Beachcombers (3 page)

Focus
, she told herself.

What was number five? Okay, the fifth thing she was grateful for was to be on this island. The flamboyant, generous beauty both hurt and healed her. Some days the intensity of the wild blue sea, the dense clouds of pink climbing roses, flew straight to her heart like an arrow, spearing her with emotions, so that she had to crouch to the ground, pressing her knees into her chest to keep from crying. But some days the beauty soothed her, even cheered her.

She believed that someday, someday
soon
, she would walk on the beach, and she would smile.

3

Abbie

A
bbie!"

The instant Abbie stepped out of Jason's truck onto the driveway, her youngest sister opened the front door and flew out of the house. Lily had been waiting, watching out the window, and this tugged at Abbie's heart. Lily was twenty-two now, a grown woman, but she would always be Abbie's little sister. And Lily
was
little, four inches shorter than Abbie, and petite.

"Abbie, I'm so glad you're here!" Lily was almost jumping up and down.

"Me, too, kid." Abbie wrapped her sister in a big hug.

Lily was the beauty of the family, with her red hair and green cat eyes. She was sexy, too, and not unaware of her charms. Abbie felt Lily's attention shift to Jason, the island man who had been on her plane and offered her a ride home from the airport.

Jason was lifting Abbie's luggage from his truck. He was two years older than Lily and six years younger than Abbie. He'd just gotten out of the army, and he was grown up and bulked up. He'd been a hunk to start with, with his dark hair, black eyes, and the exotic looks he'd inherited from his Cape Verdean ancestors.

Abbie reached for her duffel bag and roller suitcase. "Jason, thanks for the ride."

"No problem." Jason nodded at Lily. "Hi, Lily."

"Hi, Jason. Thanks for bringing Abbie home." Lily batted her long lashes at Jason. "Would you like to come in for some iced tea or something?"

"Another time, maybe. Abbie tells me she hasn't been home for a while. You guys have some catching up to do." With a smile, Jason climbed up into his truck and drove away.

Lily grabbed her sister's arm, pulling her toward the house. "I can't believe you're really here! I went out to Bartlett's and got a bunch of their arugula ..."

The front hall was cool and dim; the back of the house got the sun. As she dropped her bags down by the stairs, Abbie saw the dust powdering the baseboards, the frame of the mirror, and the etched glass globes of the overhead light.

"Look!" Lily nodded toward the hall table, where a vase of wildflowers stood next to the brass bowl where the family tossed their mail and keys. "Just for you!"

"How nice, Lily! Thanks." Abbie hugged her sister again, but she couldn't keep her gaze from sweeping over Lily's shoulder. She'd been gone for just eighteen months. How could the house have become so cluttered in that short space of time?

"Where's Emma?"

"She's in her room. She might be asleep. She sleeps a lot." Lily studied Abbie's face. "We haven't gotten around to washing the windows for a while. I never think about it, until, well, I never think about it."

And then it was as if the entire house came crashing down all around Abbie, the weight of the windows and the sofa and the chairs and the dust all balancing right on her shoulders, weighing her down so much she could scarcely breathe. And she hadn't even made it into the kitchen yet.

Since she was fifteen, Abbie had been in charge of the house, taking care of Lily and Emma, cooking and cleaning. She hadn't been able to go to college, not with the death of her mother and the family responsibilities that had brought her. Sometimes she'd thought she would never be able to have her own family, her own life. She loved her family, but she'd longed to see just a bit of the world.

When she turned twenty-eight, two years ago, she accepted an au pair job with a summer family and traveled with them to London. She was being paid for work, yet she'd never had so much time to herself. The children she took care of were ten and twelve, good-natured and easy. With them she went to museums, concerts, plays, and to watch the changing of the guard in front of Buckingham Palace. At night, she helped herself to a book from Mr. Vanderdyne's library. She read Dickens, Hardy, and T. S. Eliot. She watched DVDs of Noel Coward plays and Truffaut movies. She sat with her charges during their French lessons and began to learn French herself--the Vanderdynes were going to France this summer.

Then Lily's worried emails arrived. Abbie had to come home.

It had felt good, at first, to feel needed. Yet how good a job had she done of raising Lily if Lily was still dependent on Abbie?

Sensing the drop in Abbie's mood, Lily was babbling, "We've been too busy working to pay attention to stuff like dusting. Even before the stock market crashed last fall, Nantucket was kind of falling apart. People have stopped building new homes. Several of Dad's clients backed out of deals. He always has some work, but you know he puts his crew first, and he's kept paying their salaries and health insurance. I've helped out financially as much as I can. I pay for some of the groceries and stuff like that."

Okay,
this
was a change, and a good one. When Abbie had left eighteen months ago, Lily hadn't had any idea about the amount of money it took to run a house. With both her big sisters gone, it sounded like Lily had learned a lot.

