Woman in Blue

by Eileen Goudge

  Randall felt compassion well up in him. She wasn’t a bad person, and she was hurting. “No one’s blaming you. It was a long time ago.” He paused before venturing, “So what are you going to do?”

  “You mean am I going to divorce him?” She slowly shook her head, her eyes brimming with fresh tears. “I’m afraid he has me over a barrel. The prenup I signed would leave me practically penniless.”

  “Not necessarily.” The wheels were turning in Randall’s head.

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “There may be a way out,” he ventured cautiously.

  Before he could elaborate, Victoria shook her head in confusion, saying, “I don’t get it. Why do you want to help me? Anyone would think you’d be glad to be rid of me. I’m the evil stepmother, aren’t I? The home-wrecker responsible for your parents’ divorce?”

  “Let’s just say it could be mutually beneficial.”

  She nodded slowly, folding her arms over her chest. “I’m listening.”

  The following day he had the distinct impression that Victoria was avoiding him. Another opportunity to be alone with her didn’t present itself until Sunday. The day dawned bright and clear, as predicted. They were all supposed to go horseback riding, but at the last minute Lloyd got an important phone call he had to take, so he waved them on without him. Randall was relieved as he followed Victoria out of the house. Now was his chance to find out if she had given any thought to what they’d talked about.

  The stable where Victoria boarded her Thoroughbred was a short distance away by car. They arrived just before noon. While she saddled up, Randall was given one of the trail horses to ride, a docile chestnut mare. He hadn’t ridden in years, but it came back to him as soon as he eased into the saddle. Before long he and Victoria were cantering along the trail that wound its way through Huddart Park, sunlight filtering in a golden haze through the tall redwoods that crowded around them. They rode in companionable silence for a mile or more, Victoria leading the way. Randall waited for her to broach the subject of his father, but she didn’t.

  Did she regret having confided in him? He realized it had been naive of him to take her at face value when she’d talked of divorce. She’d had too much to drink and had merely been venting. How could he have thought a pampered woman like her, who’d been living in the lap of luxury for the past twenty years, would chuck it all? For what? Revenge? A chance at a better life?

  Still, he had to know for sure. He waited until they were back at the stables and she was brushing down her horse. “Have you given any more thought to what we talked about the other night?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I have.” She straightened and turned to face him.

  “And?” Randall felt his nerves ratchet up.

  “I still don’t know if it’ll work.” She sighed, resting a hand against her horse’s flank. “I’m not even sure if what you want exists.”

  “I’m not sure, either. We won’t know unless you look for it.”

  “How would I even know where to look?”

  “You were his secretary at one time. You must know where he keeps everything.”

  “That was years ago! My job now is to play the company wife. That, and stay in shape so I’ll look good on his arm when he’s not off screwing one of his mistresses.” The bitterness from the other night resurfaced. “Oh, yes, I’m sure there have been others. I just happened to find out about this one.”

  Some instinct prompted Randall to ask, “How did you find out?”

  The question stopped her short, and a sly smile peeked from behind her scowling mask, that of someone who’d just spied a possible way out. “The usual way—by reading his e-mail.”

  Every Sunday afternoon Lindsay went walking on the beach. When the weather was sunny and warm, she was often joined by Miss Honi or Kerrie Ann. When it was gray, like today, she went with only her dog for company. The ocean in its many moods was the remedy for all that ailed. In the early years, when she was still getting over the trauma of having been torn from her sister, she had spent many restorative hours strolling along the shore, collecting shells and bits of sea glass with Arlene and stooping to examine tide pools with Ted.

  “Every tide pool is its own little universe,” her dad had explained, poking gently with his finger at a purple sea anemone, Lindsay watching in wonder as its delicate fronds contracted. “Each of these creatures has a purpose, and they all need each other in order to survive. Take this little guy, for instance.” He picked up a small chambered shell scuttling across the rocks, seemingly of its own volition, and flipped it over so she could see the tiny claws wriggling underneath. “This hermit crab wouldn’t have a home if not for the mollusk who kindly left him this one. When he’s outgrown it, he’ll move to the next. They’re like people in that way—they learn to adapt.”

