She grimaced at his TV-psychologist imitation. “Yes, ew, cliché. But the shoe fits.”
“Boyfriend left behind?”
“He’s in England.”
Again the eyebrow.
Elizabeth took a deep breath. “He doesn’t know I’m here. We’ll put it that way.”
“You ran away behind his back. We’ll put it that way.”
“You ran away too.” She gestured to the sunlit mountains in the distance. “To drink yourself into regular stupors.”
“I say go with your strengths.”
She grinned at him and blushed when he winked. The yard seemed suddenly warmer and smaller, lengthened shadows promising intimate darkness. Romance was not what she had come over for.
“The radio said you left your job at Boston U?” She shook her head, answering her own divert-the-tension question. “No, I must have misheard. You wouldn’t quit.”
“You think not?”
“I’d bet the rest of my gin.” She took another sip of the drink, which was going down more and more easily. “Work is your ultimate squirrel-proof bird feeder.”
He chuckled. “You’re right. I’m taking a sabbatical to escape my wife’s very public humiliation and our therefore very public divorce. While I’m here, I’m writing a novel, every word of which is my own. The book will be published and sell twenty-one copies, ten to me, ten to Megan, one to Ella.”
“Twenty-two.” She waved her hand. “I want one.”
“And one to you.” He shoved his hand through his dark hair, rumpling it further. “Inconceivable, how the reading public survives without my brilliance, but apparently it does.”
While the same public had gobbled up his wife’s cheating. “So make this an absolutely amazing book no one can put down. It’ll become a best seller, and on a book tour you can meet a sexy, brilliant woman and not only believe in love again but live happily ever after, while your ex-wife dines alone on her own manuscript. How does that sound?
“Like bad movie dialogue?”
“I think I remember something about the ‘ruination of our species’…”
“Touché.” He grinned, turning into a brown-eyed Paul Newman again. “I’m just old and bitter.”
“Right, and wrinkled and gray and impotent.”
“Lest we forget.” He rolled his eyes. “Now tell me what you think of Comfort and your new family.”
“I love it, and them, especially the kids. I love Megan, too, except sometimes I think she’s either unhappy or doesn’t like me.”
“Mmm.”
“Which?”
David put his drink down and clasped his hands behind his head, gazing off toward the glowing mountains. “You’d better ask her.”
“You protect each other.”
“Friends do. Tell me what you love so deeply about Comfort.”
“Its beauty. Its peace. Its purity, and innocence. Its un-spoiled Norman Rockwell family values that—” She scowled at him, hearing the slurring starting in her own voice.
“What’so funny?”
“Things are seldom what they seem.” He sang the words in a surprisingly smooth baritone, picking up his drink again. “Skim milk masquerades as cream. Highlows pass as patent leathers; jackdaws strut in peacock feathers.”
“Um…”
“Gilbert and Sullivan, H.M.S. Pinafore. My mother sang professionally in Chicago, before alcohol ruined her voice.”
“So you were brought up in the Midwest too, on opera.” She could sort of picture it, but only sort of.
“Until age fourteen, when I was sent here.”
“Because your mother was too busy performing?”
“Because my mother was too busy drinking.” He gestured; gin overshot the rim of his glass and ran down his arm. “Off I went, over the river and through the woods, to be raised by Great-Aunt Delia, who trusted nothing but God and Lemon Pledge.
“Here’s to Aunt Delia.” Elizabeth toasted and drank. “I was raised by fat Polish women who feared everything but sausage and misery.”
“Here’s to fat Poles.” He raised his drink more carefully this time.
“To them!” She hoisted hers, only half gone and she was looped already. And enjoying herself. David was a challenge, but not, as she first suspected, a threat. And he was sexy in that brooding, tortured-artist way, and he made her feel witty, smart and interesting.
Did she mention she loved Comfort? Maybe she really did belong here. Of course, right now she loved everything. Even David. Especially David.
