A Beach Wish

by Shelley Noble

  David took the jar. Dulcie of course wanted to go with him, and he had to wait at the gate for Floret to come get her before he could run after the departing Zoe.

  He caught up to her at the end of the drive.

  “Go away.”

  “Gladly,” he said. “But Henry is worried about you.”

  “Tell him I’m fine.”

  “And Floret sent this. It’s for your hands.” He thrust the jar toward her.

  She cut him a sideways glance and took the jar. “Tell her—”

  “You’re fine. Yeah. I get it. If you’re going to be defensive, why don’t I just walk quietly by your side and make sure you don’t walk into a bus?”

  She didn’t bother to answer, and two silent blocks later they stopped on the sidewalk in front of the inn. He felt only a ripple of satisfied amusement when she tripped on the first step. He made an automatic grab for her arm but stopped himself just in time to avoid getting reamed for his concern.

  As soon as she was up the stairs, he wiped his hands of the whole situation and decided to treat himself to lunch at Kelly’s. He strode down the street thinking about what he would order. You could tell the days of the week by the diner’s specials. They’d been pretty much the same since he’d returned to Wind Chime House almost eight years ago, dragging along a grieving, sullen, mad-at-the-world ten-year-old.

  Eli had come a long way in those last years, mainly due to Henry’s and Floret’s nurturing. Henry taught him to see the inner workings of the world; Floret wrapped him in a safe haven of unconditional love.

  At the time David hadn’t had a clue about raising a child, or life, for that matter. Actually, he was still pretty much clueless. People made things so complicated.

  He paused at the diner door to glance back at the inn. Zoe Bascombe stood on the porch where he’d left her, looking like part of the décor. Well, if she was still standing there when he finished his lunch, he’d call the desk and have someone take her inside.

  He’d barely walked through the door before Jim Kelly called him over to the counter. He sat down, and Jim leaned over the counter until the edge created a crater across his stomach.

  He lowered his voice. “Just what’s been going on over at your place?”

  “Not much,” David said. “Started repairing the fence this morning.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Actually, I don’t.” No way Jim could have heard about their visit from Zoe Bascombe that morning. And he knew for a fact she hadn’t stopped by the diner on her way back to the hotel, so . . .

  “Well, it must be something. Hannah Gordon’s on my case to sell her the right-of-way back to their house.”

  “Again? Aw, Jim, you know she gets out her tentacles whenever the market is slow. She’ll crawl off when something more interesting comes up for sale.”

  “This time she offered to buy me out completely.”

  A cup of coffee appeared at his elbow. “Thanks, Leeann,” he said to the waitress, who grimaced from behind Jim’s back. He must have been on a tear all morning.

  “What do you mean, completely?”

  “My whole property—house, land, everything. Lock, stock, and barrel. And she offered a pretty decent deal. Why would she do that unless Henry and Floret had done something recently to set her off again?”

  That was a distinct possibility considering what had happened in the past two days.

  “I’ve been seeing Eli and Mel Gordon hanging out a lot together. You don’t think she’s dragged them into the feud? Awful old woman,” Jim said.

  “I don’t know why she would care about those two. We’re all on the same page with that one. They’re too young to settle down; they’re both going to college. In fact, Eli is leaving in a few weeks to do a pre-semester science program.”

  “Good for him. Still and all.” Jim shook his head and snatched the menu out of the hovering Leeann’s hand. “That old witch is gonna get her comeuppance one day.” He handed David the menu.

  “I’ll have the special,” David said.

  Zoe stood on the inn’s porch trying to regroup. An impossible task, since her whole life had just been blown to smithereens. Her father wasn’t her father; it was that . . . that . . . dissolute-looking guitarist.

  And what the hell was she going to do now? She’d fled Wind Chime so fast she’d never even asked Henry and Floret about the ashes. Though, having gotten a good dose of them today, she imagined they already knew why she was here.

