Edgewater (8 page)

“Good morning, Lorrie-glory,” Susannah said.

I turned back toward her and tipped my head toward the kitten in her arms. “Hey,” I said. “How's he doing?”

“She,” Susannah corrected. “Better, I think. Here, hold her.” I took the kitten from her, a minute morsel. As soft and weightless as a bunch of cotton balls. “I named her Wren, because she's so tiny, and the way she purrs, it's like a song. Can you feel it?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Like cotton balls vibrating in my cupped hands.

Susannah moved toward the back cupboards and began pulling out several varieties of cat food: a bag of kitty kibble, plus assorted tins of chicken and liver paste. She mashed dry and wet food together in bowls, enough to accommodate the now dozen or so cats weaving through her legs, pressing their bodies against her calves and arching their backs in complete cat-satisfaction. When she was done with the food prep, they all moved to the sliding glass door, where she placed their bowls in a line. Pansy was at the end, getting her own nourishment before she stepped back into the box to feed her kittens.
But cats are fickle, and their attachment to their young is fleeting. In a few months' time, I knew, Pansy would be so over them. She'd pass her formerly beloved kittens in the hall without so much as a glance of recognition.

Kind of like another mom I knew.

“How do you always manage to have a gourmet buffet for the cats on hand when there's nothing in this house fit for actual human consumption?” I asked Susannah.

“You wanna come for breakfast with us?” Brian asked. “We're going to Declan's. My treat.”

Declan's was a restaurant on Main Street. The breakfast menu came vaguely close to reasonably priced. Still, I couldn't believe Brian was offering to foot the bill. In fact, I couldn't recall his ever offering to treat anyone to anything. “You're kidding, right?”

Susannah had started to fill an eyedropper with milk for Wren, but she turned away from the counter and gave Brian an almost imperceptible shake of her head. “I don't think Lorrie will be up for it.”

“What?” Brian asked. “Too good for dine and dash?”

I glared at my sister. “Don't tell me that's what you're really planning to do.”

“There's no food, like you said.”

“You know, Lorrie,” Brian added, “you'd enjoy life so much more if you just killed the bug you have stuck up your ass.”

“I want you out of this house,” I told him.

“She's just under a lot of stress,” Susannah said quickly. “She doesn't mean it.”

“You're worried about him right now?” I asked my sister, incredulous. “Did you hear how he just spoke to me? He is not welcome here.”

She turned to me. “He is, Lorrie.”

Brian grinned as if he'd just won some dumb carnival prize. “I love how you think you can just make a decision like that,” he told me. “Like your name is on the deed or something. Meanwhile, you're never here, and when you are, you'll do anything to avoid facing up to the fact that you're no better than anyone else.”

“Get. Out.”

But if Brian's expression was gleeful, Susannah's was of a girl destroyed. “Please stop it now. It hurts me too much when you fight like this.”

“I'm sorry, babe,” Brian said. “Let's go. We'll get something to eat, just you and me.”

“Yeah, okay.” She swiped at her face, actual tears. Susannah didn't make gestures just for effect.

“Got everything you need?”

“Uh-huh.”

They started toward the back door. Brian had his arm around my sister, steering her away. Two of Grandma's silver forks were sticking out of the back pocket of his jeans.

“Wait!” I'm sure they both thought I was only about to make a last-ditch effort to get Susannah to stay. But I knew that was a lost cause. “Over my dead body you're leaving with those.”

Susannah turned around. “What are you talking about?”

“He has the silver he was ‘polishing' in his back pocket.”

Brian reached around before Susannah could check and pulled the forks out of his pocket. He yanked open a drawer by the stove and dropped them inside. They clanged against whatever else was thrown in there. We didn't have a designated utensil drawer with one of those organizers to separate everything into neat little sections. Nope—the utensils were subject to the same chaos as everything else in our house.

“Don't think I didn't know what you wanted to do with those,” I said.

“You think you know everything about everybody, don't you?” he asked me.

But he didn't stick around to hear my answer. The screen door slammed shut behind them.

That was my life these days: a series of doors slammed shut.

With Susannah and Brian gone, I went around the kitchen opening various drawers, on the hunt for whatever other pieces I could find of Grandma's silver. I think there'd originally been twelve each of the forks, knives, and spoons, plus serving pieces. I found maybe half, buried under a hundred other things—a screwdriver, a paperback book with the cover torn off, a broken pair of scissors, a stretched-out Slinky, an old photograph of my parents looking young and happy. I paused for a second, staring at them. Susannah had inherited the recessive blond gene, but my hair was chestnut brown, like both of my parents'. My face was mostly my mother's—same eyes and arched brows, same small space between our upper lips and our noses.

I dropped the photo back in and slammed the drawer shut. Somewhere in the house was the velvet-lined wooden box that the silver was meant to be stored in, to prevent the blackened
tarnish Brian had so diligently been cleaning off. God, he never did anything without an ulterior motive. But Susannah was an ostrich with her head in the sand about all things Brian Beecher. About a lot of things, actually.

Where the box was hiding was anyone's guess, and I didn't have the time or the inclination for that game of hide-and-seek. I collected all the silver I could find, put my loot in a paper bag, and ran it up to my bedroom closet. Only then did I finally leave the house for my morning run.

I RAN ALONG THE BEACH WITHOUT A SPECIFIC
destination in mind. But somehow, instinctively, as my heart pounded and my legs ached, missing a thousand pounds of horse between them, I ended up at Oceanfront, the only place in Idlewild I ever really felt comfortable. I went into the barn, greeting the horses in their stalls as I made my way back to the one that had last been Orion's. The stall was empty, but there was a fresh bedding of cedar chips on the floor, which meant someone was boarded here in Orion's absence, probably a horse out on its own morning ride. Around the corner came a voice: “Not to worry, Ma. I'll get you a check tonight.”

