“Hmm.” Ryan’s response was noncommittal as he slowed to navigate the traffic circle.
They were getting closer and Stacy felt her excitement build. Both sides of the street were dotted with surf shops and tiny neighborhood delis. Tufts of beach grass grew in the median, with a dusting of sand along the curb and on the shoulder of the road.
As they approached the Manasquan River bridge, Stacy lowered her window just a bit and inhaled. It was a game she and her brother had played in the car on the way to the shore.
The winner was the one who smelled the salt air first.
She felt the breeze from the inlet below wash over her, warm and light on her face.
“Mommy, it smells like the ocean.” Connor spoke from the back seat. Stacy glanced at him in the side mirror, his eyes wide with excitement, his hair ruffling in the breeze.
“You win, bud,” Stacy murmured.
The summers she and her brother had spent in Dewberry Beach had been magical and she let the memories come. Sparklers and shucking corn. Sunburns and mosquito bites. Burned hot dogs and drippy popsicles. The crash of the ocean waves as they tumbled to the shore. The sound of crickets at night, the blink of the fireflies and the heat from an outdoor fire as she held a peeled-bark stick of marshmallows too close to the flames.
The best memories came from the times she and Brad were allowed to walk to Duncan’s Ice Cream after dinner. It was only four blocks or so from their house, but Stacy remembered feeling so grown up that they’d been allowed to walk there unsupervised. Her job was to hold the money, a few dollars crumpled in her fist; Brad’s job was to pull the paper ticket from the machine in the shop and to step forward when their number was called. After Stacy paid, they walked home, delighting in drippy cones of whatever flavor looked good. They enjoyed a kind of freedom at the shore that wasn’t permitted during the school year.
She wanted all of that for Sophie and Connor.
“Have you spoken to your brother?” Ryan asked.
“Not recently, no.” Stacy adjusted the seat belt around her expanding belly. “But Mom says she did. When I talked to her earlier in the week, she said he’s coming for the summer too.” She glanced at Ryan. “Why?”
“No reason.” Ryan’s reply came too quickly, and Stacy felt her eyes narrow with suspicion.
“Why do you ask?” she repeated, staring at him.
He shrugged as he slowed for a stoplight. “It’s just that I happened to see a selfie of him on Instagram a couple of days ago. The geotag was someplace in Oregon.”
“Oregon? What’s he doing all the way out there? What day was this?”
“I don’t remember the exact day.”
“Try.”
“I don’t know, Stace.” Ryan sighed as he flicked on his blinker and turned the car onto their street. “Do you really need to have your brother there every time you visit your parents?”
“Yes.” Stacy’s reply came automatically. “Yes, I do.”
Brad had always been her mother’s favorite and Stacy had spent too much of her life trying to compete for her mother’s attention. Her honors’ classes and perfect grades went unnoticed while his C-minuses were noticed and applauded. During the summer, birdhouses Brad made with their grandfather in the work shed had overshadowed Stacy’s swim-team medals from the club. Later, in college, Kaye encouraged Brad to travel, and he did; graduating in six years instead of the standard four. Through it all, Brad seemed oblivious to the favoritism. Had he been anything other than a genuinely good person, Stacy would have been much more resentful.
The upside of Brad absorbing their mother’s attention this summer was that Stacy would be left alone. There would be much less pressure to be perfect.
They came to a stop in the driveway, their tires crunching on the white gravel.
“Bibi’s house!” Connor’s shouting woke his sister. He’d been three years old the last time they’d visited the shore house and Stacy didn’t think he’d remember it. Apparently, he did.
Ryan stepped out to release his son from his booster seat. Stacy reached across to untangle a bewildered Sophie, who rubbed her eyes and looked around.
“Time to wake up, monkey,” Stacy whispered. “We’re here.”
“Bibi’s house?” Sophie’s words were slurred with sleep.
“Yes.”
