A Beach Wish

by Shelley Noble

  Zoe could relate. “Well, I say good for you. Where are you applying?”

  “Wherever.” She sighed. “Not that I’m having much success. Most people are looking for someone with experience and I only had one local-ish internship in college.” She shrugged. “I needed to help out at the inn over the summers.”

  Zoe nodded. “So where do you want to be?”

  “Anywhere interesting. I interviewed in Boston a couple of weeks ago.” She named a big marketing firm Zoe was familiar with. “I made it through a couple of rounds.”

  “With a big company like that you might have to start out with an internship.”

  “Yeah, I’m beginning to realize that.”

  “Think you’d ever be interested in moving to New York?”

  “Would I ever. Actually, I was just there.” She shrugged. “Same story. They liked me, just not enough to hire me.”

  This is when Zoe Bascombe, scheduler of travel dates, mover of VIPs, organizer of promo drop dates, looked at her niece, and said, “Why don’t you show me some of your work later. Maybe we can zero in on some appropriate avenues to pursue.”

  “Oh, man, would you? That would be so incredible.”

  “I see you’ve met Noelle.”

  Zoe turned to find Eve standing beside her. “Yep.”

  “Zoe’s going to help me find a job,” Noelle said. “I mean, point me in the right direction.”

  “Just give advice,” Zoe amended. “If it’s okay with you. I’m not even sure I can help.” She got her first good look at her sister. Her sister. Eve looked like she hadn’t slept much.

  Unlike Zoe, who had zonked out as soon as she’d left Chris. She’d gone straight upstairs, turned on the television, and the next thing she knew a Sunday morning church service was flickering on the screen.

  “Fine by me, I’m no help at all. Do you want to have breakfast? Floret said she’d have muffins and real coffee if we just wanted to come straight there, but if you’d rather have something else, we can eat first.”

  “Coffee and muffins work,” Zoe said. “Chris is coming, too, if that’s okay with you. And he never eats breakfast at all.”

  “He’s part of the family. Speaking of whom. Here he comes.”

  Chris stepped out of the elevator and sauntered toward the lobby.

  “How late were you out last night?”

  “The better question is, how early was I back this morning? There is some amazing music in this town.”

  “We have our share,” Eve said.

  “We’re going over to Wind Chime House if you’re up for it,” Zoe said.

  “Wouldn’t miss it. After coffee.”

  Zoe him took by the arm. “They’ll give you coffee there.”

  “Or there are several places on the way,” Eve said.

  Chris slowly turned his head, giving them a deadpan face.

  Zoe smiled.

  Noelle laughed. “Please, please tell me he’s my uncle.”

  Chris flourished one of his most ridiculous bows. Straightened up with a groan, and Eve and Zoe hustled him out the door.

  “Okay, I’m a little slow this morning,” Chris said, edging himself between Zoe and Eve as they walked down Main Street. “But give me the lowdown on Wind Chime. Are there going to be a bunch of old dudes with ponytails wearing bell-bottoms and greeting us with peace signs and a joint?”

  Eve shook her head. “You actually lived with him for how many years?”

  “He grows on you,” Zoe said. “Actually, he’s the best.”

  Chris gave Eve a Cheshire cat smile.

  “I can see that,” Eve said.

  Zoe was incredibly glad that she’d asked Chris to come with them. She and Eve were both so nervous that they could hardly stay contained, so she just gave in to Chris’s antics and before long they turned down the drive to Wind Chime House.

  “Floret and Henry, right?” Chris asked as he jumped to miss a pothole.

  “Yes.” Eve stopped. “Maybe I should give you a brief history before we get there.”

  “Good idea,” said Chris, and turned to give her his full attention.

  “Floret inherited the house from her mother when she was a little girl. It was uninhabited for years until one day she and Henry came to live here, bringing an assorted group of flower children with them. I was raised here by my grandmother and dad, who you met yesterday. And Hannah—well, maybe you won’t have to have the pleasure.”

  “Moly. That bad?”

