Off Season (13 page)

“Please, Ben. We need the money.”

He did not say a word, not even
go to hell
or
screw you, lady
. Instead, he just stood there a moment, then abruptly turned and went out the door.

Was he going back to the tavern? He could live there now. He could rent the apartment from Charlie and not have to come home all winter. Or ever again.

Perhaps their love had been too magical, too unrealistic, with the end of it only a day—or a FedEx envelope—away.

Through choking-back tears, she pulled out the papers and glanced at the contract. It was neatly, properly written for the month of February: February, her first network job.

Ben went to the tavern, because he had nowhere else to go. Since marrying Jill, he’d relinquished his privacy: she had taken over his old house in Oak Bluffs—his refuge—and right now it was occupied by a couple of odd-looking young men at digital controls. He could go out to the cliffs at Gay Head, but without Noepe, there was little solace there.

He could not go to his house, and he could not go to his daughter’s.

So he went to the tavern in search of a friendly face, or
at least a face he did not want to scream at. Hopefully Ashenbach wouldn’t be there.

Ashenbach wasn’t, but neither was Charlie. Amy was alone, standing on a chair, stringing gaudy fake cobwebs from the centuries-old beams.

“I hope you’re not defacing a historic monument, young lady,” Ben said from the foyer.

“Hey, Ben,” Amy said, turning slightly. “You’re just in time to give me a hand.”

Great, he thought, something constructive to kill some more time and help take his mind off—no, he wouldn’t think about that.

“Is this really a historic monument?” Amy asked.

He shrugged, handing her more cobwebs. “I’m sure it was to your mother’s family.” He was proud of himself for not letting his voice crack when he said “your mother.”

She jumped down from the table and surveyed her work. “I’m going to replace the lightbulbs with black light so that everything white and anything fluorescent will glow. Then we’ll have centerpieces made from orange and green lightsticks on every table. What do you think?”

“Sounds ghoulish.”

Amy laughed. “Wait until you see it! I’m glad you guys are coming.”

He wondered what he’d wear for a costume and if “CM” should be embroidered on his lapel, and if it should be scarlet. He forced a smile. “We wouldn’t miss it.”

“Well, I’m amazed Mom won’t be out of town.” She tacked a few bats to a wall print of a whaling ship. “Then again, I suppose it will be a good way to check up on me.”

Ben scowled as if he didn’t know what Amy meant.

“Do you think she’ll ever let me cut the cord, Ben? Take Charlie’s apartment. He’s renting it for the winter. Do you
think for a minute Mom would let me have it? No-o-o-o-o. Forget it!”

No one had told him Charlie wanted to rent his apartment over the tavern. Was he moving in with that woman, the one from the mainland? Ben wanted to ask but was more concerned right now with Jill’s need to control Amy’s life. It wasn’t a lot unlike her need to control his, too, to try and make this ordeal go away on her terms, not his. “Have you mentioned the apartment to her?”

“I had my secret assistant do it for me. Rita. Mom said no way. As expected.”

To Ben, this seemed like a perfect solution. If Amy rented Charlie’s apartment, she’d be out of the house, away from the opportunity of learning about Mindy. Amy was eighteen—and she was supporting herself. Well, almost. A good dose of independence might be just what Amy needed to help her realize how important family support—and furthering her education—really was. And it would sure give him and Jill more freedom to sort things out, their marriage included.

He took off his cap and rubbed his head. “Has Rita rented it yet?”

“Don’t know. Hey—what about you? Not that it’s any of my business, but the tension around home is so thick, you couldn’t whack it with a ginzu. Maybe you should take a break. An amicable separation before it leads to marital disaster.”

Ben stiffened. “Your mother and I are just fine, Amy. And you’re right, it’s none of your business. But when I married her, I made it my business to see that you’re happy, too. And if I have anything to say about it, you’ll have this apartment. If it’s what you really want.”

She dropped the bats, flung her arms around him, and kissed him square on the lips.

Just at that moment, Jill walked through the door.

•   •   •

Jill wasn’t sure how to describe what she felt when she walked in and saw her husband in her daughter’s arms, lips upon lips. If it hadn’t been for Mindy Ashenbach, she might have thought nothing.

She watched in stunned silence as her husband untangled Amy’s arms a little too quickly.

“Jill,” he said, as if speaking her name would eradicate any negative insinuation the act had evoked.

“Ben,” she replied, trying to push down a seed of doubt that had neatly been planted. “I was hoping I’d find you here.”

She looked at Amy, who looked at Ben, who looked at Jill, then Amy, then back at Jill.

She blinked. “Rick Fitzpatrick is looking for you.” She supposed she shouldn’t have mentioned the lawyer in front of Amy, but right now she wasn’t feeling very patronizing of her husband or his problems.

“Rick?” Ben asked, stepping away from his stepdaughter. “It must be about the land titles for Sea Grove.”

She wanted to blurt it out right then and there, to tell Amy about Mindy so she could watch his face freeze in dull shock, the way hers felt frozen now. Instead, she folded her arms. “Oh, yes, I’m sure.”

He put his hands on his hips as if in defense. “Amy was just thanking me because I promised to put in a good word for her. It seems Charlie wants a winter renter for his apartment. The fact that you plan to be gone so often would make the apartment ideal for Amy. No sense in turning her into a housekeeper for this old man.”

Jill wanted to kill Ben for bringing up the apartment right in front of Amy, as if she had not already said no. She also wanted to kill him for hinting that Amy would be better off out from under the same roof where he lived. As if she didn’t trust him. As if …

Ben moved closer to her. “Come on, Jill, what do you say? Let her have a try. She’ll only be two blocks away.”

Inside her jacket pockets, she balled her hands into fists. “Do what you want, both of you,” she said. “I don’t care anymore.”