“Come on,” Connor tapped on his sister’s window as he eyed the front door. He’d been told to wait for his sister, though it seemed to take considerable effort. “Bibi has presents. She always has presents.”
The moment Sophie emerged from the car, Connor grabbed her hand and they ran toward the house, a burst of excited energy and chatter. Stacy hadn’t seen him this happy in a while, certainly not for soccer. Maybe a summer at the shore house would be good for everyone.
“It’s a good thing you’re doing, coming here for your dad,” Ryan offered, as he opened the trunk and pulled out a suitcase. “I know how tense things can get between you and your mother.”
“I hope so,” Stacy replied.
The shore house was strictly her mother’s domain. Kaye was the one who packed the car and drove them down, who opened the house and stocked it with food, who issued invitations for backyard parties and scheduled events. During the summer, her father felt like a visitor. He joined the family on weekends, arriving on the Friday evening train after working all week at his office in the city, like most of her friends’ fathers. Stacy remembered waiting at the town’s little depot as the sun set, slapping away mosquitos in the humid evening air, listening for the deep rumbling of the engine and the shrill whistle as the train pulled in. She’d carry her father’s briefcase as they walked back to the house, updating him on news of the week.
“The house looks nice, doesn’t it?” Ryan set a suitcase on the graveled driveway.
It looked the same and there was comfort in that.
The shore house was set in the middle of a quiet road in an area of town whose families had summered in Dewberry Beach for generations. The house itself had originally been owned by Stacy’s grandfather. He was the one who’d planted the oak tree in the yard, the same tree whose branches now shaded the house and whose leaves still rustled in the summer breeze. The house itself, cedar-shingled and well-loved, had long ago weathered to a soft dove gray. In the front, three steps led to a wide front porch, set with white wicker furniture and a trio of rocking chairs for anyone who wanted to sit and visit. On the second floor, yellow and white striped awnings shaded front bedrooms from the afternoon sun.
The porch swing was new, Stacy noticed as she moved closer. It looked at lot like a twin bed hung from the ceiling by two lengths of fat nautical rope. The yellow cushions on the furniture seemed new too. Stacy remembered blue. She also remembered spending entire afternoons buried in the cushions of those chairs reading a book from the library, completely lost in the story.
She looked forward to doing that again.
Stacy pushed opened the gate for the white picket fence that surrounded the front yard, delighted to hear the familiar creak of the wood. The front garden was planted with clusters of white inpatients and blue lavender, same as always, and on each of the steps were big clay pots overflowing with red geraniums. Stacy remembered sticking little American flags in the soil of those pots to celebrate the Fourth of July.
“You mean the garden?” Stacy asked. “It looks the same.”
“That’s just it, Stace.” Ryan swept his hand in a wide arc across the house. “This has been a rental for the past three summers. Do you have any idea how hard renters are on stuff they don’t own? The amount of work it must have taken to transform it into something that looks the same would have been enormous.”
Stacy stepped forward and looked at the house with fresh eyes.
The front garden had recently been tilled and planted. The scent of turned soil was still in the air. The wicker furniture had been scrubbed clean, with sharply creased cushions on each chair. The strangest thing was the soft cotton thro
w that had been casually draped across the back of a wicker chair.
Then she knew. Stacy’s mother, who never seemed to care about anything but utility and practicality, had staged the front porch. The realization stopped Stacy in her tracks.
She glanced at Ryan for confirmation. He nodded.
She wondered what else had changed.
“C’mere.” She took his hand and led him around to the back of the house.
The outdoor shower was still there. And although a shingled half-door now replaced the flimsy yellow curtain from years past, the top of the shower remained uncovered, open to whatever might fall from the sky. When they were younger, she and Brad used to fill water balloons with frigid tap water and drop them from the attic window on anyone stupid enough to use the outdoor shower. After a particularly satisfying summer of sneak attacks, their father had cobbled together a makeshift roof for the shower, using scraps of wood from their grandfather’s work shed. Except that Stacy’s father wasn’t the carpenter her grandfather had been. The roof he built, crooked and riddled with nail holes, had leaked rainwater and collapsed the following year. Their mother eventually hired someone to have the debris removed and forbid them both from continuing their balloon war. The promise was quickly ignored, and the attacks continued. What she and Brad did do was stop shrieking when they were hit. Revenge that year was stealthy.
