by Luanne Rice
She went to grab the coffeepot, and Nell and Gavin walked out of the store. Nell gave a backward glance, as if she wanted to run back inside and make things right with Peggy. Gavin didn’t have kids of his own, so he deeply enjoyed this chance to deliver such an obvious life lesson.
“See how easy it is?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” she asked, frowning.
“For a ‘secret’ to happen? And come between people?”
“I wasn’t keeping a secret! I just didn’t have time to tell her.”
“Exactly,” Gavin said.
And she seemed to think that over as she started the car and began driving under the train bridge, toward town and the Renwick Inn.
CHAPTER 17
NELL TOOK IT ALL IN, DRIVING GAVIN TO MEET JEFF. She knew exactly what he was saying, making a parallel between Peggy’s hurt feelings now and what Nell had been feeling about Charlie. But was it the same? She knew her own heart, knew that she would have told Peggy as soon as she could.
Had Charlie felt that same way, hardly able to wait to tell Nell about meeting his father and brother? She’d never know, and that hurt more than anything. That’s why she pressed on the gas a little harder, speeding along Route 156, taking McCurdy Road past the country club. Because the person best able to tell her about what she needed to know was right here in town, barely a mile away.
The tall white steeple of the Congregational Church loomed ahead, and she took the turn onto Main Street, hardly noticing the graceful white sea captains’ houses, the art galleries and ice cream shop, the lovely brick library with its curved porch and elegant white columns. Past the art academy, under the highway bridge, past the house and grounds where the Black Hall art colony had originated a century earlier.
Nell turned into the Renwick Inn’s driveway, parked in the shade of a sprawling elm. Last night the scene had seemed enchanted—sitting on the riverbank with a young man who’d looked just like Charlie, seeing the starlight reflected in the river’s smooth surface. The fact that he’d so badly wanted to talk to her, share with her his feelings about Charlie, had made everything all the more powerful.
Today she felt ready for almost anything. She wanted to hear whatever Jeff had to tell them. The Renwick Inn was regularly voted “Connecticut’s Most Romantic Inn” by everyone who visited. Painted classic Black Hall yellow with gleaming black shutters, sparkling windows, screened porches, and a sprawling back wing flanked by rose gardens on either side, it was surrounded by tall, ancient oaks, elms, and maples. Shade fell everywhere, but sunlight shone through the leaves, making it all so summery and bright.
“Should we go inside and ask for him?” Gavin said.
“I don’t see his car,” Nell said, looking at all the vehicles parked along the curve of the wide circular drive. “But he must be staying in one of the cottages—he bought groceries to cook for himself.”
“We could go back and find him ourselves,” Gavin said.
“Sure,” Nell said.
They walked down the gravel path toward the river. Nell scanned up ahead, trying to see his car parked beside one of the small, perfect country cottages. They were set apart from the main inn, and she knew they were usually occupied by guests staying a week or more. That made her feel happy—to think of Jeff here for a while, so they’d really have the chance to get to know each other. She felt a little embarrassed about running off last night, about her jealous thoughts about Charlie and the bass player. She’d be glad if he could put those to rest.
“What kind of car does he drive?” Gavin asked.
“A Ford,” Nell said. “With Tennessee plates.”
“Okay,” Gavin said. “You see it here?”
They walked from cottage to cottage, looking at all the cars. She didn’t see it. Two parking spots were empty—maybe he’d gone out. Just in case, she led Gavin all the way to the end of the path, where it stopped at the river. She looked left and right, to see if Jeff might be sitting on one of the benches.
He wasn’t.
Without a word, they started back toward the inn. Nell found herself picking up the pace. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt anxious. He’d probably just gone for a ride. Or maybe he’d gone back to Hubbard’s Point, to visit Charlie’s grave again. When they got to the main entrance, Gavin held the wide screen door.
