by Gina Rossi
“What sort of problems?” I’m about to say, but the waitress comes back and, somehow, I order something called Maineberry sorbet. Where am I going to put that?
“You’ll have to help me, Lucas.”
“No way,” he says, as a double helping of blueberry cheesecake arrives, compliments of Claude, “this is going to kill me.”
Both helpings are huge and we can only laugh. Much better this way, laughing over giant puddings in this cosy, lamp-lit space, with the black water hidden behind the bright reflections on the window glass, and the gloom of premature death forced down into dark corners.
“You look great, by the way,” he says, as I’m lifting a spoon of delight to my lips. My hand jerks and most of the sorbet slips onto my chin.
“I do?” I scoop, lick and wipe. Not smiling—I’ve got purple ice cream all over my teeth, haven’t I?
“Yeah.” He’s looking at me, unfortunately, as he would be. After all, you don’t pay a woman a compliment like that while gazing out to sea. His eyes are soft, a little heavy. “You’ve lost weight and gotten tanned. You look—”
“American? Are my teeth whiter?” I stretch my lips, baring my teeth, happy that the sorbet’s gone. He’s right about my weight. Without the constant worry over Hampers, coupled with Alice’s healthy diet, I am thinner. No, better than that: I am thin.
He laughs. “A little.”
“Why, thank you.” We’re back on track.
Eyes wide as a bush baby after strong coffee urged by Claude to help the digestion—I know why, because we’re going to be awake all night jumping about, stoked on caffeine and sugar—we stagger home. The midnight air is chilly, and we puff vapour as we walk. Lucas gives me his jacket, puts an arm around me and guides me home.
“Bonny,” he says, eventually, while we walk beneath the dripping trees, “had affairs. That’s how the kinder folk of Lobster Cove referred to her…her preference for variety. In reality, she got drunk and slept around.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She never wanted kids, I suspect. ‘Not yet, not yet’ she always used to say. If Alice hadn’t come along, there would be, like, nobody.”
Of all the responses that exist in the world, there isn’t one for that. We walk, into the mist that curls down on us, thicker and thicker, saying nothing. My stomach hurts. This trek to Blue Rocks will either do me the world of good or kill me. At least I’ve got that to think about.
Back at the house, Lucas pays the babysitter and she disappears in her little car, swallowed by fog before she’s reached the gates. Upstairs in the silent house, Lucas checks on Alice, tucks her in, and joins me in the bathroom. We shower together—a fairly functional event, although there is one scrumptious kiss under the downpour of hot water that should go in the record books.
Later, breathless and shivery after flawless sex, Lucas heavy and sleepy against my side, arms around each other, legs tangled together, I lie wide-awake in the dark. The foghorn wails over the muffled, incessant thump of the surf. Cosy and entwined in darkness, Lucas and I could be the only people in the world.
Except, he’s not present. Like last time, and the time before, and all the times before that, something’s missing. It’s high time I faced up to that. Something stands between us, stops me from telling him I love him. And I do. I love him with all my heart, and he loves me. He said so.
He’s not mine.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You will be happy,” says the day. Out on the sea porch I look at the view. Blueness all around; so beautiful, my eyes ache. All is paint box bright, dipped in golden sunlight.
“Did I imagine that clammy mist last night?” I ask Lucas who, bearing coffee, comes out of the house to sit beside me on the porch swing.
“No.”
“It’s like the whole world has been washed clean.”
“Sure is.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful.”
“That’s Maine for you!”
I gaze at the gilded sky. “However many times I see this view, it’s not enough. I could look at it forever.”
“Nothing stopping you.”
I turn my head sharpish to face him. “Isn’t there?”
Resolute, he stares back. “No.”
I think we both know there is.
Maine—the way life should be. Yes, true, great, but is it the way my life should be?
Lucas blows on his coffee and sips carefully for a minute or two. “I’ve got something for you.” He leans down to put his coffee on the floor, like you’re not supposed to, on a porch swing.
