Nantucket Nights (10 page)

“Here it is almost noon on a beautiful day and you’re inside,” Kayla said. “Are you being punished?”

Cassidy B. jumped up from her position on the floor—probably half out of excitement to see her and half out of fear that Kayla would scold her. Sitting too close to the TV was a no-no. Kayla couldn’t even remember why anymore.

“Mommy, you’re home!” she said. She hugged Kayla in an exaggerated little-girl way. “Daddy said Auntie A. got lost.”

Kayla pressed her close and glanced over her head at Luke, who was wearing his green Nantucket Day Camp shirt even though today was Saturday, even though camp was now over.

“Good morning, Luke,” she said.

“Good morning,” he said seriously. “Did Auntie A. drown?”

“No. Who said that?”

He shrugged. “Nobody.”

Raoul must have let more slip than he intended, although it was impossible to keep the truth from an eight-year-old. Eight-year-olds were perceptive and suspicious by nature.

“I have some exciting news,” Kayla said. “We may have a sleepover guest tonight.”

“Who?” Cassidy B. said. “Is Sabrina coming?”

Sabrina, Raoul’s mother, who never visited without her head scarves and séance candles, was another one of the kids’ favorites.

“Not Sabrina,” Kayla said. “It’s someone you’ve never met before. It’s a woman named Lindsey ...” Lindsey what? Not Riley. “She’s Auntie A.’s daughter.”

“Auntie A. doesn’t have any children,” Luke pronounced. He glared at her as if to say:
Can you please get the facts straight?

“Yes, she does. Antoinette hasn’t seen her in a long time, and that’s why you’ve never met her. But I’m going to pick her up right now, and she may stay the night. We’re going to let her sleep in Luke’s room and Luke can sleep with Daddy and me.”

Before Luke could protest, Cassidy B. said, “Lucky.” That did the trick; Luke smiled smugly.

Kayla snapped off the TV and checked the clock. She had to go. “You two play outside. See if you can get Daddy to throw the Frisbee. I’ll be back in a little while.”

Before she left, Kayla put the pregnancy test in a plastic sandwich bag and dropped the bag into her purse. Then she checked three photo albums for a picture of Antoinette. She thought there was one picture from long ago of Antoinette at their house for dinner, holding one of the children in her arms. Kayla flipped back and forth through the laminated pages, past baby shots and birthday parties, Jennifer riding a horse, Theo in his baseball uniform, but she couldn’t find a single photo of Antoinette. The picture Kayla remembered was missing.

Kayla reached the airport with five minutes to spare, and so she called the police station to see if they had any news. Paul Henry wasn’t in; Detective Simpson wasn’t in. The woman who answered the phone said there had been no news about the missing woman; they hadn’t found her at the Steamship or the airport. If Kayla wanted a report on the recovery mission, she should call the fire department.

Kayla called the fire department, keeping her eyes on the Cape Air gate. Jack Montalbano came to the phone.

“We haven’t found her yet, Kayla,” he said. “But, hey, the good news is that she might not even
be
in the water. I heard you found some mischief up at her house.”

“Mischief is
toilet paper in the trees,” Kayla said. “This was a lot more than just mischief.” She wondered if Jack had been up all night; with his wife gone, he probably avoided his empty house as much as he could. “Are you still... out looking for Bob?”

He cleared his throat. “The diver is out there now, yes.”

Kayla felt nauseated. She hadn’t eaten anything since the night before—the lobsters, the cheese. “Keep me posted,” she said, and she hung up.

The Cape Air gate still looked quiet, so Kayla made a dash to Hutch’s to get a sandwich from the take-out. And a cold Diet Coke. The girl behind the counter was about seventeen, from Eastern Europe somewhere, and she had hair the color of Bing cherries. She made Kayla think of Theo. Kayla was afraid to find Theo to say hello; she was afraid he would bully her in public, or worse yet, look at her with absolute blankness as though he’d never seen her before. Kayla wolfed down half a dry turkey sandwich and took two long swills from the Diet Coke and immediately felt better. Food. Out the window, she watched the Cape Air plane land and she thought,
Okay, I can do this.
The plane taxied to its spot. Kayla still had time. She threw the rest of the sandwich away and strolled over to the Island Air counter. Just in case Theo was hanging around.

“Kayla!” Theo’s boss, Marty Robbins, saw her right away and came up to the desk. “Where’s your son?”

Kayla smiled as benignly as she could, but her voice was weary. “I’m not sure what you mean, Marty.”