  “Depends. She raised me and got me started when I wanted to buy the inn, but she’s been carrying on a feud with Floret and Henry for years. We lived here until I was thirteen. It was a great place to grow up, lots of kids, people coming and going, peace, love, happiness. Now it’s just Floret and Henry and David, who’s raising his nephew, Eli, who is in love with Mel. And a few old-timers that come and go.”

  She shook herself. “Then one day there was a shouting match. All the shouting was on my grandmother’s side. No one else ever raised their voices on the commune. She packed us up and we moved into town. She’s always refused to talk about it. No one seems to know why it started. I doubt if they remember at this point. It’s just a habit. But it came to a head a few years ago when I suggested that I wanted to lease their beach for hotel use.”

  “To keep out the nude sunbathers,” Zoe said with a smile.

  “Talking to my kids, huh? They think it’s hysterical that old people would get out on the beach without their clothes. But it was a little off-putting to my guests. Anyway, we had come to an agreement until Hannah got wind of it. The next day she had a backhoe come in with a load of rocks and built ‘the wall’ as the locals call it.”

  “And you all just caved?” asked Chris.

  “Wait until you meet Hannah, and you’ll understand.”

  “Sounds ominous.”

  “And that’s about it, though there’s bound to be more on the horizon.”

  They started walking again and soon came to the house.

  Chris stopped to survey the vista. “Whoa. I’m loving this visual. Is that the border-wall beach over there?”

  “One and the same,” Eve said, and pushed open the gate. It moved more easily than it had the day before, Zoe noticed. The whole fence was standing a little straighter, the new pickets shining like capped teeth in an old mouth.

  “Oh, and there’s Dulcie,” Zoe said as they stepped into the yard, and the goat raced toward them. Chris did a flying leap back through the gate and pushed it shut.

  “And how embarrassing is that?” Chris asked. “And what is that?” He lifted his chin in Dulcie’s direction. Dulcie gave Eve and Zoe a welcoming butt, then zeroed in on Chris.

  “You might as well come in and say your hellos,” Henry called from the porch. “She’s not violent, just a little needy.”

  Chris raised an eyebrow but opened the gate. Dulcie gamboled and butted and pushed Chris the rest of the way into the yard.

  “Needy and obnoxious,” Chris said, and joined the others, Dulcie trotting along by his side.

  “You’ve made a friend,” said Henry as they reached the porch steps.

  “Great,” Chris said. “You’re my favorite goat. Now go away.” He climbed the steps and stuck out his hand. “Chris Bascombe, Zoe’s brother. Oh, and Eve’s, too. Hope you don’t mind me—ignore the pun—butting in.”

  Henry smiled in his all-will-be-well way, and Zoe immediately felt better. And to think she’d thought he was some kind of evil spirit with his familiar just three nights ago in the fog. So much had happened since then.

  “Floret has muffins and coffee out on the porch,” Henry said, ushering them inside.

  Chris caused a bit of a pileup when he stopped in the vestibule. “Wow,” he said. “I get it. Wind chime.”

  Zoe looked around. She hadn’t seen them on her first visit. She’d been too stressed and uncertain to notice her surroundings until she got to the tapestries, but the walls of the vestibule were filled with David Merrick�
��s photographs.

  “You’ll meet the artist later,” Henry said. “He’s around here somewhere.”

  Hopefully not listening to her family history, Zoe thought. It was bound to be shattering. She glanced at Eve, who was as pale as Henry the night of the fog. Zoe gave her a quick smile; she’d been so busy thinking about herself that she hadn’t considered what Eve must be going through.

  Floret waved to them from the archway. She was wearing a long dress, soft and flowing, its pattern of blues and greens and yellows seeming to mix with the ocean and sky behind her. Her hair was loose, almost to her waist, and held back by two nacre clips.

  “Come in, come in,” she said in her high, tinkling voice.

  “Enchanting,” Chris said under his breath, and nudged Zoe and Eve ahead.

  It took some time and choreography to get them all situated around the porch table with muffins and fruit and coffee served in mismatched china.

  “Our history,” Floret explained as she passed the cups around. “Each piece has its own memory.”

