Beach Girls

by Luanne Rice

  “We want them,” Emma said. “Right?”

  “I'm not sure.” Stevie's lips quivered in an almost-smile, wanting to hold on to the childhood she loved so much, feeling it slip away.

  “Yes, you are,” Emma said. “You just don't know it yet.”

  “But how do you know it?”

  “Because it's what happens,” Emma said. “And it makes us appreciate us even more. The beach girls.”

  She was only fifteen. Stevie had no idea of what she meant, or where such a definite statement had come from, or why Emma's eyes looked so electric as she said the words. Sometimes it seemed she had never looked back. The next year she had a different boyfriend, and after that, Jack, and life had gone on from there.

  It's what happens. Walking along, Stevie heard Emma's words. The waves licked her feet as the sun began to set. It made her feel sad, the end of day. She wished that Madeleine had stayed, to watch the full moon rise.

  Because even though Emma wasn't here to see the moonrise anymore, Stevie and Madeleine still were. And so were Jack and Nell. Stevie had hoped that they'd all be able to watch it together.

  Emma would have been with them in spirit.

  Chapter 13

  FULL-MOON NIGHTS WERE ALWAYS celebrated at Hubbard's Point. Families would gather at the beach, or on the rocks, talking quietly while they waited. People with houses on the water had parties. Some people bet on the exact time the moon would start to rise, straight out of the sea.

  If the night was hazy, the mist over the sea would obscure the moon's actual emergence, and it would magically appear up in the sky, bright yellow, after it had cleared the mist.

  But on very clear nights like this, the moon would crown the surface—a copper-colored orb slipping out of one element into another. It would shimmer, then clarify, turn glowing white, and grow smaller as it rose high in the sky, its light trickling onto the surface of the Sound. People would watch it, speechless. The Hubbard's Point full moon was always worth the wait.

  Nell planned to see it with her dad, but then Peggy's mom invited them both to join their group for a picnic first. Nell was so happy when her dad said yes. At six o'clock, way before dark, they walked through the beach roads to Peggy's house. It was an old farmhouse, bigger than most of the beach cottages, across the marsh from the rest of Hubbard's Point.

  “Who's going to be there?” her father asked as they started across the narrow trail through the tall reeds.

  “Peggy, of course. And her brother Billy and sister Annie and stepsister Eliza. They're teenagers. And her mom, who's really nice, and her stepfather, who builds boats. He's nice, too. And her aunt, who's not really her aunt, Tara, and her fiancé, Joe. He's in the FBI!”

  “Wow,” her dad said.

  Nell smiled, happy that she knew so many people here. They got to the old wooden planks, laid across the swampy ground, and Nell held her father's hand to cross. He thought he was helping her, but she was actually helping him. She and Peggy came this way every day.

  “Is anyone else going to be here?” he asked as the house came into sight.

  “Like who?”

  “I don't know,” he said. “Your friend Stevie, maybe?”

  “You told me I couldn't see her!” Nell said, wheeling around. She stared at her father, who seemed to be scanning the crowd of McCabes and O'Tooles gathered around the picnic table in the garden.

  “I didn't want us interrupting her life,” her father said. “But I'm sure she goes out with friends—I just thought she might be here to see the moonrise. That's all.”

  “She's a hermit, Dad,” Nell said, darkly. “She doesn't go out.”

  “Okay, then. Calm down, Nell.”

  Nell glowered at him. They stood just outside the picket fence. Peggy saw them and waved. Nell's father opened the gate, and Nell stared up at him. She loved him so much, but he got everything wrong. Didn't he know how special it was that Stevie had invited them for dinner? She never saw people at all. She had invited them because they were magically connected to her—through Nell's mother and Aunt Madeleine.

  “Hi, Nell, hi, Mr. Kilvert!” Peggy said, running over to meet them.

  “Hi, Peggy,” Nell's father said, walking through the gate.

  Nell just stood staring, unable to move her feet. She watched as Peggy's mother and stepfather started over to greet them. Her father shook their hands, but he kept glancing over at Nell. She felt that aura she sometimes got—anger, frustration, that her mother had died and her aunt was gone and her father didn't get it. She pictured a big black cloud over her head.

