Lighthouse Beach

by Shelley Noble

  “You know you’re going to have to face that room someday.”

  “I know, but not today.”

  Mike’s was just around the corner from Main Street. It had been a pharmacy in better days and still had the original dark wood and well-worn floors. The original soda fountain had been restructured into a serviceable bar, with stools and a mirror behind, only now instead of serving sodas and banana splits, it dispensed beer on tap, a variety of bottled beers, hard liquors, and a handful of wines, none of which would live up to Allie’s standards.

  “Well, this is rustic,” Diana said, looking around the semidarkness of the bar.

  “A nice way to put it,” Lillo said. “We can go back to Sal’s.”

  “No, this is great.”

  Diana sidled up to the bar, where Mike Growalski was talking to two old fishermen. Mike was a stocky guy, with a jovial personality when he wasn’t arguing football or the state of the local economy.

  Mike looked over Diana’s head. “Well, if it isn’t Lillo Gray. I was beginning to think you weren’t going to bring your friends. You woulda broken my heart.”

  “We’ve only been here a few days and we’ve been busy.”

  Diana perched one hip on a barstool. “I’ll have a dirty martini, Grey Goose.”

  Allie and Jess climbed on stools beside her.

  “I got Stoli.”

  “I’ll have one of your microbeers.”

  “That I can do. How ’bout you gals? I hope you all aren’t expecting me to make you fancy drinks all night. ’Cause one of my two waitresses called in sick, so I’ll also be your friendly server as well as bartender. Could take some time.”

  Lillo opened her mouth, but Diana cut her off. “How ’bout four microbeers?”

  Mike grinned at Lillo. “I like her attitude. You can bring her back anytime. Have a seat, I’ll bring your beers over to the table.”

  They started toward a table just as the door opened and Doc and Ian came in, creating gridlock in the middle of the floor.

  Jess glanced at Lillo and Diana. “Hey, guys, we’re just getting a table. Would you like to join us?”

  Lillo wanted to kick her. But she just smiled—tightly.

  “Love to,” Doc said. Ian looked away, probably trying to decide if he could make it out the door without someone stopping him. But he stood his ground and the women detoured to a larger table and sat down. Lillo made sure to place herself between Allie and Jess. She was still feeling sick and weak from the girls’ discovery about her. They seemed to have forgotten about it, and maybe to them it wasn’t a big deal.

  Of course, they didn’t have to live with it. And after Lillo had tried so hard to hide it away … Her past. Her fail. Her loss.

  “I was hoping to see you today,” Doc said as he passed by the back of her chair.

  “Well, here I am.” She concentrated on unrolling her paper napkin from the silverware.

  “Ian said you got rained out.”

  “Yes.”

  “C’mon. Don’t act so glum. I was just trying to be friendly.” He took a seat on the other side of Jess and didn’t look Lillo’s way for the rest of the night. So she ate her burger in relative silence, though she noticed that Ian was actually talking to both Allie and Diana and almost looked like he was enjoying the conversation.

  They had reached the end of their meal when Howie and the guys came in and headed for the bar.

  They ordered beers then pulled up extra chairs to the table.

  “Man, has this week gone fast,” Howie said.

  “A week?” Allie said.

  “A week … tomorrow.” Diana frowned and called Mike over. “Another round?”

  Mike went off to get the beers.

  Tomorrow, Lillo thought. It had gone fast. And was rapidly coming to an end. After today’s confession, she should be anxious to see them go. But she wasn’t. Even with all the angst that seemed to surround them, she felt lighter tonight than she could remember feeling for a long time.

  A week ago she hadn’t even seen Jess in years or met Allie and Diana. And now? For the first time in a long time, Lillo felt she had friends. Friends outside of those in Lighthouse Beach whom she’d known all her life.

  She looked at Allie, who was seriously listening to something Nando was saying, and wondered if she was thinking about her husband. Lillo really didn’t think about Kyle as much as she thought about what had happened to him. And that surely wasn’t right. But The Tragedy and his absence were so tangled up in each other that it was hard to separate her feelings. She wasn’t sure if she was lonely without him, or lonely without medicine.

