Girls of Summer (Shelter Rock Cove - Book #2)

by Barbara Bretton

  “And then there’s me,” she had said, almost spitting the words into the phone.

  “I won’t be lying to you, child. You were never his favorite, but the fault wasn’t with you. Your mam should’ve thought it through before she laid her trap for the boy-o. He never claimed to be anything but the rogue he was, and bringing a new one into the world wasn’t about to change a thing.”

  They were all so filled with excuses for him that it made her sick. He didn’t... he couldn’t... no one expected him to... maybe you should have...

  Well, she hadn’t. That was the truth of it. They had ended the way they began, separated by expectations neither one of them had the power to control.

  Not that she was going to say any of this to Scott the Mechanic. She had been deeply touched by the beautiful bouquet of wildflowers he had sent to her at Ellen’s house, and even more deeply touched by the short handwritten note of sympathy. For two people who didn’t know anything about each other, they had shared an awful lot in a very short time. She wanted to thank him for the flowers, for the lift up to Bar Harbor, for giving her a shoulder to cry on, and not making her feel guilty or embarrassed for using it. They were alike somehow. She knew he could feel it, too. Something had drawn them together right from the first instant, and she couldn’t leave without acknowledging it.

  His truck was in the driveway. She placed her hand on the hood. It was still warm. Gotcha, she thought. She knocked on the door. No answer. She rang the bell. Still no answer. She peered through the curtainless window. There was no sign of life anywhere.

  “I know you’re in there,” she called out. “I can see you hiding behind the sofa.”

  Even if that didn’t flush him out, the potential for embarrassment was a nice touch. She peered through the window one last time, then turned to leave.

  “Going somewhere?” Scott the Mechanic blocked the path. He wore a pair of jeans, no shirt, and had a phallic-looking telescope balanced on his brawny shoulder.

  “I was afraid you were lying unconscious in there and needed me to call 911.”

  “You’re a real Samaritan.”

  She tilted her head. “I like to think so.”

  “Did you get the flowers?”

  “That’s why I’m here. I’m leaving tomorrow for Florida and I wanted to thank you.”

  “Glad you liked them.” He shifted the telescope to his opposite shoulder. “How’re you doing?”

  She made a so-so gesture with her right hand. “Good days and bad days,” she said. “I think the change of scene is exactly what I need.”

  “Was your father sick very long?”

  “One day they told me he wasn’t feeling the greatest and the next day”—she snapped her fingers—“he was gone.”

  “Were you two close?”

  Say it, damn it. Don’t pretend. Don’t sugarcoat it. Tell the truth and maybe the hurting will stop. He had three daughters and I was number four on his list. How’s that for not being close?

  “No,” she said. “We weren’t close at all.”

  * * *

  He had never been great when faced with raw emotions. When Megan used to fall into one of those blue funks she was prone to, he would rack his brain for a way to make her laugh, anything to keep it from spiraling down into tears.

  He wasn’t any better with his own emotions. He had been ducking the harpist since that night in Bar Harbor when he cried in her arms. He had feigned sleep, but they both knew that was a lie even though neither one acknowledged it. It was easier to deal with her meltdown over the loss of her job than with the fact that he was only human.

  Now here they were again in another one of those emotional pressure-cooker situations they seemed to specialize in. One minute she was standing there speaking to him in a perfectly normal voice, and the next she was crying so hard she could barely breathe. Maybe it was him. It seemed they couldn’t be in the same room without an eruption.

  “Come on,” he said as he unlocked the front door. “I’ll get you a drink of water.” He couldn’t leave her standing there on the path and she sure as hell couldn’t drive in that condition.

  “I don’t want any water,” she said, following him inside. “Why do people always think you need water when you’re upset?”

  “Same reason they tell you to put your head between your knees.”

  She laughed and cried at the same time. On her it looked good. It looked better than good. It made him want to pull her into his arms and hold her until the world stopped spinning out of control.

  “I don’t know why I’m crying so much,” she said as she poked around the room, flipping through the stack of newspapers on the end table, fanning the stack of magazines on the couch. She looked up at him with stormy blue eyes. “He knew I was there at the hospital, but he didn’t even ask to see me. He left Ellen a bundle of photos he’d taken of her—I don’t know why I’m wasting my tears on someone who didn’t give a damn.”

  She was looking for a way to control what was ultimately beyond control. Only time and distance would help. “He was still your father,” he pointed out, “and it’s only been a week. Crying jags sound pretty normal to me at this stage.”

  “Normal? I wouldn’t know normal if it bit me on the ass.”

  “Normal being a relative term.”

  “There you go again. What are you doing repairing cars? You should be doing”—she waved her hand in the air—“something else.”

  She was right. He should be doing something else and come September he would be.

  “You snooped through the wrong stacks,” he said. “Try the stack in the corner while I get you the water.”

