Folly Cove (14 page)

The sad thing was, her parents had argued constantly about money, just as she and Jake did. The inn, like everything else, was an infinite dark well that had required her parents to keep pouring money into it. Laura had sworn that she would never, ever have a marriage like theirs. And she wouldn't!

Her father had wanted to sell the inn and use the money to move somewhere warm. Mexico, maybe, to a small white stucco house with a jacaranda tree dripping purple blossoms. Neil had described this imaginary home so vividly that, as a child, Laura believed this house actually existed.

She'd fallen in love with Jake because he was the polar opposite of her father. Neil Bradford was the son of once-wealthy parents who grew up to be an impractical, irresponsible dreamer. Laura had known that about her father even as a young child: Daddy played with them, took them hiking in Dogtown and fishing and sailing while Mom worked. That's how it was.

“Your father's allergic to chores,” her mother told them, if the girls asked why Neil didn't have to make up any beds or wash any bathrooms.

Jake was a hard worker from a modest home in central Massachusetts. He was driven to succeed in college and as an athlete, too. He'd played varsity lacrosse in college and morphed on the field from a sweet guy who'd hold doors open for you into a beast, growling and waving his stick, charging at opponents on the field as if he had superhero strength.

Laura ran a comb through her hair, applied moisturizer, and slipped
into a nightgown before entering the bedroom. Her best nightgown, the white one. She'd been careful not to put this nightie in the dryer the way she had all the others. Tonight she would make love with her husband and clear her mind of everything—and everyone—else.

She was reading, her eyes threatening to close, when Jake joined her half an hour later. “Sorry. Hope I didn't keep you up,” he said. “I'll just grab a quick shower.”

“Whatever,” she said under her breath, suddenly irritated with him.

Sometimes Laura imagined her husband hiding in his office or even in the bathroom until she fell asleep. Well, she'd force herself to stay awake this time. Maybe they wouldn't make love after all. She wasn't in the mood anymore. They really needed to talk about Anne. Laura sat up straighter, yanked the pillow out from behind her, and propped it high against the headboard.

Twenty minutes later, Jake emerged from the bathroom, dressed as he usually was in his fitted gray boxer briefs that showed off his body in a way that would have put Representative Anthony Weiner's scandalous sext to shame. Laura set aside her book. To hell with talking. She was filled with desire for him. What could she say to induce him to make love with her?

Then she noticed that he was carrying a phone in his hand.
Her
phone!

Jake showed it to her. “Honey, whose phone is this? And what's it doing in the hamper?”

Laura felt her face flood with heat so fast that she thought she might pass out. How had Jake found her phone? She'd made sure to bury it deep in the hamper. And what if he'd seen her texts to Tom? Or—worst of all—that last photo she'd sent?

“Laura? You okay?” Jake stepped closer to the bed, still holding the damning phone.

“I'm fine. Why?”

“Your color doesn't look right. And you're sweating.” He reached out with his free hand to touch her forehead.

Laura forced herself to smile and nod, though her head felt like an anchor attached to her neck and her tongue was thick in her mouth.
“I'm just feeling stupid. That's one of my student's phones. I forgot all about it. I can't believe I nearly washed it!”

He frowned, the phone still lying faceup in his palm. “Why do you even have it?”

Laura resisted the urge to snatch the phone away. “I took it because she was trying to text during the riding lesson. Can you imagine?”

Jake laughed. “Sure. We have a daughter, remember?” He started to hand the phone over, then hesitated, studying the screen. “It's a funny phone for a kid, huh? Looks really cheap. I thought all the kids had iPhones.”

“I know. I thought it was strange, too,” Laura said, reaching out for it again.

This time Jake relinquished the phone and came around to his side of the bed. “Whose is it?”

“Melanie's,” Laura said, then hastily said, “No, wait. I mean Georgina's. Yes, that's right.” Georgina's family didn't belong to the club; Jake would be less apt to run into her. “Anyway, who knows why the kid has this phone. Maybe this is the new thing, right? Throwaway phones?”

Jake snorted, sliding beneath the covers beside her. “Yeah, soon they'll be printing their own. Every kid will have his own 3-D printer in a few years, along with a drone to deliver his homework.”