They walked up to the reservation desk. A tall, elegant woman was on the telephone; Nell recognized her as Caroline Renwick. Her father had been a famous artist, and somehow, probably because of the painting connection, she and Stevie were friends. When she finished her call, she gave them a friendly smile. Nell didn’t want to waste time introducing herself, but she needn’t have worried. Gavin took over.
“Hi,” he said. “We’re looking for one of your guests. Jeff Quill.”
“Let me check,” Caroline said. She opened a large leather-bound book and began running her finger down a column of names. After a moment, she looked up. “I don’t see him registered here.”
“But he is,” Nell said. “He’s staying in one of the cottages.”
“I don’t think so,” Caroline said. “Those get booked up a year in advance by families who come back every summer. I know pretty much everyone…”
“Maybe he’s using a different last name,” Gavin said.
Caroline raised her eyebrow and gave him a questioning look, but Gavin didn’t seem deterred. “Just check for anyone under the first name Jeffrey, or Jeff, or letter ‘J.’”
Obliging, Caroline tried again. “Nope,” she said. “There’s a John and a Jonathan. No Jeff or Jeffrey. Or letter ‘J.’ Do you have the make of car he drives? We could check that way.”
“Ford,” Gavin said.
“Ah,” Caroline said. “Three guests have Fords. You don’t happen to have the license plate, do you?”
“Yes!” Nell said just as Gavin shook his head. He looked at her with surprise and admiration. She fumbled in her pocket, found the slip of paper she’d written it on while she was tailing him to the A&P yesterday. She read it off, hopes rising.
But Caroline dashed them. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We don’t have that plate listed here. Maybe you misunderstood, and he’s staying across the street, at the Black Hall Inn?”
“No, it was here,” Nell said stubbornly, even as Gavin thanked Caroline and steered her outside to the car. Tears were rising, and she thought she might lose it. How could this be happening? Had Jeff lied to her? Had she dreamed the whole thing?
“Give me that plate number again,” Gavin said as they climbed into her car. She handed him the slip of paper, and started the engine.
He made a phone call. She heard him as she forced herself to keep her eyes on the road. Her mind raced, going over everything about Jeff. The way he’d looked, the things he’d said. She’d been positive he was being straight with her; she’d sensed his sadness about Charlie, his need to connect with her—because, as he’d said, Charlie had talked about her.
“That’s right,” Gavin was saying into the phone. “Tennessee tags.” He repeated the number.
Nell’s chest hurt. Her eyes welled with hot tears, and there was nothing to do to stop them. They pooled and spilled down her cheeks. She felt as if she’d lost Charlie a second time. Not that she thought Jeff was anything like him, but she’d been so happy about the chance to talk to his brother, to hear more about the boy she loved so much. She felt betrayed by a stranger who just happened to be Charlie’s brother.
“Yeah?” Gavin asked, sounding fired up at whatever he was hearing. “You sure?”
Nell glanced at him. He was making notes on the scrap of paper. She heard him say he had a trip to take. Driving along, she swallowed down grief. She made herself concentrate on the road. When Gavin hung up, she waited for him to speak.
“I’m going to track him down for you, Nell,” he said.
“Who was that?” she asked.
“My friend, a cop. You did a good job, getting that license number.”
&nbs
p; “It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“Yeah, it does. It tells us a lot.”
“The car’s Jeff’s,” she said. “But Jeff’s not staying at the Renwick Inn. He lied to me…. We sat there by the river, talking about Charlie, and he looked me in the eyes and lied.”
“The car’s not registered to Jeff,” he said. “It belongs to a corporation down in Nashville.”
“That’s where he’s from.”
“It’s a record company,” Gavin said. “And you know what band’s signed to them?”
Nell shook her head. She didn’t care.
“Cumberland,” Gavin said.
DRAGONFLIES HOVERED OVER the birdbath, wings iridescent in the sun. Sheridan sat reading in a lawn chair under the oak tree, and felt a breeze come up from the beach. It rustled the leaves overhead, cooled the skin on her bare arms. After last night, all the joy she’d felt to be with Gavin, today she felt her old familiar melancholy return.
