Reunion Beach

by Elin Hilderbrand

  A motorboat’s hum interrupted her thoughts and she went jogging, her flip-flops slapping her heels, toward the dock, the dock that looked as if it might blow away in the next storm, to see Red arriving with her three best friends, their overnight bags piled like a stone cairn. They each held a hand over their hat. Victoria’s voice rose above the rest; Beatrice would know it anywhere.

  The women stepped out of the boat and onto the dock, laughter following, their exclamations overlapping. Beatrice’s heart rose to each woman.

  Rose, their swan, in her pink and green Lilly Pulitzer sundress and matching hat, her still-blond hair pulled behind in a low knot; she was first off the boat and she ran toward Beatrice, almost tripping in her strappy sandals. “This is so charming. So adorable. I’m so happy to see you.” She threw her arms around Beatrice and left a hot pink lipstick mark on her cheek.

  Victoria, in full makeup, a blue dress flapping behind her just like the wild Blue Bird of Paradise she had once chosen, made her way toward Beatrice with a sway of her hips. “Dear God Almighty. This looks dreamy.” Her smile was huge, not wrinkling her face and cheeks. Just enough plastic surgery to smooth the edges, not enough to look done. That was always Victoria’s goal. She kissed Beatrice and then slipped her arm through Rose’s as Daisy was still gathering her bags.

  Daisy, their little starling, stood at the end of the dock a few yards away, slinging her backpack over her shoulder and taking in the group of friends. She waved and hollered. “This is the absolute best. Look at us, we’ll live like the Swiss Family Robinson.”

  Red, behind her, laughed and picked up as many bags as he could and followed Daisy down the dock. Daisy wore a bright red sundress and feather earrings that brushed her shoulders. Her red hair, now mostly silver and shoulder length, caught the breeze and flew into her eyes just as she threw her arms around Beatrice.

  “This is the most perfect thing in the world. All of us together on a deserted island. The only thing missing is Dani.”

  They all nodded and stayed silent for a moment, thoughts of Dani blowing past. Victoria wiped at her forehead. “So. The first thing I need is a drink and to see what our Pegasus has gotten us into now. What’s inside? One can only guess by the absolute decrepit outside.”

  Beatrice laughed and shook her head. “Victoria, have you met Red?” She nodded her head toward him and he nodded back.

  “Of course.”

  “This is his house.”

  Victoria bit her bottom lip. “Sorry. Sometimes when I try to be funny, I’m an idiot. As the girls will well attest, I mean no harm.”

  Red smiled and carried the bags inside, saying not a word.

  * * *

  An hour later, each woman had chosen their room and reconvened in the kitchen. Red stood at the far end of the living room as quiet and still as a coatrack until he asked. “Anything else you ladies need?”

  “No.” Beatrice looked to her friends. “Anything ya’ll need before he takes off?”

  “Not that I can think of just now,” Victoria said with a coy flirt that made the other women groan.

  “How will we get ahold of you if we need anything?” Beatrice asked. “No service.”

  “I’ll be right outside.”

  “Excuse me?” Beatrice’s eyebrows raised in a question.

  “The shelter a hundred yards away.” He waved his hand east. “There . . . I’ll be there.”

  Beatrice took a step toward this tall man and then back toward the safety of her friends. “I don’t understand. You rented us the island . . . and . . .”

  “I rented you the house. You won’t even know I’m here unless you come calling. I can promise you that. If you need anything, I’m here. If not, I’m as invisible as air.” With those words, he exited the house and the screen door slammed back on its hinges with a pop.

  “He’s staying here?” Rose asked. “I can’t tell Chip. He’d lose his mind if he thought I was on a desert island with a man.”

  Victoria rolled her long-eyelashed eyes and made a snorting sound. “It is good to know not much has changed. You can’t go more than ten minutes without saying his name. Chip. Chip. Chip. God help us.”

  Beatrice popped Victoria’s shoulder. “Let’s play nice and stay focused. This weekend is about my drama.”

  Great smiles rose on their faces, and the sound of the wind breezing through the palmetto leaves whispered through the screen door.