  “Like guests at every meal,” said Chris.

  Floret beamed at him. Another kindred spirit.

  Zoe normally would enjoy the interchange. Chris was amazingly adaptable and easily entertained. “A cheap date,” he often told her. “Everything amuses me.”

  But today she was too tense to enjoy his enjoyment. She wanted it over. Whatever new thing she was about to learn. And she knew Eve did, too. She could feel the energy humming through her sister. Her sister.

  Henry passed by the back of her chair, briefly laid his hand on Eve’s shoulder, and Zoe could see her visibly relax.

  They were so strange, these two old hippies. Strange and out of touch and yet in touch with something special. Zoe liked them. But she wished they would just get to it.

  And once they got past their first cups of strong pressed coffee, they did.

  Henry’s voice caught them by surprise, changing from conversational to storyteller without transition.

  “Eve.”

  Eve jumped.

  “Your mother—and Zoe’s . . . and Chris’s here—was a joy. Not your typical groupie, not a groupie at all. Just a young girl who went to a concert and fell in love. And Lee. He was transformed . . . for a while. He brought her back here after his tour. He and Hannah and his sisters had been living here for quite a while. His brother had been killed in the war a few years before and Hannah was desperate to keep Lee from getting called up.

  “He’d always been deep. Talented, but flawed. As are we all, but in Lee’s case, it was like a little hole to darkness that hadn’t been completely closed, nor fully opened to release that darkness completely and be done. So it always dogged him, even that summer when happiness ruled the days.” There was something in his voice that foreshadowed a much sadder story and Zoe braced herself. They all knew how it ended, just not how it got there.

  “Summer was at its zenith, full and fecund . . .”

  “Like now,” Floret added in her dreamy way. “Only . . .”

  “Only in the past,” Henry said.

  “I sometimes get confused,” she told Chris for some reason. “It’s the brownies.”

  Chris nodded. Zoe wondered if he had any idea what Floret was talking about. She sure as heck didn’t.

  Floret chuckled. “You gave me such a start that day, Zoe. At first I thought Jenny had come home. You look so much like her.” She paused. Looked out at the sea. “And she has at last.”

  A chill ran up Zoe’s spine.

  A look passed between Floret and Henry and he continued. “A halcyon summer. Then one day Jenny’s parents came. None of us ever knew how they found her. If Jenny had contacted them. They just appeared one day and took her away.”

  “Just like that?” Eve blurted out. “She just walked away?”

  “So it appeared. But, Eve, no one truly knows what is in someone else’s soul.”

  Eve let out a slow, tortured breath. And Zoe breathed right along with her.

  “It caught us all, especially Lee, by surprise. He was distraught, as you can imagine. To have no warning. With no reason that we could see. We didn’t know about the baby until later. Lee went back on the road, tried to drown his sorrows in drugs and alcohol and music. It nearly killed him.”

  “He didn’t go after her?” Eve asked.

  “He never said. It was Hannah who found out that Jenny was pregnant and she arranged to adopt you, Eve.”

  “Hannah?” Eve shook her head.

  Confusion? Heartbreak? Sadness? Zoe could see it all in her sister’s reaction. Her sister.

  “One day she borrowed a neighbor’s car and drove off. That night she returned with you. Our new little newborn. Everyone here became your family. Your name was Eve. ‘To breathe, to live.’ Jenny named you that. Don’t doubt what you meant to her.”

  Eve broke down. Zoe didn’t bother to hide her own tears. Chris sniffed and blinked and finally pulled out his handkerchief.

  “Then why didn’t you tell me about the letters?”

  Neither Henry nor Floret spoke. They were the only dry-eyed ones in the room. They’d had many years to come to terms with what had happened. But why hadn’t they done anything? Tried to find Jenny? At least told Eve about the letters Jenny had written her?

  “Why?” Eve asked.

  “We didn’t receive any letters until the one she sent several months ago telling us to expect Zoe.”

  Eve fumbled in the pocket of her slacks. “But Jenny says here that she wrote, but I never answered her letters. I never got any.”

