Summer Beach Reads

by Thayer, Nancy

  Morgan walked around Bella and towered over Natalie. Natalie was still seated, although she’d drawn up from the lounge position and turned sideways to set her feet on the deck, her arms crossed over her chest defensively.

  “Okay.” Morgan spoke with clenched teeth. “Tell me again. Josh told you he’s writing a novel?”

  “Sit down, please, Morgan.” Natalie waved at the end of her chair.

  “Why? Am I going to faint?” Morgan shot back sarcastically.

  “Fine. Stand. It just hurts my neck to look up at you.” Natalie reached her hand out and touched Morgan’s arm.

  Morgan flinched. Stepped back.

  “Morgan,” Natalie said, “I apologize. I made an enormous mistake, letting it out like that. I can’t tell you how terrible I feel.”

  “I can tell you exactly how terrible I feel!” Morgan retorted.

  “Let me explain. It was the night of the painting party.”

  Morgan remembered. She wanted to know all of it. She sank down onto the lounge chair, careful not to touch Natalie. “When you babysat Petey.”

  “Right.” Natalie let it all out in a rush. “Josh came home, only a few minutes before you got back, and he saw the drawing I was doing of Petey, and I suppose that made him want to talk about his own creative work and how worried he was because even though he has an agent who thinks the novel will sell, he won’t ever make as much writing as he will working for Bio-Green.”

  “He told you all that?” Morgan was dumbfounded.

  Earnestly, Natalie said, “He loves you and Petey so much, he feels a tremendous sense of responsibility to protect you both financially, to make enough money to send Petey to college.…”

  “Thanks,” Morgan said curtly. “Thanks so very much for telling me all this private stuff my husband shared, not with me, but with you. You’re really reassuring me about the state of my marriage, you know; you’re really a loyal friend, listening to my husband and keeping what he said secret.”

  Natalie protested, “He asked me—”

  “—to stand right in the middle of our marriage? To go around every single minute of every single day knowing something about my life, my marriage, that I didn’t know? How could you do it, Natalie?”

  Bella interrupted. “Maybe we’re all getting kind of carried away—”

  “Oh, you think?” Morgan was shaking.

  “You didn’t tell me about kissing Slade,” Bella pointed out.

  “Slade is not your husband!” Suddenly Morgan’s anger transformed into a terrible self-knowledge. “What kind of a wife am I?” she asked herself aloud. “What have I done to Josh that he couldn’t confide in me? Why would he tell you, Natalie, and not me? Am I a monster?”

  “No,” Natalie said soothingly. “It’s not like that, Morgan.”

  Morgan buried her face in her hands. She’d plunged down the slide, hit the surface, and now she was hitting bottom, the cold, dark truth of the state of her marriage. Sitting on this expensive furniture on the deck of this magnificent house, she was caught in the murky reality of her marriage, how this house was anything but a home. So this was why Josh never came home at night. So this was why he worked so late in his study. So this was his secret file. She knew how much he loved reading; why hadn’t she ever talked to him about the possibility of his writing? How could she love the man and not be aware of his deepest needs? She was angry with Josh. And she hated herself.

  “I’ve got to be alone.” Morgan stood up. She walked away from the spilled Bellini and the glasses of gleaming yellow liquid, from the two women who sat watching her with tears in their own eyes. She walked into her fabulous house, slid the door shut, and locked it.

  23

  After Morgan stormed into her house, Bella and Natalie stood helplessly while the peach Bellini drizzled down the table onto the deck.

  Bella grabbed her napkin and tried to soak it up.

  “Morgan can hose it off,” Natalie told Bella. “Still, what a mess.”

  Bella added softly, “All kinds of messes.”

  Natalie sank back down on the side of her chair. “I don’t know how I let Josh’s secret out. It was just the heat of the moment.”

  “Maybe it’s best that she knows.” Letting her napkin fall, Bella sat down facing Natalie. “I wouldn’t want my husband keeping a secret like that from me.”

  Natalie flinched. “You think I should have told Morgan right away?”

