Elliot drifted in her peripheral awareness. The slightly salted hair at his temples, his eyes crinkled from perpetual watchfulness, his posture alert and aloof, all of it was as familiar to her as the glittering ballroom and the clammy air outside. All of it forced a comparison with the baking heat and sea breezes in Hampton, with Silas’s sun-streaked hair and easy smile. She pushed him out of her thoughts and slipped out of the ballroom, ducking outside to the alley where the staff smoked on their breaks.
A young man she didn’t know wearing chef’s whites and the cap of a line cook was finishing up a cigarette and a Coke. “Five grand a pop wasn’t fancy enough for you, sweetheart?”
Sofia flashed her DeVarona staff card. “Would you speak to your boss like that?”
The cook scowled, the back of his neck reddened as he dropped his cigarette butt and stamped it out.
A pair of tuxedoed men came around the shadowed corner of the building. Sofia knew from their posture and demeanor that they were part of Hermit’s detail. As they came into the light, she realized one was Elliot.
Elliot wasn’t what he was without reason. He sensed the tension as he approached. “Everything okay here, Ms. Buck?”
She quashed the giggle that bubbled up. Of course he would retain his professional facade in front of a perceived threat. “I’m fine, Agent Winter. Thank you.”
Elliot’s companion glanced at the still smoldering filter on the asphalt. “You’ll want to pick that up, son.”
She watched the two agents vanish into the shadows and walked back inside without a word to the young man, who was bent over to retrieve his cigarette.
Elliot found her one last time that evening.
She was changing back into her ballet flats, considering an offer to go out for an impromptu goodbye drink with some of her waitstaff, when Elliot entered the room.
There had been a time when his commanding presence and classic good looks had charmed her. Now, despite herself, she yearned for Silas’s less demanding self-possession, the way he slipped into a room. The way he had slipped into her heart, into the fabric of her life.
“Can I come by later?” Elliot asked.
Sofia shot a look at the group of servers waiting on her near the staff entrance. “I can’t, Elliot. I’ve got plans with the event staff tonight. Another time?”
In a rare show of public affection, Elliot circled her waist and drew her in. His lips cruised knowingly over hers before he whispered low in her ear. “Or maybe in Greece?”
He was gone without another word.
Her colleagues clapped and whistled the second the door closed.
“Well done, hot stuff,” one of the bartenders laughed.
She forced a laugh, but her lips were cool, her heart unmoved.
~~~
When Judy Dunaway called, Silas contemplated not answering his phone. The last thing he needed was another reminder of Sofia.
“Silas, it’s Judy. I need a favor.”
He already knew he would end up saying yes. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Jake’s soccer team needs a second coach. Please tell me you know how to play.”
“I played some,” he said hesitantly. He could remember countless autumn Saturdays spent playing in one youth soccer league or another, feeling frosty morning air in his lungs and the damp green field under his cleats.
“Christopher signed up to coach with another of the dads, but the other guy dropped out two weeks into the season. I told Christopher I’d make a few calls, since he’s at work all day today. I’m only calling you. Dex has three left feet, and I saw how good you were with the boys.”
“How soon do you need someone?” The truth was, he couldn’t think of any reason not to do it.
Judy’s reply was a little sheepish. “Tomorrow morning for a team meeting.”
“I’m only doing it for you,” he teased.
“Liar,” she laughed. “You don’t have anything else going on. Not since…” She stopped cold. “Not since the tourist season ended.”
Silas heard the sentence she didn’t finish. Not since Sofia left. “Where should I be tomorrow, and when?”
“I’m sorry. I swear to god, three pregnancies destroyed my ability to think before I speak. I’ll have Christopher text you about the meeting.”
He felt bad. He liked the Dunaways, and he didn’t want them to feel like they couldn’t speak to him about Sofia. After all, she’d left Judy behind, too. “No worries, Judy. Have you heard from her at all?”
