Girls of Summer (Shelter Rock Cove - Book #2)

by Barbara Bretton

  Annie’s own grin was wide and wicked. “Sweeney. It was her finest hour.”

  “Any particular reason for the ‘bite me’?”

  “Good question.” She leaned her elbows on the workbench and considered it. “She seemed a little off-bubble when she came in this morning but nothing noteworthy until Deirdre and Stanley showed up.” She mimed an explosion. “It wasn’t pretty.”

  “She’s got a problem with Ellen’s sister?”

  “Beats me,” said Annie. “Maybe she has a problem with Ellen’s sister’s dog. Our Susan has been a little tough to read lately.”

  He took a good look at her. “You know more than you’re telling me.”

  “I would hope so.”

  “If I remember right, didn’t she get a little bent out of shape when you first met Sam?”

  Annie nodded. “One thing about our Susan: She doesn’t like change.”

  “What’s changed?” Sure, the town was growing by leaps and bounds, but that had been going on for a few years now and they had all managed to reach an accommodation with the rising tide of tourism in sleepy Shelter Rock Cove. “She has the same job, the same husband, the same family, the same friends, the same house.” If anything it sounded to him like she was in a rut.

  “You’ve changed,” Annie said, “and she doesn’t like it.”

  “You’re talking about—” He stopped midstream. He wasn’t going to compromise Ellen any further than he already had.

  Annie, however, was a half-dozen steps ahead of him. “Yep,” she said with a gentle smile, “that’s exactly who I’m talking about.”

  “Susan saw me through three failed marriages. Why should this seem any different to her?”

  “Because it’s different to you.”

  She was right. It was different in every way he could name and some he could only imagine.

  Their eyes met and their shared history of friendship filled the room. He had loved her once, carried her image in his heart like a talisman, the woman against whom all other women had been judged and found wanting. It no longer hurt to remember the missed chances, the failed opportunities, the hundred times when the Good Doctor, the Family Friend, couldn’t find the way to tell her he loved her. Sam Butler hadn’t had that problem, and now they were the proud parents of two beautiful children and had the kind of life Annie had always wanted.

  And it was okay. No more pain. No regrets. He had loved her for most of his adult life, and there was a part of his heart that would always belong to her. But he wasn’t in love with her any longer. The last doubts he might have had were gone.

  When he looked at her beautiful face, he saw Sam’s wife, he saw Sara’s and Kerry’s mother, and he saw a dear friend, but he no longer saw his future.

  Now all he had to do was figure out a way to make Ellen understand.

  Cha pter Twenty

  Patsy Wheeler’s house was located only a few minutes away from the hospital, an easy stop on Ellen’s way to work. “She’s still asleep,” Doug said as he poured her a cup of coffee, “but I could wake her up.”

  “No, no!” Ellen thanked him for the deliciously dark brew. “Sleep is exactly what she needs. I just wanted to make sure things were going well.”

  “So far, so good,” Doug said, stifling a yawn. “She was pretty cranky yesterday. I suppose this bed rest takes a lot of getting used to.”

  “Especially for someone as active as Patsy.” She took another long sip of coffee. “Has the bank worked out a way for her to telecommute?”

  “I have the high-speed cable line ready to go. Now all we need is the okay from corporate headquarters and she’s back in business.”

  “Tell Patsy I stopped by,” she said, placing her empty cup in the sink. “I’ll phone midafternoon to see how she’s doing.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” he protested. “We’re doing fine. Patsy’s mother said she’ll start coming over next week when I go back to work.”

  “Humor me,” she said. “I’m a worrier. If I don’t check up on her, I can’t sleep, and you wouldn’t want a sleepy OB, would you?”

  Doug grinned. “Nope, we wouldn’t want that at all. You’re always welcome here, Dr. Ellen.”

  Sometimes she walked a fine line between being careful and being a flat-out pain in the ass, but that was a risk she was willing to take. So far nobody had complained.

