A Stranger on the Beach

by Michele Campbell

  “Yeah, they reconciled. I don’t know if it will last, though.”

  “Did your father cheat on her?”

  Hannah squinted at him. “What makes you ask that?”

  Aidan cleared his throat and smoothed his features into a better poker face. “It’s the most common reason couples split, isn’t it?” he said.

  “You hit the nail on the head. She claims he cheated. But I know my dad, and he wouldn’t do that. If anyone would cheat, it’s her.”

  “I’m surprised you’d say that about your own mother.”

  “My mom’s not very maternal.”

  “No? She’s not a good mother to you?”

  “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. Sometimes I think I’m not the right daughter for her. I’m not smart or pretty enough. She’s not abusive or anything. She doesn’t say mean things, but she’s always trying to fix me. You know, like Hannah, you should take this class, go on that diet, get a makeover. She constantly buys me clothes that aren’t my style. That kind of thing.”

  “I’m sure she does it out of love.”

  “You might be right. But my aunt Lynn accepts me for who I am. So does my dad, and that feels better, you know?”

  Aidan didn’t like listening to criticism of Caroline. But he couldn’t rush to her defense without giving himself away.

  “What’s your dad like?” he said, changing the subject.

  “He’s awesome. Really kind and loving. He works hard to take care of us. My mom digs the lavish lifestyle. I think he went into finance to support her in the style to which she’s accustomed, you know? He’d probably rather be doing something more worthwhile, but he needs to bring home the bucks for her, so he’s stuck.”

  Poor Hannah had it all wrong. She had no idea what kind of man her father really was. Judging by the stars in her eyes when she spoke of Jason Stark, Aidan had better tread carefully. He couldn’t come out and tell her what he knew, because she’d never accept it. He needed to take a roundabout approach.

  “What about his friends?” he asked.

  “What about them?”

  “Have you met them? Do they seem like decent people?”

  She looked him in the eye. “That’s a weird question. Why are you so interested in my parents? Do you know them, or something?”

  “No, of course not,” Aidan said, flustered. “I’m not interested in them. I’m interested in you.”

  That made her blush and flutter her lashes. “Wow. Thank you. I have to say, I’m kind of surprised. Guys don’t always get me right away. But I really like you, too,” she said.

  Crap. He’d made a serious mistake. He couldn’t have Hannah thinking he was coming on to her, not if he planned to be her stepfather someday. But before he could correct his error, there was announcement that the café was officially closed, and they had to leave.

  “I feel so bad that they canceled the tour on you,” she said, standing up and gathering her things. “The least I can do is show you around. My dorm’s on Roosevelt Quad. It’s like the most happening part of campus, so we should go to my room.” She lowered her voice. “Plus, I know where my roommate keeps her vodka.”

  Should he tell her he didn’t like her like that? He couldn’t correct this awful misimpression without alienating Hannah completely. She’d feel humiliated and drop him. The thing was, he actually did want to see her dorm room, to check whether it was secure. Was she on the ground floor, so that Russian thug could climb in her window? Were there security cameras in the building? A lock on her bedroom door? He could let her think he was interested long enough to get a look. He’d refuse the vodka, of course, and keep things strictly friendly. He didn’t like leading her on, but he had to make sure she was safe. Once his very brief reconnaissance was complete, he’d make an excuse and slip away.

  “Sure, I’d love to see your dorm room,” he said to Hannah. “Lead the way.”

  36

  I walked in to the empty apartment, still shaky from seeing that ugly threat scratched into the paint of my car. DIE BITCH. Would Aidan really hurt me? The signs were beginning to point to yes.

  Jason’s briefcase was gone from the front hall bench, and his raincoat was missing from the coat stand.

  “Hello? Jason?” I called out.

  Silence. I double-locked the door behind me. As afraid as I was to be alone, I was relieved to find the apartment empty. A woman about to phone her lover and get him to implicate himself in a crime didn’t need a suspicious husband breathing down her neck. I had things to do that Jason couldn’t see.

