“She was critical of our relationship,” he said.
“Yours and mine?”
He nodded. “You know, that we’re too dependent on each other, that I hold you back from having a healthy relationship with Orrin or whoever, and vice versa.” He waited for her reaction.
“She’s right,” she said. She was drowning in her dependence on him.
“Yeah, I thought so too. So I’ve stopped telling you everything and I’ve tried confiding more in Cynthia.” He smiled. “That’s been a challenge. But it’s worked, I think. I feel closer to her. I thought this would be a good time to do it. I figured that you’d be so involved with yourself and getting better that you wouldn’t miss me telling you all my troubles.”
“But how do you think I’ve felt this week having you ignore me?”
“I thought I was doing the right thing. Increasing my attention to Cynthia, decreasing my attention to you. Like a mathematical equation. I forgot there were people involved.”
“Maybe it is the right thing to do, I don’t know. But you can’t leave me out of the decision. I didn’t know what was going on, Cole. I misinterpreted things. I’ve been acting crazy. At times this week I think I actually was crazy. One night I thought I heard a baby crying and I . . .” She stopped herself. It had been so long since she’d told him anything. She wasn’t certain he’d care.
“You what?”
“I went looking for it,” she said softly.
“Oh, Kit.” He moved up next to her, wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again there was hurt in his voice. “How could you think you disgust me?” he asked.
She blushed. Damn Virginia. She shrugged and leaned her head against his shoulder, then lifted it quickly. He pulled it back against him with his hand.
“I don’t want to cling to you,” she said.
“You never have. No harder than I’ve clung to you, anyhow. I missed you this week. I felt like an addict with withdrawal symptoms.”
She nearly laughed. “Bring me up to date, then.”
He stood up. “Why don’t you get dressed and we’ll have dinner with the others,” he said. “Then we can lock ourselves away somewhere to talk.”
She was glad that he left her alone to get dressed because the whole process was a struggle. Her muscles shook as she buttoned her shirt and her breathing reminded her of the time in high school when she’d had pneumonia. But she didn’t pay her body much attention. It felt too wonderful to be in real clothes again to worry about anything as mundane as asthma. And dinner at the big dining room table sounded close to nirvana, if she could just make it down the stairs. She was so hungry.
She smiled at herself in the mirror on her closet door as she pulled a comb through her hair. You are a simple person, she thought, to be able to go from empty to full in the space of an hour.
42.
She was sitting on one of the beach chairs, a stack of stationery resting on its broad arm.
“Hi,” he said, walking toward her through the beach heather. He felt sand slip into his shoes.
She smiled up at him, the sun catching the gold and red in her hair. Her cheeks were pink and the dark hollow look was beginning to fade from her face. She looked pretty again.
“Catching up on letters?”
“They’re not too easy to write.”
He nodded. “I need to talk to you.” He’d been thinking about this all afternoon, how he would tell her. He still wasn’t quite sure.
“Have a seat.” She gestured toward a vacant chair.
He looked out at the beach where Rennie and her girlfriends were sprawled on blankets. “Do you mind if we go in the house?”
A look of concern came over her face, and he said nothing to erase it. She got to her feet slowly. Still weak from not eating, he thought. He’d been stunned when she told him she’d been flushing her food down the toilet.
In the library, he pulled the two ottomans close together, and she sat on one while he shut the door.
“You look very serious and I’m getting very nervous,” she said.
He sat down on the other ottoman. “I’m the one who needs to be nervous. I don’t quite know how to tell you this.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I called Sandy this morning, like you asked me to, to tell him about Alison. He said he was just about to call you. His wife’s been having trouble conceiving so he had a sperm count done last week and they told him his sperm were too few and far between for him to impregnate anyone.”
She frowned. “How could his sperm count drop off that quickly?”
“It didn’t,” he said. “You’re not following me. I asked him if he knew his blood type. He said it’s AB. Blood type doesn’t usually prove anything but I had Alison’s autopsy report on my desk so I figured I might as well check. Kit, Alison’s blood type was O. So is yours. It’s impossible for her father to be AB.”
There was a crease between her eyebrows as though it was a strain to follow him. “But . . . Sandy was the only possibility.”
“Not if that period you had in December wasn’t actually a period. I remember you saying it was light.” He sat back and watched her face as his words sank in.
“Oh my God.” She covered her mouth with her hand.
“I’m O.”
She couldn’t speak. He could guess at the things racing through her mind, since they’d been in his own hours earlier. They should have been partners in this whole thing from start to finish. Instead she’d gone through it alone. He cursed that night; he’d never forgive himself for it.
“You didn’t even get to mourn,” she said.
“Mourning’s the last thing on my mind. I can’t even adjust to the idea that I . . . fathered a child.” The word father wrenched his heart.
They sat in silence for several minutes, their knees touching. “Kit.” He looked out the window. He wasn’t certain how she would take this. “I can’t keep this to myself.”
She nodded. “Of course not. You had a child. How can you pretend something like that didn’t happen?”
He smiled at her. “I was hoping you’d understand. All day I’ve been feeling sentimental and thinking how ridiculous that is. But who knows if I’ll ever have another child. I don’t think it’s a secret I can carry around with me for the rest of my life.”