  “I’m not saying that. I don’t know what I think, actually.” Bella looked miserable, too.

  “I’m sorry about Slade,” Natalie told Bella.

  “It’s hardly your fault. Besides”—Bella opened her hands, as if offering an explanation—“Slade has a sweetness about him, Natalie. Truly.”

  “If he wants to,” Natalie agreed with reservation. “Bella, Slade can act the wounded baby bird if it will get him laid.”

  Bella cringed. “Charming.” Narrowing her eyes at Natalie, she asked, “Did you ever consider that perhaps you’re possessive of your brother? That you go around warning women off him so he won’t choose a woman who will be more important in his life than you?”

  Natalie gawked. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Bella stood her ground. “I know your father left you. Slade is the man in your family now. Slade—”

  “Oh, stop this.” Natalie rolled her eyes. “You think I made Slade come on to Morgan? You think I was behind that seductive Victorian settee whispering, ‘Go, boy, go’?”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “No more disgusting than what you’re saying!” Natalie reached over to take Bella’s hand. “Bella, I would be thrilled if Slade fell in love and married and had someone who was truly his. I’d be over the moon if he had a family. You’ve gotten way off track here. Slade is hardly the man in my life. I scarcely saw him in New York. It was only after I moved into Aunt Eleanor’s that he started staying with me.”

  “So maybe he is interested in me,” Bella said.

  “Maybe he is,” Natalie agreed. She paused, seeming to think her words over. Slowly, she pieced together her thoughts. “Bella, you warned me about Ben. How he’s got a one-track mind, he’s the absentminded professor, he’s consumed by his work.”

  “True.” Bella squeezed Natalie’s hand. “Perhaps Ben will be different with you. I hope so.”

  “I hope so, too. So maybe I’m wrong about Slade, Bella. Maybe he’ll be different with you.”

  “Has he said anything about me?” Bella asked hopefully.

  Natalie thought. “He did, several weeks ago. We were out in the boat. He told me he liked you.”

  “Liked me.”

  “That’s a huge thing for Slade to admit. I’d forgotten that. And it’s true, he’s been around here, helping you all the time.”

  The two women looked at each other. A flash of white caught their eye as a neighbor sailed his boat out onto the lake. Overhead, birds chirped, endlessly cheerful.

  Natalie looked toward the glass door leading into Morgan’s house. “I wish Morgan would come back out.”

  “Bella!” Next door, Bella’s father appeared on the Barnaby deck, waving a newspaper at her. “The paper’s here! The review!”

  “Coming, Dad,” Bella called back. “Want to come, too?” she asked Natalie.

  “You couldn’t keep me away.”

  They went down the deck steps, across Morgan’s lawn, and up the Barnabys’ steps to their deck.

  “Let’s sit inside,” Dennis suggested.

  They all gathered around the kitchen table: Louise, Dennis, Bella, and Natalie listened while Dennis read the review from the Hartford Courant.

  Bella’s, a new art and antiques shop located on Route 202, held its grand opening last Saturday night to a crowded and appreciative coterie of connoisseurs of crafts and creations of all kinds.

  Most impressive were the works of Natalie Reynolds, recently from New York, whose abstracts are dazzling and whose charcoal drawings are worthy of comparison to the
old masters. The furniture, mostly nineteenth-century antiques, pulled the eye with its polish and panache as it sat on luminous Persian carpets, also for sale. The prices, I must warn, are high, but deservedly so.

  Stunning jewelry handmade by Penny Aristides, wife of local surgeon Stellios Aristides, added a contemporary gleam. Perhaps the only puzzling pieces were the ultramodern sculptures by Shauna Webb. Neither attractive nor comprehensible, these were at least small enough to overlook.

  As the Amherst area becomes more raffiné, Bella’s should fill the bill for the discriminating buyer. My only caveat is the location. Route 202, a few miles from Amherst, seems too rural for such a boutique and may be its downfall.

  “Oh.” Bella slumped in her chair. “Rural.”

  “He does end the review on a negative note, Bella,” her father told her, “but the rest of it is pure praise!”