Stacy glanced from the outdoor shower to the attic window above. The roof was still open to the sky, the window in perfect alignment. Brad might remember to be watchful while rinsing off beach sand, but Ryan wouldn’t. He would make an excellent target. With a smile, Stacy turned to her husband.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
Stacy’s smile widened as she took his hand. That water would be so cold. “Nothing. Just thinking.”
Ryan had insisted on carrying the heavier bags, so Stacy grabbed Sophie’s tiny pink roller and followed her husband and children into the house. Even from the driveway, she could hear the kids’ excited shouts as they pounded up the stairs inside the house.
“Come in, come in.” Kaye held the screen door wide. “Just leave everything right here. We’ll sort it out later.” Her mother moved to hug Ryan. “How was the drive in? The weather said it was still raining over by you?”
“Not too bad,” Ryan answered, as he set the bags in the hallway and returned the hug.
“Where did the kids go?” Stacy glanced up the stairs.
“I’ve sent them to the yellow room.” Kaye slipped the roller from Stacy’s grasp and set it on the floor beside the suitcases. “I may have hinted about pirate treasure under their pillows so they’ve gone up to look.”
As that moment Connor leaned over the banister and shouted down the stairs. “Bunk beds! Mommy, we have bunk beds just like Archie and his brother.” His eyes widened with excitement as he caught his breath. “I get the top bunk because I’m the oldest, right, Mom? Wait until I tell Archie—he’s not allowed on the top bunk.”
“Bunk beds?” Stacy said, moving toward the staircase. “I’m not sure Connor’s old enough for a bunk bed. We brought the fold-up bed for Sophie. I thought she’d sleep in our room.”
“For the entire summer?” Kaye scoffed. “Stacy, don’t be ridiculous. The children need their own room. Both beds have rail-guards and the steps on the ladder to the top bunk are extra-wide. The man at the store assured me the children will be fine.”
“Well, if the man at the store said it’s safe, who am I to argue?” Stacy muttered under her breath, annoyed at herself for not being more assertive with her mother.
“But you’re welcome to check if you want,” Kaye added, in a tone that made Stacy wonder if her mother’s hearing was sharper than she had remembered.
“I’m sure it’s fine, and if it’s not, we have options,” Ryan said as he slipped his arm around Stacy. “I’m looking forward to seeing Chase. Is he on the deck?”
Kaye nodded, her expression softening. “Yes, in fact he is. Come on back.”
Stacy and Ryan followed Kaye into the house, through the kitchen and onto the deck. The deck was one of the best features of the house and the last thing Stacy’s paternal grandfather, Santos Bennetti, added before he stopped working altogether. He had been an exceptionally talented woodworker, with skills he accepted as a gift from God. He honored that gift by offering his services to anyone who needed them, whether they were able to pay or not. He supported his family, putting all six children through school, with work he did for the carriage trade, but he fed his soul with work he did for his friends.
Back then, the best cedar came from the Pine Barrens, a swath of land so vast that it spanned seven counties along the coast of New Jersey. The soil there was sandy and acidic, useless for anything but the most determined trees. When the craftsmen realized that determined trees produced the strongest wood, everyone wanted Pine Barren timber, especially the owners of the posh new marina a few towns over.
It just so happened that the men working at the marina were friends of the family, skilled dockworkers who had no problem “redirecting” some of the materials ordered for the marina to the alley behind Santos’s house. The men and their families would join Santos on Saturdays, bringing lawn chairs, food, and beer. Santos would make them whatever they wanted out of the wood they’d “found” for him. At the end of the summer, they all chipped in to build a deck for the friend who never charged them for his work.
