by Gina Rossi
“Some inquisitive folks in Lobster Cove,” Angie murmurs out of the side of her mouth, confirming my suspicions while we dispense fruit punch in pink plastic glasses, “but you can’t blame them. Lucas is unknowable and, on top of that, they can’t work out whether he’s tragic or heroic.”
Unknowable.
Chapter Fifteen
“How are things at Blue Rocks?” Cherri asks when I drop Alice off at the beach for the Green Club holiday gathering. Today is all about whales, and Cherri has got the kids building a sperm whale sandcastle, thanks to a heap of perfect-consistency imported sand and the enthusiastic efforts of two lifeguards.
“So-so,” I tell her. “Lucas got in late last night from Mexico, so he’s resting up, taking it easy.”
“Good. Good. You tell him we’re having a good ol’ wine and cheese tasting at Merlot’s tomorrow night. Make him come.”
“He won’t.” He won’t. He’s already said no to Alice’s school play, though it’s weeks away yet. I have yet to dredge the courage to impart that chestnut to Ruth Pick.
“Can I say something?” Cherri weighs her words. “Perhaps…” She pushes her blue-framed sunglasses onto her head, diamanté starfish sparkling at the hinges. “Perhaps, you know, it’s time.”
“For what?”
“For you to stop enabling his behaviour.”
I frown. “How am I enabling his—”
“Perhaps, honey, it’s time for you to go home.” Head on one side, she pats my arm, smiling with kind eyes.
One of the little boys comes running, crying, with sand in his eyes. Cherri rinses and soothes, claps her hands to assemble the group and issues a brief riot act on the rules of rock pooling. Then she sets off, crystal beads glittering, blue extra-plus sundress flapping like a tent in the breeze, the children in a cluster around her, flanked by the lifeguards, looking for all the world like a whale herself, going to a ball.
“I must go home soon,” I tell Alice, on the drive back to Blue Rocks.
“Here home is!” she exclaims, pointing at the house, as we drive through the gate.
“Not my home, your home. I have to go to my home, in London.”
“I come?”
“When you’re older.”
“You come back.”
It’s not a question. I smile. “Maybe. One day.”
That evening, once Alice is tucked up in bed, I notice how quiet the house is. I make supper and watch television in the den. When the movie’s over, I switch off lights and go to the kitchen to put out fresh water for Buster and nibbles for his midnight snack. There’s no sign of Lucas, and he wasn’t here to kiss Alice goodnight. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him all day. He must be out. I doubt he’s gone to bed early. He doesn’t do early nights in spite of the early mornings. Over the last few days, he’s been in his studio until late, working on one of the computers, or standing at the drawing board, or bent over a desk, or making endless phone calls, just getting into the swing of things by the time I go up to bed. On my way upstairs I press my nose to the glass door of the studio, to confirm he’s not there, staring into the dark room for a few minutes. Where’s he gone?
“A penny for your thoughts.”
I jump. That’s Lucas, right behind me.
“Isn’t that what you Brits say? A penny for your thoughts? What’re you looking at, thinking about, Lara Jasmine?”
Is he slurring? Yes, judging by the smell of whisky.
“Layla.” Hic. “Fairmont.”
I turn around. Lucas, always clean-shaven, has stubble. He’s got a tumbler of whisky in one hand and the bottle, half empty, in the other.
He wags a finger at me, sloshing booze, because it’s the hand holding the glass. “Hu at Murphy’s says you were asking questions. About me.”
“Lucas, don’t.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Why are you asking questions?”
“You need to get a grip because I have to go home soon.”
“Home?”
“To London.” Sigh of relief from me. Subject of questions forgotten, by him.
He squints at me, befuddled. “Why, Princess?”
I take a deep breath. “I’m enabling your bad behaviour by staying here.”
“Huh?” He leans against the wall, next to a shallow, square niche, lit by a single spotlight, yet empty—a place where a painting should hang, or where a graceful curve of silvered driftwood should stand and be admired. He raises the bottle and places it in the niche with exaggerated care, tipping his head to the side to admire it.
