Folly Cove (23 page)

“We can't afford much help,” Sarah had said. “It's only temporary.”

“They're not meant to be charwomen. Laura and Elly are Bradfords!”

“So is Anne!” she'd said. “And that's why we have to keep the inn. This is who they are. And who I am now.”

He'd stared at her then, dangerously quiet. “Oh, yes. You are a Bradford,” he said. “You married me to become one. I can see that now.”

“No,” she said, but she couldn't quite meet his eyes. They'd never had this conversation, so dangerously close to the truth. “It's
you
I loved.
You
I married.”

“I don't believe you.” Neil stood up. “I'm leaving. You can choose: me or Folly Cove. You can't have both, Sarah. If you really love me, you'll come with me.” He held out a hand and waited.

When she didn't take it, he'd nodded. “Fine. Tell people whatever you like. Say that I ran off. Or that you kicked me out because I'm a bum and a drunk. I don't care. I'm going.”

Sarah knew better than to chase a man. She would wait for him to come back to her.

And she had waited, long after she thought she'd stopped.

Sarah felt her eyes sting and swiped at them with her fingers, careful with her mascara. There was no point in crying anymore. Her life would remain unchanged except for one thing: she was a widow. Truly alone.

A sudden movement on Flossie's porch startled her. Sarah stepped
back beneath the low-hanging branches of a scrub pine as the front door opened.

Women began emerging onto the wraparound porch. Women of all shapes and ages, carrying yoga mats in bright colors, their voices muffled by the sound of the sea. Hatless, healthy-looking women with high color in their cheeks. Women with enough money to be doing yoga classes on a Tuesday morning.

Sarah had never understood women like these. For her, work was a frame; it gave her the parameters within which she made the rules and expected others to follow them. Work was her sanctuary and her safety net. Her identity, after she'd succeeded in shedding her old self so completely.

Beyond the house, pearly clouds were gathering along the horizon. The sea was nearly as gray as the air, the sand dun-colored. Flossie came outside to wave good-bye to the women from the porch. When the last of them had driven away, she turned with her arms folded to look across the ocean, her strong back to Sarah.

After a moment, though, Flossie called to her without turning around. “I know you're there, Sarah. You might as well come down here and say whatever you came to say.”

Sarah approached warily, as if Flossie were a wild animal that might bolt. Flossie turned around as Sarah climbed the porch steps. She was dressed in those awful black yoga pants and a brown zip-up hoodie. With her short, spiked gray hair and enormous dark eyes, she reminded Sarah of the tiny saw-whet owl Neil had rescued one night after it flew into his car windshield.

He'd brought the owl to his sister. Flossie had fed it live crickets and mice in her bathroom for two weeks, then set the bird free. Now the owl lived in the pines above this house and occasionally still came down to visit Flossie when she sat out on the deck.

Sarah followed Flossie into the living room, where there were framed photographs on every surface and so much furniture that you needed to thread your way between chairs, hassocks, and tables. “Why don't you ever have a good clear-out?” she said. “I'm amazed your students don't fall over something and sue you.”

“Part of what I teach them is balance. Physical and spiritual. Tea?” Flossie suggested, gesturing for Sarah to sit.

“No, thank you. I don't like your Chinese tea,” Sarah grumbled. “You always make it too strong.”

“You should learn to like it. Chinese tea is full of antioxidants.”

“Yes, I can see what wonders it does for you.” Sarah chose the only decent chair in the living room, a white wing back with carved legs.

This chair, a fine antique, was a Bradford heirloom. Flossie probably had tens of thousands of dollars in antiques and artwork in here. If she'd only sell some of these things and invest the money, she could buy decent clothes and a new car. Though of course Flossie insisted that she didn't need material goods.

“Well?” Flossie said. “What is it?” She perched on the worn tapestry couch across from Sarah. This looked like the place where Flossie ate, read, and perhaps even slept: the table and floor in front of the couch were strewn with dishes, newspapers, and books.

