The Wishing Tide (16 page)

L
ane snuck a glance at Michael, once again up to his elbows in dishwater. He’d refused help when breakfast mercifully ended, insisting
the girls
enjoy their coffee and make plans for the day. Now, as she stood at the counter waiting for a fresh pot of coffee to brew, dread hit full force.
Six days.
She had no idea how she was going to fill one day, let alone six. She supposed a tour of the inn was as good a place as any to start. Then later, when it was warmer, they could take a walk down to the lighthouse, though her mother had never been much of a beach person.

Starry Point was hardly a cultural mecca, but there were a few trendy boutiques in the village, and neither of them had ever been able to pass up an antiques shop. They’d do a little shopping, then grab a late lunch—anywhere but the Blue Water. And then what? She’d have to think of something. While she didn’t relish the idea of spending the next six days gadding all over the Outer Banks, the alternative was hanging around the inn, circling each other like a pair of wet cats, while her mother scrutinized every move she and Michael made.

“Coffee,” Lane announced, setting freshly filled mugs on the table and dropping back into her chair.

Cynthia turned from the window and came to join her. She stirred
half a spoonful of sugar into her mug, then took a sip. “You picked a lovely spot, Laney. The beach is so quiet.”

“That’s because it’s November and everyone’s gone for the season. I thought maybe we’d walk down to the light later on if you’re up to it.”

Cynthia peered over the rim of her mug. “Was that a crack about my age, young lady?”

“No. I just wasn’t sure you’d want to. You said you were tired.”

“I came to spend time with you, Laney, to
be
with you. I can be tired when I get home.”

Lane felt a tug of something familiar and uneasy. Her father had complained of being tired just before being diagnosed with renal adenocarcinoma. Ten months later he was gone.

“Are you . . .” Lane’s voice trailed off, hindered by a sudden thickness in her throat. “Have you been—I mean, are you taking care of yourself?”

Cynthia’s gray-green eyes softened with understanding. She set down her cup carefully, stealing a hand toward Lane’s. Her fingers were warm and strong as they squeezed. “I’m fine, Laney, and taking excellent care of myself. I’m afraid I’ll be around to annoy you for years to come.”

“Don’t say that, Mother.”

“Oh, honey, we both know it’s true, so why pretend? You’re not exactly thrilled to see me, but I had to come. I had to know if you were happy. And I think you are.”

The remark left Lane faintly flabbergasted. Since when had her mother cared if she was happy? Accomplished—naturally. Prominently wed—certainly. But happy? That was news to Lane. And yet there was something earnest flickering in the eyes looking back at her, eyes so much like her own. Regret perhaps? An unspoken apology?

Lane was spared a reply when Dally’s signature greeting drifted in from the parlor.

“Hey-howdy! Hey-howdy!”

Cynthia’s brows shot up. “What on earth—?”

“Her name is Dally. She helps out a couple days a week,” Lane explained hastily, as she pushed back from the table. If Dally started blabbing about Michael before she got the chance to fill her in, the jig would be up for sure. “I forgot she was coming. I better go talk to her.”

Dally was still juggling her coffee, keys, and iPod when Lane grabbed her by the sleeve and yanked her into the library, mercifully empty since Michael hadn’t settled down to work yet. This was going to be embarrassing enough without him smirking over her shoulder.

“I need your help,” Lane hissed close to Dally’s ear. “My mother’s popped in for a visit.”

“Your mother? Cool!”

“Shhh! And no, it is not cool. It’s anything
but
cool. She thinks Michael and I are . . . involved.”

“Involved?” It took a moment for the word to sink in. “Oh, involved.” Her dark eyebrows waggled. “And why would she think that?”

Lane wet her lips, not quite believing what she was about to say. “Because I told her we were.”

Dally’s large brown eyes widened. “Are you?”

“No!” Lane hissed back. “I lied.”

“You . . .” For a moment Dally stared, openmouthed. “To your mother? Lane, have you lost your mind? Why would you do something like that?”

“She called one night while Michael and I were out to dinner—”

“You two went to dinner?”

“Yes. No. Not like that. Please, Dally, let me finish! She called and started in again about Bruce. She was driving me crazy, so I sort of . . . fibbed a little.”