“I’m going home, Lucas, and you have to clean up your act. Do you understand?”
“Sez who?”
“Cherri suggested that—”
“Sh-Sherri, and a lotta other people in this town can fuck off, Layla.” Hic.
I stare at him. “Is that so?” Clearly, I can’t talk sense to him now. Also, while it might be a good idea for me to go home, it’s not going to happen while he’s unstable. Is this why he’s been withdrawn? Has he been building up to something? Whatever, I can’t leave Alice. Not yet.
“What do you think? Do you think I…” He sways. “I murdered my wife?”
Why this? Why now? “I have no idea.”
“Everyone else in Lob…ster Cove has an idea. One way or the other. What does a-a sexy, intelligent, uh, beautiful person like you think, huh? Huh?”
“I don’t, um, really know anything about it.”
“You do, because you asked Hu. He told me.”
“Lucas, I think—”
“If I tell you the truth will you stay?” Hic.
“I think you should eat something, take a cold shower, and go to bed.”
“Will you stay? Will you? C’mon Layla…Jasm…ine. We could be good together. Real good.”
I sigh. “Staying, Lucas, isn’t a question of bargaining over you telling me—or not telling me—something. It’s about my job, being professional, knowing when—”
“Her keys. That was the thing. Keys. And her ring. Together.” He shakes his head. “They, police, said that was the clue. I hid them. They said.”
This is exactly what Angie told me. I put out a hand. “Give me that glass.”
“No.” He tips back his head and throws the whisky down his throat. Most of a glass in one go.
I swoop for the bottle, get there first and rush to the guest loo to pour the rest down the drain. Will he follow me, get aggressive? I go back into the hallway. Where is he?
“Hey,” he says, somewhere in the shadows. “Beautiful Lara.”
I almost jump a whole floor to the gallery. “Bedtime now,” I say, brisk and Pick-like, hoping he won’t be smart-arsed about the concept of “bedtime” and how we may share it, by having sex.
He looms out of the darkness, coughing like he’s going to be sick. It wouldn’t be a train smash—there’s not really much to be sick on, apart from the bare floor.
“Are you okay?” I usher him to the stairs. There’s way more than half a bottle of whisky behind this state of affairs.
“No. That’sa problem. It’s over.”
“What?”
He taps his head. “Over.” He stumbles upstairs, crashes along the gallery and slams his bedroom door.
What? I wait, listening, hoping he hasn’t woken Alice. When silence settles, I go into the kitchen, put a few things in the dishwasher and turn it on. I close some of the shutters and pull a few blinds. The pantry door’s open. I glance in as I close it and there—for God’s sake—is a new case of whisky. Twelve bottles, assorted brands. Not on my watch. Not while Alice is mine to care for. I carry the bottles in batches of four to the sink and pour it all away, half-drunk myself from whisky fumes by the time I’ve finished. The empty bottles get replaced in the box that gets pushed to the back of the pantry. The recycling can wait.
Later in bed, windows open to an unusually quiet sea, I deal with things one at a time. Call me an idiot, but I like Lucas. Just not this Lucas. This Lucas shocks me with h
is wild, desperate eyes and unguarded talk. This Lucas is different and dangerous and out of control. Foolishly I had daydreamed about Lucas bringing that magic into my life—I’d seen us together, picnicking, swimming in the cove, brunching at Ned’s Lobster Shack, in the window at Maggie’s, or on the porch, waving to the sheriff as he drove by, to Skeet, the school mums and Alice’s friends, even Pick, but a Pick wreathed in permanent smiles, peppered with dimples. I’d seen us slowly getting to know each other while Lucas recuperated. I’d seen us having fun, but there’s no fun to be had with this Lucas.
This is not the Lucas I realized I loved when John made me think he had died. Does that even make sense? How can you love a man with whom you spent a few short hours, sorting out a stuff-up? That’s how long I spent with the Lucas I liked. A few hours, followed by a void of absence, and now days and weeks with the stranger who returned in his place. The answer to these questions drifts out through the front door, now that I let it out of the storeroom of my subconscious.
