Allie bunched up the handkerchief in her hand and lifted her small chin resolutely. She looked him firmly in the eye.
“Adam, something went on, up there in Nakamura’s office, between you and Zach. Something that made you back off the way you did. Is that what you want to talk to me about?”
“That’s right, Allie.” Adam was quiet for a moment as the counterman arrived with their coffee and set it down together with a little pitcher of cream on the Formica tabletop. Adam handed him some dollar bills and the man understood they wanted to be left alone.
“You see, Allie, I know something about Zach that no one else in that room knew—except Zach himself, of course.” Adam poured a bit of cream into his coffee and stirred it with a spoon. He looked thoughtfully into the cup, as though he might find some guidance there as to how to proceed. Still staring into the cup, still swirling the coffee slowly, he said, “It’s a story that goes back a number of years, and I guess I just hadn’t connected it with this whole project. But something Zach said made me remember, and then I understood the whole thing.”
“You mean you understood his opposition to the project?”
“That’s right. I not only understood why he was fighting it, I understood why he would spend any amount of money and any amount of time and energy to kill it. I knew there was no point in trying to stop him.” Adam snorted. “I realized this was a battle Zach Eliot was going to win.” Adam laid the spoon down on the tabletop abruptly. “I saw I was going to lose this one.” His lips compressed tightly against his teeth, and then, with a small, rueful laugh and a shake of his head, he added, “A half a million, down the drain!”
Allie’s tears had stopped. She only stared at Adam, waiting for him to continue.
“I didn’t catch on,” Adam continued, “until Zach said something about ‘not stirring up those waters.’”
“What he said was, ‘You’re going to leave the waters of Cape Cod Bay in peace.’ ” Allie remembered exactly.
“That’s it,” Adam said, picking up his spoon and stirring his coffee again, staring into the cup. “That’s when I realized what’s going on.”
Allie felt a cold breath of dread pass over her as she saw the somber expression on Adam’s face. “What is it, Adam? What happened to Zach?”
“It’s a terribly tragic story, Allie.” He raised his eyes to hers, seeing there the pain and the growing anxiety. “Believe me, sweetie, if I’d had any idea of what was happening between you and Zach, I would have seen to it that you knew, but I just never realized. I never had a clue that Zach was even in the picture.”
He reached across the table and stroked the damp bangs away from Allie’s forehead and ran his hand in a comforting gesture down the side of her cheek. Allie’s eyes were fixed on him intently.
“I never knew Zach Eliot well,” he began, “but my family had been renting that house up on the beach from the Eliots ever since I was in college, so I guess we weren’t exactly strangers. He’s younger than I am, by about ten, maybe twelve years, so we didn’t have much contact back then.
“I guess eventually he went off to school, had a couple of the usual wild years—all the Eliot boys seem to have done that—and then settled down to being a respectable adult. That also seems to be an Eliot characteristic.
“Then I heard that he’d married a girl from one of the old, old Boston families. Elizabeth something. Morrow, or Monroe. Something like that. Very high class. That would have been soon after he got out of college.”
“The girl in the picture,” Allie said, as though to herself, remembering that morning in the darkened living room of Zach’s house.
“What picture?”
“Never mind,” Allie said, shaking her head briefly, not wanting to stop Adam’s story. “Go on.”
“All right. Well, there were also two children. Two little boys.”
“Two?” Allie asked, surprised.
“That’s the way I heard it. Anyway, they lived in Boston, and Zach worked in his family’s investment banking firm. They had offices here in New York, too, so I suppose Zach traveled back and forth a lot. And they had the old Eliot place on the Cape.” Adam paused, knowing this was no time to tease her about her “visit” to that house. “You’ve seen it, of course.”
Allie nodded, her hands circling the saucer of her coffee cup. She hadn’t drunk a drop. Hadn’t even thought of drinking it. “I guess I really was snooping that day. I hate to admit it. I didn’t even admit it to myself, but I guess that’s what I was doing.” She brushed at her bangs. “I guess I wanted to know more about him.”
