by Luanne Rice
Could her mother's best friend be a book-writing witch? Nothing seemed impossible anymore. In fact, compared to other things that had happened during Nell's lifetime, that didn't even seem so weird or terrible. She thanked Peggy for the information, and then she set off to find a way up the hill to the House That Used to Be Blue.
THE HUBBARD'S POINT tennis courts had come a long way from when Jack Kilvert was a kid. Back then, they were cracked blacktop, a second thought to the beach and marsh, sloping into the sandy parking lot, underwater during big storms. Now they were green composite, neatly lined, rolled, and maintained—and people had to sign up to use them.
“Thirty–love!” Francesca called from across the net.
Jack concentrated as she prepared to serve. Her hair was honey brown, held back by a wide white band that set off her tan. Willow thin, except for the hourglass factor, she had legs that went on forever, and, in spite of his attempting to focus on the game, Jack was aware that she had stopped some traffic. Two men, smok-ing cigars and carrying beach chairs and floats, had stopped on their way down Phelps Road to watch her serve. Or stare at her legs.
She served, he returned, she jumped the net into his arms.
“You won, you bum,” she said, kissing him on the lips.
“Doesn't that mean I'm supposed to jump the net?” he said.
“Don't get technical about everything. Maybe I was just in a big hurry to hold your big sweaty body—did you ever think of that?”
Jack laughed as she kissed him again. She felt thin and hard in his arms. He had a memory that bypassed his mind entirely, existing solely in his heart: of holding Emma twenty-five years ago, right in this same spot. Francesca was the spitting image of his wife as a young woman. Jack did the age math, and his head hurt.
“Come on, let's jump in the ocean,” Francesca said.
“I want to go home and check on Nell.”
“She told me she was going to the beach,” Francesca said. “In fact, she saw me pull up in front of the house, and she met me before I even got out of the car. I think she wanted to go through my trunk, to make sure I hadn't brought an overnight bag. Honestly, she's like the border patrol.”
“No, she was just welcoming you.”
Francesca snorted through her pretty, perfect nose. “You are so not right about that. My parents were divorced, and when my father brought women home, I gave them hell. This is my payback—and believe me, I deserve it. Don't worry, though. I don't scare easy, and I totally respect her need to stake out her territory. I'll win her over—you'll see.”
Jack didn't say anything, not wanting to give her the wrong idea about where things were going.
“Look . . . if she's at the beach, that means your house is empty,” Francesca said, squeezing his hand. “I already know you have to be proper on the chance she'll walk in on us, but can we at least hold hands on the couch?”
“While going over our British North Sea plans . . .” Jack said. They both laughed, Jack pulling back his hand as they set off, thinking, Real romantic, you jerk. He was forty-eight, overwhelmed, overworked, and totally confused about life's twists and turns. She was twenty-nine, dangerously beautiful.
For the last six months, Jack had been in the Boston office of an Atlanta engineering firm. Francesca worked in his department now, and they had been colleagues for several years before that. They played mixed doubles together with people from work. He admired her serve, the precision of her mind, the excellence of her engineering skills, her great sense of humor.
Did she notice that he was keeping distance between them, not wanting people to think he was part of a couple? And just who would care? Who would even remember him? Emma had spent about fifteen childhood summers here, before her family had moved to Chicago. Jack's family had rented here for three years in a row; Emma was four years younger—his sister's age. He had met her on the boardwalk one clear July night, and their fates were sealed. This year, needing a place to take Nell on vacation, he had chosen Hubbard's Point over the Vineyard, Nantucket, the Cape, islands in Maine . . . not so much because he wanted her to see the place where her parents had met, but because he'd been pulled here by forces he couldn't understand.
“If your daughter's not home,” Francesca whispered, closing the gap as they walked, “I can't promise that I'll behave myself. . . .”