  She drove back to the hospital and completed her morning rounds by ten o’clock. She left messages for Grady, chief of internal medicine, and Sabatino, head of hematology/oncology, and one for a colleague back in New York who specialized in diseases of the digestive tract, then she dialed Cy’s number down in Boca Raton.

  “Honey!” Nancy, her stepmother-once-removed, always sounded delighted to hear from her. “How long has it been? Don’t answer. I know how long it’s been: too long.”

  “Good to hear your voice, too, Nancy. How’s everyone?”

  “We are up to our ears with David’s bar mitzvah. Planning a wedding would be easier.”

  She did some quick math. “David’s bar mitzvah? He won’t be thirteen for another four months.”

  “And we’ll need every single one of them. I’ve had the restaurant booked since Thanksgiving. Cy has been beside himself over this. If he had his way, he’d invite everyone in the Boca phone book.” Nancy’s laugh was as sunny and good-natured as she was. “The way he loves that boy!”

  Who didn’t know how much Cy Markowitz loved his son? The pharmacist knew. The cabana boy at the club. His cardiologist, his barber, and his dry cleaner could probably recite David’s vital statistics from memory. Ellen was almost thirty-five, which was far too old to feel jealous over the existence of a skinny twelve-year-old kid with spotty skin and braces, but the ugly traces of not-quite-sibling rivalry were still there.

  Actually she loved the kid. He was bright and funny and not half as spoiled as he should have been, considering the way his parents doted on him. It wasn’t often you met a twelve-year-old with a highly developed sense of irony. But David saw life through interesting eyes, and Ellen always enjoyed their encounters immensely. It would be nice to be there for his big day, but she felt more like an outsider than family. She and Nancy chatted a few minutes about menus and guest lists. Ellen heard herself promising to clear a spot on her calendar so she could join the family in October.

  “What’s wrong with me?” Nancy said with one of her bubbly laughs. “Here I am bending your ear on your dime when you called to talk to Cy. Hold on, honey. I’ll go get him.”

  She heard the sound of Nancy’s heels on the tiled floor, bits and pieces of conversation, then the squeak of rubber-soled shoes approaching.

  “So how’s the new house?” Cy asked after they had exchanged hellos.

  “Big,” she said with a laugh.

  “The mortgage or the house itself?”

  “Both.”

  “Looks like you’re up there to stay, Elly. I hope you’re doing the right thing.”

  “It’s a great town, Cy. I love being right on the ocean and I love the people.”

  “But it’s not New York.”

  “Neither is Boca,” she pointed out.

  He had the grace to laugh. “There are more native New Yorkers down here than in the five boroughs.”

  He asked about her practice, and she told him a little about Patsy Wheeler’s situation. Cy was a skilled OB-GYN and his insights were always welcome. He mentioned the name of a hospital Web site that had links to a physician’s online forum she might find useful. She typed the URL into her browser window, then bookmarked it while they were talking.

  “I appreciate the help, Cy.”

  “You never were one to ask for anything,” he said. “Good to know experience still counts.”

  She wasn’t exactly sure how to take that comment, but this wasn’t the time to start parsing it for hidden meanings.

  “Sorry to have to cut this short, Elly, but I’m due for my annual stress test in an hour.”

&nb
sp; There was no nice way to ease into it, so she jumped in feet first. “I need a referral, Cy. The person in question is presenting signs of liver cancer, most likely secondary. I suspect a primary pancreatic tumor, but I haven’t done an examination.”

  “Male? Female? Age?”

  “Male,” she said, keeping her tone even. “Over sixty-five.”

  A silence. “Heavy drinker?”

  “Moderate.”

  “Smokes?”

  “Used to.” Maybe still did. She really couldn’t say.

  “I can think of three top-drawer choices. One is up in Palm Springs. The other two are in the New York City area.”

  She copied down the names then took a deep breath. “Anyone in the Boston area?”

  He gave her a name. “He’s good but nowhere near as gifted as the others I’ve mentioned.” Another one of those uncomfortable pauses. “Are we talking about Billy O’Brien?”