The thing is, I probably don’t love Lucas. I love Maine. I love the sky and the clouds and the sea, the little yachts tied up at Pier Two, the buzz of the harbour where fishing trawlers and tour boats potter, the shops and restaurants along the front, the pale grey storm-weathered gables topped with tarnished copper weather vanes of whales and moose and flying geese. I love Alice and everything about her: the school run, the extra activities, the weekly shop, even mending her little blue pyjamas, hunting down wool so I can darn her split-open sea horse and fixing her books. It’s important stuff, all that, compared to luxury picnic hampers, for God’s sake. Who cares about those? People love them, they don’t actually care about them. Here at Blue Rocks, I’m working hard, earning money and making a difference. That’s the difference. Picnics don’t matter. This matters.
I’m in love with life in Maine and all the unique characters that contribute to its charm, down to Queenie the chicken. Add to that a Lucas-like equivalent of good standing and even temperament, and life would be bloody perfect.
Dozing, waking, I listen—the only sane person—I think—in a household that’s falling apart. Was it ever on an even keel as John suggested? Around two in the morning, in the deep, black silence, I hear noises. I get up and hurry out of my room, along the gallery. Lucas, being violently sick. Retching and groaning so badly I want to be sick myself. I sit on the floor outside his room and lean against the wall, waiting for him to finish. Eventually, the toilet flushes and I hear the gush of a tap, turned on full. I stand up, knock on the door and push it open.
“Lucas? Are you all right?”
He’s sitting on the bed, head in his hands.
“Wait there,” I say, a non-essential instruction. He’s not going anywhere. I fetch a big glass of water and several aspirin. “Take these,” I say, holding the tablets out in the palm of my hand. He does, fumbling, spilling the water, his hands are shaking so much. “Are you okay? Will you be okay?”
He doesn’t really answer that question. He says, “Fuck,” falls backwards on to the bed, rolls himself up in the duvet—after a fashion—and drags a pillow over his head.
Leaving the door wide open I go back to bed, Fraught and exhausted, I sleep, on and off, still listening, worried Lucas will throw up and choke himself to death.
Chapter Sixteen
Before dawn, Alice gets into bed for a cuddle. She’s delightful, warm, cute and drowsy. I wrap my arms around her and, wide-awake while she sleeps on, I think about what to do. Not for long. The next thing I know the room’s full of sunlight, and Alice has jumped out of bed.
“Yay, Daddy!”
“Hey, angel,” Lucas says, “Winnie-the-Pooh’s on. Run downstairs, will you?”
She scampers off. I sit up, covering a yawn, pulling the bedclothes around my mostly-nakedness and pushing my hair into some sort of shape that doesn’t resemble an electrocuted mop-head. “What’s the time?”
Lucas, contrite, chastised and pale, is dressed, shaved and loads neater than he’s been for the past while. “Nearly nine.”
It can’t be! I look at my watch to check it’s true. It’s true. “I’m sorry, I overslept.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He’s carrying a cup of something in his hand. “Tea,” he says, “for you.” He puts the cup and saucer down on the bedside table and sits on the bed, well away, near my feet, and studies me for a long minute or two. I wish he wouldn’t. I’m a wreck after so little sleep and I bet I look it.
“I apologise for my behaviour last night,” he says.
“That’s okay.” Hmm. White polo shirt, longish dark blue shorts, a light distribution of dark hairs on tanned skin, that brown hand with the white scar running across the knuckles, resting on a blue, heavyweight cotton thigh…
“Can we forget about it, please? It won’t happen again.”
Concentrate. I sit up, pushing my hair back further, putting a hand over the giant yawn that’s splitting my face. “Yes.” I yawn again. “Sure. Of course.”
“Did I…did I say anything really dumb or offensive to you last night?”
“Er, no.”
“I’m not…I don’t normally do that.” He holds my eyes with his haunted, hunted ones. “What I did last night. I’m sorry.”
“Sure.” I sip my tea. This is the best cup of tea I have ever had, and I tell him.
“It is? I had to ring John’s wife to ask how to make it.”
