The Guest Cottage (7 page)

Not to mention: the piano. It waited for her like a childhood fantasy, tempting her to return. She played it only when everyone else was out of the house, and that was rare. She almost wondered whether she
should
play the piano. She needed her friends, Bess and Angie, to come down. Bess was sweet and practical; Angie was no-nonsense and interfering. They’d known each other forever, the three of them. Bess and Angie had supported Sophie in high school when she gave up so much of a normal adolescent life in order to focus on her music. They would help Sophie decide what to do now.

But for now, this week, this period of sunshine, laughter, delicious food, and deep, refreshing sleep as cool salt air blew through the bedroom window, for now Sophie was astonished by the gifts of the world.

The seventh night, Trevor and Sophie sat on the patio after getting the kids to bed. The dark sky, the hush of the household, and a healthy sense of exhaustion after the bright, busy day made the moment feel intimate.

“First week’s up,” Trevor said. “What do you think?”

Sophie took her time to consider. She was happy. Her children were happy. Even Leo seemed less shriveled and nervy. The days had flown by as everyone slept late in the morning, went to the beach or into town, played badminton and croquet on the back lawn, and ate Sophie’s delicious dinners.

Cautiously, she said, “You know, I think it worked. I think we could last two months. You?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s been a good week. You and your family are very kind to Leo. Plus, you’re a helluva cook.”

Sophie smiled. “Thanks.” It had been a long time since anyone complimented her cooking. From the maple trees at the side of the property, doves called out the arrival of night. Golden light glowed from the windows of the apartment where Susie and Ivan’s grandfather lived. Sophie realized it was somehow comforting, having the kind old gentleman around. Somehow more—
complete.
“This is like a fantasy world.”

“True, and I could use some of that. So let’s agree to keep on like this for the next two months, and if any problems come up between us we’ll find a way to sort them out.”

“Agreed.” After a moment, Sophie offered, “We’d be glad to include Leo when we go to the library while you’re at the grocery store. Lacey is itching to play with Leo. She thinks he’s adorable.”

“Leo likes Lacey and Jonah, too, I can tell. Sure, ask him the next time you go and we’ll see what he says. Sooner or later, I’m sure he’ll accept.”

This evening before dinner Leo’s Great Wall of China, begun below the kitchen table, reached so high it almost touched the underside of the table. It was beginning to snake out into the room. Trevor hadn’t been sure how to handle this. To his surprise, Sophie had announced casually, “From now on, we’re going to eat in the dining room. Lacey, you will set the table, and Jonah, you will clear.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Trevor admitted. “He wasn’t always this way. He played with other kids. He went to their houses, and we had kids over to our place.” After a moment, he added, “He’s breaking my heart.”

“Give him time,” Sophie advised. “He’s processing. You’re good with him. You take care of him, he feels safe with you, but you don’t baby him, you don’t smother him.”

Trevor’s throat closed up with emotion. He nodded, unable to speak.

Next to him, Sophie made a noise between a cough and a laugh. “Listen to me, the great know-it-all. At least
your
son talks to you.”

“Jonah’s fine.” Trevor glanced over at Sophie. Their eyes caught, snagged, and they both quickly averted their gaze. “Guys don’t talk to their moms much, anyway.”

“He used to talk to me. This spring he’s become too quiet. He missed a lot of baseball and soccer practice. He used to build his
world
around those games. His grades are dropping, too.” Her voice thickened when she confessed, “I can tell Jonah likes you.”

It was the perfect moment, the perfect opening, for Trevor to ask, “And do you like me?” But he didn’t want to come on to her like some kind of horndog. Still, he was rattled by her words. So he responded in a Mafia don accent, “Eh, what’s not to like?”

“Jonah doesn’t have a real grandfather,” Sophie said thoughtfully. For a moment, Trevor was thrown by her words. What relevance did that have to this conversation? “My father died a few years ago and he never was involved with my kids. Zack’s father lives in Florida, and gets a new girlfriend every year. He seldom comes to visit. I guess I was kind of hoping Jonah might strike up a relationship with Connor. I worry about him, too. I don’t think it’s good for the old man to be alone so often.”