“Who do you want to know?”
He sighed, folded his hands on his knee. “Jay already knows. I had to talk to someone. Sorry.”
“What did he say?”
“After ‘holy shit’? He was sad, I think. Sad that we didn’t know from the start. And a little amazed that I would do something like that when I was still with Estelle.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“No, but I want to tell Janni and Maris.”
Kit nodded. “We have to keep it from Rennie, though,” she said. “She’d never understand.”
He nodded. “Absolutely.” He would keep it from Rennie at all costs.
It was warm out on the bay, and oddly quiet, the only sound the hum of the Sweetwater’s motor as Jay steered her toward the setting sun. The houses along the water’s edge looked as though they’d been painted there, still and peaceful. It was quiet inside the boat as well. They’re mulling over the news, Cole thought. He stretched out on the seat at the back of the boat, watching them. Janni and Maris sat next to each other on the Sweetwater’s left side. He’d told them about the baby only an hour ago and surely there could be nothing else on their minds. Janni caught his eye now and winked. She was making it easy for him. She’d cried when he told her. He’d seen the curiosity burning in her eyes, all the questions she was longing to ask. He knew it was hard for her to refrain from probing deeper. That she didn’t pry the slightest bit touched him.
And Maris had surprised him with her look of delight. “I’ve never understood why we don’t all make love to each other whenever we feel the need,” she said. “Sure would keep me happy.” Then she’d p
ut her arms around him and kissed him. “Come on, Cole. Give me an aquamarine-eyed black baby.” She’d diffused a lot of his guilt right then, joking about it.
Kit sat on the right side of the boat. She’d wrapped a white sweater around her shoulders and she sat up straight, letting the breeze whip her hair around her face. Rennie sat next to her, looking miserable. They’d all be talking about the baby right now if it weren’t for her. She hadn’t wanted to come with them, but Kit insisted. “Please, Ren, I want everybody with me tonight.”
It had been Kit’s idea, the evening boat ride. They doused themselves with insect repellent and walked the two blocks to the pier in silence, Rennie lagging behind.
What was wrong with Rennie? He watched her now. She stared at the deck of the boat, the tips of her blond-streaked hair grazing her thighs.
“Do you have a lot of homework tonight, Ren?” he asked, trying to get her talking.
She didn’t answer. From where he sat, her eyes looked glassy, her nose swollen.
“Cole asked if you have much homework,” said Kit.
Rennie looked up at Kit. “Was Cole your baby’s father?”
He sat back against the plastic cushion and felt the vibrations of the engine up his spine. How could she know? “Why do you ask that?” he said.
“Was he?” Rennie repeated to Kit.
Kit gave him a resigned look over Rennie’s shoulder. “Yes,” she said, “he was.”
Rennie clapped her hand to her mouth, and for a moment he thought she was going to get sick. Apparently Kit did too. She turned Rennie’s shoulders to face the water. “Over the side, Rennie,” she said.
But Rennie twisted free of her. She lifted her feet onto the seat and hugged her knees, her eyes glued to the horizon. Jay cut the engine and the Sweetwater started to drift.
“How did you know?” Cole asked. He looked at Janni and Maris for the answer but they shook their heads.
“I heard you talking on the phone.”
His mother. He tried to remember exactly what he’d said to her, what his end of the conversation would have sounded like to a just-turned fifteen-year-old girl, around whom he acted as if he’d taken a lifetime vow of celibacy.
“I was talking to my mother, Rennie. And you must have heard me tell her that I didn’t realize the baby was mine until after she was born.” He hoped that would somehow make him more innocent in Rennie’s eyes.
“How could you do that to Kit?”
“It was a mutual decision,” Kit said quickly. “Cole’s not to blame.”
“No one’s to blame.” Janni moved closer to him and rested her hand on his knee. “It’s just a fact, plain and simple. It happened. Kit and Cole made a baby together. You’re getting tangled up in right and wrong.”
“But Kit got so sick. She almost died because of . . . him.”
So, he was suddenly reduced to a him.
“It’s not Cole’s fault that Kit got sick,” said Jay.
Rennie turned to Cole again. “If you’d known it was your baby, would you have married her?”
She was offering him a chance to redeem himself, but the thought of marriage had never entered his head. He looked at Kit and saw with relief that she was smiling at him. “It’s impossible to say what we would have done,” he said.
“You should still marry her if you had sex with her,” Rennie said solemnly.
Maris laughed. “Yeah, Cole, make an honest woman out of her.”
Rennie scowled. “Jay, can we go back?” she asked abruptly.
Jay nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
The motor started up again, and the Sweetwater cut back across the bay, toward Mantoloking and the Chapel House. No one spoke, and he wondered how he could ever erase the look of betrayal in Rennie’s eyes. He’d presented himself to her as a good man. Now she knew the truth.
43.
She reached the hotel in Atlanta around five. For a moment she was afraid to get out of the taxi. Her head was light; she was not certain her legs would hold her. She didn’t want to pass out on the sidewalk of a strange city, alone.
