Whisper Beach

by Shelley Noble

  She hung up to see a grinning Suze, who handed her a glass, spilling a few drops on the coffee table as she did.

  Van took the glass and wiped up the drops with the efficiency that had made her successful.

  “It’s like nothing changed,” Suze said, oblivious to the spill and cleanup. “The same pastel walls. Same white gauze curtains. This same saggy chair.”

  “Don’t forget the new air-conditioning,” Van said. It was the first thing she’d noticed when they’d entered. Well, the first thing after Harold.

  “Thank heavens for that. I wasn’t relishing the idea of sleeping au naturel and sweating under an open window. And she still has those god-awful shades on the windows.”

  “What shades? I don’t recall seeing any in my room.”

  “Because yours isn’t on the side of the house with the fire escape. Don’t you remember? She put them up after the boys climbed the fire escape and saw Dana naked. She screamed so loud the neighbors called the police.”

  “I think it was Gigi who screamed. They were sharing a room that night.”

  “Well, that would make more sense.” Suze looked over the plate of hors d’oeuvres. “Dana probably basked in the attention.”

  “Probably. They were a little put out.”

  “The cops or the neighbors?”

  “The cops.”

  “You have to admit it was pretty funny.”

  “I remember,” Van said. But she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be beguiled into reminiscences. Not about Gigi, Suze, or Dana, especially not Dana.

  “The next day Dorie went out and got those ugly beige shades. After she let us have it for causing a scene.”

  “We didn’t cause a scene. It was Gigi.”

  “Some things never change. Poor thing—she was always such a wuss.”

  Van rolled her eyes. “I know. She was sweet. I always thought she was too wishy-washy, but she came through when I needed her.”

  “Or maybe she just didn’t have the guts to say no to you.”

  Van thought about it. “I didn’t ask for the money. Gigi offered it. I didn’t want to take it at first, but she insisted. So I did.” Van had gratefully accepted it. For all the good it did either of them.

  “Push that plate of crab puffs over here, will you?” Suze said. “With all the drama at the pub, I hardly got a chance to eat anything but a couple of miniquiches. Both at the same time. So gauche. Not that that crowd would notice. They were lined up three deep at the bar.”

  “Hmm.” Van reached for her glass of wine. What she really wanted was a big glass of water. She drank, but not often and not much. Tonight, though, she was tempted to break her own rules and enjoy a glass or two.

  She could feel the past tugging at her memory. She fought it. There had been fun times. But most of her teenage years, especially after her mother was killed, was one long desperate attempt to stay housed and clothed and fed. What she remembered most was hard work, grief, and anger.

  Best not to go back even in conversation. She put down the wineglass.

  “What, don’t you like cabernet?”

  “Sure, I just— Like you said, I’m a stingy drinker.”

  Suze looked concerned and a little uncomfortable.

  Van didn’t want to go there, but she knew she had better set things straight. “Don’t worry, I’m not my father. I can drink without falling down and yelling profanities and letting people— I’m just so busy I rarely have time to enjoy good wine.”

  “Van, it’s okay. You don’t need to talk about that stuff. I told Dorie it might be rough on you to come back. She didn’t understand. It hurt her that you left without a word.

  “At first we all thought you ran away, which it turns out you did, but no one knew why. Gigi never told. Then when you didn’t come back or let anyone know where you were, Dorie was afraid something had happened to you.”

  It had. “You set her straight though, right?”

  Suze closed her eyes, opened them. “Eventually, but at first I didn’t know any more than she did. But after you called me . . . well, I did call her once I knew you’d be all right. I didn’t tell her anything, just that you were okay and that you didn’t want anyone to know where you were. That’s all, I swear. But I think she deserves to know why you left. She took good care of you, of all of us. And it really hurt her that you didn’t come to her with whatever was hurting you.”

  Van leaned back on the couch and closed her eyes, opened them. “I’ve made a good life for myself. I own a successful business, and I’m thinking about opening another branch. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to be reminded of where I came from.”