She heard a car coming up the street and she looked up from her book, hoping it would be the blue car again, but it wasn’t. Early that morning, she’d looked out the kitchen window, seen someone who looked like Charlie driving by. She was losing her mind.
She turned back to her book, Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus. They were love poems, and beautiful. She understood Rilke to mean that separation was part of love, as valid and true as coming together. The whole experience, whether two people were as one or driven apart by circumstance or renunciation or death, was what mattered. Love was bigger than the human heart could understand, or sometimes bear.
Sheridan held the book on her lap, but closed her eyes. Too many words, too much explanation, could get in the way. She had to read in the spaces between lines, to fill in with her own experience. She had lived so long without Gavin. Just as in Rilke’s Sonnet XIII, their parting had introduced her to winter. An endless winter, one she’d never expected to pass—especially after losing Charlie as well.
The breeze blew across her skin, reminding her of last night, the way Gavin had touched her. It had been so long since he had, but it had immediately felt good, wonderful, familiar, as if no time had passed at all, as if there’d never been time or distance between them. Perhaps that was a nighttime state.
Because today, she felt empty again. She didn’t want these feelings; she wanted to reclaim last night’s joy. In bed, it had seemed impossible that they could ever be apart. Today she realized, with bottomless sadness, that separation had become a habit; she couldn’t open herself up to someone else—to him—again. She’d gotten used to the idea of being alone; it suited her, even as she ached to change. But too much loss, too many goodbyes, had frozen her solid.
Earlier that day, she’d looked down the hill, seen a small blue car driving past. She’d looked up just in time to see the driver’s face turned toward her: a young man who’d reminded her, shockingly, of Charlie. She’d jumped up to call to him, but he’d just driven past—maybe even sped up.
Sheridan must have imagined it—not the car and the man, but the resemblance to Charlie. She thought of him every day, all the time. But having Gavin here, knowing he was working on the case, had stirred everything up in deeper ways. Sheridan felt exhausted by the turmoil. She wanted to be the kind of woman who could heal, not by conjuring up visions of her dead son, but by letting love back into her life again. But she wasn’t.
Hearing footsteps on the steps from the beach, she raised her eyes. Gavin came shouldering through the overgrown path, brushing wild bamboo and jasmine out of the way. She stared up at him. He was the same man she’d been with last night, but inside she was different. He couldn’t tell by looking at her—he grinned to see her, and leaned down to kiss her on the lips.
“I missed you,” he said.
She nodded, but she couldn’t say the words. She’d missed him, too, but the feelings were too raw and dangerous to trust.
“Last night…” he said, trailing off as if there weren’t any words to describe it.
“I know,” she said.
His expression changed; something about her tone, her reticence, the emotion she couldn’t keep out of her eyes, had put him on notice that something was wrong.
“Sheridan,” he said.
“We’re not back together,” she said in a low voice, almost too quiet to be heard above the wind in the leaves overhead.
“Yes, we are,” he said, crouching down.
“Gavin, I don’t know what to think,” she said, holding the book. “Last night…it was wonderful in ways I never thought would ever be wonderful again. Just being with you, after so much time…”
“Almost as if we were never apart.”
“But we were,” she said. And what if they were again? How could she bear it, opening herself to all the ups and downs of love, even the best of it? What if she had nothing to give?
“Don’t you believe we’ve learned our lesson?” he asked, taking her hand.
“I’m not sure it’s that simple.”
“But it is,” he said with a stubbornness that reminded her of how he’d always been. And she knew: love was a cycle that didn’t end. She stared into his eyes and remembered the boy he’d been and saw the old man he’d be. She knew she’d love him, as she always had. But the heart had gone out of her.
“It’s too hard,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.
“Is it because of what I said about Charlie last night? Because I wasn’t seeing him exactly the way you were?”
