . ?”
“September twentieth.”
“My oldest son was born in September. He’s a professional golfer now. Travels all over the country.”
“How many children do you have?” she asked politely.
“Four.” He reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and she expected him to pull out photographs, but instead he produced a crumpled handkerchief and blew his nose. “Julie’s at Princeton, Roger’s the golfer, Patty’s teaching in Collingswood . . .” He looked up suddenly, his attention caught by a woman standing behind the vacant chair. “Ah! Here she is.” He stood up. “This is Cynthia Britten, without whom the foundation would fold up like an umbrella. She’s our accountant.”
The men stood and Kit stared. She was exquisite. Her hair was as dark and shiny as Orrin’s, her skin a rich bronze. Her dress was made of some feather-light fabric that fell in layers low on her breasts. It was exactly the color of Cole’s eyes. The way she moved and her throaty voice when she apologized for being late reminded her of Estelle. But her beauty was different—innocent and unpolished, as if she hadn’t yet learned its power.
Secrets at the Beach House Page 20