Despite the yoga class—or maybe because of it—Flossie looked tired and drawn. They were seated close enough together that Sarah could see the other woman's huge pores and the fine lines around her eyes and mouth. She barely suppressed an urge to remind Flossie that a little makeup went a long way at their age. On the other hand, women who wore no makeup risked less when they cried.

She did not want to see Neil's sister cry. But what choice did she have, since she was about to break her heart?

“I've had a letter from an attorney in Florida,” Sarah began, then had to stop and clear her throat before adding, “It's about Neil.”

Flossie's expression crumpled and she looked down at her own small, rough hands. “I see. When?”

“Yesterday.” Sarah realized with a start that Flossie must already know what was coming. “Neil has died.” She gentled her voice anyway. “I'm sorry.”

Flossie nodded, still not looking up. “What did the attorney say?”

“Not much. Only that Neil died from liver cancer. From the drinking, I suppose. I don't know any details.”

At least the attorney had spared her that much. Sarah didn't want
to imagine Neil frail or in pain. She'd rather remember the way he'd looked with the girls, healthy and tan, running and laughing as if he were just one more child among them.

After a moment, when Flossie neither looked up nor spoke, Sarah said, “Are you all right?”

Flossie nodded again. “It's not exactly tragic for anyone to die at sixty-five, is it?”

“No, I suppose not,” Sarah said, though she'd forgotten for the moment that Neil was ten years younger than she was.

Of everyone, Flossie was the only other person who knew this fact, because of circumstances beyond Sarah's control. To Flossie's credit, she had never divulged the truth about Sarah's age or her true background to Neil or the girls.

Flossie stood up and began moving around the room, aimlessly touching the furniture as if she'd been struck blind and had to feel her way. “I mean, we might think it's tragic, since he was younger than we are, but most people would not,” she said. “They would say, ‘He had a good long life.'”

“Well,” Sarah said warily, “I'm not so sure about ‘good.'”

“It was getting better,” Flossie said.

“How on earth do you know that?” Sarah said crossly. “And how did you know Neil was dead? You did, right?”

“Yes.” Flossie went to the far corner of the room and opened an oak cupboard big enough to hide any number of family skeletons. She reached onto the top shelf and brought down a Priority Mail box from the post office, then carried the box over to Sarah and set it on the coffee table in front of her.

Sarah felt her breath leave her in a great whoosh of air, as if someone had slammed something into her gut, as she read the black sticker on the box:
CREMATED
REMAINS
. The return address on the box was Venice, Florida.

“It arrived late yesterday, but I haven't wanted to open it,” Flossie said. “I wanted you to be with me.” She sat down across from Sarah again, the box between them.

“Good of you,” Sarah said dully. Why had Neil sent the box to his
sister and not to her? Did he think she wouldn't want it? Or that she'd toss it into the ocean, unopened?

That thought was more tempting than she'd ever admit. Goddamn Neil.

“He wrote to me about a month ago,” Flossie said gently, “saying he was thinking about coming back to Folly Cove, but then he was diagnosed and told he had only weeks left.”

Neil had written to Flossie? A buzzing started in Sarah's ears, drowning out the sound of the surf. Her eyes swam. “Why did he tell you but not me?”

“I'm his sister.”

“I'm his wife!” Sarah said, then pressed her lips tightly shut.

“Of course you are,” Flossie said. “But you know it isn't the same. Neil and I felt unconditional love for each other, no matter how disappointed we were in each other from time to time. You kicked my brother out of his own house. I've been supporting him. Sending him money so he didn't always have to live on the street.”

“You knew where he was?” Sarah asked, too astounded for a moment to be angry. “All this time?”

Flossie shook her head. “He always gave me a post-office box, and every time, the boxes were in different cities.”

“It was his choice to live the way he did,” Sarah said. “He abandoned us!” Mortified, Sarah felt her shoulders start to shake and pressed a fist to her mouth. “He could have come home,” she said around it, the words muffled.

“Really?” Flossie clasped her hands in her lap. “You would have let him?”