  They hadn’t asked her one question. Because her mother had told them what to do. Not trusting in Zoe’s ability to get the job done? She pushed that niggle of doubt away. Her bugaboo, doubt. It hadn’t been just nerves or stage fright or even out-and-out fear that had paralyzed her at her Juilliard audition. It was her doubt in herself.

  She’d had a pampered childhood on Long Island; had never really failed at anything until then, not anything she’d really cared about. She’d never really tried to achieve anything that important before.

  Her one break out of the flight pattern of her life and . . .

  “Ms. Bascombe? Are you all right?”

  Zoe jumped and might have yelped. She was so rattled that she wasn’t sure. All she saw was the valet from the first night standing inches from her.

  “Yes, thank you. Just thinking.”

  He opened the front door for her.

  She stepped into the lobby, right into Eve Gordon. Gordon. Zoe Gordon. She licked incredibly dry lips.

  For the longest time, neither of them moved.

  “Ms. Bascombe?”

  Zoe just looked at her. “We need to talk.”

  “I know,” Eve said serenely. “My mother was Jenny Campbell, who married your father and became Jenny Bascombe. We’re half sisters, aren’t we?”

  “Rather more than that,” Zoe said, and laughed. She clamped her hand over her mouth trying to stop herself. She couldn’t stop. She shook her head.

  Eve frowned, but Zoe was seeing her through a fractured lens of disbelief and hysteria, and it made her sister—her sister—look unreal.

  “I don’t understand. More than half?”

  Zoe gulped in air. She felt so odd, like maybe she was going to faint, though she’d never fainted in her life.

  She nodded, kept nodding. Gulped in air. “More. Sisters. We’re sisters. Whole sisters.”

  Eve stilled, suddenly coming back into focus. “Noelle!”

  The young woman who had mistaken Zoe for Mel stuck her head out of the office door. “Oh.” She grinned. Why was she grinning? Zoe tried to breathe. This meant her father wasn’t her father, for over twenty-five years. . .

  “Can you watch the desk for a while?”

  Noelle had started forward, but she stopped. “Sure. Take your time.” She smiled broadly at Zoe and went back into the office.

  She knew? Did they all know? What was happening here?

  Zoe was being led down the hall. But instead of stopping at the elevator to Zoe’s room, Eve kept going, out the side door, down a short brick path to a cottage surrounded by grass. Zoe thought it was a pretty cottage.

  Eve opened the door. It seemed to Zoe that she was like a dream person. A sleepwalker. A good song title. “Dream Person, Sleepwalker.”

  A glass of water was thrust into her hand, and she drank half of it before putting it down on the coffee table in front of the couch where she was sitting.

  She glanced up at Eve, who was standing over her. She didn’t look like her—their—mother. Must take after her . . . their father, Lee Gordon. No. It just wasn’t possible, there must be a mistake, and yet . . .

  “Did she send you? Is she coming here?”

  God, how did Zoe answer that one? How did you tell someone who hadn’t seen her mother in her entire life that her mother was dead?

  “Never mind. I get it. She doesn’t want to see me.” The blunt resignation in Eve’s statement threatened to break Zoe’s heart, and it was only going to get worse.

  “It
isn’t that.”

  “She doesn’t know you’re here?”

  “Not exactly, but she wanted me to come. She couldn’t come, but she told me to.” She paused, waiting for Eve to ask, but Eve stayed silent.

  It was hard to watch a woman, her sister, old enough to be her mother, so tentatively eager, so dreading the answer. And knowing she was about to destroy that last flame of hope. Trying to feel what Eve must feel, what she was going to feel, the inevitability of it all. Eve’s mother had never seen her perform in the school play, come to her dance recital, track meet, or Sweet Sixteen. Just one graduation ceremony in her daughter’s whole life, and she hadn’t even made herself known.

  Zoe couldn’t begin to understand how that must feel. Her mother—their mother—had come to everything any of her children did.

  But not for Eve. Except for her graduation. Zoe touched her purse where the letter was concealed.

  “She couldn’t come. Not the way you would want.”

  “Why? You came. Is she sick? Too busy?”

  What could Zoe say? She’d been so shocked and in denial herself she didn’t think ahead. Jenny would have.

