Folly Cove (33 page)

“I don't know what I can do,” Colin said, spreading his hands. “I don't have anything to spare.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake, Colin,” Barbara said, coming up behind him. “Give the girl some money so she'll go away. We can put our lawyer in touch with her in the morning.” She pushed in front of Colin and stood squarely in front of Anne.

Lucy, appropriately, began to cry at the sight of her. “Tell your sisters to wait in the car and I'll write you a check,” Barbara told Anne, raising her voice over Lucy's howls.

“We're not going anywhere until she has that money in her hand,” Laura said.

Barbara tried glaring, but at three to one, and with a crying baby besides, it was no contest.

She finally shook her head, disappeared into another room, and reappeared with a checkbook. She wrote a check to Anne and handed her a business card.

“Here,” Barbara said. “This is our attorney. Please contact us only
through him in the future. And get that baby a DNA test. You're going to need proof if you insist on blackmailing my husband.”

“How am I blackmailing him?” Anne demanded. “I'm just asking him to help support his own child, even if he never sees her again.” She looked at Colin, who had retreated into the darkened hallway, using Barbara as his shield.

“I'd rather have you see Lucy than not, Colin,” Anne said softly, as if gentling her voice might lure him out of the dark like a recalcitrant horse. “Wouldn't you like some contact with her, at least?”

“That's absolutely out of the question,” Barbara said. “And if you show up here again, any of you, I'll sue you for harassment.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Anne said in a singsong voice, causing Laura and Elly to giggle. “Come on, girls. We're done here. I'm sure we've kept these poor people up way past their bedtime.” She turned around and pushed past Laura and Elly through the front door, leading the way back to the car.

Elly let Laura go ahead of her, then couldn't resist turning around to give Colin a little shove on the shoulder. “I bet you're a crap writer,” she said. “I can't wait to read your novel and tweet my reviews.”

Outside, Anne collapsed against the car. “That cowardly
jerk
,” she said. “I can't believe he wouldn't even hold the baby. He hardly even
looked
at Lucy!”

“You're better off without him,” Laura said gently.

“Yes,” Elly said. “And at least now you'll have an easier time financially.”

“I don't want his money!” Anne said, pressing one hand to her eyes while jiggling Lucy on her hip. Lucy's face was solemn as she grabbed on to Anne's red curls; she looked like she might cry, too.

“That money is for Lucy, not for you,” Laura said. “Colin helped bring her into this world. You shouldn't have to do everything on your own.”

“But I
wanted
to do it on my own,” Anne said, shifting Lucy to the other hip when she started grabbing for Laura's silver necklace.

Laura took off her necklace and dangled it for the baby, who babbled happily as it swung in front of her. “We're Bradford women,” she
said. “We can all do things on our own when we need to, thanks to Mom. But Elly's right. We might be better off if we learn to ask for help sometimes.”

Lucy finally caught hold of the necklace. The curve of her cheek and snub nose were so like Anne's when she was little that Elly had a sudden, visceral memory of carrying her little sister. Elly was only two years older, but she used to carry Anne on her hip or piggyback all over Folly Cove.

She remembered, too, how she and Anne used to hide under the sunporch with Laura, the three of them risking spiders and snakes to avoid their shouting parents. They kept a tea set and some stuffed animals under the porch, along with blankets to sit on or to wrap themselves in like magic cloaks as they played and listened to the distant surf. The sound of the ocean still reassured Elly. It was a sign that the rhythms of the world would stay the same, no matter what their parents did.

She had helped raise Anne, just as Laura had helped raise her. Now Kennedy and Lucy had all three of them. Lucky girls.

“Hand that baby over before we get back on the road,” Elly said. “I haven't even held her yet.”

Anne smiled. “She's all yours. Here.”

Elly took the warm, solid little body. Lucy stared at her, wrinkling her tiny forehead as she tried to decide whether this new face was friend or foe. Elly held her close and started singing softly about drunken sailors.

