It Comes In Waves (10 page)

I
n the minutes before Foster drowned, those minutes when Jill had been coming back from the Piggly Wiggly with Luke's football-shaped birthday cake, the plastic goalposts sinking into the green frosting AstroTurf, she'd felt something shift, something shudder under her skin, like fingers drifting across her scalp. It wasn't the sort of wall-shaking, fainting-spell-inducing alarm that people often reported in the seconds before they lose someone they know. She'd heard about those moments, known neighbors and friends, deeply spiritual people, who swore they had sensed the passing of their loved one in the seconds before it had happened. Some had fainted; some had grown so dizzy they'd had to sit down; some had bolted awake from a deep sleep. For Jill, she'd blinked and pulled her car to the side of the road.

This was how she knew Claire had come to Folly. Jill had felt the same flutter around her heart that she'd felt the day Foster died; not once, but consistently, that whole morning as she'd dried and folded piles of guest towels and ironed pillowcases and sheets in their bedroom, a makeshift office and linen closet in the busy season. She heard Shep's footsteps ascend the stairs and watched the doorway, waiting for him to fill it. When he finally did, he wore a resigned smile.

“She's here, isn't she?” Jill said. “Claire's here in Folly?”

Shep nodded. “She came with her daughter. She's about Luke's age.”

“You saw her?”

“She was at the shop when I dropped by.”

At the shop? Jill drew in a quick breath. “So Ivy's already seen her too?”

“Not yet,” Shep said. “Ivy took off this morning for Edisto before Claire got there.”

“Oh.” The thrum of panic slowed; relief ebbed in. Jill sat down on the edge of the bed. “How did she seem?”

“The same, I guess. More put together, maybe. Her hair's not quite as blond. A little shorter. It was hard to tell; she had it pulled back.”

But that wasn't what Jill had asked and they both knew it.

She searched his face, waiting.

Shep leaned into the doorjamb and sighed. “She didn't pull out a strawberry blond voodoo doll and start sticking pins in it, if that's what you're worried about.”

“Maybe she didn't want to upset her daughter.”

“You can decide for yourself. Luke invited her over for dinner tonight.”

“He
did
?” Jill stood, jostling the edge of the bed in her haste and sending a pile of towels on the edge tumbling to the floor. She dropped to pick them up. Shep arrived to help her.

“He just blurted it out, Jill. What could I do?”

“And Claire said yes?”

Shep nodded, but Jill pressed, not yet convinced. “Yes, like she really wanted to come, or yes, like she didn't know how to say no?”

“Jill.” Shep smiled knowingly. “When did you ever know Claire not to say what she really felt?”

Never. And that was exactly what Jill was afraid of.

She turned back to face the bed, where she'd organized the next week's rental linens, each stack topped with a numbered note card. She stared out at the piles, another burst of relief blooming in her stomach: Ivy gone meant that Foster's mother wouldn't join them for dinner. A small blessing, but Jill would take it. At least their unexpected reunion could be uncomplicated.

Well.

Not
as
complicated anyway.

“What about Luke?” Jill asked. “Did he like her?”

“He only met her for a few minutes, babe.”

Jill folded her arms, not sure why she'd even asked.

“He took down the sign again,” Shep said gravely. “He was worried the film crew would pass them by if they saw it.”

She sighed. “Of course he was.”

Shep turned to go, turned back. “Also, he wants to make dinner for her. Paella.”

Jill blinked. Paella was fancy, expensive. Special.

But what could she say?

“Great.” She nodded, turning back to her work. “That sounds great.”

•   •   •

W
hen Claire Patton stepped into the apartment they would share, Jill wanted everything to be perfect. It wasn't out of character for her—she'd always taken great pains to keep her space tidy and decorated with care, which surprised no one who knew the home she'd grown up in.

Jill also knew what girls like Claire thought of girls like her. All her life she'd watched the summer kids from Charleston, carefree and fun-loving, arriving in their expensive cars, trunks and bumpers covered with edgy stickers in an attempt to hide their conservative pedigrees.

But in many ways—maybe the most important ways—Claire Patton was different. For one thing, she surfed—
well!
—and she didn't flaunt her family money the way so many visitors did in Folly.

Jill believed they could be friends. Maybe even good friends.

Foster believed it too.

Shep wasn't yet certain.

“You've cleaned that stove three times since I've been sitting here,” Shep said the morning before Claire was to arrive, he and Foster keeping Jill company in the kitchen. “She's not the queen, you know.”

