Folly Cove (15 page)

“Lonely? Me?” Flossie stared at her for a moment, then tipped her head back to laugh. Lucy startled and screwed up her face, but Flossie quickly put the baby against her shoulder and stood up, walking to the window to show Lucy the view of the water. Lucy stopped fussing at once.

“Yes, you,” Anne said. “I mean, I'm lonely here, and I've only been here a little while. Plus I've got Lucy for company.”

“You don't know anything about my life.” Flossie's tone was calm rather than accusatory. “This is the life I've chosen, dear girl. I've had one great love, and I've felt affection toward many men since that first one. In the end, though, I prefer to be on my own. To be at one with the rhythms of nature rather than dependent on the whims of others. The few times I've felt at loose ends, I have found that meditating—especially when I do it with others in my meditation group here in Rockport—lets me think of loneliness as a background landscape I'm moving through temporarily. So, yes. I am generally content.”

“That's amazing,” Anne said.

“It isn't really. We think of our emotions as being the result of
something happening to us, but happiness is a choice. It's a choice I've made. You can make it, too, no matter what happens in your life,” Flossie added. “People think they have to physically die before going to heaven or starting new lives, depending on their religions. The truth is that you can start a new life anytime you choose, as easily as waking from a dream.”

Anne tried to imagine this. Could she wake up and choose to start a newer, happier life under any circumstances? She had her doubts. But she could try. And maybe that was a choice, too: making the effort to be positive rather than negative. That would have to be enough for her right now.

Flossie jiggled Lucy a little in front of the window, then turned to look at Anne over her shoulder. “You'd better go get a ride in before this child decides she's hungry for something I can't provide.”

Anne stood up, then hesitated. “Are you sure?”

“I am. And if that bossy sister of yours gives you any grief, tell her I asked you to exercise General in exchange for staying in my cottage. He's still my horse, after all.”

“What if Lucy cries while I'm gone?” Anne asked anxiously, zipping up her vest.

“Tell you what. If Lucy starts screaming, I promise to hold her out a window. You'll hear her down in the woods. You can come galloping up the beach in time to catch her when I throw her out.”

Thankfully, the barn was empty when Anne arrived, and Laura's car wasn't parked in the driveway by the house. Anne tacked up the horse and left a note on the stall door.

The sun was stronger now. Anne lifted her face to it and relaxed in the saddle. General was a stately black gelding, nearly seventeen hands high, with a white nose and two white socks. Now fourteen years old, the horse plodded at a gentlemanly pace despite his slender thoroughbred build.

Anne followed a cart road along the pasture to one of the trails entering Dogtown. Soon she was in deep woods. She headed for the area with the Babson boulders, which had been carved with inspirational sayings during the Depression by out-of-work laborers. She
reached the “Truth” boulder and urged the horse into an easy trot through the thick stands of pines interspersed with birches and maples. It was only the first week of October, but the autumn leaves were almost peaking.

The early-morning rain had rinsed the air of pollen, and the light alternated between buttery gold, where it filtered through the oaks, and fiery red around the sugar maples. Anne took deep breaths, content to be alone with the sound of a horse's hooves on the pine-padded trail. She'd forgotten what a gift it was to be left in peace to hear her own thoughts, especially given the remarkable beauty of Massachusetts in autumn.

Of course, by late November, the leaves here would be gone. Only the pine needles would remain, dark green, almost black against the gray tree trunks. In winter, New England's coast had more shades of gray than anything else: dark gray storm clouds and slate gray sea, pale gray tree trunks and chilly gray rain. Sometimes the ocean looked like a thick layer of smoke against the horizon in November.

Maybe she wouldn't be here then. She hoped not.

Especially not if Laura continued holding this senseless grudge.

Her sister probably had no idea that Jake had stalked her in Gloucester a week after his bizarre behavior in their guest bedroom. He'd waited outside the elementary school where Anne had taught third grade until she was sitting in the driver's seat of her car, preparing to drive back to her apartment. She was searching for her phone in her purse when the passenger door opened and Jake slipped into the car.

