A Month at the Shore (17 page)

Corinne looked up at her approach, and the smile on her face disappeared instantly. "Laura! What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost!"

She laid her rolling pin aside, then went up to Laura and pressed the back of a flour-dusted hand to her forehead. "You're not clammy. How's your stomach?"

"My stomach's fine," Laura said, slipping out from under her sister's scrutiny. So much for disguising her distress. "That smells great, by the way. I'm starving."

"Go wash. You probably haven't eaten a thing all day," Corinne grumbled. "This is why I can't trust you to grab lunch on your own. You don't do it. How'd it go with Kendall Barclay?"

"Oh
... okay. He could use some work—his garden, I mean."

"Don't I know it. The house is gorgeous; the grounds are a mess. Have been, ever since his mother moved out and he moved in. A gardener he ain't."

Corinne began shaping the dough into a long roll for cutting into thin, chewy dumplings. "I don't know why the man doesn't just break down and hire a service. He can afford it. But no; I see him pushing that ridiculous old hand-mower over that pathetic patch of grass, and I say to myself, why? Why does he bother?"

"Maybe he wants people to feel sorry for him."

"Yeah, right. The most eligible bachelor on the Cape, a man who's rich, smart, and handsome—who's going to feel sorry for him?"

Laura dipped a spoon into the stew and blew on it to cool it down. "Why hasn't he married?" she asked very casually. "No one in Chepaquit's good enough?"

"Funny you should ask," Corinne said, amused by the very question. "A couple of months ago, I was getting my hair cut at Tess's, and his mother's old cook was going on with one of the hairdressers about him. He's dated plenty of women, but the cook says he's very particular—not that you'd know it, looking at his lawn."

"Well, cheer up about that, at least. He plans to order all of his landscaping needs from Shore Gardens, and he wants you to oversee the planting."

That got Corinne's attention. "Really? Oh, don't toy.
Really?"

When Laura nodded, she said joyously, "This could be it, Laura—the break we've been looking for! Maybe everyone will take their cue from him and come to us instead of taking their business to Chatham. Maybe they'll stop regarding us like a bunch of weirdos and murderers. Maybe we'll finally get some respect!"

"We'll have a better idea the day after tomorrow," Laura said, not as confident as she'd like to be. "A good crowd would go hand in hand with lots of orders."

"I know what we can do. We can serve more serious treats than cookies. Brownies. I'll make up a few batches and cut them small. We'll have them set up at your seminar on how to dry flowers. That should do it. Now go change, and then call Snack; supper's in fifteen minutes."

She looked so pleased with herself, so hopeful. Laura didn't have the heart to tell her that the real reason she suspected they were getting Ken's landscaping order was so he could talk it over with Laura in bed.

Okay, that was unfair. But for whatever reason, Ken had a yen, and what did he care if he threw a little business their way to indulge it?

Okay, that was also un
fair. Although he seemed mysti
fyingly attracted to her, Laura had seen evidence that he felt an obligation to his family homestead. His desire to have it properly landscaped seemed sincere. Still, the best way to test that sincerity was to stay out of his bed.

Which was an excellent plan all the way around. "Do I have time to change?" she asked Corinne.

"Laura! Have you heard a thing I said?"

"No," she admitted. "Nothing after the word 'brownies.' "

****

Ken had to cool down before he punched in the number of his mother's Boston condo. Camille Barclay was very protective of her late husband's memory, and she was convinced that Ken had competitive feelings about his father besides.

Well, she was right. Ken did feel as if he had something to prove. He was determined to be his own man and not just his father's son when it came to running the bank. It was the reason he'd painted it red, the reason he'd pushed for a major upgrade of their data management system.

It was even the reason he'd hesitated about moving back to Triple Oaks, once his mother had made the decision to move to Boston. He didn't want to be a carbon copy of the Old Man; it was such a clich
é
. But then his mother had gone and called his bluff by threatening to sell out to a developer, so here he was, the owner of the house after all.

And mad as hell. It was one thing to be encouraged and guided and even blackmailed, another thing altogether to have mail intercepted, an answer faked, and his life turned around.
Damn it to hell
!

His mother sounded delighted, as she always did, to hear from him. He had to give her credit there; Camille Barclay
never nagged if, unlike his sister, Ken happened to slip out of touch for a few weeks. In fact, the only guilt he'd had to endure was over his taking his time on the marriage-and- grandchildren front, and Ken knew that he wasn't alone in his generation to do that.

"Darling, you're going to have to make it fast," she said. "I'm on my way out to dinner."

"All right, I'll cut to the chase. Did Dad once intercept a letter to me and then answer it himself?"

The ripple of cultivated laughter was both reassuring and troubling.

"Ken, your father never opened his own mail. Why would he have opened yours?"

"When I was fourteen."

He expected more laughter, but instead he got silence.

And then, finally, an answer: "No. I'm absolutely sure that your father never did any such thing."

Suddenly someone pulled back the blinds in a back room of Ken's mind, and light began flooding in. "Mother. For God's sake. You were the one."

"Oh, Ken, don't start. I've told you: I'm on my way out the door."

"How could you do that?
Why
would you do that?"

"You were just a boy; you don't remember—"

"The hell I don't!"

"It was an awful event; it could have dogged you for the rest of your life. You meant well, of course you did, but you managed to get involved with the worst sort of—really, I
have
to go," she said. He could see her drawing herself up to her full statuesque five feet and nine inches. "We can discuss this at some other time."