Adam gazed at her sadly for a moment, realizing how unhappy she was. Then he went on with his story.
“Well, here’s the thing. For generations, that whole family had been into sailing. I mean really big-time sailing. Zach had been sailing since he was a kid. He was world-class, very, very experienced. Won all sorts of trophies. He’d been in all the big races, international competition, the works, with custom-made, high-tech boats. That kind of sailing is only for rich men, very rich men.
“Now, the way I heard it, about seven years ago, maybe eight, he was sailing this new boat he had down the bay to the canal. His wife and kids were with him, and they were going to watch him race this boat in one of those fancy regattas they have up there. The boat was apparently one of those specially designed racing sailboats, so it didn’t have much engine power.
“The weather was okay when they left the harbor, but they were out in the middle of the bay when this terrible squall came up very suddenly. It can happen that way in Cape Cod Bay. These line squalls can develop right out of nowhere.”
Allie’s eyes were growing wider. She dreaded what she was going to hear.
“I don’t know the details,” Adam continued. He fingered his coffee cup, avoiding her face. “The wife and the older boy were apparently swept overboard and drowned. Never found. So their bodies are down there, at the bottom of Cape Cod Bay.” He heard Allie’s gasp, but he still didn’t look up. “The boat was driven aground and was broken up.
“Zach must have been hurt. When the Coast Guard got to him, he was unconscious, and they found the younger child’s body, still lashed to the boat.”
Adam forced himself to look up at Allie. Her eyes were fixed on him, the tears streaming down her face. “Allie, I’m sorry, dear. I wish you had known all this.”
“He never said a word.”
She remembered him that night, sitting in the moonlit window, looking out over the ocean, talking about loved ones lost at sea. Her heart was breaking.
“No, he never talks about it. But just now, up in that office, when he said what he did about the waters of the bay being left in peace, when I saw his eyes, I realized what was in his mind. What was in his heart. I understood why he would never let this project happen. I understood his reasons, and I knew I would not be able to fight him.”
“And he knows that you know what happened.”
“Of course. Everyone around there knows what happened to him and his family. They respect him, and they leave him alone to work it out his own way. He had closed down the family business, and now he runs that little boat rental operation. He seems to get some comfort from it, and the quiet life lets the scars heal in peace. And, of course, no one ever talks about it.”
“Of course. No one up there would ever have said anything to an outsider about it.” Allie remembered the tears in Zach’s eyes. “But Adam, he and I were both keeping things locked up inside ourselves. I never told him, either. About my father. About how he died.” She reached across the table and rested her hand on Adam’s arm. Her eyes were almost pleading with him to understand and to make the pain go away.
“My dear Allie.” Adam laid his hand over hers. His face was full of his affection for this lovely girl. “In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never said a word about your father and how he died. If I hadn’t heard it from your teachers, long ago, I would never have known.” He shook his head, almost dis
believingly. “This is something quite new. These tears, this opening of doors locked up so tightly, so long ago. Something important is happening, Allie.”
Allie was struggling painfully, trying to express what had been inexpressible.
“I’ve been alone so long, and now I don’t want to be alone anymore.” Her voice was strangled in her throat, blocked by her tears. “Look at me, Adam. I can’t stop crying. I haven’t cried since I was a child, and now I can’t stop crying.” She brought her hands to her face, covering her mouth, and then clasped them together, in front of her. “Adam, I’m in love with him. Do you understand, I’m in love with Zach.”
Adam picked up his handkerchief, soaking wet by now, and patted damply at her face. “And now you think he hates you because he saw me walk into your apartment using my own key.”
She nodded her head silently.
Adam smiled fondly at her. “Allie, go home and wash your face. Pack a couple of things, and I’ll have Marcus pick you up at five-thirty. There’s a plane at seven-fifteen tonight. Go to your sailor man tonight and get this all straightened out.”
“Adam.” Allie’s face was a picture of damp despair. “He’ll never understand. You didn’t see the way he looked at me, Adam, when he was leaving. You didn’t hear the way he talked to me.”