  She bristled slightly at his tone of voice, even though he had every right to resent the man his wife had loved. “I spoke with my sister in Cambridge and she says he looks pretty bad.”

  “Then he should definitely see one of the men in New York. We both know the odds are against him if it’s pancreatic, but if there’s anything to work with, they’ll bring their entire arsenal to bear.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “This information will mean a lot to Mary Pat.”

  “And to you?”

  “I’m pleased to be able to help.”

  “That isn’t the same thing.”

  “I’m calling from the office, Cy. I can’t really get into this.”

  “Findlay is the man you want to speak with,” Cy said. “Tell your sister to make sure they don’t try to hand her over to one of his partners. They don’t have the depth of experience James has.”

  It cost him as much to share that information as it had cost her to ask for it. Just the mention of Billy’s name had changed the atmosphere between them from warmly cordial to wary and uncomfortable. Two decades had passed since the day she found out she wasn’t Cy’s daughter and they were still frozen in place, held together by history and habit, each one unwilling to be the first to let go.

  Cy promised to e-mail her if he came up with any more names. She promised to keep him posted on Billy’s illness. They both said how sorry they were that they couldn’t speak longer, but 1) she was at work and 2) he had a stress test scheduled. They couldn’t have planned it any better if they’d tried.

  She hung up the phone, then slumped back in her leather chair. She felt drained, as if all of her emotional energy had seeped out through her shoes when she wasn’t looking. Despite everything Cy Markowitz was still her father in all the ways that counted, and his approval continued to carry a great deal of weight. Probably more than it should, she supposed, but whoever said family dynamics made sense? She used to laugh when Susan launched into a rant about the complex dynamics at work within the Galloway clan. Some of the goings-on sounded downright Machiavellian to her—who would have thought planning Thanksgiving dinner required diplomatic maneuvers that rivaled the SALT talks?—but still she envied Susan every second of aggravation. She had always longed for family, to be surrounded by all of that shared history and love and support.

  When Cy married Nancy, her new stepmother had opened both her heart and her home to her, but Ellen had been too young and still too angry to be able to accept kindness when it came her way. She had hated Cy for not being her father, hated him for bringing Billy O’Brien into her life, for taking away the family she knew and loved and replacing it with a group of strangers. She had cultivated her anger the way Nancy cultivated her roses until it became a habit she couldn’t break even if she wanted to.

  When David was born she thought her heart would split apart. Cy’s joy had spilled over onto everyone; it was wide enough to cover the world. If only she had been old enough, mature enough to understand the things that seemed all too clear to her now. At the point when Cy had stopped believing in miracles, the greatest miracle of all was handed to him. He was fifty-six when love found him for the second time; fifty-seven when their first child was born. Sometimes it hurt to look at him; his joy was that blinding.

  There was nothing she could ever do that would surpass the simple fact of David’s existence. No award she could win, no mountain she could conquer. Once again the illusion of being part of a family didn’t hold up to the light of day.

  But she couldn’t change the past and she refused to spend the rest of her life with her nose pressed up against the metaphorical window, always on the outside looking in. She threw herself into her studies, falling more in love with the practice of medicine with each day that passed. She had a natural gift when it came to dealing with patients. Her diagnostic skills were razor sharp. She heard both text and subtext. She was able to read subtle changes in body language and interpret them correctly and when the result was the birth of a healthy baby to a healthy mother—well, nothing on earth came close. One way or another, it always came down to family. Everything you did (and the way you did it) could all be traced back to someone very much like you. You woke up one morning and looked in the mirror and saw your mother looking back at you just when you thought you had forgotten... or you laughed and heard your aunt, the one with the overplucked eyebrows and bad taste in men. Grandma Bess used to do the Times crossword puzzle in ink same as you do. And what about that auburn hair and the skin that freckled in the shade—everyone knew that was pure O’Brien.

  She wasn’t part of Cy’s family; not the way David was, but she had inherited his love of medicine the same way Deirdre had inherited Billy’s love of music. There were no med school classes to explain this, no asterisk attached to the DNA. Earthly ties required no explanation. They just were, and that was usually more than enough.

