Frieda snatched the onion ring from its paper tray. “Oh,” she said, “but I am.”
Jack sighed dramatically. “That’s what I get for being a gentleman.”
“Being a gentleman is always a good thing. Jack? I’m curious. How did you and Veronica meet?” Frieda asked.
“I was visiting a cousin in Connecticut and we went to a karaoke place one night. I was onstage belting out a seriously awful version of ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ and this woman in the audience caught my eye. She was smiling at me and not in a mocking sort of way, and believe me I deserved to be mocked. So after I was through embarrassing myself I went over to her and said hello. And that’s all it took for me to know I’d found The One.” Jack smiled. “Sounds pretty goofy, doesn’t it?”
“I think it sounds lovely,” Frieda said honestly.
“After we got engaged Veronica won a teaching position at the private grammar school in South Berwick and moved in with me. She loved my house and she really made it her own as well. She made it our home.” Jack shook his head. “Everything was going so smoothly.”
“And then?” Frieda asked gently.
“And then we got married and Veronica had trouble getting pregnant. We both really wanted a family and after almost two years of trying without success we decided to give IVF a go.”
“And it wasn’t successful,” Frieda said quietly.
“We’ll never know if it might have been. Before we could get started Veronica was diagnosed with cancer and we turned all of our time and energy to getting her well. But in the end, we failed.”
“Don’t say ‘failed.’” Frieda shook her head. “Sorry. It’s just that when you say you failed to keep someone alive it means that you’re guilty of negligence, of not caring enough. And I know that can’t be true of you.”
“Or of you, Frieda.”
“I’m almost ready to believe that,” Frieda told him.
“So, how did you and Aaron meet?”
Frieda smiled. “It was the first day of freshman orientation at college. I guess it was also one of those moments of recognition where you say to yourself, ‘There he is’ or ‘There she is.’ I loved him so much right from the start and yet . . .”
“And yet what?” Jack asked gently.
Frieda hesitated. This was a difficult admission to make and it surprised her that she wanted to share these thoughts with Jack. “And yet sometimes,” she went on, “usually in the middle of the night after a particularly trying day when what I most need is a deep and dreamless sleep, I find myself blaming Aaron for the accident even though I’ve been assured by every authority involved that he wasn’t at fault.”
“I’m sorry, Frieda. What actually happened?”
“Well,” Frieda said, “we decided to rent a car for the last full day of the vacation. The resort regularly used a local family-owned rental agency and they arranged everything for us. As promised, a car arrived the following morning; it was clean, the gas tank was filled, and Aaron could find nothing wrong with it. The car performed perfectly. In the morning we took a tour of a coffee plantation and in the afternoon we visited some spectacular waterfalls. It was a lovely day.” Frieda swallowed hard against a lump in her throat. “It was only the next morning when Aaron and Ariel were on their way home from a museum that . . . That things went wrong.”
Jack shook his head. “I’m sorry, Frieda. I know I’ve said it before, but I think it bears repeating over and over again.”
“Thank you. Those sleepless nights . . . I start to think, why didn’t Aaron detect something wrong with the car? How could he not have been aware of the danger? I hate that I doubt Aaron’s competency. I really hate it. And when the first signs of dawn filter through the curtains of my bedroom I find myself in tears, apologizing to Aaron. If there had been anything he could have done to save Ariel’s life he would have. Anything. It was the sort of man he was, always putting the needs of others before his own.” Frieda attempted a smile. “Well, now you know what sort of a monster I am.”
“You’re not a monster,” Jack said. “Just human.”
“I wish being human meant not being so irrational.”
“There’s not a chance of that! Look, not long after Veronica’s diagnosis I felt so scared about what would happen next that I blamed Veronica for the cancer. I couldn’t stop thinking that if only she’d eaten better or exercised more often she wouldn’t have gotten sick.” Jack shook his head. “Of course it was ridiculous and unfair as it always is to blame the victim, and thank God I didn’t actually give voice to those thoughts. Can you imagine what harm I would have done? But the thoughts were there and I was ashamed of them until I got a handle on why I was thinking the way I was. The cancer made no sense, so I had to find a responsible party to blame, when all along it was chance that was to blame. Chance, pure and simple.”