Adam continued to smile. “My dear, have I ever steered you wrong? In all these years, have I ever given you anything but the best advice?” Allie shook her head uncertainly. “Now, you listen to your wise old uncle Adam. Be on that plane and go talk to him. And I mean talk to him. Tell him everything!” He patted her hand. “And now,” he said, stuffing the tear-soaked handkerchief into his breast pocket, “I’ve got to get back to my office and get Zach’s original Allie Randall painting crated up and shipped to him. It’ll be a sort of a peace offering.” He got out of the booth, ready to leave.
“A peace offering? He just cost you over half a million dollars.” Allie was sliding out of the booth and Adam took her arm to help her out.
“Well,” he said, as they left the diner, “that’s the way it is in this business. You win a few, you lose a few.” He smiled wickedly as he led her to the car. “Don’t worry, sweetie. I’ll make it up on the next deal.”
Chapter Nineteen
Allie stood in the driveway of the house on the beach and watched the disappearing taillights of the local taxi that had brought her from the Provincetown airport. In the darkness, the shrubbery and trees were glowing silver in the brilliant light of the full moon, the leaves shivering in the breeze that came from the ocean. The edge of chill in the air matched her own chilled and miserable spirit. Seeking the comfort of the quiet house, she walked up the flagstoned walk, past the Cherokee, a dark shadow in the driveway. The door to the house was open, and she remembered Zach’s words that first day. “We don’t lock things up much around here,” he’d said. Maybe not their doors, she thought, only their secrets, only their heart-breaking, soul-wrenching secrets.
Letting the moon illuminate her way, she went from room to room, thinking of her first night here, only a few weeks ago, and of the last night, with Zach, upstairs in the bedroom. How many turns her life had taken in between. As she had on that first night, she trailed her hand softly over the antique pieces, realizing that in these few weeks, she had added memories of her own to their rich history. With difficulty, she restrained the tears that threatened to flow. There had been tears enough in these last two days.
Mournfully, she climbed the stairs to the bedroom, thinking of the last time she’d gone up those stairs, naked, laughing, in Zach’s arms.
In the bedroom, she stood at the window, still open as they had left it, and she lifted her eyes to the moon. Zach had also looked at the moon that night, not so full then as it was now, but bright enough, bright enough to illuminate his handsome face and his wonderful, sensual body. She turned and sat next to the window, where Zach had sat, and rested her head back against the frame, as he had done. She understood now why he had looked out to sea, away from her, hiding his face from her as he spoke of loved ones lost at sea.
If only he had been able to talk to her, to share his suffering with her. But she, too, had been silent, holding her own sorrows close to her, giving him no chance to know the truth. Maybe, if that phone call hadn’t come when it did, maybe if she hadn’t been so ready to run away, in pursuit of her career—
On the floor, her foot touched something, and she looked to see what it was. Placed just where he’d left it was the glass he’d been drinking from that night. But something was missing. The bottle of Jack Daniels should have been there, too, but she saw only the empty glass. That’s odd, she thought. Where was the bottle?
Her eyes scanned the room, every detail clearly visible in the moon’s light. The bed was still in the wildly disheveled state in which they’d left it, the sheet she’d wrapped around herself still lying in a heap on the floor. The pillows were pushed up against the headboard.
Allie stared at the bed. The quilt was gone! The beautiful quilt, with its ridiculous story, was gone. Nothing else had been touched. She left the window and, puzzled, she walked through all the moonlit rooms, upstairs and down. There was no sign that anyone had been there.
She went out onto the deck and looked down from the rail to the beach below, and saw there a lone figure, bathed in the moon’s bright light.
Zach was sitting on the sand, near the water’s edge, looking out over the glittering surface of the ocean, his eyes fixed far beyond the endlessly crashing waves as the tide brought them slowly, inevitably, closer and closer to where he was sitting. His arms were resting on his raised knees, and, from his fingertips, a glass dangled casually. The bottle of whiskey was stuck in the sand at his side, and on the other side, dropped heedlessly in a pile, was the beautiful old quilt.