“Tell me what you have against—”
“Hi there.” A throaty female voice behind them. Ella appeared from the shadows of a tree near the back door, tall and sexy in a tight fuchsia top and cropped pants that left her stunning figure with no secrets. She sauntered up next to Elizabeth and gave her yet another once-over, as if she hadn’t already examined every pore. Then she flicked a pointed glance over to David and back. “Well. Elizabeth. You work fast.”
“Nice to see you again, Ella.” She kept her tone pleasant, wondering how Ella would look with a martini dripping off her face.
“You two stunning women have already met?”
“This morning at Megan’s.”
“Ah.” He looked back and forth between them, then settled on Elizabeth. “Ella is my favorite drinking partner, and the only other person in Comfort who doesn’t bother.”
“Bother…”
“With Comfort.”
Ella gave a laugh that excluded Elizabeth from the joke, then adopted a model-like pose, one foot pointed forward, hand on her hip clutching a pack of Marlboro cigarettes and a lighter.
“Any gin for me?”
“There’s always gin for you.” David got up, a little less than steady by then, and gestured gallantly. “Take my seat, martini pitcher’s here, I’ll get you a glass.”
“Thanks, darlin’.” Ella sank onto the just-vacated chair, tapped out a cigarette and lit it, drawing in the smoke with such elegant pleasure that Elizabeth had to picture her in a cancer ward or be envious. “So. Elizabeth.”
“Ye-e-es?”
Ella arranged herself, legs slanted in a beautiful diagonal, torso languorously applied to the back of her seat. “How are you liking our town?”
“Very much.”
“We don’t get many Yankees down here in li’l ol’ Comfort.”
Elizabeth ignored the über-Southerner act. “How long have you lived here?”
“For all eternity.” She tipped her head back and blew out a stream of smoke. “Minus seventeen years in Florida.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Rotting.”
“Sounds fun. Are you married?”
“Divorced.”
“Children?”
“No.” She spoke flatly; Elizabeth sensed pain in the answer. What a pair she and David made, hiding hurt, nursing bitterness over gin. Were they lovers, too?
Some of the blissful shine dulled from her buzz. “What do you do?”
“I have a job at the Comfort Public Library, Elizabeth. I live with my parents. I wear a size eight shoe and thirty-four C-cup bra, and I—”
“Good to know, thanks.”
“What do you do?”
“When I’m not trying to be polite to rude strangers?”
Ella laughed unexpectedly. “Yes.”
“I live in Manhattan with my chef boyfriend, and I’m starting my own design business. Fabrics, mostly.”
“Interesting.” She picked up a lock of hair and started toying with it, long fuschia-polished nails flipping the dark chin-length strands over and over. “Do you knit?”
“Yes, why?”
“Our group has temporarily lost two members to the lure of Vegas. Quaint as it will sound to your big-city ears, we need more hands to get our blanket project finished in time for the local craft fair.”
“Oh, wow.” Elizabeth’s mood perked up again. What could be more small-town perfect than getting involved in a knitting club and craft fair?
She knew women in New York who knitted, but it seemed more like a genuine way of life here, less like a trendy diversion. “Thank you, that sounds totally fun.”
“Really.” Ella took another hit from her cigarette and twisted her mouth to blow the smoke away. “You need to get out more.”
“Here y’go.” David made it to the table, brandished a fresh frosted glass and poured generously from the pitcher. “If martinis be the food of oblivion, drink on.”
“Oblivion is where I do my best work.” Ella reached for hers.
“What shall we drink to tonight?”
“Elizabeth and I were talking about love.”
“Then here’s to love.” She took a blissful swallow. “May it rest in peace.”
“Careful.” David turned to Elizabeth, which put his face half in rosy light and half in shadow. “This sweet young thing still believes.”
“Break her, Brother David. Pain now spares her later.”
He reached and let his hand hover over Elizabeth’s wrist.
“Listen and learn, child. Love is a dangerous trap set by human nature, toothed metal jaws hidden on the forest’s leafy floor.”
Ella snorted. “You are such an author.”
“You can’t get caught without being hurt. Snap.” He grabbed Elizabeth’s wrist and held it tightly, his compelling eyes lit by the fading sunlight. “Were you about to get caught, up there in New York?”