  But, because she didn't want to ruin the evening, she shook it off. She smiled stiffly at Peggy and her parents—ignoring her father. Peggy grabbed her hand, pulled her toward the table. Nell no longer felt like being at a party, but she went along anyway.

  JACK KNEW he'd done it again—said the wrong thing to Nell. He thought she'd like being asked about Stevie. Instead, she'd shriveled up before his eyes, looking as if he'd just said the worst thing in the world. More to the point, being honest with himself, Jack knew that his question had relatively little to do with Nell's feelings. It had to do with wanting to know whether Stevie would be at the party.

  Peggy's family was wonderful and welcoming. Her mother, Bay, swept Jack right into the crowd. Bay was about his age, red-haired and freckled, just like Peggy. She was newly married to Dan Connolly, and they were both glowing. Jack met Bay's best friend, Tara O'Toole, and her fiancé, Joe Holmes. The kids came over to say hi—Annie, Eliza, and Billy. Jack recognized Billy from the ladder incident outside Stevie's house. Billy looked scared, but Jack didn't mention anything.

  “Nice to meet you all,” Jack said.

  “You, too,” Tara said. “We love your daughter.”

  “She's something special, that's for sure.”

  “Nell tells us you're an old Hubbard's Point kid,” Bay said.

  “Yes. Our family rented here when I was a teenager. But my life was up home, in Hartford, and I had my license. I didn't really hang around the beach too much.”

  “That explains why we don't know you from back then,” Tara said. “Bay and I are lifers.”

  “My wife was,” Jack said. “I finally left Hartford long enough to meet her here, on the boardwalk.”

  “Nell told us about her. I'm sorry,” Bay said. The others nodded, and Dan said, “We know it's hard.”

  “Thank you.” Jack looked over at Nell, saw her engrossed in conversation with Peggy.

  “What'll you have to drink?” Bay asked, leading Jack to a bar under the trees. He took a beer, and so did Bay.

  “Thanks,” he said. He glanced around the garden, at all the roses and lilies. “You have a beautiful place here.”

  “Thank you. It's been a great place to raise the kids. Tara lives over there”—she pointed at a white house just across the marsh. “I don't know what I'd have done without her. I really am sorry about your wife. . . . I lost my first husband a few years ago.”

  “I'm sorry about that,” Jack said.

  “How is Nell doing?”

  Jack looked over. Nell was doing cartwheels across the yard with Peggy right behind her. As usual, the way she was in public was at total odds with how she seemed alone, at home.

  “Right now, she seems to be having the time of her life,” he said.

  “Sure, in a crowd . . .”

  “When it's just the two of us, it's another story,” Jack said. “She can't sleep—has bad dreams when she gets to sleep at all. I read to her, rub her back, but . . .”

  “But you can't bring back her mother.”

  “Sounds as if you know the deal.”

  Bay nodded. “When Sean died, everyone fell apart. Some more than others—including me. We all went a little crazy.”

  “With grief?”

  “And everything that comes with it. You must know the lovely five stages. . . .”

  “Ah, yes,” Jack said, remembering the bereavement group his boss had convinced him t
o try. The other widowers and widows, the adults who had recently lost parents, and worst of all, the parents who had lost children. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. “I know them well.”

  “I know that it sounds trite, but time does heal all things.”

  “‘This too shall pass,'” Jack said. “That's my personal favorite.”

  He and Bay clinked beer bottles, smiled at each other.

  “I'm sure you know the importance of having support,” she said. When Jack didn't reply, she smiled. “Oh, you're a guy.”

  “Um, yes?”

  “Well, for better or worse, women are programmed to reach out. Our survival instincts include knowing how to pick up the telephone and call each other for help. I did that with Tara—like you wouldn't believe. My husband, Danny, was a widower, and from what I can gather, he never talked to a soul. He could offer me a shoulder, and did . . . but when it came to his own inner demons . . . forget it. He was like the Tin Man when I met him—so frozen and rusty.” Jack watched her eyes fill with tears, and he couldn't help feeling touched. He could see how much she loved him.