  Daisy, so quiet until now, broke into the conversation. “I like that Red is here. Makes me feel . . . safer.”

  “Our little starling, the more people, the better for you.” Victoria hugged Daisy with one arm and drew her close.

  Daisy smiled with the truth and looked to Beatrice. “Okay, Pegasus, tell us what we can do to help?”

  Almost as one they moved the few steps toward the living room and plopped down on the couches and chairs to sit in a circle. A fresh breeze that smelled of burned firewood and dark mud wafted through. The far-off hum of a boat joined in the chorus.

  “This is really nice,” Victoria said and snuggled further into the plaid couch. “It feels like we are a million miles away instead of a ten-minute boat ride across the water. Now tell us what happened.”

  Beatrice took a breath and started from the beginning, taking sips of white wine in between breaths, staying her tears, keeping her mind occupied with telling the story in a linear way so they would understand, so they would help her know what to do.

  “So now. I don’t know what to do . . . or nothing I do will matter.”

  Rose chimed in first. “Do you love him? Like Swan-mate-for-life love him?”

  Victoria coughed out a laugh, her vodka and lemonade drink almost snorting from her nose. “I don’t know what that even means. What are you talking about swan-love? For God’s sake, Rose. Not everyone is Chip Chip Chip.”

  “I didn’t even say his name,” Rose protested. “You did. I just meant to ask if Beatrice loves Lachlan in a way that makes her want to stay with him for the rest of her life?”

  Daisy, whose husband had unexpectantly died of an aneurysm six years ago, was trying to navigate the dating scene now that her two girls were off at college, piped up. “Rose just means,” she turned to Beatrice. “Do you love him enough?”

  “That’s the thing,” Beatrice said leaning forward into her knees and into the question. “What’s enough? When we were in college, all we imagined was finding the right one. The fairy tales, the movies, the plays, the books: everyone found their soul mate. For God’s sake, we even went to a psychic to see who would find their star-twin first.” Beatrice looked about the room at her friends. “Who was it?”

  “Me,” Victoria said with a laugh. “The one who never married; the one whose star-twin must have been confused and ended up in another galaxy.”

  Beatrice lifted her glass before taking another sip. “Exactly. Who is to know? So, there’s no real way to know.” She stood, began to pace the room. “Not a real way at all. I mean, I knew with Tom. I loved him so. Or thought I did. But now I know that I just wanted Tom to choose me. I wanted him. I wanted that life. I wanted to be safe and live in a nice house and have beautiful children, and damn, he was beautiful.” She paused and her forehead wrinkled with the thought. “I think I loved him.”

  Victoria shook her head. “You can’t think you love someone. That’s not how it works.”

  “And you know because?” asked Rose, still smarting from the Chip-teasing.

  Victoria stood, her blue caftan billowing out. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ve never . . . settled down. How do you know?”

  “And that means I haven’t loved?” She leaned closer to Rose. “You know what else a swan represents?”

  “Just everlasting love.”

  “The swan maiden. Have you heard of that story? That myth? You’re the writer. Don’t you know?”

  Rose shook her head, tears threatening in her eyes but her voice steady. “I’m the writer w
ho doesn’t write. And you’re being mean. I forgot about that, how you can be mean.”

  “No, I’m not.” Victoria sank again into the couch seats. “We’re here for Beatrice, not for you to poke at the fact that I never got married. Maybe—in case you ever wondered about my life—maybe it’s because the person I loved didn’t love me. Or because I fell in love with the wrong person or . . . do you think I’m incapable of love? You and your adorable husband and four kids and suburban house. How could you know?”

  Beatrice cleared her throat. “Birds. Seriously? This is about love. Not about comparing love.”

  “Comparing?” Daisy asked, laughter hidden in her voice. “We’ve never compared ourselves to each other, have we?”

  Great laughter erupted.

  Daisy exhaled. “Try dating with two college daughters visiting back and forth, and a dead husband whose pictures and ghost watch over everything you do.”

  “I wouldn’t even try,” Victoria said.

