B000FC1MHI EBOK (21 page)

“Me neither.” He shot her a glance. “Why don’t you try talking with Kim again? I’ll push John and see what his investigation’s turning up. A pistol would be nice, especially if it’s registered to a third party.” Without humor, he added, “I could use a real villain.”

Suddenly he sat straighter and slowed the truck, eyes sharpened on the road. Julia’s followed. His headlights picked out several cars haphazardly gathered ahead. It was a minute in the stone blue of dusk before she recognized the spot as being the one where she had left her SUV. Moments later, she picked out Zoe’s truck, along with the little Plymouth that Molly had taken to driving. The police cruiser was parked beside them; though the light bar on top was dark, the driver’s door was wide open in a statement of urgency.

Noah pulled up close behind. Julia was out of the truck the instant it stopped. She had barely reached the ground when Molly started running toward her. She stopped just beyond reach, staring in horror.

“I found your car,” she said in breathless accusation. “I sat here forever, waiting for you. I can’t tell you what I thought.”

Julia could understand Molly’s fear, but only to a point. This was the island, after all, not the city. And she wasn’t a helpless ninny. “What did you think?”

“That you’d been abducted. Or done something strange.”

Julia was taken aback. “Strange, like what?”

“I don’t know. Just something. You said you were bringing cookies to the Walsh kids. You were supposed to be back.”

“You were supposed to be at work,” Julia replied quietly. She wasn’t arguing. She was simply stating fact.

“Rick needed my Social Security number, and I couldn’t remember it, so I drove home for my papers, and you weren’t there.”

Zoe approached. “She was frightened. She called me, and then John.”

“Why were you gone so
long
?” Molly asked without budging from that spot, just beyond reach.

“My fault,” Noah offered, coming up beside Julia. “I passed her on the road and conned her into helping me run a few errands.”

Julia felt a twinge of annoyance. She didn’t need a cover. “He didn’t have to con me. He asked, and I went. I had no reason not to.”

Molly’s mouth settled into a straight line. Seconds later, she turned on her heel and strode to the Plymouth.

Julia caught up with her there. They were far enough from the others to give them privacy; still, she kept her voice low. “Molly, what
is
it?”

“This doesn’t look good. That’s all.”

“
What
doesn’t look good?”

“You and him. Did you know him before?”

Julia was offended. “What are you implying?”

“Maybe there’s
double
reason Dad’s back in New York.”

“Double reason?”

“Dad there. You here.”

Julia wouldn’t have picked this time or place, but the matter loomed. “Did you
see
something there last week?”

Molly drew herself straighter. “He’s lonely. I think you should go back.”

“Lonely?” Julia couldn’t imagine it. “Did he say that?”

“You need to be there.”

“Was someone with him?” It wouldn’t be the first time, Julia knew, and felt a stab of anger toward her husband.

“You need to
be
there,” Molly repeated and climbed into the car. “I have a job. I’m all set for the summer. Pretend I’m still in Paris.”

Julia leaned down to window level. “You didn’t answer me.”

“I have to get to work,” she said. She started the car, backed it around, and drove off.

“What’s eating her?” Zoe asked, her tone kind.

Julia held up a staying hand and walked past, toward her own car, but before she could climb in, John Roman said, “Hold up. I have your things.” At the back of the cruiser, he opened the trunk. Her leather purse was deformed, yet recognizable. She could only assume that the large plastic bag with it—the large green
trash
bag—contained the remnants of her other belongings that had been retrieved from the ocean floor.

Feeling mildly sick, she couldn’t move, so he carried the bags to her. She managed to open the back hatch of the SUV so that he could put them inside, and thanked him for the effort. But these things were as unwelcome as Molly’s accusations. Old horizons were crowding in on her, pushing her back into places she didn’t want to be.

