Folly Cove (11 page)

These were far-fetched fantasies, but Elly could sooner imagine Anne living either of those lives than being a mother way out here on a lonely cliff overlooking the gray Atlantic.

Elly felt bereft and angry, despite knowing these emotions meant she was some petty kind of
idiot.

Still, she couldn't help but wonder what she had in common with Anne and Laura anymore, if they were both mothers and she was childless. It was as if a ravine had opened between them. They'd found love and moved on without her. Gone on to the next level of adulthood. Put their biological stamp on the next generation.

By now Anne had carried the baby inside. The sun was sinking fast. Elly continued up the path to the cottage and rapped on the door.

“Hey, you,” she said when Anne opened the door.

“Elly!” Anne's rich auburn hair was cut to her chin and curly. It was the same haircut she'd had as a kid, when she was in perpetual motion on a bicycle or a skateboard. She wore jeans and a flannel shirt. Her grin was broad and genuine. “I didn't know you were coming!”

“But I texted you!”

“You said you ‘might' be coming,” Anne said. “I figured that was California-speak for ‘maybe.'”

“Well, here I am. You going to let me in?”

“Oh! Sorry!” Anne opened the door. “Sorry about the mess, too. I just moved in here because Flossie wanted to have the place cleaned first. I haven't finished unpacking. Of course, now you can't even tell it was ever cleaned, I've got so much crap.” She bit her bottom lip. “The thing is, I didn't come alone.”

“I know.”

“How? Did Mom tell you?”

“No. I saw you on the porch a minute ago,” Elly said. “I nearly had a stroke. Why didn't you tell me you had a
baby
? Or Laura? She doesn't know, either, right?”

Anne made a face. “Laura and I aren't exactly on speaking terms. Anyway, I thought Mom would tell her.”

“She didn't. Who knows why not? Mom's mind works in mysterious ways.” Elly peered over her sister's shoulder at the baby. It was lying in a portable crib, wearing a sleeper—yellow, an unhelpful color, if you wanted to determine gender—that snapped up the front. The baby had hair a shade redder than Anne's and was waving its arms and legs at a handmade mobile of string and driftwood and shells.

“He or she?” Elly said.

“She.”

“How old?”

“Four months.”

“What's her name?”

“Lucy. Isn't she beautiful?” Anne said, then began to cry.

Elly wrapped her arms around Anne. Her sister was several inches shorter, the perfect height for leaning her coconut-scented head on Elly's shoulder.

Anne had never been a pretty crier. Not like their mother, who Elly had always suspected of manufacturing convenient tears when things weren't going her way. No, Anne was heaving and snorting and rooting around in the pockets of her jeans for tissues.

“Sit down before you fall down,” Elly said. “What's wrong?”

“Everything!” Anne said.

“Okay, okay. Take a breath. Come on.” Elly led Anne over to the couch facing the windows. Below them, the gray-green waves were fanning toward the shore, trimmed in white lace as the surf sprayed against the rocks.

Elly wanted to kill Writer Guy. She didn't need details to know that he'd stomped on her little sister's heart. Evil bastard.

The couch was the same one that she remembered lying on with countless boys in high school: bamboo with removable cushions covered in brown burlap cloth. The cushions could fly out from under you at awkward moments, like that time Billy Oswald—her bad boy in leather jacket and torn jeans, senior year—was lying on top of her and trying to talk dirty. Elly finally shoved him off because she couldn't breathe, she was trying so hard not to laugh.

The colorful print had faded on the old feedbags Flossie had used to cover the cushions in a creative act that infuriated their mother. “Your aunt decorates like she lives in a barn.” Sarah had scowled.

But Elly thought the rough burlap cloth suited this narrow living room with its honeyed pine paneling. The two chairs, also bamboo, had cushions covered in cream-colored muslin and blue plaid pillows, but the windows were bare. Flossie had never bothered making curtains. Why would she? There was nothing beyond the windows but the sea.

The baby was starting to fuss. Elly didn't think Anne would hear the mewling noise above her own sobs, but some mothering instinct kicked in. Anne wiped her face on her flannel shirt and scooped the baby into her arms. The baby stopped grizzling for a minute, then screwed up its face in a howl.