Lily went on, "I want to talk to you about money. You're always so good with stuff like that."

"Okay, sure. We can ask Emma, too, since she's the money expert."

"I don't think Emma's feeling too
expert
about anything," Lily said.

Abbie's attention was caught by the photograph on the mantel. Their Aunt Stella had taken it at her daughter's wedding ten years ago. The three sisters were dressed in matching bridesmaid's gowns, lavender tulle fantasias.

Abbie's curly brown hair was feathered close to her scalp, accentuating the elegant shape of her head, and the length of her neck. She'd inherited her father's tall, lanky, wide-shouldered swimmer's body and stood with an ironic tilt behind the froth of dress. Abbie had worn her hair short all her life. It was easy to keep--she often trimmed it herself--and it made swimming easy. She was twenty then, but clearly she was an adult. She held herself with authority. Her smile was genuine but perhaps just a little sardonic.

Emma was a few inches shorter than Abbie--it was always remarked upon, how the three sisters were like stair steps. Like Abbie, she had big hazel eyes. Unlike her older sister, she was round, as their mother had been. Not fat, not even plump, just
round.
Her bosom bulged at the strapless neckline. Her waist was small, her hips wide. Her brown hair was as curly as Abbie's but Emma had freckles sprinkled over her nose and cheeks and her face was less angular than Abbie's. She was the "cute" one, and it drove her crazy. She set and rolled and ironed and blew her hair dry, and for photos she jutted her chin out, trying to look sophisticated. She always just looked cranky.

Lily had been only twelve that year. She'd sleeked her wild red curls into a formal chignon and lined her gorgeous green eyes with kohl. She was the shortest of the sisters as well as the youngest, and the most dainty. For the photo she'd turned a bit sideways, curling her shoulder up to her cheek in a kittenish come-hither gesture. She looked like a child playing dress-up.

"Why is this thing on the mantel?" Abbie wondered aloud. "We all look so young."

"Dad likes it there," Lily said. "It's the last formal photo taken of the three of us together."

Abbie did a slow turn around the room. "It's like entering a time machine." She quickly held her hand up. "Not criticizing! Just saying." She took a moment to study her baby sister. "Wow, you have really turned into a bombshell, haven't you?"

Lily blushed. "Do you think so?"

"How could I not? You've got some Rita Hayworth stuff going on for you now."

Pleased, Lily hurried to return the compliment. "And you look like--Audrey Hepburn."

"Ha. I think I'm more Sigourney Weaver in
Alien.
"

Lily nodded enthusiastically. "I can totally get that!"

"What's Emma looking like these days?" Abbie idly ran her fingers over the piano keys--it was just slightly out of tune.

Lily tugged on Abbie's arm. "Let's go up and see her."

4

Emma

E
mma lay on her bed like the letter S with a cat nestled into the crook of her knees and her ancient Paddington bear squashed up against her chest. Much of the stuffed animal's fur had worn away, and his left ear was held on with a safety pin, but she only loved him all the more for that. Paddington had seen her through many crises. His fur probably still held all the salt from the tears she cried the year her mother died.

Downstairs, the screen door slammed. Voices floated up, Lily's rapid girlish soprano, Abbie's lower, slower phrases. It had been two years since she'd seen Abbie.

Emma had been so happy for Abbie when she went to London. No one knew better than Emma how Abbie had sacrificed her own life to keep the family going after their mother died. Perhaps Emma hadn't been really aware of it when she was a teenager, caught up in her own grief and desires. Certainly when she got a scholarship to U. Mass./Amherst, she'd accepted in a flash, and gone away for four years, assuming that Abbie would stay home to take care of Lily and run the house. It was what Abbie did. Had she taken Abbie for granted? Yes, she had. They all had. Even, especially, their father.

Jim Fox was a contractor, a reliable, friendly, even-tempered man who never let his clients down. He was not ambitious, or if he was, his ambition was simply to enjoy each day. He loved the island and the community. He loved taking the time to talk, over a sandwich lunch at the drugstore where he could jaw with his buddies, or leaning against his truck shooting the breeze with a friend--another contractor, a realtor, the police chief, a fisherman.

He was a good father, patient and decisive and loving. He taught his daughters to sail, to clean a bluefish, to use a Phillips screwdriver. He took them to the summer fairs and he built them the Playhouse at the back of their yard.

But he'd been hit hard by their mother's death. He'd gone quiet, paralyzed by grief, and without Abbie taking over the way she had, who knows what would have happened to their family. Their father had continued working, and working hard, so the family never suffered financially. But the light had gone out of his eyes, and even his smiles were sad.

Emma had been thirteen when their mother died. As she grew older, Emma wanted to do something to help her family, but she didn't have the homemaking talents or the natural bossy authority Abbie had, so for a few years she felt lost. During high school, she gradually learned that she was smart, and by the time she started college, she had formed a plan. Perhaps she couldn't run the house the way Abbie could but she could help in other ways. She determined to save herself, and her family.