She managed a weak laugh. She couldn't believe she was lying to him like this, and yet she couldn't imagine telling him the truth about Tom. Not with her sext possibly still on this phone. “I know what you mean. Our grandkids will be microchipped at birth so their parents won't lose them.”

“And they'll be using iPads in their cribs.” Jake reached over for his own phone, which he'd left on his nightstand during his shower, and started scrolling through it.

Laura waited a beat, then said, “Jake, how did you find the phone? Why were you looking in the hamper?”

“What?” Jake turned to look at her, frowning again. “Oh. I thought I left something in my pants pocket,” he said vaguely.

“Hold me,” she said impulsively. “I missed you today.”

Jake looked surprised but complied, after first plugging his phone into
its charger, then removing his glasses and folding them to put on the table beside the phone. This all took longer than Laura would have expected.

She rested her head on his shoulder when he'd finished. “I'm sorry about arranging that stupid dinner with Sandra,” she said. “I just didn't know how to get out of it.”

“I know. I'm sorry I upset you. Let's just go and have fun.” He stroked her hair.

Jake smelled as he always did: of mint mouthwash and deodorant. In her fantasies, men smelled of sweat and leather and horses.

What would Tom smell like?

Thinking of Tom led her to think about Anne, of Anne brazenly making love with a married man.
Choosing
to have his baby! Anne should have stopped things before they got that far. All it took was willpower, which was what Laura was summoning now: she had to end all communication with Tom before it led to an affair. Or to Jake catching her in a lie. Otherwise, what kind of hypocrite would she be?

“Better now?” Jake asked, and released her after a quick squeeze.

Laura sat up. If Jake would kiss her—
really
kiss her—maybe that would be a sign that she had nothing to worry about. That her marriage was going through a rough patch but was as solid as ever.

She turned to Jake and smiled, then immediately pressed her lips together again. The last thing she wanted her husband to be thinking about was her teeth and whether they needed another cleaning. He made her go three times a year as a matter of course; his hygienists were lovely girls, but so relentless when it came to scraping off plaque, Laura was often left with a headache afterward from the vibrations. A wonder she had any enamel left.

Jake did not kiss her. Instead, he reached for his glasses and phone.

“Elly saw Anne today,” Laura said before he could start reading again. “She's staying down at Flossie's cottage.”

“Oh? How's she doing?”

“She has a baby now. Did you know that?”

Jake's face froze. “Hell no. She never said anything to me about it.”

Laura watched him out of the corner of her eye while pretending to adjust her nightgown strap. “She didn't?”

“I just said that, didn't I? Of course not.”

Laura gave up pretending not to look at him. “Why ‘of course not'?”

“I only saw her once, Laura, at the pub that night. I swear! Other than that, Anne and I haven't communicated in two years.”

“Okay. Sorry.” Laura touched her husband's hand where it rested on the sheet between them, the fingers tapping nervously, as if there were a keyboard beneath the covers.

“Why isn't Anne staying with your mom?” he asked, fingers still twitching.

“Elly says Mom didn't want a baby in her apartment. Mom's also insisting on telling everyone that Anne is divorced. I guess she doesn't want everyone to know that her daughter forgot to keep her legs closed.”

“Don't be nasty,” Jake said gently. “We got pregnant by accident, too, remember. That's how we ended up here. We're just lucky it worked out for us.”

Laura opened her mouth to protest, to say it was different when they got pregnant because they were in love and neither of them was married to someone else. It had made sense for them to get married.

But it didn't. Not really. Two weeks before their wedding day, she'd ridden her horse over a jumps course. The horse had refused a stone wall and pitched her over the saddle. She had miscarried.

Briefly, Laura closed her eyes. So much blood. She'd never known a body could bleed that much. She shouldn't have been riding, though the doctor had told her it was fine. She was fourteen weeks along.

Jake had gone with her for the D & C. The doctors told her it would be easier to get pregnant again if she had the procedure. Laura had curled up in bed for days afterward, weeping. Jake stayed with her. Fed her. Even bathed her. It wasn't her fault, he said. The doctors had told her it was fine for her to keep riding and that they'd have more chances to be parents.

What Laura had never admitted to anyone was that as she was riding that day, she had been fantasizing about falling, about an accident that could cause her to miscarry. She was only twenty years old, and Jake was the only man she'd ever slept with, yet she'd known something was wrong between them even then.

