Barefoot in the Sand

by Holly Chamberlin

  She hadn’t been the least bit afraid of telling Rob. She knew he would be happy, not walk away leaving “it” for her to “fix” like the cads she had so often seen in movies. She had never seen Rob cry before and had realized in that moment that she had fallen in love with him all over again. Here was a real man, her very own hero, the father of her child! And though she had not planned for this child, and though the idea of becoming a parent while still a teenager filled her with an understandable dread, she felt happier than she had ever before felt.

  Rob had immediately asked Victoria to marry him. “I love you and you love me. I’ll quit school and go to work full-time. We’ll live with my parents and sisters until we can afford a place of our own. Our baby will have all the love he or she could ever hope for.”

  Victoria had hesitated. Her parents needed to be told. Her parents, who didn’t even know their daughter had a boyfriend, let alone that he was the son of a working-class family, let alone that he was employed on their property. How would they react to the news that their daughter was not only pregnant but engaged to that young man?

  But the look of love and devotion in Rob’s eyes overruled all of her fears, and she had gladly agreed to become his wife. Surely her parents would want their only child to be happy. Surely, they loved her and would support her. They had to. It was their job as parents. Wasn’t it?

  Enough, the adult Arden commanded. What had happened had happened and could not be altered, not all these years later. But the joys of the future—of a future with her daughter—might conceivably outweigh the pains and deprivations of the past.

  It was possible.

  Wasn’t it?

  Chapter 28

  “I hope sleeping on that sofa wasn’t uncomfortable,” Arden said when Laura made her appearance in the kitchen. Arden was already dressed for the day in a pair of jeans and a cotton blouse.

  Laura, who was still in her pajamas and robe, smiled. “It was just fine.”

  “Were you warm enough? Too warm?”

  “It was perfect. Really. And one of the cats visited me. I couldn’t tell who it was, but I woke feeling this weight on my chest and guessing it wasn’t an incubus, I assumed it was a cat.”

  “Probably Ophelia.” Arden smiled. “That was her way of telling you that you’re welcome here. I hope you didn’t mind.”

  “Not at all. We had a cat for a while when I was very young. His name was Oscar. He was already five or six by the time I came on the scene, and he died when I was ten. I guess that’s a decently long life for a cat.”

  “Decently long, yes. But I know of a kitty who’s turning twenty-one in the fall. And another who’s nineteen.”

  “Wow.” Laura took a seat at the table, already set with breakfast things. “I wanted an animal companion when I was married, but Jared, my husband, wasn’t keen on the idea. He claimed he had allergies, but I never saw him sneeze when he was around a friend’s pet. I suspected he just didn’t want the bother.”

  “You said your divorce was recent?” Arden hadn’t taken a seat. Laura thought she seemed a bit nervous. Well, if so, that was to be expected.

  “It was finalized this spring. It wasn’t pretty, and I’m still knee-deep in debt. But you don’t want to know the nasty details of that.”

  “I do if you want to tell me.”

  Laura smiled. “Thanks. Maybe some other time.”

  “Do you drink coffee in the morning?” her mother asked hurriedly. “Tea? I have a variety of teas. Do you eat breakfast? I’ve always been a breakfast person, but I know plenty of people don’t care to eat in the morning. I could always—”

  Laura smiled. “Arden. It’s okay. We’ll figure things out and you’re not to wait on me. And coffee will be fine.”

  Arden clasped her hands in front of her. “It’s just that I know so little about you. Nothing, really. It’s . . .”

  Laura quickly stood and went over to her mother. “And I know nothing about you, either”—Laura placed a hand on Arden’s shoulder—“so we’re both in the same boat. Well, different boats but the same sea. It will be exciting getting to know one another.”

  But maybe not all sunshine and roses, Laura added silently.

  Arden wiped at her eyes and reached for the coffeepot as Laura took her seat again. “I haven’t asked what you do,” Arden said, pouring two cups of steaming coffee.