Anne didn't scream for help. Even after everything, she wasn't afraid of him. Jake had always seemed like a man who was uncertain of his own power. His own identity, even.

When Laura married him, Anne had the odd thought, while standing near the altar in her itchy blue bridesmaid's dress as her sister and Jake exchanged vows, that Laura must have been looking for an unfinished man to mold. That must be why she'd chosen this one.

“Get out of my car!” Anne had shouted at Jake that afternoon. “I don't want you anywhere near me.”

“Please,” he'd begged. “Hear me out.”

Anne sighed. “Five minutes. And it better be good.”

He'd rubbed his palms along his jeans, ironed with a crease in them. Pressed by her sister, no doubt, Anne thought with a queasy shudder. “Look, I'm sorry I came into your room the way I did,” Jake said.

“You
should
be! That was wrong on so many levels that I don't even know where to start.”

“I know,” he said. “I feel terrible about scaring you that way.”

She crossed her arms. “So why did you do it?”

Jake started talking fast; he told her he'd been about to break up with Laura before they got married, but then she'd gotten pregnant. “I know your sister's a good person. I wanted to do the right thing.”

But their marriage had always been more of a business partnership than a passionate connection, he went on. “I'm unhappy, but what can I do?” Jake pleaded. “I'm trapped, Anne! I could never leave Laura and Kennedy. They make me a better man. Leaving my family would destroy me. And them! But Laura's unhappy and so am I. What should I do? Tell me! You always seem to know what you want.”

Anne had felt herself softening. Jake sounded so miserable. And he was right: Laura was a good person. The best of the three Bradford sisters in many ways: intelligent, reliable, honest, helpful.

“I can't tell you what to do,” she said finally. “Only you and Laura can decide that. Have you tried counseling?”

Jake shook his head. “I asked her, but Laura says there's no point. She wants to stay with me and I want to stay with her. She says that's all we need to know.” He lifted his hands, dropped them. “I wanted to be an architect, you know. But when Laura got pregnant, I knew I had to provide for a family, and my uncle's a dentist. He helped me get into dental school.” He shook his head. “It was a mistake. I hate my life.”

“Being unhappy still doesn't excuse what you did to me,” Anne said.

“I know. Can you please forgive me? I feel stuck, but I don't want my daughter growing up without a father in her life.” He'd started crying.

Anne didn't want that for Kennedy, either. She knew what it was
like to grow up without a father. It would break her heart if Kennedy lost hers. Especially if it was her fault in some way.

So she had forgiven Jake, even hugged him as he got out of the car. But then there was that awful Christmas party two years ago, when he'd betrayed her again by acting like some drunk jerk of a frat boy, cornering her against the wall and kissing her.

“Screw you, Jake,” Anne said aloud now, tipping her head up to watch a blue jay scold her from its perch high in a pine tree. “You hear me? I'm done with you!”

It was always a mistake to let your guard down on horseback. She had let the reins drop, so now, when an animal streaked across the path so fast that Anne barely caught sight of its bushy brown tail—a dog? a fox?—she had no hope of staying on when the horse bolted.

The gelding veered off the path and scraped Anne off against a tree before galloping away. For a second the landscape pinwheeled around her, a blur of green and red and yellow. Then Anne hit the ground and everything went black.

•   •   •

Witnessing Laura's life up close and personal was driving Elly crazy. Why was her sister such a doormat?

Laura ran errands, cooked meals, and did laundry for everyone, despite the fact that she was getting up before sunrise to shovel horseshit every day, then teaching lessons until dinner. She cleaned the house and even ironed Jake's shirts like the guy didn't have two good hands of his own. Elly got tired just watching her.

Kennedy was useless, too, hiding out in her bedroom unless she was skulking through the kitchen, where it never seemed to occur to her that someone had to put dishes in the dishwasher after she left them on the counter.

Last night Laura had stayed up until eleven to bake cookies, even though Jake wouldn't touch them. Kennedy, though, was a little hoarder, sneaking off with handfuls of cookies anytime she thought people weren't watching. Her bedroom smelled like a cross between a gym and a pastry shop.