“She is too,” Foster defended. “She's going to be my queen.”

Shep balked. “I don't care what your last name is, bucko—her daddy won't let you be
her
king.”

In spite of their teasing, Jill would be grateful for her obsessive cleaning when Claire finally arrived. Claire's mother's inspection of the interior rattled Jill terribly and the strange absence of Claire's father was equally unsettling. Close with her own parents, Jill found the strained relationship hard to understand. When pressed afterward, Claire was tight-lipped.

A few weeks later, clarity came.

She and Claire had been walking back from the market, each carrying bags of groceries, when Claire came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the sidewalk, her eyes locking on something in the distance. Traffic had stopped for the light. Jill scanned the row of cars trying to decide which one had caused Claire to freeze in place.

It was the Cadillac, Jill decided. A man at the wheel, a woman with her head leaned against his arm. Then the driver's eyes locked with Claire's too. He was an older man, but his study wasn't one of interest.

Jill looked between the man and Claire several times before she asked, “Is that someone you know?”

“Yes,” Claire said, staring into the car. “My father.”

Jill looked back at the Cadillac and this time took in a longer study of the woman in the passenger seat. Jill had met Claire's mother. The woman who sat beside Claire's father, the woman who had been stroking his jaw only moments earlier, was most definitely
not
Claire's mother.

Jill turned to Claire. Her cheeks were nearly as scarlet as the woman's painted nails.

Surely he would pull over and park, Jill thought. Surely he wouldn't pretend he hadn't even seen his own daughter?

But when the light changed, the man's eyes swung forward and the car followed, lunging to join the traffic as it filed down the road.

For a moment, wanting to spare Claire's feelings, Jill wondered if she should make believe that he hadn't seen them, that his flagrant rejection was misunderstood, but how could she?

“Oh, Claire.” She turned slowly, her heart in her throat. “I'm so sorry.”

“Don't be,” Claire said, drawing in a sharp breath and marching them forward. Jill resumed her steps.

“You want to know the craziest part?” Claire asked, her gaze still fixed on the Cadillac as it sped away. “They were friends once, that woman and my mom. Good friends, supposedly.”

Jill shook her head. “I don't care how great a man is. Men should never come between friends. No man is worth that.”

They walked on in thoughtful silence.

It seemed like such an obvious thing to say, Jill almost felt badly for it.

•   •   •

J
ill forced an agreeable smile as she walked with Luke through the grocery store, thinking that every time he took an ingredient off the shelf and dropped it in their cart, she should tell him the truth about Claire and Foster and get it over with. All day, ever since Shep had arrived with the news that Claire would be coming for dinner, Jill had felt the seed of dread sprout and grow inside her, twisting around her ribs. She moved through the day with a tightness she couldn't loosen. She felt like a giant fist, a tightened lid.

Shep had assured her that there could be no hard feelings anymore, that with Foster gone and so much time having passed, Claire would arrive at the house fresh and forgiving. But as Jill watched her son fret over brands of rice and saffron threads, watched his beautiful face flush with innocent anticipation, her heart ached with worry.

Of course Shep would think it all water under the bridge—men weren't like women that way. They raged and they cursed. They purged their anger on front lawns or football fields, letting it spill out completely, draining their hearts of whatever hurt had entered there. But for women, betrayal took root. There was no quick way to cast it out.

Jill envied men their process.

She kept silent all the way through the checkout line and then to the van, their groceries unloaded and nestled safely in the back, but when Luke slid the key into the ignition, she laid her hand on his.

“Baby, I have to talk to you about something.”

He leaned back against the seat and blew out a frustrated breath. “If this is about me taking down the stupid For Sale sign, I told Shep I'd put it back up first thing tomorrow.”

“It's not that.” Jill cleared her throat and reached out to wipe dust off the top of the dash. “This is about Claire Patton. About her and me and your father. And Shep too, I guess. It's about all of us.”

“What about it?”

She looked around the busy parking lot, regret filling her. Why was she doing this here? She should have waited until they were home.

Too late now.

She folded her hands in her lap and started again. “You know we were all friends.”

“Yeah, I know. And I know Dad and Claire dated a little bit and then she broke up with him and you guys fell in love.”

“Well, that's not exactly what happened. . . .”

Luke frowned at her.

“Your dad left Claire,” Jill said. “He left her to be with me.”