Given a shovel, she would have stopped on the way back to Zoe’s and buried the bags under several feet of cleansing island soil. Lacking one, she settled for stashing them behind bales of fresh hay in a far corner of the barn. She was reemerging when Zoe pulled up, but she wasn’t ready to talk yet. Sending Zoe back to her friend’s house, she heated a can of soup for dinner. Putting her wedding band by the bathroom sink, she washed up, climbed into bed, and read the manual that came with her camera until she fell asleep. She didn’t hear Zoe come in later. Nor did she hear Molly return from work, and she was out of the house, herself, the next morning before either of them got up.

J
ulia drove with her window down and no destination in mind, at her own pace. She couldn’t remember having done this before—just driving for the sake of driving. Leisure was one word to describe what she felt; defiance was another. Her life was a mess of tangled ends and open questions, yet she found herself smiling.

The air was damp but refreshing. She imagined it clearing her head of worries, though she didn’t dwell on them any more than she dwelt on the concept of defiance. Island mornings were more about being than thinking.

She had her camera with her and stopped from time to time to take pictures of gulls on the rocks, a hermit crab in the froth of the surf, sandpipers on the beach. She followed the road all the way around the harbor to Foss Fish and Lobster, and, while the sky bled from lilac to pink, photographed the large box of a building against it.

The pictures were sweet but common. She could as easily have found the same ones on postcards at the island store, but that was fine. She was familiarizing herself with the camera, and the drive was therapeutic. By the time she returned to Zoe’s, she wasn’t quite as angry at Molly.

Since it was early still, she went straight to the barn. She was surprised to find her aunt already there. “I heard you leave,” Zoe explained gently. She had a rabbit on the grooming table and was working a wire brush through its fur. “Are you all right?”

Sneakers whispering, Julia crossed the old wood floor and kissed the top of Zoe’s sleep-mussed head. “I am. Thank you. How about you? My visit keeps growing more complicated for you, too.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“Were you up when Molly got back?”

“Um-hmm. She’s still angry.”

If anyone has a right to be angry, it’s me, Julia thought. She was the one whose integrity had been wrongly questioned—and she might have said as much, if Zoe hadn’t given her arm a gentle little shake.

“It’s too nice a morning to deal with that yet. Want to see me pluck?”

Like Noah’s offer to run errands, this one was perfectly timed. The rabbit at hand was Sugar, so named for the white in her largely cinnamon fur and her sweet personality. “I’ll bet you didn’t know she has multiple layers of fur,” Zoe said.

“I didn’t.”

“They all do. At a given time, they can have one coat that’s three inches long, another beneath it half that length, and a new, very short one close to the skin. The longest coat is the one we pluck.”

“I don’t see layers,” Julia remarked.

Zoe gently parted the coat. “Take a closer look.” Beneath her knowing fingers, the different lengths of fur were clear as day.

“How do you pluck the longest coat without taking the shorter ones?”

“Easy. The longest fibers are released when you pluck, the shorter ones stay put. This is actually my argument in favor of plucking, rather than clipping or shearing. Plucking takes longer, nearly forty-five minutes per rabbit. I’d cut that time by half if I clipped, and by three-quarters if I sheared. The problem is, when you clip or shear, you do take multiple layers, and that’s fine for the wool buyer but not for the rabbit. Angoras rely on their fur for warmth. Plucking removes only the top layer, leaving them plenty still. They may not need it now as much as they do in the winter, but their internal thermostats are calibrated for it. If you clip or shear and inadvertently take too much, you risk leaving the rabbit chilled.”

Julia recalled Zoe’s description of what happened when a hairless kit fell through the bottom of the cage to the unprotected tray beneath. “Chilled” was putting it kindly.

“Besides,” Zoe said, “my rabbitry isn’t that big. I can get everyone plucked.” She saddened. “Todd was a help. I miss him.” She resumed work with a metal comb, slowing at a tangle, separating it with care. “His dysfunctionality was to my advantage. He had nowhere to go but here. I would have gone to his funeral, but the brother suggested I not. I’m part of a life the family can’t understand.”

