Safe Harbor (33 page)

She knew that it looked bad for a thirty-one-year-old to be running straight
to her mom. But her sixty-year-
old mom had come running to Holly not so long ago, and over the same woman at that.

How ironic, thought Holly. How totally twisted.

She drove on automatic to the turreted house on
Main
. It was late when she arrived; the house was dark.

Unless.
She skirted around to the side. As she expected, the lights in the master bedroom were on. She crept over to the gnarled old cherry tree that grew alongside the house and began climbing, monkeylike, from lower limbs to upper until she reached the small balcony outside her mother's bedroom.

The French doors were open to the night air, but the screen doors were locked. Her mother was in the bathroom: Holly waited until she emerged and then called softly through the opening. Her mother jumped half a foot.

"Holly, for Pete's sake," she said, tying her robe around her as she approached the screen doors. "You're too old for that.
I'm
too old for that; you're going to give me a heart attack."

Holly put a finger to her lips. "Mom, we have to talk."

"At this hour? About what? I'm exhausted. I want to go to sleep."

"I know, I know." She went directly to the stereo system and put on a New Age CD to drown out their voices.

Her heart was still thumping from the climb; the extra oxygen helped keep her from breaking down. When she turned around, she had a ridiculously amused smile plastered to her face. "You won't believe what I just found out," she said.

That part she got out with no problem. She forced her smile to broaden.

"
Eden
's back, and
... it's the funniest thing. She's actually married to—this is so
funny
—Sam."

The thing that undid her was the look of deep and instant sympathy on her mother's face as she rushed to embrace her. Holly knew that mothers understood their daughters' pain. But
this
mother understood
this
pain in an extraordinary way. It was as if a single bullet had gone through both their hearts, leaving both women clutching one another to keep from falling down.

Holly broke down, despite her best efforts. In the next few minutes she related, in bits and tear-stained pieces, the scene that had just taken place in the red barn between Sam and her.

It was harder for Holly to tell her mother that her father had been informed and that her father didn't care; and that he was eager to help straighten out Eden's financial—and presumably her legal—entanglements. But Holly made herself do it, because she believed that not to say anything was to lie.

Her mother accepted the news with eerie resignation: undoubtedly she was too shell-shocked to do much else.

"So now there are
two
men who want her?" she asked when Holly was done.

Holly said, "Sam says no, that she doesn't mean anything to him. How can
I
believe him? He's lied about everything, including his own name, to me."

Her mother was awash in her own sea of misery. "She's on the boat? She's actually on the boat right now?"

"Yeah, if Sam is right," Holly answered. Too tired to move, she was lying like a rag doll stomach-down over a huge tufted hassock. "What will you do now, Mom?" she asked in a mopey voice. "You won't stay on the island, will you? If you go, I go," she decided.

Her mother had her bare feet perched on the edge of the hassock, pulled up to the wing chair in which she sat. Her head was thrown back, her eyes were closed; her wrists were draped limply over the rolled arms of the chair. She seemed even more weary than Holly; it had been another hell of a long day.

"You're jumping th
e gun, dear; you always do. No
one knows where they'll stay. Maybe they'll sail off into the sunset. That's your father's dream, isn't it?" She sounded bitter and sad and lonely as she said it.

"
Eden
would never do that," Holly said, flopping over on her back and easing the stretch in her limbs. "She needs more than an adoring audience of one. Just ask Sam."

She threw in the last three words to show how brave she was; but the effort hurt more than she thought possible. How on earth was her mother getting through this?

"Don't go rushing for the ferry yet, Holly,"
Charlotte
said grimly. "It's not over until it's over. Something could happen. She's reckless. Accidents do happen."

Something in her voice made Holly uneasy. "Mom," she said softly, "I don't like you like that."

"Yes. You're right. Sorry."

Holly went back to thoughts of Sam. "We should form an organization
. We'll call ourselves the Man-
Haters' Club—East Vineyard Chapter."

"And that would accomplish what?"

Holly spread her arms wide in a martyr's pose. "We could have weekly meetings and eat chocolate and write dreary poems about how pathetic men are."

"I
thought
I heard voices up here," said Ivy, poking her head in the room. "What's this club? I like the sound of it. Who're we hating and why?"

They were women, they were family, they were currently short on pride. It wasn't hard for Holly to relate her tale of woe for the second time that night, this time with fewer sobs and tears.

"So here we are," she said, pulling her knees to her chin. "All in the same boat, all at the same time. I think we would've been better off staggering our traumas," she added glumly. "It would be nice if one of us were emotionally intact."

"Nah," said Ivy. "We'd end up hating her for being that way."

"Ivy, for goodness sake!" her mother admonished. "You're both too young to be so disillusioned."

"Right now I feel old enough for the old folks' home," Holly admitte
d, yawning. She stretched full-
length on her mother's needlepoint rug and closed her eyes. "I think I'll just sleep here tonight."

She was prodded alert by her sister's next remark: "Now that I think about it, Holly, I'm not sure you're as qualified as we are to be in a man-haters' club."

It struck a nerve. Holly had been feeling slightly uneasy herself; her situation was not the same as the other two women's.

"Okay,
obviously
there was nothing wrong with his marrying
Eden
," she allowed, opening her eyes. "But there was plenty wrong with not telling me about it."

"Well, you can see why he'd be reluctant to do that with you, honey," her mother chimed in. "I've told you before: you want everyone to be too happy. That's another way of saying you hate bad news."

