Treading water, he looked up at her, his teeth gleaming. “Are you going to tattle to your big sister?”
She was shaking so much that she stomped her foot. “You had no idea whether that water was deep enough for diving!”
“It was deep enough the last time I dove in.”
“And how long ago was that?”
“About seventeen years.” He flipped to his back. “But there’s been a lot of rain.”
“You’re a moron! Have all those concussions scrambled your brain cells?”
“I’m alive, aren’t I?” He flashed a daredevil grin. “Come on in, bunny lady. The water’s real warm.”
“Are you out of your mind? I’m not diving off this cliff!”
He flipped to his side, took a few lazy strokes. “Don’t you know how to dive?”
“Of course I do. I went to summer camp for nine years!”
His voice lapped at her, a low, lazy taunt. “I’ll bet you stink.”
“I do not!”
“Then are you chicken, bunny lady?”
Oh, God. It was as if a fire alarm had gone off inside her head, and she didn’t even kick off her sandals. She just curled the toes over the edge of the rock and threw herself off the bluff, following him into insanity.
All the way down she tried to scream.
She hit harder than he had and there was a lot more splash. When she came up, water dripped over the stunned expression on his face.
“Jesus.” He spoke on a softly expelled breath that sounded more like a prayer than a curse. And then he started to yell. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The water was so cold she couldn’t catch her breath. Even her bones were shriveling. “It’s freezing! You lied to me!”
“If you ever do anything like that again…”
“You dared me!”
“If I’d dared you to drink poison, would you have been stupid enough to do that, too?”
She didn’t know if she was angrier with him for goading her into being so reckless or at herself for taking the bait. Water flew as she slapped it with her arm. “Look at me! I act like a normal person when I’m around other people!”
“Normal?” He blinked the splash from his eyes. “Is that why I found you holed up in your apartment looking like spoiled shrimp?”
“At least I was safe there, instead of catching pneumonia here!” Her teeth began to chatter, and her icy, waterlogged clothes pulled at her. “Or maybe making me jump off a cliff is your idea of therapy?”
“I didn’t think you’d do it!”
“I’m nuts, remember?”
“Molly…”
“Crazy Molly!”
“I didn’t say—”
“That’s what you’re thinking. Molly the fruitcake! Molly the lunatic! Off her rocker! Certifiable! The tiniest little miscarriage, and she flips out!”
She choked. She hadn’t meant to say that, hadn’t ever intended to mention it again. But the same force that had made her jump off the cliff had pushed out the words.
A thick, heavy silence fell between them. When he finally broke it, she heard his pity. “Let’s go in now so you can get warmed up.” He turned away and began swimming toward the shore.
She had started to cry, so she stayed where she was.
He reached the bank, but he didn’t try to climb out. Instead, he looked back at her. The water lapped at his waist, and his voice was a gentle ripple. “You need to get out. It’ll be dark soon.”
The cold had numbed her limbs, but it hadn’t numbed her heart. Grief overwhelmed her. She wanted to sink under the surface and never come up. She gulped for air and whispered words she’d never intended to say. “You don’t care, do you?”
“You’re just trying to pick a fight,” he said softly. “Come on. Your teeth are chattering.”
Words slid through the tightness in her throat. “I know you don’t care. I even understand.”
“Molly, don’t do this to yourself.”
“We had a little girl,” she whispered. “I made them find out and tell me.”
The water lapped the bank. His hushed words drifted across the smooth surface. “I didn’t know.”
“I named her Sarah.”
“You’re tired. This isn’t a good time.”
She shook her head. Looked up into the sky. Spoke the truth, not to condemn him, just to point out why he could never understand how she felt. “Losing her didn’t mean anything to you.”
“I haven’t thought about it. The baby wasn’t real to me like it was to you.”
“She! The baby was a she, not an it!”
“I’m sorry.”