  “Poor Shauna Webb,” Louise mused.

  “Raffiné?” Natalie snorted. “Who even knows what that means?”

  “All the raffiné people know,” Bella groaned. “Whoever they are.”

  “We still have the Daily Hampshire Gazette article.” Louise patted Bella’s hand. “That will come out in the Style section next Sunday.”

  “It’s always more fun to be critical than approving,” Natalie reminded Bella.

  Bella just nodded, considering the consequences of the review.

  “Bella.” Louise squeezed her daughter’s hand. “Let’s have some dinner before we think about this anymore. It’s easy to get discouraged on an empty stomach.”

  “I’m not discouraged, Mother,” Bella said. “I’m not hungry either. I’m just … thinking.”

  Natalie understood exactly where Bella’s mind was. She’d been there many times herself. “I’m going to head home.” She stood, kissed the top of Bella’s head, and said, “Congratulations, Bella. It really is a splendid review.”

  “He certainly liked your work,” Dennis said heartily.

  “Yes, he did. And I’m so grateful to Bella for showing it.” Natalie waved at the three of them gathered around the table and let herself out the sliding glass door.

  “What shall we have for dinner?” Dennis asked. Now that Bella worked at her shop all day, he and Louise were sharing cooking tasks.

  “I made a potato salad earlier,” Louise told him. “Is there enough cold roast chicken left over?”

  Bella spent a moment gazing fondly at her parents, then excused herself. “I think I’ll go for a walk.”

  “Oh, darling, it’s so hot out.”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s cooled down from earlier today.”

  Before they could object, Bella hurried down the hall and out the front door.

  She clipped along down the slate sidewalk bordered with her mother’s flowers, then turned left, toward the main road. Toward rural Route 202. She didn’t want to walk the route around the lake. Too many people knew her and might come out to chat with her about the newspaper review, and right now Bella wanted to be alone with her churning thoughts.

  The verges of the two-lane road were narrow and thick with grass twined with Queen Anne’s lace. A forest, cool and dim, stretched endlessly on either side. In the silence, her mind calmed, and the disturbing revelations of the day settled down, shrinking in significance.

  Slade and Morgan. How could she be surprised?

  The review of Bella’s. Natalie must be thrilled.

  Aaron. San Francisco.

  Her shop. She had wanted to create a place to inspire people to fill their homes with beauty, and perhaps she had achieved a tiny portion of that goal, although a grand opening and one day did not prove anything, really. The review would bring people in. The reviewer had said that the customers were appreciative, so that was good. And it was no small achievement to have introduced Natalie’s art to this part of the world. It helped Bella believe that she had a good eye for art as well as for furniture.

  Aaron hadn’t yet taken the San Francisco job. If he did take it, he wouldn’t start until September. She had a few more weeks to see how her shop went, to test her creative judgment, before she made a decision about staying or moving. Her talent in life was beginning to come clear to her, like a ship arriving through the parting mist. She loved Aaron. She was infatuated with Slade.

  But most of all, she cherished the spark of possibility burning inside her at the thought of what she, Bella, could do with her life.

  24

  Morgan was a time bomb waiting to explode.

  After she sweetly, sanely, tucked Petey in bed, she stormed around the house beating pillows back into plumpness, folding laundry, doing anything she could to use up some of the manic anger whirling inside her like a tornado building up from a small funnel into a roaring twister.

  Josh had told Natalie he was writing a novel. What else had Josh shared with Natalie?

  At ten o’clock, she heard Josh come in. She waited for him to climb the steps and peek in at Petey as he usually did. Then he walked into their bedroom.

  Morgan was in a nightgown, pretending to read.

  “Hey,” Josh said.

  She intended to be cool about it all, but the sight of him broke her open.

  “Oh, Josh.”

  “What?” Puzzled but wary, Josh perched on the end of the bed.

  “Natalie told me.”

  Josh drew back just slightly, as if she’d punched him. “She told you I’m writing a novel.”

  Morgan crossed her arms over her chest, partly to calm her shaking. “How could you?”