Luke swerved his gaze to the window, considered an abandoned shopping cart for a moment, then turned back to her. “Dad did that?”

“We both did it. It wasn't your dad's fault. It wasn't anyone's fault.”

“Grams never told me that.”

“That's because I asked her not to.”

“Why?”

Jill shrugged. “It wasn't something you needed to know.”

“But I need to know now?” It wasn't a question as much as an accusation.

“I thought you should know since Claire's coming over. In case it all feels strange.”

“Then why
is
she coming over?”

Jill smiled weakly. “Because you asked her. And who can resist you?” She reached out to touch his face; Luke moved back, his gaze fierce.

“Is that why you guys never kept in touch?” he said. “Because she's still pissed off?”

Jill stared at her hands, wishing she'd never opened this sealed box. “It's hard to explain, Luke.”

“You should have told me. Now I feel stupid asking her to come over. She must have thought I was a jerk. Or just really thick.”

“No. She would never think that.”

He turned to her. “You're mad at me, aren't you?”

“About what?”

“Because I asked her to come over.”

“No,” Jill said. “Oh, baby,
no
. It's been a long time. We're all grown-ups. It's really not a big deal.”

“If it's not a big deal,” Luke said, “then why are you telling me?”

Jill met his deep blue eyes, at a loss for an answer. She feared she'd failed him somehow, disappointed him.

Luke looked away from her, back to the parking lot. His expression shifted. In his profile she saw a fresh realization. “So you got pregnant when Dad was still with her?”

“It's a lot, I know.”

“I just don't understand why you lied about it.”

Words failed her again. She was right to doubt her decision. It was too much for him. All the pieces, all the layers she herself struggled most days to peel through—she at forty-two. Her son, not even eighteen.

Luke turned on the van. “We should go. Before stuff spoils.”

Jill nodded, but she feared it already had.

A
soft sea breeze pushed gently through the screens, blending the smells of sautéed garlic and saffron into a heady stew. Jill walked past the kitchen and smiled to see Luke at the stove. He'd changed into a clean T-shirt and shorts, his curly hair brushed behind his ears. Pride swelled.

Too nervous to sit still, she moved through the house, tidying, checking; fluffing sofa pillows, straightening pictures.

She's not the queen, you know.

Shep found her in the living room and wrapped his arms around her waist to quiet her relentless fussing.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

She'd debated over her meager wardrobe options for far too long before deciding on a simple sheath dress, a bold print of bone and coral, and twisted up her hair in a sleek knot, beaded earrings brushing the sides of her bared neck, matching bracelets covering one wrist.

She laid her cheek against his chest, drawing in the faint scent of cut grass.

“The place looks great,” he said. “I doubt Claire'll recognize it.”

She will,
Jill thought.

Shep leaned back to study her face. “Are you nervous?”

“A little,” she admitted.

“It was another lifetime, Jilly. We're all different people. She agreed to come, didn't she?”

“What if it's only to finally let me have it?”

Shep stroked her cheek. “Is that what you want?”

Jill frowned at the question even as a part of her considered saying yes. The guilt had been unbearable for so long. “And she knows we bought the Glasshouse?”

“I had to give her an address for dinner, didn't I?”

She nodded, feeling dim.

“You should have seen how Luke stared at me when I told him the truth. Like he had no idea who I was all of a sudden. My heart stopped, Shep, I swear.”

“You're making too big a deal out of this. This isn't shattering his world. It's just him needing a little while to digest it, that's all.”

The sound of clanging dishes broke out from the kitchen; Jill glanced to the doorway.

Shep smiled. “He makes paella for us all the time.”

“Not with fresh royal reds.”

Shep kissed her softly on the mouth, tasting of beer. For the first time, Jill considered what Claire would think to know Shep had taken her back. Would Claire be angry? Jealous? Shep had told her, Jill, that Claire was divorced. Raising a teenager alone couldn't be easy; Jill was grateful she hadn't been forced to do it.

Nearly, yes. But then Shep had come back.

She took his hands in hers, stroking his knuckles, the weathered, chapped skin. “Thank you.”

He searched her face, confused. “For what?”

She touched his cheek.

“Everything,” she said. “Just everything.”

•   •   •

S
o, who are these people anyway?”

Lizzie waited until they were in the rental car and on their way to Jill's to finally ask the question Claire had been waiting days to hear. Now that it had come, Claire hesitated in her answer; the layers she had hoped to convey—rehearsed, even—seemed burdensome to someone Lizzie's age, even if her daughter was only a few years younger than Claire herself had been when she moved to Folly. Or maybe it was simply geography: they'd arrive in a matter of minutes; not nearly enough time to dig deep.