When her wish came true, the guilt had nearly crushed her. Jake had cried over the loss as much as she had. Laura couldn't bring herself to break up with him.

“That cottage seems like a chilly place to be stuck alone with a baby,” Jake said now.

“I know.” Then, partly because she'd promised Elly that she'd clear this up for good, Laura added, “You know, when Elly saw Anne, Anne kept saying those same terrible things about that time she was house-sitting for us.”

“What things?” Jake was clenching his jaw.

“You know! About how you went into her room. And, you know.
Exposed
yourself.” Laura felt sick, saying this.

Jake rubbed a hand over his face. “I have no idea what Anne's talking about. I've told you. There's nothing between us. There never has been.”

“I know,” Laura said. “But it bothers me that Elly believes her.”

“Come on. You know me.” Jake took her hand. “Have I ever given you any reason to think I'd do something like that? Or to doubt how much I love you?”

You don't desire me. Isn't that reason enough?
Laura wished she could say this, but she was suddenly tired of picking at the same old scab. What good would it do?

“I don't care about what happened between you and Anne. Or about what Elly thinks, okay?” Laura stroked Jake's cheek, wishing she could erase the tension from his face as effectively as she smoothed out the wrinkles of the quilt on their bed each morning. “That's all in the past. I'm letting it go. All we have is the present and the future, right? And what matters is that we're okay. We
are
okay, aren't we?”

Jake's smile was tender. “Of course we are.” He drew Laura into his arms, just as she'd wanted him to, and held her tightly against him, stroking her hair. “I love you so much.”

It was almost enough, when he said that, for her to feel content.

I
t was raining lightly when Anne woke at six to feed Lucy, but now the sun was out. Through the window she could see gray clouds parting to make way for brilliant blue sky. Jagged splashes of light reflected on the honeyed wooden walls.

She could hear the tide rolling in and out of the cove below the house, as steady and rhythmic as her own breathing. The bouncing watery light, the soundtrack of the gulls overhead, and the cottage's tidy built-in bookshelves and drawers made her feel as if she really were floating in a houseboat at sea.

Anne switched Lucy to the other breast, wondering about Colin. Was he still in New York, writing? Did he miss their old life, or even think about it?

The steady sound of the sea made her remember one of the first trips she'd taken with him. Colin had convinced her to skip the usual group kayak tour of Puerto Rico's Bioluminescent Bay. Instead, he'd borrowed a kayak from a friend and they'd set out on their own. It was close to midnight; even the touristy street stalls in Fajardo were shuttered.

It was a cloudy night. Anne had worried about rain and about how they'd navigate the kayak through the mangrove swamp in the dark. But her desire to be with him had surpassed her fears.

That night was so inky black that Colin's muscular shape in front of her was barely visible as they'd maneuvered the kayak along the winding
river through the swamp. The sound of the coqui frogs was deafening. She'd been scared of having snakes drop onto her from the trees, knowing boas might be wrapped around the limbs.

Anne forgot her fears once they'd paddled deep enough into the trees and the water began lighting up around the boats, brilliant jeweled sparks beneath the water's glossy black surface.

“Put your hand in the water,” Colin had urged.

Anne did it despite her fear of jellyfish and snakes, laughing as she cupped water in her hand and saw a miniature fireworks display in her palm. The bright flashes in the water were caused by plankton called dinoflagellates, Colin explained. Even the jellyfish were glowing, odd geometric shapes pulsing with light.

“Did you like your adventure?” Colin asked as they carried the kayak back up onto the beach afterward.

She'd kissed him in answer. Then they'd made love on the sugary white sand.

Anne forced herself to sit up. She tossed the covers aside and put Lucy on the bed to change her diaper, making faces and nonsense sounds to distract her. Colin had promised to give her adventures. He'd delivered. She couldn't deny that. But right now she had to
think
. To
act
. To learn how to be on her own again.

Well, not really on her own: here was Lucy. Smiling at her. Depending on her for everything. That's why Anne felt so anxious. What if she didn't live up to her own daughter's expectations?

She carried the baby into the main room of the cottage. One wall was painted a light apple green, a pop of color against the warm brown paneling, and Flossie had filled the chipped white enamel pitcher on the table with scarlet dahlias. Anne smiled, knowing her mother would have a fit if she knew Flossie had wasted dahlias on her, especially in the Houseboat.