Elizabeth recoiled, then set her drink down on the table holding the now-sweating pitcher and tried to pull her wrist out of his grasp. “Who’s spouting bad movie dialogue now?”
“Uh-oh.” He grinned, let her struggle another second, then let go. “I think I struck paydirt.”
“Looks like.” Ella was smiling too, not unkindly. They were teasing her. There was no reason for Elizabeth to be this upset.
She stood up. “I do believe in love. It’s not an easy thing to say, but it takes more courage than rejecting it.”
“Sweet Jesus, it’s Pollyanna. And all this time yer pa ‘n’ I thought you was dead.”
“Down, girl.” David spoke quietly, watching Elizabeth.
“Thanks for the drink.” She stepped away from the chair.
“I’ll leave you two to enjoy your despair.”
“Oh, ouch.” Ella laughed good-humoredly. “Good night, Elizabeth. Don’t forget your rose-colored glasses on the way out.”
“Not a chance.” She managed a smile back. “I see so much more clearly with them.”
“Elizabeth, you are a gem.” David stood and took her shoulders, kissed her on both cheeks, closer to her mouth than was purely friendly. In spite of the drinking he managed to smell good. “The gin of oblivion is always flowing here in hell. Stop by anytime.”
“I’ll stick to the milk of human kindness. But thanks, Lucifer.”
“Lucifer!” He laughed, deliberately demonic, bent to pick up his drink, and toasted her with drunken affection. “Call me a sadist, Ms. Detlaff, but I look forward to watching you get to know Comfort.”
Chapter Five
The day Fiona is to see the new lighthouse site with Calum dawns drizzly and gray, but nothing can dampen her mood. She helps her mother prepare breakfast oatmeal, milks the placid cow and feeds the busy chickens, waves to her favorite horse, Vogue, who tosses his chestnut head, turns his back and trots over the hill behind their house. Inside she dresses in a straight gray skirt she’s sewn herself and a sweater knitted from her own carefully spun wool, with a gray, blue and cream pattern of eight-pointed stars. The blue catches her eyes, her mother says, and smooths her daughter’s bobbed curls proudly, wishes her a good time.
Just before Fiona is to leave, the rain stops, the sun breaks through, making drops glisten on the heather-strewn hills. She smiles at the sky and hurries to Calum’s, where he’ll be waiting to walk with her to Eshaness’s highest cliffs. As she descends the slope to his house she sees him coming around the corner and waves, quickening her steps. He raises his hand, dark hair curling in the wet, tall and solid in his charcoal sweater. As Fiona is about to call out a cheerful hello, Gillian appears in a flowing black skirt and a sweater like nothing Fiona has ever seen. Reds, blues, oranges, greens, buds and blooms and vines and butterflies. Her hair is long and free, blowing in slow graceful waves as if it’s underwater, making her look like a wild tangle of the world’s most beautiful garden.
She says hello to Fiona and smiles a smile that keeps part of her to herself, quiet with deep secrets. Fiona nods, shy with sudden uncertainty and looks to Calum. Is Gillian to come with them? Calum cannot meet her eyes beyond a glance and she has her answer. Disappointment is hot and hard, but she will not let it show.
As they walk, with her musical voice and gracious manner, Gillian tells stories of her life on Unst, of meeting her husband, of their life together, of watching him waste slowly toward death until there was scarcely enough flesh to keep his bones together. Calum listens, Fiona listens, the tale seems to weave a spell over them so that the long walk is swift and barely noticed.
They reach the site past the mysterious circular ruin of the broch and walk the outline of the lighthouse foundation, a smaller building and a larger one that will house the light in one corner, both atop a cruel jagged cliff that could be the very edge of the world, two hundred feet above the cobalt sea. Gillian stands facing the salty Atlantic, endless to the horizon, and her face transforms into such fierce longing that Fiona is frightened and Calum lunges to grab her. She breaks free and runs to the edge, stopping as Fiona screams, Calum goes white. Gillian throws her arms wide, tips her head back and laughs. Twenty yards offshore an orca breaks the surface of the water as if summoned by her wild joy.