“You worry too much,” Trevor told her. “It’s summer. Let’s give ourselves some time.” He bit his tongue after saying ourselves. That implied the two of them were in this together.

Well, after all, they kind of were.

Next to him, Sophie nodded. “Good advice.” She wasn’t looking at Trevor now, but he could sense some sort of force field radiating from her toward him like the heat of the afternoon’s sun. His throat went dry. He could pick up a woman in a bar, no problem. But this woman was older and classy and talking to him as if he were her friend. Probably she was all mixed up, what with her husband messing around with another woman.

Before he could think what to say next, Sophie stood up. “I think I’ll go up and read. Good night.”

“Good night.” He sat alone for a long time, staring at the starry sky.

A
s July deepened, the heat intensified. Sophie met some of the surfer boys’ moms and exchanged information and phone numbers, all of them checking each other out in a friendly way. After that, some evenings Jonah would meet his surf buddies to go into town to see the latest action movie. Other nights, he’d stay home, watching the Red Sox or playing video games on his computer in his room. Trevor and Sophie lounged on the back patio with cold lemonade while Leo and Lacey played at the side of the yard.

Lacey had made overtures to Leo, inviting him to help her build her fairy house from rocks and twigs from the yard and shells and seaweed from the beach. He had watched her carefully, not speaking, not helping, until the evening they went out to discover that during the day part of the house had fallen in. This had seemed to frighten him, certainly to worry him.

Lacey had noticed how the little boy’s eyes had widened, how he had backed away, his chubby fists clenching.

“It’s okay, Leo,” she assured him. “I can fix it. I didn’t make the corner strong enough.”

“I’ll get my Legos,” Leo told Lacey. “I’ll build my wall over here.”

“Great,” Lacey agreed. “Then our fairies can visit each other!”

So the children built their houses beneath the bushes on the side of the lawn, about three feet apart, one house whimsical, lopsided, and lovely, the other made of plastic Legos, not so organic, but less fragile.

Often in the evenings, Connor Swenson would sit on his patio when Sophie and Trevor came out to theirs. Connor would wave a greeting to them, but he sat facing the lawn, not the house, and he appeared content with his own company. Two or three times, Sophie or Trevor had walked over to the apartment to say good evening and ask Connor if he wanted to join them for dessert. Connor always politely refused, saying, “No, thanks. I’m all settled here.” His response made them feel they were intruding on him, so the last time Sophie walked down, she’d answered, “If you ever feel like joining us, you know you’re more than welcome.”

“I thank you for that,” he’d said.

During the long, sunny days at Surfside Beach, Lacey made friends with a girl named Desi. The moment the group arrived at the beach, she raced off to find her friend. Jonah hung with a pack of surfers of all ages. He was agitating for her to buy him a bike so he wouldn’t have to leave the beach whenever his mom did.

Sophie kept an eye on her kids, but mostly she was free for long, sunny hours to read or drowse, or stare out at the blue horizon, thinking. It was a background perfect for remembering.

Zack would love it here. Not because of the natural beauty, not because he loved to swim, but because everyone on the island appeared to be blessed with wealth. As a young man recently out of college, Zack had been in a hurry to accumulate wealth and its signals. He came from western Massachusetts, where his father was a dentist and his mother was head of human resources for a large corporation. Jeanette, Zack’s mother, doted on her only son. In her eyes, he could do anything, he could be anyone—he could be president of the United States, he could be the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he could be a Major League Baseball pitcher, or perhaps a movie star with his beautiful, thick blond hair. Zack had two sisters who were older and clearly as infatuated with their spectacular younger brother as Jeanette was. His sisters never really welcomed Sophie into their family, but Jeanette had been warm and affectionate from the start, and over the years had become a good friend to Sophie and a doting grandmother to Jonah and Lacey.

Still, was Zack’s ambition all about pleasing his mother and his sisters, the first females in his life, the women who believed he had hung the moon and could bring it down for them if they asked? When Sophie first met him, she had been struck by his unusual closeness with his mother and sisters, but she assumed her reaction was caused by the difference between Zack’s family and hers. Like her mother, her father was a physician. He was fascinated by research on prostate cancer, and as more and more technological advances filled the field, he became less attentive to his wife and daughter and even more obsessed with work. Both parents had been gravely disappointed when Sophie showed no signs of liking or even comprehending biology and chemistry in high school. When Sophie married Zack, her parents had grown even more distant. They didn’t think much of him. As it turned out, Sophie thought wryly, they were right.