“A little?”

“Okay, a lot. And now she’s here—in my kitchen.”

“Well, well, well. And what does Professor McDreamy have to say about all this?”

“He’s loving it, actually. He’s quite the actor as it turns out. I was all set to tell her the truth when he stepped in and started calling me sweetheart. I nearly fell over.”

Dally lifted the plastic lid off her coffee and took a thoughtful sip. “And now you want me to play along, too.”

“Yes. Look, I know this is all very . . . weird. But, Dally, I’m desperate. If she finds out I lied about this—just made up a boyfriend—I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Dally apparently couldn’t hold back her grin another moment. “When I said you should take him on trial, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind. But hey, if this is what it’s going to take to finally get you—”

“Nothing’s changed, Dally. It’s all pretend.” She tried not to think of the kiss they had shared last night—kisses—tried not to remember how it felt to be held again in a man’s arms. In Michael’s arms. “It’ll all be over in six days.”

“Six days, did you say? Do you really think you can pull this off for that long?”

“I don’t have a choice. The alternative is to let my mother go back to Chicago thinking I’m even more pathetic than she realized.”

“Okay, yeah, I think I see your point.”

“Just do me a favor and start upstairs today. It’ll give me a chance to get her out onto the beach. With any luck you won’t even bump into her. I just wanted you to know—in case.”

Dally heaved an affected sigh and shook her dark head dismally. “Far be it from me to point out that all this could have been avoided if you’d just taken my advice and slept with him right out of the gate.”

Lane eyed her darkly. “Are you trying to get me to fire you?”

Dally grinned, then stuck out her tongue. “Try it, and I’ll go straight to the tabloids with everything I know.”

Lane couldn’t help scanning the dunes one more time when she and Cynthia finally stepped out the back door and onto the deck. Eleven o’clock and still no sign of Mary. If she were coming she certainly would have appeared by now. Still, it was a relief to be out in the sunshine, where there was space to breathe and room to avoid her mother’s keen eyes, which seemed to be everywhere at once when Michael was anywhere in the vicinity.

It was a good day for walking, bright and cloudless, with just a bit of a bite in the air. Lane pushed through the gate and out onto the narrow boardwalk, waiting for her mother to follow.

“That’s where we’re going,” she said, pointing down the beach toward Starry Point Light, stark and almost dizzyingly white against the clear morning sky.

If Cynthia was daunted she gave no sign. She did, however, button her jacket to her throat as she fell in step beside her daughter. “I thought this was the south. It’s freezing!”

“Just keep walking, Mother. You’ll be unbuttoning that coat before we’re halfway there. I brought some bread. We can go out on the jetty and feed the birds.”

“Out on the jetty,” Cynthia echoed, trying to sound bright but already sounding breathless in her effort to keep up. “That’ll be . . . fun.”

Lane shortened her stride. It would be no such thing, and they both knew it. Her mother had never been much of an outdoor person, happy to leave things like camping and zoo trips to her father, preferring instead to seek adventure in shopping malls, art boutiques, and smart little cafés. At no time had these differences been more glaring than during family vacations, when she and her father would set out in shorts and sandals for some local point of interest, and her mother and sister, coiffed to perfection, would head for the nearest spa for mother-daughter pedicures.

Lane slowed her pace, then stopped altogether, bending to pluck a small shell from the sand. She turned it over in her palm, ran a thumb over the soft pink striations. “Do you remember the time we all piled in the car and drove to Sanibel Island for vacation?”

Cynthia smiled crookedly. “Your father got sun poisoning.”

“And you had to take me to the beach because he couldn’t go outdoors.”

“Had to take you?” Cynthia shielded her eyes as she regarded Lane. “Is that how you remember it?”

“You and Val were supposed to go souvenir shopping in town. Instead, you were stuck with me.”

“We had fun that day,” Cynthia said, her tone bordering on defensive. “Don’t you remember? We built a sand castle and collected shells.”

Lane ran her tongue over her lips, tasting salt. “You made me throw back the chipped ones.”

Cynthia’s brow scrunched. “What?”

“The shells. You made me throw back the ones that weren’t perfect. You said no one wanted something that wasn’t perfect, that only the perfect ones were worth keeping.”

