Cole spoke to her as she settled into her seat, and they laughed like old friends. Kit smoothed her green silk dress over her stomach and shifted in her seat. She’d scoured every maternity shop between the shore and Princeton for this dress. She’d have done just as well at the local Kmart.
Cynthia caught her eye and smiled at her, and Kit smiled back, captured. She longed to reach across the table and stroke her fingers over the exposed part of Cynthia’s breasts. If she felt that kind of pull, what on earth must Cole be feeling?
They made their way through salads and stuffed flounder. Kit listened politely to the Calloways’ detailed descriptions of their children’s exploits, wishing Orrin could rescue her somehow. But he was chatting on and on with Winn Meyer and her husband as if he was having the time of his life.
With half her attention she watched Cole and Cynthia. At times they didn’t seem to notice the others around them. Every once in a while Cole smiled at Kit across the table with a look that said: How could I be this lucky?
Applause broke out table by table as George Calloway made his way to the podium. He held up his hands to quiet them. Kit’s heartbeat quickened and she barely heard a word he said. Something about all of them knowing why they were there and the foundation’s great pride in being a part of a program that was so exciting. Then he introduced her.
She walked up to the front of the hall and had her cheek bussed by his damp, rubbery lips. She settled in behind the podium and looked out at the expectant faces in the audience. She wasn’t up to this tonight. It would have been better to let Cole do all the speaking, but she hadn’t been given that choice. She only hoped that her carefully memorized speech sounded more spontaneous than it felt.
“Blair Medical Center has always been an exciting place to work,” she said, her voice echoing. This had to be a boathouse. “When you talk to the employees, you get a sense that they like their jobs, regardless of the level at which they’re working. They have a commitment to their work and to the patients, and they know they’re part of something very, very important. But in recent months, since the Devlin Foundation provided financial backing for the Fetal Surgery Program, I’ve noticed a change in the level of excitement. It’s higher than ever before. You can feel it in the air—the sense of pride of everyone there in knowing that lives are being saved and changed in a way they had never imagined possible in their lifetimes.”
She paused for breath and glanced at Cole. The rest of what she had to say would put them all to sleep. They’d told her she had to talk about Blair itself. Its history. Its other programs. Leave the fetal surgery stuff to Cole even though she was the one who’d been making the speaking engagements all along.
She wrapped it up quickly, trying to ignore the polite staring into space of the audience, and turned the podium over to Cole.
The applause shook the crystal on the tables and for a moment she feared they would all stand. He’d hate that. He would say something humble about how he didn’t deserve that kind of deification. Yet as she watched him take the podium, smiling patiently while they applauded, she had to admit he had charisma. Was it that suit or had he had it all the time? He jumped right in, speaking to them as though he were sitting over a cup of coffee in their living room.
“Last week, a couple came to me after a doctor diagnosed their unborn child with a deadly kidney disease. I was able to tell them there was a very good chance the life of their baby could be saved, and that it could be a very full and normal life as well. A year ago I would have had to tell them it was hopeless and watch them walk from my office knowing that they would have to see through to the finish a pregnancy that would result in certain death for their baby. I can’t begin to tell you the gratitude I feel—and the parents I’m treating feel—toward the Devlin Foundation, which has made this possible.”
He was twisting the truth, exaggerating the Foundation’s impact as though the Foundation itself were responsible for the surgical techniques. And really, he should have reversed the order of the example he’d used. He should have said that a year ago he would have had to tell the parents that there was no hope, but now he was able to offer their baby a chance.
But it didn’t matter. The audience listened intently, all eyes and ears. Cynthia smiled, stroking her water glass with long, polished fingernails.
Cole spoke for about twenty minutes and left the podium to more applause. He sat down again, and it was Cynthia, not Kit, who got his first smile of relief.
People were beginning to rise. Many of them were approaching Cole, patting his shoulder and shaking his hand. A few were headed in her direction.
“Time to mingle,” she said to Orrin.
It had to be an hour later that Cole finally worked his way toward her. “You were great,” he grinned.
“You, too. You had them spellbound.”
“I think Cynthia and I are getting out of here.”
She waited, hoping he would suggest that she and Orrin join them but he obviously wasn’t thinking in that direction at all.
“She seems really nice,” she said. There were strange, tingling pains in her chest.
George Calloway broke between them. “A complete success,” he said, his breath fuming in her direction. It was hard to get any air in her lungs at all. She couldn’t take much more of this.
She excused herself from the two of them and found Orrin waiting for her by the front door.
“Ready?” He reached for the door, as if he knew she wanted to make the quickest exit possible.
She nodded and pushed past him, filling her lungs with the fresh night air.
“Your blood pressure’s one-twenty over eighty.” Cole frowned into her chart the next morning.
“That doesn’t sound all that high,” Kit said from her perch on the examining table.
“It’s not, except that it’s unusual for you and it merits watching. You’ve put on a little more weight than I’d like to see, too, which might mean that you’re eating too much or it might be an early sign of PIH—pregnancy-induced hypertension.”
“Toxemia.”