  She put out her hand to stop Suze from saying anything. “And yes, I remember. We had some good times. Some really good times. But I had some that were just awful. And it’s impossible to remember one without the other.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dredge it all up.”

  “Don’t be. You know more about me than most people.” Strange, since they’d never been that good friends. Which maybe had made it easier for Van to seek Suze out when she’d been completely down and out and close to death.

  “And I . . .” Van shrugged. She didn’t know how to say what she felt. To thank Suze for not judging her. Or if she had judged her, for keeping it to herself and helping her anyway.

  “Don’t say it. Have a crab puff.” Suze shoved the rose-edged plate toward her.

  “Thanks, but I’m not really hungry.”

  Suze wiggled the plate at her. “You need sustenance. I have a feeling you are going to get a barrage of questions from Dorie.”

  Van took a crab puff. “She still has the same plates.”

  “Amazing. I break a plate or cup at least once a week. I must have gone through five sets of dishes since I started working.”

  “Because you’ve become the absentminded professor.”

  Suze laughed, spewing out bits of quiche.

  “Absentminded and basically a slob, obviously.” She grabbed a paper napkin and brushed off the front of her shirt and pants, wadded up the napkin, and tossed it on the far edge of the coffee table.

  Van smoothed it out and stuck it under one of the tins.

  “Unlike some people I know.”

  “I like things neat.”

  “Which is why you’re so good at what you do. I’m just the opposite. If I had the money, I’d hire you to organize my life. Especially when I’m so totally stressed about the grant money. Makes me even more absentminded and sloppy.”

  “You need money?”

  “Van, I live on a professor’s salary. Do you know what untenured professors make?”

  Van shook her head.

  “Peanuts. But enough about my grantless state, my bad habits, and your good ones. Eat up. Because one of us is going to have to tell Dorie that Harold has gone off—again.”

  Van shrugged, considered. “I bet she knows.”

  “Like I said—clairvoyant.”

  “No way. Though I wouldn’t put it past her to orchestrate his departure.”

  Suze chewed her quiche, her face registering a comical mix of innocence and surprise. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  Van groaned. “This better not turn into The Big Chill Jersey Shore Edition.” There was still time to follow Harold’s example and run. Maybe Suze would like to go with her.

  Chapter 4

  VAN ACCEPTED A SECOND HALF GLASS OF WINE. IT WASN’T that she was afraid of becoming an alcoholic. It was just she didn’t like being out of control. She’d done that once with disastrous consequences.

  Already she could feel her control slipping, not from the wine but from just being back in Whisper Beach. She’d been crazy to think she’d never have to confront her past or her past relationships. Even when she decided to come to the funeral, she thought she could get in and out without too much discomfort. But she’d been wrong on both counts.

  She hadn’t cut her ties as she’d thought these last twelve years
. They were just as strong; maybe they’d grown stronger while she’d been ignoring them.

  Van heard the front door open, squeak on its hinges, a sound that was still so familiar that it caught her off guard. For a second, she was eighteen again, and Dorie didn’t have those lines of age and worry on her face.

  Suze did a backbend over the chair arm until she could see Dorie. “We’ve red, white, and white zin. And we helped ourselves to some of the funeral food. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “We’ll pay you back,” Van said without even thinking.

  Dorie snorted. “You think I can’t afford to replace a few measly crab puffs? Eat up, girls, then we’ll send out for some real food. And not from the Blue Crab, either.”

  She looked over her shoulder as if she heard something. But there was nothing— or more accurately—no one there.

  Suze cleared her throat. “Uh, we saw Harold when we got here.”

  Dorie nodded.

  “He was . . .” Suze shot an agonized look at Van.

  “Carrying suitcases,” Van finished.

  “Oh?”

  “You knew he’d be gone, didn’t you?”

  Dorie came into the room. “Suspected. That man’s like clockwork. You almost get a decent chunk of time out of him and he gets the wanderlust.”