“Nope. Not since Labor Day.” There was a pause; Silas could hear children in the background. “I saw her before she left. She told me you two fought. She didn’t want to talk about it, and it’s probably not my place to say anything, but I think she made a mistake, and I think somewhere under all that armor, she knows it.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Silas replied. He didn’t know what to say. “Anyway, have Chris shoot me the details, and I’ll see him tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Silas.”
He set his phone down on top of the stack of paperwork that had arrived that morning, wondering how the Dunaways would feel about what those documents represented. He hoped that when Judy inevitably told Sofia, she’d understand.
And forgive him.
TWELVE
With the movers due in just a few hours to take what was left of her things to a long-term storage facility, Sophia finally turned her attention to the two boxes she’d been avoiding. One, a cardboard box she’d pulled out of the back of their closet back in Hampton bearing her mother’s name in her father’s expressive handwriting. The other, a hastily packed box of mementos from the summer. She hadn’t yet forced herself to open either. Instead, they’d taunted her from a corner of her living room as the days remaining in her condo dwindled.
Kevin Landry’s referral had taken her to a sleek but comfortable real estate agency in Georgetown. She’d listed the condo the same day; it had shown twice in the first forty-eight hours. She’d taken the first reasonable offer, after less than a week on the market. That closing would happen after her departure.
The sale of Buck’s Landing had gone without a hitch, with the attorney in Portsmouth signing the paperwork for her. By the time she finished her orientation week in Athens and moved on to Santorini, there would be nothing left to tether her to her old life.
Feeling like a coward, she opened the second box—the one she’d packed herself—and parted the crumpled newspaper protecting the contents. Inside, the purple glass mermaid preened on her purple glass rock. Beside her rested the beachy lobster in his preposterous shorts. Her words that day at the snack bar window had come true. The mermaid was off to see the world. Sofia suppressed a pang of envy; the glass statue had a companion for her travels. She gathered up the mermaid and the lobster, and carried them back to her bedroom where her large suitcase waited, along with several boxes of personal effects and clothing she was shipping to herself care of Luxelle.
She added the tchotchkes to a box already holding her favorite of her mother’s vases and the pile of photos from the Hampton apartment. Those she would take with her.
The final box's dusty, dented corners suggested its contents hadn’t seen daylight in some time. Inside was her mother’s wedding dress. It had been a simple affair, made by Nonna from her own dress’s silk and lace. The cloth was yellowed and smelled of long-staled mothballs, but Sofia could still see how beautiful the dress had been. The memory of poring over her parents’ wedding photos swamped her.
She noticed an envelope, standard letter-sized and far newer than the wedding dress, tucked carefully into the bodice of the gown. Hands trembling with emotion, she reached for it. Again, her father’s bold letters spelled out her mother’s name. It was thick; there were too many pages inside to have fit easily. Feeling like an eavesdropper despite her curiosity, she swiped her stinging eyes on her sleeve and tore the envelope open.
Elena, my love,
It’s more than fifteen years since you left me and I st
ill wake up in the morning and look for your hair curling over the pillowcase. If heaven is the boot heel of Italy like your Mama always said, I bet you two have one hell of a garden growing. I was never much good at that, nurturing things, not without you. I miss you. I’ve missed you every day. Even the really bad ones.
So much that I lost myself, forgot to keep living, forgot to care for our beautiful daughter.
God, Ellie, I screwed up. I drank away my sorrow and I left her on her own. By the time I pulled myself together she was gone, so far so fast and I couldn’t ask her to come back. I screwed up so bad. I’ve been sober now for a while, and I’m supposed to atone, to make my apologies to the people I hurt, but it seems selfish to find her just to unburden my heart. I won’t hurt Sofia. I won’t dredge up all that pain just to polish up my halo. Instead, I’m saying I’m sorry the best I can to you.
I’m sorry.