“Theo never showed,” Marty said. “True, Monday is his last day, but I need him now. It’s a holiday weekend.”

“He didn’t call?” she asked, knowing the futility of the question. She closed her eyes and tried to remember: The Jeep had definitely
not
been in the driveway, but what about the door to Theo’s room? Open? Closed? It hardly mattered. If the Jeep was gone, Theo was gone. Kayla didn’t have time for another missing person, and although she was ashamed to admit it, part of her was relieved that Theo wasn’t at the airport. One less distraction, one less stressful encounter. The encounter she had coming would be stressful enough.

“I’ll try to round him up, Marty,” she said, backing away from the counter. “Right now I have to meet someone.”

There was no doubt as to which of the women coming off the Cape Air flight was Antoinette’s daughter. Even Antoinette would have been startled at the resemblance. Lindsey was tall and thin like her mother, with the same unruly black hair and the same dark eyes. Her skin a shade lighter, her nose pointier, her gestures more hurried than Antoinette’s, but otherwise it was as though Kayla had stepped back in time to the kitchen on Hooper Farm Road as Antoinette poured Chablis into her Waterford goblet. Kayla wanted to cry at the incredible unfairness of it—this young woman so much like her mother, whom she had never seen, and because of some cruel trick of fate, would not see today.
Oh, Antoinette, how could you miss this moment? Your own child.
Kayla’s heart was breaking as she approached the girl.

“Lindsey?” she said.

The girl’s eyes widened just a bit, though Kayla could see she had steeled herself for anything. Well, anthing except Kayla—blond and big-boned. Lindsey was carrying a Louis Vuitton backpack, and her knuckles whitened as she clenched the strap.

“Antoinette?”

“No,” Kayla said. The poor girl. Kayla sensed her relief immediately. “I’m a friend of your mom’s.”
Mom
—that sounded way too familiar. “I’m a good, dear friend of Antoinette’s. My name is Kayla Montero.”

Lindsey smiled—gorgeous teeth, the perfect shade of plum lipstick—and offered Kayla her hand. “Lindsey Allerton. Nice to meet you.” Incredible poise. Here she was—what, twenty years old?—and she was as smooth as a newscaster. She wore loose-fitting white cotton pants, a sleeveless hot pink T-shirt that showed one inch of midriff, and sandals that laced up her calves. Jennifer would love her clothes. Theo probably, too.

“It’s nice to meet
you,”
Kayla said. “Do you have luggage?” Kayla wanted to get out of the airport before she told Lindsey anything. That would give her time to figure out what she wanted to say.

“... brown like this one ...” Lindsey walked over to the baggage area and reached for a matching Louis Vuitton duffel.

“Where did you come from?” Kayla said. “Where do you live?”

“Right now I’m living in Boston,” Lindsey said. “I’m a junior at Emerson.”

“What do you study?” Kayla asked.

“Art history,” Lindsey said. “I know, I know— my parents tell me it’s totally useless.”

“Your parents,” Kayla repeated.

“My adoptive parents,” Lindsey said. “Claude and Denise Allerton. They live in New York. That’s where I grew up. I told Antoinette all this already over the phone.”

“Of course,” Kayla said. “Well, anyway, the car’s out here. Have you eaten lunch?”

“No,” Lindsey said. “I wanted to eat with Antoinette.”

“That was thoughtful,” Kayla said. The longer she waited to tell Lindsey the news, the more Kayla felt like she was
deceiving
her. “Okay, look, my car is over here. The Trooper.” Kayla walked ahead of Lindsey and opened the back so she could load her luggage in, and
wham
—the stench of old lobsters. Even more alarming were Antoinette’s black Chuck Taylors sitting there like a ghost that only Kayla could see. Kayla climbed in the driver’s side and let down all the windows and turned on the air-conditioning. Lindsey got in the passenger side, backpack at her feet. Now what? Drive away? Explain things here in the smelly car, in the hot airport parking lot? Kayla sat tapping her palms against the steering wheel, letting the cool air blast the dampness between her breasts and under her arms.

Lindsey cleared her throat. “Is everything okay?” she asked. “Where’s Antoinette?”

I wish I knew,
Kayla thought. The car had cooled down some, so she put up the windows. “Your mom...” She had to stop saying that!

“Antoinette and I have been friends for twenty years, since just after you were born. It was just after you were born that your mother moved here.”

Lindsey nodded. “She told me.”

“I’m not sure how to put this,” Kayla said. “I have some bad news.”