“Yes, chance.” Frieda glanced at her watch. “Look at the time! We’ve been here for almost two hours.”
Jack smiled. “Time flies when you’re having fun. Though the content of our conversation wasn’t always fun, was it?”
“No, but the experience of the conversation has been a good thing; at least it has for me. Thanks, Jack.” He gets it, she thought. He really gets what it’s like.
“Thank you, too, Frieda. Though next time you might share more of the onion rings.”
“It’s every man, woman, or child on his or her own when it comes to onion rings and cupcakes.”
Jack grinned. “Forewarned,” he said, “is forearmed.”
Chapter 20
“I can’t believe we’re actually having a drink somewhere other than one of our homes.” Phil shook his head. “We almost never go out during tourist season. Whose idea was this again?”
“Mine,” Ruby said. “And since it’s my treat you’re not allowed to complain.” Ruby lowered her voice and added, “Though if they let one more person in this bar I think they’ll be breaking a law.”
Ruby and Phil were sipping glasses of Prosecco at the bar in one of downtown Yorktide’s most popular eateries, The Atlantic. In atmosphere it was the opposite of The Friendly Lobsterman, the cozy, unpretentious, kid-welcoming restaurant owned by the Gascoyne family for over twenty years.
“So why did you want to meet here?” Phil asked. “And I’m not complaining. It’s just that an upscale place like this usually isn’t your cup of tea.”
Ruby shrugged. “A whim? A change of scenery? A chance to see how the other half lives? Hey, guess who reached out to Frieda the other day? Steve.”
Phil’s eyes widened. “Steve as in Steve Hitchens? Her father?”
“The very one. He called the house hoping to find her and she happened to pick up the phone.”
“Wow. Not much astonishes me these days, but I have to say this rates as an astonishing event. So, did she talk to him? Or did she slam the phone down?”
“She told me she was tempted to hang up, but she didn’t. And she even agreed to talk with him again, though she’s not sure why she did.”
Phil shook his head. “I suppose there’s always mere curiosity, but . . . No, I don’t think curiosity would be enough of a motivation for Frieda. Not after all she’s been through. As for Steve, what in the world made him reach out to his daughter now?”
“I have no idea,” Ruby admitted. “I don’t know what he hopes to achieve. All I can think is that he wants to make amends. I mean, why contact her after all this time if he doesn’t care? What would be the point?”
“Like you,” Phil said, “I have no idea. I’ve never pretended to understand Steve. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate the guy. Hate isn’t an emotion with which I’m familiar. I just don’t trust him. What if he succeeds in gaining Frieda’s confidence or even her affection—and we know he can be charming—and then he just walks, like he did all those years ago?”
“I think Frieda knows what she’s getting into,” Ruby said. “At least, she knows her father has severe limitations when it comes to accepting respons
ibility of any sort.”
“Still,” Phil argued, “Frieda is vulnerable. She’s worried about Bella. She doesn’t need something else troubling her.”
“True. But there’s not much I can do, is there? I did consider giving Steve a warning to tread carefully, but honestly, Phil, I don’t want to interfere. Maybe it’s time Frieda and her father negotiate a peace without my influence.”
“You might be right about that. I just don’t know. What does George have to say about this development?” Phil asked, finishing his glass of Prosecco.
“I haven’t told him yet,” Ruby said. “I suspect he’ll feel as you and I do—apprehensive. Protective of Frieda’s feelings. But Phil, we have to have faith in Frieda to know what’s best for her.”
Phil frowned. “Since we can’t have faith in Steve. Okay, I’ll be nice. Steve’s not evil. He’s just really good at causing collateral damage.”
Ruby couldn’t argue with that. “There’s another thing I haven’t told you,” she said. “Let’s have another glass.”
“Keeping secrets from your old friend?” Phil smiled. “Sure, one more round.”
