Whole Latte Life (37 page)
“Buckle up,” Rachel says, waiting to put the car in gear.
Even though this feels like old times going antiquing or to the farmers’ market, stopping for cappuccino first, Sara Beth knows not to be fooled by the easy sensation. That’s how tenuous their friendship has become. It’s a butterfly flitting above those van Gogh flowers, just as easily flying away.
“I’m glad you called,” Sara Beth says as she shifts in the seat.
“Me too. The kids look good.”
“They’ve missed you.” She settles comfortably, turning toward Rachel. “They were so happy you came in and visited for a bit.”
“I’ve missed them, too. And hey, great piano.”
“I’m actually going to take lessons. I can’t wait.”
“You are? Good for you. I think you’ll love it, making music.”
They pass the turn-off for Whole Latte Life. “Rachel? The coffee shop’s back that way.”
“Oh, I have to make another stop first.” She pulls her oversized sunglasses from atop her head and slips them on. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“No. Go ahead.” Her hairdresser appointment isn’t for another two hours. But when Rachel gets on the highway, she starts to worry. “Where exactly do you have to stop? The mall?”
“No, it’s only a few exits down. Okay?”
Sara Beth doesn’t want anything to ruin the chance they have this morning. But when Rachel leans forward and turns on the radio, she’s surprised. “Hey. Didn’t you want to talk a little?” she asks over Tom Petty. “With that music playing, I can’t even hear my thoughts.”
“It’s just a little background music. Keeping things easy, you know?”
“I guess.” Trees and signs pass by at sixty-five miles an hour. Three exits later, Sara Beth lowers the music volume. “I don’t know if we’ll have time for our coffee now. How much farther do you have to go?”
“Oh,” Rachel says as she changes lanes, “I’d say a couple hours.”
“What? Where are we going?”
She glances in her side view mirror. “New York.”
“We’re going to Manhattan?”
“Even better. Long Island.”
“Come on, are you for real?”
Rachel guns the engine, pushing the speedometer past seventy. And she suddenly looks pretty darn pleased with herself. “Sara Beth? You’ve just been kidnapped.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Absolutely not.”
Sara Beth struggles with her seatbelt. “Shit, Rachel, turn this hybrid car around.”
“No way.” They’re cruising in the fast lane. “This car’s got a one-way ticket to the beach.” Rachel rolls her window all the way down, the wind whipping her hair. “Whooee! It’s not turning around and you’re not getting out!”
“Come on!” Sara Beth tries to hold her hair back in the wind. “I have a hairdresser appointment this morning.”
Rachel reaches into her handbag, pulls out her cell phone and tosses it in Sara’s lap. “Cancel.” Her eyes stay on the road.
“I will not. And Katherine’s having a cavity filled at three-fifteen.”
“Whatever.”
“
Whatever
? This is some kind of a joke, right? You can’t kidnap me.”
“Oh yes I can. You
ran away
on me. And that’s what got us into this whole mess in the first place. You!”
Sara Beth sits back and closes her eyes. This can’t be happening, not with the To-Do list she has to check off today, including a one o’clock appointment with the real estate agent.
“Come on, Rachel. If you won’t go back, let me out at the next exit. Up ahead there.” The car flies right by it. “You don’t understand!” She whips around in the seat and watches the exit fade. “We’re making an offer on a house today. For my shop. My
life,
okay? Tom finally agreed. God damn it, would you
stop this car!
”
“Tom’s got everything under control. He’s putting in the offer as planned.”
“He
knows
about this?”
“I called him last night. Who do you think put your overnight bag in my trunk when we were with the kids?”
“Overnight bag?
Overnight?
This was
planned
? What the hell are you doing?”
Rachel grips the wheel with two hands. The wind blows through the car while Petty sings about free falling. “Listen,” she says over it all. “Our friendship means
way
too much to lose over one really screwed up weekend. And you’ve told me more than once that what we need is time on some
boat
, with no distractions, to get to the bottom of this. Well, I don’t have a boat and neither do you, so I don’t know where you got that from. But there
is
a little cottage out on Long Island that will do just as good. You’re
not
going back home until we’re finished with this thing once and for all. Got it?”
“Long Island. I don’t suppose this has anything to do with that cop I guess you’ve hooked up with?”
“He’s a Mounted Police Officer with the NYPD and he has
far
more to do with this than you realize.” So now there’s that, too, this whole
guy
thing Sara Beth knows nothing about. “And he’s really the best thing to happen to me since, well, he’s the damn best. So leave him out of this before you say something you’ll really regret.”
Sara Beth shifts in her seat, crosses her arms and looks out the window. They are miles from Addison now. “This is perfect. Really great. What a brainstorm you had. Owen’s got BedTime StoryTime at the library tonight.”
