Folly Cove (7 page)

Laura had to stop herself from bolting from the room. She didn't want to hear any more. “I'm sure she was expecting you. Anne knew when you were coming home. I even sent her an e-mail with your flight information.”

“I know. You're always so thoughtful.” Jake's voice broke. “That's why this is so hard.”

“Jesus, Jake,” Laura said. “Just tell me! Did you sleep with my sister? Is that it?” She had to tuck her hands beneath her thighs; they were trembling. She was trembling all over, as if she had the flu.

“No,” Jake said, “but almost.”

“What do you mean?” Laura cried out. “
Almost?
What is this,
high school
? Are you talking first base here? Second?
Third?
With my own
sister
?”

He began to reach out to touch her knee, but her expression must have stopped him. Jake folded his hands in his lap instead. “The door to the guest room was open a little,” he said, “so I poked my head in to say good night. Anne told me to come in and tell her about the trip.”

“All right,” Laura said, staring at Jake's hands now. “Then what?”

“Anne said she was glad I was home, because she'd been thinking about me. Fantasizing, she said.”

“She
said
that?” Laura's gaze flew up to his face.

Jake nodded. “I thought I'd misheard her. But that's what she said. So I asked why, and she got out of bed and came over to me.” His voice trailed off. “Oh, God, Laura. This is rough. I'm so
ashamed
. And I don't want you to hate your sister.”

“Tell me,” she said, but she could guess. She'd seen Anne in action. Whatever her little sister wanted, she usually got.

Especially if what she wanted was a man. Even in high school, Anne had managed to sleep with Sebastian Martinson, who was already at Yale when Anne was only a junior. Laura had caught Anne with Sebastian at a party one night, a tangle of limbs in a car, her
sister's burnished hair on fire beneath a streetlamp, her legs milky white around Sebastian's waist.

“Tell me,” Laura repeated, though she wanted to cover her ears.

“There's no easy way to say this, honey,” Jake said. “Anne was naked, but she got out of bed anyway. I was too shocked to move. She put her arms around my neck and started kissing me, pressing herself against me. I think she must have been drinking.” He winced. “I swear that's all that happened. I got out of there as fast as I could. Your own sister! I am so, so sorry.”

Laura had stroked her husband's bowed head, shushing him, relieved that his confession had ended here and not where her own mind had gone. “You didn't do anything wrong,” she said. “It's okay.
We're
okay. Anne has always been wild. Any other man would have gone to bed with her. You didn't give in. That's what matters.”

“Because I love you too much,” Jake said, pressing her hand to his lips. “I would never do that to you.”

“I know,” she said, and kissed him.

Afterward, Laura had driven to her sister's apartment, breaking the speed limit even before leaving the driveway.

Anne had denied everything. She told a completely different version of events that Laura didn't buy for a minute. And catching them together two Christmases ago proved to Laura beyond a doubt that Anne couldn't be trusted with her husband.

Now Laura rose from the breakfast table and began methodically tidying the newspapers. Jake wouldn't just go off and see Anne, would he?

He might, if Anne was having some sort of crisis and that's what had brought her back to Folly Cove.

Laura loaded the dishwasher, wiped the counters, and ran upstairs to get dressed. Fifteen minutes later, she was in the car and driving toward Jake's office in Gloucester. She needed to see for herself that his bicycle was actually there.

Laura drove the way she usually did, one hand on the wheel, the radio on loud, with no regard for speed. She knew these roads well enough to drive them blindfolded.

In less than fifteen minutes, she arrived at Jake's office building. It must have rained here last night; there were puddles as bright as mirrors all over the tarmac.

She pulled into the lot and sat there with the engine idling. Jake's bicycle was there, padlocked to the bike rack. He had been telling the truth! Her relief was colored by shame. She shouldn't have doubted him.

Her prepaid phone buzzed. She knew it was that phone because the other one was set to a jungle ringtone that Kennedy had chosen. This one sounded like a wasp trapped in a jar.

Laura removed it from her purse, her fingers trembling. Tom, of course. Nobody else had this number.