When the bartender had brought two fresh glasses of Prosecco, Ruby said, “Frieda wants to give a little party to mark what would have been Ariel’s sixteenth birthday. Just the three of us, with a cake and our sharing memories and all that.”
“And?” Phil asked.
“And Bella seems deeply against it,” Ruby told him. “I’m not entirely sure why other than the fact that she says it’s macabre to have a party for a dead person.”
“Wow. She really said macabre?”
“Yup. But Phil, what I also don’t understand is why I have a bad feeling about the idea. After all it’s not outrageous. A memorial to a child who’s gone ahead is encouraged, at least from all I’ve learned about mourning.”
Phil shook his head. “You’ve got me there. I can’t see much of a downside to having a small party.”
“You’re probably right,” Ruby said, “and I’m probably making too big a deal of it all. So much these days seems . . .”
“Seems what?”
“Seems uncertain. But then again,” Ruby said, raising her glass to her lips, “that’s just life.”
* * *
Ruby tossed restlessly in her bed. All that talk with Phil earlier about Steve and the collateral damage he had caused had thrust her mind back to the days of her marriage, the days when it was more likely than not that Ruby was busy making do when Steve lost jobs, making excuses when he failed to deliver on a promise, and turning a blind eye when he engaged in yet another affair.
There was the time, Ruby remembered now, when they had been compelled to return the substantial initial payment on a commission for a dining room table. Steve just couldn’t seem to finish the job. The trip Ruby had organized to Acadia National Park had to be canceled and making rent for the next two months had been a close thing.
Ruby sighed. How many times had she caught Steve forgetting to buckle Frieda into her car seat? How many times had he brought home unannounced a fly-by-night buddy in need of a meal and a place to crash? And what about the time Ruby had gone to visit her ailing mother for four days and returned to find Frieda in dirty clothes, unwashed, and her hair knotted? No three-year-old ever protested the lack of a bath and indeed Frieda had seemed perfectly content, but Ruby had been angry. “Why is the sink full of dirty dishes?” she had demanded. “The dishwasher broke,” Steve had told her. She asked if he had called the repair service. He said it had slipped his mind. He apologized with a smile and Ruby had wondered if she were being too fastidious and critical. And when Steve drew her into his arms and kissed her, her anger melted away. She cleaned the kitchen, called the repair service, and gave her daughter a bath. Getting the knots out of Frieda’s hair had been a bit more difficult.
And Ruby had routinely excused these episodes of irresponsibility. After all, she believed there was no bad intent behind them, just carelessness. An inability on her husband’s part to focus on someone other than himself for more than a few moments at a time. A failure to think about the consequences of his actions. After a while Ruby had begun to wonder if by keeping the extent of Steve’s misconduct a secret she had really been protecting Frieda and Phil and Tony from the full truth of his faulty character, or if she had simply been acting as Steve’s enabler.
In the years since his defection Ruby had often wondered if there had been other enablers in Steve’s life. He had never mentioned a friend or a colleague or a lover, not even in passing. It was as if after he left Yorktide he became alienated from the human race. But he wasn’t alienated from the human race because he stayed in touch with her, Ruby Hitchens, the woman who had been his wife. The woman who was the mother of his child.
His only child? Ruby smiled ruefully into the dark. Lothario. Don Juan. Philanderer. Rake. Cheat. Your judgment was seriously off when you married Steve Hitchens, she told herself. Seriously off.
Chapter 21
Bella lay on her bed. She had been thinking about Clara and the shrine she had erected to her former boyfriend. Even though a part of her thought that Clara’s devotion was romantic, another part of her found something about it odd. Now, on this muggy afternoon, Bella thought she might finally have identified what it was about Clara’s devotion that gave her a slight case of the creeps.
In history class sophomore year they had learned how some ancient cultures had worshipped the relics of a dead person; they believed the remnant of the person or the presence of something he had owned held some special power and could protect or even grant the wishes of the living. It was an interesting idea except when it came to people collecting gross things like bits of a dead person’s bones or fingernail clippings or hair.