Her niece spent most of her time in that purple bedroom, a color
that made Elly's teeth ache. In the five days Elly had been here, Kennedy hadn't had any friends come over to shriek and play loud music after school, or to loll around watching brainless TV shows. Certainly no boys were sniffing around.

Also, there was zero evidence—Elly knew this because she'd been bored enough to snoop through Kennedy's bedroom while the kid was at school—of her niece doing drugs or even sneaking an occasional beer. She lived like a nun.

Whenever Kennedy
did
venture beyond her bedroom, she moped so silently around the house that Elly was often startled by her presence. Her niece would suddenly appear at Elly's elbow, reading or eating, occasionally peering up at Elly in a spooky way from beneath her raggedy bangs.

Like now: for the past half hour, Elly had been sitting in the living room with her laptop and answering e-mails. When she looked up, she realized Kennedy was lying on the couch across the room, as if she'd been tossed there like an extra pillow.

Her nose was buried in a book. Judging from the blond girl wearing a leather combat suit and carrying a futuristic weapon on the cover, it was probably one of those apocalyptic YA novels about a teenage girl saving the world, probably while choosing between two hot love interests.

Maybe that's what Kennedy secretly wanted to do: blow everyone away. Elly had certainly wanted to do that when she was thirteen. Especially her sisters, because Laura was too bossy and Anne was a whiny pain.

Elly closed her laptop. It wouldn't kill her to be nice. It was Saturday; Laura was teaching lessons all day and the poor kid must be bored witless.

“Good book?” Elly asked.

Kennedy shrugged. “It's okay, I guess.”

“It's great that you like to read.”

“Mom says I read too much.”

“Impossible!” Elly tried to channel a supportive aunt. “Reading can open doors to new worlds.”

Her niece rolled her eyes. “Where'd you hear that? A fortune cookie?”

Elly was startled enough to laugh. She loved a kid with a smart
attitude and a quick mouth. “Probably. Want to know the truth? I hate reading. I always feel like I'm not really doing anything.”

Kennedy finally closed the book. “You're a singer, right?”

“Not anymore. That didn't pan out, so now I'm a production designer.”

“What's that?”

“Here. It's easier if I show you.” Elly crossed the room and perched on the edge of the couch, holding her laptop open in front of Kennedy while she Googled her own Web site. She clicked on the montage of projects showcased on her home page: ad spots and music videos, a couple of Internet pilots, and a snippet from the animated movie where she'd voiced a singing penguin. She was pleased to see Kennedy's big blue eyes—the girl could be a mascara model with lashes like that—get even bigger.

“So you make, like, videos and ads and stuff?” Kennedy said when the three-minute clip had finished playing.

“I design the sets for them,” Elly said. “Other people put together the music and costumes, and there are tech geeks who do things like lighting and cameras. But I'm in charge of the overall look and the props. Like, I might have to decide how to build a stone wall, or how to make a puppet that looks like an alien.”

“That's so cool.” Kennedy was sitting up straight now. “I wouldn't mind trying that.”

Elly smiled. “Great, because I need your help. Your mom and I are designing a birthday party for your grandmother. Her favorite movie was made the year she was born, a musical called
An American in Paris
, so our mission is to turn the inn's dining room into a French bistro and find costumes we can wear. We need tablecloths, fake flowers, vintage clothing, and maybe stuff to build a statue of the Eiffel Tower.”

“You're going to make the Eiffel Tower? For real?”

“Well, a replica of it, yeah.”

“No way!”

“Way,” Elly said. “I'd go shopping with you right now, except I don't have a car.”

“Dad would totally let us use his! He always rides his bike to work. I'll call him!”

Jake agreed to let them borrow his brand-new Lexus. Must be nice to have a dentist dad, Elly thought as they headed into Gloucester to check out the consignment stores there.

Being home made Elly miss her own father in a way she hadn't in ages. She kept having oddball memories. As they were leaving the garage, for instance, Elly spotted Kennedy's bike in a corner and remembered how her father had taught her to ride a bike by attaching a broom pole to the rear fender, so he could run alongside her without bending over.