“Or resents,” Julia suggested, “if they blame the island for taking Todd away.”

Zoe worked the comb through another matted patch. “Does Monte resent me?”

Julia gave her a curious smile. “Why would he resent you?”

“For taking you away from the city.”

“You didn’t take me away. I
went
.”

Zoe’s eyes were frank. “What’s going on between you two?”

Nothing,
Julia might have told anyone else.
Everything’s fine. Why do you ask?

But this was Zoe. Zoe loved her and wouldn’t judge her harshly. And she had to be suspecting the truth, especially after Molly’s behavior out on the road the night before.

Julia let out a breath. “I’d say that familiarity breeds contempt, only there isn’t contempt. Monte and I are perfectly friendly when we’re together. It’s just that we rarely are. I was hoping it would change after Molly left. I was hoping there’d be a little passion, and I don’t mean sex. I mean emotional involvement. I was hoping we’d be off doing things, just the two of us, like when we were first dating.”

“Are you sitting home alone a lot?”

“No. I’m active—American Cancer Society, Friends of the Library, that kind of thing.” This involvement gave her a sense of control. As she rose in the ranks of a charity’s bureaucracy, there was even an element of power. “I exercise. I take courses. I’m in a book group. I have my own life, my own friends.”

“The ones you email?”

“Yes. They’re fabulous women. They were all associated with contacts of Monte’s at one time or another, which is how I met them. Our friendships took off on their own. They’re high-power women, but they love me because I’m not. They say I’m their touchstone.”

“Does it bother you not being a high-power woman?”

Julia smiled. “Molly asks me that. She keeps telling me I’d have been a great school principal, or a great therapist, or a great florist. But I didn’t want to be any of those things. Monte didn’t force me to drop out of school.”

“Excuse me,” Zoe chided knowingly.

“Okay,” Julia granted. “I got pregnant. But once Molly was born, I could have gone back to school if I’d wanted to. I didn’t.”

“In hindsight, are you sorry?”

“You mean, do I wish I had a career that would occupy me during those times when Monte is busy?” Bluntly, she said, “My not having a career isn’t the problem.”

Zoe had set aside the metal comb and was working with practiced fingers. “I remember when you met him. You were swept off your feet. Madly in love.”

“Madly,” Julia confirmed.

“Are you still?”

She sputtered out a sad laugh. “Madly? No.”

“At all?”

“He’s my husband,” she said, which didn’t answer the question, but she didn’t know what other answer to give. She didn’t hate Monte— should, perhaps, but she didn’t. He had his strong points: he was a good provider, intelligent, charming when he wanted to be. She supposed she still loved those things about him.

Loved?

Well, she appreciated them, at least. Without them, she might have left years before.

“He’s a good-looking man, and he knows it,” Zoe said. “He loves the adulation of women.”

“He does.”

“Has he been faithful?”

Julia held Zoe’s searching gaze, which was answer in and of itself.

“You seem calm,” Zoe finally said, and Julia gave an uneasy laugh.

“Now maybe, but I wasn’t always. I cried. I shook. I felt used. I felt
worthless
.”

“Do you still?”

“Sometimes. How not to wonder whether if I’d been a little smarter, a little sexier, a little more of a dynamo, he’d have been satisfied at home?”

“Some men need conquest.”

“So my therapist said. She let me vent, and she said all the right things, but in the end, there was only so much she could do. Couples therapy would have been the next step, but Monte refused.”

“Too threatening?”

Julia rolled her eyes. “Way.”

“Is he in love with someone?”

“I don’t think so. He has short flings.”

“Do you confront him?”

She made a soft sound of self-derision. Confrontation was something she had spent a lifetime avoiding. “He knows I’ve suspected it. There was the time when flowers mistakenly arrived at the house with a card from him addressed to another woman. He said she worked at the brokerage and was leaving, hence the flowers, but I’m not stupid. I checked the brokerage directory. She wasn’t on it. Another time, I got a phone call from a woman. He had just ended it with her, and she was hurt enough to want to hurt him back. Calling the wife to tell all seemed like the best way.”