Jack felt the grin on his face, in the muscles around his mouth, but it didn't register anywhere else. He could show a smile, but he couldn't feel one. That had been the biggest curse of losing Emma. He was numb to the bone, as if winter had come to stay for the rest of his life. He was six foot three, had been an athlete since he could throw a ball, and he couldn't feel anything. Guys in his basketball league didn't know, his tennis partners had no clue, the women he dated wouldn't guess, his own sister, Madeleine, was in the dark.
Only Nell knew, and he hated that she did.
THE ROAD to the Point looped up from the beach, right past the tennis courts. Nell glanced over, just in time to see her father and Francesca kissing at the net, too busy to look up and witness her passing by. Seeing her father kiss Francesca was like a dagger in Nell's heart and made her in a greater rush to get to the House That Used to Be Blue. She began to trot, turning right at the top of the hill.
The shadows were soft and dark here on the Point. Nell slowed down, looking at all the houses, trying to figure where she was in relation to the beach. Her parents had talked about this place, but never brought her here. Their family lived in Atlanta and vacationed on the beautiful Georgia barrier islands.
Nell was used to southern white sand beaches and soft green grasses and warm water . . . nothing like this jagged coast, the chilly Long Island Sound. A craggy bay showed through the trees of the yards on the left. Some of the gardens were beautiful, overflowing with roses and lilies. A few had flagpoles. The breeze was blowing, and the flags stood out. Some of the flag houses had lovely window boxes cascading with petunias and ivy.
Suddenly, looking up the hill that rose to the right, Nell saw a different kind of yard. It was mostly rock, with patches of wild-looking grass filling in between bushes and trees. Lilies bloomed in the shade, scraps of yellow and orange, like birds hiding in the woods. Pine needles and oak leaves rustled overhead, and stonecrop thatched in the crevices of stone steps curving up the rocky hill. Nell's heart began to beat very hard when she saw the sign:
PLEASE GO AWAY
It was hand-lettered, white paint on gray driftwood, nailed to a stake and driven into the ground beside the steps. Nell raised her eyes from the sign to the house. It was painted white, but the white looked almost blue in the shade of two tall oak trees.
Nell looked back at the sign. Then at the house. She heard Peggy's words about the lady being a witch, and felt a tug-of-war inside. What if she was mean and scary and put a spell on her? The possibility gave Nell a cold shiver.
But some feelings are stronger than fear: love, longing, desire. She had a lump in her throat and couldn't shake it loose. Her feet began to walk up the hill, and then she started to run. Staring upward, she saw a face in the window. She felt afraid, but she couldn't stop now. Barefoot, she caught her toe on a rock in the yard, tumbled head over heels, skinned both her knees.
STEVIE MOORE had been at her kitchen table, watercolor brush poised as she stared out the window at hummingbirds darting in and out of the trumpet vine. Her seventeen-year-old cat, Tilly, sat on the table beside her, no less intent. Stevie wanted to capture the hummingbird's essence, which she thought was its amazing ability to be purely still yet in constant motion, all at the same time. Tilly just wanted to capture the hummingbird.
Stevie really didn't know how she would survive without Tilly. The cat had been Stevie's constant companion through everything. Tilly had gotten her through more lonely nights than she could ever count. Sighing with love for her cat, she saw the hummingbirds suddenly dart away. Looking toward the stairs, she saw a child running up the hill.
“Tilly, don't scho
ols teach kids to read anymore?” Stevie asked, wondering whether maybe her nemeses, the young boys next door, had stolen her sign again.
The cat, spying the approaching stranger, sprang up on top of the refrigerator to hide in a wicker bread basket. Stevie stood up. She brushed cat hair off her black T-shirt and slacks. This child seemed hell-bent on something, so Stevie grabbed her panama hat and put it on, preparing to look stern and imposing, a split second before she saw the child fall on the rocks.
Stevie ran outside. The girl was crumpled up on the ground, trying to pick herself up. Her knees and big toe were bleeding. Stevie hesitated for just a moment, just long enough for the girl to look up at her. Her green eyes were cavernous, flooded with pain, and the sight of them sent a current of unexpected, unfamiliar emotion through Stevie.