It was amazing, really, that Sarah and Flossie were both still here on the same property, when neither had much good to say about the other. Flossie had always been a rebel; when she inherited a bit of money from a spinster aunt, she'd dropped out of her all-women's Ivy League college to travel and eventually joined a Buddhist convent in France. She'd
come home for her brother's wedding, and her parents had pushed her toward the son of a family friend, a man from Essex who was eager to marry her. Flossie had refused him. She was far from celibate—Anne had seen men coming and going from her house through the years she was growing up—but Flossie had never married.

“I prefer my own company,” she always told Anne. “Gives me time to think my own thoughts. The thing about men is that they take up an awful lot of space, and I don't mean just physically.”

Sarah, who had always been about following the rules and upholding tradition and the Bradford family name, couldn't believe Flossie had turned down her parents' choice of partner. “A man with shoreline property in Gloucester and plenty of money? That would have solved all the Bradford family's money problems,” she declared. “The Bradfords wouldn't have needed me to save their inn if she'd married him. Flossie was selfish to turn him down, if you ask me.”

Anne, who was in her twenties by the time she heard this story and studying literature in college, had been appalled. “But that's terrible, Mom! It sounds like an arranged marriage out of Jane Austen's time. Why should Flossie have agreed to marry a man she didn't love?”

“Because at least then she wouldn't be poor and alone,” Sarah snapped. “It's not like Flossie had some great career to keep her busy. Remember, Anne: you can work for money all your life, or marry it in five minutes.”

Not that their mother had been so successful at following her own advice. Sarah had probably thought she was marrying into money when she chose their father. Instead, she'd had to work around the clock to keep the inn out of bankruptcy.

Anne got dressed and spent the next hour surfing job sites online, applying for any teaching or restaurant positions open within an hour's drive of Folly Cove. Between applications, she made herself coffee and ate yogurt with sliced banana, then nursed Lucy again and bathed her in the tiny sink.

The phone rang as she was dressing the baby. “You need to get out of that house,” Flossie commanded.

Startled, Anne glanced over her shoulder toward the windows, half
expecting to see Flossie striding across the sand toward the cottage from her own house. The beach was empty. “What? Why?”

“Because you'll get depressed, cooped up in that dank old shed.”

Anne laughed. “I like this old shed. But you're probably right. I am feeling a little down. I've been looking for jobs online and there isn't much.”

“I'm pleased to hear that you've been productive. However, as your landlady, I demand that you leave the house. And bring that baby over here. I need to pinch those cheeks.”

Anne bundled Lucy up and carried her in the backpack across the beach. The sun was warm and the tide was in; she had to pick her way across the rocks before climbing up the wooden stairs to Flossie's porch.

The house and her aunt were opposites. Flossie's house was a tall, formal Victorian painted a solemn gray with white trim. Her aunt was delicate, birdlike, and never formal. She was dressed this morning, as always, in workout clothes: black yoga pants and a black fleece. She greeted Anne on the front porch, shading her narrow face against the sun with one hand, and took the baby at once, lifting her deftly out of the backpack. Lucy gave her a toothless grin.

“There,” Flossie announced, smiling back at the baby. “Now, that's what I call the sun coming out.” She looked at Anne. “What about you? Where's your sunshine? Your face is all clouded over.”

“I do feel a little gray,” Anne admitted. “It's a lot to do, starting my life over with a baby. I didn't realize how tired I'd feel.” She followed Flossie into the living room, where her aunt sat on the couch and balanced Lucy on her lap. Anne chose the floral armchair across from them.

“You don't need to do everything at once,” Flossie chided. “Why don't you go riding? It'll clear your head.”

Fresh air was Flossie's prescribed cure for everything. Anne's mother had told her once that, when Anne was a baby, if Flossie was watching her she'd put Anne outside for a nap on the porch in nearly every season. Flossie would stretch out on the bamboo sofa beside her.

“It could be fifty degrees, and that woman would still think it was a grand idea to sleep outside,” Sarah had grumbled. “I swear your father's sister was raised by wolves.”

“How can I go riding?” Anne asked.