“She doesn’t want to see me.”

“No, that’s not it. She
does
want to see you. But something’s happened. Last night, your mom and I and another friend of ours went swimming. We went swimming in the dark and Antoinette disappeared.” Kayla paused. This sounded ridiculous, even to her. “We called the police and the coast guard, and they had a helicopter searching, but they haven’t found her. As far as I know. I mean, there may be a message waiting for me at home. But when I left the house half an hour ago, they hadn’t found her yet. Your mom...”
Stop it!
Kayla told herself. “Antoinette is missing.”

Lindsey made a noise like a hiccup; then she lit into Kayla. “That is such
bullshit
!
”
she said. “Disappeared while
swimming?
That’s the best you can do?” She pulled a small package of tissues from her bag. She was crying now, her smooth facade melting. “I know this is difficult. It was the hardest thing in the world to board the plane this morning.
I was the one who was abandoned. How do you think
that
feels? How long do you think it took me to summon the courage to even contact the agency? And then Antoinette tells me over the phone that the reason she gave me up was because my father cheated on her in this disgusting way and she developed suicidal tendencies. That wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear.” Lindsey looked out the window at the car next to Kayla’s—a rusty red Wrangler with the top off. “Okay, well I guess I can’t
make
her want to see me. And if she doesn’t want to see me, I’m sure as hell not sticking around.” She reached for the door handle. “Thank you, Ms I’m sorry, I forgot your name.”

“Kayla. Kayla Montero.” Kayla didn’t know what to do. What would be more painful: to think this was some kind of elaborate hoax, or to know the truth—that the day you were to meet your birth mother she actually did disappear? Drowned, possibly.

Kayla touched Lindsey’s arm. Lindsey had goose bumps; the air-conditioner was going full-blast now, and Kayla turned it down.

“I understand what you’re thinking,” Kayla said. “I wish this
were
all made up, Lindsey, but it’s not. I’m telling you the truth. Antoinette, we
think,
got lost in the water off Great Point. I say “we think’ because nobody’s sure. The coast guard seems convinced that if she had been swimming, they would have found her. Anyway, we checked her house, because if she wasn’t in the water we figured she just went home without our knowing it. But the house had been
ransacked.
Like someone broke in or whatever. To be perfectly frank, we have no idea what’s going on.”

Lindsey’s lip curled in an unattractive way. “Ransacked,” she said. Her voice could not have been more deadly.

Kayla sighed. “You don’t believe me. Okay, I don’t blame you. You don’t know me, and here I am telling you these preposterous things. Why don’t we get some lunch and we can talk a little and then I’ll drive you out to Antoinette’s house and you can see for yourself? Who knows, maybe by then she will have turned up. Maybe we’ll have news.”

Lindsey wiped the tissue under her eyes, mopping away the smeared mascara. “Fine, whatever,” she sniffed. “I could do with some food.”

They went to lunch at The Brotherhood because it was dark and quiet and full of tourists, so Kayla would be unlikely to see anyone she knew. Although she’d polished off half the turkey sandwich, by the time they sat down at a table for two in the corner, she was hungry again. The restaurant smelled of French fries. Their waitress was a young blonde wearing a long patchwork skirt; she bore a disturbing resemblance to Missy Tsoulakis. Missy, Kayla knew, had moved to Greece right after graduating from college. This was her younger sister, maybe, Heather. Kayla ordered without looking up from her menu: clam chowder, green salad, iced tea. Lindsey got a burger. Kayla played with the spoon sticking out of the tiny pot of ketchup. This felt a little too civilized: sitting down to lunch, when twelve hours earlier all hell had broken loose. What if there was news? Raoul was expecting her home at any minute. Just as Kayla was about to excuse herself to call Raoul, Lindsey spread her fingers out on the scarred wooden table. She had a French manicure, and her nails were as smooth and pearly as shells.

“What’s she like, my mother?”

“Oh.” Kayla deflated in her chair. “Antoinette is ... well, she’s one of a kind. You look remarkably like her.”

“Do I?” A flicker of pleasure crossed Lindsey’s face.

“It’s astonishing. Antoinette is tall like you, and slender. Bronze skin. Curly hair. She’s into her dancing and her meditation, and she reads.”

“What does she read?”

“Novels, I think. Charles Dickens, J. D. Salinger. Toni Morrison.” Kayla closed her eyes, remembering the year when Antoinette’s Night Swimmers secret had been that she spent three months memorizing
The Bluest Eye.
And then to prove it, she started reciting.