  “Not much of anything at the moment, I’m afraid. I got my master’s degree in literature years ago with the intention of continuing on for my PhD. But I got married and I let being a wife get in the way of my work. See, Jared wasn’t keen on my burying myself in academics; he needed all of my attention.” Laura smiled a bit embarrassedly. “I don’t blame him. I blame myself. Anyway, for the past years I’ve been teaching writing to freshmen at our local college, you know, honing—more often, introducing—the basic skills, that sort of thing.”

  “It sounds challenging. Teaching someone to write is teaching her to think.”

  “It is challenging. But it can be rewarding. Well, not so much financially!”

  Arden smiled. “So, what would you like for breakfast?”

  “Just toast would be fine.”

  “I have butter and a jar of blueberry jam made locally.”

  Laura smiled. “The famous Maine blueberries. I had blueberry pancakes at the North Star Diner in Port George.”

  “It’s still around? That’s good to hear. You know, you might get sick of blueberries after a time. They show up on tables all year long as people freeze great bags of them to use in the long months of winter.”

  Laura felt a sliver of anxiety. Would she still be in Eliot’s Corner come winter? Did her mother already expect her to stay on? It wasn’t wise for either Laura or her mother to make assumptions about their relationship, but it was difficult to ignore the possibility of a future.

  Arden brought a plate of toast to the table and finally took a seat of her own. As if on cue, the thundering of feline feet began and stopped only when Falstaff, Ophelia, and Prospero were standing at Laura’s feet, balefully staring up at her.

  “They’ve already had their breakfast.” Arden rolled her eyes. “Don’t fall for the pitiful looks of starvation.”

  “Not even a bit of butter on my finger?”

  “It will become a habit. If you’re okay with being hounded for food every time you take a seat at the table, be my guest.”

  “Sorry, kitties,” Laura said to the bundles of fur. “You’ll just have to hold out until later.”

  Chapter 29

  “Tell me about my father,” Laura said suddenly, but softly.

  Arden tightened the grip on her coffee cup. She had been silent about her past for so long, she could hardly believe she finally had the opportunity to speak. It was a gift, and a challenge.

  “We met in the library. We bumped into one another and Rob dropped an armload of books.”

  Laura laughed. “That’s so charming!”

  “I fell in love with him at once. Words aren’t enough to give you a good idea of how special he was, not only to me but to everyone he knew.”

  “Do you have a photo? I’ve only seen pictures the Port George Daily Chronicle printed at the time he went missing. They were grainy but I got the general impression of a nice-looking young man with a great smile.”

  “No,” Arden said shortly. “What photos I had got lost a long time ago. I’m sorry.”

  The photos had not been lost. Her parents had thrown them out along with pretty much everything else Rob had given her during their all-too-brief relationship.

  Laura nodded. “That’s okay.”

  “When I met Rob, everything began to change. He opened my eyes to laughter. To love. I was seventeen; he was nineteen. We had to keep our relationship a secret, and Rob accepted that. If my parents were to find out I was dating . . .”

  “The son of a truck driver?”

  Arden sighed. “Yes. They were snobs. But it was more than that. In some ways, it was as if I was
being raised in another time entirely, not 1984, the year when Prince released ‘When Doves Cry’ and when doctors were making ground-breaking discoveries about the cause of AIDS, and The Burning Bed caused such a sensation. I mean, it was not a time of cultural stagnation, but you would never have known that from the way my parents behaved. I was exposed to the real world at school, but when I got home every day, I was right back in this sort of cocoon.” Arden smiled ruefully. “Being groomed for marriage to an eligible man.”

  Laura frowned. “It sounds pretty awful. Did you ever meet any of Rob’s family?”

  “Yes. When we’d been together for about a month, Rob persuaded me to come to his home to meet his family. It took a lot of courage for me to agree, but I didn’t want to disappoint him. At first, the Smiths were wary. I think they wondered what I was after, maybe just the thrill of dating a boy from what my parents would say was the wrong side of the tracks. But the second time I visited we were all more comfortable with each other. Except for Frannie, Rob’s older sister. She never took to me and clearly wasn’t happy that I was dating her brother.”