  Harold had always been a philanderer. Van would have kicked him to the curb years ago if she’d been married to him. The Listers had kids, but Van had met only two of them and that had been years ago.

  “Picked a hell of a time to run off, though. Now I gotta find somebody or -bodies to help me close up for the winter.” Dorie gave them an over-the-top innocent look.

  Van frowned at her. Suze might still be here to help, but Van would be long gone when it came time to close the restaurant. She might be able to spare a weekend here or there.

  Suze unfolded herself from the chair and stood. “What’ll it be? White zinfandel?”

  “Sure, that’s good.”

  While Suze went to get the wine from the kitchen, Dorie sat down in the other chair facing Van and reached for a cube of cheese. “So where do you want to begin?” She finished with an expression that Van recognized all too well. As teenagers they had quailed beneath that look. Well, everyone except Harold, who would just slap her on the butt, call her babe, and get the hell away.

  Van didn’t think she’d be able to escape so easily. “How about with Clay Daly’s death? How did he die and what’s going to happen to Gigi and the kids? She has a couple, right?”

  Dorie nodded distractedly as she looked over the remains of their snack. She finally decided on a mini egg roll and popped the whole thing in her mouth, wrinkled her nose. “I’m thinking Italian. How long are you staying?”

  Taken aback by the abrupt change of subject, Van said, “At least through tomorrow. I promised Gigi to come see her in the morning—maybe a week. If that’s okay.”

  Dorie’s eyes flew heavenward. “All right then. Since Gigi will try to color it pink, I’ll give you the real facts. She and Clay were one of the families on the bay that got flooded out when Sandy hit.” She raised her voice. “Hey, Suze, look in the cabinet next to the coffeemaker and bring those take-out menus.”

  “So the Reader’s Digest version is, they got flooded, they screwed up the FEMA papers, cause Mr. I-Don’t-Need–No-Help Daly tried to do everything himself.

  “They moved in with Gigi’s mother and father. But Clay got it in his head looters were going to steal everything from the house and moved into the RV in the driveway. If you ask me, Clay had just gotten enough of Amelia.

  “Then he lost his job ’cause the damn machine shop where he worked closed up and never reopened. Then his unemployment ran out, and he started acting crazy. Sitting out front with a shotgun at night. Hammering and sawing like he was going to rebuild the house himself, which he couldn’t do because, besides the fact that it had been condemned for being structurally unsound, it was growing killer black mold.

  “Last week, he climbed up on the roof, God knows why. Roof gave way and he fell and broke his neck. You know the rest.”

  Suze came back with a glass and corkscrew in one hand, the bottle of white zin in the other, and a stack of menus wedged under her chin. As she put the bottle and glass down, the menus slid out from under her chin and cascaded for the most part to the coffee table.

  “Damn.” She leaned over to retrieve the ones that were on the floor while Van cleaned off the ones that had landed in the artichoke dip.

  Conversation was put on hold while Dorie and Suze flipped through the take-out menus, settled on a local Italian place, then spent the next few minutes deciding what to order. Van didn’t join in; she’d eaten a couple of crab puffs, and a piece of cheese, and her second glass of wine sat untouched on the coffee table. None of it was sitting well in her stomach.

  “And what about Gigi? Does she have a job?”

  “Did,” Dorie said. “Suze, hand me your phone so I can call the take-out place.”

  Suze handed her the phone.

  “Worked at Gifford’s Furniture. Stopped though when she got pregnant. Another one of Mr. No-Wife-of-Mine-Is-Gonna-Work Daly’s pronouncements.

  “I swear, I think the men in this town were dropped down by some unfriendly alien space ship just to make stupid decisions.”

  Suze barked out a laugh. Even Van smiled. She had to admit, it felt good to be here with Dorie; she never pulled her punches and had an opinion—most of them totally un-PC—about everything.

  Dorie called their food order in and spent a couple of minutes commiserating over the demise of Clay Daly with whoever was at the other end of the conversation. Then she turned off the phone and gave Van her full attention.