  To make certain he was gone, I went through each room, checking. I even looked in the bathrooms. In the master bath, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and stopped short, startled. I looked haunted, exhausted, with pinched cheeks and shadows under my eyes. If I saw myself from a distance, I would think, That woman is hiding something. You could see the deception in my eyes. Jason was no longer the only party to this marriage who had secrets. Now I was the one retreating to other rooms to take phone calls, lying about where I’d been, sneaking time alone to conduct my shady business. What had happened to me? When did I become this horrible person? Mere weeks ago, Hannah, Jason, and I were a happy family. I slept easy at night. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t tell lies. Then the Russian woman came to the party, and everything changed. In a moment of weakness, I slept with Aidan, and the dominoes began to fall. Now I was as bad as Jason, as bad as the Russian woman. I wanted my old life back. I wanted my family back.

  I wandered into Hannah’s room and sat down on her bed. My little girl had left for college, and I missed her with a terrible, stabbing pain. I toppled over sideways, pressing my face into her pillows, tears flooding my eyes. I was tired, and I was sad. I hugged Hannah’s stuffed puppy dog to my chest and rocked him like a baby. His name was Benji, after the dog in the movie that she loved when she was a little girl. I whispered his name over and over again, kissing his raggedy head. Poor Hannah—she’d wanted a dog so bad, but she was allergic. I should have tried harder, looked at hypoallergenic breeds, taken her in for allergy shots. A pet would have made a difference to a lonely kid like her, but it had seemed like too much bother. Was I a bad mother? I remembered dropping her off at school when she was little, how she’d cling to me, afraid of the mean girls. That exquisite agony of protecting a child from harm, the awful wrench when you had to let them go. I was the one alone now, and I wanted Hannah back. I wanted her little again. I snuggled deeper into her pillows, shifted to pull her down comforter close around me. The smell of the bed brought her back so vividly. That organic perfume she’d mixed up in the shop, with its notes of vanilla and spice. The smell of her peppermint chewing gum, her floral shampoo. I lay there and closed my eyes, sinking into the bed, the coziness of the memories.

  I closed my eyes and gave in to the fatigue.

  * * *

  The sound of a ringing phone woke me. I sat up, groggy and disoriented, confused at finding myself in Hannah’s bed. The ringing was coming from the front hall, where I’d left my bag when I got back from the parking garage. It all came back to me in a rush. Aidan’s threat, scratched into the paint of my car. Coming home to find Jason gone and feeling so relieved. The mess that was my marriage. No wonder I’d given in to sleep. My troubles were beginning to feel overwhelming.

  How long had I been sleeping? The sun slanting through Hannah’s blinds was much lower in the sky. I went to find my phone, and saw it was 2:40. Hours had passed while I hid from my problems. I took the phone with me to the kitchen, where I splashed water on my face and drank thirstily from my hands, then poured a cup of cold coffee from the carafe. I smoothed my hair and sat down at the kitchen table to check my phone. The missed call was from Lynn. I’d never shown up to her house as promised. She’d left a voicemail. I winced as I listened.

  “What the hell, Caroline. You said you’d be here by lunchtime. It’s two thirty, and I’m worried. Are you okay, or are you ditching me? I’m not waiting around any more. I’m gonna go t
alk to my lawyer friend about your situation. Call me when you get this.”

  Lawyer friend? I had no idea who she meant. Lynn was dragging some random lawyer into my conflict with Aidan? No way. I had to stop her. I hit her number.

  “I’m fine,” I said, the second she answered.

  “Where the hell are you? You were supposed to be here hours ago.”

  “I had car trouble.”

  “You couldn’t call and tell me? I was freaking out.”

  “I’m sorry. I came home and fell asleep.”

  “Seriously, Caroline? What’s with the excuses? Are you avoiding me?”

  “I practically passed out in Hannah’s bed. Look, things are complicated here, with Jason. I’m depressed, I’m upset. And it doesn’t help to have you talking to people I don’t know about my personal problems. Don’t do that. Okay?”

