Whisper Beach

by Shelley Noble

  Van stared. Managed to shake her head. “No. Just a coincidence. Someone with the same last name.” And the same first name. But it couldn’t be. Because she’d never even seen him draw a stick figure much less paint with oils and watercolors. Besides these weren’t the work of a mere hobbyist. This painter had real talent and training.

  Still, it was weird, and Van had an overwhelming urge to get outside. “Let’s get Dana and go.”

  “What about the Crab painting?”

  “I changed my mind. I’ll wait for you outside.” Van turned back toward the front door.

  He was standing by the window talking to a man who appeared to be the gallery owner and a middle-aged woman with short-cropped hair. He was facing slightly away from Van, but she recognized him, in spite of the silver hair, in spite of the twelve years separating them.

  And she couldn’t get to the door without passing right by him. “Forget Dana; she can catch up to us later.” Van began to edge toward the door.

  She’d almost reached the entrance when he turned from the gallery owner. Somehow their eyes met. His registered shock and disbelief. For a moment they both froze, locked in an inescapable bond.

  Father and daughter.

  Then he took an involuntary step forward. And Van bolted.

  Chapter 19

  VAN DIDN’T STOP UNTIL SHE WAS HALFWAY DOWN THE BLOCK and only then because she heard Suze and Dana running after her. She slowed to a walk, then stopped altogether and waited for them.

  Her heart was pounding so hard that she was afraid it might be the beginnings of a heart attack. And she kept saying over and over to herself, No no no.

  She made herself turn around and stand still while she waited for them to catch up to her.

  “Jeez,” Suze said when she finally caught her breath.

  Van could just shake her head. Suze took her elbow and turned her toward home.

  “What the hell just happened?” Dana asked, holding a handful of crudité.

  Van opened her mouth. Waited for the explanation to come out and finally said, “That was my father.”

  “Holy crap. Man, he doesn’t look like a drunken louse. Actually, he looks pretty hot for an old guy.”

  “Dana, cool it.” Suze steered Van down the sidewalk.

  Van didn’t protest. Now that she’d escaped, shock, real shock, had set in. She was shaking and felt cold even though it had to be in the nineties even under the trees.

  “How could that happen?” she finally managed. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “I’m afraid it’s a case of ‘for that which is fated and doomed,’” Suze said.

  “Huh?” asked Dana.

  “Shit happens,” Suze said.

  Van saw a bench up ahead and headed for it. She barely made it before her knees gave out and she fell onto the seat. Suze sat down beside her, and Dana sat on her other side.

  “How is it even possible?”

  “Did you know your father was an artist?”

  “No. He hated art. He refused to help me with any project that required anything close to crafts or drawing. He threw out my last batch of sea glass paintings. I keep thinking I must be hallucinating. Those were his paintings, weren’t they?”

  “They were,” Suze said. “No doubt about that. But it really makes no sense at all.”

  “Huh,” Dana said. “I guess you won’t be buying that picture after all.”

  “Not likely,” Van said, trying desperately to pull herself together.

  “You have to admit they were impressive. Beautiful and, as far-fetched as it seems, gentle.”

  Van looked at Suze like she’d grown horns.

  “Don’t you?”

  Van shook her head. “I-I- . . . I can’t assimilate it yet. Let’s go back to Dorie’s.”

  “Better hurry,” Dana said. “Some woman I saw at the gallery is headed this way.”

  Van looked up. Saw the short cropped-hair. She’d been standing next to— “Let’s get out of here.”

  Van turned away from her and started to walk.

  “Vanessa, please. Wait.”

  Suze steadied her elbow. “It won’t hurt to see what she wants.”

  “It might.” It might hurt a whole lot. What could she possibly have to say that wouldn’t tear Van to pieces? But it might be better to get it over with. She took a breath, turned to wait for the woman to reach them.

  She felt Suze and Dana move closer to her, and she almost burst into tears. Shot them a silent thank-you. She’d thank them out loud later, when they were back at Dorie’s.