The unfairness of attacking him silenced her. It was wrong to condemn him for not sharing her suffering. Of course the baby hadn’t been real to him. He hadn’t invited Molly into his bed, hadn’t wanted a child, hadn’t carried the baby inside him.
“I’m the one who’s sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. My emotions keep getting away from me.” Her hand trembled as she pushed a strand of wet hair from her eyes. “I won’t bring this up again. I promise you.”
“Come on out now,” he said quietly.
Her limbs were clumsy from the cold, and her clothes heavy as she swam toward the bank. By the time she got there, he’d climbed out onto a low, flat rock.
He crouched down and pulled her up beside him. She landed on her knees, a cold, dripping, miserable wreck.
He tried to lighten the mood. “At least I kicked off my shoes before I dove in. Yours flew off when you hit the water. I’d have gone after them, but I was in shock.”
The rock had retained some of the day’s heat, and a little of it seeped through her clammy shorts. “It doesn’t matter. They were my oldest sandals.” Her last pair of Manolo Blahniks. Given the current state of her finances, she’d have to replace them with rubber shower thongs.
“You can pick up another pair in town tomorrow.” He rose. “We’d better head back before you get sick. Why don’t you start walking? I’ll catch up with you as soon as I rescue my own shoes.”
He headed back up the path. She hugged herself against the evening chill and put one foot in front of the other, trying not to think. She hadn’t gone far before he came up next to her, T-shirt and shorts sticking to his body. They walked in silence for a while.
“The thing is…”
When he didn’t go on, she looked up at him. “What?”
He looked troubled. “Forget it.”
The woods rustled around them with evening sounds. “All right.”
He shifted his shoes from one hand to the other. “After it was over… I just… I didn’t let myself think about her.”
She understood, but it made her feel even lonelier.
He hesitated. She wasn’t used to that. He always seemed so certain. “What do you think she—” He cleared his throat. “What do you think Sarah would have been like?”
Her heart constricted. A fresh wave of pain swept over her, but it didn’t throb in the same way as her old pain. Instead, it stung like antiseptic on a cut.
Her lungs expanded, contracted, expanded again. She was startled to realize she could still breathe, that her legs could still move. She heard the crickets begin their evening jam. A squirrel scuffled in the leaves.
“Well…” She was trembling, and she wasn’t sure whether the sound that slipped from her was a choked laugh or a leftover sob. “Gorgeous, if she took after you.” Her chest ached, but instead of fighting the pain, she embraced it, absorbed it, let it become part of her. “Extremely smart, if she took after me.”
“And reckless. I think today pretty much proves that. Gorgeous, huh? Thanks for the compliment.”
“Like you don’t know.” Her heart felt a little lighter. She wiped at her runny nose with the back of her hand.
“So how come you think you’re so smart?”
“Summa cum laude. Northwestern. What about you?”
“I graduated.”
She smiled,
but she wasn’t ready to stop talking about Sarah. “I’d never have sent her to summer camp.”
He nodded. “I’d never have made her go to church every day during the summer.”
“That’s a lot of church.”
“Nine years is a lot of summer camp.”
“She might have been clumsy and a slow learner.”
“Not Sarah.”
A little capsule of warmth encircled her heart.
He slowed. Looked up into the trees. Slipped one hand into his pocket. “I guess it just wasn’t her time to be born.”
Molly took a breath and whispered back, “I guess not.”
Chapter 11
“Company’s coming!” Celia the Hen clucked. “Well bake cakes and tarts and custard pies!”
Daphne Makes a Mess
Molly set the alarm clock Kevin had left for five-thirty, and by seven o’clock the smell of blueberry muffins filled the downstairs of the B&B. In the dining room, the sideboard held a stack of pale yellow china plates with a ginkgo leaf at each center. Dark green napkins, pressed-glass water goblets, and pleasantly mismatched sterling completed the setting. A pan of sticky buns from the freezer baked in the oven while the marble slab on the worktable held a brown pottery baking dish filled with thick slices of bread soaking in an egg batter fragrant with vanilla and cinnamon.