  Josh nodded. “I knew you’d be angry about this. You think I already spend too much time away from home—”

  “Wait. You think I’m upset because you’re writing a novel?”

  Josh almost smiled. “Well, look at you. I’d say you’re upset.”

  “Of course I am—because you didn’t tell me, you told Natalie!” Morgan couldn’t tolerate one more second of his typically male incomprehension. “What kind of husband are you, to share such an intimate, enormous secret with another woman? Are you sleeping with Natalie?”

  Exasperated, Josh groaned, “Oh, for God’s sake, Morgan. Of course I’m not sleeping with Natalie. Don’t be fantastical.”

  “Oh, okay. I won’t ‘be fantastical.’ ” The full blackness of wrath settled on her. “So you’re not sleeping with Natalie, but you’re sharing with her the secret you would share with your wife, if you were truly married.”

  “What?” Josh ran his hands through his hair. “Now you’re just getting overwrought. What does that even mean, ‘truly married’?”

  Morgan said through clenched teeth, “It means faithful. It means choosing each other over everyone else. It means being true to each other in every way.”

  “Oh, babe.” Josh tried to put his arms around her. “Morgan. Come on. I am true to you in every way.”

  She wrenched herself away from his attempted embrace. “You told Natalie you’re writing a novel, and you didn’t tell me!”

  He hung his head. “Okay. I get it. Look, I’m sorry. I apologize, all right? But, listen, it just happened. It just came out. It was when Natalie was babysitting Petey after the painting party you guys had—”

  “The one you didn’t come to.”

  “Okay, fine. Guilty as charged.” Her words had snapped something in Josh. He walked away from the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “Don’t you see, Morgan? I can’t do anything right by you anymore. You’re always pissed off because I’m always working. I knew you’d go ballistic when you found out I’m also trying to write a novel in my spare time—spare time, hell, as if I have any.”

  “Oh, I see!” Morgan stood up, too, facing her husband. “So it’s my fault you conspired with Natalie.”

  “Oh man, give me a break, I didn’t conspire—don’t be so dramatic.”

  “Dramatic!” Morgan could hear how shrill her voice was. She paced around the room, trying to cool herself down, trying to get to the heart of the matter. “Josh,” she said,
quiet now, as if she were calm, “why didn’t you tell me you’re writing a novel?”

  “Because of this!” His voice broke. The firestorm of her anger had crossed over to ignite his own anger, injury, and fear. “Because I knew you would give me holy hell about it. Damn it, Morgan, I work eighteen hours a day. I suck up to Ronald Ruoff every day, every day, ‘yes, sir; of course, sir; you’re right, sir; I’m sorry, sir; I’ll get right on that, sir.’ I take wealthy prospective investors out to lunch and pretend I’m something I’m not, and if you don’t think that makes me feel like a nasty little lizard, think again.”

  “I thought you believed in Bio-Green,” Morgan said.

  “I do. Of course I do. I wouldn’t work for them if I didn’t, I’m not that much of a tool. I do believe in Bio-Green and their goals, but that doesn’t mean it helps me believe in me. I’m thirty-five. I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life. But I also love you and Petey. I’m trying my damnedest to provide for both of you, to be sure Petey and any other children we have get a good college education. I try to spend some time with Petey, I try to be here part of the weekend to take him out on the lake. Jesus, Morgan, I break my neck getting back here. But it’s not good enough for you.”

  “Josh—” How had the argument turned? How had she become the bad one?

  “I want to see if I can write novels well enough to make money, and I think I can. But it takes cojones to try to write. It’s … private, and embarrassing. I could tell Natalie I’m writing a novel because I don’t care what Natalie thinks about me. But it makes all the difference in the world what you think of me.”

  “Josh—” The adrenaline whirling through Morgan made her almost dizzy, stalling her at the height of her outrage. She felt she was being cheated somehow, that Josh was spinning this argument on its head. She could understand the sense of Josh’s words, she could see her husband’s weariness, but she was still right, she was still owed something. If he loved her, Josh needed to be the one to make the first move toward reconciliation.