“What is it?” I hold my mug up and away, prepared for slopping. He hands me a business card: Jolivette French, Frenchman Bay B&B.
“Is that Gigi’s mother? Gigi who babysits Alice sometimes?” I ask.
“Sure. I saw her this morning, on my run. She wants to know if you’ll supply a couple of picnics for a group coming into town next week.” He sits back, half-turned to me, right leg bent, up on the seat, left foot on the floor, rocking the swing.
“I suppose I could.”
“Call her. She heard about you from someone at Sea Crest Inn. Your fame is spreading. Soon you’ll be part of Lobster Cove folklore.”
“You think?”
“See? You’re even starting to sound like an American. A Lobster Covian, at that.”
I laugh. “Is that a compliment?”
He leans across and kisses me. “You should start a business. Right here, you know that?”
Imagine a deli like Hampers in Lobster Cove. Could it work? Maybe it’s only me, but this place sings picnic, never more so than on a day like today. Add to that the sandy beach at Sea Crest Inn, the secret coves, the magical islands and hidden inlets, the hills behind us, laced with lakes and draped in forest. Could I develop a successful business here? Hope fills me. I look away from Lucas’s eyes, back at the glittering sea. He watches my face. I look down. I’ve exposed myself. He knows what I’m thinking. He understands.
I’m not going there. It’s a wild dream. Fun, but entirely impractical.
“Well?” He takes my empty mug and stands up.
“No.” I smile up at him. “I doubt my temporary work visa would stretch to that.”
“It can be changed. You could immigrate and apply for a green card.”
“I suppose.”
“Or you could marry an American guy.”
“I could.”
“Would you do that?”
I hesitate. “It would depend on the actual guy.”
He throws his head back and laughs. “Nice. Nice one, Lara Jasmine.” Whatever that means.
“What about you?” I ask, brave. “Will you marry again?”
He lowers his head, smile gone, and looks at me under his eyebrows. “No.”
I sidestep the dour thrust of disappointment. Serves me right for asking the question, for pushing him where he’s not ready to go. And, PS, that includes the forbidden cove—forbidden for a clear-cut reason, although…
“Something’s got to happen before I do that. If I ever do that,” he says, quietly determined.
You know what I should do on this glorious gift of a day? Assemble a perfect picnic, drag it, and Lucas, plus some rugs and cushions, down to the forbidden cove and fuck Lucas’s brains out. On that goddamn flat rock. Bonny used that rock for cocktails. I’ll use it for something else! I’ll change the name of that rock and etch it into the folklore of Lobster bloody Cove. That’ll do it. That’ll banish the ghosts, take care of that something.
Reckless and desperate, that’s me.
“What are you doing today?” I ask.
Leaning on the porch rail, holding the mugs in one hand, he looks at his watch. “I have a load of work. Feedback for the Saudi Arabians. And you?”
I lift a bundle of matted blue wool off the seat beside me. “I have this.”
He frowns. “What is it?”
“Alice’s knitting project. A bunny in a blue dres
s.”
“That’s a bunny?”
“It will be. However, I have to undo most of what she’s done while she’s at school and re-knit it all.”
“Isn’t that cheating?”
“I want to encourage her, not put her off. She’s enthusiastic, and should be supported. She’s getting better every day, honest.” I begin the process, undoing the stitches, thinking of Alice, later this evening, every feature of her little face utterly focussed on her masterpiece.
“Hmm,” is all Lucas says, going inside.
Ten minutes later, he’s out again. “You know, it’s a shame to waste a day like this.”
“Meaning?” By no means a knitter, I pick up a dropped stitch but somehow it looks back to front.
“Why don’t we take one of those famous picnics of yours and go to the beach?”
Yesssssssssssss! I abandon the knitting. “What a lovely idea.”
We go to the forbidden cove. My suggestion, and Lucas’s reaction is strangely neutral. The tide’s in so we sit high up on the shore in the sun and eat antipasto and grilled lemony chicken between thick, toasted slices of Italian bread, followed by fat green grapes that taste like cool honey. No flat rock. Today will not be the day the Cocktail Rock becomes the—
Never mind. It was a stupid idea.