Flossie scowled. “How can you
not
? You rode every day of your life when you lived here. Walk down to the stables. I haven't ridden General all week and I bet he's raring to go, on a day this fine. There won't be many more days like it.”

“I can't,” Anne said, gesturing toward the baby, though her thigh muscles tightened, anticipating the feel of a horse beneath her.

“You can.” Flossie gave her a sharp look. “Lucy and I are old friends by now, aren't we, darling?” She made a comically wide-eyed face. Lucy grinned obligingly. “I'll watch her. Or don't you trust this old bat?”

Anne shifted her weight on the porch. “Of course I do. But Laura wouldn't like seeing me at the stables. We're not exactly on speaking terms.”
More like screaming terms,
she added silently.

Flossie swept her gray bangs out of her eyes. “Oh, for crying in your beer. You two are going to have to get over that. Husbands come and go, but sisters are forever. I know you're not after Jake, and pretty soon your sister will have to realize that
you
are not the source of her marital problems.”

“You heard what happened with Jake and me?” Anne felt her neck itch with embarrassment. She had never told Flossie any of it. “I mean, what Laura thinks happened but definitely did
not
?”

Her aunt nodded. “The walls have ears. And, for the record, I'm on your side.”

Anne was touched. “Thanks. That means a lot.” She stood up and went to the mantel, where among the framed photographs was one of her parents' wedding day. They looked happy, leaning into each other. Her mother's hair was like Elly's, honey blond and straight, like a sleek gold shawl around her shoulders. She wore a simple white strapless gown and veil.

Her father was barely out of college and boyish looking, a skinny guy with a shock of hair that looked dark in the photograph but was auburn like her own. He wore a tux but somehow gave off an indie-rocker vibe. Flossie wore a white blouse and black pants and scowled off to one side of the group photo. Her head was shaved.

“I forget,” Anne said. “Was the wedding right after you came back from the convent in France?”

“Yes. I only came back for your father.”

“You've never really told me anything about why you joined that convent.”

Flossie's tone was brisk. “I studied abroad my sophomore year of college and spent a semester in Paris. While I was there, I took a meditation course taught by Buddhist monks from Nepal. That changed my life.”

Anne sat down again on the chair. Lucy lay on her back across her great-aunt's knees, apparently fascinated by the ornate brass light ceiling fixture. “How?”

Flossie swayed her legs a little beneath the baby, smiling when Lucy waved her arms and babbled at the overhead light. “My parents weren't much for talking. They certainly weren't ever going to answer my questions. As a child, I'd sit with them in church and wonder how they could believe in a God that would allow things like war to happen, and what our purpose should be as protectors of the planet.”

Anne laughed. “Life's little questions, you mean.”

“Exactly. Meditating with the monks made me realize how angry and alone I felt, and how much I needed a community that would help me find a path for living that made more sense to me than what my parents had always stood for: keeping the status quo no matter how nonsensical it was. You have to remember that this was in 1971, just before the mess in Vietnam ended. A turbulent time. I felt ignorant and overly attached to my life. To all these worldly goods the Bradford family was so hell-bent on protecting.”

She smiled as Anne glanced around the room. “Okay, I'm a bit of a hypocrite. A hoarder of antiquities and memories. But I like to think I learned something about acceptance and patience, anyway, while I was in Europe.” She nodded to the table next to Anne's chair. “Take a look in there.”

Anne gently pulled open the drawer of the Queen Anne table. The table was old and wobbly, covered with a lace cloth. In the drawer lay a
photograph of her aunt in a simple pine frame. Flossie looked young and happy, smiling against a backdrop of jagged snowcapped mountains. She wore orange robes and her head was shaved. Her smile was brilliant, as white as the snow behind her.

“You look so happy. Where is this?” Anne asked.

“Nepal. That's Annapurna in the background. A gorgeous mountain. My favorite in the Himalayan range. Annapurna often looks pink, the way it catches the light, and the snow comes off it in these long, filmy white scarves.”

“It's beautiful. So are you.”

“Ha! I looked like a molting robin,” Flossie said. “But it was a wonderful time. I went to Nepal to study Buddhism before entering the convent in France. I keep that photograph to remind me of who I was and what real contentment feels like.”

Anne studied her aunt's plain face, the deep lines around her eyes and mouth. “And do you still feel content?” she said. “Sometimes I worry that you're lonely.”