“They're just old friends,” Claire said finally, deciding it was the best answer for the moment.

“They must have been more than that. You changed your outfit seven times.”

Claire frowned. Had Lizzie actually
counted
?

“They were
good
friends, Zee. They meant a lot to me once.”

“If they meant so much to you, then how come I've never heard of them before now?”

“It's complicated.”

Lizzie eyed her and muttered, “That's exactly what Dad said when you guys were getting a divorce.”

“That's because divorce
is
complicated.”

A lie. What had happened between her and Foster and Jill and Shep was far more complicated than anything Claire had endured during the end of her marriage to Nick. What had lived and breathed between the four of them, bloomed and wilted, soared and sunk, had made her divorce look no more complicated than drawing the blinds. Which was what she had done.

Only with Nick, it had been a quick cutting off of the light.

•   •   •

C
laire wasn't going to be one of those women.

If she had gleaned anything from growing up with a cheating father and a mother who lived in willful denial, she'd learned the signs of infidelity in a marriage. If she ever caught a whiff of deceit in her own, she'd run.

In the months after she'd left Folly, after she'd tried, and failed, to resume her surfing career in Florida and moved out to Colorado, Claire learned to forgive herself for being blind to Foster and Jill's affair, for breaking the one rule she'd set for herself. It would not, she decided firmly, happen twice. So by the time she met Nick Matheson at a party for mutual friends, she'd believed herself reformed, wiser. He was charming and smart, and totally bald—by choice, he clarified, having decided thirty was too young for a comb-over. He got her a glass of wine and made her laugh almost immediately. When he invited her to hike Chief Mountain with him the following Saturday, she agreed, and when they reached the top and looked out at the view, her first thought was how much the mountains looked like waves, and she burst into tears. He asked her what was wrong. Not knowing where to start, Claire just kissed him instead and that was that.

She would never get back to answering his question. Two months later, she was living in his bungalow and going back to school for her degree. Her muscles no longer ached to paddle out, to duck-dive, to launch. She watched, with some strange relief, as her body softened slightly with every passing day. A lover would never notice the change, but she did. When she learned she was pregnant, she felt absolved, as if she was granting her body a purpose she'd taken away from it when she stopped surfing. Holding Lizzie for the first time made everything else—eating, breathing, sleeping—seem singularly purposed. Not since surfing, not since Foster, had she known such complete direction. This, Claire thought, as Nick drove the three of them home from the hospital, this was who she was meant to be.
Elizabeth's mother.
And with every sleepless night, every laundered onesie, every new tooth that pushed through velvet gums, Claire's devotion grew firmer, denser, like ice forming on a lake. The thicker it became, the less anything underneath would matter.

•   •   •

Y
ears later, when Nick surprised her with dinner in the middle of the week, making reservations at their favorite restaurant, it was a perfect mountain evening, crisp and cool, and Claire had carried a sweater just in case. They'd seen little of each other in the past few weeks. Her work teaching history at the high school was always demanding around exam time, and she looked forward to catching up, to filling him in on Lizzie's latest successes. It had been a flawless year for their daughter. She loved her teachers and they loved her. Claire had been relieved that middle school was kinder to her daughter than it had been to her. Tonight Lizzie was at a friend's house, baking brownies for a fund-raiser for the no-kill shelter. Claire had requested a call when Lizzie arrived, but her phone had been silent.

“What are we celebrating?” Claire asked when the waiter brought a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

Nick tasted the sample pour and nodded for the waiter to fill both glasses. “You'll like this,” he said. Claire picked up her wine and studied her husband as she sipped. He looked tired, she thought. The kind of tired that would normally find him on the couch, drifting off to a Rockies game. Instead he'd wanted to take her out to dinner.

She ordered first—peppercorn medallions with fingerling potatoes—and while Nick chose, she reached down to pull her phone from her purse. Just a peek.

“She's fine, Claire.”

She looked up to see her husband's chastising gaze. She smiled, caught. “I know.”

“Then stop checking the phone every five seconds.”

She would. She pushed her purse under the table with her foot.

“You didn't answer my question,” she said.

Nick drew a poppy seed roll from the breadbasket and eased it apart. “Which was?”

“What exactly are we celebrating?”

