Off Season (33 page)

But Jeff? Quiet, introverted Jeff?

“I’ll drive you to Oxford,” Richard was saying, “so you won’t have to take the train. I’ll take my favorite girl and her mom for eggs and bangers before they settle out there in the country.” He winked at Amy and gave her another one-armed hug.

Jill stepped back to walk behind them, Dad and daughter.

“How long are you staying?” Dad asked.

Mom did not respond that they’d be here until February, unless her new husband was cleared before then of assault and battery of a child under the age of fourteen. Instead she said, “For a while,” and let it go at that.

•   •   •

Ben wandered through the quiet rooms of the house on North Water Street in the middle of the goddamn day, trying to figure out where to put himself and what to do and how much longer this day or the next would—could—last.

He’d thought about going to bed, but if he took a nap now, he’d set himself up to pace half the goddamn night.

So he wandered, stepping over dried pine needles, straightening sad red bows, while the hollow clomping of his work boots on the hardwood floors reminded him that this time the house felt different, that Jill was simply not off at work but off—well, gone, perhaps for good.

He couldn’t blame her. What woman in her right mind would have stuck around even this long? It was bad enough what Ashenbach had made Mindy do. But dear God, now Fern? He almost wished he had the guts to call Jill in England and tell her not to bother coming home at all.

How many more surprises?
the look on her face had asked. Well, he couldn’t quite be sure.

He balled his fist and slammed it against the hallway doorjamb, the solid, hard oak doorjamb that he had painfully restored, hand-carving the turns and grooves to replicate the authenticity of the past.

Back when he was a respected craftsman. Back before anyone would have thought that he was a child molester and an adulterer to boot.

“Shit,” he cried, his knuckles quickly reddening. He straightened out his fingers. Pain shot up his arm. “Shit,” he said again, then worked to catch his breath. “Shit.”

At least the pain had taken the edge off the emptiness in his gut, the deadened air, and his indecision about what to do next. He went into the kitchen, cracked some ice, and pressed it against his knuckles, hoping he hadn’t done any real damage, wondering where in hell he’d found the anger to do that in the first place.

Just then he heard footsteps cross the porch, followed by a determined knock on the back screen door.

He figured he might as well see who it was. After all, how much worse could things get?

“Common sense—and, believe it or not, my mother—told me to mind my own damn business,” Rita said, stepping into the kitchen and eyeing the ice on the back of his hand, “but as you may know, I’ve never had much sense, common or otherwise.” She shoved her hands into the deep pockets of her street-length quilted parka. “Where’s Jill?”

Ben moved to the sink and dropped the paper towel with the ice cubes. “She’s not home,” he said.

Rita nodded, and Ben got the feeling she knew more than she was saying. “Does she know that Fern Ashenbach is trying to make trouble?”

Leave it to Rita to come right out and say what was on her mind. “She can try if she wants,” he replied, holding his throbbing hand. “I can’t stop her.” He didn’t ask Rita what she knew or how she found out. Any second now, she’d blurt it all out.

Rita went to the counter and plunked herself down, uninvited, on a stool. “Is this so-called scandal about the affair you had with her?”

Scandal?
He laughed because it was safer than crying. He laughed because Rita’s no-nonsense approach to life was so refreshing after the spoken and unspoken stress between him and Jill these past weeks.

“Want some tea, Rita? I’d offer you a drink, but I suppose—”

“Tea’s fine,” she said. She rubbed her belly, and the image made him smile. It was nice that she was going to have a baby. That way she wouldn’t have to go through the rest of her life without a child, without Kyle.

“Nice party the other night,” he said, making tea as if it were just another day, as if everything were fine.

“Thanks.”

He dug out tea bags. “Have you heard from Charlie?” He wasn’t sure if he should mention him, what with the baby and everything.

“He called to say Hugh Talbot was looking for you.”

Ben set the kettle on the stove and ignited the gas jet beneath. Christ, had Hugh checked with everyone? His knuckles throbbed, and now his head did, too. “Speaking of scandal,” he said, “I didn’t know you knew Fern.” He kept his back to Rita.

“I didn’t. But Jill told me you’d screwed around with her. Then Fern called and asked me to list the house out in Menemsha. She said she saw my car—and my sign—the day I drove out there after Hugh Talbot came looking for you at the tavern. Anyway, I don’t exactly believe in coincidence. I think Fern found out I’m Jill’s friend, and yours. I think that’s why she wants me to list the house.”

Ah. So that was what Rita knew and that was how she found out. “Do you think Fern is trying to get to me?”

“You tell me. But it seems like a lot of folderol for something that happened years ago.”

The kettle whistled. With mechanical precision, Ben poured water into two mugs where he’d already dropped the tea bags.

“What else did she tell you?” he asked.

“Not much. That her father-in-law knew about the two of you.”

“What else?”

“That’s all. What else is there?”

He bobbed the tea bag up and down inside the mug. He slunk down on the stool across the breakfast bar from Rita. Then he propped his elbows on the counter and dropped his face into them. Suddenly he was so tired.

“Jill’s not here because she left me,” he said through his closed hands. “She left me, and she’s gone to England.”

Rita squeezed tea from the bag and set down the spoon. Ben thought he could hear her breathing, or maybe that was him.

“I knew she was upset about you and Fern,” Rita said in a quiet voice, respectful of his pain, “but I tried to tell her Fern was no threat to her. That it wasn’t as if she caught the two of you in bed.”

Ben pushed out a puff of air and dropped his hands into his lap. He looked at Rita through aching, tired eyes. “That’s not the only problem,” Ben said. “Fern’s trying to blackmail me.”

Rita had class enough and smarts enough not to press him for more. But as the world closed in around Ben, he had to share the load.

