Whole Latte Life (44 page)

“You have a boat?” Rachel asks as Michael helps her in. The rowboat is old, painted white with a brick red bottom. Its benches are unpainted, the color of beached driftwood.

“No.” He lifts the oars, the salt water dripping, then dips them again. “I have connections.”

Long Island Sound feeds the lagoon, filling it with gently flowing tidal tributaries. They pass a great blue heron standing statuesque along the banks. Schools of minnows idle in place before darting off in another direction. Kingfishers swoop and another heron flaps its mighty wings over head. They paddle into the center of the lagoon, where the water spreads out lake-like, the green grasses a velvet carpet curling through the pool. Michael drops anchor and pulls chilled wine from a small cooler, along with two glasses.

“A toast,” he says, handing Rachel her glass. “To you, sweetheart.”

She touches her glass to his, then listens to his stories about Anchor Beach. Of how it hasn’t changed in the past twenty years. The charm of the old cottages grows simply more beguiling, the weathered boardwalk more inviting, the sea more mysterious. Anchor Beach saved him the summer after he’d been shot. He spent a lot of time here, in between bouts of serious drinking and finding bar fights. But in the end, it became simply him and the beach, considering a new job with Maggie.

“What if you ever want to stop patrolling?” she asks. “When you’re older, you know? You already have an Associate’s Degree, two years from a Bachelor’s.”

“Why would I want to stop? I love what I do.”

“I’m just saying. In ten years, what if it gets difficult riding a horse every day? Don’t you at least want options?”

“Options? I make my own. And besides, I could never sit in class with a bunch of twenty-year-olds. And there’s tuition, and time commitment.”

“Wouldn’t the department pay?”

“Rachel, we already discussed this, and my answer is still no. I have no intention of going back to school.”

“And I’m not trying to push you. But listen, you always worry about when Joe and Lena sell the deli. What if you wanted to take it over? Shouldn’t you have a business degree?”

Michael looks long at her. “What is this really about, Rachel? Do you need a pedigree?”

“How can you say that? I’m worried about you. I’ve heard all your talk about your grandfather, and Pop. Your life is rich with story and I don’t want you to lose it. Sometimes it seems like this place you’re at right now overshadows everything else.”

“This place. Meaning that I’m still dealing with a violent day in my life.”

“Yes. And maybe a change would be good.”

“Listen, you’re right. I love what my family stands for. They really were a part of building a great city. And I used to feel that I was honoring them somehow, keeping an eye on their efforts while I patrolled.” He lifts the oars and paddles silently through a bend surrounded by tall marsh grasses. “And then I screwed up.”

“What? Screwed up?”

“No one else pulled that trigger. Only me. And I’m not sure Pop would understand that decision. So I’ve tarnished his name and now I’m trying my best to fix that. To get back out there and restore myself on his streets. To get back into good graces.”

“Michael, first of all, he’s gone. And you never fell out of grace. How can you think that?”

“I’m talking about Summer’s grace, about what kind of
rich story
I’m living for my own daughter, for God’s sake. One of a murderer who turns his back on the experience, and on everything he stands for? That’s not me, and I think you know it. So stop asking.” He looks long at her and says nothing more. He’s going to stay exactly where he’s at.

Rachel looks away, toward the distant Sound and the evening horizon. Michael knows there’s something about that place where sea and sky meet, and all that passes in front of it on shore. Time and life and sadness and clarity. There’s more to the beach than Rachel’s ideal of star-wishing. There’s truth, and the beauty and pain that comes with it. That’s where she is, right now. In that pure, difficult place.

“What does Maggie do while you’re on vacation?” she finally asks, not looking at him.

He pauses, then dips the paddles slowly back in the water. “She is too. The hostlers groom her and put her out in the corral behind the stable in the afternoons. That’s her vacation: standing in the sun, kicking up her feet a little bit. Maybe rolling on the ground.”

She doesn’t respond and he starts to row back, dipping the oars again, before nightfall. The sky shades to a royal violet in the east. The birds quiet, the insects chirp louder.

But the thought doesn’t leave him. She wanted more. Education. Possibility. And he gave her his version of it. As he rows, he never stops watching Rachel. She sits with her knees drawn up and hugged close, gazing at the sky. She is barefoot, wearing khaki Bermudas and her black ribbed tank, a gold chain around her neck.

For all he is, this is who she is. She’ll never stop searching for the first star. He can tell when she spots it, a light glimmer against the darkening horizon. She simply closes her eyes for a moment, then looks out at Long Island Sound beyond the lagoon.

And he knows exactly what he has to do. An idea takes hold, but will take a few weeks to sort out. He can do no less for her.

The hours pass in the cottage with Rachel curled up with a book on the porch, but not turning the pages all that often. Her thoughts are so far away and he’s worried he hurt her somehow. Or lost her. So late that evening, just past eleven-thirty, he checks the daily tide chart clipped to the refrigerator then hands Rachel her sweatshirt.