Lucy grinned, and the four of them did a victory dance around the car, with Laura and Anne singing along with Elly, their voices as sweet in harmony now as they ever were.

Elly hoped Colin was watching them through the window, and that even if Barbara made him draw the curtains, he would do so with regret.

•   •   •

Flossie telephoned her early in the evening. Gil had slept beside her for a couple of hours, and then he had awakened her with a light kiss on the cheek and said he'd better go home before he got any ideas.

Sarah had rubbed her cheek afterward, suddenly minding the wrinkly
leafy feel of her own skin less, now that it was warm from sleep and tingly where Gil kissed her.

“What?” she said into the phone, recognizing Flossie's number.

“I was just wondering if you've changed your mind,” Flossie said.

“Of course I haven't.”

She heard her sister-in-law's heavy sigh. “My God, you're a stubborn cow.”

“Pot. Kettle. Black.”

Flossie snorted. “You're indulging in some very passive-aggressive behavior. This is beneath you, Sarah.”

“You're the one being aggressive,” Sarah said. “You're blackmailing me, and I don't like it.”

“Blackmailing you?” Flossie sounded genuinely surprised. “How is that possible, when you hold all the cards? You're my brother's widow. Folly Cove is yours now. You've already threatened me with kicking my keister to the curb if I tell the girls about Neil. I'd call that blackmail.”

“Except you don't believe I'd do it.”

“I can't control what you do,” Flossie said. “I can only control what I do, and I can only do what I think is right.”

“You're such a bitch,” Sarah said, and would have been pleased with herself if her voice, already frayed from all the damn talking she'd done with Gil, hadn't snapped as she burst into tears.

“Sarah, are you all right?” Flossie said.

“I'm perfectly fine.” Sarah hated the concern in her sister-in-law's voice. It was a painful reminder of the times Flossie had cared for her so many years ago. “Of course you must do what you think is right, Flossie. So long as you know that I'll be the one facing the consequences.” She hung up the phone and covered her face.

What would she do if Flossie told the girls about her past? About all her lies?

Flossie had discovered everything about her many years ago, shortly after Neil left: Sarah's real name, where and when she was born. Flossie had even tracked down her sister!

“You sure had me fooled,” Flossie had said once the secrets were out. “I really thought my brother was dating some rebel debutante.
Turns out, you were a townie putting on airs. A girl who grew up behind the King Arthur's Strip Joint and Motel. My mother was right. She always thought there was something fishy about you not bringing any of your people to your wedding. You said your parents were dead. And you never even told us about your sister!”

“Little Joanie,” was all Sarah could think to say then, because of course in her mind Joanie was as she'd been the last time Sarah saw her at nineteen, still pretty, though worn down by that awful man. “She's alive?”

“Oh, yes,” Flossie told her. “A widow with five children. But from the looks of her house, she's doing fine. A shame you never kept in touch.”

How could she tell Flossie what her childhood had been like? Sarah had never told anyone.

“I'm not going to hold any of this against you,” Flossie had said all those years ago. “Your secrets aren't mine to reveal. But you will need to tell your kids someday.”

That day had apparently come.

Sarah was still sitting in bed. She pulled the cashmere blanket up around her shoulders, then turned off the lamps, as if sitting in the dark would somehow conceal everything Flossie was threatening to bring into the light.

She picked up the phone and thought about calling her back. But what could she possibly say to change Flossie's mind? She pressed the phone hard enough to her face that she could feel her cheekbone. So frighteningly easy to imagine the skull beneath the flesh, at her age.

She glanced toward the window, but it was dark.

She thought about getting up and going to the dining room for dinner. But then she might see Betty or Rhonda, and she couldn't face either of them and all of their questions. They were like her daughters, only worse, because she paid them to like her.

Maybe she should leave the inn. Not just for the evening, but go away for a couple of days while Flossie detonated a bomb in her family. But where would she go? She wasn't exactly flooded with invitations.