She glanced up quickly, absurdly fearful that Jake might be able to see her and would somehow know what she was doing. But that was ridiculous. Besides, she wasn't doing anything wrong. Not really.

She looked down at the phone's screen, smiling when she saw that Tom had texted her a picture of a sign advertising a horse show in Hamilton.
The universe is working hard to make sure I see u everywhere,
he'd texted.
Are you competing in this show? I could come cheer u on.

Laura leaned her head back against the seat. She should stop this now. Text him to say it was over, then throw this phone into a Dumpster. This had been a fun, harmless, virtual flirtation over the past months, but she wasn't about to cheat on Jake.

Another text.
You there?

Laura dropped the phone into her bag and pulled out of the parking lot, panicked.

T
heir second lunch—Sarah refused to call it a “date,” no matter how excited Rhonda looked as she waved them off—was an even bigger mistake. She knew that as soon as Gil Mandel walked her out to his blue car, a stocky man wearing carefully pressed khakis and a navy blue polo shirt. He must have pressed those pants himself, since his wife had been dead a year, according to Rhonda.

But what choice did she have? Here was Gil in his neatly creased trousers, gallantly opening the door of his Subaru, so Sarah swept her camel's wool coat beneath her legs and settled herself on the passenger seat. At least there were no crumbs or cans rolling around on the floor: she couldn't abide by any evidence of people eating in their cars.

They drove half an hour north to a restaurant on the water in Newburyport. Sarah had selected the place; she didn't want to meet anyone she knew. She loved a good Manhattan and felt immediately calmer when the drink was between her hands, despite noticing the water glasses were cloudy. Perhaps she'd have a quiet word with the waitress and suggest that they use a rinsing agent in the dishwasher.

They ordered their food from a waitress who called them “my little friends” and cheerily said, “I'll be taking good care of you,” making Gil roll his eyes at Sarah.

Sarah minded the waitress's words less than she minded the look the girl gave them. She imagined the waitress, who was all of thirty
years old, going back to the kitchen and gushing about “that cute old couple at table five.”

She'd heard her own waitstaff cooing over elderly couples, as if a man and woman keeping company past age sixty-five was something to be either pitied or marveled over. Nobody young could imagine ever reaching this age or picture any sort of passion that might lead people with wrinkled flesh to press their bodies together in a moment of abandonment. Passion and abandonment were for the young. Sarah almost wanted to lean over and kiss Gil just to shock the damn waitress. She wouldn't think they were so cute then.

She focused instead on the menu. Sarah settled on grilled scallops on a bed of spinach. Gil ordered the baked stuffed haddock. The waitress gave them another approving look before bustling back to the kitchen with a hiss of panty hose and polyester.

Fine. The sooner they ate, the sooner Sarah could get back to the inn. The only reason she'd agreed to this second meeting with Gil was out of guilt: their first lunch in the Folly Cove dining room had been cut short when the smell of smoke caused a guest to call the fire department. There was no fire, only an overloaded and smoking surge protector, but the inn had been evacuated for two hours. Sarah had sent Gil on his way while she smoothed the feathers of the few guests checked in for a weeknight stay.

The view of the Merrimack River was spectacular, the grasses a burnished copper in the late-afternoon sun and the river a vivid blue. The weather was warm enough that there were still some boats in the water.

“I appreciate you taking time out of another of your busy days to see me,” Gil said. He had Rhonda's careful diction and thick head of curly black hair, though his was dusted white. He was her mother's younger brother, Rhonda had said, married forty years until his wife died suddenly of pancreatic cancer last year, and had two grown sons.

“Yes, well, Rhonda seemed to think you needed a tour guide, since you're new to the area, and she's very dear to me,” Sarah said. “I'm happy to fill you in on everything there is to do around here.”

Gil laughed. “My niece has been worried about me since Marjory—
that's my wife—passed away. I'm getting along just fine, but it's true that I don't enjoy going out to lunch alone.”

“I've never minded eating alone,” Sarah said truthfully.