  The familiar pain radiated through her. Her standing over him, both of them laughing, then … then one of them was gone. She’d lost precious minutes—or maybe it really was only seconds—standing there on the ledge; lost even more as she tried to revive him, not realizing his femoral artery had been severed.

  If only she had seen it earlier, if he hadn’t been laughing like nothing had happened, though she knew that often a victim is unaware of the severity of a wound until it’s too late. If only she’d been faster, had seen the blood. If only they hadn’t dared each other to race to the top, if they hadn’t gone to the bonfire, if it had rained that day.

  If only …

  Allie leaned over and whispered in her ear. “I’m going for a walk with Nando. I’ll be back later.”

  “Oh,” Lillo said, surprised by the interruption of her thoughts.

  “Is that okay?” Allie asked, looking worried.

  “It’s great.”

  “If you guys leave before we get back, I’ll just come to the cottage. Can you spot me dinner until then?”

  “Absolutely, take your time, have fun,” Lillo said, and realized they were still talking in whispers.

  Allie pushed her chair back and she and Nando left. Lillo watched them, but surreptitiously. So did Jess and Diana, but no one said a thing or called attention to their leaving. Howie was just finishing a story about a late-night emergency call from a girls’ dorm that led to a blackout and the triggering of a fire alarm and the hilarity that ensued. Lillo doubted if he or the other guys even noticed Nando’s absence.

  Chapter 20

  Lillo awoke sometime in the middle of the night; she’d been waking up off and on ever since she lay down. Sometimes groggily, as waves of regret roiled through her. Regret for her past, for her failings, for telling her friends the awful truth. Sometimes shaking, or holding absolutely still, forgetting for a moment where she was, thinking Kyle was lying beside her still, or that she was sleeping on a cot in the residents’ room at the hospital. Then she would revisit Kyle’s death, her fall from grace, her acceptance of it, until she drifted off again. This time she awoke with a start, aware that someone was walking across the floor.

  She stiffened. She always locked the front door, a habit she’d picked up in college. Then she remembered she’d left the door unlocked because Allie hadn’t returned when they’d all gone to bed. Lillo didn’t move but listened as the steps tiptoed down the hall and went into the bathroom.

  She groped for her phone. After three a.m. Well, good for Allie. She hoped she would find happiness. As for Lillo … she just wanted to find sleep.

  Everyone seemed a little tired when Lillo padded over to the kitchen the next morning. She sat down and braced her elbows on the counter while she watched Jess and Diana work, team-like, making the coffee.

  Jess glanced over her shoulder. “We have three eggs, half a loaf of bread, and a package of bacon I found in the freezer. We’re going to attempt French toast.” She yawned, narrowed her eyes at Lillo. “Is that okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then what?”

  “Nothing.”

  Jess turned and leaned on the pass-through counter. “That’s not a nothing face. What gives?” Her expression changed and she reached across the counter and pulled Lillo’s hand toward her. “You’re not upset with us about yesterday and finding the DVD and butting i
nto your life, are you?”

  Lillo shook her head. “No. It’s just … nothing.”

  “You wish we hadn’t and now you don’t know how to go on from here?”

  Lillo pulled her hand away. “Is that coffee ready yet?”

  Jess took a mug out of the dish drain and poured Lillo a cup, but instead of handing it to her, she held on. “Do you?”

  Lillo thought about it, but mainly she was just awed by Jess. Since Jess had come to Lighthouse Beach, Lillo could see glimpses of the person she had become, or at least said she’d become during college and her years working in Manhattan. She was fun to be around, had managed to shed her insecurity. In the old days, faced with the slightest confrontation, she would back off, but today she was standing across the counter looking Lillo dead in the eye. Waiting for an answer.

  “How do you do it?” Lillo asked her.

  “Do what?”