  “Vanessa. I’m Ruth.” The woman smiled gently.

  Van waited. She had no idea who this person was. Or what she wanted.

  “I know you’re surprised—no, shocked—to meet your father like this. We had no idea you were in town.”

  We?

  “He would like to see you. I know you aren’t ready. He’s not a bad man. Not anymore.”

  Van just stared at her.

  “He doesn’t expect you to forgive him. He never meant to seek you out. He thinks he has no right.”

  He was right. For once he’d gotten it right.

  “But I thought, hoped, that you might want to at least reconnect with him. There’s a big hole in each of you that needs to be filled.”

  Van began to shake her head. What the hell did this woman know about any of it?

  “Just think about it. I’ve written our address and phone number on this card.”

  Our.

  “If you think you might want to talk. Or maybe just hear about him . . . I would welcome you.”

  She stuck out a card with a hand that trembled slightly. Her fingers were long and tapered. A model’s hand.

  Van just looked at the card. She didn’t want it. She had no intention of ever seeing him or this woman ever again. Our. Our?

  He’d killed her mother, made Van’s life miserable, and as soon as she left, he moved out of the house lock, stock, and barrel, had taken up painting, and found happiness with another woman.

  It was enough to make her want to scratch the woman’s eyes out.

  As if sensing Van was on the edge, Suze said, “Thank you,” took the card from the woman, and guided Van away.

  “Man, she’s just standing there looking after us,” Dana said, following after them. “Gives me the creeps.”

  They didn’t talk for the rest of the walk back to Dorie’s.

  DORIE WAS SITTING on the porch, drinking a glass of lemonade when the girls returned from town. “Well, how was the shopping spree?”

  Van just kept going into the house.

  Dorie lifted her eyebrows in question.

  “Well,” Suze said. “I got a nice dress and a pair of shoes. And we went into this art gallery, and Van ran into her father there.”

  Dorie put down her glass. “Robbie Moran in an art gallery? Don’t believe it. She must have been mistaken.”

  “No mistake. They were having an opening. There was a painting of the Blue Crab and we went in to see if it was affordable. Van thought you might like to have it.”

  “And Robbie Moran was there?”

  “Robbie Moran was the artist.”

  Dorie frowned. Why was that striking a chord? She shook her head, couldn’t place it. But for a second . . . “So what happened?”

  “Van got the hell out,” Dana said. “And we went after her.”

  Suze looked toward the door, then sat down. “The strangest part was this woman, late forties, fifty maybe, came after her. And gave her this card.” Suze fished in her pocket and brought out the card.

  Dorie took it. Robbie Moran. Landscapes. Portraits.

  “You sure this is the same Robbie Moran?”

  “I only saw him once,” Suze said. “Dana?”

  Dana shrugged. “I knew him, uh, when he was always piss drunk, just like my old man. This guy looked like . . . I don’t know . . . like you’d expect an artiste to look. And sober. Didn’t he look sober to you, Suze?”

>   “Yeah, though I’m no expert.”

  “Well, I am. He looked stone cold. And shocked as hell when he saw Van. As soon as she got out the door, he kind of swayed, ya know? Like he was gonna pass out or something. That woman who came after us started fussing over him and I got the hell out, too. Man, those people are weird.”

  “I don’t think there was any doubt in either of their minds,” Suze said.

  “Is she okay?”

  Suze shook her head.

  Dorie pushed to her feet. She had gotten them in this mess, the least she could do was see them through. “Give us some privacy for a few.”

  Dorie looked in the living room then the kitchen. She climbed the stairs feeling much older than her sixty-some-odd years. Van’s door was closed, so she knocked. Lightly. When there was no answer, she rested her hand on the doorknob. “I know you might not want company, but I’m coming in.”

  And in she went.

  Van wasn’t curled up on her bed crying her eyes out or packing her suitcase, for which Dorie was really grateful, but standing at the window looking out on the roof next door.