I think about her all the time, Ellie. I think she’s older now than you were when we got married. She always looked like you. I bet she’s a beautiful woman, just like her Mom. I guess she could be married, could even have kids of her own by now. Thing is, sometimes I get angry, so angry at her for leaving me, too. But I drove her away and that’s different, and I forgive her for leaving.
I still love both my girls so much.
If I could, I’d tell our daughter to love hard, to give herself up to loving someone. Then I’d tell her to fight hard for it, not to let it walk away, not to let it die, not to let anyone or anything stand between her and real love, even if it hurts like hell, because living without love isn’t living at all. I had you. I had that love and maybe I couldn’t win against death, but I didn’t fight the demons that got between me and Sofia. I let her down, I let me down, and I’ve got half a life wasted to show for it.
Forgive me, sweetheart, and maybe someday we’ll all get another shot.
Love you forever. Jimmy
Long ago dried tears spattered the ballpoint ink, bled out the pale blue lines of her father’s notebook paper. Sofia paged through the stack of letters, all from her father to her mother, all written in the years he was sober. After the first one they became more like journal entries, full of the language of love and loss in a way Sofia had never imagined her father to think.
She lost track of how long she sat there, getting to know the man her father had become. She basked in his forgiveness, finally able to see his remorse, to believe he’d loved her despite his actions. When the letters were read, she folded the pages back into their envelope. Setting it aside, she boxed up the dress. Before she left, she would take it to the cleaners and see about having it preserved, and stored.
A knock at the door pulled her thoughts back to the present. The moving truck waited, pulled halfway up on the sidewalk outside. Dazed, she showed them the furniture and boxes destined for her storage unit. When they had gone, leaving her with a mattress to sleep on and the few things she planned to take to the Salvation Army before she left at the end of the week, she drifted through her rooms. Pared down to the essentials, she didn’t amount to much.
The letters called to her from the spot on the kitchen counter where she’d left them. “I’d tell her to fight hard for it, not to let it walk away, not to let it die, not to let anyone or anything stand between her and real love, even if it hurts like hell, because living without love isn’t living at all.”
She was moving towards the bedroom, grabbing her carefully packed suitcases before her head could stop her. She raced down the front steps and around the corner to the alley where her car was parked, dragging her luggage behind her. She was outside the Beltway and halfway to Baltimore before she allowed herself to think.
The Landing was gone; her condo was gone. Luxelle was expecting her in eight days. Silas had never said he loved her. Not in words. She’d never said she loved him, but she did. Her foot nudged the accelerator, pushing the speed limit as far as she dared. Even if he turned her away, she owed it to them both to tell him the truth.
~~~
Hampton Beach was shrouded in darkness when she pulled up outside Buck’s Landing. Sofia was quivering from exhaustion, her eyes burning from a punishing, nearly ten hour drive. She’d stopped only once for fast food, gas, and a bathroom, determined to find Silas before she lost her nerve altogether.
She opened a window and let the BMW idle. The ocean was a constant, even in the small hours of the night. The sand was bone-white under a sliver of moon, and Buck’s Landing hulked, empty and closed-off, over the mini-golf course. The Landing was dark, but a light glowed in Silas’s apartment over the Atlantis Market. Her folly washed over her. For all she knew, he had a woman up there, or he didn’t even live there anymore. Three weeks was long enough for anything to have happened.
Steeling herself, she killed the engine and opened the car door. Ocean Boulevard was deserted, save for the streetlights. Her eyes traced the chain-link fence that surrounded the putting greens, coasting over the Snack Bar window, and coming to rest on the unlocked and open gate. Her heart kicked over. What the hell?
She walked in the moonlit shadows towards the gate. Without the cheery burble of the water feature and the piped in top forty, a sinister pall fell over the landmarks. As she rounded the building onto the first green, she heard a voice.
“Goddamn it!” Footsteps on the gravel. “Get the hell over here.”
Sofia pulled her phone out of her pocket, fingers poised over the screen.