“Right. It’s not that uncommon in older . . .”—he smiled, touched her arm—“in women over thirty expecting their first baby.”
“So what do I have to do?”
“Rest. Lots of protein. Lie down most of the time when you’re at home. Forget running.”
“I have to run.”
“No running. You can walk on the beach, but not far and not fast.”
She knew toxemia could be dangerous, but she felt fine. She wanted to tell him that if she stopped running, that’s when she’d get sick, but the look on his face told her not to. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll be good.”
35.
The crowd at the band shell expanded so rapidly that he wondered if he’d ever be able to find Cynthia. But then he caught sight of her, walking toward him with a smile and a wave. Her gauzy white dress deepened her tan, and she carried a dark red sweater over one arm, a basket over the other.
“I was afraid we’d miss each other in this mob,” she said, helping him hunt for a spot on the grass where they could spread his blanket.
“I wouldn’t have left here until I found you.”
They had to put the blanket close to the lake, quite a distance from the band shell, but he was pleased. He wanted the music to provide the background for the evening, nothing more.
Cynthia pulled a bowl of red grapes from her basket. She reached in again and produced a bottle of white wine and a plastic bag packed with wedges of cheese. He uncorked the wine while she arranged the cheese on a little china plate. She handed him a plastic wineglass, along with a pink cloth napkin.
He watched her busyness with a smile. Her bare arms were perfectly shaped, her fingernails the color of roses.
It might have been a mistake, meeting her at the band shell. He’d come here often with Estelle, though certainly not to hear Debussy. Estelle loathed Debussy. Too sweet, she said. But the music seemed a perfect fit
for Cynthia. She was a gentle presence next to him. Soft, almost shy, although he imagined a steel core inside of her that had gotten her where she was professionally.
She wanted to hear about fetal surgery, the technical details.
She followed him easily, said she was a frustrated nurse trapped in an accountant’s body. Her brown eyes rarely left his face as he spoke, unless he touched her or reached for her hand. Then she’d turn her head away from him. He had the feeling she’d been wounded once or twice.
In the middle of La Mer, she slipped a grape between her lips and leaned back on her arms. “I don’t understand your living arrangements, Cole. They sound . . . odd.”
“It’s simple. When I was in medical school I lived with Jay DeSantis, who is now a surgeon at Blair. Then his girlfriend Janni moved in with us. Then Janni inherited the Chapel House and we all moved in there. Janni and Jay hired an architect to make some changes on the house and when her—the architect’s—husband died, she moved in with us. Then about a year and a half ago, Kit moved to New Jersey from Seattle, and she was a friend of Janni’s so she moved in. Then we took Rennie in as a foster kid.” He loved recounting that tale. And he loved the stunned look on Cynthia’s face.
“My God. Do you know how bizarre that sounds?”
He shrugged innocently. “Does it?”
“You live on a commune. Do you grow your own vegetables?”
He laughed, hoping she didn’t mean to be as cynical as she sounded.
“Orrin doesn’t live there?”
“No.”
“Aren’t he and Kit . . . I assumed he was the father of Kit’s baby.”
“No. That was someone she’s no longer seeing.”
“Oh.” She looked pained. “It would be terrible to have a baby without the father around.”
“Well, she’s hardly lonely. Besides, Kit’s pretty tough.”
Cynthia looked thoughtful. “What will happen when you want to settle down?”
“There’s always room for one more.”
“You mean you’d stay there? In that house with a million other people?”
He sighed. He’d hoped she’d understand. “It would be very hard to leave.”
She shook her head. “There’s something unhealthy about it. Six adults living together. Professional adults. If you were all students or people just getting your feet on the ground, I could see it. Maybe.”
“Five.”
“What?”
“There are only five adults.”
“However many. It just isn’t done.”
“We’ll have a baby there too in the not too distant future.” He was baiting her shamelessly.
“When is Kit due?”
“September. If she makes it that long. She’s having a few problems, and I’m not happy with some of her test results.”
“You sound like you’re her doctor.”
“I am.”
She leaned back, and he could only read the look on her face as horror.
“You live with her, you work with her, you’re her obstetrician . . . Don’t you think that’s a peculiar arrangement?”
“It’s not a problem,” he said. He was growing uncomfortable with her questions. He poured himself another glass of wine and leaned back on his elbows. “If you’re done criticizing me, maybe we can listen to the music.”
She looked stricken. “Cole, I’m sorry. Here I am with somebody that I really like for the first time in a long while, and I’m destroying it before it’s begun. It’s a bad habit.”
She seemed human again, and he risked it now, taking her hand. “We all have our vices,” he said.
36.
Kit leaned over the side of the boat and ran her fingers through the cool water of the bay. She’d spent the morning on the Sweetwater with Maris, Jay, and Rennie, teaching Rennie to ski. Rennie was good; she lasted four minutes on her first try and looked great out on the water, with her hair flying behind her and her body in the early golden stage of a tan. It was fun watching her confidence grow. But Kit would be glad to get back to solid ground. Every time they bounced across the wake of another boat, she worried that the jostling might be too much for her baby.