  “She doesn’t want to see me.”

  “She wanted to.” Zoe had the letter to prove it. But now it was too late. Why hadn’t she stayed in touch with her daughter? Jenny Bascombe would have never let someone tell her what she could do or not do. She always found a way. But not when it came to Eve. And Zoe, for that matter. They’d all been living a lie.

  Cheesy maybe. But it didn’t stop it from hurting.

  “She couldn’t come. My—our—mother is dead.” There, she’d said it. It was a relief, but at that moment the warmth seeped out of the room.

  Eve started, swayed for a perilous moment, while Zoe sat watching, unable to help her. Eve stuck out her hand—Sleepwalker sleepwalking—found the arm of a chair and eased herself down onto the cushion.

  “I’m sorry, Eve.” It was such a stupid thing to say. She hadn’t done anything wrong, she hadn’t even known about Eve, none of them had.

  She meant sorry for everything. For our loss, for the years you didn’t have a mother, and neither of us had a sister. But it wouldn’t make a difference.

  Eve stared into her hands and Zoe stared at her.

  She and Eve didn’t look at all alike. Zoe had always taken after her mother. Eve was taller and larger boned than Jenny. She had lighter hair than Zoe but maybe not Jenny. For as long as Zoe could remember, her mother had dyed her hair. But the immaculate pants and tunic that Eve wore were spot on and though the necklace of silver and turquoise wasn’t Jenny’s trademark pearls, there was no mistaking the traits that Eve and Jenny shared. And Eve was the owner of a high-end inn and spa. Successful, self-assured, organized.

  Their mother would have liked that. It’s what she liked about Zoe. Zoe was all those things, except for the music. Zoe hadn’t made it in music, but she’d certainly done all right in the event-planning business. Her mother had never stopped her from studying music, but she didn’t encourage her either. And now she was beginning to understand that, too.

  Maybe her mother had been right all along.

  Had running the inn been Eve’s first choice for her life? Or had she had other dreams, like Zoe?

  There was so much she wanted to know.

  “I never even got to meet her, to ask her.”

  “She loved you.” Zoe snapped her mouth shut. Why had she blurted that out? It was true, according to the letter, at least.

  She opened her purse, looked inside. The letter was still there, slightly crumpled where she’d shoved it hastily out of sight before leaving the commune.

  “What happened? Was it an accident? Was she sick?”

  “Look, before we get any further, I think you should read this. It was waiting for me at Floret and Henry’s. She’d sent it months ago. She didn’t know she was going to die. Or maybe she suspected. I don’t know. She sent it because—” Because, organized as usual, Jenny wanted to make sure her life was in order even at the very end.

  Zoe thrust the letter at Eve.

  Eve stared at it. The navy and off-white swirls of the chair’s upholstery seemed to move like the air around her, while her eyes stayed riveted on the paper she held by the very edge.

  Then she began to read.

  Zoe watched her, looking for the first sign of recognition, of anger or denial. Something that would make her world make sense again. How could her mother have kept this from her all these years? Did her father know? Either of them? She felt the laugh bubbling up again and quickly drank some more water. Put the glass down with a clunk.

  Eve didn’t seem to notice; her eyes flicked from left to right as she read. She paused every now and then, and Zoe wondered what word had stayed her attention.

  She had a sister.

  She watched Eve as she read. Perfectly still, her face showed no emotion as one tear after the other fell onto the paper. Finally, she looked up.

  “She loved you,” Zoe said. She moved from the couch to sit on the arm of Eve’s chair. Then slid down to squeeze onto the cushion next to her. Her sister.

  “She loved me,” said Eve. And Zoe let her own tears flow. Really, there was no way to stop them.

  Eve read the letter again, then went to make tea, and Zoe went to use her bathroom. She splashed water on her face until her mascara ran, then tried to rub the smudges off with a tissue. It only made it worse.

  She looked around for a bottle of makeup remover, baby oil, even hand lotion. She’d never seen so much stuff packed into such a tiny room.