You’re not the fainting type, she told herself as she paid the driver and got out of the cab.
She’d only brought an overnight case with her. Her suitcase was too heavy and bulky for her to manage. Physically, she shouldn’t be here at all—Cole would give her hell if he knew. But he didn’t know. No one did. They thought she was having a restful visit with an old friend in Pennsylvania, a person she’d fabricated in a few minutes’ time.
She’d received the call from the University Hospital in Atlanta two days ago. She’d almost forgotten that she’d sent out those resumes. The hospital had a PR position open, the man told her, and Kit sounded custom-made for the job. Could she come down on such short notice?
Of course, she’d said, not allowing herself to think it through. She was not allowing herself to think at all. She should have asked him if she could put the interview off a week. She wasn’t strong enough for this quite yet.
She knew that now, as she leaned against the hotel’s registration desk trying to catch her breath so she could ask for her room. She’d order a little something to eat from room service, she thought, then get in bed and stay there until morning.
The interview went smoothly the next day. She met with the PR director first, then with her six potential coworkers. She liked them. She liked the soft twang in their voices and felt their warmth. She was wearing a disguise, though, the facade of a woman who was glib and good humored, who was yearning for a new professional challenge. No one would guess that just four weeks ago she’d delivered and lost a baby. Her interviewers were such gentle people that for a moment she considered telling them. She caught herself, frightened by the near lapse in judgment that would have cost her this job, because surely she would have cried. Surely she would look like a woman about to fall apart.
The director called her at her hotel that night. They wanted her, he said. He outlined the offer: more money than she was making at Blair and better benefits.
“I’ll need to give at least four weeks’ notice,” Kit said.
“You can have six,” he answered. She could hear the smile in his voice. They were pleased to have found her.
She accepted the offer and got off the phone feeling numb. This would be fine, she told herself. She’d live alone for a change. She’d make new friends—she was good at that. She would make a new start on her life. Again.
She had little strength left to hunt for an apartment, but she had no choice. She didn’t want to make a second trip down here. The first apartment she looked at was stark and glassy and overlooked a shopping mall. Her furniture would look ridiculous in it, but it didn’t matter. This would be temporary, she thought, until she could find a house.
She stared out the living room window while the landlord rattled on about the cleaning deposit, garbage pickup, the laundry room. The huge square shopping mall stretched out below her. It covered a full block, maybe two, and lines of cars snaked around it. She could hear an occasional car horn and the squeal of brakes.
“Do you have any questions?” the landlord asked.
She thought of the sunrise over the ocean, the cymbal crash of the waves, and turned to face him.
“Let me write you a check,” she said.
44.
In the summer, the Seaside Heights boardwalk was a world all its own. Kit was drawn to it and repelled by it at the same time. The shadowy beach and black ocean were eerie and mysterious in stark contrast to the activity on the boardwalk. The lights were garish, the calls of the kids working the concessions grating. They had promised Rennie a night at Seaside to celebrate the last day of summer school. She brought her two girlfriends with her. Laurie and Chris were turning Rennie into a giggly teenager. It was good to see her laughing and happy.
It had been a week since her interview in Atlanta, and Kit had told no one about her plans. It relieved her now to watch Rennie, to see how well she was doing. She didn’t n
eed Kit. She would be fine without her.
Rennie had been cold to Cole for a couple of weeks after she learned about the baby, but now she was talking to him again, acting as if she’d never been angry with him in the first place. Probably it wasn’t anger she’d been feeling as much as confusion, Kit thought. Rennie hadn’t been sure how to act toward him, so she’d chosen not to act at all.
They separated from the girls by the frozen custard stand in the middle of the boardwalk. “We’ll meet back here at ten,” said Janni.
The girls groaned.
“Okay. Ten-thirty.”
The adults headed south, the girls north. Cole looked back at them over his shoulder.
“You worried?” Kit asked him.
He looked embarrassed. “A little.”
“She can take care of herself.” She knew he was down tonight. His surgery that afternoon on a hydrocephalic fetus had been a disaster. That was the word he used, and she hadn’t pressed him for details. It was obvious he didn’t want to talk about it.
“You are neurotic, Perelle,” Janni said. “What is the worst possible thing that could happen to Rennie? Tonight, I mean.”
He smiled. “Well, I was a teenager myself on this boardwalk once upon a time, cruising around, looking for girls—like those three—to pick up. My friends and I would see who’d be first to get a girl under the boardwalk.”
“Rennie’s unlikely to go under the boardwalk with anyone, no matter how he sweet-talks her,” said Kit.
They were nearing the rides at the south end of the boardwalk and rock music blared from the concessions surrounding them on all sides. It was an incredible cacophony, and they had to yell to hear each other. People were packed together, eating thin-crusted pizza and frozen custard.
“God, I’d forgotten how tacky this place is,” said Cole.
Jay nodded. “It’s great, isn’t it?”
“Jay and Maris and I used to come here a few nights a week during the summer,” Janni said to Kit. “But Cole almost never came with us because Estelle was afraid her hair would frizz in the night air.”
Secrets at the Beach House Page 26