Rainy Day Sisters (8 page)

“Hey, Jul—”

“Apparently one of the guests is allergic to cotton sheets,” Juliet cut her off, not quite seeming to be addressing her. “Could have told me, don't you think?” She shook her head and went to fill the kettle. “Americans. Sometimes they can be so picky.” She put the kettle on the Aga and stood there, one hand on the railing, her expression shuttered but also weary. From this angle Lucy could see a few gray streaks in Juliet's sandy hair.

“Would you mind walking the dogs tomorrow?” Juliet asked abruptly. “I've got an appointment up in Carlisle.” She didn't look at her as she said it, and Lucy wondered if this was her sister's idea of a peace offering.

“Sure,” she said, although Milly and Molly still made her nervous. Their trembling terror of just about anything put her on edge. She almost asked Juliet about her appointment, but her sister's expression was so closed she decided not to. She thought about saying something else, something about the way their dinner had ended last night, but she couldn't quite make herself, and she didn't know what she'd say anyway.

Why don't you like me?
seemed pathetic. And
Why did you invite me, anyway?
could possibly make her homeless. No, silence was better.

Juliet

THE IDEA HAD COME
to her suddenly, although Juliet knew it had been flirting at the fringes of her mind for a while now, maybe even years. But her confrontation with Lucy, her awkward conversation with Peter, the loneliness she now felt like a palpable thing, always pressing down on her . . . they had, together, made her determined, or perhaps just desperate, to act.

And so she was driving to Carlisle, her hands gripping the wheel so tightly her fingers ached, to have a preliminary appointment with the Cumbrian Fertility Clinic.

She let out a bark of disbelieving laughter, the sound like the crack of a gunshot in the confines of her car. She, Juliet Bagshaw, was thinking about going down the sperm donor route, just as her mother had.

Because if Fiona could do it, why couldn't she? A ready-made family. A person who was new and unspoiled, with no preconceptions about life or parenthood or what a family was supposed to look like. A person who would need her, love her.

A person you could mess up.

Because she had such a great track record with relationships. Because her own mother hadn't loved her, so why would a child be any different?

She was going for a preliminary consultation, Juliet reminded herself. Nothing was definite. She just wanted to
see
.

She drove the forty miles to Carlisle past rolling sheep pastures, the fells a gray-green smudge in the distance, the sea falling away on her left and signs for the nearby lakes of Crummock Water and Buttermere on her right. It was always a bit of a jolt to come into Cumbria's only city and see the rows of terraced houses, the massive Carlisle Castle with its ruins of Hadrian's Wall. With seventy thousand people, Carlisle felt like a teeming metropolis in comparison with Hartley-by-the-Sea.

The private fertility clinic she'd furtively looked up online last night was in a concrete building on the far side of the city, with tinted glass doors and a discreet sign with the letters
CFC
. Juliet parked in the near-empty lot and headed inside.

The lobby could have been the waiting room for any office; there were the standard uncomfortable sofas and chairs, a coffee table of fake wood, and the usual collection of year-old issues of
Good Housekeeping
and
Woman's Weekly
, plus the odd, ancient copy of the more upmarket
Cumbria Life
. A couple sat on one of the sofas, holding hands and looking down at their laps. Juliet looked away from them.

She gave her name to the bored girl at the desk and was handed a clipboard with a ream of forms to fill out. Her knee started to jiggle as she began to write.

“Miss Bagshaw?” A round-faced man in a creased shirt and gray trousers came to the door just as Juliet was filling out the last page; it was almost as if he'd timed it. “Would you like to come through?”

Stony-faced, clutching the clipboard to her chest, Juliet nodded and followed him to a small office that was decorated with the same utilitarian furniture as the waiting room.

The man rounded the desk, gesturing to one of two chairs in front of it. Juliet sat down, glancing at the empty chair next to her, and felt more alone than she wanted to in this moment.

“So. I'm Dr. Allen.” He folded his hands on the desk and gave her a smile that felt cringingly compassionate. She wished he were wearing one of those white lab coats, something to give him a little distance. “You're here today for a preliminary consultation about fertility options?”

“Yes.” Her voice emerged as a croak, but clearing her throat felt too revealing. Her gaze moved to the window and she looked out at the square patch of pewter sky, unable to bear looking at Dr. Allen's face again. Coming here had been a mistake, a moment's idiocy.

“Let me just look through your medical history,” Dr. Allen murmured, and she heard the rustle of the pages she'd painstakingly filled out and handed to him. She kept staring out the window. “I see you're interested in an IUI with donor sperm,” he said after a moment, and Juliet nodded, forcing her gaze back to Dr. Allen. “I also see that you've indicated on your medical history that you have only one functioning Fallopian tube.”