  She could see Ted in her mind’s eye, his long, scholarly face with its neatly trimmed beard and warm brown eyes caught in nets of wrinkles. What would her life have been without him and Arlene? She recalled vividly the day they’d sat her down, after she’d been with them for about a year, and asked solemnly if she’d like to become their real daughter—in the eyes of the law, not just their own. She’d felt like the luckiest girl on earth.

  Now she was like the hermit crab, faced with the choice of either clinging to the known and thus perishing … or moving on. In the days since the trial she’d thought of little else but was still no closer to a decision. If she continued her fight, she’d end up broke and would probably lose the house as well. Even if she could find another place nearby, it would be a loss. She would still have her Sunday ritual, but it wouldn’t be the same. Gone, too, would be the thousand little things that connected her to Ted and Arlene, like her morning jogs along the cliffs, with the ocean sprawled at her feet like the kingdom of some mercurial potentate, one that with a wave of the scepter could give way to stormy seas just as easily as to the nearly impenetrable fog presently swaddling the shoreline.

  The fog was a match for her mood right now. As she strolled barefoot along the cold, damp sand, she felt like the last person left on earth. Whenever she thought about the days lay ahead, every muscle in her body contracted like the sea anemones her father used to poke. Her sister and Miss Honi had promised to help her look for another place, one big enough for all three of them. “Long as we still got each other, we’ll manage just fine. Ain’t nothing a pair of loving arms can’t cure,” Miss Honi had consoled her. While Kerrie Ann’s motto was “When life kicks you in the ass, kick it back.” But Lindsay, though she appreciated their efforts, knew this decision, and its consequences, was hers alone. Could she face what the future held? Was she brave enough?

  The answer, she realized, lay not in the future but in the past. Her mind traveled back to the days when she’d been left to fend for herself and her little sister. She thought, too, of the business she had built from scratch and which she had somehow managed to keep afloat in these difficult times. And the David-and-Goliath battle she’d fought with all her might. The same person who had done all those things could do this, she told herself.

  She was used to loss, after all. She’d lost all those years with her sister, and with the deaths of Ted and Arlene, the only parents she’d known. Randall, too—she felt a fresh stab at the thought and quickly pushed it away before she grew even more depressed. And more recently, and somehow less painfully, her boyfriend of three years. The day of the trial, when Grant had shown up belatedly with, as usual, a perfectly valid excuse for not making it in time, she’d realized, with a certainty that took her by surprise, that it was over and had been for some time.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” she told him. They were sitting on the wrought-iron bench in the pocket park adjacent to the courthouse. Grant had pulled into the parking lot just as she was getting ready to pull out and had come rushing over, tie flapping, apologizing profusely—something about an emergency injunction he’d had to deal with.

  Misunderstanding, he nodded
, speaking in calm, lawyerly tones: “Well, no one can say you didn’t give it your best shot. It’s perfectly understandable if you don’t want to file an appeal.”

  She was quick to set him straight. “I didn’t mean that. I meant us.”

  “What?” He blinked at her uncomprehendingly.

  She placed a hand over his. “I’m sorry, Grant. It’s not your fault. It’s just.… We can’t go on like this, with you always too busy to make time for me and me waiting for the day when it’ll all magically work itself out. That’s not going to happen—we might as well face facts.”

  “That’s crazy. We can make it work. After all the time we’ve invested …”

  “This isn’t a business partnership. And even if it were, at some point, if a business is failing, you cut your losses and walk away.”

  “But I love you.” He spoke urgently, and she saw pain in his eyes. It left her curiously unmoved.

  “Yes—in your own way,” she said. “But I’m afraid it’s not enough.”

  “I thought we were going to be married someday.”

  “I thought so, too. But that ‘someday’ never seemed to come, did it?”