Sarah nodded, though the truth was complicated. When Neil accused her of having another man's child, a hinged door had snapped shut on her heart. He should have known she would never break her marriage vows. They were sacred to her. If nothing else, the Bradford name was the one thing she'd ever owned that was worth keeping.

Not her maiden name, Brogan. Derived from the Irish for “shoe,” for God's sake.
Shoe!

She'd made up a stage name: Sarah Simmons. For years, she'd hidden
herself successfully in plain sight of the Bradfords, until Flossie accidentally stumbled onto her secrets.

“We might have been happy, if he'd come back.” Sarah shut her eyes, picturing Neil as he'd been: tall and vibrant, the girls clinging to him like monkeys. “We could have tried again.”

“Perhaps,” Flossie said, then stood up and went to the kitchen. She returned a moment later with a glass of water and a tumbler of brandy, set these on the table next to Sarah, then proceeded to read the papers Sarah had given her, nodding as she skimmed the will and Sarah sipped the brandy.

Flossie finished reading and neatly slid the papers back into the envelope. She handed the envelope back to Sarah and said, “I have something for you to read, too. Drink your brandy.”

She waited until Sarah had obediently taken another sip, then stood up and went to the narrow table beneath the windows, retrieved a white business envelope, and gave it to her. Sarah's name was scrawled across the front in Neil's handwriting.

Sarah had to breathe carefully around a sharp pain beneath her rib cage. The brandy burned at the back of her throat. She swallowed hard to avoid retching. “Should I read it now?”

“Up to you.”

Sarah couldn't walk home in this state. She couldn't imagine standing up, much less moving around the box on the table. The box that looked far too small to contain Neil.

She slit the envelope open.

Neil's handwriting was nearly illegible. He must have been extremely ill. She had to puzzle over several words.

My dear Sarah,

I hope this note finds you in good health. I expect if you're reading this, my sister has kept her word to me and I am gone now. I regret any pain or sadness you may feel over this fact, though I suspect that you will deal with this in your usual practical manner, moving forward
with one delicate but determined foot in front of the other, as you have always done.

First of all, I want to apologize properly, as I should have done years ago, for accusing you of having an affair. I know Anne is my child. I knew it then, really. I was just looking for an excuse to leave Folly Cove, and it's always easier to leave someone behind in anger, is it not? I hope you'll forgive me. I would have come home to apologize in person, but I would rather have you remember me as I was, not as I am now. Just know that I am sorry from the bottom of my heart. From every cell of my being.

“Oh.” Sarah looked up at Flossie through blurred vision and took another sip of brandy. “He says he's sorry.”

“Yes,” Flossie said. “He wrote to apologize to me about certain things, too. He was trying to make amends. It was part of his AA membership, to do that. To ask forgiveness.”

Sarah pictured Neil as he used to often stand when he was talking to her, tucking his hands into his pants pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels. She remembered him asking her to dance that first night she'd sung at the inn and doing exactly this motion. Neil rocked on his heels whenever he was nervous.

She went back to the letter then.

I won't bore you with details, but you should know that I am sober now, and had the Fates not intervened and had their little joke, I would have come home to ask if we could try again as man and wife. I waited too long, I expect, for you to consider such a thing, but I like to think we could have made a go of things.

Once I dried out, my life did improve, though I'm not sure you would have approved of it. I found work at Sharky's, a restaurant on the beach in Venice, Florida, near the pier. I was humbled by the generosity of the owner, who, despite my lack of real work experience, entrusted me to serve his customers. Some of the young couples reminded me of us on our honeymoon, you with your yellow hair in the moonlight so long ago, teaching me the wonders of what it really means
to make love to a woman. God, remember the sand? Who ever thought it was a good idea to make love on a beach?

But I digress. You would have laughed, dear one, if you'd seen how I spent my last days before I grew too weak, sifting through the sand at Caspersen Beach for fossilized shark teeth. Remember our days doing that, how in the end you proved, once again, to be the more determined of the two of us? I have thought of us often, these last days, even as delusional as I am sometimes on the morphine, and I swear I could hear you singing to me from time to time.