“I’m starving,” he said. “Let’s see what my dad has in the kitchen. Breakfast is the one meal of the day I can manage to pull together. Do you like eggs?”
“I like eggs,” she said, slipping on the jeans she’d worn the night before; they had been hastily discarded next to Luke’s bed. He pulled a blue University of Rhode Island sweatshirt from his closet and passed it to her. “When it’s cool outside, the kitchen has a draft.”
She felt mildly self-conscious walking down the stairs holding Luke’s hand as they made their way to Thomas and Bart’s kitchen. In weather like that, there was no doubt they were both hunkered down inside the house, and this made Rachel feel she was doing the beach-house version of the walk of shame. Except there was nothing to be ashamed of. And, really, Thomas and Bart would not exactly be scandalized. There had been more than a few wink-winks along the way that summer. If she was surprised about last night’s turn of events, she was probably the only one.
“There you are!” Fran jumped up from the kitchen table. “I went back to the other house looking for you.”
“Well, you found me,” Rachel said, sitting in one of the Arts and Crafts chairs across from her.
“I’m taking off after lunch,” Fran said.
Rachel wondered if Fran was at all upset about their conversation last night, but she seemed to be in her usual chill mood.
“Coffee, Fran?” Luke said, pouring a mug for Rachel.
Fran said no, she was starting a cleanse. Luke made small talk with her about the Cape Cod yoga retreat, and Rachel was content to just revel in the luxury of looking at him. At one point, he caught her eye and winked, and she felt she could die of happiness.
The doorbell rang, and he excused himself to go answer it.
“Well, well,” said Fran. “Good for you. No wonder you stayed here all summer. You should have mailed me a postcard of him. No further explanation needed!”
Rachel shook her head. She wasn’t about to get into it. Fran wouldn’t understand. She would have somehow managed to sleep with him the first day they met.
“I should get going,” Rachel said.
“Why?”
Why? Because this was making her uncomfortable. She didn’t need a post-hookup brunch with her mother. “Come by the house to see me before you leave.”
Rachel glanced at the kitchen door, wondering what was taking Luke so long. She climbed the stairs back to his room and found her handbag. Looking out the window, she decided to keep his hooded sweatshirt for the walk to the house. He wouldn’t mind. She looked at the disheveled bed and smiled. This is really happening.
Back downstairs, heading to the front hall to find him, she heard his voice before she saw him. He wasn’t alone.
She followed the sound of conversation into the living room. Luke’s back was to her, and so she was greeted by a surprised expression from a very lovely Asian woman. She was around Rachel’s age, with prominent cheekbones, a heart-shaped mouth, and shoulder-length hair styled with neat bangs.
Luke, following the woman’s gaze, turned around.
“Hey,” he said, clearly trying to sound casual. But the set of his jaw and the way he squared his shoulders undermined that completely.
“Hey,” she managed in a way that hopefully conveyed Who the hell is that? Even though she knew. Of course she knew: Vanessa.
Luke stumbled through the awkward introductions, and Rachel’s body went cold at the same time her face turned hot. In all their intense talking the past fifteen hours—not to mention intense fucking—how had he failed to mention that his girlfriend was coming to visit? Okay, maybe the timing was a surprise. But surely he knew it was on the table, so to speak. No wonder he’d been pushing her away all summer. He was still involved with Vanessa!
Rachel almost knocked over an end table on her way to the front door. She ignored Luke’s pleas to wait, stop, hold on a sec. Outside, the rain pelted her hard and she welcomed the punishing needles. She deserved to be soaked, drenched, washed out to sea. She was an idiot! When the Beach Rose Inn finally appeared in the distance, she ran the rest of the way.
Chapter Forty-Two
The days passed quickly, melting into one another. Marin felt herself growing lazy. She didn’t know if it was the pace of life in a beach town or her hormones, but the only thing getting her out of bed some mornings was Kelly’s knock on the door to get her ass up to the studio.