He didn’t move, except, occasionally, to drink from the glass, lifting it abstractedly to his lips, as he continued to stare out to sea. Allie watched him for perhaps five long minutes, fearful of approaching him, and yet knowing that eventually she must go to him. She dreaded his anger, remembering those last moments in Mr. Nakamura’s office. He had made it as plain as it was possible to make it, he wanted her out of his life.
But she had come here to force open the doors that had been slammed shut between them. She knew now that she was in love with Zach Eliot, and she would not let him lock her out of his life. And, as hard as it would be, she would allow herself to reveal to him her own painful memories, and she would help him to live with his terrible losses.
At last, she gathered her courage around her. She left the dark house and silently made her way down the steep dunes. Her shoes filled with sand and she stepped, unthinking, out of them, leaving them behind her, dropped somewhere, perhaps forever, in the tall, thin dune grass. She crossed the narrow beach and stopped a few feet from where he was sitting. She stood behind him, not knowing what to say, the crashing roar of the waves matching the pounding of the heartbeat in her chest.
“Allie?”
He hadn’t moved. Startled, she took the few remaining steps to where he was and sat down in the sand next to him, drawing her knees up to rest her arms on them.
“How did you know I was here?”
“I always know when you’re near me.”
He didn’t turn his head to her. He must have been there for hours; he was still wearing the dark gray suit and the white shirt. He had pulled off his tie and it was lying, crumpled, still knotted, on top of his shoes, which he’d tossed onto the sand near his feet.
He emptied his glass, drinking it off in one swallow, then picked the bottle out of the sand, unscrewed the top and poured more whiskey into the glass.
“I told Adam to get you the hell out of here!” With a vicious twist, he screwed the top on and jammed the bottle back into the sand.
“I’m not going that easily, Zach. If you want me out of here, you’re going to have to get rid of me yourself.”
It took all Allie’s courage to cha
llenge Zach so directly. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he stalked back to the house, gathered up all her things, and threw them out into the driveway. These last days had taught her that Zach was not the simple, small-town fellow she had thought he was when she first met him. If he wanted her out, he’d damn well get her out. She took a breath and added bravely, “I’m not going to make it easy for you, Zach.”
A minute or two passed, and Zach didn’t respond. He continued to keep his eyes fixed on the horizon. Finally, he spoke.
“Allie, you are one hell of an obstinate woman.”
She couldn’t speak for a moment. Then she said, “I know it, Zach.” Her voice was almost inaudible. “I can’t help it.”
He said nothing in response, and only continued to stare silently out to sea. Allie wished she could explain to him, but she didn’t know how to begin. There was so much to be said, by both of them, and she struggled helplessly with the words that were locked impotently in her throat, in her heart.
And so they sat, for a very long time, without speaking, their eyes fixed on the horizon. The chilling wind began to cut through the thin shirt Allie was wearing, and she clasped her arms across her chest, huddling down against her raised knees. As miserably unhappy as she was, she felt, nevertheless, a comfort that came from sitting close to Zach. She could wait all night, if she must, until, together, they found a way.
Another minute passed. Perhaps two minutes. Allie shivered slightly in the cold. Another silent minute. Then, Zach spoke two words very softly, almost under his breath.
“Damn it!”
He was speaking to himself. He put his glass down in the sand, stripped off his jacket, and turned to lay it protectively across Allie’s quivering shoulders, reaching his arm around her to settle it in place over her. Then he picked up the glass, rested his arms again on his upraised knees, and continued staring, silently, into the moon-filled night.
The warmth of Zach’s body came with his big jacket around her, and Allie took its lapels in her hands and drew it close around her. His unexpected gesture had brought her the first easing of the terrible tension of these last miserable days, and again she felt the burning tears fill her eyes. She breathed deeply, forcing a measure of control over herself. She didn’t want to cry anymore.
Summer on the Cape Page 21