  “So does she have a plan?” Van asked.

  “Who?”

  “Gigi.”

  “Ha. Has that girl ever had a plan?”

  Once, thought Van. Once she’d wanted to go to nursing school. But she’d given Van her college savings so she could get away. And even though Van had paid Gigi back and more, she must have given up on the idea by the time it was all repaid.

  Van sat still on the couch as the familiar tendrils of hurt wrapped around her throat. She tried to breathe it away. It was stupid to react like this. It wasn’t her fault that Gigi hadn’t gone to college, or that she’d married a man who sounded like a Neanderthal.

  Was it?

  “Who paid for the funeral?”

  “Nate and Amelia; they paid for everything.”

  “Catering, too?”

  “They’ll pay me back, someday. So enough about Gigi. What I want to know about is you.”

  Van shrugged. “I’m doing great. I own my own business. A lifestyle management service. It started out as a glorified cleaning service. Something I learned working at the hotel and the restaurant all those summers.”

  “Ha,” Suze said. “It developed into much more than a cleaning service. It’s a total organization service for rich Manhattanites. Apartment living the Van Moran way. She takes your messes, your schedules, your laundry, your bratty children and makes them run smoothly. Down to recommending a nanny.

  “She’s been featured in the New York Times and New York magazine.”

  Van held up her hands. “Thanks for the endorsement. I should hire you to do advertising, but I don’t think Dorie is interested in the daily grind of it all.”

  “I am, I am,” protested Dorie. “But first I have a question.”

  Van knew immediately that it wasn’t going to be about her business. She reached for her wineglass with an unsteady hand. “What do you want to know?”

  Dorie pulled the magnum of zinfandel over and filled her glass to the brim. “Why don’t you start with why you left and where you went? I can’t believe this was all because you and Joe Enthorpe had a lovers’ spat.”

  Even though Van had expected Joe’s name to come up sooner or later, hearing it out loud was a shock, and she bobbled her wineglass. Put it down.

  “I
t wasn’t Joe’s fault.” Not exactly. The fact that he’d turned into one more disappointment in a life of disappointments had driven her over the edge. He was the last person she had totally trusted. And he’d betrayed her.

  “Or was it because while you two were broke up, he and Dana had a little fling? Not that he ever cared a whit for the likes of her.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Gigi told me.”

  Van was appalled to feel tears spring to her eyes. She was thirty years old, and a teenage crush could bring her to tears? She looked away, trying to pull herself together.

  She saw a white tissue appear in front of her nose. Recognized Dottie’s Aren’t You Something red polish.

  “Because if it was that, I have two . . .” Dorie counted on her fingers. “Three words for you. Get. Over. It.”

  “It wasn’t,” Van said, and sniffed. “Nobody carries a torch for a high school sweetheart for all this time.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “It’s what happened after . . . the spat.”

  Van was aware of Suze’s arrested attention. Dorie leaned forward. Here it was. Dorie deserved an explanation. And now that it was time, Van looked forward to getting it all out. Sort of. She took a breath. Just start. She had no doubt the rest of the story would pour out. It had been bottled up long enough.

  “I got pregnant.”

  Suze looked down at her wineglass.

  Dorie narrowed her eyes. “And for that you left town and were never heard from again until today?”

  “Um, Dorie?” Suze said.

  Dorie waved her away. “Don’t you think that’s a little melodramatic? Even for an Irish girl? Joe woulda done right by you. You know he would.”

  Van and Suze exchanged looks. “It didn’t matter. I lost the baby.”

  “Lost or . . . ?” Dorie left the end of the question unasked, but Van knew what she was saying.

  “I miscarried. Ask Suze.”

  Suze nodded confirmation.

  Dorie turned on Suze. “You knew about this and didn’t call me? Of all the—”

  “I couldn’t. I had my hands full at the time. I nearly called.” She stopped to give Van an apologetic look. “Van almost died. She waited so long before she called that by the time I drove to Manhattan and got her to the hospital, she’d nearly bled to death.”