With a shriek of delight, Amy high-fived Ben and Jill went out the door.

Something must have happened. Rita had known Jill for over forty years, and in all that time she’d never once changed her mind, had only grown more stubborn after she’d made a decision. Well, of course, she had changed her mind and married Ben and not that celebrity asshole, but Rita never believed she’d been serious about him in the first place. After all, a big part of the reason Jill had become so successful was because she had sense.

So when Jill called Rita in the morning and told her she had changed her mind and wanted Amy to have the apartment, Rita was surprised. She wasted no time in leaving a message on Charlie’s machine, in case he ever bothered to haul himself out of Marge Bainey’s sack long enough to see if the rest of the world was still there.

Apparently he hauled himself out not long after lunch, because a few minutes later, he was on the phone.

“So it looks like you’re off to Florida whether you like it or not,” Rita said. “Or you’ll be bunking at the homeless shelter in Vineyard Haven.”

“Or with you and Hazel,” he said with a chuckle, which Rita did not think was very funny.

“Do you want me to draw up a lease agreement? What about the rent? You never mentioned what you want.”

“For Amy? Come on, Rita, she’s family. Besides, the heat might be costly if it’s a cold winter, but it will be better for the building if it’s on. If she wants cable TV, she’ll
have to pay for it to be installed. Those things plus the fact she’ll be watching out for the tavern should make us about even.”

“That figures,” Rita said. “I finally make a real estate deal, and the guy wants to cut me out of a commission.”

“I’ll send you a pink flamingo for the lawn.”

A baby stroller might be more appropriate
, she wanted to say. She felt a slow pang of sorrow that this time separation from Charlie seemed somehow permanent. A fleeting thought that maybe she should tell him about the baby, that maybe she should stop him from doing anything stupid like marrying Marge Bainey, went through her mind and did just that: fleeted. When he came home in the spring, it might be too late for them, but it wouldn’t be too late for him to be a father to his child, if she decided he should be, if that was what he wanted, if he weren’t so angry with her that he ignored their baby.

No
, Rita thought, Charlie was like Ben Niles. Neither had a mean bone in his body.

“When are you leaving?” Rita asked. “Not that I care, but Amy might like to know when she can move in.”

“Well, I hadn’t made definite plans, but now it looks as if you’ve forced me into them. Give me a few days after the Halloween party to get organized. How about if she moves in the following weekend?”

“Good deal,” Rita said, then rang off, feeling somehow elated that she’d beaten the odds and would not have to face Charlie and tell him the truth and risk him wanting to marry her and her having to say no.

Mindy took her time walking home from the school bus. Part of her was hoping if she were late, she wouldn’t have to go today. Tomorrow might be better. Or next week.

But she saw the doctor’s old Volvo as soon as she reached the driveway. The doctor stood outside with Grandpa—oh, God, was he going, too?

He was. They were.

Grandpa hustled Mindy into the pickup truck. The doctor said she’d follow them, so she wouldn’t have to come back out to Menemsha. Mindy was glad because that meant she wouldn’t have another “session” today, another hour of talking about fairly stupid things and getting neither of them anywhere, wherever they were supposed to be going.

“Let’s stay with this a moment,” the doctor said whenever the subject of Mindy’s mother came up.

“And what about your dad?” she must have asked a skillion trillion times, though Mindy barely remembered him and told her so.

Stupid questions wasting time. Wasting Grandpa’s money.

She wanted to tell him that now, but when she looked over, he sat forward on the seat and said, “You be sure to tell them how Niles made you come there every day after school.”

He scowled a familiar scowl and added, “You be sure to tell them how he always brought you snacks from that tavern—those homemade cookies you told me about. You be sure to tell them how he took you out to the cliffs and how he made you play that game.”

“Making pictures from the clouds?”

“Yes. You be sure to tell them that.”

You be sure of this
and
sure of that
. Mindy pressed her face against the window and wasn’t sure of anything.

It was a small room with only one window where someone had put a plant that was mostly dead. There were three chairs and a wooden table. The walls were painted the color of old celery: a painting of a lighthouse hung on one, a calendar on another. In the corner of the room, a video camera was set atop metal legs. Behind the camera stood a thin young guy who could have been a fisherman except he wore a white shirt and bow tie.

It wasn’t how Mindy pictured a courthouse room would look. It didn’t have a big bench or Judge Judy in a long black robe. It was just a room, and it just had … them.

“I guess we can sit down,” Dr. Reynolds said, so the three of them sat.

A moment later, a man came in. He had gray hair and a cardigan sweater the same color. He smiled.

Grandpa stood up and shook the man’s hand. “Mr. Winkman,” Grandpa said, “nice to see you again.”

Mindy crossed her feet under her and tried not to think about his funny name. Winkman. Winkie. Wink-wink. She wondered if he winked a lot or if he had a twitch. She bit her lip.

“This is my granddaughter, Melinda.”

Sometimes she forgot that was her name.

“Hello, Melinda,” Mr. Wink-wink said. “I’m Mr. Winkman, the district attorney. I’m going to ask you a few questions today. Is that all right?”

She wondered what would happen if she said no. She pointed to the camera. “You’re going to tape me?”

“Yes,” he replied. “This is what we call a deposition. You will answer my questions, then we’ll show the video to the judge. That way you won’t have to go to the trial.”

“Will I be cross-examined?” She remembered that from the
Law & Order
reruns she watched late at night when she couldn’t sleep and there was nothing else to do. Cross-examination was when the other guy’s lawyer yelled and screamed and got the defendant to say things he didn’t want to say, and to confess things like “I lied! I’m the killer!”

“You won’t be cross-examined,” Mr. Winkman replied. “You’re a minor.”

“Oh,” she said, guessing that was good. She folded her hands. “Well, go ahead, then. Ask me anything.”