Authors: Antoinette Stockenberg
Safe Harbor (37 page)
Ivy, whose lithe, blond figure looked good in anything, threw on a boxy, shapeless sundress that would have made Holly look like a fire hydrant. As for Holly, she wore black, she didn't know why. It wasn't her best color, but it wasn't her worst, and she liked the way the rayon fabric flowed when she moved. It reminded her of the sea.
Charlotte Anderson fussed as well, emerging from her bedroom in a flattering sundress of cream linen printed all over with the outlines of tiny seashells. Her mood was upbeat, and that made everyone glad.
The weather was warm and muggy and iffy enough that
Charlotte
ran back for umbrellas and threw them in the Volvo before the women set off for Oak Bluffs. Traffic was a predictable nightmare; the fact that Renata Nevin had parking for two cars was itself cause for
cel
ebration. Eventually the Volvo was snugged behind the widow's brand-new Volkswagen bug, and six women, no men, gathered under Japanese lanterns hanging from every open piece of gaily painted gingerbread on Mrs. Nevin's Gothic confection.
Painted pink and la
vender and ivory and you-would-
have-to-call-it purple, Wren House was only a little more exuberant than its neighbor to the right, painted green and blue and mauve and rust, and far less adventurous than its neighbor to the left, whose gingerbread alone was painted three shades of red.
Holly and Ivy left their mother and her old friend to entertain the stream of visitors stopping by, and they went off with the children to the sing-along.
The two big and two little sisters wandered among the milling crowd, enthralled like everyone else by the
village
of
Hansel-and-Gretel
cottages built often no more than an arm's length away from what originally had been neighboring tent sites. The Camp Ground was a fairyland of intricate scrollwork highlighting turrets and eaves, teeny balconies and tiny verandas, steep-gabled roofs and fish-scale shingles, all of it a-twinkle with thousands of Japanese lanterns. This was no commercial, made-for-admission Disney fantasy, but century-old enchantment in its original form. Every year, at least once, the Vineyard got it exactly right.
Holly said to her sister, "I feel a little as if we're fairy-people, and this is our magical ground, and the paper lanterns are stars from the sky, and something wonderful is happening here. You feel it, too, the spell."
Smiling, Ivy said, "Yes, I do. Even I."
"Nothing
bad can happen here; we're enchanted, at least for tonight."
The women strolled serenely while the girls darted in and around them, all of them whispering sisterly secrets and forming bonds that would carry them into their old ages. Strains of "Cruising Down the River" made them linger at the crowd's edge to join in; everyone knew the words to that one.
Ivy spotted an old friend. "I haven't seen Eva in years! Keep an eye on the kids for me, would you? I'll be right back."
The songleader launched another old-fashioned crowd pleaser, "Shine On, Harvest Moon," and Holly and the children stayed to sing those lyrics, too. Holly had her arms around Cissy, snuggled in front of her, as they swayed to the old-fashioned tune. Sally, it was true, seemed more fascinated by two nearby girls wearing midriff tops over low-slung jeans, and bangles that jangled when they fluttered their hands—but even Sally was singing along.
The crowd loved the song. Holly
could almost see a little white ball bouncing across the top of the words.
I ain't had no lov-in
' ...
Since August twenty-first around six-thirty
a.m
., she realized, substituting her own sad version for the lyric.
The simple truth was that there would be no moon tonight—harvest or otherwise. The sky was threatening; there was rain in the air. Still, for the length of the lyrics, the life of the song, Holly truly believed that love was a simple emotion that led, inevitably, to a happy ending.
****
Sam stood alongside and a little behind her, aware that he should keep moving, unable to do it. She looked so completely lovely, swaying slightly to the song, her hair swept up off her neck, her arms dropped over the shoulders of a young girl, undoubtedly a niece. He could hear Holly clearly above the crowd; she had a beautiful singing voice, something else he hadn't known about her. And she knew the lyrics. They all knew the lyrics. What kind of people
were
these?
For me and my
... ga-a-a-l.
The song ended; it was time to move on. Sam was pushing himself to leave, and she must have noticed the struggle, because she turned to him with surprise and wonder in her face, as if he'd suddenly materialized from another century.
Caught.
Approaching her with a wry smile, he said, "Evenin', ma'am," simply because nothing else occurred to him. At this point, what the hell could he possibly say?
"Sam...?
" She still didn't believe it.
Sam wasn't sure himself why he'd come, except that he knew that tonight on the island, the
Camp
Ground
was the place to be. He said, "I had some time to kill," and immediately hated himself for saying it that way: the thought seemed unworthy of the fantasy that surrounded them.
"Oh—well, naturally. I can see how
... how
..." she said, stammering to a halt.
Holly Anderson, at a loss for words? It was more painful to witness than if she had jammed a knife in his gut and turned it. He could deal with her rage. He just couldn't handle her hurt.
In a desperate diversion, Sam turned to the two young girls who were watching him curiously and gave them a stiffly smiling "Hello."
"Oh, I'm sorry," said Holly. "That's Cissy, my niece, and this is her sister Sally. Girls—"
The little redhead was looking up at her aunt in surprise. "I'm not Sally. I'm Cissy."
Holly gazed at the girl's earnest face and said, "Did I say Sally? I didn't mean that. Sam, this is my niece Sally."
"I'm Cissy
!
"
"I'm sorry. What did I say? Cissy?"
"You said Sally! I'm Cissy! Are you just fooling, Aunty Holly?" she asked, turning suddenly plaintive.