In college, she majored in economics. It didn't come easily to her, but she studied hard. She didn't party much and she didn't fall in love. She worked part time at a copy center and saved her money instead of spending it on lipstick and clothes. After graduation, she went to Boston and landed a plum job in a high-powered investment firm. She started on the lowest rung, but she worked industriously and diligently, and gradually she made a name for herself as a broker. She scrimped her pennies and saved them until they grew into dollars, then invested her own money in high-risk-high-payoff stocks.

Emma earmarked one account for Nantucket. For her father. When it reached a nice fat sum, she was going to come home and present him with a check. So he would be safe, and could continue to work in his peculiar leisurely way, or not work at all.

By her third year, she was living the good life. She started dating Duncan Fairly, another broker in her firm, an ambitious, energetic type A who liked her style. They quickly became a couple. She vacationed with him in the Caribbean. They bought each other designer clothing, and reveled in their image. They were the glam couple of the firm. He asked her to move into his Back Bay apartment.

She invited him to Nantucket. At first, she worried that their eccentric old house and her father's way of life were a little too downscale for Duncan, but Duncan never criticized. He knew Nantucket was a great place to make contacts. He liked sailing, playing tennis, eating out at the posh restaurants. And it was on Nantucket that Duncan proposed to her, in August, while they were walking on the beach at sunset. It had been perfect, almost as if Fate were following a schedule Emma had drawn up.

By then, fourteen years had passed since Emma's mother's death. Her father was less paralyzed, happier in his life, more
there
, but Emma had another idea for brightening his life. She would give him grandchildren. He would
love
having grandchildren. He would be such a great grandfather, patient and instructive, showing them the berries on the moors, the shells on the beach, the fish sparkling like magic firecrackers in the harbor waters.

Emma wanted to wait until it was all ready, the bank account bulging, her pregnancy begun, and then she would spread the future before her father like a magic carpet. She would present her father with a nice fat check and instructions to fix up the house, because she wanted to bring her children to the island as often as possible.

In October, the stock market was hit by a death blow.

The money Emma had invested vanished like smoke in the wind. Her savings were gone. The money in the aggressively-invested, high-risk account for her father disappeared in a blink of the eye.

The firm fired her. She tried to remind herself that dozens of brokers had been fired along with her, but the comfort that brought was ice-cold.

She tried not to be desperate. For a few months she hung on, frantically searching for a new job, networking at parties--the few parties that anyone gave. It was difficult in the new economy to be optimistic, but she was young. She was in love. Duncan had not been laid off, after all. He made enough money. He could support her and a baby or two. Of course they couldn't have the lavish wedding they'd been planning, but she really didn't mind. Their new life together was what counted.

In May, Duncan broke off his engagement to Emma. He had, he told Emma, fallen in love with Alicia Maxwell, another broker at the firm. Another broker who hadn't been fired. The daughter of such old family money that this financial blow was a gnat's bite to her.

Emma was stunned with loss.

Duncan didn't give her time to grieve. He tore through his apartment like an exterminator, snatched up her possessions, tossed them into boxes, and shipped them back to Nantucket. She had no address of her own, no place to go, but back to the house where she'd lived as a child.

Now cardboard boxes grew up from the floor of her old childhood bedroom like stalagmites in a dark cave. She didn't have the heart to unpack them. She didn't have the heart for anything.

She was defeated, and beneath the loss ran a vein of fear. She didn't want to be paralyzed like her father had been. But how could she climb out of this pit of sorrow?

She heard her sisters' voices as they came up the stairs. It would be so good to see Abbie. It was comforting that she was here. Emma and Abbie had always been close. They were only two years apart, while Lily was the baby. The adorable, darling, baby-doll child, perhaps a little bit spoiled, a bit of a princess now.

But Emma had to give Lily credit. Since she'd graduated from college, she'd been home taking care of things. She bought and cooked decent food; she kept the house pretty clean. This year when Emma came home for Christmas dinner, she found a tree elaborately decorated by Lily, as well as a real Christmas dinner.

Now that Abbie was back, Emma wondered cynically just how quickly Lily would weasel out of any household responsibilities. She gave herself a mental head slap. After all, just how many responsibilities was
Emma
willing to take on? She couldn't even find the energy to get out of bed.

Her bedroom door flew open.

"Emma, look who's here!"

Emma rolled on her side and sat up in bed, dislodging Cinnamon from his warm nest. The cat yawned, arched his back, and fixed the newcomers with a disdainful glare.

Abbie sat on the side of the bed and gave Emma such a warm, affectionate hug that Emma had to hold her breath to keep from bursting into tears. Oh, Emma thought, she'd forgotten how wide and strong her older sister's shoulders were, as if she'd been built to comfort and care for them all.

But this time, not even Abbie could help.