  This past week with Deirdre had been trying but wonderful. That big empty house felt like a home to her now with her sister’s harps in the front room, Stanley’s water bowl near the back door and his food dish anywhere he felt like carrying it. And although she wouldn’t admit it to Deirdre for fear of encouraging her, she was glad Stanley the One Dog Wrecking Crew would be staying behind while her sister was up in Bar Harbor.

  She glanced at her watch. It was almost eleven. The odds were that she wouldn’t hear from any of the doctors she had called until after office hours. She debated e-mailing Mary Pat with the names of the doctors Cy had suggested, then decided against it. She pulled out her address book, flipped pages until she found Mary Pat’s number, then dialed. The machine answered and she was ashamed of the sigh of relief that escaped her lips. What did it say about a relationship when you would rather speak to a machine than your own sister?

  “You have reached the Galvin residence. We’re all busy right now, but we hope you’ll leave a message. To leave a message for James, press 1. For Mary Patricia, press 2. For Shawna, press 3. For Sean, press 4. For Caitlin and Duffy, press 5. And if you’re calling for Declan, call back in another two years when he’s old enough to talk.”

  Mary Pat’s outgoing messages tended to sound like the begats in the Bible. She and Deirdre used to mock Mary Pat’s outgoing messages mercilessly when they were younger. Once, when Ellen was interning at Mount Sinai, Deirdre taped a devastating parody on Ellen’s answering machine without her knowledge and only the actions of a very benevolent God saved them all from terminal embarrassment. She had never been so grateful for a power outage in her life. And if that wasn’t a metaphor, she didn’t know what was.

  She pressed 2, then waited for the tone.

  “Mary Pat, this is Ellen. I have some information for you.” She read off the names and phone numbers Cy had given to her, along with his recommendation. “My partner is looking into it and I have calls in with some other sources as well. Call you tonight with some more names.” She hesitated a moment. “Say hi to Billy for me, okay?”

  Years of training, years of practice at dealing with patients and their families, years of knowing exactl
y what to say and when to say it, and when it came to her own family, this was the best she could do.

  Pathetic didn’t begin to cover it.

  * * *

  “Look,” Scott the Mechanic said as they merged onto the Maine Turnpike a little before one in the afternoon, “we still have a long way to go until we get to Bar Harbor. You’re not going to talk about that dog the whole way, are you?”

  Deirdre glared at him through her sunglasses. “I’m worried about him,” she said. “Stanley doesn’t like being left alone.”

  “Maybe you should’ve thought of that when you adopted him.”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but I didn’t know it when I adopted him. He didn’t start acting out until the other night.”

  His snort of laughter wasn’t the most attractive sound she had heard lately. “Acting out? He was being a dog.”

  “I did some research while I was at Ellen’s house, and dogs suffer terribly from separation anxiety.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re one of those lunatics who take their dogs to pet shrinks.”

  “I can’t afford to take my dog to a pet shrink, but if I could—”

  His groan rattled the windows.

  “Okay, we won’t talk about Stanley anymore,” she said, glancing down at the nifty little red convertible whizzing past them in the right-hand lane. “So what do you want to talk about?”

  “You much of a sports fan?”

  “I love figure skating.”

  “That’s not a sport. That’s a popularity contest.”

  “And I suppose you’re going to tell me they’re not athletes.”

  “So forget sports,” he said. “How about politics?”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “You don’t vote?”

  “I vote but my candidates are never on the ballot, so I write them in.”

  So much for politics.

  The frequent silences that fell between them had started to feel as comfortable as a pair of old Birks to her. She was happy to hum along with some early Bonnie Raitt on the radio and watch the pine trees roll by. Being celibate had its advantages. A few years ago, back when she still believed in the concept of Mr. Right and all that came with him, she would have been compelled to look at Scott the Mechanic as a candidate for the job. These conversation-free stretches would have sent her self-confidence into a major decline. Why wasn’t he talking? What had she done wrong? What could she do to make it right? The posing and posturing with one goal in mind.