As for Cissy's blond sister, she turned her back on the whole conversational fiasco and simply pretended not to be there.
Despite the tension, Sam probably would have continued to stand there like a moonstruck servant if it weren't for Holly dismissing him. She half-sighed and said, "I hope you enjoy the time you have left to kill, Sam. When you're done with the loft, just leave the key on the dresser." She stuck out her hand and said, "Goodbye."
Not good night; goodbye. No questions asked. Sam was so stunned by the finality of it that he didn't think to take her hand. She shrugged and turned away, flanked by her nieces. The last thing he heard was the little redhead—Cissy or Sally, he still didn't know which—asking, "Is that the man who sleeps in his car?"
He stared at the three until they were joined by a fourth and got swallowed up by the crowd. After that, his world went from color and magic to plain black and white. He didn't see anything except in terms of obstacles to move around as he sought to escape. He circled the huge wrought-iron Tabernacle—historically the stage for so many spiritual revelations and conversions—on his way back to
Circuit Avenue
. People, trees, the gingerbread houses themselves—all seemed no more than indistinct blurs that got in his way. He wanted out of there; the idea that he was going to find illumination on Illumination Night suddenly seemed laughable.
He bumped into someone walking too slow, excused himself, got caught in a stroller-laden, slow-moving family, couldn't get around them, clipped the mother's shoulder, excused himself again, turned to detour down one of the cottage-lined spokes of the wheel that was Trinity Park, and found himself face-to-face, for the first time in seven unending, gut-gnawing years, with Eden Walker, who had refused to take the name Steadman when they were married at City Hall, sending Sam a signal as loud and clear as an air raid siren, only he had been too damn stupid to see it.
Because she was so beautiful. Her beauty had been blinding then, and it was positively awesome now. She was standing at the end of
Tabernacle Avenue
, actually a short and narrow lane, and she looked as if on this most magical of nights she had been expecting him. The lanterns hanging from every conceivable perch threw a rainbow of color over
her short white dress, a form-
fitting thing which reminded him, if he needed reminding, that her legs went on forever and her breasts were high and firm.
He approached. She met him halfway.
He was able to see her face: the high, sculpted cheekbones, the Brooke Shields eyebrows, the mane of hair that was no longer blond, as Holly had said, but the color he remembered, a rich, dark auburn. It was straight and shining and bounced as she walked, trailing a cloud of confidence behind her.
For years he had been convinced that he'd been exaggerating
Eden
's beauty to himself, but now he knew that he had been wrong. She was all that and more.
28
"
H
ello, Sam," she said.
He remembered now: for all her sophisticated beauty, her voice had a kind of little-girl pitch to it that he had always found off-putting. Funny how he'd forgotten that.
"Long time, no see," he managed to say.
"I told you I'd come back."
"True," he said, and meanwhile his heart was taking flying leaps at his ribcage. "But you didn't mention that it would be for my parents' engraving."
She laughed and circled him, which made him feel like livestock at auction. He remembered that, too, about her now: that she looked before she bought. He used to enjoy it. Tonight he was co
mparing it to Holly's straight-
ahead enthusiasm, and he wasn't so impressed. This seemed tired, and somehow nasty. He half-circled Eden himself, so that she wouldn't have the advantage of him.
He watched as a corner of her mouth lifted in a querulous smile. She rested her shapely behind on the cap of a low picket fence and let him take her all in. And he did, from the perfectly shaped fingernails, so unlike Holly's shop-torn ones, to the curve of her long neck as she watched him watching her.
"The years have been good to you," he said grudgingly.
She lifted a bare shoulder. "I play to my strengths."
"You have them in spades."
"I—thank you," she said. She cast her gaze downward in a gesture of humility that surprised Sam. She seemed to be waiting out a thought. He decided that he'd wait it out, too. She looked back up at him, and even in the kaleidoscope lighting he could see that her eyes were glazed over with tears.
"I'm sorry, Sam," she said, her voice catching.
She stood up.
"It was a huge mistake, leaving you."
His heart took a big jump.
It was a huge mistake:
words he had waited seven long years to hear. He savored them, let them roll back and forth in his consciousness like fine brandy.
And then, amazing himself, he spit them out. All he wanted, he realized now, was the taste of her remorse. He had waited seven endless years to hear her say that she'd made a mistake. The magnitude of his wasted life didn't hit him all at once; it rolled in slowly and in stages, like an incoming tide.
"There was no baby, of course," he said tersely.
"No
... there was no baby."
"But there
was
a warrant."
"Yes. I cheated an old woman and I'm sorry for that."
"And yet you came back to try to cheat another old woman, and her invalid husband."
She shook her head. "
I
came back to find out about you, whether you were with anyone. The engraving falling into my hands, that was a detour."
"An irresistible one."
"I won't deny it. But it wasn't what I came for, not what I wanted."
"I don't think you
know
what you want,
Eden
!" he said in a burst of frustration.
"Yes
... I do, Sam," she whispered.
He was beginning to feel ill. "Besides money, I mean."
That brought a flash of anger from her. "If it was about money, I'd be with Eric right now."
Seven years! Sam nodded and said, "Where
is
the poor sap, anyway?"
Eden
pushed herself off the low fe
nce and said dis
missively, "He's showing me how much he trusts me."
He'll get lots of practice at that, Sam thought, but he didn't say it aloud. What was the point?
Seven years! There was only one real sap in this scenario.
"Since we're here," Sam said tiredly, "I suppose I ought to bring up the subject of the money. Sorry," he added, when he saw the look of pained surprise on her face. "I know it's gauche."