  * * *

  What was wrong with her? Every time she saw him, she ended up collapsing in a sodden heap of tears. She wasn’t like this at all. Sure, she cried at sad movies or over a particularly powerful piece of music, but when it came to real life, she was drier than the Mojave. Still sniffling, she wandered over to the stack of papers in the corner and started shuffling through them. Baxter College was imprinted on the front of a deep blue folder. Was that one of those vocational schools that gave you life credit for knowing how to tie your shoes? Not that she was being critical. She didn’t have a credit to her name and probably never would. Last she heard they didn’t give life credit for being a fuckup.

  She opened the folder. A list of courses. Per credit charges. Scott the Mechanic’s name was typed right there at the top with the word Student after it and the words, “Bachelor of Science, major in Astronomy” beneath it. Apparently he was going back to school in September and planned to work toward the goal he had given up years ago.

  Those damn tears started up again. She wished she hadn’t teased him about being a mechanic. God, what was she after all but a down-on-her-luck ex-blues singer turned harper who was about to sail away on a low-rent version of the Love Boat.

  Good on you, Scott Peretti. She flipped through a few more pages but didn’t stumble upon any more surprises. She was about to put the folder down when an envelope slipped out and fluttered to the floor, and she bent down to pick it up.

  Nice heavy-laid finish. Perfectly typed address complete with bar code. A commemorative stamp, one of those Old Glory ones, and a handsome logo in the upper left-hand corner that almost brought her to her knees.

  The 9/11 Families Relief Organization.

  “Oh God,” she breathed, staring down at the envelope. “Oh, no...”

  She didn’t hear him come in. She looked up and he was standing in front of her, holding a glass of water in his left hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know... I didn’t mean to...” What was there to say that could make the slightest difference?

  “I told you that you could look. I wasn’t sure Baxter would be able to accommodate my schedule, but it looks like we can work something out. Jack—” He stopped and in that instant she saw the realization spread across his face. The glass shattered in his hand in a spray of water and glittering shards
.

  “Your wife,” she whispered, “your little boy.”

  The muscles in his throat, his jaw, clenched and unclenched as he struggled to control his emotions the way he hadn’t been able to that night in Bar Harbor. He said nothing but his eyes gave him away. She didn’t need the details. He had lived near Boston. The two planes that slammed into the Twin Towers had both originated from Logan.

  “I’m so—”

  “Shut up.” His voice was harsh, raw with the struggle against his sorrow.

  “Don’t fight it,” she said. “It’s okay to—”

  “Shut up.” The ragged edge of sorrow was blunted by something else, a tidal pull of longing that wrapped itself around her and wouldn’t let go.

  Nobody had ever looked at her that way before. Rage, sorrow, a loneliness that ran deep and wide and long. She felt as if she was seeing into her own soul, past the lies and the defenses meant to keep the world out, seeing straight into the vulnerable beating heart of truth she had spent a lifetime running from.

  He crossed the room to where she stood waiting for him.

  Their fingers touched and for a second it seemed as if the world and everything in it fell away. They had been circling this moment from the day they met.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said, examining the palm of his left hand.

  “You’re crying,” he said, touching her cheek with the callused tip of his forefinger.

  The cut on his hand was small, nothing more than a scratch really, but she needed time. After waiting all her life for this moment, she needed more time. She took him into the kitchen and washed and dried his hand, fussed about Band-Aids and hydrogen peroxide as if adhesive and gauze could heal their broken parts as neatly as they could heal a scratch.

  “I didn’t want this,” she said.

  He cradled her face in his bands and said, “Nobody does.”

  Then, because there was nothing else they could do, no other way to postpone the inevitable, he swept her up into his arms and carried her into the bedroom where he gently stripped away her clothes and began to make love to her body and soul.

  “It’s been a long time for me,” she warned him as she helped roll on the condom.

  He cupped her with his hand. “We’ll take it slow.” He told her it had been a long time for him, too, and he wanted them to enjoy every second.

  Hot. Wet. Long and slow until they were drenched in sweat and the heady, erotic smell of sex. She slid down his body, aware of the way her nipples felt against his chest, his belly, his erection, drawing pleasure from the sounds he made deep in his throat when she cupped him with her hand, then drew him deep inside her mouth. She used to think of this as a parlor trick, something you did because men loved it and expected it and you never disappointed a man, not if you wanted to see him again.

  She did it this time because she wanted to, because there was as much pleasure in it for her as there was for him.

  And oh, God, the things he did to her with his hands and his lips and his tongue. Wild forbidden things she had only dreamed about. Tasting, sucking, sharp little bites that sent her spiraling out of her mind, away from the world, away from sorrow and disappointment just long enough for her to remember how sweet life could be if you let it.

  Sweet and precious and terribly short.

  * * *

  “I’ll be back later,” Susan said to her husband as she grabbed her purse and car keys from the hall table. If she kept fussing with her hair and makeup, she would never leave.

  Jack looked up from the Red Sox game he was watching. “Where are you going all dressed up?”

  She considered lying, but she was still too much of a Catholic schoolgirl to do that. “I’m stopping by the office for a while, and then I’m going by Hall’s.”

  “What for?”

  “I need to sign some papers.”

  “I mean, why are you going to Hall’s place?”