When I peeked around, I spotted Jeremy Gummer, a cell phone pressed against his ear, at the far end of the corridor. Gumby Gummer. That had been his childhood nickname, he'd once told me, and it fit. He was tall and lanky but with a softness to him. Not sharp like Brian, and not solid and square like Charlie.

Everyone knew Jeremy's story: He used to be a weekender in Idlewild, who boarded a horse at Oceanfront. But a couple
years back his father was convicted of insider trading. The family managed to hold on to their Idlewild home, which had been on his mother's side for years. But otherwise they were wiped out. Everything had to be sold, including Jeremy's horse, to pay legal fees and penalties. Now Mrs. Gummer ran a bed-and-breakfast out of their main house, and she and Jeremy lived in the caretaker's cottage. Jeremy himself had to put college on hold and get a job, and Oceanfront's owner, Naomi Ward, had hired him as a part-groom, part-trainer. Multiple times I'd seen him ease his way into the stall of a snorting, stomping animal, get up close, and speak in low tones to calm all the wildness right out of it.

Jeremy had left a bucket of grain just outside the stall of a horse named Kismet, who whinnied from within, hungry for lunch. It's tough to be a horse and always be at the mercy of humans when you want your food. “Hey there. I got you, I got you,” I told him. I unlatched the stall door and carried the grain in, unhooked the old feed bucket, and replaced it with the fresh one. Kismet hardly waited for me to move my hand before he nosedived in. I dropped the old bucket, and it clanged onto the floor. Jeremy ran over to investigate and was clearly startled to see me.

“Sorry,” I mouthed sheepishly. I had the bucket back in hand, and I slipped out of Kismet's stall and redid the latch.

“Listen, I have to go,” Jeremy said into the phone. “Yeah, you, too. See you later.”

“Hey,” I said, once he'd clicked off. “I was just trying to help. I didn't mean to interrupt your call.”

“No worries.” He reached toward me with a hug hello. “Oh, no, I'm too sweaty,” I told him. “I ran all the way here.”

“Sorry.” He backed up awkwardly and propped an elbow up against the window of the stall across from Kismet's. “I heard you'd be away all summer.”

“I had some family stuff to get back for,” I said.

“I hope everything's all right.”

I hesitated for the smallest moment. I was certain Jeremy didn't notice. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Of course. Everything's great. My aunt just wanted some quality time.”

“I get it,” Jeremy said. He tugged at the goatee on his chin. Facial hair was not really my thing, but there was something about Jeremy's that I found fascinating, because it always looked like he'd just started to grow it. Did he trim it that way, or was that the most he could get? We did not have a close enough relationship for me to probe these things. “Where's Orion?”

“On his way. His return is just a bit delayed because my friend Beth-Ann had a competition and she needed a good jumper.”

As if Beth-Ann and I were friends. As if I'd make the mistake of lending her Orion again.

Behind us another horse whinnied a lunch demand.

“Orion will be back soon,” I said. I needed to say it out loud to make myself believe it. “So I need to talk to someone about his board. Is Naomi around?”

“Later today,” he said. “But I can ask for you and call you back.”

“Thanks,” I said. Except I didn't have a working phone. “Or I'll call you.”

“Either way.”

“Thanks,” I said again. “And, uh, maybe you can ask Naomi if she needs more help around here. You know, as long as I'm back.” And as long as I was destitute. Working at Oceanfront, I'd have money on hand to bring Orion home, without having to rely on Gigi and the missing trust fund, and be able to board him at a discount. But I certainly wasn't going to tell Jeremy all that and blow my cover. “I can't spend every single waking hour with my family, and I'd like to feel useful.”

“She mentioned we needed someone,” he said. “I'll let her know you're looking. And I'll tell her how you helped out today with Kismet.”

“Oh, that was nothing,” I said. I twisted my hands together. They were even sweatier than the rest of me.

“So, uh, I heard the Copelands are hosting some blowout party tonight.”

My heart skipped a beat at the mention of the Copeland name. “Yeah, I heard that.” I hoped my voice sounded cool, as if a Copeland party was completely unremarkable to me.

“People around here have been trying to get invites, but it's some political thing. Really exclusive. Apparently Gucci is doing the fireworks.”

He meant Grucci. It was a fireworks company that did the pyrotechnics for the Olympics and presidential inaugurations. Hannah Mayberry, who went to Hillyer with Lennox and me, had invited us to the New Year's display over the Statue of Liberty a couple years before. Her dad's law firm did the deal, so we had VIP passes and shook hands with the Grucci brothers themselves. And now they'd be in the Copelands' backyard.

“You'll be able to see them from the beach,” he went on.

Lennox had been the first of the two of us to notice that Jeremy had a crush on me. I sloughed it off, telling her I was sure he was nice to me simply because I was nice back—which was more than you could say for a lot of the girls who boarded their horses at Oceanfront. But even after I came around to agreeing with her, she didn't push me to pursue it. There was an element of “us and them” when it came to Jeremy Gummer and the Oceanfront regulars; not just because he was the only guy at the barn—most riders were girls—but also because he wasn't wealthy like the rest. From my end, I liked Jeremy a lot, but not
that
way; besides, I didn't want to get too close to him. Getting close to him would be something everyone around us would notice. It'd be yet another thing they'd talk about.

From down the corridor the horse whinnied again and stomped a foot. “I think you're being paged,” I told Jeremy. “And I've got to get going. But tell Naomi I can start Monday.”

“Monday,” he repeated. “See you then.”