  “I’m sorry about that. Look, I told you that I read about the investigation into my father’s disappearance. I spoke to Lenny Tobin, the reporter who covered the story for the Chronicle. He told me he believes the investigation was prematurely halted by one of the town’s powerful men, maybe someone involved in the disappearance.”

  Arden just nodded. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Laura her suspicions about her father’s involvement in Rob’s disappearance. Not yet, anyway.

  “You should know,” she said, “that after leaving Port George for good, I kept Rob and the child we’d had together a secret.”

  Laura’s eyes widened. “No one else knows about me? Really?”

  “Other than my parents and anyone involved with the adoption. Some in Port George speculated, but no one knew for sure.” Arden hesitated. “Frannie Smith confronted me when I’d returned to Port George after.... She knew in her heart that Rob had a child, but I was too scared to admit the truth. Too scared of what might happen when my parents learned I’d revealed their shame. Too scared of what Frannie and her family might do to me if they knew I’d given Rob’s child to a stranger.”

  “Is that why you left Port George? Because you felt pursued?”

  “Only partly. But the rest of my story will have to wait.” Arden reached across the table and gently touched Laura’s hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “No.” Laura placed her hand on Arden’s. “I’m sorry. It’s a lot all at once, for the both of us. So, if my father and I don’t exist as far as anyone in Eliot’s Corner is concerned—well, who are you? I mean, what have you told people?”

  Arden sat back in her chair. “Before I settled in Eliot’s Corner I never stayed long enough in any one place to need much of a backstory. When I did need to be someone, I created a very simple narrative. I realized that the fewer details I had to keep track of, the less likely I’d trip myself up.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I want to share the whole truth with my two closest friends here. Deborah and Gordon. And eventually, at least part of the truth with others.”

  “People will ask about my father. Where he is now. If you two were married. What will you tell them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It might be easiest to tell the truth as far as you know it. That Rob went missing not long after you discovered you were pregnant. End of story.”

  “Won’t that give rise to a lot of wild speculation?”

  “Yes. But no matter what you say or don’t say, people are going to speculate.”

  “The only people whose opinions I care about are Deborah and Gordon.,” Arden said firmly. “I’m afraid they might not be pleased with me for having lied to them all this time.”

  “If they’re truly your friends, they’ll understand why you kept certain parts of your past a secret. Everyone keeps something back. No one is entirely an open book.” Laura smiled. “And speaking of books, I’d like to see your shop. But maybe not today. If you don’t mind, I’d like to spend the day here, resting. These past weeks have left me feeling exhausted.”

  Arden rose from her seat. “Of course. Brent, my assistant, will open if I’m not there, but I should get going. Oh, and don’t let the cats con you into giving them more food! They’ll eat when I get home.”

  “You know, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. We’ve both devoted our lives to the written word in one way or another.”

  Arden smiled. “For a long time, I regretted not having been able to go to college.”

  “You could do it now. There are reputable online degree programs.”

  “I know. But I’m okay with the way I’ve educated myself over time. Not having a degree doesn’t make me a less literate person.”

  “Of course, it doesn’t!” Laura followed Arden to the door of the cottage. “That was another thing about my ex-husband that should have set off warning bells. He didn’t read. Well, he said he did and he kept a few tomes around as if to prove his claim, but ask him a basic question about a particular work, and it became clear pretty quickly he had no idea what lay between the covers. For a while I thought it didn’t matter to me. I figured he was intellectually curious in other ways. But he wasn’t.”

  “I’m sorry,” Arden said feelingly. “I’m sorry you were made so unhappy.”

  “Me, too. What a waste of time! I think that’s what gets me most about the marriage, the fact that I’ll never get back those years I wasted with Jared.”

  Arden fought back new tears. She would never get back the long years she had lived apart from her child. But the future . . .

  “Well,” she told her daughter as she opened the door of the cottage, “call me if you need anything today. I’m only a few minutes away.”