  “Exactly. But I am trying.”

  Beatrice walked the few steps to the kitchen and opened a bag of chips, poured out the homemade salsa she’d bought at the farmer’s market just yesterday into a bowl, and brought it to Red’s coffee table covered in hunting and fishing magazines.

  Victoria slipped her hand into her huge flowered bag and pulled out a small round speaker. She set it on the table and then used her phone to start some music—Van Morrison—softly singing about falling into the mystic. She turned it low while Rose leaned forward.

  “Victoria, I want you to tell me the story of the swan maiden.”

  Victoria picked up a chip. “I don’t think now is the best time.” She paused and held her chip aloft, turning to Beatrice. “How did you feel when you met him? Let’s start there.”

  Beatrice closed her eyes and fell backward into time. “We met at the art museum.” She opened her eyes. “Of course it was the art museum. My paintings were part of an ‘art and nature’ exhibit. He was standing there in his faded jeans and gray sweater, his glasses on the edge of his nose, teaching a class. He was pointing at a Cézanne, the Jas de Bouffan—the study of trees—on loan from a museum in Paris, and talking in that deep voice about the history of impressionism and nature and . . .” Beatrice stopped, almost breathless and then, “I could not take my eyes off him, and when he turned to me and smiled, I felt as if I should hug him, as if I’d known him forever.”

  “My God,” Rose said. “Are you making that up?”

  “What?” Beatrice asked with an incredulous tone. “Make it up?”

  “It’s almost too romantic to be real.”

  Beatrice smiled, and in that smile hid the memory of the entire afternoon they’d spent together immediately after he let his class go early.

  “It’s real,” she said.

  “And after?”

  “It has stayed just as real.”

  Victoria sighed. “So, if that’s how it started—what’s the last thing Lachlan said to you?”

  “To not contact him. To give him space. To . . . I don’t know really. I’ve listened to his message ten times. Twenty. And even his voice is different.”

  “Do you believe him?” Victoria bit into her chip.

  “I don’t really know.” Beatrice glanced at her best friends. “That’s the thing with heartbreak. You can’t think straight. Or sleep straight. Or eat straight. I feel so upside down and inside out. What’s true? What’s false?” Beatrice paced the room, wandering from window to window as the light slowly turned from bright yellow to soft twilight. “I’ve loved Lachlan for so long, and we have such an amazing life together. I just didn’t want anything to shift at all. I didn’t want to topple things over. I didn’t want to . . . change anything. We were happy.”

  “When did things change with Tom?” Rose asked quietly. “Maybe that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  “I never knew things changed with Tom until he announced things had changed. I never saw it coming.”

  Rose shook her head. “Are you sure? Or did you not want to see the changes?”

  “What are you asking?” Setting her hand over her heart, Beatrice continued staring out the window.

  Rose plowed ahead. “I’m wondering if change is what frightens you—not marrying Lachlan, not shifting things up because the last time things changed . . . they ended. That’s all.”

  Beatrice set her forehead on the glass window, watching clouds move quickly across the sky as they headed toward night with the rest of the day. A flock of white ibis flew by and settled in an oak tree to the right of the window. What Rose had just said—Beatrice had thought about it a million times. Was there a moment when things had changed with Tom and she’d been too busy to notice?

  She’d been shuttling carpool with her daughters from school to dance to softball; she’d been shuttling herself from the studio to art shows to social engagements. She’d thought of her family as a team. But it’d ended up being more like a company with a CEO and a secretary who could be easily fired and replaced. But had there been a singular moment when Beatrice had known it was coming off the tracks? No, she couldn’t find it.

  She turned back to her friends, who sat quietly eating the chips and salsa and watching her carefully, allowing space for her to answer. Her gaze passed over each and rested on Daisy, her starling, whose eyes wouldn’t catch hers. “What is it, Daisy?”

  Beatrice knew her friends better than she sometimes knew herself, and Daisy had something to say. “What do you mean?” Daisy looked up and tried to smile.

  “You know what a starling group is called?” Beatrice asked.

