The Wishing Tide (7 page)

Mary

W
hat on earth am I doing? I shake my muddled head as I watch the Inn Lady climb back up the dunes, her green thermos snug beneath her arm, and wonder if I’ve lost what little is left of my mind. Letting people in is a bad idea. A dangerous idea.

They sidle up next to you, all syrup and smiles, ask all the right questions, say all the right words. And then while you aren’t looking, they open you up and take you apart, poke at your wheels and your gears, until they realize they have no stomach for what they’ve found—and then they leave you.

And each time they do, you scrape up the pieces and find a way to put yourself back together. Only somewhere along the way, a few gears go missing, and then a few more, until one day the little that’s left comes flying apart, and all your warped wheels and broken springs are laid bare to the world. And perhaps you deserve that kind of scrutiny. Perhaps it’s even good for you. They tell you it is.

But I can’t do that again. I won’t.

And yet here I am, risking exposure—and worse. How would pretty little Lane Kramer react if she knew where I’d spent the better part of my years—if she knew what I’d done? Would she turn away
like the rest? I don’t believe she would. Because in a way I can’t explain, way down in my marrow, I know this woman. She’s safe, not broken like me, only a little bruised around the edges, and those bruises, wherever they’ve come from, make me sad for her, in a way I suspect people were once sad for me. No one is sad for me now. And that’s as it should be.

Still, it’s a frightening thing, this sympathy—unfamiliar territory. My heart has been frozen for so long I can scarcely remember the last time I felt sorry for anyone but myself. Still, I feel it now, thawing like a glacier that’s drifted too far south, leaving me exposed and uncertain on this slippery new ground. I don’t know Lane Kramer’s story, or who left her black-and-blue. I only know I’m willing to risk the finding out.

Michael

M
ichael sat at the dining room table, sipping a glass of Chianti and listening to the sounds of dinner being served up on the other side of the kitchen door. Lane hadn’t volunteered what was on the menu when she suggested they dine together, but whatever it was smelled amazing. After this morning’s somewhat strained conversation in the library, the offer had come as a bit of a surprise. She had seemed distracted when she returned from her walk, her face grim and set, but then who could blame her? He had sworn he’d be no trouble, and so far he’d been nothing but. He was lucky she hadn’t booted him out on his ear. Instead, she’d invited him to dinner.

Lane was still wearing her apron when she pushed through the swinging door connecting the kitchen with the inn’s formal dining room. He stood to help with the tray, but she shooed him back into his chair, then proceeded to set out garlic bread, salad, and an enormous bowl of pasta.

It all looked wonderful, but at the moment Michael was more interested in the woman who had prepared it. Her face was just inches from his as she leaned forward to set out the dishes, though most of it was concealed behind a curtain of deep red hair, the kind
of hair you wanted to touch just to prove it was real. She really was quite lovely, long-limbed and slender with enormous gold-flecked green eyes and a dusting of pale freckles across the bridge of her nose. He hadn’t noticed those before, but suddenly he had a flash of her as she must have been as a girl, the freckles more pronounced, the auburn hair wound into a pair of heavy braids, all knees and elbows and eyes. He found himself wondering if she’d been happy then—and if she was happy now.

She sighed softly as she untied her apron and tossed it aside, then slid into the chair across from him, her cheeks still flushed from cooking.

“Wine?” Michael inquired, poised to fill her glass.

Lane shook her head. “Best not. I still have some writing to do.”

Michael waited for her to take the first bite before picking up his fork to dive in. “This is amazing,” he said after a few bites. “There’s a little place outside Boston, La Campania. Best Italian I’ve ever eaten. But they’ve got nothing on you.”

She waved off the compliment. “There’s still no meat to be had, but there were some vegetables in the bins that were still halfway decent, so I opted for the primavera. I’m never, ever out of pasta.”

“Are you Italian?”

“Lord, no. I was a Campbell before I married Bruce.”

“Bruce?”

“My ex.”

“Oh,” he said, feigning relief. “I thought maybe you were stashing him somewhere.”

“Hardly,” Lane said with a roll of the eyes. “Have you got one? An ex, I mean.”

Michael thought of Becca sorting through the CD tower in his living room. Could you call someone your ex if she required only one cardboard box to pack her possessions when she moved out?

“No,” he said finally. “No ex.”