"Mother! Now it's
my
fault?"

"Not at all. But it's been my experience in life that in most situations, everyone is at least partly to blame."

Holly sat up. "No! I'm not taking any blame in this. I didn't do anything wrong, damn it! And neither did you. It's not your fault if you can't sail around the world."

"No, but even if my stomach were able, I wouldn't
want
to do it. For a marriage to work, big dreams have to be shared; it's only the smaller ones that are optional."

"If it is a dream. If you ask me, I think Dad is just bored, bored, bored with work. It's not that he really wants to see the world; it's just that he wants to run away from his job. There's a huge difference."

"Okay, Dear Abby—what was Jack's problem?" asked Ivy. "He loves his work."

"Oh, Jack. He was just incredibly stupid."

"And Sam? Why do you think Sam jumped into bed with you? To get back at Dad?"

"Not at all. If that were the case, he would've slept with Mom."

"Hollyl"

Holly shrugged at her mother and said, "Sorry. We're just theorizing." To her sister, she said, "Frankly, in retrospect I have no idea what Sam saw in me. You haven't met
Eden
, but I'm the polar opposite of her. I hate to play games; she lives to play games—"

"Sam may not
like
to play games."

"There are other things. I'm not coy; she's a flirt. I'm not confident—"

"Earlier this evening, you were brimming," her mother reminded her with a gentle smile.

Holly sighed and said, "That was before I got dumped."

"You didn't get dumped, Holly. I got dumped. You found out that Sam once got taken in by
Eden
's allure, that's all. He was twenty-three; what did you expect? Twenty-three is just a few months older than thirteen."

Holly wasn't comforted by the fact. "If
Eden
has the power to make Dad throw away a thirty-plus-year marriage, she certainly has the power to reclaim a man who's been carrying the torch for seven years. The only option I have is to wait and see what happens," she said, more to herself than to them.

It was time to go. She stood up. "To be perfectly honest," she added, "I don't think
Eden
will want Sam. She's ignored him for seven years; that must mean something. Besides, she's going to go where the money is, and Sam doesn't have that much. Not compared to Dad. So. Where does that leave me?"

Resting her forearms on her head, she swung left and right, working out the day's kinks. "It leaves me with someone who will—possibly—continue to carry the torch, even if he buries it deep down inside. How would I ever know for sure?"

It was hard to argue with that, and neither Holly's mother nor her sister bothered to try. The three became silent; Holly had just waved her evil wand over the slumber party and turned it into a wake.

Ivy tried to brighten the mood. "Stay over tonight. Stay. Mom will make us breakfast in the morning—won't you, Mom?" she said.

Their mother was unhappy with Ivy's plan and was blunt about it.

"I don't think that's a good idea," she told Holly. "With Ivy and the girls here, there's really no room. I don't want to make up the sofa bed—for pity's sake, you only live a mile away."

Surprised by her mother's resolve, Holly shrugged and said, "Okay by me; I know when I'm not wanted."

"I feel a headache coming on,"
Charlotte
added. She was virtually showing Holly the door.

"With or without a premonition?" Holly murmured, studying her mother curiously.

"Don't be flip, Holly; it's your biggest flaw. Good night. Both of you. Please."

And that was that.

A
little before six the next morning, Eden Walker snuggled her naked body against her exhausted lover and licked the lobe of his ear. "Mornin', big guy," she said in a sleepy, sultry voice. "Ready for more?"

The response she got was a pleased, delighted groan—but a groan, nevertheless.

Eden
laughed and sat up in the berth. "Then what do you say to a warm doughnut instead?"

Eric Anderson rolled onto his back and opened one eye. "I say yes." He closed his eyes. A sleepy, sated smile softened the deep lines of his face. "It's good to have you back aboard."

Eden
pulled a denim jumper over her bare body and slid into a pair of espadrilles. "Don't go sailing off without me, now," she teased.

"Oh, my darling," said Eric, doting on every syllable. "Never."

"Good," she said, grabbing her straw carryall. "Be right back!"

Emerging on deck,
Eden
bent over double and
combed her fingers through her
auburn hair, then shook it back as she straightened and took a deep, long breath of salt air. She glanced around at the other boats, but the marina was quiet at that hour. Her step was light and sure as she hopped down to the dock, then walked out toward the road through the shell-strewn parking lot.

She was halfway across the lot when a car shot out from its place among a row of parked automobiles and headed in her direction.

She turned in time to see the wagon swerve toward her, running her down before racing out of the lot.

****

Sam lucked out: there was a seat available on the Cape Air Cessna for the first flight out to
Boston
that morning. Arriving early on standby had something to do with nabbing the spot, he knew; but he had chosen to believe that God had simply got tired of the way he was screwing up his quest for justice and had decided to step in and lend a hand.

Immediately after dropping into one of the coveted nine seats, Sam closed his eyes, trying to shut out the string of disasters that
had made up his previous day.
His thoughts were murderous, and they were aimed at himself. What a jerk, what a fool, what a paranoid ass he'd been. Why couldn't he have just told Holly the truth from the get-go? Instead, these were the cards he had handed her to play:

Hi, my name is Percy Billings. I'm a lawyer. No, wait, I'm a P.I. No, scratch that. I'm actually an idiot. Did I mention that I'm sleeping in my car? And that I'm married? To the same woman who's just destroyed your family?