  “We need advice. This Aidan guy is nuts, and he’s dangerous.”

  “I don’t want advice from some rando.”

  “It’s my friend Jodi Avergun. She’s a lawyer, and she’s very smart. A criminal lawyer, not divorce like those other names I gave you. She used to be a prosecutor.”

  “No. This is a sensitive situation, Lynn. I want to keep it quiet. If I need your help, I’ll ask. Do you understand? It’s my life.”

  “Better to say it’s your funeral.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “I’m serious. I’m worried about you. But if that’s how you want to play it—”

  “It is. You don’t have my permission to speak to anyone about this. And if you do, I’ll know I can’t trust you, and I’ll stop confiding in you.”

  “All right, fine. But promise you’ll tell me if you’re really in danger.”

  “Of course. I’m not stupid.”

  “That’s debatable.”

  Nobody but Lynn could get away with talking to me like that. Of course, she’d been doing it since we were kids.

  “When are you coming out here then?” she asked.

  “I’m not coming. There’s too much going on in the city. Jason’s got some kind of … thing at work—”

  “You should come. You should check on your house.”

  “My house? Why?”

  “Hurricane Oswald is why. Don’t you watch the weather? Category Four. They’re saying it’s gonna make landfall as far north as Delaware. Usually it hits a lot farther south, and it’s nothing by the time it gets to Long Island. We could get hit bad this time. I’d be worried about your beautiful house if I was you.”

  “I’ve got enough problems without bothering about some storm.”

  “Do you know what I went through, repairing damage on the condos from the last big one? Eighty thousand out of pocket and counting, and my insurance is saying they won’t pay. Board up your windows at least. An ounce of prevention is worth—”

  “Okay, okay, I will. You promise you won’t tell anybody about Aidan.”

  “I said I won’t.”

  “Thank you. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I hung up, glad to be done with her. I loved Lynn, but she could be such a meddler.

  The coffee had cleared away some of the cobwebs. It was around three o’clock. Aidan wouldn’t’ve left for work yet, and I should try to catch him. I couldn’t afford to put this off one more day. I would call his phone, get him to admit to what he’d done, and record the call. Then I’d have proof to bring to the police. Problem solved, right?

  Nothing was ever that easy. My phone lacked the capability to record phone calls without installing a special app. I was the least technically inclined person on the planet, but I told myself I could figure this out. I spent half an hour reading reviews of the various recording apps. Most of them got terrible reviews, with the major complaint being that they actually failed to record calls. Just what I needed—to blow my one shot at getting Aidan to confess with some malfunctioning recording app. On top of that, it turned out that recording phone calls without the other party’s consent was illegal in many states. Great. I’d bring the recording of Aidan’s confession to the police, and wind up getting arrested for illegal wiretapping.

  I tried downloading the best-rated app anyway. But it wouldn’t open on my phone. Typical. I threw up my hands.

  Should I try meeting Aidan in person? I could set the meeting for a public place, where I’d feel safe. I’d confront him about his scary behavior, with my phone in my bag set to record.

  No, too risky.

  I gave up in frustration.

  I wandered back into Hannah’s room, stopping to remake the bed. As I picked up Benji the stuffed pup, nostalgia hit me hard again. Suddenly the need to hear my daughter’s voice was overpowering.

  I dialed Hannah’s number. It rang and rang. Right before it went to voicemail, she picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, sweetheart, it’s Mom. You sound out of breath. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “Yeah, kind of. I’m … I’m with someone.”

  “With who? Your roommate?”

  “Um, no, Mom.”

  She paused. And I understood. My stomach lurched.

  “You’re with a boy?”

  “Yeah, can I call you back?”

  “Yes. But, soon, okay? Promise?”

  “Sure, Mom,” she said, dismissively, and hung up.

