Safe Harbor (3 page)

“Nothing else?” Dana asked, wanting her to see what her mother always saw.

Allie shrugged and shook her head. “Why do you always paint the sea?”

“Because I love it so much.”

“The water looks different in every painting. Black, dark gray in that one, turquoise blue in that one . . . but when we were little, you used to say it was all one sea, the same salt water, right?”

“The same water in different places,” Dana said, squeezing her hand. “Every coastline has its own character.” It had almost stopped mattering where she lived as long as she could see the sea from at least one window in her house.

Now, looking for Quinn, she spotted her standing by the hors d'oeuvres table. Forced to wear a flower print dress, Quinn had accented the ensemble with hiking boots on her feet and a heavy chain around her neck. Her strangely braided hair made her resemble a wiry shrub or a drawing by Dr. Seuss.

“How do you spell ‘psycho'?” Allie asked.

“P-s-y-c-h-o,” Dana said. “Why?”

“Because that's what Quinn looks like with her hair like that.”

“Will you ask her to please come stand with me? I flew all the way from France to see you guys, and she hasn't said two words,” Dana said.

“You came for the art show,” Allie corrected.

“That's not the main reason, and you know—” Dana began. Suddenly, Allie pulled her hand away and walked over to her sister. Dana watched as Quinn seemed to listen, then strode out through the open door with Allie following. By the time Dana got outside, her mother following behind her, the two sisters had disappeared.

Dana breathed steadily. She was jet-lagged. Just yesterday she had been standing on the hill, gazing toward the English Channel at the exact spot where Eugène Boudin had painted with Claude Monet, inventing Impressionism in the process. She had packed her clothes, walked through the studio she had shared with Jonathan. Now Dana was in Black Hall, surrounded by friends and neighbors examining her own work. She hoped no one noticed she couldn't quite look at it herself.

“Are you going to tell me your plans?” her mother asked now that they were alone.

“You know them, Mom. I plan to stay for the week, then go back to France.”

“Dana,” her mother said, placing her hand on Dana's arm. “I told you on the phone, and I'll say it again. I don't want you to go. You belong here. Just look around—can't you feel the support? You can't tell me you get that in Honfleur, as beautiful as it might be. And you know you're going to need it.”

“Mom, don't,” Dana said. “Where did the girls go?”

“Running wild, as usual. Allie's fine, but Quinn is a terrible influence. Last Sunday I caught her smoking a cigarette. Twelve years old, and there she was, puffing away!”

“I'll talk to her.”

“Oh, a lot of good that will do. What makes you think she'll listen? She hasn't listened to one word anyone's said in months.”

“She will,” Dana said. “We're special.”

Her mother snorted. “So special you can't even stay.”

“Mom . . .” Dana began.

Her mother's face looked so old. It was tired and lined, and there was an unfamiliar hardness behind her formerly soft blue eyes. When Dana reached for her hand, it felt cool and dry, and she didn't squeeze back. They were mother and daughter, but it was as if their connection had been broken.

When Martha Underhill slid her hand away to walk back into the gallery and rejoin the party, Dana closed her eyes. She thought of her cottage on the English Channel, of its whitewashed stone walls. What did it mean to her, after all? It was just real estate with a beautiful view to paint out the window. She and Jonathan had tried—fumbling all the way—to love each other there. Her assistant, Monique, had kept it spotlessly clean. Remembering that, she shivered.

She thought of sailboats rocking in the harbor at Deauville; to supplement the income from her not-frequent-enough sales, she sometimes gave sailing lessons there. Then she thought of Lily.

She wanted her sister.

Of all the people in all the world, Dana wanted her sister to walk through the door. They'd bag this party in a second. She wanted to grab her sister's hand, run down to the water, and find a boat. Lily's girls could come with them, and together they could all sail away. Her heart was absolutely ready to be poured out. She craved a gripe session with the girls: a chance to bash Jon and trash Monique. A gentle breeze, a broad reach, and her sister were exactly what Dana needed.