Marin was beginning to realize something. Or, rather, Kelly had realized it and pointed it out to her: Marin actually had some artistic ability. While Kelly worked on some of the more intricate parts of the Beach Rose Inn mosaic—the rose design was complicated because the pieces had to be cut in very deliberate angles to form the blossoms and the leaves and stem—Marin started her own small piece. It was a starfish, inspired by the stained-glass mosaic hanging in the living room. But instead of stained glass, Marin was creating hers entirely from smalti and tiles. And she loved it. It felt natural; she had an absolute vision for how she wanted it to look, and cutting and gluing the pieces to match that mental image was incredibly satisfying.
“I’m not surprised you’ve got a knack for this,” Kelly said. “I told you Amelia’s the one who taught me how to do it, and her son, Nick, was an incredible sketch artist. It’s in your blood.”
Funny, she had always believed being a shrewd attorney was in her blood. And she had worked hard to fulfill that destiny. Not anymore. Nature versus nurture.
“I want to show you how to grout,” Kelly said. Grout was the mortar that filled the space between the pieces, creating an additional bond to the glue.
“Sure. Let’s do it.”
Kelly walked her over to a small hutch and pulled out a few pieces, showing her the difference between a finished grouted mosaic and ones that were not grouted.
“It serves a technical purpose but also a visual one.”
Marin nodded.
“Choosing the right color grout matters. When in doubt, go with your lightest option. You can always make it darker. Once you use black or dark blue, you’re stuck with it.”
Kelly dragged a big bucket to the side of the table, breathing so hard Marin jumped in to help her. “I already mixed this. It’s pretty simple. Just add water until you get the consistency of mayonnaise. Then let it sit for fifteen minutes. But this batch is ready to go. So watch. I’m going to grout one of these small pieces that I have sitting around because I’m not at this stage yet for Amelia’s.”
She pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and told Marin if she ever got grout on her bare hands, she should rinse them in apple cider vinegar.
“My go-to tools. This is a float,” she said, showing her a flat metal base with a handle. “And this is a trowel.” She picked up a metal tool that looked like a cake knife without the serrations.
Kelly dropped a glob of the grout right on top of the mosaic.
“You just smear it all over? Don’t you just go in between the cracks?”
“No—you have to cover the piece and then wipe away the excess. I know it looks strange to do it this way, but trust me.” She smeared the thick gray mixture with the float, working right to left and then top to bottom. “Don’t leave any gaps.”
She started coughing and had to put down the piece to retrieve tissues out of the pocket of her apron. Marin gasped when she saw them spotted with red.
“Kelly! Jesus. You take it easy. We don’t have to do this now.”
Kelly shook her head. “I’m fine. This has to sit for ten minutes anyway.”
They moved to a couch by the window. Marin, shaken, couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“How are things going with your baby daddy? Have you heard from him since he was here?” Kelly said finally.
Marin shook her head. “Well, he might not technically be the father of the baby. And no, I haven’t heard from him.”
“I’m bummed I was away and didn’t get to meet him. Bad timing.”
“Yeah. Timing is everything.” Especial
ly when you get pregnant by accident. “I have a sonogram later today.”
“Marin, have you considered it might be time for you to go back to New York? It seems like you have some pretty important things to take care of. You better not be waiting for me to kick.”
“Kelly! I am not waiting for you to…kick. That’s not it,” Marin said.
Kelly cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “You were all set to leave after the Fourth of July—actually, correction: you weren’t even going to stay the full first week. Then you found out I was sick and suddenly you decided to stay the whole summer.”
Marin shook her head. “It’s partly because I wanted to be supportive of you and Amelia. But it’s not entirely unselfish. I like being here. It’s helping me regroup.”
Kelly nodded. “Regrouping is good. Can’t argue with that. But at some point, you have to get your shit figured out. You have someone else to think about now,” she said, glancing at Marin’s belly.
“I know. I’ll go back to New York when the summer is over.”