The first years of Sophie’s marriage had been both difficult and exhilarating. Jonah was born nine months after the wedding, while Sophie and Zack were renting a second-floor apartment in Lexington, Massachusetts. Not only did Zack work full time for an architect, he also insisted that they attend every party they were invited to and give parties on every possible occasion. “Making contacts,” he called this. “Building my list.” One of Sophie’s jobs was to catalog every person they met, their phone numbers and addresses, and any relevant information that would help Zack build a sense of familiarity with them.

He had worked hard, day and night. His life was all about work, really. Sophie, Jonah, and Lacey became “the family,” another asset in building trust with his clients. By the time Jonah was eight, they were able to buy the large house in the posh suburb. By the time Lacey was ten, they belonged to a country club, took winter trips to the Caribbean, and attended charity galas as “Angels.”

They were not as much a family as an enterprise. The children weren’t aware of that, of course. Many young parents were working as hard as Zack. If Sophie wasn’t happy, she was certainly “fulfilled,” busy with her beautiful children and an active social life. But should a woman remain married to a man who no longer loved her—to a man, she had to admit to herself, she’d never loved—for the sake of the children? She knew she was not the first woman to ask this question.

It would be wonderful to have a friend to talk to about all this. Angie and Bess were coming to visit sometime this summer, but she had to be careful discussing her husband and her marriage with them because their husbands were friends of Zack’s. Her best college friend, Marty, lived in California, was pregnant with her fourth child, and had, so she said, the perfect husband; she was far too busy with her own family right now to discuss issues like divorce with Sophie.

In the evenings, after the usual badminton and croquet games, after the children were in bed, Sophie and Trevor usually sat out on the patio with iced tea or beers, talking about their day and their plans for the next day. They purposefully kept their conversation light. So far this odd arrangement was working well for both of them. They didn’t want to endanger it. Trevor would probably be upset if Sophie tried to get into a deep emotional discussion about marriage and divorce. He’d been widowed, and even though he intimated that Tallulah had been troubled and far from perfect, still she had been his child’s mother.

Sophie sensed that he was attracted to her. But Trevor was young, at least five years younger than she was. Between an older man and a younger woman, this would seem like nothing, but it was different this way around. She didn’t kid herself. She knew what men were like. They’d go to bed with almost anyone female. Sometimes, when he was making all the children laugh, Lacey and Jonah and Leo, Sophie watched Trevor with admiration and a rising sense of—yes, she would admit it—lust. This was a sensation she had strictly and sternly banned for years. She hadn’t wanted to get into a series of reckless affairs with the daddies of her own children’s friends or with the magnates who bought the mansions Zack designed. She had learned to live within a routine, a velvet cage of her own creation, which allowed her to appreciate the sensual pleasures of flowers, fabrics, and especially food. She took pride in being a loving and present mother and a helpful and efficient wife. Her life was not difficult. Her life was wonderful.

Well, her life
had been
wonderful. Her husband might become her ex-husband. Had Zack set her free by having an affair with Lila? Did that mean Sophie was free to go to bed with another man—with Trevor? The very thought made her so nervous she had to get up and move around, drink some water, do some laundry, search out recipes on her iPad—anything but think about what it might be like to press her lips against the lips of the tall young man she saw every day.

It would only be a
fling.
She had never had a fling. Her friends would tell her she really ought to have one, especially now. Maybe it would be nice, for both her and Trevor. Maybe they would find a summer’s consolation in each other’s embrace. Maybe it was karma, meant to be—why else would they have ended up together in this house?

But what if she hurt herself even more in the process? She had seen the picture of Tallulah on the bedside table in Leo’s room. No way could Sophie compare with that goddess. Plus, she had only ever slept with Zack, and she never had been wild and creative that way. She could imagine going to bed with Trevor one time and having to live the rest of the summer in the same house with him meeting young women on the beach and either bringing them home or going out to their place at night while Sophie babysat. That was the more believable possibility.