Elly grinned. “You sure produced an ugly little troll. Look at that face.”

“Be nice.” Anne dropped into one of the chairs across from Elly.

Now that Anne's back was to the window, her curly hair rose in a burnished halo around her face. She lifted up her shirt to feed the baby. Her breasts were engorged and creamy white, with rosy nipples.

Elly turned away for a moment, pain and jealousy making her eyes burn. “I still can't believe you kept this a secret. What the hell?”

“I know. I'm a horrible sister. I'm sorry.” Anne leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Her face relaxed.

The act of nursing seemed to calm her. Hormones, Elly supposed. The baby had grabbed on to Anne's shirt. Her hands were pink and tiny. Starfish hands.

Again, Elly had to look away. “So what happened in Puerto Rico?”

“Everyone keeps asking me that, but I never know what to say. It's so complicated,” Anne said.

“Start with the basics. Who knocked you up and where is he now?”

Anne opened her eyes. “Colin. New York.”

“Has he left you and the baby for good?”

Anne nodded. Her face was blotchy from crying. Elly thought, for a brief absurd moment, of Snapchatting a picture of Anne to Laura. If Laura could see how Anne looked right now, she would realize she had nothing to worry about. It was obvious that Anne hadn't come home for Jake. She was simply hiding out after her own train wreck.

“Were you in love?” Elly pressed. “Was this guy Colin on board with the whole baby thing but backed out? Or was this unplanned? Just another cosmic joke?”

Anne made a face at her. “What is this? Twenty questions?”

“Oh, honey, I'm just getting started.” Elly crossed her arms and waited.

Her sister glanced down at the baby, stroking her curls with her free hand while she told Elly about surfing and living with friends in a beach house. Working as a waitress. Her dream life.

“Really? Waitressing is your dream life?” Elly asked. “You have a master's degree in education.”

“I'd started cooking, too,” Anne said. “I was thinking about going to culinary school.”

“I thought you hated working at the inn.”

“I hated working with
Mom
,” Anne corrected. “Anyway, I wouldn't ever want to run an inn. I just want to cook. To bake, actually.”

“Fair enough. And when did Mr. Asshole arrive on the scene?”

“Don't call him that. He's still Lucy's father.” Anne switched the baby to the other breast. Lucy fussed a little, but Anne soothed her quickly. “He's a writer. I met him in the restaurant.”

Her sister managed the baby so naturally that again Elly felt her own black heart contract with envy, raw and terrible.

“What kind of writer?” she prodded when Anne leaned her head back against the chair. Anne's throat was tan and slender; her lashes were as lush and dark as a doll's against her freckled cheeks.

“A successful one,” Anne said, sounding dreamy now as she told Elly about Colin.

She was reliving that first flush of love, Elly thought as she listened: that wild, sweet emotion you feel when you're entering the danger zone of passion and feel certain everything will turn out fine, despite all evidence to the contrary.

“Colin's Irish,” Anne went on. “He published a novel in Ireland about ten years ago that was made into a TV movie over there. He came to Puerto Rico to write a sequel.”

Elly was begrudgingly impressed. She didn't have enough fingers to count the number of her Hollywood friends who would kill to have a book or script made into a movie. “Okay, enough about him. So then you got pregnant. Too bad they never taught you about birth control when you were getting your master's degree.”

“I know, right? I was stupid. Colin told me right up front he'd never wanted kids.” Anne's eyes were dark with misery, nearly slate. She started crying again, which led to hiccups. The baby didn't seem at all bothered by this; she continued to nurse with little grunts of satisfaction.

Jesus, Elly thought. Babies are total parasites. “So the guy's a bastard. Don't give him another thought. He doesn't deserve you.”

“No. Colin never made me any promises. Then his wife came to Puerto Rico and got him!”

For an absurd moment, Elly pictured a woman with a lasso, roping her wandering man. “Oh, honey,” she said, because now Anne was
doing more than crying: she was collapsing, folding in around the baby as if protecting her child from falling shrapnel.