“So that’s the mark for you? End of summer?”
“Yes. Labor Day.”
Kelly’s breathing was so strained Marin felt afraid.
“Are you in pain?”
“I don’t feel great, I can tell you that.”
“Is it…like, your chest hurts?”
“Yes, that’s part of it. But it’s more than that. While we were away, Amelia insisted I get checked in Boston. They found bone metastases, which the doctor here didn’t see or didn’t mention. The pain from that is hard to treat.”
“Isn’t there anything they can do?”
“I’m taking the meds. It barely helps and when I take too much it makes me loopy. I hate not thinking clearly. The doctor wants me to go in for radiotherapy next week. So we’ll see.”
Someone knocked at the door.
“Who is it?” Marin called out.
“Paul. Open up. I come bearing gifts.”
Marin unlocked the door for him and he walked in with a plate of brownies.
“What do you know—we were just discussing pain management,” Kelly said.
“What’s my excuse for eating them?” he said, sitting at the table and moving Marin’s mosaic to make room for the plate.
“You have none,” Kelly deadpanned.
Paul took a bite of one and passed it to Marin.
“She can’t eat pot brownies, Paul. She’s pregnant,” Kelly said.
“Pregnant! Mazel tov. Who’s the lucky guy?”
“It’s a long story,” Marin said. She checked the time on her phone. Only two hours until her sonogram appointment. She had to find her mother and get going.
“Good luck!” Kelly called out as she left. Closing the door, Marin heard Paul say, “It’s a little late for luck. She’s already knocked up.”
Marin heard Kelly’s throaty laugh, and she smiled.
Blythe sat outside at the table planting lettuce seeds in trays. She decided to try the varieties Warren had given her. She had considered texting this to him, but she held back. While they’d spoken on the phone a few times since dinner, he must have sensed her reticence because he did not ask her out again. Or maybe he just didn’t feel a connection. Either way, it didn’t bother her and she had to read that as evidence that she simply wasn’t ready to meet anyone new.
As always in times of stress, she turned away from her heart and toward her green thumb. In two weeks, the seeds she was pressing into little beds of soil would sprout up an inch or two, and she would transplant the leaflings to the garden.
Her phone rang, startling her. She jumped up to find it in her bag and saw the incoming number was Kip’s.
“Hello?” she said. She squeezed her fist, her nails digging into her palm. By now, he had to have located the shoe box. The question was whether he’d looked inside before he packed it up and mailed it to her. No matter what Marin said about him knowing all along, seeing proof of an affair in black and white would be difficult for anyone to take. Ever since asking him to mail it to her, she’d second-guessed herself.
“How’s Marin?” he asked.
“She’s hanging in there. Julian came to visit and he’s handling the news of her pregnancy fairly well. I just don’t want her to feel alone in dealing with all this.”
“She’s not alone. She has us.” Us? Of course—parents. Always they would be parents together. “Blythe, I found the shoe box you asked me to unearth from the back of your closet.”
She looked down at her nails, edged with soil. Her heart beat fast.
“Did you send it?”
“No.”
“No?” No as in “not yet”? Or no as in “I looked inside and I’m not facilitating your walk down memory lane with your former lover”?
“I brought it to you in person. I felt we have some loose ends to wrap up. I have some paperwork. We can kill two birds with one stone here.”
In person? Loose ends to wrap up? Kill two birds…what on earth was Kip talking about?
“I’m confused,” she said. “Where are you?”
“I’m here—in Provincetown.”
He’d rented a basement studio apartment; it was the only thing he could find that week at the last minute. The entire town was booked up. It was a few blocks away, just off Franklin. “Can you come meet me now?”
By the time she reached the address, she was sweating. He opened the door and they greeted each other awkwardly, without touching.
She looked around. It was a cute place, with a dark wooden sleigh bed, crisp white walls decorated with framed autographed photos of Broadway stars, and an anachronistic stereo and a rack of CDs. The room wrapped around a small kitchen, where they sat at a wooden table.