“Jesus, we’ve been through this. Not at night when everything’s all locked up.” The voice was hoarse, urgent in the darkness.
She peered around the man-made cave that separated the front nine from the back nine and nearly laughed in relief. By the light of an LED flashlight, Silas was staring up at a furry face with reflective eyes peering down from the top of the Easter Island Head on the seventeenth hole.
She couldn’t help herself. “Lost your cat?”
Silas whipped around, his face a fright-mask in the bleached-out light.
Houdini chirped and skittered down the statue, leaping from the moai’s nose and coming to rest at Sofia’s feet. Silas watched warily.
“Sofia?”
She scooped up the cat, whose entire body was vibrating with feline joy. “Hi.”
Silas pocketed his hands. “Hey. You’re a long way from home.”
“Am I?” She ran her hands through Houdini’s silky fur. The question hung weightily in the air.
“Isn’t home about to be the volcanic shores of the Greek Isle of Thera?” Silas winced at his own sharpness.
“Right now?” Sofia’s voice broke. “Home feels like an apartment over a mini-golf course.”
For a long moment Silas said nothing, his face impassive in the glow of the flashlight.
“Thank you for the print,” he said finally. “It was a wonderful goodbye gift. I didn’t deserve it.”
“You’re welcome.” Sofia set the cat down. Houdini sat back on his haunches and groomed his tail enthusiastically. “I’ve been an idiot.”
“How so?”
Sofia hoped she wasn’t imagining an echoing longing in his reply.
Her words were barely more than a whisper; her heart was beating so hard she could feel it in her fingertips. “I spent so much time and energy running from my father’s ghost that I was blinded to the fact that I was repeating his mistakes. I let someone I love slip away, and I was too proud to fight to get him back.”
She saw a tiny flicker, a muscle working in his jaw. Her every cell was tuned to his reaction.
“I love you, Silas. I love you, and I’m sorry.” Someday, she thought, I will run out of tears. “I know there isn’t a place for me here anymore, but I couldn’t leave without you knowing you were right. You were so much more to me, and I was frightened and angry and—”
“Shh.” His arms came around her, his breath warm on her cheek. “Shh.”
He took her face in his hands, drying her tears with his thumbs. “I love you, Sofia. And if we love each
other, there’s a place for you here.”
His mouth was warm when he kissed her. She held him, lips hungry against his. Her hands smoothed up his back, gliding over the smooth skin and muscles she remembered so well. Houdini twined through their legs, breaking the moment.
Sofia looked around at the deserted golf course. “We should go, shouldn’t we? We are trespassing.”
~~~
They weren’t trespassing, but how to explain that to her?
“Yeah,” Silas began, but Houdini streaked off out the gate and they gave up conversation to follow him. Silas threaded his fingers with hers, loathe to let her go even to walk to the apartment. The cat led the way past Sofia’s car, rubbing his back along the doors and tires as he passed.
“I need to move that into the parking lot,” Sofia said, voice jittery with adrenaline.
“Leave it for a minute. It’s okay,” Silas said, pulling her close again, “I don’t want to let you go just yet.”
He buried his nose in her hair, kissing his way down her neck, tasting the thin skin over her collarbone, hands roaming every inch he could reach. She was real, inexplicably there; his heart was full to the brim.
She touched his face softly, tentatively. “Silas? I know I’ve made a mess of things; there’s so much we need to talk about.”
He shushed her with a kiss. “There’s something I need to show you. Leave the car and come upstairs.”
He took her hand again, squeezing a little in reassurance, and clicked his tongue to call the cat. “Houdini!”
The cat vaulted up the back stairs, rubbing his jaw against the door jamb. Silas opened the apartment door, watching Sofia’s eyes move over the room. She took in the changes and looked up at him with eyes full of questions.
“You have my father’s chair.”
Buck's Landing (A New England Seacoast Romance) Page 13