Replete, again, considering last night’s meal, we lie side-by-side on a thick rug, and bask.
“Shelves and jews,” he murmurs, after a moment. “Christ. For a moment I was convinced.”
“Convinced of what?”
He doesn’t say anything for a while, and then, when I think he’s dozed off, he says. “Bonny used to take her engagement ring off when she swam. It was a loose, and she was afraid it would slip off. She had a special little hook on a key ring made from the first champagne cork to pop at our wedding. People reckoned that if her death had been an accident, the cork and the ring would have been found there, on the beach. The lawyer for Bonny’s defence suggested I had removed the ring because it was too valuable to let go.”
“It could have washed out to sea.”
“It would have floated, they said, because of the cork. It would have turned up.”
“Not necessarily.”
“It happens. That’s the way the tides and currents work around here. Ask any of the lobstermen, or yachtsmen. What the ocean gives back, is part of the folklore in these parts.” Another lengthy silence. “Hardly a day goes by when I don’t think about that fucking ring. I searched for it, but the weather was terrible. Big storms, huge tides.”
“Tell me about the ring I found in Alice’s dollhouse.”
“A replica. Bonny wore it when she travelled.”
“You gave it to Alice to play with?”
“I don’t really remember.”
There’s a bit of a silence. “Well, you found Bonny. That’s…that’s…” That’s what? Important? Amazing? Essential? “That’s the main thing. Finding the real ring wouldn’t prove anything, would it?”
“It would to me.”
Maybe the real ring wasn’t insured? Is that what he’s been fretting about down the years? I’m sure I know Lucas well enough to say I’d be surprised if that were the case.
“Think about it,” he says, like he’s talking to himself, “would a woman, about to kill herself, bother to take off her ring? Would she take a set of keys to the beach?”
Suicide? I hadn’t thought about that. Clearly Lucas has, a lot. “I suppose,” I say, “she must have had them with her, otherwise where else would they be?”
“I need to know for sure.”
Wouldn’t she have left a note if she’d killed herself? I’ve never pondered the vital importance of a suicide note until now. The clink of a falling pebble distracts me. I glance in the direction of the sound. Is there someone on the steps? Are we being watched?
“She was so brittle I couldn’t hold her together. She fell apart in my care.”
“What about the man she was seeing at the time? Did you know him?”
Silence sprouts and fills the cove, muffling the surf and chasing the seagulls away. Clouds thicken out to sea. I’m cold. I reach into a basket for my pullover.
“Sure I know who it was. It was Hank Martinez.”
I frown. “But wasn’t he your defence lawyer?”
Lucas nods.
“But why would you use Hank Martinez to defend you when he was—”
“Because I knew about Bonny and Hank. Mrs. Hank Martinez didn’t, and doesn’t. Neither do their teenage children. No one else in that outwardly perfect family knows apart from me and Hank. God knows how because Bonny was less than discreet.”
I recall seeing a photo of the Martinezes in the Hello magazine, at some charity gala event in London. They are a handsome, happy couple. In a movie, they’d be played by George Clooney and Cameron Diaz. “What are you saying? You made a deal with him? He got you off in exchange for your silence?”
Lucas sits up. “Yeah, I guess.”
I stare at him. “I don’t understand.”
“Bonny forced Hank into making a mistake. I know she did. She was one of those women. If she wanted something, she went for it until she got it. When she didn’t want it anymore, she broke it, and moved on.”
“Is that what she did to you?”
He looks at me for a few moments. “Martinez was lucky. Bonny hadn’t got that far with him. My silence saved his marriage. His expertize kept me out of jail. Fair deal.”
Fair deal? I’m not so sure, and I say so. Martinez gets off free as a seagull to progress his hotshot, flashy, New York life, and Lucas is dumped with a thundercloud of doubt hanging over him, unable to enjoy life in a town split over his innocence—in spite of Alice, beautiful Blue Rocks, his exciting career, anything, everything.
