Summer House (45 page)

Mandy tilted her head, appraising Charlotte. “I thought you’d be upset.”

“You
hoped
I’d be upset,” Charlotte shot back.

Mandy bridled. “Well,
that’s
a terrible thing to say!”

Charlotte started to argue, then shrugged. She rose. “I’ve got to get out to the garden.”

“Charlotte, wait.” Mandy scooped a pile of errant cereal from the table and dumped it into Christian’s bowl. “Eat that before you get more,” she said to her son. Looking back at Charlotte, she said, “Mee didn’t want to hurt you. I mean, she’s not—doing this—to hurt you.”

Charlotte sighed. “I know that, Mandy. The only motivation any woman needs to—do what Mee is doing—is just to look at Coop.”

“But you never did seem serious about him.”

“I’ve only dated him this summer. I haven’t had a chance to get serious about him.” She didn’t want to have gooey girl talk with her cousin right now, even though Mandy was practically panting for it. “I’ve got to get to work.”

“Charlotte—so you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.”

In the mudroom, she laced up her work boots, applied more sunblock, and stuck her sun hat on her head. She strode out of the house and down the drive to her garden shed. So this is why she’d been so unsettled, so edgy, so nervous. This thing, this
event
, was unrolling toward her, and now it had happened. She wondered whether this was enough. Had she paid off her debt? Had she earned her freedom? Or did she have to
tell
someone about what she had done, to make it more real, more complete? If so, who would she tell? Not Mandy. None of the Ms could ever keep a secret. Not her mother, who would too easily forgive Charlotte, and certainly not her father, who would think Charlotte was even more of an idiot than he already believed. She needed someone involved with the family, someone who would comprehend the magnitude of her transgression and could provide a sensible reaction, and then perhaps she would be able to set herself free.

Whit
, she thought all of a sudden.
Whit.
She dug her cell phone from her pocket.

Whit met her
at Altar Rock. No one ever came to the moors in August, it was just too hot. But Whit knew a secret place, a shady grove beside a hidden pond. They left their cars at Altar Rock and walked down a dirt road bordered with crooked scrub oak smothered beneath wild grapevines. She was surprised when he suddenly ducked beneath a branch and motioned for her to join him. She followed him through a green tunnel of leaves, along a narrow path worn down by deer, and found herself on the edge of a small blue body of water adorned with water lilies. An island covered with a multitude of wildflowers rose from the center of the pond. It was cool in the shade, and still, except for the occasional rustle of leaves.

“Whit, this is beautiful!”

“I know. And private. Whatever you’ve got to say won’t be overheard out here.” As he spoke, he flapped an old blanket out onto the ground.

Charlotte helped him smooth it out. She settled, cross-legged, on the blanket, and took her thermos out of her bag. “Iced tea?” She poured them each a plastic cup. Now that the moment had come, she regretted her impulse. Yet she also knew she couldn’t continue her life one more minute without removing the secret that was strangling her life.

“All right. Here goes.” She shifted, angling away from Whit. It would be easier to tell him if she didn’t see his reaction. “About four years ago I did something pretty bad. I haven’t told anyone else. I thought I could—oh, somehow work out my own schedule of atonement, and somehow I’d feel better, but it hasn’t turned out that way.” She cleared her throat. “All right,” she said again. Then, in a rush, she told him. “Whit, I had an affair with Phillip. When Mee was still married to him.”

Whit didn’t respond. She glanced at him, but he was staring out into the distance.

“It’s not why Mee got divorced,” she added quickly. “Mee never knew. It didn’t have anything to do with Mee. It hardly had anything to do with Phillip. I was just so unhappy and confused at the bank. I kept making mistakes. I was working in his department then—commercial loans—and I kept making stupid mistakes, and Phillip
was so nice about it. He didn’t make me feel like an idiot. He
helped
me.” More quietly, Charlotte added, “He didn’t tell my father how I kept messing up.”

Whit picked up a twig and snapped it into equal lengths, considering. After a moment he said, “You know, don’t you, that Phillip had affairs with a lot of women at the bank?”

Charlotte pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them, dropping her face down into her arms. Her voice was muffled as she said, “I heard that about him. And I’m not saying that I was such a fabulous experience for him that I caused him to leave Mee. I mean, it was four years ago, and it didn’t last very long, and I broke it off. But I did have sex with a man who was married to my cousin, and that is just
shabby.”

“Yes,” Whit agreed quietly, “it is.”

Charlotte sniffed. “I’ve been trying to—oh, this sounds corny, but it’s the only way I know how to say it—I’ve been trying to live
virtuously
ever since. I didn’t have sex for years, and I worked in my garden and spent my free time with Nona—not that I don’t adore Nona, I do, but I haven’t had much of a social life. I thought—I
knew
—the time would come when I would wake up one morning and realize I’d paid my debt. I would be free to move on. And this morning—well, this morning, Mandy told me that Mee spent the night with Coop. She’s still with him.”

“Really?” Next to her, Whit broke into a big smile. He turned to look at Charlotte. “How do you feel about that?”

“I’m glad.” Charlotte lifted her head and wiped the back of her hands across her wet cheeks. “I won’t deny I’ve always had a kind of crush on Coop. But over the summer I’ve gotten to know him, and we’re so different it would never have worked out between us. And I know how bad Mee has felt since her divorce, she’s been feeling unattractive and unloved and all of that, and now she can feel superior and smug and ravishingly irresistible because she’s ‘stolen’ Coop from me.” Charlotte looked up at Whit. “What I want to know, what I
need to
know, is whether or not I should tell Mee that I slept with her husband. I mean, I don’t want her to feel guilty about Coop.”