  “He made a big contribution to the town preservation fund. I wanted to pick up the check.”

  “It can’t wait until tomorrow?”

  “Jack, if you don’t want me to go, just say so.” She held her breath.

  “Do what you want,” he said. “There’s no talking to you lately.”

  She didn’t even bother to hang around for a fight. Lately fights were like buses: If she missed one, there would be another along any minute. She flew out the door, leaped into her car, and zipped over to the office, where she signed some contracts, returned a phone call, then raced back out to her car. She supposed she was taking a chance, just popping in on Hall this way, but it was now or never.

  * * *

  It was a little after seven P.M. when Ellen pulled into Patsy Wheeler’s driveway. Doug was away on another business trip. She was surprised to note the private nurse’s car was missing. She added that to her list of items that needed to be dealt with during the visit.

  She had made arrangements for a technician to bring over a portable sonogram machine tomorrow so they could perform a status report on the baby’s progress. Her reasoning was twofold: They needed to know how well the baby was developing and she hoped that seeing her child right there on the monitor might spur Patsy to take fewer chances, no matter how minor they might seem to be.

  She climbed gingerly from her Cruiser. The pain in her abdomen had intensified since the afternoon. Sharp, searing, it was beginning to seem more and more like appendicitis. Acute appendicitis was nothing to fool with, and she was seriously considering a quick stop at the hospital after her visit with Patsy. Better safe than sorry. It would be pretty embarrassing for a physician to be hauled into the ER on a stretcher because she was too arrogant to pay attention to her own symptoms.

  Patsy and Doug had given her a key to the house, but she didn’t like to use it without announcing herself first. She rang the doorbell, then waited for Patsy to click on the intercom and inquire who was there. A minute passed, but no Patsy. She rang again and waited. Still no Patsy. Okay. That did it. She unlocked the door and stepped into the shadowy hallway.

  “Patsy!” Her voice seemed to echo in the silent house. “Patsy, it’s Dr. Ellen!”

  No answer. Sweat broke out on the back of her neck as a sharp blade of pain sliced through her midsection. She moved through the darkened house, switching on lights as she made her way toward the master bedroom. Patsy wasn’t a deep sleeper. She certainly would have heard her approach.

  “Patsy! Don’t be alarmed. It’s just me... Dr. Ellen.”

  Still nothing. Her heartbeat leaped forward. She placed her hand against her abdomen and almost jumped at the shock of heat against her palm. Something was very wrong. A wave of nausea assailed her and she forced herself to breathe deeply in order to quell it. She pushed open the bedroom door and gasped at the sight before her.

  Patsy was lying on the floor near her desk. She was conscious, but there was an ominous pool of blood beneath her.

  “It’s okay, Patsy,” she said, putting her arm around the woman. “I promise it’s going to be okay.”

  “My b-baby...”

  “We’ll get a sonogram done at the hospital. I’ve told you before how resilient babies are.” She glanced around. “Where’s the nurse?”

  “She had to leave early. I—” She clutched her belly. “The battery on the cordless was low. I needed the phone to—Dr. Markowitz?” Her voice rose in fear. “Dr. Markowitz, what’s wrong?”

  Pain shot through Ellen’s middle with ferocious intensity. White hot pain that seared away everything else.

  “Dr. Markowitz—”

  Those were the last words she heard.

  Chapter Thirty

  Hall was surfing the Web for information on the restaurant where Kate and Lizzy would be working this summer when he heard a knock at the front door. He glanced at the clock on the bottom right of his computer screen. Almost nine o’clock. A grin spread across his face and he yanked off his reading glasses and dragged a hand through his hair. Ellen, he thought. It had to be.
r />   It wasn’t.

  Susan brushed past him into the foyer. It would never occur to his old friend to ask if it was a good time, something he had had to explain more than once during the course of his marriages.

  “So what’re you doing out this late?” he asked as he followed her into his kitchen.

  “Late?” She wrinkled her nose and he noticed she was wearing more makeup than usual and had taken great pains with her hair. “It’s not even nine.”

  “You look good. What were you up to?”

  “Nothing special. I had to sign a few papers at the office. I was on my way home when I remembered I left one of my date books here when I was pulling afternoon duty with Stanley last week.”

  “I haven’t seen a date book around here.”

  “Small. Red leather. You must’ve seen it.”

  “I’d notice a red leather date book.” Mainly because he wouldn’t be caught dead with one. “Sorry.”

  Some of her brassy self-confidence faded. “Am I interrupting anything?”

  “I was doing some background on the place where the girls will be working this summer. I wanted to get a feel for who runs it, that kind of thing.”

  “You’re such a worrier.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “and you’re not.”

  She laughed. “That’s why we’re friends, isn’t it? We have a lot in common.”

  “How’s Jack? I heard he sprained his wrist yesterday and ended up in the ER.”

  She made a dismissive motion with her hand. “It’s always something lately. Since he turned forty-five, it’s been one thing after another.”

  “As someone who kissed forty-five goodbye, I can relate.” You were right, Claudia. Something’s definitely wrong with the Aldrins.