"I'll be up there tomorrow night," he said in a steely voice. "Don't make plans."

"I've made plans."

"Then cancel them."

"I will not! I—"

The regal tone collapsed in a puddle of motherly irritation. "Oh, all right," she said. "This is such a non-issue. But if it makes you feel better to throw a tantrum in front of me instead of over the phone, then fine. Be here."

He hung up in a retroactive fury. As an only son, he'd always had to put up with a certain amount of control and manipulation by both his parents. His father had discouraged his original desire to become a naturalist, and his mother had never given up trying to match him to the Right Sort of woman. He understood and accepted that; they were only being parents.

But this was different. This had been behind his back. The fact that he'd been a kid at the time was irrelevant; this was the first instance he'd seen of either of his parents being guilty of deception. Now, suddenly, he was forced to wonder if there had been other times.

Damn it.

The couple of times that he and Laura had crossed paths in town, she had looked away and then run away. He hadn't run after her because he was tongue-tied and shy. He saw her only one other time, although that time, she hadn't seen him. He'd grown taller by then, and he'd put on some muscle. Didn't matter. He was still tongue-tied and shy.

It wasn't until he went to college and lived free of parental and private-school constraints that he'd had a chance to grow and bloom. He went a little wild, his grades sank, he ran a risk of being kicked out as a classic non-performer. But he turned it around in time and graduated with honors and, more importantly, with a minor in ornithology. Laura was long gone by then.

Had he been happy since? He hadn't been unhappy. But now all bets were off. When he finally went to bed, the same bed that he'd so fleetingly shared with Laura just hours before, he was aware that he was more miserable than he ever had been as a geeky little rich snot in Chepaquit Elementary.

And he didn't like the feeling at all.

****

"It's some kind of plot, that's what it is."

"No, it's some kind of blown gasket. I'll go to town, get a new one, replace the lost hydraulic fluid, and we'll be back in business."

Laura, Snack, and Corinne were standing in front of the ancient John Deere tractor, which looked as if someone had come during the night and stabbed it to death: a pool of dark liquid stained the rich earth beneath it.

"But the tractor was working fine last night when you were moving the compost," Laura said, ready to scream. "How could it just go and collapse in the middle of the night?"

"It's old. It's tired. I've been flogging it for days."

Corinne said, "Whether or not you finish moving the compost, we need the tractor. We have to fix it, Snack. We won't be able to move or load any of the bigger shrubs or trees without it," she went on, her voice getting higher and more anxious. "What if you can't get the right gasket?"

"I'll get it, I'll fix it, you'll have it,
okay
?
"

"That'd be great, Snack," Laura said in a soothing tone. "Just
... do what you can."

She was worried about him. He'd been doing the work of two men, and the strain was beginning to show. The compost project was taking far too long for him, and he'd become increasingly snappish; even Corinne's hearty stew the night before hadn't been enough to restore his mood.

It was a stretch to picture him in twenty-four hours wearing a clown's outfit and twisting balloons into cute little animals for kids. A real stre
tch. Laura gently set her hand-
wringing sister back to pricing the truckload of annuals that had just arrived; gave her brother some money for town; and went back to the house and her laptop, where she was preparing a list of gardening dos and don'ts.

After the sale—and assuming Shore Gardens was still in business—she intended to compose a Tip of the Week ad for the nursery in the
Chatham Herald.
It was a great way to establish brand loyalty with the gardeners in the area, and once she was back in Portland and getting paid again, the cost of carrying the ads would be nothing for her.

She sat back down at her father's desk and continued plugging away. She already had a list of Top Ten Dos for the Garden to pass out; but she wanted to include the Top Ten Don'ts. She composed at a feverish pace and didn't look up until the printer began spewing the pale green printed pages. She pulled one off the top and looked it over.
 

1.
Don't wa
ter your roses at night; you'll
encourage blackspot.

2.
Don't plant your tulip bulbs in holes that are shallow; you won't get a second season of bloom.

3.
Don't use chemical pesticides if you want earthworms to make your soil rich. And bees to pollinate your flowers. And birds to feed on the seedpods.

4.
Don't plant sun-loving flowers anywhere where they can't get four to six hours of sun a day; they'll sulk and just won't bloom.
 

Don't don't don't.

Don't think about him.

Don't think about yesterday.

Don't think about his touch, his kiss, his vow to get to the bottom of the letter mystery.

Don't.

Laura proofread the rest of her tips and set the stack aside. Next up: tip sheets for her dried-flowers workshop. She was gratified that the class would be full. Twenty-one women—including Miss Widdich!—had paid the ten-dollar fee, which barely covered the cost of the supplies. It was part of doing business, and Laura understood that, but still. It would be awfully nice if they managed to come out of the week with anything close to a profit.

No one ever promised you a rose garden,
her mother used to say. It was kind of a family joke. But Laura needed success, money, and, yes, that rose garden, so she had gone off in search of the good life. She had found herself a city, a job; for a while, a man. But now, looking out the window at the bounty of the nursery and beyond it at the sea, she had to wonder whether she'd made the right choices in life, after all.

Don't.

She brushed away her doubts like aphids off a rose and got back to work, and she didn't look up from her laptop until she heard three easy raps on the open door to the den.

He was standing there with his arms crossed and leaning against the doo
r
jamb, big and broad-shouldered and looking about as un-geeky as a man can get. There was something about his smile—something in the anticipation she saw there—that made Laura feel it right down to her toes.