“Do you hear yourself? Hair appointment, house appointment, dentist appointment, storytime. You need this kidnapping more than you think!”
“I can’t
believe
Tom agreed to this. We had a huge day planned. There’s no way he’d go along with such a ridiculous idea.”
“Call him.”
“I think I will. And I’ll have him call the police while I’m at it.” She dials her home phone. The announcement on the answering machine has been changed to Tom’s voice.
Sara, if it’s you, don’t worry. Everything’s under control. I’ll take care of the house and get Katherine to the dentist. Relax already, and I’ll see you whenever you get back
. She stares at the phone, then disconnects silently.
Rachel keeps her eyes on the road. Then, as if to say
forget-about-it, there-is-no-ransom
, she passes a car and picks up speed.
“You won’t turn around no matter what I say, will you?” When she laughs, Sara Beth punches in the salon number and cancels her appointment, then redials her home. After the beep, she leaves a message. “Tom!” She turns away from Rachel. “Jesus Tom,” her voice angry. “What’s gotten into you? I can’t believe this. Kidnapped? I’ve been
kidnapped
? I thought we, well, why didn’t you…Well, Owen’s got story time tonight. Be sure he wears his pajamas there. All the kids do. And let me know about, oh, never mind.” She disconnects and throws the phone back in Rachel’s purse.
Rachel settles back, turns the music up when a Stones song comes on, and drives the route to the Connecticut docking of the Cross Sound Ferry. Sara Beth alternately watches her and the road without talking because sometimes you can’t talk, everything that needs to be said has been, and the moment has to wind itself down.
“I made advance reservations online,” Rachel finally tells her when they pull into the line waiting to board the ferry. She inches the car forward, looking a little like a rebel.
“Why? So I wouldn’t have a chance to escape if you bought the ticket here?”
“That’s exactly right.” She maneuvers the car onto the upper level auto deck, kills the ignition and steps out. “Come on,” she says, lifting her sunglasses on top of her head and taking a deep breath of the salt air. “We have to get out of the car for the crossing.”
Sara Beth opens her door, seeing the water spread out before them, seagulls flying in high loops above the dock. The boat sways slightly, like it’s trying to prove that, yes, she is about to cross Long Island Sound. Because, oh boy, she still doesn’t believe it.
“Hey!” Rachel says as she heads for the passenger cabins on a lower deck. “I guess we found that boat after all!” she calls over her shoulder. “What a co-in-kee-dink!”
A
rchitecture as art. This is the thought that crosses her mind when Sara Beth sees the small gray cottage Little Gull. Architecture with its inherent design, structure and style, is one of many art forms from which she’d been trained to cull the universal forms of human expression. So much of her Art History education was a visual training. Learning to look.
It comes naturally now, silently walking the flagstone path to the bungalow. She’s sure Rachel thinks it’s her irritation at being kidnapped that keeps her quiet. It’s not. It is the innate way she employs her trained eye: Peeling paint from the flower boxes contrasting with the red geraniums and snow white petunias; lattice porch windows open to the sea; jars of seaglass sitting amidst an array of conch shells and painted seagulls mounted on driftwood; hurricane lanterns.
So what is the human expression in this beach architecture?
What function does the three-dimensional delineation serve? In a social context, this structure serves honesty. It is edifice stripped down to simplicity, leaving room for the heart to expand within its context. She feels it already.
Inside, chairs slipcovered in stripes and plaids along with whitewashed end tables all face a stone fireplace upon which sits a massive vase of heather and wild grasses. In the kitchen, dried flower bunches hang from ceiling beams. There’s a mingling of human touch with structure everywhere around her.
But nowhere more so than on the kitchen table: A vase of fresh flowers sits beside a bottle of wine and a can of coffee grounds, and, almost like an afterthought, someone leaned against the vase the mall photograph of Sara Beth and Rachel smiling together.
“He left ice cream in the freezer, too. I think there’s cookie dough.”
Sara Beth turns and studies her friend’s face. What she sees in its space, light and color are answers to questions she never voiced: How long did Rachel wait in the restaurant that day? A long, panicked time. And did she sleep those nights, worrying? She worried a hell of a lot more than slept. And did Rachel look for her in the city? She looked in every special place their friendship has ever taken them, hoping hoping hoping Sara would return to her in some way, even by revisiting a memory. All those answers are there, human expression in the architecture of her eyes.
After being out of college for two decades, twenty years of life between herself and classroom desks, what Sara Beth knows is this: When a relationship is mounted and framed against the simple setting of a beach cottage, she finds the same emotional dimension in the relationship’s symmetry, design, balance, content, layout as in the work of the great masters.
“We’ve been trying all summer to get back to that picture,” Rachel says.
Sara Beth takes the photograph and sets her visually trained eye on it. “Oh Rach. We never really left it in the first place.”