  “We kidnap you from your wedding, after the mother of all confrontations with your parents, drive to the back of beyond, where you’re living without any of the creature comforts. You sent your father’s goons packing. Before, any of these things would have sent you into a downward spiral.”

  “You really want to know?”

  Lillo desperately wanted to know, not just for Jess but for herself. Because she was getting near to bottoming out and she didn’t know what the hell to do to stop it.

  “Practice.” Jess finally pushed Lillo’s coffee over to her, and lifted her own cup. “You only knew me as the sad kid who would gradually peek out of her shell as the weeks went by only to succumb to her former life each August. My parents had the advantage of time in those days. I’d start believing in myself and they’d snatch me away from those dangerous waters before I could understand what I could be. What I really was. But that changed in college. I spent more time without them than with them. And I began to live as that other me, the summer me, all the time.”

  She put her mug down. Looked into its center. “I used to pretend I was you.”

  “We used to pretend we were sisters,” Lillo corrected her.

  “I said that, but I wanted to be you. To live here. To have your parents for my parents. Mac as a neighbor. By the time I moved to Manhattan to work, I was spending almost all my time away from the family. More time being a productive independent woman than the Parkers’ disappointing daughter. I started becoming the person who I imagined myself as. Not you. Each time I had to reconnect with my parents, it got a little easier to return to that person I’d become.”

  “Then how did you end up about to marry what’s-his-name?”

  “James. They swept in like something from Harry Potter, all of them, the sibs, all of them. It was a done deal before I even heard about it. I’d gone out with him a few times, not realizing it was just part of the hostile takeover. Megabucks and corporate power on the table, and me the pawn.

  “They all applied the pressure, stayed in my face, and I caved. It’s like an alcoholic or a drug user. One misstep and I was screwed. I knew it, but I just kept being sucked down, and I couldn’t get out of it by myself.” Jess stopped, blinked furiously. “I needed my posse. And you came through.

  “We’re your posse, Lillo, if you want us to be. I got my life back; you can get yours, too, if you want it. If you let us help.”

  “Well, thanks, but I’ve got a life.”

  She watched Jess shrink and could kick herself for causing that little twist of pain even for a second. “Sorry. I’ve got to get dressed and get over to the clinic. They need files filed. Floors mopped.”

  She started to stand but Diana stopped her. “Look, we’re reaching the end of our vaca. I’ve got to get back to work, Allie needs to see her kid, and Jess …”

  “I’m working on it,” Jess said.

  “And Jess has to do something she won’t tell us about.”

  “Your point being?” Lillo asked while kicking herself for asking.

  “I think we should help you clean out that storeroom. We’ll send the presents back or give them to Goodwill or the community center. We’ll toss whatever’s holding you down. And rearrange the rest so that the space is livable.”

  “I’ll do it. I just haven’t had time.”

  Diana fisted her hands on her hips. “A year? It will take us an afternoon, and you’ll be glad we did it when it’s done.” She dropped her hands. “There may be a few tears involved. But hell, that’s what your friends are for.”

  “Don’t you have something better to do on your week off than to clean my house? Weren’t you going to a spa?”

  “Look, I’ve—we’ve—all had a better time than we would’ve had at Jess’s wedding or at a spa. Why not let us do this? Besides, if we don’t, when we all come back for a visit, Allie and I will still be sleeping in the same room, and she snores.”

  “She doesn’t!” Jess exclaimed.

  “Not really, that was just an excuse. Best I could do on short notice.”

  “Diana’s right, Lillo; look what this trip has done for me. You might as well take advantage of Team Road Trip while you have us. It’ll be fun.”

  “Like a root canal. I have to go to the clinic.” Lillo stood and hurried to the back of the house to retrieve clothes from her bedroom. She’d go to the clinic and she’d stay there until they closed. When she finally came back to the cottage, they’d have to have dinner, and besides, it would be too dark to carry stuff outside. She took her clothes into the bathroom, showered, changed, and grabbed her rain poncho and boots from the closet, then left the house with a “Don’t touch my things while I’m gone.”