Fiona calls for her to come back, not to stand so near the edge with the wind lashing. Calum strides toward her. When he is near, she turns and he stops as if she has put up a wall. Fiona holds her breath while Calum walks gently, tenderly, the way he’d approach a wounded animal, closer and closer until he’s through the wall, takes Gillian’s hand and they are together, brown and white-winged skuas swirling around them, with Fiona still on the outside.
It begins to rain again.
Megan sat on the front porch with Vera, working on her Acre lace pattern blanket square. Two-row repeats of ten-stitch segments over and over. Knit, knit, knit two together, yarn-over, knit, knit, yarn-over, knit two together, knit, knit, knit. The only excitement: changing colors every twenty rows to progressively greener shades of blue.
Beside her, Vera’s needles clicked over and around, forming the stockinette rectangles she’d join for her fifth indigo square. Her rocker moved forward, back, forward, back, at the apex of each rock, a tiny creak that was getting on Megan’s nerves.
No reason to be so tense. Around them were the sounds and smells of summer, kids playing, sprinklers hissing, crickets discussing the latest insect news. Over at David’s house, occasional laughter. He and Elizabeth must be enjoying each other.
A plain knitted row. Knit, knit, knit. Megan’s great-grandmother, Fiona Tulloch, and her cronies could knit up to a mind-boggling two hundred stitches a minutes, could finish a lace shawl in six weeks.
Knit, knit, knit.
Laughter boomed again next door. David’s this time. Megan lost thirty years and became a lonely adolescent home with her mother instead of part of the boisterous gang.
“Sounds like a party,” Vera said.
“Sounds like.”
“I saw Ella heading around back next door too. With Stanley yours, there aren’t many men around Comfort who can handle her. David must have his hands full.”
“I’m sure he does.” Knit, knit, knit, row’s end and turn.
“Bless Ella’s heart.” Vera shook her head, smug amusement showing through her sympathy. “I’ll never forget the look on her face when she found out Stanley asked you to marry him so soon after you started dating, and she’d been with him what, four years? Dorene said Ella thought she and Stanley’d get back together after he had his �
��little fling’ with you. She had her sights set on him from the time—”
“Yes.” Megan put her blanket square down on the rickety table Stanley had made at her request and stood. The air on the porch had gone; she didn’t know where. “I know.”
“Of course, then she married Don, the first man who’d take her away from Comfort. What a mistake that was. A passionate woman is a dangerous thing, but men don’t find out ’til it’s too late.” Vera looked up from her knitting over bright red magnifying half-glasses bought at Hansen’s Drug. “Good Lord, Megan, you look like you’ve seen Elvis.”
“I’m…” She gestured vaguely. “I’m just—”
“Don’t you start worrying about Ella. My Stanley’s still as crazy about you as the day he married you. He tells me every time on the phone how he can’t wait to come home to you and the—”
“I’m thirsty is all. You want some water? Juice? Ginger ale?”
“I’ll take a ginger, but only if it’s diet. Doctor Helverson keeps telling me I’m close to diabetic. Too many years of too much—”
“I always buy diet, Vera. I always have bought diet.”
“Yes. Yes, you have.”
“I’ll get one for you.” Megan fled to her kitchen, leaned on the sink, looking out at her garden. Vera would be wondering what was wrong with her. She’d tell Stanley. Something’s not right with that wife of yours. He’d want to know what.
How could she tell him when she wasn’t sure herself? Adjusting to the new stranger had been more difficult than she imagined, that was certainly true. If she could, Megan would take back Elizabeth’s standing invitation to dinner with the family. But that perk was the only way she could set the rent so high for the area. And in Elizabeth’s place, Megan wouldn’t want to have to cook dinner on two cheap burners in the corner of a living room.
She pulled a diet ginger ale from the refrigerator and twisted an ice cube tray to fill a glass for Vera, then filled another glass with tap water for herself.
Outside she heard Vera’s voice again, Elizabeth’s answering; she’d come back from David’s. Was it too much to ask that she’d go to her apartment and stay there until morning?
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