Something like wariness had crept into Cynthia’s expression. “Laney—honey—where are you going with this?”

“Nowhere, really. It’s just something that’s always stuck with me. Being on the beach with you must’ve brought it back. Forget it.”

“I was talking about shells, sweetheart. About collecting shells.”

Lane shrugged and dropped the shell.
If you say so,
but it felt like something else.
Dusting the sand from her fingers, she turned back toward the lighthouse and set out again at a brisk pace, leaving her mother to catch up.

As predicted, Cynthia had undone the first two buttons of her coat before they reached the halfway mark. By the time they reached the lighthouse, the coat was unbuttoned completely, flapping in the breeze as they picked their way out onto the rough boulders of the jetty.

Lane couldn’t help feeling a pang of admiration. Her mother was almost sixty, and utterly out of her element, but she was doing her best to be a trouper as she moved cautiously toward the end of the jetty, pretending not to mind when the gulls began to screech and swarm. At least the tide was out, no slippery rocks, no spray to dodge.

“You really do this every morning?” she asked when they finally reached the end. “On purpose?”

Lane laughed as she fished a pair of bread-filled baggies from her jacket and handed one to her mother. “I do. It sets the pace for the day. And I think the gulls would be furious if I were to stop.”

To demonstrate, Lane tossed up a handful of stale scraps. The gulls swooped greedily, squabbling among themselves for the bread bits as they scattered in the wind. After a few moments Cynthia opened her bag and followed Lane’s lead. When the bread was gone Lane took her mother’s bag and crumpled it, along with her own, into the pocket of her jacket.

“You belong here, Laney,” Cynthia said quietly.

Lane turned to stare. “Where did that come from?”

A smile flitted across Cynthia’s face. “When you told me you’d bought this place, way out in the wet wilds, I seriously thought you’d lost your mind, that you were just trying to get back at Bruce for . . . well, for everything. But now, seeing you, I realize you were right. You seem . . . happy. And now with Michael—”

Lane felt her shoulders sag. For a moment she’d actually thought her mother was going to give her credit for something. Instead, it had to do with a man.

“I was happy before Michael, Mother. I had a perfectly good life, all on my own.”

“Yes, of course you did, but now—”

Lane closed her eyes, tipped her face to the sun, and counted to ten.
Yes, of course. Now there’s Michael—or at least you think there is—so everything’s fine. As long as I’m perfect and he doesn’t throw me back.

L
ane checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Out of her T-shirt and sweats, with her eyes made up and her hair blown out, she looked startlingly like her mother, fine-boned and delicately pale. Val was like their father, with strong, dark features that bordered on the exotic. Ironic that they should each resemble the parent with whom they had the least in common, an inexplicable prank of Mother Nature.

God help her. One day into her mother’s visit and already she was exhausted. Some part of her, the grown-up part, knew she was being unfair, dissecting every word and look, ready to pounce at the slightest hint of disapproval. But old habits died hard—for both of them, it seemed. Her mother was trying at least, attempting to bridge the distance that had always existed between them. But some chasms were simply too wide to cross.

Sighing, Lane applied a second coat of mascara and girded her loins for lunch with her mother. On the way downstairs she took a moment to look for Dally, following the butchered version of “I Feel Like a Woman” bleeding out into the hall from Michael’s room. She was just putting the finishing touches on the bed when Lane tapped her on the shoulder.

Dally yanked out her earbuds, eyes wide as she took in Lane’s transformation. “You look amazing! Date with Professor McDreamy?”

Lane made a face. “Lunch with my mother.”

“You still look great. You should dress up more often.”

“For who?” Lane held up a hand before Dally could open her mouth. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. Listen, I need you to do me a favor, and I need you to not ask me why. I don’t have time to explain right now.”

Dally’s eyes lit up. “Sounds like more tabloid fodder.”

Lane shot a quick look out into the hall to make sure her mother’s door was still closed. “You know the old woman who rides around town on that old bike?”

“You mean Dirty Mary?”

“Her name is Mary,” Lane replied evenly. “And yes, that’s who I mean.”

“What about her?”

“Well, she’s sort of a friend. Only I haven’t seen her for a few days. I’m worried something might have happened to her.”