Michael wasn’t sure she’d heard him. She was nibbling on a piece of bread, staring off into space. He hadn’t meant to bring up a sour subject, but the look on her face suggested he’d done just that. His suspicions were confirmed when she grabbed the bottle of Chianti and splashed some into her glass.

“I didn’t mean to pry. I’m sorry.”

“You asked if I was Italian,” she said between sips. “That’s hardly prying.”

“Would it be prying to ask how the articles are coming along? I haven’t been in your way, have I?”

Lane shook her head as she chased a chunk of zucchini around her plate. “No, you haven’t. And they’re coming along nicely, thank you. What about you? How’s the research going?”

“Tedious. So pretty much as expected.”

“You don’t enjoy research?”

Michael helped himself to more salad and began carefully herding olives to the edge of his plate. “I think I’m just tired of working on this book.”

“Then why write it?”

“Ever heard the phrase
publish or perish
?”

Lane nodded.

“Well, that’s why.”

“I thought you were crazy about Dickens and his social commentary on the poor and downtrodden.”

Michael caught the slightly snarky reference but let it pass. “I am, which is precisely the point. The more I work on the thing, the more I realize it isn’t the book I meant to write.”

“I don’t understand. It’s your book. Write it the way you want.”

Michael eased back in his chair, sipping his wine while he considered Lane’s remark. If only it were that easy. If only he believed he had that kind of say over his career and his work. But he’d learned early on, and was still learning, that the hallowed halls of academia
carried their share of drawbacks, particularly for the son of a prominent Boston attorney whose shockingly generous gift to the school had conveniently arrived one month before he was hired.

He’d been trying to prove himself ever since, trying to overcome the niggling suspicion that he was sitting in someone else’s chair, that he’d usurped the job of someone who might have been more deserving, though not as well connected or well-heeled. The worst part was that he honestly couldn’t say whether he would have landed the position had his father not mailed the check. He did, however, know what everyone else thought.

“Can I ask you a question?” he asked, setting his glass aside.

Lane nodded, but her gold-flecked eyes were suddenly wary.

“This place—the inn—do you enjoy running it?”

“Very much. Why?”

“And your articles—you like writing them?” Her brow furrowed and he could tell she was trying to surmise where these questions were leading. “I guess I’m trying to figure out how you know if you’re where you’re supposed to be in life, or if you’re just, you know, treading water.”

The words seemed to catch Lane off guard. She set down her fork and blinked across the table at him. “I’m not sure if you’re asking the wrong question, or just the wrong girl. I mean, how does anybody know that?”

He planted his elbows on either side of his plate and folded his hands beneath his chin. “Did you always want to do this?”

“The inn? No, never. But I knew the minute I saw it.”

“And it’s enough? Even though it’s not what you always dreamed of doing?”

Michael saw at once that the question made her uncomfortable. She lifted her glass to buy time, sipping deeply. “For now,” she said quietly. “Yes, it’s enough.”

“Hmmm . . . why don’t I believe you?”

Lane’s brows shot up. “Now I’m a liar?”

“Don’t get mad. Believe it or not, this is actually about me, not you. Lately, I’ve been feeling like I’m living in someone else’s skin, showing one face to the world, but staring at someone completely different when I look in the mirror.”

“I know a little something about that.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I never really chose a path. Well, I chose, but for all the wrong reasons. I confused running away
from
something with running
toward
something, and I’m starting to wonder now if that ever really works. I’ve been thinking about making some changes in my life, following my dream or my North Star or whatever people call it.”

“Do you know what your dream is?”

“I do, or at least I think I do. And I can tell you it’s a million miles from what my family thinks it should be.”

Lane lifted her glass in mock salute. “At last, something we have in common.”

“Really? What did your parents think
you
should be?”

Her eyes lifted over the rim of her wineglass, meeting his. “Married.”

“Oh,” he said, swallowing his surprise. He’d expected her to say something else. “And what did you want to be?”

“A writer,” she blurted without blinking. “The kind who tells stories that make people laugh and cry and think about life.”

“Important stories?”

Lane drained her glass, then stared down into it. “Important stories, yes.”

Something in her voice made him want to reach for her hand, an uncomfortable reaction he managed to check. “Then why didn’t you?”

“Oh, I did once.”

Once again her answer surprised him. “And what happened?”

“He caught me.”

“Caught you? Who?”