“Who says we have to be celebrating anything?” He buttered the roll. “Maybe I just thought it would be a nice place for us to talk.”

So they did. Sipping and talking, buttering and talking. About work, about the house, about plans for the holiday. When their salads arrived, Nick emptied the last of the wine into his own glass and motioned for the waiter. Claire didn't say anything as he ordered them another bottle, but her expression must have revealed her surprise. In thirteen years of marriage, she could count the times Nick had allowed himself more than one glass of wine with dinner.

“What?” he defended. “It's not like we have to drive home.” True, their house was just up the hill. “Besides.” He refilled her glass with a generous pour. “Since when do you say no to more wine?”

The edge of anger in his tone startled her almost as much as the additional bottle. He was stressed, Claire could see that now. But he always was at this time of year. Exams and papers, panicked students e-mailing him around the clock. Compassion sparked inside her, turning quickly to longing. She admired his jaw, the crisp green of his eyes. They could make love later. She'd been missing him.

The new bottle came with their entrées; a red this time. Nick filled their glasses.

“How is it?” he asked after she'd taken a few bites of her dish.

“It's not as tender as it usually is. But the potatoes are perfect. How's the fish?”

Claire looked at his plate, surprised to see he'd barely touched his salmon.

He set down his fork and folded his hands. “Okay, here's the thing . . .”

She frowned at him, confused. “The thing about what?” she asked.

He took a long sip of wine before answering, enough to drain his glass, then poured more into his and hers.

“You're probably going to hear things,” he said.

“Things? What things?” Now Claire set down her fork. “Nick, what's going on?”

“I may have done something . . . something pretty stupid.” He met her eyes over his laced hands. He no longer looked tired; he looked nauseated. “No, I did,” he said. “I definitely did something really,
really
stupid, Claire.”

The possibilities flooded her mind. There were lots of stupid things people could do. They could forget to pay a bill. They could get a speeding ticket. They could leave a pen in their shirt pocket and ruin a load of laundry.

But a married person . . .

There was only one really stupid thing a married person could do.

She swallowed. “Oh God, Nick.”

“It was just one time, Claire. I need you to understand that. It was one damn time, but one of her friends talked about it and it got back to Brad and now the department knows—”

“Are you saying you slept with a
student
?”

The table beside theirs quieted, the diners shifting with interest. Nick offered them a nervous smile, then cut his gaze back to Claire and whispered, “She's not a current student.”

“And that's supposed to make me feel better?” Claire cried.

More heads turned. Nick leaned in. “Keep your voice down.”

“Maybe you shouldn't have chosen a crowded restaurant to tell me you're screwing your student.”

“I just thought it would help if you were around other people.”

“Help
you
, you mean. Because you thought if you told me here that I wouldn't make a scene, right?”

“No,” Nick said calmly. “That's not at all what I—”

The wine in her glass landed with remarkable symmetry, drenching his shirt, his lap, and equal parts of his sleeves. Who would have known she'd have such good aim under duress?

Walking home, shaking with bewilderment and panic, Claire kept thinking,
Not again, not again
. When Nick called an hour later, Claire refused to pick up. Instead she woke Lizzie and wooed her downstairs with Rocky Road ice cream and a movie of her choice. When midnight arrived and Nick had yet to appear, Lizzie asked what was keeping her father. Claire said he was staying late at school and that he might be gone all night.

If Lizzie knew even then that her mother was lying, she'd never let on. And Claire was too grateful to worry.

•   •   •

C
laire didn't want to remember the way to the Glasshouse. She didn't want to flick the turn signal when they passed Ocean Street, but she did. When she'd steered them into the driveway, she didn't want to recognize it. The patchwork of paint colors had been covered with a flawless coat of burgundy, the windows and trim a beautiful sand. Gone was the peeling porch swing that groaned when anyone dropped into it and shrieked when anyone forced it to move. In its place was a pair of tidy wicker chairs and a potted gardenia.

Only as she and Lizzie began toward the front steps and the glow of the porch lights that flanked the door did it occur to Claire that she'd come empty-handed. Her mother's chastising voice rang out; the sleight of etiquette was unforgivable. Even to the home of the woman who was having an affair with her husband, Maura Patton had arrived with a still-warm pie and a gracious smile.

Claire tried to swallow the knot in her throat, but it wouldn't budge. The last time she'd stood on this porch, the door was unlocked and she walked right in.

She raised her knuckles and knocked.

“How long do we have to stay?” Lizzie asked.