Return to the Beach House

by Georgia Bockoven

  “Known in some circles as being too self-confident,” Danielle chimed in. “Been there, done that. So what happened that changed your mind?”

  “He saved a little boy and his father when they were tossed out of their raft on the Mulchatna River. It was early in the first week of the salmon run, when the bears are testy. The rafters made it to a sandbar, where a couple of territorial brown bears kept them from going anywhere else. Rescuing them was a much bigger deal than it comes across in the retelling because there are so many nuances to the story. But basically, Darren had to land his plane on a sandbar that was too short and narrow to get off again with the added weight. He should have waited for help, but he was afraid the father was going to do something that would antagonize the bears, so he went in.”

  “Scary,” Bridget said. “I’d worry about him every time he went out after doing something like that.”

  “The important part of this story is that Darren never said a thing to me or anyone else. I had to find out what happened from another pilot.”

  “About the baby,” Danielle said. “None of my business, and feel free to tell me so, but failed birth control or intentional?”

  Bridget sat forward. “Okay, I admit I’m curious too. But isn’t that a little personal?”

  Carrie and Danielle looked at her. Simultaneously they said, “Nah.”

  Danielle added, “If she doesn’t want to tell us, she won’t.”

  Angie laughed. “I’ll tell you, but don’t you dare tell Darren that I did.”

  “It’s a deal,” Danielle said.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Carrie added.

  “Not even if he promised to introduce me to his brothers,” Bridget chimed in.

  “Darren was due back from a flight to Lake Clark, and he was over an hour late. I kept trying to raise him on the radio—but all I got was static. It was fifteen minutes to midnight, and because float planes fly by sight, not by instruments, he had to be back before sunset, which was less than ten minutes away.

  “I went outside and started pacing, listening for the peculiar sound that particular plane makes. Finally, when I heard it, I was sick with relief. And I was furious at how Darren had scared the hell out of me. I thought about locking up and leaving as soon as he landed and waiting until morning to find out what had caused the delay.”

  She finished her tea and sat back, propping her legs on the ottoman. “Instead, I waited. Turned out to be a fateful decision. I planted myself on the pier so that I’d be the first thing he saw when he pulled in. I stood there with my hands on my hips, doing my best imitation of a pissed-off polar bear, getting madder and madder the longer he ignored me. I saw him watching me out of the corner of his eye the entire time it took him to unload his gear. When he finished and came up the pier, he dropped everything at my feet, didn’t say a thing, put his arms around me, and kissed me like I’ve never been kissed before.”

  “Oooh, I like this guy,” Bridget said.

  “What did you do?” Carrie asked.

  Angie popped a piece of cheese in her mouth. “I kissed him back, of course.”

  “Good girl,” Danielle added. “And then?”

  Bridget laughed. “There’s this obnoxious voice inside of me insisting this borders on voyeuristic. Give me a minute to choke the life out of it.”

  “This next part is so saccharine it will make you gag, but here goes. He swept me up in his arms and carried me into the office.” Her mouth turned up in a Cheshire grin. “Let me tell you, by this point I was soooo glad I hadn’t locked up. We tore each other’s clothes off, he tossed a couple of sleeping bags on the floor, and—we made a baby.”

  Bridget sighed. “Not once, in all the time I was married, did I experience anything even close to this romantic.”

  Always the detail person in the group, Carrie asked, “Why was he late?”

  “He had engine trouble and had to make a landing on one of the isolated lakes near Redoubt. The radio had stopped working, so he knew that even with the GPS he was in big trouble if he couldn’t fix whatever it was and get airborne again. He said he spent a lot of time thinking about what he’d left undone and I was at the top of his list.”

  “What will you do if he decides he wants to leave Alaska?” Bridget asked. “I’m assuming that would be a deal-breaker for you.”

  “That’s not going to happen. Darren’s parents took care of that possibility by sending all five of their kids to the Lower Forty-Eight to go to college—whether they wanted to or not. Darren chose the University of Washington because he thought Seattle weather was the closest he could get to home. He hated it, but he stuck it out, then moved back the day he graduated.”

  “When was that?” Bridget asked. “My cousin went there.”

  Angie focused on the welting outlining her seat cushion as if it were an exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art. “I’m not sure.”

  “Approximately,” Carrie nudged.

  Danielle watched Angie squirm and wondered why. And then it hit her. “Did you bring a picture?”

  Angie let out a resigned sigh. “Okay, so he’s a little younger than I am.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Bridget said. “If you’re happy and he’s happy, that’s all that—”

  “He’s ten years younger,” Angie said, interrupting her. “He thinks I’m crazy that it bothers me.”

  After several seconds of stunned silence, Danielle was the first to say something. “And you’re sure his family still likes you?”

  “That’s what they claim.” Angie put her feet on the wooden deck, her elbows on her knees and her hands over her face. “I don’t know what to do. Darren insists he loves me, and I know he’s thrilled about the baby, but that’s how he feels now. What about twenty years from now when I’m sixty?”

  “Haven’t you heard?” Carrie said. “Today’s sixty is yesterday’s forty. No telling what it will be when you’re actually there. Maybe even thirty-five. Whatever—you’ll still be as beautiful and interesting and fun then as you are now.”