Some years ago, she'd written her own obituary, thinking she might send it to the newspaper to have it on file. In the end she hadn't
sent it. There was nothing there of merit. What did she have to show for being alive so many years?

Her apartment, with nobody in it but herself. Daughters who were too busy for her. The inn that her children would sell the minute she was in the grave. Developers would build on this land eventually. All trace of her, and of the Bradfords, would vanish.

Sarah became aware suddenly that it was raining, the sound like a crowd of people tapping on her windows. She felt agitated enough to get up, finally, and pace the room.

A bath. A bath always fixed her moods.

She went into her en suite bathroom—classic black-and-white tiles, soothing seafoam green walls, luxuriously soft white Turkish cotton towels, all chosen by her own hand to provide instant comfort, though now these details seemed silly in the face of everything else—and started running water into her sunken whirlpool tub. Then she added her favorite rose-scented bubble bath.

Sarah made the water as hot as she could stand it. This wasn't good for her skin. But she didn't care: she had grown up in an apartment where there was never any hot water for bathing, so when she moved into this smaller suite in the inn, she had specifically asked the architect to design a bathroom around this tub, which could easily seat two, and always allowed herself as much hot water as she liked.

She sank deep into the water, letting it rise up to her shoulders, then up to her chin, clearing a space in the bubbles for her head. The water was close enough to her nose that her exhalations made it ripple outward, causing satisfying mountains of bubbles to rise around her face.

She could slide her head beneath the water and stay there. She would not be missed. Either the inn would go on without her, or it would not. Maybe Laura would move here with Jake and manage the place. Or Flossie could turn Folly Cove into a Buddhist retreat.

Perish the thought. If she did that, Sarah would find a way to haunt her from the grave.

Oh, why worry? What was left for her to do? She had accomplished her goal of saving the inn, of keeping the Bradford name alive, but that seemed to be of little importance to anyone but herself, especially now
that Neil was gone. Laura wouldn't stay here. She'd probably join Elizabeth in Los Angeles or, God forbid, follow Anne somewhere foreign and cheap.

Sarah held her breath and sank beneath the water.

“Sarah? You in here?”

Sarah's head was underwater, but she could hear Flossie's voice calling; her sister-in-law had always been a strident woman. No ability to modulate her voice whatsoever.

Well, let her keep calling. Sarah didn't have to respond.

Suddenly, she remembered that she'd forgotten to lock the apartment door after Gil left. Sarah slid upright against the back of the tub and pulled the washcloth off the rack to cover her breasts. “Go away, Flossie!”

As always, commanding her sister-in-law to do something had exactly the opposite effect. Flossie let herself into the living room—Sarah knew this by the rattle of china in the upright antique corner hutch in her living room—and noisily charged through the apartment.

“I just wanted to make sure you're all right.” Flossie peered her wizened monkey face around the door, then stepped into the bathroom. “Jesus, it's like a sauna in here. I've never understood the need some people have to practically boil their bathwater.”

“Get out,” Sarah said.

Flossie perched on the toilet, hands on her knees. “Nice tub. I didn't realize you'd put in a whirlpool. Looks like there's room enough for two.”

“Not when I'm in here.”

Flossie laughed. “Can you imagine what the girls would say if one of them stopped by to check on you and found us bathing together? They'd be the ones having strokes.”

Sarah had to smile at that. “Except my girls don't give a damn about me.”

“It's difficult for me to imagine a pity party smelling this good.”

Sarah flicked bubbles off her fingers onto Flossie's black vest. “You're crashing the party. Leave if you don't like it.”

“Your daughters love you, Sarah, but they don't really know you.
I've come to beg you one more time to let them see you for who you really are. They deserve that. So do you.”

Sarah's hair was wet now and her shoulders felt chilled. She slipped deeper into the water and rearranged the washcloth to cover her breasts. Not that it mattered. She supposed Flossie's saggy old dugs weren't any perkier than hers. “My past is my own. I'd rather keep it that way.”

Finally, Flossie said, “You're afraid your daughters won't love you if they know the truth.”