Whit studied her face. “You’ve got quite a complicated system of checks and balances going on inside your head.”

She nodded, agreeing.

“It seems to me,” Whit said slowly, “that Mee ‘stealing’ Coop from you shouldn’t make Mee feel as guilty as you feel about sleeping with her husband. Plus, Mee is just a bit—this is only an observation, not a criticism—Mee’s less complicated than you. I don’t think she’ll feel guilty about Coop. So I don’t see that it would do any good to tell her about you and Phillip.”

“Oh, thank heavens.” Charlotte sighed. “I think you’re right. Oh, you have no idea how good I feel now—how
free
!”

“I’m flattered that you’ve come to me with this, Charlotte.”

“You
are
sort of like family,” she told him.

With a smile in his voice, he said, “I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or bad.”

Carefully, Charlotte chose her words. “I
love
my family. I’ve realized that I can’t be like Oliver and just move away to another part of the world and live my life separately. For better or worse, my life is going to be influenced by my family. For a while I fought against that, and I know some people would say I’m too—what is the pop word these days?—
enmeshed.
But I love my family. I love my mother and father, and I adore Nona, and I want to help Teddy, and I’m getting terribly fond of Suzette, and I’m irrationally wild about their baby, and I’m not sure I love Uncle Kellogg and Aunt Grace, but I do love my cousins and I’m glad they’re so temperamental about Suzette’s baby and my using Nona’s land, because it just makes them human and weak and fallible, and that makes me feel better about myself.” Charlotte was crying again. “Oh, Whit. I’m an
idiot.”

“True, but a very attractive one,” Whit told her. Reaching out, he put his arm around her and pulled her next to him in a brotherly hug.

Charlotte leaned against him, grateful for his strength, his maleness, his calm, and cried for a while, in the shelter of his arms.

After a while
, Charlotte said reluctantly, “I have to get back to the garden.”

“All right,” Whit said, but he didn’t take his arms away.

“Whit?”

“Mm?”

“Could we have dinner tonight?”

“Damn. I can’t. I’ve got plans. And may I hasten to add,
family
plans.”

“Oh. Oh, well….” Charlotte pulled herself away from him and stood. She began to gather up the thermos and cups.

Whit rose, too. “How about tomorrow night?”

She looked at him, aware that her face was streaked with tears and her hair was probably all over the place. In spite of that, she sensed his desire for her. It was as certain as the sunlight.

“Dinner? Tomorrow night? Sounds wonderful.”

They walked beneath the low green ceiling of leaves and branches up out of the secluded glade and back along the dirt road to Altar Rock and their cars. All around them, beach plums and rose hips glistened among the heath and low bushes, and a hawk wheeled high overhead in the flawless blue sky. Charlotte felt as if she were suddenly possessed of a rare, clear, pure happiness—it was a delicate gift, almost liquid, contained within her heart like elixir in a sacred vessel. She wanted to be motionless; she wanted to simply exist, feeling this way. Cleansed. And new.

Twenty-eight

H
elen steered
the old Chrysler into a parking spot in the airport lot and took a moment to check her reflection in the mirror. When Worth phoned this morning to tell her he would be arriving at five-thirty, he sent her into a kind of young love fit of jitters. She tried on several outfits, finding them all wrong—the shirt with the low bodice was too suggestive, the khaki trousers were too prim, and her favorite sundress seemed too dressy. She settled on the sundress finally, carefully put on makeup, and then hurriedly washed it all off.

She was lucky she’d made it to the airport in time.

As she walked toward the terminal, her heart began to leap and bound. And when she saw Worth coming from the baggage section, his duffel bag in his hand, she almost giggled with nervousness. Had she forgotten how handsome he was, how striking?

He scanned the crowd, and when he saw Helen he smiled.

She waited as he made his way toward her.

“Hi,” he said simply, and bent down to kiss her lips.

It was only a quick, neat, familial kiss—Worth did not like public
displays of affection—but Helen nearly swooned like a schoolgirl.
My goodness
, she thought,
how the body goes along just doing what it wants to do!

He took her hand as they left the terminal and headed toward the Jeep.

“Good flight?” she asked.

“Easy,” he told her. “Ah, the island air is so much nicer than the city’s. It’s good to be here.”

“It’s good to have you here,” she said, then bit her lip at the formality of her words.

When they reached the Jeep, Worth hesitated. “I have an idea.”

“Yes?”

“Let’s stay at an inn. Let’s stay at an inn, and eat dinner out, and not go back to Nona’s until tomorrow.”

Helen said the first thing that came into her mind, “But in August! During high season! It will be so expensive.”

“It will be so
private,”
Worth countered. “I want to spend some time alone with you.”

Helen flushed. “We’ll have to phone them or they’ll worry. What will we tell them?”

“I’ll call them. I’ll tell them we’re spending the night in town and will be home tomorrow. That’s all they need to know.”

“I don’t have a toothbrush,” Helen said weakly.

“We’ll buy one.” He held the car door. “Come on. Let’s go.”

The drive from the airport to the center of town was only a matter of a few miles. Worth choose an inn halfway between the Jetties Beach and town. It was larger than the cozy B&Bs and it had parking. There was a vacancy, and they were given a room, and before Helen had really accustomed herself to the idea, they were walking down the long carpeted hallway. Air-conditioning blew, tempering the air, and the silence was sheltering. Worth keyed the door open, ushered Helen inside, and shut the door behind them. The room was comfortable, clean, and anonymous. They were closed away from the world.