“A friend of . . . yours?”

Lane could already see the wheels turning behind Dally’s narrowed gaze. “Look, I know it sounds weird, but I really don’t have time to explain. I just need you to keep an eye out for her. Let me know if you see her around town.”

Dally shrugged, part agreement, part confusion. “No problem. But don’t think I’m letting you off the hook about this. I want to know how you got to be friends with a bag lady.”

“Please don’t call her that.”

Dally shrugged again. “Sure. Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Forget it,” Lane said, giving her arm a squeeze. “And thanks for not asking questions.”

Dally flashed one of her wicked grins as Lane headed for the door. “Oh, you can bet I’ll be asking plenty of questions. Just not now.”

Downstairs, she found Michael at work in the den, tapping
manically on his laptop keyboard. Stepping behind him, she waited for him to finish his current sentence, reading silently over his shoulder. Finally, he turned. His eyes moved over her very slowly.

“Wow, you look . . . nice.”

Lane tried to ignore the pleasant tingle in her cheeks. “I’m taking my mother into the village. I thought we’d hit the Historical Society before lunch, then maybe do some shopping. I just wanted to let you know we’d be out. There’s leftover chicken in the fridge if you get hungry.”

She was about to step away when Michael took her hand and pulled her back. “What, no kiss?”

Lane took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m sorry about all this. Really. You must think I’m some kind of nut.”

Michael’s grin warmed into something else, something that made her heart beat faster. “I think nothing of the sort. And even if you were some kind of a nut, what do I care, as long as I get to keep kissing you? It’s not exactly a hardship, you know.”

Lane stared down at their fingers, loosely twined. “For me, either,” she said quietly. When the silence began to stretch, she cleared her throat. “Well, I guess I’d better be off. Oh, I meant to ask, what are your parents’ names?”

Michael frowned. “Matthew and Katherine. Why?”

“Because it’s likely to come up at lunch.”

“Ah, right. Then you’d also better know that my brother is Matt Jr., and my sister is Liz, short for Elizabeth. Matt’s an attorney. Liz is an attorney’s wife. She and her husband have two children—Brandon and Rhiann—and a pair of springer spaniels. I’m sorry. I don’t know the dogs’ names.”

Lane’s shoulders sagged miserably. “God, this really is insane, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Michael said huskily. “I’m beginning to enjoy playing house.”

He kissed her then, without a word of warning, a casual brushing of lips as he pulled her down into his lap. The kiss that followed was more thorough, deep and deliciously slow, turning her bones and her senses to liquid, until she could no longer tell where the lie began and the truth ended. Somewhere in her head a voice warned her that this was a mistake, a charade that could only lead to heartache. And yet—

The delicate clearing of a throat somewhere near the door shattered the moment. Lane slid off Michael’s lap, hands darting to her mouth like a teenager caught making out in her mother’s basement.

“Oh, excuse me, you two,” Cynthia said, smiling conspiratorially. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just wanted to let Laney know I was ready.”

Lane cleared her throat, ran a hand over her hair. “I’m ready, too, Mother. I was just . . .” Her voice trailed awkwardly.

“Telling your man good-bye. Yes, I recognize it.” She shot them both a wink. “I’ll be in the parlor. Take your time.”

Embarrassed, Lane turned to follow her mother. Before she could take a step, Michael recaptured her hand. “Have fun with your mother this afternoon.”

Lane’s eyes widened skeptically. “Fun?”

“She loves you, Lane.”

Had she imagined the faintly reproving tone? “How do
you
know?”

“Because she’s here. That says something. Quite a lot, in fact.”

“You don’t understand. You couldn’t. It’s a terrible thing to always be at war with the woman who brought you into the world, to at times wonder if you even . . . like her.”

Michael held her eyes for a long moment. “I understand more than you think,” he said finally. “Go on now. And remember what I said.”

“Yes, all right. I’ll have fun.”

She hesitated briefly before turning away, puzzled by the sudden
change in his voice, and by the grave, faraway look that now shadowed his eyes. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what had put it there, but she decided to let it go. Something told her she wasn’t likely to get a straight answer.