  Dorie walked up beside her. Glanced over to see how she was holding up. The girl wasn’t even crying. Just looking out the window.

  It was kind of spooky. She didn’t even seem to be aware of Dorie being there. So Dorie just stood there, too.

  “You know,” Van said finally. “When I first left Whisper Beach, I never wanted to see him ever again. I prayed that he would die.” Van breathed out a laugh that gave Dorie the willies.

  “Then as time passed, I used to imagine what would happen if we ever met again, whether I would walk away like I didn’t even recognize him, or spit in his face and then walk away.” Another one of those unnerving laughs. “But since I never perfected the art of spitting, that possibility got eliminated. So I decided that I would just kill him.

  “Not in a million years did I think I would ever see him in an art gallery, with some woman who said, ‘visit our house.’ Our house! How dare he.”

  Now she turned toward Dorie with such feeling that Dorie had to consciously not step back.

  “He looked happy. Damn him. In that second before he saw me, he looked happy.”

  Now Van started crying. “How can he be happy?”

  “Maybe it’s time you asked him. Because you’re never going to be free until you let go of all this anger.”

  “I’m not usually angry. I haven’t thought about him for a long time. It was just the shock. I’ve seen him now, and I don’t need to know anything more. I don’t care.”

  “You’re angry because he looked happy.”

  “Leave me alone, Dorie. I didn’t do anything bad. Stupid maybe, but I’ve paid for that. So just leave me alone.”

  Dorie sighed. “You still coming to the restaurant tomorrow?”

  “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Just checking.” Dorie crossed slowly toward the door. She opened it but didn’t go out. “You know, Van, you fix other people’s lives for a living. Don’t you think it’s about time to fix your own?” And Dorie closed the door.

  “I HAVE FIXED my own.” But instead of saying it to Dorie, Van was speaking to the closed door. I have. This time she spoke to herself. She had.

  She’d worked her way through school, gotten a degree, had her own business.

  Had no family, no real friends.

  She had friends.

  Not like the friends she’d had in Whisper Beach.

  Well, she wasn’t angry, not anymore.

  Then why did she try to leave as soon as Clay’s funeral was over?

  She had a hotel reservation in Rehoboth.

  Van sat down on the bed. “You didn’t even want to go to Rehoboth. Ugh.”

  And now that she was back, and now that she had accidentally run into her father, there was only one person she wanted to talk to. The other person she hadn’t wanted to see. She could always tell him what she was feeling. She’d given up that closeness when she’d lambasted him for flirting with Dana mainly because she was having such a hellish week at home.

  And he’d paid her back royally.

  Van could still picture him and Dana in that truck like it had been last night. But she wanted to talk to him. Work things out for herself while he listened—like they used to do. She’d always trusted him before that stupid night. Could she trust him now not to cut her off at the knees if she confided in him again?

  There was only one way to find out. Maybe.

  Van grabbed a windbreaker, took a quick peek in the mirror. She had her pride after all. Then she shoved her wallet and keys into her pockets and jogged down the stairs.

  She heard voices coming from the parlor. Suze and Dana. She went down the hall to the kitchen.

  Dorie was there chopping green beans.

  “I’m going out. I’ll be back.”

  “In time for dinner?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Van drove along the beach. Trying to decide what to do. There seemed to be a big hollowness inside her. There’s a big hole in each of you. She did have an empty place in her. She knew it. The hole had always been there, but it had grown small over the years, almost like a pinprick, something she hardly ever noticed until a song came on the radio, or she turned the corner to see a lit Christmas tree in the snow. Walking into a stranger’s apartment to the aromas of a stew slow-cooking on the stove. A school bus parked on the street.

  That’s what she had wanted at one time, what she’d thrown away. No, she hadn’t thrown it away. She’d been jettisoned out of it and left broken.