  “Yes,” Daisy said. “Of course. A murmur.”

  “Which sounds to me like a secret. Spill it.”

  Daisy laughed, but the sound was more like a cough than a laugh and she again looked away. “I was just thinking that you might have noticed things were changing at Dani’s memorial.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because Tom was so drunk and . . . distant at the event. And he flirted with everyone there like he was still in college and . . .”

  Beatrice saw it in her mind’s eye: a flash of the memorial at Dani’s parents’ house after the funeral. It had been a gathering of hundreds of people who had loved their fragile oystercatcher. She tried to remember Tom being there. After a heartbeat or two she recalled him in the far corner of the crowded living room talking to Daisy, his head bent low.

  “Holy shit.” Beatrice took a step toward Daisy. “He hit on you.”

  Daisy looked up, her face flaming. “Yes.”

  Victoria and Rose caught their breath in a quick inhale, and Beatrice drew closer. “You never told me.”

  “No. Because he was drunk, and I didn’t think it was a big deal, and I told him to get lost and—”

  The other two women made guttural noises and Rose shot up from the couch. “By hit on, what exactly do you mean?”

  “He kissed me.” Daisy cringed. “Or tried to anyway. And I pushed him away and told him to f off. Except I said the word.” Again she tried to laugh and again nothing came out.

  Beatrice felt outrage—not at Daisy but at Tom—pulsing through her body. “I hate to repeat myself—but you never told me?”

  “There was no reason to tell you,” said Daisy. “Things seemed fine and you were happy, and he was drunk.”

  “But see? That’s the thing!” Beatrice clapped her hands together. “We weren’t fine. And I wasn’t happy. And he was about to leave me. Maybe if someone had told me, maybe it wouldn’t have been such a shock.”

  “Yes, it would have been.” Rose walked to Beatrice. “It would have been a shock whether Daisy told you about his drunken attempted kiss or not.”

  Victoria fluffed her bluebird caftan and spread out on the couch. “I think we might have nailed it here, Beatrice. I think you’re scared of being blindsided. But if you’ve kept your eyes open with Lachlan, you won’t be blindsided. There are never guarantees; sometimes you have to take a chance, b
ut you kept your eyes shut with Tom, or at least you looked away. You didn’t want to know.”

  Beatrice let that idea sink in. Maybe Victoria was right. “But I still don’t understand the logic behind this. The fear is illogical. It grabs me exactly when I want to say yes. It sends my mind to static. But when I’m not with Lachlan, or think I’ve lost us, I miss him so badly I feel almost ill.”

  Rose made a small noise in the back of her throat. “I know that feeling.”

  “Even all these years later, you miss Chip like that?” Victoria asked.

  Rose whirled her wine in her glass. “I don’t know if that’s it. It’s more like . . . fear. Like if I’m not with him, it will all fall apart.”

  “Well, that’s screwed up,” Victoria said with a laugh. “Like you have to be there to keep it together?”

  “Sort of . . . I don’t know.” Rose sat back. “This isn’t about me. This is about Beatrice.”

  Daisy stood up and joined Beatrice at the window. “If you want my opinion. Which might not be worth a damn. I think that it’s Sam, Jonah, and Annie’s fault that we’re all screwed up.” She paused. “You know, Sleepless in Seattle.”

  “We know,” the women chimed in unison.

  Rose held up her hand. “Whoa! I’m not one bit screwed up.”

  The other three women laughed.

  “What? You think I’m screwed up?” Rose pouted.

  “We all are. Don’t worry,” Daisy said. “It’s not just movies like You’ve Got Mail. And My Fair Lady and the movie with the guy playing the radio outside her window. It’s Cinderella and it’s Snow White. It’s all the stories that show us that the man will save us and then life is grand, for good and all. Not one of those stories—not a one—showed what happens after Richard Gere marries Julia Roberts. Not one clued us in about what happens when the kids get the flu and the money is low and the husband asks the wife not to pursue her dreams or the best friend’s husband tries to kiss you or the husband dies and leaves unpaid bills. Did they show us that? Oh, hell, no.”