Instead, she just walked down the gallery steps, past the boxwood hedge. As she breathed in the clear summer air, her attention was drawn to a blue van. The driver climbed out, and Dana slowed down, then stopped in her tracks. He was tall and strong-looking, rearranging the bouquet of flowers he had brought. She was mesmerized by the sight of such a big man fiddling with daisies. Her heart kicked over, but when he lifted his eyes and looked straight at her, it flipped back. He was quite young, certainly no older than thirty. Suddenly Augusta Renwick exclaimed with delight, and the young man turned to her, and it didn't matter anymore.

Dana headed down the blue stone walk, away from the crowd, in search of her nieces.

 

“S
HE SAID YOU
haven't said two words to her,” Allie pleaded.

“I have two words for her,” Quinn said. “‘Fuck you.' ”

“That is so rude and crummy.”

“Pick one,” Quinn said. “Rude or crummy. You're so dramatic.”

“I'm not the one with Brillo head.”

“No, you're the one with empty head, you stupid baby.”

Allie's eyes welled with tears. Two big ones plopped off the lids, down her pink cheeks. Quinn tried not to look, but it was hard. They had walked out the gallery's front door and sneaked in the back, and now they were sitting under the food table, hidden from sight by a long tablecloth. Face-to-face, she couldn't exactly pretend she didn't see her sister crying.

“Stop that,” she said.

“Stop what?” Allie asked, sniffling hard. She knew Quinn hated it when she cried, so she was trying to make herself stop.

Just to change the subject, Quinn brought the cigarette butt out from behind her ear. She had found it on the gallery steps, not even half smoked. Filching matches from the owner's desk had been a snap. Now she struck one, lit the butt, and took a drag.

“Don't do that,” Allie begged.

“Why not?” Quinn asked, blowing out a puff. Smoke filled the small space, leaking out under the cloth's hem.

“You could die. Smoking kills—don't you listen in school?”

“Everyone dies,” Quinn said. “So who cares?”

“I do,” Allie said, and now she really couldn't control herself. The tears got bigger and started falling faster. To Quinn they looked clear and solid, tiny jellyfish rolling down her sister's face.

“Allie,” Quinn said, holding the cigarette in her cupped hand the way she had seen it done in movies. “You know why she's here, don't you?”

“The art show.”

“Bull. That's not why.”

“She says it's all the same sea, the same salt water . . .” Allie cried.

“But the houses are different, the people are different. We'd have to learn French, Al. Besides all that, I hate her.”

“How can you hate her? She's Mommy's sister,” Allie wept.

“That's why,” Quinn whispered, staring at the lit part of the cigarette as if it were the beacon of a lighthouse. “That's the exact reason why.”

Suddenly feeling unbearably claustrophobic, Quinn pinched the cigarette out and stuck it behind her ear. Then she threw back the tablecloth and scrambled through a forest of legs, Allie right behind her. People laughed and gasped, but Quinn didn't care. She just wanted to get away.

 

B
LACK
H
ALL
was exactly as Dana Underhill had remembered it: peaceful, elegant, suffused with clear yellow light that seemed to bounce off salt marshes and tidal creeks, to paint the shipbuilders' mansions and church steeples, to trickle down the Connecticut River into Long Island Sound. Just as Honfleur was the birthplace of French Impressionism, Black Hall was where the movement had first started in America, and as an artist, Dana could understand why.

“Hey,” the voice called.

When she turned around, she saw the young man coming after her, still holding his flowers. She saw that she'd been right, that he was just about twenty-eight or twenty-nine.

“Where are you going?” he asked when he'd caught up.

“I'm looking for someone,” she said.

He laughed. “They must be back there, at your opening. Everyone came to see you.”

She didn't stop walking. The June air was fresh and cool. It blew through the trees, made Dana pull her shawl a little tighter. She wore a white silk sheath and black cashmere wrap. Her earrings and necklace were silver lilies, to remind her of her sister. She wore them whenever she felt a little nervous or thought she might be afraid. Lately she had worn them to soothe her broken heart.

“Is it kids?”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you looking for two girls—your nieces, Lily's kids?”

“How do you know?” she asked, stopping short as her heart began to pound.

“I saw them go by. They look just like you and Lily,” he said.

“You know Lily?”