Which, in a way, she was. Elly could see it all now: Anne's delusions, then her fantasy life being shattered as suddenly and completely as if someone had fired a missile into it.

Elly crossed the room to kneel on the braided rug in front of her sister to comfort her. Laura was going to have another hissy fit when she found out Anne's baby daddy was
married
.

Had Anne known Colin had a wife? Maybe he'd lied to her all along. For the sake of a truce between Anne and Laura, Elly hoped so. She rapped on her sister's knee sharply with her knuckles. “Look at me!”

Anne snapped her head up. “What? Why are you hitting me?”

“Did you know this guy was
married
? I mean, from the beginning?”

“Yes, but Colin told me he'd been separated for two years. He said he was
this close
to getting a divorce.” Anne held her thumb and forefinger up an inch apart.

Elly sat back on her heels. Colin was probably thrilled to be playing Papa Hemingway and screwing his pretty island girl. Then the baby arrived and he was off like a shot, back to the bed his wife had been keeping warm for him. “What a total dick.”

“Don't
say
things like that. I don't want Lucy to think her father meant nothing to me.” Anne gave the baby a worried glance, as if the little slug could actually understand the conversation.

Elly shrugged. “Fine. But if your kid's lucky, she'll never meet that jerk. Remember: we all got along just fine without Dad.”

Though the minute she said this Elly knew it was a lie. She had missed her father from the moment he left.

The morning after Dad disappeared—he'd taken off at night while they were all asleep, the coward—Elly had sneaked into his bedroom closet and stolen one of his neckties, her favorite one with the black Scottie dogs on a green background. She still had that tie in a dresser drawer.

She'd ridden her bike to Gloucester the next day, trying to find
him. The police had to take her home. She was eight years old. Now she wondered what her mother had been doing that she hadn't even noticed Elly was gone. It was Flossie who'd called the cops.

In her early teens, Elly kept asking her mother about her father's whereabouts. One Saturday night, while the two of them were alone in the kitchen at Folly Cove and polishing silverware, Sarah had thrown her hands up in exasperation as Elly grilled her.

“Look,” Sarah said. “Your father was an alcoholic. He went out of his mind and accused me of terrible things,” she'd said. “That's the truth! I have no idea where he is now and no reason to think he'll ever come back.”

“But, Mom! Didn't you even try
looking
for him?” Elly had yelled. “What kind of woman doesn't look for her own husband? Alcoholism is a
disease
, you know. An addiction! Like heroin! We learned that at
school
!”

“For heaven's sake! I can't believe I'm paying tens of thousands of dollars to that prep school of yours so some nitwit teacher in wrinkled
khakis
can make you believe that getting bombed and abandoning your family is normal.” Her mother's glare was incredulous.

Elly got up now and went to the refrigerator—all of ten steps from the living room—in search of wine. There wasn't any. She filled a glass of water and sat down on the couch again. “What about Mom? She must have totally freaked when she saw the baby.”

“She wants me to say I'm divorced.” Anne's voice was bitter. “Oh, and she also made it clear that Lucy and I aren't welcome at her apartment.”

“Well, I guess one good thing about Mom is that you always know where you stand with her.” Elly reached across the narrow living room to touch the baby's hair. A red ringlet curled around her finger. Elly smiled. “I can guess why you named her Lucy. Narnia, right?”

“Yes,” Anne said, smiling back. “Because of Dad reading us those Narnia stories.”

It came to Elly then, another memory: her father, his whiskey-sweet breath and the scratchy feel of his face as he gave them “super kisses,” blowing air out on their arms or bellies and making them giggle after reading to them from the C. S. Lewis books.

“God,” she said. “I haven't thought about those books in ages. Remember how Dad used to sit with us on that big window seat upstairs while he read to us? And how he used different voices for the Narnia characters?”

Anne laughed. “I loved it when he was the faun, Mr. Tumnus.”

“Me, too. But we were terrified when Dad acted out Jadis. Remember her? The White Witch who froze Narnia for a hundred years?”

“Of course. I used to hide under the covers!” Anne said. “I was petrified. Then you and Laura started calling Mom ‘the White Witch' because you said she could freeze us with a look. We all thought that was hysterical even though it was true.”