“Are you okay?” she asked, but before she could even crouch down, the girl nodded her head vigorously, and tears flew out of her eyes.
“It's you, it's you,” the girl said, her voice thin and reedy.
“You're a reader,” Stevie said, assuming the child had made a pilgrimage to meet the person who'd written Owl Night or Summer of the Swans or Seahawk; but just then, the girl looked past her and through her, as if she was seeing a ghost.
“My mother knew you,” the girl said, in a southern accent.
“Your mother?”
“Emma Lincoln,” the girl said. “That was her name before she married my father.”
“Oh, my,” Stevie said softly. The name came from the distant past. Memories swept in, clear and bright as sunshine, all the way back to earliest childhood, girls who had learned to swim together. “How is Emma?” she asked.
“She died,” the girl said.
Oh, the sky changed color. It really did. It lost several shades of blue as the words sunk in. How could such a thing have happened, and Stevie not have known? A breeze moved the leaves overhead with a rush; Stevie stared into the little girl's eyes, and she swore she saw Emma right there.
Stevie reached out her hand, and the girl took it with a scraped, sweaty palm. “You'd better come inside,” Stevie said. And they went into the house.
Chapter 2
AFTER STEVIE CLEANED OFF THE GIRL'S hands and knees and gave her Band-Aids, she made tea, because that's what her mother would have done. She set out Blue Willow china cups and saucers, the sugar bowl with tiny brown sugar cubes, and a plate of lemon drop cookies. Then she and the girl—whose name was Nell—went to sit at the table in front of the stone fireplace.
“Your mother and I used to have tea parties right here,” Stevie said.
“When your house was blue?” Nell asked.
“Yes.”
The child's gaze was avid, taking everything in: the wicker chairs, faded green loveseat—arms and back clawed by Tilly and her sisters—bird illustrations from some of Stevie's books, her collections of feathers, shells, birds' nests, and bones. Stevie watched Nell's face and knew the child was wondering where her mother had sat, what objects her eyes had seen. Stevie had done the same at Nell's age, visiting places where her mother had once been.
The two sipped their tea for a while. Stevie wanted to find the right words, to comfort the child. She wanted to ask what had happened to Emma. But she felt constrained, afraid she would say something wrong. Her own mother had died when she was young, and she remembered a world of adults who meant well but just seemed to make everything worse.
Besides, Stevie was a hermit. She wrote and painted, mostly in silence. It hadn't always been that way; there had been much love, and men, and the men's children. But now it was her and Tilly, and for a long time, that had been enough. So, she held her teacup and waited for Nell to speak. It took a few minutes, during which time they listened to sounds of early summer coming through the open windows: small waves breaking on the beach, finches singing in the privet, a squirrel chattering in the hollow oak.
Nell finished her cookie, politely wiped her fingers and mouth on the pink linen napkin, and looked up. She was about nine, very thin, with shoulder-length brown hair held back from her face by flower barrettes, and enormous green eyes.
“My mother said you were her best friend.”
“Oh, yes. We were best, best friends.”
“With Madeleine?”
“Maddie Kilvert!” Stevie said, laughing. “Yes, the three of us were inseparable. Emma—your mother—and I knew each other first. Her family had a cottage here as long as my family—since we were very young. But then Maddie came along . . . that's when we really got close. The three of us, for three summers . . .” As she said it, the words came flooding back: “‘Three summers, with the length of three long winters . . .'” Seeing Nell's expression of peace as she closed her eyes to listen, Stevie knew she had heard the words before. “Did your mother tell you we borrowed that line from Wordsworth?”
“From a famous poet, she told me. To describe how long the winters were without her best friends, the beach girls.”
“Beach girls!” Stevie said, delighted as another great old memory tumbled out of cold storage. “That's what we called ourselves. Because we were always happiest with our tootsies in salt water . . . we could hardly stand the winters, apart from each other. Our phone bills were massive. I used to intercept the mail, before my father could see the bills I'd run up talking to Emma and Maddie. One month I had to sell my clothes!”