  She was fine now. More than fine. But she wanted someone to talk to. Really talk to. Not have to be the strong one. Not have to be the one with the answers, the plan; just the one with the hurt, and the indecision and the questions.

  Was she asking too much? Probably. And if he turned her away, she knew she’d deserved it. But she wanted to go back, just for a second, like a drowning man knowing it was hopeless, still comes up for one last gasp of air.

  Joe’s truck was parked at the marina.

  She stopped alongside it. Got out of the car before she could change her mind. Walked up the steps and knocked on the old wooden door. Waited. For a long time.

  At first she just stood there, not able to believe she’d actually gotten up the courage to come and he wasn’t even home. So par for the stupid day she was having.

  Or maybe he was there. Maybe he was watching from the window. Saw who it was and decided not to answer. She didn’t blame him. It had been a stupid idea.

  She wouldn’t even leave a note. He didn’t need to know she’d come after all.

  The door opened. Joe stood on the other side.

  “I saw my father today.”

  “I JUST PANICKED and ran,” Van said. She and Joe were sitting on the small couch near his computer desk.

  “I mean, what are the odds? I saw this painting of the Crab and wanted to buy it for Dorie. I wanted to buy one of his paintings. How can that happen?

  “How could a man like him paint those beautiful paintings. And they were beautiful. Serene. Gentle but with emotion. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe he’s changed.”

  Van shook her head. “People don’t change.”

  “Don’t they?”

  Joe suddenly seemed too close. She didn’t move back. It felt too close, but it also felt right. Joe hadn’t changed.

  No. Maybe some people, but not him. “I don’t even know how to react. It isn’t right that he got to live and my mom died because of his neglect.

  “And then that woman he was with. Talking about ‘we live’ and ‘our house’ . . . I bet he doesn’t treat her like he treated us. Did she actually think she could change my mind with all that smiley sweetness? Ugh.”

  “Do you think you’ll go?”

  “Not a chance. He has no right to find happiness with another woman. My mother didn’t have that chance to b
e happy.” And neither had Van.

  “Van.” Joe moved closer, turned her to face him, held her by both shoulders. “Look at me.”

  “Joe, he was so mean to her; always yelling, or worse, she would try to talk to him, and he’d just ignore her. If she turned off the television to get his attention, he just got up and walked out of the room. That was so hurtful.”

  “Maybe he was wounded, too?”

  Van shook her head. It seemed to be the only thing she could do. The rest of her felt extraordinarily tired and heavy. Today when she first saw him, before he turned around, he seemed calm, filled with life, not the drunken shell of a man he’d been when he was her father. “He was mean, Joe. You know he was.”

  “I know. He hurt you and that makes me hate him. And I don’t think you have to hear his version of what happened or his excuses. You don’t need to forgive him.”

  “I’ll never forgive him.”

  “Fine. But maybe you should ask someone how he got that way.”

  “Everybody says he started out bad.”

  “Nobody starts out bad.”

  Van didn’t know what to say. As she thought back over the day, now with distance from that dreadful meeting, something shifted. If she’d seen him today for the first time, would she know what an awful person he was? And how could that woman, Ruth, seem to care for him so much, if he was?

  “My mother never showed him any affection. I realize that now.”

  Joe sat, waited. It was so natural. Letting her work through whatever was bothering her. He’d heard it all before, and yet he sat patiently listening.

  “If I had just gone on to my vacation after the funeral, this would never have happened.”

  “Maybe it was supposed to.”

  “That sounds awfully woo woo to me.”

  Joe shrugged. “I was never very woo woo, but I do believe some things happen for a reason.”

  Van shifted. He wasn’t going to bring up the past, was he?

  “You can wash your hands of him if you choose. But you can’t walk around afraid you might run into him again.”

  “I’m going home as soon as I get Dorie’s restaurant reorganized.”

  “Home?”

  “Yes. I’ve made a place for myself in Manhattan. And it’s not likely that I’ll run into him there.”