She shook her head. “I know my son,” she said. “You don’t, so you’re trying to get a picture of him. He was rock-steady when it came to certain things…when it came to Nell. You’ll learn that if you find out more about him.”
“So that’s not it,” he said. “It’s us?”
She shrugged. “Or it’s me,” she said. “I’m not who I used to be. There was the me before…and then there’s after.”
He stared at her with piercing eyes, waiting for her to explain.
“After you and I broke up,” she said, “I still believed I could have love. I tried with Randy…and Charlie was born. Having a son like him, well—I had more love than I ever thought possible. That ‘after’—the after you and I broke up—was hard, but I got through it. This one…”
“The ‘after’ Charlie’s death,” Gavin said, and she nodded.
“It’s too hard for me,” she said. “I tried last night. Or, I didn’t even have to try. I just…loved you. But today I feel different.”
“You don’t love me today?”
She stared at him. She did, but she couldn’t tell him, because it would give him too much hope. She knew that love was just as strong when the person wasn’t there, even when you chose not to be together—sometimes it was even more powerful. She didn’t want him to stay here, crouched before her, so she shook her head.
“I don’t believe you,” he said.
“I thought I could try, but I can’t,” she said.
He just stared at her long and hard, without changing expression. She had the feeling he was taking her in, letting her know he was with her no matter what she thought or felt. The sensation affected her down to her bones; she wanted to lean into him, have him hold her, but she couldn’t. She was still frozen.
“I’m going to give you some space,” he said.
“You’re leaving?” she asked, and the thought jolted her.
“Not for long,” he said. “Just for the day.”
“Where are you going?”
“Nashville,” he said. “I’m flying down and back.”
“Why?” she asked.
“A young man came to Hubbard’s Point,” Gavin said. “Nell talked to him. He looks like Charlie, and he says he’s his half-brother Jeff.”
“He looks like Charlie,” she said, shocked, thinking of the man in the blue car.
“Yes, how do you know?” Gavin said. “He hasn’t been here to see you?”
“No. But I think he might have driven by,” she said, suddenly gr
ipped by the thought, trying to picture him, the way he’d looked, the way their eyes had met for a second.
“When?”
“Early today. Why was he here?” Sheridan asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
“You don’t have to do this,” she said, as if the territory had changed, as if her declaration that she couldn’t love him would mean he’d stop investigating Charlie’s death.
“Yes, I do,” he said.
“Because Nell’s your client?”
He shook his head. “No. Because Charlie is your son. And in a way I can’t even explain, that makes him mine, too, Sheridan. I might not be his biological father, but he’s your child, so I love him. I’d protect him if I could. I would have while he lived, and I’m going to do my best, now that he’s dead.”
“Gavin,” she said.
Again, he gave her a steady look. He took her hand, held it for a long time. She stared down at their fingers clasped together. They’d been holding hands in this yard since they were fifteen. He would go away, and he would come back, and one way or another he would go away again. She stared at their hands, and thought of how life broke your heart slowly.
“You’re going to feel better,” he said. “I know you don’t believe it this second, but you will. You’re crashing today because of last night. But I won’t let you, Sheridan, not really. I won’t let you really crash.”
Still staring at their hands, she felt the tears spill over.
“I’ve got you, kid,” he said, his arms coming around her as she sobbed quietly into his shoulder and the breeze made the oak leaves rattle in the tree above them. “Believe it or not, I’ve got you.”
CHAPTER 18
VINCENT DE HAVILLAND ENJOYED THE MANY PERKS OF his law practice; one of his favorites was having access to a G4 jet nearly any time he wanted it. An extremely grateful client, the ex-wife of a billionaire venture capitalist with his own investment firm that happened to be one of the largest stakeholders in the Light Years media conglomerate, made it available just for the asking. One call to the private aircraft hangar at Groton–New London Airport, and the jet was fueled and ready.