“I want to show you something,” he says.

“Really, Michael. It’s late. I’d rather stay in.”

He holds the front porch door opened for a long moment, then walks out alone. The beach road is dark now, the cottages quiet and the night air damp from the sea. It’s amazing how quickly the damp rises with the setting sun.

The beach is deserted, with two lights on either end of the boardwalk casting a misty glow. Small waves lap lazy at the shore. There is no other sound at this late hour as he takes a seat facing the sea, the boat basin behind him.

The tide is out and just beginning to turn. It’s a moment about the earth, the sea and the moon. The surface water in the boat basin stills while the currents below gently curve onto themselves, reversing. It makes barely enough of an invisible pull to shift the docked boats in their slips. And at the turning of the tide, in the dark, he waits to hear the boat talk, without the distracting noises of day, and people, and wind.

You can’t help but be deeply aware of the sea, and the stars, as you only listen at midnight. You’re somehow more alive with that awareness of something ancient below the water, that ceaseless rhythm. He turns to hear more closely the boats creaking against the pilings and posts to which they are secured.

A school of minnows ruffles the dark water. They splash up through the surface, no doubt with a large bluefish coming up behind them, on the hunt.

Chapter Thirty

S
aturday morning arrives. The lingering tension makes it feel like they are awaiting test results. The two days need to be processed.

Michael leans down into her opened car window. “I still don’t know how you can trust an electric hybrid. With all that new technology.”

“Michael.”

“Okay, sorry. Drive safely, then,” he says. “And I’m saying that because I love you.”

Her hand reaches up and touches his still-unshaven face. “Me too.”

He takes her hand and kisses it, feeling as though she’s just saying that to get out quickly. “I’m sorry if I hurt you somehow. I didn’t mean to.”

“I know.” She pulls her hand back. “Have a good week with your daughter.”

“Call me when you get home.” He backs away from the car. “See you next Monday?”

“No, that won’t work for me. I’ve got teacher’s orientation that Thursday, so I’m not sure yet when I’ll be back.”

He steps further away as she backs out of the driveway, then motions for her to stop.

“Wait, I forgot something.” He reaches into his cargo pocket and pulls out a small wrapped box.

“What’s this?” she asks.

“Just a little something. A nice-day present. From me, to you. Wait till you get home to open it.”

Rachel rides the ferry home feeling a sea breeze skim off Long Island Sound. Michael had just tried giving her forty-eight hours of her heaven. No one had ever done anything as thoughtful, and somehow her questions soured it all. She opens his present while looking out at the water, touched more than she’d have thought possible by the diamond studded journey necklace. She lifts the gold chain from the velvet box and clasps it on her neck. He wants her along on his journey. She calls and leaves him a quick voicemail. “Hey Skipper,” she says softly. “I’m starting to feel more like Ginger Grant, now. Thanks.”

Back on the Connecticut highways, it all starts to feel dreamlike as the beach diminishes behind her, the boats creaking, the seagulls crying, the waves breaking. During the past two days, Michael tried to show her there is nothing to be afraid of. She rounded forty and he was waiting. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she knows he’s been waiting since May when she stopped him from leaving Joe’s deli at the last possible second. Since tying bowling shoes and rolling balls and knocking down pins.

But pulling into her driveway, there’s more doubt about leaving here. She feels it now that she’s alone: How compulsive is Michael’s vigilance, a caution that stems from not believing in your own safety? There will always be triggers, but can he really lessen his worry? How do you know what’s merely someone’s way of loving? Carl loved her and always wanted her safe, too. And for a moment, she wishes Carl were still here and that Michael’s demons hadn’t found her life too.

She carries in her bags, drops the mail on the kitchen table and opens the windows. A week stretches before her to tidy up the house, weed the garden and mow the lawn.

There is a message on her answering machine. A reporter with The Addison Weekly picked up a fire call on his scanner and asks if she can get to Old Willow Road for the photo op. He apologizes for the early hour, but a fire of this scope is big news in sleepy Addison. He gives the address quickly, a garage of some sort going up in flames.

Suddenly there is too much to do. The kettle on the stove whistles. She pours an instant coffee and pulls the telephone book from the hall closet to compare addresses. “March, March.” She passes the page twice before finding the name and seeing if the address matches.

The truth of it all makes her grab the phone to call the reporter back.

Sara Beth scrubs every speck of grease from the stove top, bent over the burner grates and control knobs, reaching into the oven walls. Her gloves are soiled with cleanser and grit, her hair tied back beneath a bandana, her breath short as she scours away every threat.

If she’d only been attentive, she thinks, scrubbing endlessly. If she’d only installed an alarm in the carriage house, or a sprinkler system. If she’d only, if she’d only, if only.

So now Sara Beth makes herself aware. She knows that in the United States, home fires take a life on average once every three hours. Kitchens are the most prevalent origin for home fires and cause the highest percentage of home fire injuries.