“Yes.” Her throat had gone tight and her hands were clenched in her lap; she was sitting so rigidly she knew he must see and feel her tension. “I had an ectopic pregnancy eleven years ago.”

“And it burst, causing damage to the tube?” Wordlessly she nodded and Dr. Allen glanced back down at her notes. “And you've also suffered from endometriosis?”

“Yes.”

He took off his glasses and gave her a smile of such genuine sympathy that Juliet wanted to slap him. “I have to tell you, Miss Bagshaw, that IUI might be difficult for you.” She didn't say anything, didn't think she could, and he continued in that same kindly tone. “With your medical history, implantation of an embryo would be challenging. Of course, we'd do a full physical and fertility assessment first, and I should let you know that counseling is required when using donor sperm. Would you be using the sperm of an acquaintance, or would you prefer to go through a sperm bank?”

Juliet stared at him blankly.
Of an acquaintance?
Who on earth could she ask to give her some sperm? “A bank,” she said, and Dr. Allen nodded.

“Then you should know that you would, in all likelihood, have to go through another country. The United Kingdom has very few sperm donors on register. Most people use a bank in the United States or Denmark, which have the largest number of donors. But it can be expensive.”

Juliet's jaw bunched even more tightly. “I see.”

He cocked his head, his gaze sweeping over her. Juliet didn't like to think about what he saw. “Perhaps,” he said, his voice so very gentle, “this is something you need to think about for a little while.”

Five minutes later she was back out in the parking lot, the rain spitting down, her car keys clenched in one hand, cutting into her palm. She'd envisioned the appointment taking most of the morning, not just ten minutes, although granted, that had been long enough. But some naive part of her had vaguely imagined coming out of the clinic with a plan, a promise. Maybe even a pregnancy.

She was utterly hopeless. What on earth had she been thinking, making that appointment? What would everyone in Hartley-by-the-Sea have said when she was suddenly pregnant? Not that it was even likely she could get pregnant. She'd known going in that it was a remote possibility, and yet still she'd hoped. She'd clung to the possibility because at least it had been
something
.

The rain was coming down harder now, stinging her face, and Juliet got back into her car. She didn't want to go home yet, not when she'd intimated to Lucy that she'd be gone for most of the day. And frankly she wasn't ready to face Lucy at all. The sympathy she'd seen on her sister's face last night . . . even now it made her wince. The last thing she wanted or needed was Lucy's pity.

She ended up parking the car in the center of town and walking around the shopping area known as The Lanes, gazing unseeingly into shopwindows and feeling aimless. She had no guests due at Tarn House until tomorrow, and the house was already clean, the beds made up, the towels laid out. She had absolutely nothing that needed doing and she wanted to be busy, too busy to think, to feel.

She ate lunch at the café on top of Debenhams department store, amidst other chatting shoppers, bags piled by their feet. She watched as two women around her age gossiped over a piece of chocolate fudge cake they were sharing. One of them let out a crack of laughter, and the sound seemed to slice right through her. She turned to gaze out at the rain-washed streets as she picked at a lukewarm slice of steak and mushroom pie and tried to act as if she liked being alone, as if this were her choice.

Lucy

SATURDAY DAWNED, RATHER PREDICTABLY,
wet and windy. By the time Lucy came downstairs, Juliet had already left for Carlisle, and after a quick breakfast of cereal and tea she decided to walk the dogs early, while the tide was out; the tide clock above the Aga informed her she had at least two hours before the sea started its relentless surge back towards shore.

She wrapped herself up in a fleece and waterproof, yanked on her already mud-splattered Wellies. “All right, you two,” she told the dogs, who trembled in their beds, tails thumping on the ground as they eyed her with trepidation. When Juliet fetched their leads, the dogs raced for the door, quivering with joy. When Lucy did it, they dropped their heads onto their paws.

“Walkies,” Lucy said halfheartedly, and stuffed a few dog biscuits into her pocket, which got the dogs up and out of their beds, at least. They still trembled, and suddenly it made her sad. “What happened to you,” she asked them, “to make you so nervous? I promise you, I'm not going to hurt you.”

Milly and Molly didn't look convinced.

Still, with the help of a few dog biscuits she got their leads on and them out the door, then heading down Beach Road. The wind was brisk but surprisingly refreshing, and although the sky was still gray, at least it wasn't raining anymore. Quite a few people were out, Lucy noticed. Children rode bikes and scooters, and several couples were walking with a rather determined briskness that suggested pedometers and heart monitors were involved.

There were also plenty of dogs, of different shapes and sizes, all of them heading with their owners towards the beach.

The tide was completely out when Lucy reached the beach, an endless stretch of wet sand that was churned up joyfully underneath a thousand dogs' paws. Milly and Molly were straining at their leads to get out there, although Lucy wasn't sure she should risk it. What if they ran off and she couldn't get them back? She imagined telling Juliet she'd lost her dogs and shuddered.