  It was a hectic, wild mess. Beauty and hair products were balanced on the windowsill, the side of the tub, the back of the toilet. Zoe was amazed that they could get in and out of the room without setting off an avalanche of bottles.

  She found lavender hand cream on the sink by the soap pump. It was good enough; she rubbed a drop under her eyes and blotted it off. She looked better, but the scent set off memories that surprised her. Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly. It was her mother’s favorite scent, and hers. And evidently Eve Gordon’s, too.

  She tossed the tissue into a wicker wastepaper basket already half-filled with papers and cotton balls.

  It made her smile for a second. It was hard to reconcile this bathroom with the minimalist Zen-like feeling of the inn. And it was so not like Jenny Bascombe. Her bathroom had been immaculate at all times. She was the only person Zoe knew who could get out of a tub and not drip water on the floor. At home Zoe had her own huge bathroom. They all did, even her father—her George Bascombe father.

  Did he know about Eve and about Zoe?

  She flushed hot. All these years had he known and only waited for Chris, his real son, to graduate from high school before suing for divorce? Or had it been after that that Jenny, feeling free at last, told him, and . . . ? It was useless to speculate.

  “Are you okay in there?” Eve asked through the door.

  Zoe opened the door. “Yes. I wasn’t snooping or anything, just amazed at how much stuff you have.”

  “It kind of sneaks up on you. Noelle graduated from college, so she’s home while she’s looking for a job. And Mel, she’s our free spirit, and her surroundings reflect that. Most of my toiletries are in the cabinet.”

  Zoe smiled. Why was she not surprised?

  She followed Eve back to the living room where a pottery teapot and two handmade-looking mugs were placed on a wooden tray. Zoe sat while Eve poured the tea. It was the first time she’d been calm enough to notice her surroundings. A combination of pastels and rich, deep jewel tones. A floor-to-ceiling bookcase crammed with books and what looked like souvenirs from many travels. The walls shared space with posters of the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canyon, and tropical islands.

  “Have you been to all these places?”

  Eve glanced up. “None of them. But someday . . .” She handed Zoe one of the mugs. “So, what do we do now?”

  Mel sat on the driftwood log fingering a broken pi
ece of glass someone had placed there. The sea and sand had smoothed the edges like a piece of sea glass. But it wasn’t sea glass. It belonged in the trees behind the beach. Old Beach. Her and Eli’s beach, that suddenly everyone was calling Wind Chime Beach.

  Mel liked that name, if Zoe hadn’t been the one to name it. She wished she’d never come to the inn. It seemed like everything was all messed up because of her asking about the beach. Why did she need to know where it was?

  It was Mel and Eli’s beach. No one else ever came. She bet people didn’t even know about it. She wished he was here. But he said he had to study before he left tomorrow to take some test to get him in the early science program at the university. If he got in, he’d have to leave at the beginning of August. That so sucked.

  At least for her. She knew he wanted to go. She should want him to do what he wanted. But she didn’t. And that was so lame.

  Sometimes Mel didn’t get herself at all. Maybe she was just a selfish bitch like Noelle said. She didn’t get Noelle either, or Harmony. She thought she got Eli. They’d been best friends forever. Now everyone was against them.

  She wished he would take a break from studying and come down, only he didn’t know she was there.

  She’d been sitting for hours, and she was hungry and thirsty. Floret was probably baking something, but she didn’t want to go to the house and interrupt Eli. She’d promised not to. David might be there and not let her in.

  She heard a noise on the path above her and stood up. Maybe Eli—no. It was probably David. He must have seen her cut through the woods. It was like he had special radar to keep her and Eli from being together. She might be able to slip beneath the steps without him seeing her.

  She and Eli had made a little nest there. Our first home, Eli said. But that had been at the beginning of summer. She darted across the sand and practically dove inside.

  It was dark beneath the stairs, like a cocoon. It could sometimes get a little stinky after a storm, but today it was dry. There was an old crate that had washed up that they used as a table, plus a hurricane lamp and a sleeping bag, because really, who wanted to lie in the sand. Especially when you were having sex.