For the first time in months Molly was ravenous, but she hadn’t found time to eat. Preparing breakfast for a house full of paying guests was a lot more challenging than making smiley-face pancakes for the Calebow kids. As she moved Aunt Judith’s recipe notebook away from the French toast batter, she tried to work up some resentment against Kevin, who was still asleep upstairs, but she couldn’t. By acknowledging the baby last night, he’d given her a gift.
The burden of the miscarriage no longer felt as if it were hers alone to bear, and her pillow hadn’t been tear-soaked when she’d awakened. Her depression wasn’t going to vanish instantly, but she was ready to entertain the possibility of being happy again.
Kevin straggled in after she’d given John Pearson his second serving of French toast. His eyes were bleary, and he bore the look of a man suffering from a lethal hangover. “Your pit bull tried to corner me in the hallway.”
“He doesn’t like you.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
She realized something was missing, but it took her a moment to figure out what it was. His hostility. The anger Kevin had been holding against her finally seemed to have faded.
“Sorry I overslept,” he said. “I told you last night to kick me out of bed if I wasn’t up when you got here.”
Not in a million years. Nothing would make her enter Kevin Tucker’s bedroom, especially now that he was no longer looking at her as if she were his mortal enemy. She tilted her head toward the empty liquor bottles in the trash. “It must have been quite a party last night.”
“They all wanted to talk about the draft, and one topic led to another. I’ll say one thing for that generation, they sure know how to drink.”
“It didn’t affect Mr. Pearson’s appetite.”
He gazed at the French toast that was turning golden brown on the griddle. “I thought you didn’t know how to cook.”
“I phoned Martha Stewart. If people want bacon or sausage, you’ll have to fry it.”
“The Babe thing?”
“And proud of it. You’re also waiting tables.” She shoved the coffeepot at him, then turned the French toast.
He gazed at the coffeepot. “Ten years in the NFL, and this is what it all comes down to.”
Despite his complaints, Kevin was surprised how quickly the next hour passed. He poured coffee, carried food back and forth, entertained the guests, and swiped some of Molly’s pancakes for himself. She was a great cook, and he got sparks out of her by telling her he’d decided he’d let her keep the job.
Seeing those eyes flash felt good. Last night’s confrontation seemed to have lifted some of her depression, and she had a little of the sparkle back that he remembered from Door County. He, on the other hand, had stared at the bedroom ceiling until dawn. Never again would he be able to think about the baby as an abstraction. Last night had given her a name. Sarah.
He blinked and grabbed the coffeepot for another round of refills.
Charlotte Long peeked in to see how Molly was doing and ended up eating two muffins. The sticky buns had gotten a little burned at the corners, but the French toast was good, and Molly didn’t hear any complaints. She’d just downed her own breakfast standing up when Amy appeared.
“Sorry I’m late,” she muttered. “I didn’t get out of here until like eleven last night.”
Molly spotted a fresh hickey on her neck, this one just above her collarbone. She was ashamed to feel another pang of jealousy. “You did a good job. The house already looks better. Why don’t you get started on those dishes?”
Amy wandered over to the sink and began loading the dishwasher. Clips with tiny pink starfish on them held her hair away from her face. She’d outlined, shadowed, and mascaraed her eyes, but either she hadn’t bothered with lipstick or Troy had already eaten it off.
“Your husband’s really cute. I don’t watch football, but even I know who he is. That’s so cool. Troy says he’s like the third-best quarterback in the NFL.”
“First-best. He just needs to control his talent better.”
Amy stretched, hiking her purple top above her navel and forcing her shorts even lower on her hipbones. “I heard you just got married, too. Isn’t it great?”
“A dream come true,” Molly said dryly. Apparently Amy didn’t read People.
“We’ve been married like three and a half months.”
Just about the same as Kevin and Molly. Except Kevin and Molly weren’t having any trouble keeping their hands off each other.