The scarred honey-pine floorboards creaked noisily as Lane and Cynthia entered the dimly lit anteroom of the Starry Point Historical Society. The attendant, a middle-aged woman in an ill-fitting navy suit, offered them a smile but made no move to get up from her desk at the back of the large, open room. Lane smiled back, then folded a five-dollar bill into the donation box just inside the door.

The atmosphere was somber and sepia-toned, the air heavy with the scent of beeswax. Lane moved to the first exhibit, a tribute to Starry Point Light, finished in 1872, featuring photographs and a sort of time-lapse tableau of the light in various stages of construction. She had seen it before but lingered while her mother read the captions beneath each photo.

“This is where we stood this morning,” Cynthia said, pointing to the jetty in one of the earliest photographs. “On these same rocks.”

“The very same,” Lane said with a nod. “As you can see, we’re very proud of our lighthouse. And of our dead whale.”

Lane pointed out a rather gruesome black-and-white of a dead whale that had washed up back in 1928 and had made the front page of the
Islander Dispatch
. When she saw her mother’s delicate shudder she moved on.

The next exhibit was a wall of images depicting damage done by various hurricanes over the years. The pictures were sobering, dating back to the 1933 Outer Banks hurricane that killed twenty-one people. The collection progressed through more recent storms like Irene and Sandy, all of which had left their mark on the vulnerable Carolina coastline: homes listing into the sea or washed completely off their
pilings, fishing boats stranded in backyards, streets waist-deep in water, Highway 12, lifeline to the mainland, warped like a ribbon of shiny black licorice.

Cynthia studied the collection in horrified fascination, a hand pressed to her throat. “Laney, this is terrible. Doesn’t it worry you to live in a place where these kinds of things happen all the time?”

“Storms like these don’t happen all the time, Mother. These are the worst of the worst, and they span nearly a century. Most of the storms we get are nothing like this. In fact, we just had one, and the damage was pretty minimal, more of a nuisance for most of us than anything.”

Cynthia looked dubious as she wandered away from the photographic wreckage, clearly more at ease with images of Starry Point’s historical landmarks. “Oh, look,” she said, pointing. “Here’s your inn, Laney, back when it was still a convent, I think. And isn’t this the house just across the street?”

Lane came to stand beside her. “Yes, it is. It’s called the Rourke House, after one of the mayors who used to live there.”

“It says here that it burned, but you can’t tell from the street. Or from this picture, either.”

“Most of the damage is to the upper floor, at the back. A little boy died in the fire.”

Cynthia’s eyes closed briefly. “How awful. No one lives there now, though, do they? It looked abandoned to me.”

“It’s been empty since the fire.”

“Such a shame. It’s a beautiful house—or was. I wonder why they don’t restore it.”

Lane and Cynthia both started when the attendant spoke unexpectedly over their shoulders. “We’ve been trying to do just that for years. You’re absolutely right. It should be restored, but there’s always some kind of legal roadblock.”

Lane was surprised. “I always assumed it had to do with the expense.”

The woman in the navy suit shrugged. “Oh, there’s that, too. But we believe we’d recoup that quick enough with a small tour fee. The locals believe it’s haunted, you see, so over the years it’s gotten quite the reputation. Attracts tourists like crazy.”

It was Cynthia’s turn to look surprised. “I didn’t think anyone believed in ghosts anymore.”

“Oh, they do. And this house has two—an old man who hanged himself after the crash, and that poor little boy who died in the fire. I was only a girl when it happened, but it was a sad day in Starry Point, I can tell you. The story’s changed a lot over the years, but people claim to see things all the time.”

Lane stared at the early image of the house, tidy and well kept in its day, and tried to imagine the parlor beyond its empty, eyelike windows, bright and warm, ringing with boyish laughter, but she couldn’t. All she could see was the house as it stood now, hollowed out and gloomy, emptied of any joy that had ever existed within its old plaster walls.

Just thinking about it made her sad, and more than a little uneasy. Suddenly, she couldn’t shake Michael’s theory about houses having souls and collecting memories. It made sense when you thought about it, emotions leaving imprints on tangible things, scarring them.

All the good and the bad that’s ever happened.

Suppressing a shiver, she tapped her mother’s shoulder. “We’d better keep moving. It’s about time for lunch.”