  Chapter 30

  When Arden had gone, Laura cleaned away the breakfast things and then began a tour of the cottage. She didn’t, however, go into Arden’s bedroom, though the door was open and Arden hadn’t asked her to stay out. That seemed an intimacy too far even though it was clear that her mother trusted her—a stranger, a woman who claimed to be her daughter but who, for all Arden Bell knew, might be an impostor.

  What was behind the trust? Laura wondered. Guilt over having given up her baby? Or a real, deep-down certainty that Laura was who she said she was? The bottom line was that Laura was dying to know all that her birth mother had to tell. Stories were a person’s heritage, even her birthright; stories were the real riches of inheritance. But her mother might not want to provide anything more than a bare outline of the events that had marked the progress of her life. Burying one’s painful memories was a valid coping mechanism, if not the healthiest method of getting through life, and Laura was in no position to criticize. Besides, Arden had asked for patience, and Laura would proceed carefully and with respect for her mother’s feelings and all that she had endured since that catastrophic summer of 1984.

  Laura looked from the lovely stone fireplace to the wooden slatted blinds on the living room’s windows; from the neat-as-a-pin kitchen to the small but cozy loft. Evidence of her mother’s character and personality was likely to be in her home, unless, Laura thought, a person who had lived the majority of her life in secrecy and silence might not want to speak through inanimate objects that might invite penetrating questions. Still, it couldn’t hurt to observe.

  On the coffee table, for example, there sat a basket of seashells in shades of ivory, creamy white, taupe, and mottled brown. Perhaps Arden had collected the shells over years of walks along the shore. Or perhaps she had bought the shells as a collection; Laura had seen packaged seashells for offer in high-end home-goods shops.

  A small signed oil painting depicting a line of rowboats at dock caught Laura’s eye. The technique was good; the textures of the paint expressive. Did the painting evoke a memory for Arden? Had she—when she was Victoria—gone rowing with Rob one idle summer afternoon?
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  Though no one piece was overly bright or garish, the cottage was full of color. Various shades of blue and green. Salmon pink. Touches of crimson. What, Laura wondered, was her mother’s favorite color? That morning she had been wearing a cotton oxford blouse and jeans. Did she always dress simply and casually? When a little girl, had she enjoyed dressing up in her mother’s jewelry and high heels?

  A set of three narrow shelves attracted Laura’s attention. The centerpiece of the top shelf was a painted fan, Japanese or Chinese, Laura couldn’t determine. It might have been a gift. It might have been a flea market find. A quick glance around the room proved that it was the only item of Asian origin, which, again, might mean nothing much or something significant.

  Laura smiled. Next to the fan was an iron doorstop in the shape of a comically fat sheep. Found at a yard sale? Laura looked more closely. The top shelf and the two below it were thoroughly free of dust. Arden was a good housekeeper. Had she learned this out of necessity or did she enjoy cleaning and tidying? Laura did not enjoy such things.

  No framed photographs were in the living room, or in the kitchen, not even of the friends Arden had mentioned, Deborah and Gordon. That wasn’t especially unusual; these days lots of people kept their favorite photos in their phones or on their computers. But Arden didn’t strike Laura as being particularly into technology and its constant so-called advances. Then again, all she possessed of her mother were first impressions, and their worth was limited.

  But as for books! The cottage was crammed with them. Paperback novels piled high against a wall of the loft. Cookbooks tightly packed on a shelf in the kitchen. Large photographic books lined up on a low shelf in the living room. And Laura had glimpsed a standing bookcase in Arden’s room. There was no doubt where Laura had come by her love of reading. She had left Connecticut for her journey to Maine with a satchel of titles she didn’t like to be without, old friends, comforting presences, the best traveling companions. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Albion by Peter Ackroyd. Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. A book of poems by Elizabeth Alexander. Six or seven other volumes. The satchel weighed enough to cause Laura to grunt when she lifted it into the back seat of her car. Getting it up to the loft had been a chore.