“Rita,” he said slowly, afraid to look into her eyes, “how good are you at keeping secrets?”

When Ben was finished telling her, Rita tried to close her mouth, although she wanted very much to gulp.

“Does Charlie know?”

He shook his head. “No one but Jill and my son-in-law. Not even Carol Ann. I tried to tell Charlie one night, but he was busy, and now he’s gone.”

She watched him take a sip of tea and wondered if he felt relieved now, if his burden had been lifted, now that he’d told someone besides his wife, who had too much at stake to be objective. She wished she hadn’t blown off Jill’s troubles as petty jealousy.

She studied Ben’s drooping shoulders, his pale, gaunt face. This, she supposed, explained it all: the weight loss, the excuses not to socialize. Rita was no shrink, but she
would have bet that Ben had not done it. He looked like a man who was caught in a trap not of his making. “Have you talked to Mindy?”

He shook his head. “I tried, at the Thanksgiving school play. She screamed. It made the paper.”

Rita had a vague recollection about a story Hazel had read to her. “Why not try again? There’s no restraining order against you, is there? Aren’t they only for people you live with?”

He shook his head. “Legal or not, my attorney has advised me not to go near her.”

“If it were me, I’d want to face my accuser.”

“She’s just a child, Rita. I don’t want to scare her. For some reason, she’s been scared enough.”

That answered it for Rita. Whether it was the words he spoke or the way his voice cracked when he spoke them, Rita knew then that Ben positively could not have done this. He was too kind and too good. “Who’s your lawyer?”

“A fellow named Bartlett. From Atlanta.”

“Atlanta? For chrissake, Ben, where’d you get him?”

“Addie Becker knows him. She’s Jill’s old agent.”

Rita thought a moment. “So that explains why she was willing to do
Good Night, USA
and team up with those jerks again.”

Ben took a sip of tea. “Yep. That explains it.”

Rita looked into her mug as if the tea leaves held the answer. “I’m not going to ask if you did it, Ben, because I know better.”

“I did have sex with Fern Ashenbach years ago. But I did not touch Mindy. I would never touch a child.”

“I know,” Rita said. “But it looks like you’re getting in deeper shit each day. What are we going to do about it?”

“We?”

“Well, the way I see it, your wife is on the lam in England, and your best friend is sucking up the sunshine in Florida. Your daughter doesn’t know, so that leaves me. Rita Blair. At your service.”

“I’d kiss you, Rita darling, but I can’t afford the gossip.”

Richard wanted to take them to lunch at a perfect little tavern he knew of right there in Oxford. Jeff and Mick would be in class, it would just be the three of them.

Thankfully, Amy begged off—jet lag had attacked, and she and her mother needed sleep. So at noon Oxford time, six
A.M
. on the Vineyard, they’d let themselves into Jeff’s apartment with the key the boys had hidden under the front stoop. They stepped past neatly stacked disarray, found a note with instructions to make themselves at home, and fell into sofabeds that had been clumsily made up.

They’d slept until midnight, then had tea and scones with Jeff, and finally had a chance to meet his roommate, Mick from the Lake District, who didn’t seem to mind Jeff’s penchant for the computer or that he put empty cereal boxes back in the cabinet.
“Cupboard,”
Mick corrected, and Amy laughed.

They caught up on the events of the months since they’d been together—what they hadn’t covered by e-mail—then returned to bed and slept until dawn. Richard phoned shortly thereafter: he had stayed in town, and
was determined to take them all to lunch today, jet lag or not.

Jill decided she was awake enough to handle it. He arrived at one o’clock with a copious bouquet of flowers for “his favorite girl,” Amy. Jill said she’d put them in water and retreated to the kitchen. She emptied a milk bottle that smelled as if it had been there since last month, and parked the flowers in it. Standing in Jeff’s kitchen, she listened to the voices in the other room: her children’s mixed with Mick’s and Richard’s, her ex-husband’s voice still rich with that disarming British accent that had spelled trouble when she’d first met him so long ago.

She’d been a news reporter on the streets of Boston then. He’d been in the States in the brokerage business. As a sideline, he’d dealt in antiquities. He’d been robbed in his hotel, but he’d single-handedly caught the thief who’d been absconding with a million pounds worth of rare coins. Jill had covered the story, and that had somehow led to dinner. The remaining history seemed now as ancient as those coins. A few years later, Jill realized that the trait she’d mistaken for bravery was really an overinflated ego that could not tolerate defeat.

How many more misjudgments about men would she make before her life was over?

None, if you don’t let them get too close
, she thought. Such a warning could have come from Rita.

But this was not the time or place to start thinking about the Vineyard. There were too few opportunities these days, weeks, and years to have her children both together as a family, plus Richard, plus Mick.

A family, of which Ben might or might not still be part.

Determined to make this visit an improvement over life back home, Jill poured water into the bottle and returned, vase in hand, to the living room. She looked at Richard and smiled. “I’m starving. How far is it to the restaurant?”

•   •   •

They walked down a narrow alley that Jill doubted anyone could have found unless they knew it was there.

“I thought this place might remind you of the tavern you always talked about,” Richard said, “the place your family owned.”

Amy jumped in and said how cool the 1802 was, and that her goal was to own it again one day. Jill pondered Richard’s comment that she’d “always” talked about the tavern. Had she done that? In that moment she remembered that not once, in the eight years that they were married, had her parents ever met him, had he ever gone to the island. It had been as if she could not afford to let her two worlds—the present and the past—come together, merge as one. It had been as if she’d been afraid to interrupt her dream.

The alley suddenly opened to a garden, where remnants of a flower-filled autumn were now trimmed to winter’s lifeless remains. Like her garden back home. Home—that place she refused to think about.

To the right was a small stone building. A low, narrow doorway welcomed them inside.