“Bruce. He hated that I wrote. He thought it was a colossal waste of time. So I used to sneak around. I’d work when he was at the hospital, or away at a seminar. One day he found part of the manuscript in my nightstand. I didn’t want the pages lying about, so I rarely printed what I was working on, but I was having trouble with a scene and I thought if I printed it out it might help.” She shrugged as she reached for the Chianti and refilled her glass. “He found it.”

“And then what?”

“He pretended he thought it was funny, but he was furious that I’d gone behind his back.”

“And whose fault was it that you
had
to go behind his back?”

“Mine,” she said, the lone word flat and strangely devoid of emotion. “With Bruce everything was my fault. Everything. Always. It got to where I was afraid to make a move for fear of getting it wrong.”

“Did he . . . hit you?”

She looked at him then, or through him. There was something hard and faraway in her eyes. “There are more ways to be abusive than just using your fists.”

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, because he truly was. A writer’s ego was a fragile thing, especially early on. It required support and careful nurturing if it was to have any hope of surviving those early uncertain days. She had obviously gotten neither.

“Did you keep writing?”

“For a while, yes. Until I figured out Bruce was right and I was just wasting my time.”

“But how do you
know
you were wasting your time?”

“Kenny Bingham, one of Bruce’s buddies, who worked in the lit department at Northwestern, assured me that I was. Bruce snuck him a copy of my manuscript to critique.”

Michael stifled the grimace he felt tugging at his lips. He could already guess what was coming. He’d seen it firsthand, elitist
professors bent on doing their duty by the literary establishment, brandishing their opinions like swords, and riding roughshod over the dreams of budding writers in the process. He’d managed to resuscitate a few of those dreams, the ones he’d gotten to in time, but some had been past saving, too bitter and disillusioned to try again. He suspected Lane Kramer was one of the latter.

“And . . . ?” he prompted, when it became clear she wouldn’t volunteer more.

“And . . . he politely advised me to find a new hobby. Apparently I’m a talentless hack. Oh, and I’m unoriginal. I have no voice or style of my own. I do, however, have a gift for mimicking other, more talented writers, though that should in no way be confused with having actual talent.”

“Lane, there’s no such thing as original. Everyone borrows, whether they know it or not. Hell, some steal outright. It sounds to me like this Kenny whatever-his-name-is actually paid you a compliment, even if he didn’t mean to. Writing like other talented writers is a very good thing indeed.”

Lane sniffed. “That isn’t how Bruce saw it.”

Michael pushed his plate back in disgust. “So that was it? You took one stuffy-ass professor at face value and gave up?”

Lane tilted her glass and drank deeply, then gazed absently into the bloodred dregs. “I thought you stuffy-ass professors knew everything.”

Michael couldn’t help laughing out loud, partly because the words had come out slightly slurred, but mostly because the premise of the statement was utterly ridiculous.

“First of all, literary critique is purely subjective. One man’s trash may truly be another man’s treasure.
War of the Worlds
was called horrid, and a nightmare. Stephen King was told that
Carrie
would never sell. And one publisher actually told F. Scott Fitzgerald that
The Great Gatsby might
work as a book, but only if he got rid of Gatsby.”

“Yes, well, I’m not F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

“How do you know?” He could tell the question annoyed her, but he didn’t care. “My point is the so-called experts don’t know a bloody thing. We have an opinion, that’s all.”

A thick curtain of hair fell across her face as she reached for the wine bottle and refilled her glass. It wasn’t a new occurrence; her hair was always falling across her face. But now, suddenly, he saw that the gesture wasn’t wholly accidental. She used it to shield herself from probing eyes. He wasn’t sure how he’d missed it until now, but tonight there was no hiding the fragile, eggshell quality that hovered about her, as if a wrong move or word might break her.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

“No, this is different.” She tipped her head to one side. “But why are you being so nice all of a sudden, so . . . supportive?”

Michael pondered the question a moment. They hadn’t had many conversations since he arrived at the inn, and the ones they did have hadn’t gone very well. Now, without meaning to, he stood accused of being nice.

“Because your husband was an ass,” he said finally, and without apology. “Or perhaps it’s because I think you have a right to your dreams, and the right to pursue them in whatever way you choose.”

Lane smiled, a brief curl of the lips that was gone as quickly as it had appeared. “I can’t tell—are we still talking about me, or have we switched back to you?”

It was Michael’s turn to smile. “Point taken,” he conceded grimly. “Though I honestly don’t know the answer.”