“I kind of feel I deserve it,” Lucas says, “because—” he turns his head to look at me, his eyes unreadable—“I was glad Bonny died. Happy.”
Those words punch me in the gut. “Lucas. How can you say that?”
“It’s the truth.” He frowns, like he’s confused himself by realizing a significant fact. “I cannot begin to describe the relief that flooded me, after the original shock and horror of finding her. That’s why I feel so guilty. That’s why I have to know she didn’t kill herself. I have to know, even though she was so hard to love.”
I’m that shocked I’m breathless. If he found it difficult to feel and show grief after Bonny’s death, is it any wonder Lobster Cove is divided?
Next thing, he reads my mind. “Another truth about…all this is that I don’t much care what Lobster Cove folk think about me. I care what I think about me.” He prods his chest with a thumb. “And I care about Alice. She’s the world to me.” He stares at me, his eyes hard. “Have I shocked you?”
I stop gawping and shut my mouth. “Um.”
“That’s it,” he says, voice flat. “That all. Now you know everything about me. There’s nothing else.”
“I’m sure you did everything you could.” I think about Alice, skipping off to school this morning, full of the joys of the world, particularly excited to show Ruth Pick a fallen chunk of wasps’ nest—thoroughly inspected by me, for emptiness—found by Lucas this morning.
“I didn’t. I should have tried harder.”
“Maybe she should have tried harder too.”
“She couldn’t. She wasn’t that sort of person.”
Enough. “Great!” I yank on my pullover, angry now. “You tried, she didn’t have to, and now everybody, you, Alice, and…and me, we all have to live under the burden of your guilt, because bloody Bonny couldn’t bloody behave herself!” I stand up and start throwing stuff into the picnic basket. The little bowl of grapes overturns. Grapes tumble onto the pebbles like fat, green tears and something inside me breaks. “She’s between us all the time, Lucas, isn’t she? Isn’t she? Like a horrible dark shadow on all our lives, making everyone miserable!” Bursting into fat tears of my own, I turn my back and stamp up the beac
h to the steps. Not my most Zen-like moment.
Approaching the house, my anger fades to remorse. This isn’t about me. It’s about Lucas. And it’s about Alice and, yes, like it or not, Bonny too. If Lucas is the One for me, but I’m not the One for him—for whatever reason—that’s bad, and that’s too bad. Am I going to hang around waiting for him to love me the way I want him to?
No. I’m ashamed of myself for even thinking that! I’m ashamed of myself, period. How could I have spoken to Lucas like that?
My phone rings. Julie, wanting to discuss baby-led weaning, whatever that is, this minute.
“Can we do it later?” I say. “I’m busy.”
“Why?” Her hurt tone is the last straw. “I have to leave for the spa in ten minutes—”
“Don’t be so needy,” I snap. “Be havvy, for God’s sake!”
“Lara?” she squeaks.
“Pull yourself together. Grow up. I’ll call you back later. Goodbye.”
I ring off, not before I hear her shout, “You’re jealous—”
Am I? Would I rather be Julie, who doesn’t have, need, or want to work, who’s adored and worshipped by wealthy, devoted Derek, who doesn’t have a thought in her head beyond her own comfort and happiness? Or would I rather be me?
I’m really busy. Sorry. Dealing with something awkward. Love you X, I message, quickly, blinking back new tears. Am I staying in Maine because I can’t compete with Julie?
I stop walking, ankle deep in scratchy grass and look at the house, at the simple solidity of the architecture, somehow restrained and majestic all at once. I’ve grown to love it. To me, this house is the heart of Maine. A few days ago I felt I could change my life to live here forever, but now? Lucas aside, could I move my life to Maine?
No. Because Lucas is not aside, and I’d always be waiting, wouldn’t I? Waiting to see what happens? Waiting for some spark to ignite in him, to burn up those dark memories and fling their ashes into the blue-grey salt of the Atlantic Ocean. I could wait forever. What sort of life is that?