But it wasn't really much of a walk if they didn't get their playtime at the beach, and so with some trepidation she released them. They were both off like shots, quivering with ecstasy or fear, probably both, as they tore down the beach towards the sea. Lucy had brought one of Juliet's old tennis balls for them, but they didn't seem much interested in it, much happier to simply race about and frisk and play with the other dogs.

Lucy stood for a while watching them, her hands in the pockets of her waterproof, her shoulders hunched against the wind. She exchanged a few friendly smiles with other dog walkers, and felt a surprising satisfaction and pleasure in the simple act of having gotten here, in having the stiff, salty wind sting her cheeks. Then she heard a frenzied, terrified barking, and with a lurch of alarm she knew something had gone wrong.

She searched the beach, the shapes of dogs blurring as her eyes watered from the wind; finally she saw Milly and Molly cowering from a rather fat black Lab who looked, Lucy thought, a bit overeager but unlikely to hurt a fly, much less two greyhounds.

She marched off towards the dogs, calling their names and snapping her fingers to seemingly no purpose, when her step faltered and her heart stilled and then sank as she saw the owner of the black Lab.

Alex Kincaid.

He hadn't seemed like a dog person, was her first irrelevant thought as she approached. Alex had managed to get a lead around the Lab's neck and was pulling the dog to heel. The dog, Lucy saw with some amusement, had dug his paws into the sand and was resisting with all his might. She remembered her little fantasy about walking through the fields with a Lab and nearly started laughing.

“Milly, Molly,” she called, and then she did laugh at Alex's expression when he caught sight of her. He looked like she was the last person he wanted to be the owner of the dogs that his own dog was frightening.

“Sorry,” he bit out as he pulled on the dog's lead. “He's not very well trained, I'm afraid.”

Lucy looped the leads around Milly's and Molly's heads with an easy confidence that was both amazing and faked. “Now, that surprises me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I would have expected your dog to come to heel at just a look,” Lucy answered. “
I
practically do.”

For a second she thought he was going to smile; the corner of his mouth tugged upwards slightly, but then his expression ironed out. “I'm not that terrifying, surely.”

“Trust me, you are.” She kept her voice light, maybe even the tiniest bit flirtatious. Alex was so good-looking it was hard
not
to flirt. “I have to give myself a pep talk in the mirror every morning before I go into school.”

His mouth tugged upwards again, but only briefly. “I think that might be your issue, not mine.”

She laughed, enjoying this banter. “Actually, you might have a point there.” She nodded towards the fat Lab. “So why isn't he well trained?”

“No time. Getting a dog was a somewhat ill-conceived notion on my part, I'm afraid, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“It always does, I suppose.”

He glanced down at Milly and Molly, who had been butting Lucy's legs rather insistently with their long, pointed noses. “Those are Juliet's two. Are you much of a dog person, then?”

“Not really. I've never had one of my own, anyway.”

Lucy could feel the conversation petering out and she wished it wouldn't. She'd enjoyed the round of gentle teasing, was ridiculously glad that Alex Kincaid did, in fact, possess at least a small sense of humor.

The sky had darkened ominously as they'd chatted, and now the first few raindrops spattered onto the sand, the heavy, large kind that almost always preceded a torrential downpour. Even so, Lucy didn't want to leave.

“Look,” she blurted before she could lose her nerve, “it looks like it's about to rain. Again. How about a cup of coffee?” She nodded towards the beach café at the end of the promenade. “My treat.”

He stared at her for a moment, looking so nonplussed that Lucy felt as if she'd suggested something utterly inappropriate. And maybe she had. Maybe you didn't offer to buy your boss a cup of coffee. Did he think she was asking him out?

Was she?

No, she just wanted a friend, even if it was grumpy Alex Kincaid. Someone to talk to over a hot drink. Was that too much to ask?

The torrential downpour had started, rain sleeting into both of their faces, and finally Alex answered. “That would be nice,” he said, and unable to keep a big, sloppy grin from spreading over her face, Lucy nodded and then they both began half-sprinting to the café, the rain now coming down in sheets, the dogs barking and frisking at their heels.

They tied the dogs up outside under the awning and headed into the warm café, picking a table near a rain-spattered window. Alex grabbed one of the menus and studied it so intently that Lucy had a feeling he regretted accepting her impulsive invitation. She sat down, hanging her coat on the back of her chair and unwinding what felt like a mile of multicolored scarf before reluctantly taking off her hat. She knew her hair was a mess, and as Alex looked up from the menu, she saw him glance at it and she grimaced.

“I must look like a clown. My hair goes really frizzy when it's wet.”