  He continued to stare at her uncomprehendingly. That was when it dawned on her that, for Grant, theirs had been a working relationship. They just had different ideas of what they wanted out of life. She rose to her feet, not without some regret. She would miss his company and the comfortable rhythms they’d established. He was a good person. He just wasn’t good for her.

  “Good-bye, Grant.” With that, she walked away.

  Change, however painful in the moment, didn’t necessarily have to be bad, she told herself now. Kerrie Ann had once accused her, in the heat of anger, of being a stick-in-the-mud. And Lindsay supposed it was true. But it wasn’t fear of the unknown that had made her this way; it was intimate knowledge of what the unknown could bring. But there was a price to being inflexible. In an earthquake, it was the seemingly indestructible buildings that were first to tumble down.

  Now that it was over with Grant, maybe it was time for her to move on in other ways as well …

  Walking with her head down, lost in thought, Lindsay didn’t notice that she wasn’t alone on the beach. It wasn’t until Chester began to bark excitedly that she looked up and saw the fuzzy outline of a figure making its way toward her through the dense fog. Just another lonely soul finding solace by the sea, she thought. Then, as it neared, the figure materialized into a man who looked startlingly familiar. She gave a gasp of recognition.

  Randall.

  What was he doing here?

  Her heart took flight, and she wanted nothing more than to go racing toward him, as her shameless old Labrador was now doing. She came to a halt instead, watching Randall stoop to retrieve a piece of driftwood, which he pitched into a long throw, sending Chester chasing after it down the beach, before he continued on, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his chinos. He was barefoot, and his hair, the same silvery-buff color as the sand, stood up in windblown tufts.

  “Let me guess. Miss Honi told you where to find me?” she said as he approached.

  He shrugged, breaking into a grin. “She thought you could use the company.”

  “I see.” Lindsay arched a brow, grateful for the effect of the chill air on her burning cheeks.

  “I thought so, too. That’s why I came.”

  “So you’re not here to convince me to give you another chance?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  She sighed. “Look, we’ve been over this already. What’s the point of hashing it all out again?”

  “Things have changed.”

  “What? I’m still at your father’s mercy, and you’re still his son. Nothing’s ever going to change that.” She spied a piece of sea glass gleaming amid a tangled skein of kelp and bent to pick it up, rubbing its grainy surface between her thumb and forefinger as she fought to rein in her emotions. Damn him. Why was he making this so much harder?

  Even the sight of him was making it difficult as he stood smiling at her, his thick fair hair luffing in the breeze. “Maybe not,” he said. “But I have something that might change how you feel.”

  He withdrew a folded piece of paper from his back pocket—a Xeroxed copy of a computer printout. She quickly scanned it. It was an exchange of e-mails between Lloyd Heywood and a man whose name she recalled from her lunch with Dwight—Curtis Brooks, the new head of the Lands Commission. It appeared innocent enough on the surface—Brooks merely thanking Lloyd for the all-expenses-paid vacation he and his wife had enjoyed at the Heywood resort on Maui and Lloyd promising in return to beat him the next time they played golf—but Lindsay was quick to grasp the significance of it. She jerked her head up to meet Randall’s gaze.

  “How on earth did you get this?”

  “My father’s wife. She did some snooping.”

  “Why would she want to help you?”

  “At the moment she isn’t too happy with him, either. It seems she caught him cheating on her.”

  Lindsay grimaced in sympathy. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Victoria’s using it as leverage,” he went on. “If it should get out that he bribed a public official, he’d lose everything, and he knows it. This way she’ll get a decent settlement out of the divorce.”

  “And what’s in it for you?”

  “That remains to be seen.” His eyes searched her face as if the answer lay there. “I had a little talk with my father, too. I told him I’d keep quiet if he ditched his plans for the resort.” Lindsay’s breath caught in her throat. “He let loose with some pretty choice words but in the end realized I had him over a barrel. He had no choice but to agree to it. Which means you get to keep your property, and I’m no longer welcome in his house.”