  “And if you aren’t, there’s always stress management and plastic surgery,” Danielle added.

  Again, there was stunned silence. Only this time it was followed by hoots of laughter.

  Danielle stood. “Come on, Carrie. Let’s start dinner, and leave these two invalids to enjoy this glorious sunset by themselves.”

  Chapter 5

  When they were alone, Angie turned to Bridget. Even though they considered themselves a group of four, there were times when the four settled into twos. Angie trusted and loved these women and knew the feelings were reciprocated, but when she needed to share the most intimate details of her life, it was invariably Bridget she went to, Bridget who listened without judging.

  “We were always so sure that nothing, not even time and distance, could make us drift apart. And yet look at us. How did we let this happen? Why didn’t you tell any of us about your cancer? Did you have so many shoulders to lean on that you didn’t need ours?”

  “I could deal with Miles or I could deal with my cancer. Having both happen at the same time was too much. It isn’t that I didn’t want to reach out—I couldn’t. For a while, just picking up the phone took too much emotional energy. Most days it was easier to crawl into a hole and try to disappear.”

  “I understand. But I still wish I’d known. I could have laughed through really bad movies with you while we were making a voodoo doll of Miles.” Angie summoned an evil grin. “Imagine the places we could have put pins.”

  She finished her tea, stared at the rapidly disappearing sun, then shifted her gaze back to Bridget. “Why didn’t I tell any of you that I was pregnant?”

  “Because you knew we’d bombard you with questions, and you weren’t ready to answer them. That’s one of the problems with staying connected the way we do. We rarely have real conversations, something that goes deeper than what can be said in a paragraph.” Bridget tucked the tail of her scarf under the wrap. “Like with me—how do you tell your
best friends that your life is falling apart in fifty words or less? Especially when you’ve allowed them to believe for years that everything is okay?”

  “You don’t,” Angie admitted. “Every once in a while I start to tell all of you about something that’s going on with me, but then I think how busy everyone is and I wind up hitting Delete before I can send anything.”

  “Which is why it’s so important that we get together in person.”

  “But it needs to be more than once every five years.”

  “How often do you think it would take to get back to the way we were in school?”

  “We know too much and we’ve experienced too much to ever be what we once were. That kind of sweet naïveté is for the girls we were, not the women we’ve become.” Angie didn’t say anything for several minutes. And then a smile formed. “Even so, we could try for every other year and see what happens.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of every year. Not for the three weeks we’ve gotten together in the past. That’s too hard. Maybe go for a long weekend the way the guys I know are always taking off on golf trips.”

  “I like that. Any ideas how to convince Danielle and Carrie?”

  Bridget gave her a sly smile. “A few months back, as I was heaving my guts out, it occurred to me that if I had to have cancer, I might as well get something out of it. When we talk to them, I’ll casually let it drop that it’s important for me to see as much of my best friends as I can for as long as I can.”

  “And you think they’ll let you get away with that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Danielle will see it for what it is before you put a period on the end of the sentence.”

  Bridget laughed. “No doubt. But it will plant the seed, and that’s all we need.”

  The spark left Bridget’s eyes. “Six months ago, when Miles had one of his heart-to-heart conversations with me, he said he’d given it a lot of thought and decided it would be better for everyone concerned, me included, if I stopped fighting the cancer and died like the classy woman I’ve always been.”

  Angie gasped. “He didn’t.”

  “Yes—he did.”

  “The son of a bitch.”

  “That’s putting too much blame on his mother. As Miles likes to remind people, he’s a self-made man.”

  “I can’t think of any way to say this without it sounding macabre, but I’ll never forgive you if you ever go through something this harrowing again and don’t tell me.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve learned my lesson. I desperately needed all of you, and I was just too stupid and too proud to let you know.”

  “There’s something else you’re not telling me,” Angie said.

  Bridget’s chin trembled as she tried to smile through welling tears. “I was scared. What if I asked and none of you came?”

  “God, you can be such an idiot. How could you not know that we would have moved heaven and earth to get to you?”

  “No one ever has.” The admission was as embarrassing as it was painful. Bridget brought her knees up to her chest as if trying to make herself the smallest possible target for her own tortured thoughts.

  Angie’s heart ached. She had to consciously force her lungs to expand and contract through the pain. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For not finding a way to show you how important you are to me—to all of us.”

  “There was no way you could have known.”

  “You mean other than picking up the phone every once in a while or catching an empty seat on one of the airlines that offers me deals in exchange for taking their VIPs to luxury lodges in the wilderness? I used to think about how easy it would be to meet you for lunch and still be home in time to sleep in my own bed that night.”

  “Planes fly in both directions. I could have flown up to see you.” Bridget straightened her legs again, then tucked one under the other.

  “Lesson learned.”

  “Hopefully.”

  “How about your mother? Has she been any help at all?”

  “When she was staying with me, it was like I was the target of one of those machines that throw tennis balls. Only these balls were snippy bits of advice and great big blobs of criticism. When I’m feeling charitable, I tell myself it was her way of dealing with the thought of losing her daughter.”