Years later, the deck was still the best part of the house. Men who knew how wood fit together had built it and it looked as good today as it did the day it was christened. They built it large enough to accommodate an oversized dining table and groups of wide chairs, and they angled it in such a way that it overlooked the pond beyond the yard. The salt pond was where a lanky white egret lived and families of loud mallards made their home. At the end of the day, family and friends could gather to watch the sun make its descent through the tree branches and listen as the air stilled.
It was her father’s favorite place to sit.
“Look who’s here,” Kaye announced as she stepped onto the deck.
Stacy’s father was seated in one of the slatted Adirondack chairs that faced the pond. A green market umbrella provided shade and a pale glass of iced tea sat forgotten on a side table nearby. He rose, folding his newspaper and slipped it under his chair.
“Hi, Dad.” Stacy wrapped her arms around her father and hugged him.
“How ya doing, kiddo?” His deep voice vibrated against Stacy’s ear.
Her father used to be a brick of a man, with a chest Stacy could barely get her arms around and an oversized personality that dominated the room. It was still unnerving to see the physical changes his illness had wrought, even after his recovery. He was much too thin, his clothes falling in soft folds from his shoulders, and his once-enviable head of hair had thinned and grayed.
“Good, Dad. I’m good,” Stacy answered as she pushed back, careful not to meet his eye in case he could read her thoughts. “How are you? That’s the more important question.”
“Can’t complain,” he said benignly, as he reached for Ryan’s outstretched hand. “And how are you, Ryan? How’s the master of industry?”
Ryan laughed. “Not quite a master yet, but the company is doing well.”
“I’ve heard good things about those Seattle VCs. You’ll get your money’s worth out of them, that’s for sure.”
“Glad to hear it.”
As Ryan and her father chatted, Stacy allowed her thoughts to wander. Though she and her parents lived within a couple hours’ drive of each other, she hadn’t seen her father much since he’d been released from the hospital. She’d grown used to news of his recovery reaching her through Kaye and she passed messages back to her father the same way. But it was wrong to do so. Stacy should have made more of an effort to visit her father or help with his care. Even with two small children to look after, she could have found the time.
Growing up, Stacy had idolized her father. Even
though he missed more sporting events than he attended, couldn’t pick her friends out of a line-up, and barely made it to her college graduation in time to see her cross the stage, he was there when Stacy needed him the most.
And that was all that mattered to her.
Stacy had gone into labor unexpectedly with Sophie when Ryan was in Seattle on business. There were complications after the birth that were so concerning that doctors debated whether to airlift both mother and child to Princeton General. In the flurry of activity that followed, with Kaye in the hallway making phone calls and Ryan scrambling to come home, it had been her father who sat beside her bed and held her hand. He told her he knew that Sophie would eventually become a healthy, active little girl, and he distracted her with funny stories of his own childhood. When her father told her that everything would be okay, she believed him. The following afternoon, Ryan arrived at the hospital after traveling all night and her father quietly faded into the background, allowing Ryan to take charge of his young family.
But even then, her father didn’t leave the hospital.
Stacy learned years later that her father had claimed a chair in the waiting room and stayed there. Every night. Every day. For a full week. Her father didn’t leave the hospital until Sophie was out of the NICU and had been cleared to go home. And even then, Stacy suspected that, had Ryan allowed it, her father would have followed them home.
Behind them the screen door slapped shut and Connor bounded out of the house, his face alight with joy. Sophie followed closely behind, carrying an oversized red purse over her shoulder and wearing a looped beaded necklace underneath her pirate boa.
Connor ran up to Stacy, his fists full of treasure. She smiled at her son then redirected him to his grandfather. “Did you say hello to Grampy?”
“’Lo, Grampy,” Connor said, his face flushed with excitement.
“What d’ya got there?” her father asked.
“All of this.” Connor tipped his hands to show. “It was all under my pillow.”
The Shore House: An emotional and uplifting page turner (Dewberry Beach Book 1) Page 6