Of course, worshipping relics wasn’t really what Clara was doing—Marc was alive after all—but Clara’s behavior had also gotten Bella thinking about the importance mere things had taken on in the first weeks after the crash. She and Ariel had bought matching shell necklaces in Jamaica. Ariel had been wearing hers that fateful last morning, but it hadn’t been among the effects their mother had brought home from the morgue. Mad with grief, Bella had vowed never to take off her own necklace. It would be a gesture of devotion and remembrance.
But when she got home to Massachusetts the sight of the string of shells around her neck had for some reason made Bella feel sick to her stomach. Roughly she had pulled off the necklace and stuffed it deep into the garbage waiting at the curb to be taken away by the sanitation people the next morning. After a restless night Bella had woken with a feeling of intense regret and still in her pajamas she had raced out to the curb and torn open the lid of the garbage can, only to find it empty. She had spent the next several days despondent. The loss of the shell necklace was the loss of her sister all over again.
After that she had stripped her room of all photos and other reminders of her father and her sister. Even when she had begun to heal, to consider taking driving lessons, to consider spending time with Kerri, it had still been tough to bear the sight of her father’s and her sister’s personal possessions. Like Dad’s dress watch and Ariel’s blue topaz ring, Bella remembered now on this muggy summer afternoon. Like Dad’s running shoes and Ariel’s favorite wool sweater.
Objects, possessions, relics—call them what you liked, but things meant something; things had the value you gave to them, even if only for a short period of time. Bella glanced at the squat oak dresser that stood against the wall opposite the beds. She had no idea what might be inside the drawer that had been Ariel’s. Suddenly she sat up and swung her legs off the bed. I’m going to be brave, she thought. I’m going to see what Ariel left behind.
Gently, almost reverently, Bella slid open the bottom of the two wide drawers. The first thing to catch her eye was a crystal point on a leather cord. Ariel had loved collecting crystals. Carefully Bella moved the crystal aside and focused on the other items in the drawer. There was a pair of khaki shorts and two T
-shirts, one white and one blue. Ariel had hated wearing clothing with logos or pictures of celebrities printed on it. Looking at those plain, neatly folded T-shirts, Bella almost smiled. Practically every one of her own T-shirts announced its corporate origin—Abercrombie & Fitch, PINK, Adidas—or advertised a band Bella was momentarily obsessed with.
In addition to the clothing there was a black headband, the wide stretchy kind, and an unopened package of elastic hair ties. Ariel had always been getting compliments on her hair—“It’s like you’re a model for a Pre-Raphaelite painting!”—but she had never really understood why. “It’s just hair,” she would say to Bella. “What’s inside a person is way more important.”
The last item in the drawer was a small hardcover book bound with a metal lock. A diary? Bella had never seen it before. She lifted the book out of the drawer and stared at the picture of a white unicorn on its cover. Her sister had always been scribbling, but she had never seemed concerned with privacy. None of the notebooks Ariel had routinely left scattered throughout the house were locked and she had never asked her family not to read what she had written. Still, after the funeral, Bella’s mother had gathered the notebooks, put them in a cardboard box, and sealed it with packing tape. The notebooks remained unread and, for all Bella knew, they might remain unread forever.
But this book was obviously different. What had Ariel written that was so important that she had felt compelled to hide the content from her family? Bella searched the rest of the drawer but found no key. It might be hidden somewhere else in the room or Ariel might have kept it back home in Massachusetts. It might even have been in her luggage the morning she got into that rental car.
Bella got to her feet and, holding the little book in both hands, she perched on the edge of her bed. Everyone knew that when someone committed suicide her family and friends were frantic to understand why, especially if the person hadn’t left a note that made much sense to them. But this was different, Bella thought. There was no good reason for her to violate her sister’s privacy just because she was dead. Ariel hadn’t killed herself. She hadn’t wanted to die. What more did Bella need to know about the sister she had lost so suddenly beyond the fact that Ariel had loved being alive?
Home for the Summer Page 9