  Henry and Floret exchanged looks, but it wasn’t hard for Zoe to see where this was going.

  “Hannah.” Eve stood, nearly knocking over her chair. She started toward the front door but Henry was there before her.

  “Don’t go in anger. You don’t know the whole story.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Oh my God. She threatened you, didn’t she. Didn’t she?”

  “Eve. She always threatens us. It makes no difference. We’ll never change. We just don’t know any more of the story than you. We were just happy to have you with us.”

  Floret had moved beside Henry, and they formed a calming wall between Eve and the door. But it didn’t last.

  “I’ll never forgive her.”

  “Oh, Eve.” Floret stretched out her arms, beseeching like one of those poor children in an alms poster.

  Eve swept past her, ran down the hall and out the front door.

  Henry and Floret both closed their eyes, and Zoe thought they must be praying or sending their strength along with her or whatever old flower children did. Because when they opened them again, peace had filled the room.

  “Storm ahead,” Floret said. And handed the muffin plate to Chris.

  That was an understatement, thought Zoe, until a clap of thunder startled her from her chair. There really was a storm coming.

  “Maybe we’d better—” Chris began.

  “It will pass,” Henry said. At the same time a wall of raindrops assaulted the windows. Progressed like an army of foot soldiers across the roof.

  The front door opened and shut. “Jeez Louise,” said David Merrick from just inside the doorway. “Oh, sorry. Don’t let me interrupt.”

  “Not at all,” Henry said. “Coffee’s still hot.”

  David dripped into the room. He and Chris were introduced, shook hands. Floret handed David a cup and he sat down in Eve’s vacated seat.

  “Did you see Eve?” Zoe asked.

  He shook his head. “Was she here?”

  Zoe nodded.

  He started to stand. “Should I—?”

  “No,” said Henry. “If it has to be done, best that it’s done quickly.”

  “‘That tears shall drown the wind,’” Chris mumbled.

  “Exactly,” said Henry.

  “Aw, crap,” said David, and reached for a muffin.

  Chapter 13

  Silence fe
ll around the table, while the rain pounded about them, and David finished his muffin and started another one.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the storm ended. The sun came out with a vengeance, its heat beating into the room as the air grew heavy with residual humidity.

  “Wow,” Chris said. “Beach weather again.” He stood abruptly. “Thanks for having us. But I think we should be going.”

  Zoe frowned at him. She had a hundred questions, wanted to hear stories about their mother in her younger years, about her first coming to Wind Chime, about her and Lee Gordon, and maybe understand what made her run away. Was it really Jenny’s parents? Had they forced her to go home? The Campbells were really sweet, doted on their grandchildren. Zoe couldn’t imagine them dragging a heartbroken, pregnant Jenny away. Eve was their grandchild, too.

  Maybe they had just been doing what they thought best. But she wanted to know.

  She started to tell Chris to go ahead without her, but Henry stood, too.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he said to Chris. “You and Zoe are part of the family now.”

  Chris nodded gravely. “Thank you. It’s an honor.”

  Everyone turned to looked at Zoe. She stood and realized her legs were shaky. Chris took her elbow. And Henry walked them to the door.

  “Thank you. I’ll . . . I’d . . .”

  “Come back anytime. All will be well.”

  And then somehow they were down the steps and standing in the yard. Chris kept moving her toward the gate.

  “What’s the hurry? Don’t you want to see Wind Chime Beach? The woods when the breeze blows—”

  “Yes,” Chris said, looking behind them. “But right now you look like underdone pastry. You barely touched your coffee and that poor muffin was nothing but crumbs. Not one bite made it to your mouth. And I know for a fact there’s a big cheeseburger and a Coke with your name on it at that diner I saw in town.”

  Zoe’s hand went to her cheek.

  “Yeah,” Chris said. “Shock, or something. I recommend protein and sugar before you pass out and I have to haul you over my shoulder and cart you off to the closest divan.”

  Zoe smiled. He was absolutely right. She’d be lucky if she made it as far as the street. And he used just the right amount of sympathy and silliness to keep her from being offended.