“Ah. I can see that. You're probably one of those efficient multitaskers,” Gil teased. “The sort who does the accounts while making toast and pays for advertising online while running on the treadmill. Rhonda says you work around the clock.”

“Treadmill? Please,” Sarah said, eyeing him suspiciously. What else did Rhonda say about her? “I do the tasks at hand in the order that makes sense. My goal is to stay ahead of my responsibilities.”

“Sounds exhausting,” Gil said cheerfully, spreading his napkin on his lap as the waitress delivered their plates. He waved a hand. “Me, I like a good sit-down with the morning paper, then a walk before lunch. I spent my whole life pleasing other people. Now it's time to please myself.” He picked up his knife and fork. “If I want to see a movie in the middle of the day, I go right ahead and take myself off to the cinema.”

Sarah tried to imagine life with so many empty hours and couldn't do it. Nor could she see its appeal. But she had the good manners not to say so. She speared a scallop with her fork. “You told me last time that you were a chemist before you retired. Why did you choose chemistry?”

“I always loved science as a kid. My father became a doctor, and his father was a doctor before him. Me, I couldn't seem to get out from behind the lab bench.”

A scientist: that explained the precise way Gil was carving up the fish on his plate, Sarah decided, and the facts he'd delivered on their way to Newburyport. He'd seemed to know about everything from the salt hay mounded in the marshes along Route 1 to world politics. “You really don't miss working now that you're retired?”

“Not at all.”

She studied him for a moment as they both chewed. Gil was a rough-looking bulldog of a man, balding in the middle of those black-and-white curls, with a thick neck and a wrestler's shoulders. Nothing like her tall, slim, elegant, mannerly Neil.

Sarah and Neil were a matched set. Everyone said so. Even the elder Mrs. Bradford, Neil's impossible-to-please grandmother. Yet
Sarah admired Gil's hungry, untamed look. You didn't see that in most men her age, who often appeared diminished and bewildered, even vacant around the eyes and mouth as their wives directed them around the grocery store or through the too-precious shops along Bearskin Neck in Rockport.

“Still, perhaps you should have kept working part-time,” Sarah said. “Research shows that retirement can be detrimental to your health.”

Gil hunched his thick shoulders upward, unimpressed. “Yeah? I've known plenty of guys who dropped dead because they didn't know when to call it quits. They stayed on the hamster wheel, and for what? One more Caribbean cruise? No, thanks. I'll take my freedom. Besides, now I've got plenty of time for my pet project.”

A man eager to talk about his hobby. Please, God, let this lunch be over and done with soon. “Oh? And what's that?”

He leaned forward, a gleam in his eye. “I'm restoring a boat. She's a real beauty. A classic 1912 Fay and Bowen, a twenty-six-foot, extra-wide launch. I'm restoring it to saltwater standards, using all triple-plated brass hardware, even the strut, rudder, skeg, and prop. I've got fifteen coats of varnish on her already, and I'm planning to replace the engine and launch her this spring.” He nodded toward the river. “You get out on the water much?”

Sarah shook her head. “Owning an inn doesn't leave much time for boating.”

“Married to your work. I see. Not enough hours in the day and all that.” He smiled, taking some of the sting out of his words, but by the way he sat back in his chair again, she knew she'd disappointed him.

She smiled back, but it irked her that he was somehow implying she lacked outside interests. Still, when she struggled to think of something else she enjoyed, she came up empty. “Innkeeping is a very consuming business.”

“Sure it is. And if you're happy, that's what matters.” Gil's tone was magnanimous, which irritated Sarah even more. “So, what about you? You told me you were a singer with a jazz group in Boston. How'd you end up way out here at the tip of Cape Ann?”

“The Folly Cove Inn hired us for a weekend.”

“Why jazz and not classical? What appealed to you about the style?”

These questions surprised her. Most people wanted to hear about where she'd toured, what celebrities she knew, and whether she'd made any albums.

“I trained as a classical singer.” Sarah had been telling this lie for so long that it seemed true. In reality, she had never made it beyond high school, and there had been no formal musical training—something even her husband never knew.