  “Did he say ‘Oil can'?” Jack asked.

  Bay laughed, wiping her eyes. “No way. That would have been asking for help! And I was completely wrecked by Sean's death, and none too swift about knowing how to be around him. But eventually we figured it out. We got each other through. . . .”

  “I'm glad.”

  “Do you have friends? Siblings?”

  “A sister,” he said.

  “Really? Was she here with you, way back when?”

  “She was. Madeleine Kilvert.” Saying her name tugged hard at Jack's heart. He watched for recognition in Bay's eyes.

  “I can't remember anyone with that name,” she said.

  “Maddie was really close with my wife, Emma. And they had another friend. Stevie Moore.” If Madeleine's name was a tug, Stevie's name was a downright yank. Jack felt shocked by it.

  “Oh, Stevie. She's amazing,” Bay said. “She's a few years younger than Tara and I, but we always knew of her. And then, when she grew up and began writing those beautiful books . . . all the kids love them.”

  “They love her books, but they give her a bad rap,” Tara said, coming over to join them.

  “Calling her a witch?”

  “Exactly. We're in suburban fantasyland here,” Tara said. “The moms—Bay notwithstanding—tend to be a wee bit suspicious of the perpetually single. I think the whole witch-drama started with someone who can't understand why a wonderful woman like Stevie can't stay married.”

  “Can't?” Bay asked, raising her eyebrows. “That sounds a little judgmental, especially coming from you.”

  Tara chuckled. “From another brazen hussy, she means. Well, those days are over—Joe's making an honest woman out of me, come Christmastime. Anyway, what I meant was, the married beach set looks askance at Stevie for getting divorced and keeping to herself. And the kids pick up on that. When the real truth is, she just hasn't found someone good enough for her, who'll make her happy!”

  “She deserves that,” Jack said.

  “You know her?”

  “Well, a little. She seems great. I just know she likes her privacy.”

  Both women smiled. Was it his imagination, or had they just homed in on him like ospreys on a fish? “She doesn't like it that much,” Tara said.

  “Well, anyway,” Jack said, remembering the last visit, trying to keep his expression neutral. He didn't feel like getting into it with Bay and Tara, but he could almost see the matchmaking wheels turning. “Really,” he said, just so they wouldn't get any ideas, “I think it's better left alone.”

  “You are a guy,” Bay said, sounding fond and indulgent.

  “Isn't he, though?” Tara asked.

  Just then, Dan called over to ask how he liked his burger done. Jack was glad for the chance to get away, join the men at the grill. He went over to find Joe and Dan talking about the Red Sox, and he slipped in easily. The panacea of baseball: balm to his troubled soul.

  The rush was on to feed everyone and make it to the beach before the moon rose. Jack thought of watching the moonrise with these two great couples and all their kids. He'd have Nell, of course, but he'd be missing someone else.

  Emma, of course.

  He'd be missing his wife. He told himself that, and even believed it. He had blocked out any feelings to the contrary. Sometimes he told himself he hadn't been good enough to her. She had become so selfless, those last two years. Her volunteer work at church had transformed her. The priest had touched the deepest part of her soul, turned her into a woman who wanted only to give, never take. What other woman from their comfortable neighborhood would spend time working at Dixon Correctional Institute? Her time at the prison just showed what a fine woman she was. To want to help people through their struggle.

  Don't think about it, Jack told himself. Look at the moon—tell yourself that you miss your wife, your daughter's mother. Remember how you fell in love with her on this beach. That's what you came to Hubbard's Point to remember! Think about that Emma. How much you loved each other . . .

  He told himself those five stages of grief were more than just talk. They were the real thing. He had looked at them as steps in an engineering project to work through: on schedule, in time, and under budget. But they hadn't happened that way. They hadn't gone according to any manageable plan at all. He had crashed through them all, and although he had stopped believing it possible, he seemed to be coming out the other side.