Jay turned the Sweetwater toward shore, and Kit spotted two figures on the distant pier. Probably Cole and Cynthia, back from the church breakfast. Cynthia’s idea, of course. Cole had looked embarrassed when he told Kit about it. He had to be hooked to put up with that sort of thing.
She knew he was intrigued by Cynthia. He’d told her so. He told her everything, much as he had with Estelle. She knew the details of their dates, what Cynthia said, what he said in return. And she knew they were not yet lovers. Cynthia was holding him off.
Each time he came home, she was afraid he’d tell her they’d crossed that line. She didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to think of him making love to Cynthia, imagining how it would compare to the quick, uncaring way he’d made love to her the night he fought with Estelle.
The figures on the pier came more clearly into view. They were both men, and they had a boat, sleeker and more powerful than the Sweetwater. One of them was getting ready to board.
“Who’s that?” Maris asked.
Jay shook his head. “I don’t know.” Only a few other people shared their pier and none of them had their boat in the water yet this season.
Rennie looked toward the pier and caught her breath. She jumped to her feet, nearly knocking herself off balance, and grabbed the wheel out of Jay’s hands. She turned it sharply to the left.
Jay caught her arm. “Rennie, what the hell are you doing?”
“It’s them!” she screamed. She broke free of his hand and scrambled to the side of the boat. She had one foot in the water before Kit and Maris caught her. She fought like a caged animal, and Kit held her at arm’s length, frightened of taking a blow to her stomach.
“Rennie, calm down,” Jay said. “We’re back out in the bay. You’re safe.”
“They’re the ones who raped you?” Kit felt some of Rennie’s terror.
Rennie went limp in Kit’s arms. “Why are they here?” she cried. “I thought they’d gone away.”
“I’ll drop you off a few blocks down, Rennie.” Jay turned the boat south.
The Sweetwater pulled alongside a pier behind a white shingled house. Kit followed Rennie’s eyes back to their own pier. The men were still there, one of them in the boat.
“They can see me get off here,” Rennie said.
“I’ll go with you.” Kit climbed onto the pier.
Jay turned off the engine. “We’d all better get out here,” he said. “We’ll call the police from the house.”
37.
He woke up thirsty in the middle of the night, thirsty enough to get out of bed for a glass of water. Probably that corned beef hash at the church breakfast. It had been an awkward morning, meeting Cynthia’s friends, though they were obviously primed to meet him. “We’ve heard so much about you,” they said, and “Cynthia seems so happy lately,” and “How did you ever inspire her to apply to nursing school? We’ve been trying for years.”
Cynthia told him that some of her friends were zealous anti-abortionists who might try to put him on the spot. He felt rigid, watching his Ps and Qs. He was surprised that he cared what her friends thought of him. And he was surprised when Cynthia told him that she herself had protested the opening of an abortion clinic earlier that year. He had created an image in his mind of who she was and what she was like, and she was chipping away at it bit by bit.
He opened his bedroom door and nearly tripped over Rennie. She was asleep on the floor, curled up under her blanket, one arm circling her pillow. He stepped back in his room to put on his pants and a T-shirt and went back into the hall. He knelt next to her and shook her gently by the shoulder.
“Rennie,” he whispered. “Wake up.”
Her eyelids flew open, and he saw the crimson in her cheeks at being caught.
“Were you afraid in your bedroom?�
� She’d been jittery and preoccupied since that morning, when she’d spotted those bastards on the pier.
“I can’t sleep in there, Cole.”
“Come on,” he said, helping her up. “You can’t sleep out here on the floor, either.”
The shades in her bedroom were tightly drawn, the closet door wide open, filling the room with a yellow light. She’d been sleeping in the dark the past few weeks, and it saddened him to see the light on again, to see how this had set her back.
He pulled back her covers. “Get in.”
She climbed into the bed obediently and lay back, looking him squarely in the eye. At least she was no longer afraid of him. He sat on the edge of her bed.
“The house is full of noises tonight,” she said.
He nodded. “You can lock your door.”
“But then I’d feel even farther away from everyone.”
He smiled. “Quite a dilemma.”
Her eyes clouded over. “I keep thinking about Grammy,” she said. “I’m glad she didn’t live to see me raped. She couldn’t have taken it. It would have killed her.” She surprised herself with a giggle and clapped her hand over her mouth. “That’s not funny,” she said.
“I bet your grandmother would have laughed at that herself.”
“She was so sick. At the end she couldn’t talk at all. Sometimes she didn’t even know who I was.”
He was aware of Grammy watching them from inside the plastic box on Rennie’s bureau. “Let’s get her an urn,” he said.
She brightened. “Can we?”
“Tomorrow.” He stood up and switched off the light. “Good night.”
“Cole?”
“Yes?”
“Are you in love with Cynthia?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering,” she said.
He closed the door, but not before he saw her smile in the light from the closet.
He told the others he’d be getting home late that night. Very late. He even considered packing his clothes for the next day and slipping his toothbrush into his pants pocket, but he decided he’d better not push his luck.
Secrets at the Beach House Page 21