“What?”
“I did! I sold two brand-new sweaters and a pair of boots to the lady I babysat for, to give my father money to pay my share of the phone bill. Thank God there wasn't three-way calling back then, or it would have been total financial ruin.”
“You all lived far apart from each other?”
Stevie nodded. “Well, it seemed that way at the time. During the winters I lived in New Britain, Maddie lived in Hartford, and your mom lived in New Haven. But then summer would finally get here, and we'd all be in our rightful place—right here, at Hubbard's Point.”
“Aunt Maddie lives in Rhode Island now,” Nell said.
“Your aunt . . .” Stevie paused, putting it together. “Your mother married Jack!”
Nell nodded. “You didn't know?”
Stevie held back a sigh. How to explain a crazy chiaroscuro life, all its layers and lapses and messiness and separations—the losing-touchness of it all—to this sweet nine-year-old child? “No,” she said. “Once the beach girls got to college, we sort of went our separate ways. And lost touch with each other.”
“Mom didn't lose touch with Aunt Maddie,” Nell said. “They saw each other a lot, because she married Aunt Maddie's brother. Was he like the beach girls' brother? The ‘beach boy'?”
Stevie laughed. “It didn't work that way, Nell. It was just us—we were closed to the rest of the world. Besides, he was four years older, which, back then, made him ancient. I do remember, though, the summer before we all went to college, your mother started going out with him.”
“They fell in love here,” Nell said.
Stevie nodded, although her face remained inscrutable. “Hubbard's Point has always been the place to fall in love.”
“Dad said they used to kiss under the boardwalk, and at Little Beach, and behind that blue house.” Nell pointed out the front window, at Stevens' Hideaway, the sprawling place at the end of the beach.
Stevie smiled, remembering several key kisses of her own in that exact spot. But not wanting to burst the parents'-singular-romance bubble of a young girl, she kept them to herself.
“Blue houses,” Nell said. “That's how I found you, you know. My mother always said you lived in a blue house.”
“She didn't tell you my name?”
“I think she did,” Nell said. “But Stevie is a boy's name. I guess I couldn't keep it straight. Why'd your parents call you that?”
“It reminded them of where I came from,” Stevie said after a long moment, deciding that Emma's daughter didn't need to hear the story of how she was conceived in a hotel on St. Stephen's Green in Dublin.
“Let me see your knees. . . .” Stevie said suddenly. “You really skinned them.”
“They're fine,” Nell said, staring. Her accent made fine come out “fahn.”
“Where do you live now?” Stevie asked, happier when she was the one asking the questions.
“Atlanta's our real home, but my father transferred to the Boston office, so we're there temporarily. And he's taking the summer off, sort of. I mean, he's working, but he doesn't have to go to the office so much.”
A silence rose, and Stevie felt Nell's steady gaze on her. It wasn't so bad. But then Stevie noticed Nell wasn't looking away, and she began to feel enclosed.
“The reason I painted my house,” Stevie said, just so the child would stop staring, “was that it had always been blue. Always, from the time I was born. And I started to think . . . maybe if I changed my house color, I would change . . . some things I didn't like. About . . . life. Does that make any sense at all?”
Nell nodded gravely, and Stevie saw her gaze shift down, to Stevie's left hand.
“You're looking for the engagement rings,” Stevie said. “I know. All the kids do.”
“Did you lose them all in the water?”
Stevie tried to smile. “Just one,” she said. “And I didn't lose it.”
“Didn't lose it?”
“I threw it in,” Stevie said.
“But you look for it every morning!”
Stevie shook her head. “No,” she said. “I walk the beach every morning looking for sandpipers to draw. And because I like to swim before the sun comes up. And walk with my feet in the water.”
“Your tootsies,” Nell said with a grin.
Stevie nodded. The child's smile gave her a lump in her throat and sent a powerful sting right into her eyes.