  I stared at my phone, feeling stung and surprised at this unexpected turn of events. Not that it should be unexpected. Hannah was eighteen years old and away at college. But somehow, dating had seemed like a remote contingency, something to worry about far off in the future. I could be forgiven for thinking that, since Hannah had never so much as gone to a dance in high school. She went stag to her prom, with a couple of girlfriends who were so not-into-it that they left after an hour and went to the movies. Despite Hannah’s lack of experience with the opposite sex—or maybe because of it—I’d insisted on having those awkward conversations before she left home. Hannah knew about STDs, birth control, staying safe at parties, though she’d blushed through the whole thing, and acted like I was torturing her. She was prepared for the practical aspects of dating. But did she know how to protect her heart?

  The thought of my daughter with a boy worried me. But I took a deep breath and told myself to relax. On the list of things I had to fear right now, Hannah dating barely cracked the top ten.

  37

  That night, the rain finally started.

  It was past seven, and I was alone in the apartment. I heard a thunderclap and went over to the living room window. Looking straight down, I could see drops beginning to hit the pavement, and people walking below opening their umbrellas. Our apartment was on the tenth floor, with a view south of the tops of surrounding buildings and open sky above. Lurid purple clouds hung low and thick in the sky, reflecting the lights of the buildings back at me. It felt claustrophobic, like the clouds might strangle me.

  Jason’s secretary had left for the day, and he wasn’t picking up in the office or on his cell. It felt like the days right after the Russian woman had come to the party. He’d promised that was over for good. Was he lying? I’d tried to track his phone, with no success. Maybe he was onto me, and my clever little trick, and he’d somehow disabled my ability to track. Or maybe I was being paranoid, and his cell reception was poor simply because of the storm. I left him a pathetic voicemail, begging him to come home for dinner tonight. I wanted to sit him down and figure out what was really going on, and whether this reconciliation was a masquerade. But he remained stubbornly out of reach.

  It was hours since I’d interrupted Hannah with that boy and begged her to call me back soon. But so far, nothing. Could she possibly still be with him? Was she avoiding me because she didn’t want to talk about her sex life with her mother? Or was he a psycho, and had he done something to her? I had to stop myself from imagining the worst. The point was, I had too much on my mind to worry about the weather.

  An hour later, the rain pounded against the living room windows so loudly that
I looked out again. On the street below, people were running for shelter, their umbrellas turned inside out in the wind. Only then did I take seriously what Lynn had said, and bother turning on the television.

  The networks were predicting catastrophe. The reporters, in matching jackets, standing in front of swaying trees in the driving rain, in Virginia, along the Chesapeake, at the Jersey shore, talked in urgent voices. Eighty million people in harm’s way. Category Four and strengthening. Landfall projected in mid-Atlantic region by midnight. Mandatory evacuation orders as far north as Cape May. But they always did that, to pump up the ratings. They’d cried wolf so many times that I couldn’t take it seriously.

  Then my next-door neighbor from out at the beach called.

  Francine was a complainer, but I always took her calls. I had no choice. She was the sort of person who had no problem calling the zoning board on you, or even the cops, if she felt you weren’t taking her concerns seriously.

  “Hello?”

  “Caroline, this is your neighbor, Francine Eberhardt.”

  “Hello, Francine. Are you okay out there in this awful weather?”

  “I am not okay. Your burglar alarm has been going off for the past fifteen minutes, and it’s driving me nuts.”

  The alarm going off? But I’d never gotten an alert, and I’d paid the bill in full as soon as Jason put money back into the account.

  “It can’t be mine. The security company didn’t call me,” I said.

  “It’s yours, all right. I should know. I’m right next door, and it’s shrieking.”

  “If it is my house, I apologize. The wind must have set it off,” I said.

  “It wasn’t the wind. Someone broke in. The front door is wide open.”

  The front door had a dead bolt. Unless I’d left the door unlocked, it couldn’t blow open.

  “The lights are on, too,” Francine said.

  A cold fear rippled through me.

  It couldn’t be the housekeeper. She didn’t have a key. Was it possible that, in my frazzled state of mind, I’d left the house without bolting the door or turning off the lights? I wanted very much to believe that, because the alternative was terrifying. The alternative was, somebody broke in. And that somebody was probably Aidan.