“You look fine.” He spoke tersely, inspecting her for a second longer before looking back at the menu. At least it gave her a chance to study him. She let her gaze linger on his straight nose, that cleft chin. She wondered what his wife had looked like.
Anna.
She sounded dark and beautiful, Italian maybe. Someone who would tease him out of his grim moods, pull his ears and ruffle his hair and kiss him senseless.

A petite, dark-haired woman with a toddler perched on her hip approached the table, looking friendly but fairly harassed. Lucy wondered if she was related to Mary, the elderly woman with the flyaway hair and the heart condition. “What can I get you two?” she asked, hitching the little boy higher on her hip. He grabbed a strand of her hair and started winding it around his fist. She winced and drew his hand back. “Easy, Noah.”

Alex raised his eyebrows at Lucy. “What would you like?”

She ordered a latte and he had a black coffee, which seemed so predictable. Why couldn't stern, sexy men order mochaccinos? The woman went back to the kitchen, the little boy now trailing after her. Lucy turned back to Alex. “So what brought you to Hartley-by-the-Sea?”

He tensed, looking almost trapped by what Lucy had meant to be an innocuous conversation opener. “The job, first of all,” he said finally. “But village life seemed appealing.”

“Yes, I think I have this rather ridiculous fantasy of life in an English village. I thought the lady at the post office shop would slip me chocolate buttons.”

“Too bad for you a man runs the post office shop.”

Lucy grinned. “Yes, I've met him.” Lucy was still nurturing hopes that Dan Trenton was more of a gentle giant, but her three forays into the shop had not yet won her more than a flat stare and her change. “So that really wrecks my fantasy, I guess,” she said.

“I don't know. He might slip you a button or two.”

Which sounded kind of . . . flirtatious. “So what about village life was appealing to you?” Lucy asked.

He traced a coffee ring on the table, averting his gaze. “The whole package, I suppose. Community. Closeness.”

Lucy wondered if he would mention his wife, or if she should be the one to mention that she knew. Or, since this was such a small village, would he assume she knew? Should she say she was sorry to hear about his wife's death? This was a whole new territory of uncertainty and awkwardness.

“So has the village met your expectations?” she finally asked, her tone a little too jolly, and Alex looked up with a surprisingly bleak smile.

“I don't think
I've
met its expectations.”

Surprise jolted through her at this honest admission. “Why do you say that?”

He spread his hands flat on the table and stared down at them; there was something about the gesture that seemed both contemplative and lonely. “Work has taken up most of my life.”

“But as head teacher you're giving back to the community,” Lucy pointed out. She felt she should really say something about his wife, or maybe he should.

He just shrugged and said, “I suppose.” Lucy opened her mouth to say something, although
I know about your wife
made her sound like some bad TV detective. Then Alex spoke first. “What about you?” he asked. “You're only here for four months, but what made you decide to come all the way to Cumbria?”

“Well.” She considered fobbing him off with the usual
I wanted a change
and then decided she was tired of prevaricating. Alex had been surprisingly honest, so maybe she could be too. “My life in Boston kind of fell apart. Actually, there's no ‘kind of' about it. Completely fell apart is more accurate.”

“I'm sorry,” Alex said after a moment. “That's always difficult.”

He spoke as if he understood what she was talking about and Lucy knew she couldn't let the moment pass. “I'm sorry,” she blurted, and Alex arched an eyebrow. “About—about your wife.”

“Ah.” His mouth twisted in a rather grim smile. “You've heard.”

“One of the teachers told me she died a couple years ago.” He nodded, not seeming inclined to say anything more. “I'm sorry,” Lucy said again.

“So am I.”

Fortunately the woman brought their coffees, and Lucy was spared from making any more awkward condolences. Alex's expression was back to the basilisk stare. She turned to the woman, who had the little boy—Noah—clinging to her legs as she struggled to put their coffee on the table. Lucy reached for her latte to help her. “Is Mary all right?” she asked, and the woman jerked back a little in surprise, sloshing black coffee on the tray. Alex took the cup from her, mopping up the spilled coffee with a napkin.

“You know her?”

“My sister does. We came in here a week or so ago.”

“She's all right,” the woman said, but she sounded resigned. “She had a bit of a turn last week and she needs to rest.”

Lucy nodded, not wanting to ask any more questions and seem nosy. With a tired smile the woman left, taking the little boy with her.

“And when you go back to Boston,” Alex said as Lucy loaded her latte with sugar and took a frothy sip, “what will you do?”

“Honestly? I have no idea.”

She saw remembrance flicker across his face. “You worked in an art gallery, didn't you?”

“Is that what I told you?” He raised his eyebrows at that. “Well, yes, I did work in a gallery, but in the café part. I was a barista. And before you say anything, I know it seems like a waste of a perfectly good education. I do have a university degree, even if you're surprised to know it.” Now where had all
that
come from?