  “And when you’re not feeling charitable?”

  “Then she’s just a first-class bitch who was angry because she’d been inconvenienced—even though Miles paid her expenses and gave her spending money because he couldn’t be bothered with taking care of me himself.”

  “Now I get it. I can see why you wouldn’t want to call any of us for help and break up that lovefest.” Angie made a grab for a napkin that had blown off the table and stuffed it into an empty glass.

  “When did I become a mealy-mouthed little mouse who felt she had to ask permission to squeak?”

  “Things like that don’t have a start date. They happen so slowly you don’t realize you’ve changed until everything falls apart. I worked so hard to build my flying business that somewhere along the line I forgot I wasn’t just one of the guys. When I caught a glimpse of myself in a window I was passing and it took several seconds to realize it wasn’t a guy looking back, I decided it was time to find myself again.” Angie held up her feet to show off her shoes. “Thus the newly created fashionista.”

  “How long do you think this other you will be around?”

  “Long enough to show Darren that I can be more than jeans and boots and plaid shirts and not give my customers a wrong impression. They’re putting their lives in my hands when I fly them into the wild, and they’re not comfortable if those hands have sparkly pink nails. As much as I’d like to wear something with a little lace and woven ribbons, my shopping list for this pregnancy is more along the lines of expandable jeans and stretchy T-shirts.”

  Bridget gave her a knowing smile. “Doesn’t mean you can’t shop for lace and ribbons for the bedroom.”

  Angie laughed. “Have you been talking to Darren?”

  “No, but I can’t wait to meet him.”

  Bridget took Angie’s hand and wove their fingers together. “God, how I’ve missed you,” she said. “I never should have tried to get through the cancer without reaching out. I was so scared. And humiliated,” she added. A bitter look took the place of the smile. “I hate that hating Miles gives him power over me, but I don’t know how to stop.” She caught her breath in a hiccuped sob. “How could he just abandon me? How could he leave me the way he did? He didn’t have to love me, but what did I do that made him think it was okay to walk away while I was fighting for my life? How could he care so little?”

  “You only did one thing wrong where Miles is concerned. You kept thinking you could change him, that your love would turn him into a caring, thoughtful human being. Think what you gave up. Think of the years you missed getting to know yourself. Think of the opportunities you could have had to find someone smart enough to recognize what an amazing woman you are.”

  “You’re my friend. You have to say things like that.”

  “No, goddamn it, I don’t. I know how bad this sounds for me to actually say out loud, but what if you only have five more years, Bridget? Are you going to waste the time you have left wallowing in what might have been? Was there no one you could have called in Sacramento who would put cold compresses on your neck when you were hanging over a toilet after one of your treatments? You’ve always had more friends than the rest of us combined. What happened? What’s the real reason?”

  Bridget hesitated, started to speak, then stopped again. Slowly, inevitably, she lost her hard-won battle at composure and hiccuped through huge sobs of release. “I was hoping the treatment wouldn’t work.” She put her hands over her face. “I knew if I had any of you there with me, you’d talk me into caring, and I wouldn’t be able just to let go.”

  Angie got up and squeezed into the chair with Bridget. She wrap
ped her arms around her and rocked her in rhythm to a silent lullaby. After Bridget stopped sobbing, Angie put her hand under her friend’s chin and forced her to look up. “I’m going to make you a promise, sweet Bridget. We’re going to fix you. You’re going to leave here so full of life that when someone asks you about Miles Woodward, you’re going to say, ‘Miles who?’ ”

  Chapter 6

  Carrie artfully placed lettuce leaves on the Williams-Sonoma Poisson salad plates, impressed that even the casual dining pieces at the beach house were first-class. Someone had given a lot of thought to every detail of the finishing touches, from the Egyptian towels in the bathrooms to the assortment of magazines on the coffee table. The soaps and lotions tucked into the welcoming baskets on the beds were thoughtfully purchased, containing neutral, fresh fragrances that disappeared quickly but left a wonderful, silky feel to her skin. She didn’t know the brand and had a feeling it was something custom-made for the owner of the house.

  Carrie knew people who lived in that kind of luxury, but only peripherally, and most of them were clients—especially since she’d taken on the job of heading the new art brokerage division of Pearson Inc.

  Danielle cut into the loaf of San Francisco sourdough bread that they’d picked up on their way to the airport that afternoon. She sliced off the end piece, put it up to her nose, and inhaled deeply. “Oh. My. God. I’m going to have drool running down my chin if I keep this up.”

  Carrie stepped closer. “Let me smell.” Danielle handed her the slice. “This is nothing like we get at home. It actually has a tanginess to it.” She broke off a piece, took a bite, and handed the rest to Danielle. “You don’t even need butter.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Danielle reached for the butter dish. “Didn’t your mama ever teach you that everything tastes better with butter?”

  “It’s looking at my mama and the three hundred pounds she packs that keeps me from putting butter on anything.”

  Danielle wound up with traces of butter on the corners of her mouth and a smile that reached all the way to her eyes. “I’ve been meaning to tell you how great you look. Is that part of the new job?”