  He knew he was, because he found himself staring east over the marsh, past the beach, to the rocky point. The houses were so far off from here, but he could make out Stevie's above the tree line. Peggy called out that everyone had better hurry—they didn't want to miss the full moon.

  Full moons had always seemed mysterious to Jack. He was an engineer, used to dealing with absolutes. He drew very precise, detailed plans, and bridges, buildings, oil rigs were built to his exact specifications. He liked—and expected—results. He knew that rules of physics were immutable, and he liked them that way.

  As Dan and Bay set out plates of burgers, potato salad, and cole slaw, Jack thought that dinners fell into the category of results. You cooked, you invited people over, you fed them. That worked.

  The moon and the five stages of grief fell into another category entirely: Father Kearsage would have called them “luminous mysteries.” That had been the priest's phrase for what had happened with Emma. Although Jack had been blind with rage at the time, the words had stuck in his mind. Once he found out that Kearsage hadn't made it up but taken it from the writings of a monk in Kentucky, Jack actually liked it. To him, “luminous mysteries” included ocean tides, heartbreak, prison walls, spiritual release, lies and truths, falling in love, moving to Scotland.

  Stevie was in there, somehow. Her painting, the way she'd looked in that white robe, the black bird she was raising with bugs from her garden, the kindness she had shown Nell—and him, the feeling he'd had, those early mornings two weeks back when he'd watched her swim. Picturing her with clear, dark water pouring off her naked body, he had a shining thought: I don't want to move to Scotland.

  How could he get out of it?

  Luminous mysteries, he thought. A poetic name for a real struggle. He had signed a contract, made his plans. But he could change them—he knew he could. As he ate dinner with his daughter and new friends, he listened and talked, laughed at a few jokes, eventually joined the procession through the marsh and across the seawall to the beach.

  They assembled, friends and family, along the tide line. They gazed east at the placid Sound, waiting with an abundance of faith. That's what it took, Jack thought. Nothing less than faith, to get through the day, the summer, the moonrise. Faith that he'd made the right decision about Scotland. Doubtfully, he glanced down at Nell.

  Mysteries of life. Nell snuggled beside him on the sand, and he put his arm around her. His daughter made his top-three list of lumino
us mysteries, right up there with the full moon.

  And Stevie Moore.

  Chapter 14

  THE CASTLE WAS INCREDIBLE AT THE MOST ordinary of times: on a sunny April morning, say, or on one of November's dull gray afternoons. But on nights of celestial doings, when the midsummer moon was set to rise and anticipation was running high, the castle was nothing less than enchanted.

  Stevie drove up the hill. The night was warm, scented with honeysuckle and pine. Parking her car, she started toward her aunt's cottage, but turned when she heard her name called from the castle. Her aunt was in the tower, waving. Stevie grabbed a flashlight from her glove compartment and started up.

  The castle had fallen upon hard times, but its grandeur was unmistakable. Oak beams, heavy leaded windows, stone floors. Stevie had come here as a child, when Aunt Aida had first married Van. She remembered feeling so lucky to be able to play in an actual castle. She felt that same way tonight, and wished she could bring Nell here to see it.

  The tower stairs wound around and around; the stone passageway was oppressively dark and musty, and she startled bats as she passed. When she reached the top, she walked out onto a carved balustrade to meet her aunt. The fresh air felt good, and the view across treetops to the river mouth and Sound was magnificent.

  “Where's Henry?” she asked.

  “He went to Newport, hoping to see Doreen,” Aunt Aida said.

  “Didn't he call first?”

  “I think he's given up on that. He's just planning to present himself at her door and see what happens.”

  “Brave man.”

  “With all the action he's seen at sea and in battle, I don't think he's ever been as afraid as he is right now, at the idea of losing Doreen. The worst of it is, he brought it on himself, and he knows it.”

  Stevie nodded. She knew that feeling. Driven by her own needs and fears, she'd been the architect of plenty of unhappiness—for herself and for others. She had felt torn earlier. On the one hand, she had wanted to stay at the Point, hoping that she'd run into Nell and Jack. On the other, she was afraid of making things worse.