We laugh, and the tension shifts—a little. “I’m touched.” I am, truly. When last did a handsome man bring me tea and heartfelt apology in bed? Too long ago, and he wasn’t that handsome, PS.
It’s awkward. Him sitting on the bottom of my bed and me…well, me quite unable to focus on anything other than that—him, sitting on the end of my bed. Something’s going on. There’s a vibration in the air, like two auras touching—I read that in a book about ESP by the way, and always thought what rubbish—but now I’m not so sure…I look straight at him, but his eyes are too much, too sombre, too serious, too deep. Full of questions. I swallow and inspect my teacup. Empty.
“I failed my medical,” he says.
I look up. His eyes hold mine this time, anguished and intense. “I’m sorry.”
“I have a second one in a few weeks. If I pass that, I might be okay, otherwise it’s over, and I guess I’ll have to find another career.”
How can I possibly respond to that? “You’ll be fine.” I nod, to convince myself.
There’s a wry smile and a shrug. “I love it.”
“I know.” But I don’t understand. Who would dive in the freezing blackness of the North Sea for a living? Or swim with sharks to earn a crust? I suppose someone’s got to do it. Why does it have to be Lucas?
He looks down at his hands, running a thumb over that scar line across his knuckles. “I know that what I did last night is no way to deal with the situation. Any situation.”
I nod more. Good, because I confess I was frightened last night. Lucas is big, nearly a head taller than me and super-strong. If he’d really got out of control, really wanted to harm me—
Would he actually do that? You see, I don’t think he’s got it in him, even when he’s blind drunk. Don’t ask me how I know, but there’s a solid, fundamental decency to the man and he wouldn’t go that far. I trust him not to.
But if he ever threatened Alice, or God forbid hurt her, I would kill him. I would.
Then we’d see who was up for murder.
“If you threaten Alice in any way or hurt her, I will kill you,” I tell him, pleasantly enough. Yes, I am a catastrophist.
Hard to imagine, but he turns several shades paler and looks positively ill. “I would never do that. And”—he removes the cup from my hand—“I have never threatened or hurt anyone, ever.” Our eyes meet. His hold the reflection of my unswerving challenge. “Also, I did not murder my wife.”
“I know.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Am I?
“Good.” He leans forward t
o put the cup on the bedside table, standing up in the process. Hands in pockets he turns to the window and stares out over the ocean. What’s coming next? A revelation about a missing engagement ring or lost key to the sea horse door?
No. Something altogether more sinister.
“Do you like camping?” he asks.
Er, no! On a scale of likely to unlikely, camping would score an absolutely not.
He stays at the window, the morning sunlight touching the front of his shirt, and looks straight ahead through the gap in the shutters. What’s the view like this morning? I’d like to get up and stand next to him, perhaps a little behind, and look around his shoulder at the sea and sky, awash with a fresh, new, blue day.
“We like to go up to a place called Emerald Lake.”
“Phantom Creek?” The words shoot out of my mouth before I can stop them.
He turns his head and looks at me for a long, long moment. “No,” he says eventually. “I don’t go there any more.”
“Why?”
“Bad memories.”
“Like the beautiful little cove, right here on the doorstep of your house?”
He looks back out the window.
I’ve got the high road now, after last night, but I’ve probably said too much. Hell, the point of no return has come and gone. I go further. “If you don’t face your fears, they’ll hold you back all your life, and Alice too. You don’t socialize, and there are a whole lot of places in town you won’t go. You don’t attend school functions, or Lobster Cove events, even when people reach out to you. You don’t even live here. You have a job that takes you all over the world, as far away as possible.”
“Had.”
I’ll let that go for now. “Where’s it going to stop, Lucas? You need to grab hold of life and lay some good memories over the bad. Otherwise you need to get away and start over, somewhere fresh, or Alice will grow up with your hang-ups holding her back. New beginnings, Lucas, come on. You can’t change the past, but you have the power to make the future bright.”
He turns to face me, hands back in his pockets, eyes hard. “And how the hell am I supposed to do that?”