“Knew her,” the young man corrected Dana, and again she felt the kick in her heart. “You don't know who I am, do you? I thought you recognized me back there, when I first got here, but you don't, do you?”

She flushed, not wanting him to know she'd been thinking he was cute. “Tell me . . .” Dana began, her mouth dry, “how you know Lily.”

“You both taught me how to sail,” he said, handing her the flowers. “A long time ago. Back in Newport.”

She blinked, staring from the bouquet into his eyes. They were smiling, anticipatory.

Dana spun back. The summer before her senior year at the Rhode Island School of Design, she and Lily had worked at the Ida Lewis Yacht Club. Dana had hoped to follow in the footsteps of Hugh Renwick and paint on the Newport wharves; even back then, to support her art, she had taught sailing to kids. Was this one of them, all grown up?

“Don't you remember me?” he asked, his voice deep yet soft.

Dana peered more intently into the young man's eyes and felt something move inside her chest. She saw herself and Lily treading water, holding an unconscious boy between them in their arms. The harbor was summer-warm; she could almost feel her sister's feet brushing her legs underwater.

“Sam . . .” The name came out of nowhere, out of the past.

“You remember me,” he said, grinning widely.

“We never forgot you. Lily told me she'd seen you somewhere—at the theater, wasn't it?”

“A little over a year ago,” he said, nodding. “Those are her girls?”

“Yes.” Then, trying to smile, “How did you know?”

“Well, they have the Underhill eyes. And she told me you don't have any children of your own.”

“No, just nieces. That's enough,” Dana said. But her eyes failed to smile. “What brings you here? Are you an artist?”

“Far from it.” He laughed. “I'm a scientist. An oceanographer to be exact. Remember the crabs?”

“I do,” she said, beginning to smile as she pictured him on the dock. “I do.”

Grinning, Sam gazed down at her. He was quite tall; Dana had to tilt her head back to look into his face. He was full of good humor—every part of him seemed to be smiling. The sun was setting behind the Congregational Church's white spire, and the scratched lenses in his glasses reflected the declining golden light.

“I'm a marine biologist,” he said. “My brother gives me grief—he's an oceanographer too, but the geologist-geophysicist variety. Joe says studying whales is for nerds, that sediment's where it's at.”

“I remember you talking about your brother,” Dana said. She could see him now, that little boy playing on the docks, catching crabs and throwing them back, missing the older brother who had gone to sea. Her heart caught, missing her sister, and her eyes filled with tears.

“He married a girl from Black Hall,” Sam said, his gaze growing serious as he noticed the change in her expression.

“Oh,” she said, carefully wiping her eyes.

“I teach in New Haven now. Yale,” he said with a shrug, as if he'd just gotten caught bragging. “Joe and Caroline got married two years ago and they travel a lot, but whenever they come back to Firefly Beach, I'll get to see them. It's great.” Laughing, he focused on her eyes. “What am I telling you for? You know, right?”

“I know?” she asked, figuring he was referring to his brother: “Caroline” had to be Caroline Renwick, daughter of the art legend, Hugh Renwick of Firefly Beach.

“How great it is to come home and see your sister.”

“Oh, yes.”

“You guys were really close. It was like a package deal—show up and get taught by not one but two Underhill sisters. Is she here tonight?”

Dana didn't reply. Thoughts of Hugh Renwick evaporated. Now she was remembering the package deal: Dana and Lily in the crash boat, coaching the fleet, feeling the summer breeze on their skin, picking out harbor scenes they wanted to paint.

“You came home to see her and her kids?” Sam persisted.

“I came home to see her kids.”

His face was made for looking quizzical. Tilting his head, he pushed his glasses up. His eyes crinkled slightly. Dana smelled the wildflowers he had brought her and thought of beach grass filled with rosa rugosa, cornflowers, Queen Anne's lace, and daylilies. She could see Sam didn't know what to say next, so she said it for him.

“Her daughters. They're my charges,” Dana said, and the word sounded so formal, it made her laugh.
My sweethearts, my darling nieces, my sister's beautiful girls,
would have sounded more natural. “My charges,” she said again.