  Lindsay couldn’t believe it. This was the miracle she’d prayed for. She tried to keep from grinning, but it proved impossible. The most she could manage was to keep from letting out a victorious whoop. “Will he ever forgive you, do you think?”

  Randall appeared nonplussed. “No. And to quote Rhett Butler, ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’”

  “Still, he’s your father …”

  He shrugged. “Blood may be thicker than water, but it’s not bulletproof.”

  Lindsay shook her head slowly. “Does this really mean I get to stay? I won’t have to find another place to live?”

  Randall nodded. “With one catch.”

  “What’s that?”

  He grinned. “That you have an open-door policy when it comes to me.”

  Lindsay didn’t trust herself to speak; she was too choked up. Instead she wordlessly stepped into the arms he held open to her. As she sank into Randall’s embrace, a snippet from the Blake poem surfaced in her mind: To see the world in a grain of sand …

  She was that grain of sand now, an entire universe unto herself on this vast beach, as she stood locked in the arms of the man she loved.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Seven months later

  One of the biggest surprises of the past year had been Kerrie Ann’s discovery that she liked to read. Since coming to work at the book café, she’d devoured all of the Judy Blume books (her favorite was Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret) and worked her way through the Anne of Green Gables and Boston Jane series, the Narnia chronicles, and the works of Elizabeth George Speare, Scott O’Dell, and Madeleine L’Engle before graduating to the likes of John Grisham, Stephen King, and her current favorite, Anne Rice. It was as though she were living her life in reverse through books, discovering worlds she’d bypassed growing up. In each book was a valuable lesson to be learned and usually a heroine with whom she could identify. Like Kit Tyler in The Witch of Blackbird Pond who is accused of being a witch in the days of the Salem trials. Kit stands to lose everything, including her life, but she’s brave and eventually triumphs over adversity. Kerrie Ann had read the book three times, until the copy on sale at the Blue Moon Book Café finally grew so dog-
eared that she felt compelled to purchase it.

  As the date for her custody hearing drew near, Kerrie Ann thought more and more about Kit Tyler. Like Kit, she had been branded, though in her case not altogether unfairly. She’d also fallen prey to some unfortunate mishaps, like the one with Jeremiah. And she stood to lose what was most important to her: her child. But she knew she had to be brave and stay the course.

  Over the past year, Kerrie Ann had gradually come to see that happiness was possible, if far from guaranteed. That good people did exist—like her sister and Randall, Miss Honi, Ollie, and her new friends from the program. And that every once in a while, through a combination of hard work and luck, you got what you wanted.

  She had never wanted anything more than this.

  This was her last chance. If the judge failed to take into account the strides she’d made, she’d lose custody of Bella for good. And she didn’t know how she would cope with that. It was one thing for them to be apart for a period of time, another for her to be forever robbed of the joy of waking up each morning to her daughter’s sweet, smiling face.

  Whenever she thought back to the Kerrie Ann who’d arrived in Blue Moon Bay nearly a year ago, packing not much more than a major attitude, that woman seemed like a whole other person, someone Kerrie Ann had no wish to become reacquainted with.

  So much had changed since then. For one thing, she now had a real paying job at the Stitch and Sticks yarn shop down the street, one that had started out part-time but, as she proved increasingly indispensable, quickly became full-time. She’d even taken up knitting. It had been rough going at first, but she’d graduated from lumpy neck scarves to the afghan she was knitting as a wedding present for Lindsay and Randall, who were getting married in a few months. What she loved about knitting was that it soothed her mind while keeping her hands busy, and at the end she had something to show for it. She’d gotten others in her twelve-step program hooked, which had brought in a steady trickle of business from characters who must initially have seemed sketchy to the shop’s owner, Ginny Beal: scary-looking bikers and ex-cons, recovering heroin addicts with old track marks on their arms. All of them people like her who were fighting to reclaim what they’d lost, day by day, stitch by stitch. Kerrie Ann jokingly referred to knitting as the thirteenth step.