“This is cute,” she said, looking at the place. It was difficult to face him, knowing that he knew the truth about Marin. In some ways, this was the first fully honest moment between them in the past thirty years.
It was excruciating.
“How long are you in town for?” she asked.
“I had to book it for a few days—their minimum. But I’m leaving in the morning. I figured I could see Marin for dinner tonight.”
“Right,” she said. She looked him in the eyes, those intelligent, commanding blue eyes that she’d fallen for so many years ago, so many years filled with secrets and lies. “I don’t understand,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “You knew about Marin, so why didn’t you say anything? In all this time…”
“Maybe I should have,” he said. “But I was hurt. Angry. Talking to you about it would have, in some ways, been letting you off the hook. I’m not saying I thought this consciously, but in some sense, not admitting that I knew the truth gave me a secret of my own. It leveled the playing field. That’s petty, I know. That’s the lowest point of my reasoning. I also didn’t say anything because I wanted to protect Marin. I didn’t want her to know. I never wanted to have to confront the issue of whether or not to tell her the truth. As far as I was concerned, she was my daughter.”
Blythe fought back tears. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I never was. If it had been up to me, we probably never would have had a child. I was too selfish. And it would have been the biggest mistake of my life. You saved me from that.”
“Do you mean that?” she said.
“Yes.”
He stood up, the chair startling her with a scraping sound against the floor. Kip walked to the bedroom area and when he returned, he had the shoe box in hand.
She closed her eyes. She had asked for it, but now that it was in front of her, she didn’t want to confront the evidence of her betrayal.
“I know I shouldn’t have looked inside, but I couldn’t help myself.”
“Kip…”
“I read how lonely you were. How miserable you were. And it was my fault.”
The journal. She had been so focused on Nick’s letter, she had forgotten about the journal!
Blythe felt hopeful. Not that sh
e wanted him to blame himself—the affair had been her mistake, her transgression against the marriage. But if he was willing to take some of the blame for his own shortcomings, if he could see the big picture, then there was room for reconciliation. Maybe that was why he had come in person. Yes, that had to be it!
She took his hand. “There is no excuse for what I did. And I wish you’d told me you knew all this time. But please know that as wrong as it was for me to have the affair, it really did force me to either accept you as you were or end the marriage. And I knew I wanted to be with you. I made the decision to end it before I found out I was pregnant.”
“I know,” he said, smiling wistfully. “I read your journal, remember.”
She looked at him, trying to read his expression. Decades of litigating had made him inscrutable. And she had learned from him not to always speak—that there was truth at the end of silence.
Kip spoke slowly, with deliberation. “Blythe, I thought I had put it behind me. Years ago. I figured you had a one-night stand or something equally as insignificant. That’s what I told myself. I made it a nonissue because I didn’t want it to affect my love for Marin. And it never did. But seeing the drawing…that letter. It made it real. Makes him real.”
She closed her eyes. “Kip, I’m so sorry.”
Finally, he said, “We both made mistakes. I hope we can move on from them.”
Her heart soared. It was going to be all right. All of this happened for a reason, leading to that very moment. The marriage was not finished. It was at a point of renewal.
“Yes—yes. Of course we can.”
“I’m happy to hear that,” Kip said, smiling at her. “We need to be on good terms. For our own sake, but especially for Marin.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Rachel never thought she’d miss the days of her unrequited, lusting-from-afar feelings for Luke Duncan. Now, compared to her current hell, they seemed quaint and relatively joyful.
He’d called the house twice, but she refused to talk to him. Here was a guy who spent all summer blowing her off because she was too young for him and therefore couldn’t possibly have her shit together, and then he decides he wants her, sleeps with her, and his ex-girlfriend shows up the next morning? If she even was an ex. Would someone really just show up randomly like that? Did he expect Rachel to believe that? Clearly, he was the one who didn’t have his shit together.
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