“How did Monte explain that one?”

“He claimed she was a client who didn’t like the performance of her portfolio, so she was looking to make trouble for him. Well, she was a client. That was true. I can’t prove the rest.”

“Why do you
stay
?” Zoe asked with feeling.

Julia shot that feeling right back. “Because there’s been good
reason
to stay. There’s Molly. There’s financial security. There’s a way of life. Monte has been my job for twenty years. He’s what I
do
.”

“But you came up here,” Zoe reminded her quietly. “For two weeks, maybe more. That’s a longer break from Monte than you’ve ever taken.” More gently, she asked, “Is he with someone now?”

Julia touched the backs of her fingers to the soft spot between the rabbit’s ears. “I don’t know. I think so. He’s out of the house a lot, and he doesn’t have
that
many male friends. He may be working, but this time of year, New York is dead. So what’s he doing?” Once started, the words continued to spill. “I’m afraid Molly saw something when she showed up unexpectedly last Monday night.”

“Caught him with a woman?”

“Yes.”

“Have you asked?”

“Indirectly. But how blunt can I be? Forget putting her in the position of telling on one parent to the other; if I ask bluntly, it suggests doubt on my part, and once doubt has been voiced, it never goes away. It creates insecurity. I never wanted that for Molly.”

Zoe had taken up the metal comb again and was working it through the cinnamon fur. “Is that what you felt when I told you about George and me?”

“Insecurity? No. I’m not starry-eyed, like I was at Molly’s age.”

“A jaded lady at forty,” Zoe teased.

Julia managed a small smile. “You know what I mean. I’m not saying that I wasn’t shocked by what you said. I still am. Part of me—the notso-nice part, I guess—may feel a little vindicated, like their marriage isn’t as perfect as everyone thought, which means that I’m not such a failure by comparison.” She paused. “I’m disappointed in my father.”

“And in me?”

“No. I don’t think you set out to seduce George. It wouldn’t have happened if Mom hadn’t left him here alone.”

“Isn’t that what you’ve done with Monte?”

Julia was taken aback. “Maybe. Only he does his thing whether I’m there or not, and I needed a break.”

“Break from the city? Break from Monte? Break from suspicion and insecurity?”

“All of the above.”

“You’re like Janet in a way, you know,” Zoe said.

“I am not.”

“Yes, you are. When something is troublesome, you opt out. Isn’t that what Janet always did? When raising a family became a nightmare of custodial arrangements, she withdrew into her work and ceded the responsibility to you and George.”

“What responsibility am I ceding?” Julia argued, annoyed by the suggestion. She had taken pains to cover every possible base before even suggesting she go away for two weeks. “I’ve set up Monte’s world so that it’s on autopilot. What responsibility am I ceding?”

“Responsibility for your marriage.”

“Excuse me, Zoe. He’s the cheater.”

“You’re allowing it.”

“By leaving him alone in the house?” Julia asked. “Well, maybe that’s what I want. Maybe I’m giving him just enough rope to hang himself. I’m not naive.” Her voice began to rise. “Maybe I’m begging him to show his true stripes. Maybe I’m ready. Maybe the time is right. Maybe I didn’t even know that when I planned this trip. Maybe the accident brought it all out.” She took a quick breath and went on in the same high pitch. “I don’t know. I don’t
know
. But I do know that it’s my life, and I’m not so obedient—or stupid—that I’m oblivious to his affairs, but I’ll deal with them in a way that works for me. It might not work for you or for someone else,” she tapped her chest, “but it’s my life.
My
life.”

Zoe smiled. “That, my dear, is the most force I’ve ever heard from you.”

Julia exhaled. “You riled me.”

“I’m glad. You’re too nice sometimes.”

“I meant what I said.”

“I know.”

“I will deal with it, but when I’m ready.”

“I know.”