“Is that right?” Gil asked.

“Yes, but eventually I realized how much more I enjoyed loosening the rhythms of a song. Once I tried jazz, I embraced its spontaneity.”

“Not sure I get what the difference is in how you sing the two styles,” Gil said. He was eating his dinner methodically, one item at a time, working his way around the plate: he'd finished his fish and now turned the plate to start forking up the mixed vegetables.

“In classical music, the aim is to sustain your notes, because you're typically singing in front of a large audience,” Sarah said. “When you sing jazz, you have more freedom of expression with the music. You can play around a little, even stress the offbeats and swing if you want.”

“Uh-huh. I think I get it. How old were you when you started singing professionally?”

“Oh, very young. Sixteen.” Sarah sipped her wine, remembering those first gigs: lying about her age and sneaking into Boston clubs, begging bands to let her sing with them. Eventually one of them did. That band, the Sweet Tones, was made up mostly of older musicians.

Rupert, who played the trumpet with the Sweet Tones, making it sound like anything from a foghorn to a weeping woman, fronted the band. He talked the rest of the guys into letting Sarah sing with them. She was all of eighteen by then.

“Man, what are you guys afraid of?” Rupert had asked them. “What harm can this skinny-ass chick do us? She's got some sweet pipes. That's what matters. And having a pretty girl might get us into some new clubs.”

He was right about that. Sarah was ambitious. She was struggling
to escape her mother's house and live independently. Contrary to what she'd told everyone, even Neil and his family, she did not grow up in a Back Bay brownstone, but in a cold-water apartment in Everett near the airport. She'd never told her daughters, either, wanting them to emulate the woman she'd become rather than the girl she'd been.

Sarah had no idea where her father was; he'd left them when she was an infant. Her mother's sole occupation was to entertain men. Not for money, her mother insisted, but it amounted to the same thing: men brought food and booze to the apartment. Many stayed the night, or sometimes an entire weekend.

Occasionally a man turned his attention to Sarah and made a pest of himself. She started sleeping with a kitchen knife under her pillow and had used it on more than one occasion. Eventually she found an abandoned car in the neighborhood and began keeping blankets she'd found stashed in Dumpsters around the city in it for the nights when certain men came around the apartment. The car had locks.

So, when Sarah joined the Sweet Tones, she was determined to make the band a success. She took over booking their gigs as well as becoming the lead singer, walking into clubs personally to introduce herself and talk up the band.

She told Gil how the Sweet Tones had played city clubs for years, mostly Boston and Providence at first, then New Haven and New York as their following grew. Musicians came and went, but she and Rupert—who by then had become like a father to her, offering Sarah advice on everything from music and clothing to the men she dated sporadically—stayed.

“I loved everything about touring,” she said. This, too, was a lie, but only a white one: she'd loved being in the spotlight but hated the cheap hotels and long trips in the van with men who could never seem to stop smelling like animals.

Gil nodded. “Must have been hard to give up.”

“Yes, well. We do what we must for love.”

She explained to him how, ten years after joining the band, which by then was called Sarah and the Sweet Tones, she began scouting resorts, hoping for steadier bookings that would come with
accommodations. “We played the Catskills, the Berkshires, New Hampshire ski resorts,” she said.

And then, one day, they got a call from Neil Bradford's mother, saying the band they'd booked for a wedding event had canceled.

When Sarah cagily said they were already booked for that weekend—it was true, though it was only in a VFW—Mrs. Bradford said, “We're in a bit of a jam here,” in a voice that made it sound as if she were chewing mashed potatoes while speaking. “I've heard your band is marvelous. Two of my friends have seen you perform at the Chelsea Club. We would be happy to pay more than your usual fee, given our predicament, if you'll cancel your engagement and come to us.”

Sarah had doubled their fee and booked the gig.

“Huh. What a thing. You came here to perform at the inn and it changed your whole life,” Gil said. “Do you ever think of what might have happened if you'd said no?”