Amy resumed loading the dishwasher. “Everybody said we were too young—I’m nineteen and Troy’s twenty—but we couldn’t wait any longer. Me and Troy are Christians. We don’t believe in sex before marriage.”
“So now you’re making up for lost time?”
“It’s so cool.” Amy grinned, and Molly smiled back.
“It might be better if you didn’t try to make up for any more of that lost time during working hours.”
Amy rinsed out a mixing bowl. “I guess. It’s just so hard.”
“The slave driver will probably be checking up on you today, so why don’t you get the bedrooms done as soon as you’re finished here?”
“Yeah…” She sighed. “If you see Troy outside, will you like tell him I love him and everything?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s immature. My sister says I should be a little more standoffish or he’ll take me for granted.”
Molly remembered the adoration on Troy’s youthful face. “I don’t think you have to worry about that yet.”
Kevin had disappeared by the time Molly was done in the kitchen, probably tending to his hangover. She made iced tea, then phoned Phoebe to tell her where she was. Her sister’s confusion didn’t surprise her, but she couldn’t explain how Kevin had blackmailed her into going with him without revealing too much about her physical and emotional condition. Instead, she just said that Kevin needed some help and she’d wanted to get away from the city. Phoebe started clucking just like Celia the Hen, and Molly got off the phone as quickly as possible.
She was tired by the time she finished baking Aunt Judith’s citrus Bundt cake for afternoon tea, but she couldn’t resist sprucing up the parlor a little. As she filled a cut-glass bowl with potpourri, Roo began barking. She went outside to investigate and saw a woman emerge from a dusty burgundy Lexus and turn to gaze out over the Common. Molly wondered if Kevin had checked the computer to see if any new guests were arriving. They needed to get better organized.
Molly took in the woman’s oyster-white tunic, bronze capris, and sculpted sandals. Everything about her was stylish and expensive. She turned, and Moll
y immediately recognized her: Lilly Sherman.
Molly had met a lot of celebrities over the years, so she was seldom awed by famous people, but Lilly Sherman made her feel starstruck. Everything about her radiated glamour. This was a woman accustomed to snarling traffic, and Molly half expected some paparazzi to jump out of the pine trees.
The stylish sunglasses on top of her head held the rich auburn hair that had been her trademark away from her face. Her hair was shorter than it had been in her days as Ginger Hill, but it still had a sexy, tumbled look. Her complexion was pale and porcelain-smooth, her figure voluptuous. Molly thought of all the girls she’d known with eating disorders that had left them cadaverously thin. In earlier times women had aspired toward Lilly’s figure, and they’d probably been better for it.
As Lilly headed up the path toward the house, Molly saw that her eyes were an unusually vibrant shade of green, even more vivid than on television. A faint web of lines fishtailed from the corners, but she looked barely forty. The large diamond on her left hand sparkled as she bent down to greet Roo. It took Molly a few moments to accept the fact that her poodle’s stomach was being rubbed by Lilly Sherman.
“This place is a bitch to get to.” Lilly’s voice had the same husky quality Molly remembered from her days as Ginger Hill, but now it was a shade more sultry.
“It’s a little isolated.”
Lilly straightened and came closer, regarding Molly with the neutral politeness celebrities adopted to keep people at a distance. Then her attention sharpened, and her eyes frosted. “I’m Lilly Sherman. Would you have someone bring in my suitcases?”
Uh-oh. She’d recognized Molly from the People article. This woman wasn’t her friend.
Molly stepped aside as Lilly climbed the steps to the porch. “We’re sort of reorganizing at the moment. Do you happen to have a reservation?”
“I’d hardly come all this way without one. I spoke with Mrs. Long two days ago, and she said you had a room.”
“Yes, we probably do. I’m just not exactly sure where. I’m a big fan, by the way.”
“Thank you.” Her reply was so cool that Molly wished she hadn’t mentioned it.
This Heart Of Mine Page 15