  She was immediately engulfed in a thick layer of fog. She’d be lucky to find her way across the parking lot without losing her way, wandering out to the jetty, and falling into the depths.

  “Ha, wishful thinking.” And knowing she was acting like an ungrateful bitch and hoping her friends would see through her and still be there when she returned, she hurried toward town and the clinic.

  “Well, shit,” Diana said, passing a plate of French toast and bacon to Jess, across the counter, where she’d gone to sit after Lillo’s dramatic exit. “Eat,” she said. “I didn’t spend the morning playing Suzy Homemaker to have everyone turn down my poor attempts.”

  “I should’ve minded my own business,” Jess said, making no effort to even pick up a fork.

  Diana picked it up and handed it to her. Picked up her own. Looked down at her plate. “God, this looks awful.”

  “It looks delicious,” Jess countered.

  “What’s burning?” Allie croaked from the hall door.

  “You sound like a foghorn,” Jess said.

  “In keeping with the situation,” Allie said. “You can’t even see the lighthouse from here. Would a ship have been able to see its light through this kind of fog?”

  “Not my area of expertise,” Diana said. “Let’s just say I’m glad not to be a ship dependent on it today. Want French toast?”

  “Oh, that’s what that is,” Allie said, snagging a piece of bacon off Jess’s plate.

  “Hey,” Jess said, and took a piece from Diana’s plate. Diana reached across to the opposite counter and placed the whole platter of bacon between them.

  Allie made herself a plate and coffee and carried it around to sit beside Jess.

  “Where’s Lillo?”

  “On her way to the clinic. In a huff,” Diana added. “Jess put it to her.”

  “I did not. I was trying to be helpful.”

  “What happened?” Allie asked.

  “First tell us why you sneaked back in the middle of the night last night?” Jess said. “And I hope it’s X-rated.”

  Allie sighed and smiled. And Diana wondered, What the hell?

  “I went for a walk with Nando. We talked … about everything.”

  “And … ?” Jess encouraged.

  “And he kissed me … a few times. And then he walked me home.”

  “Holy mother, for crying out loud, did you—”

&n
bsp; Allie shook her head. “It was awkward.”

  “Awkward?” Diana rolled her eyes. “It’s a simple process of tabs and slots.”

  Jess slapped her hands over her face. “Diana.”

  “Well, it is. You guys are such prudes.”

  And listen to me, Diana thought. Talk about awkward. She couldn’t wait to get to the stables each day. Was in a constant state of indecision while she was there, and left wondering what had, or more to the point, hadn’t happened. At least Allie had gotten kissed.

  “Really, people, who ever heard of four single women taking a road trip and not one—let me repeat—not one of them gets laid.”

  Jess and Allie both turned on her.

  “You mean you really are mucking out stables and horseback riding?” Jess asked.

  Diana covered her eyes with her palm. “It’s so humiliating. I think I’m losing my touch.”

  “Well, in your defense, I think that man has issues.”

  Diana gave her a look. “All men have issues. Usually to do with size. I may be wrong, but in this case I don’t think that’s it.”

  “What happened after I left?” Allie asked, reaching for the syrup.

  Jess shrugged. “We had another round of beers, Doc and Ian left, we stayed a few more minutes, and then we left.”

  “I swear I felt like spring break at the beach,” Diana said, “though it’s getting hard to remember that far back.”

  “Oh bull,” Jess said. “You’ve been to the stables twice now.”

  “Three times if you don’t count the first day, when he practically ran me off with a shotgun.”

  “He has a gun?”

  “No, that was just an expression.” At least she didn’t think Ian had a gun, though on second thought, he probably would have to. So he could put down wounded animals and things. The French toast was beginning to get to her stomach.

  “Well, if the fog doesn’t lift, you’ll be stuck mucking out stables all day.”

  Allie’s eyes rounded. “Don’t you dare go out riding in this, you could go off a cliff or something.”

  “Same goes for you, no motorcycle rides.” Diana smiled wickedly, she hoped. “Maybe just curl up with a certain CPA-mechanic and …”