Summer Shadows (20 page)

Marsh smiled his most charming smile. “Good evening. So nice to see you this lovely evening.”

“Mom, I’d like you to meet Marsh Winslow.” Abby looked at him with warning in her eyes. No more stories about carrying her upstairs. “He lives downstairs and is my landlord. He’s a professor. My mom, Hannah MacDonald.”

A tall man stepped out behind the woman.

“This is my father, Len MacDonald,” Abby said.

Celia emerged next with two plates of steaming spaghetti. “Hi, Marsh.”

He nodded. “How are you, Celia?” This time he was sure he got it right. “I’m glad to see Karlee’s doing so well.”

The man with the silver temples emerged with two more plates of spaghetti.

“This is Dr. Schofield, Karlee’s doctor,” Celia said. “He stopped to check on how she’s doing. Wasn’t that considerate of him?”

Dr. Schofield smiled in a charmingly deprecating way. Both Celia and Abby looked at him with that look women give someone they think has done something wonderful. Marsh wanted to grind his teeth. Like it was such a big thing for a doctor to make a house call, especially at dinnertime. What about a writer who tried to write with the whole world talking and laughing right over his head? Who gave someone like that any praise?

Marsh nodded at the doctor, smiled again at the kids, winked at Abby, and met the glare of Len MacDonald without flinching.

“Don’t let us keep you from your dinner,” Hannah MacDonald
said, her smile a poor disguise for the true meaning of her words.
Get lost
.

“Right.” Marsh said as he started downstairs. “Enjoy.”

It was amazing how tasteless a frozen pepperoni pizza could be.

A
BBY WOKE ON
Sunday morning to a room filled with sunshine. She lay for a moment, enjoying the fact that she was in her own home, her very own place, starting her new life. She smiled at the picture she had hung on the wall facing her bed, a glorious English garden done in watercolors. It wasn’t very seashoreish, but the hollyhocks, roses, lavender, and some other flowers she couldn’t identify filled the frame with color and a misty, summer morning feel. Every time she looked at it, she smiled, sort of like she did every time she looked at the ocean from her porch.

Who said you couldn’t begin all over again?

A knock at the door broke her reverie.

“Come on, sleepyhead.” It was her mother, a lilt in her voice. “Breakfast is ready.”

Abby’s smile faded. Breakfast was ready? How could breakfast be ready? She hadn’t made it yet.

Logically she should be glad that Mom wanted to cook. Everyone, including Abby herself, would eat better. One of Sam’s great disappointments had been that Abby had never developed culinary skills of her mother’s caliber. Even when she followed her mother’s directions explicitly, the dishes never tasted the same.

“It’s all right, dear,” Sam always said with a sad little
smile. “I don’t mind.” After Maddie came, it was, “We don’t mind.”

But it was obvious he did, and meal after meal tasted like dust in Abby’s mouth.

But Mom being better wasn’t the point. Abby knew she was being petty, but it felt like Mom had taken over. As usual. Last night she hadn’t said anything when Mom had commandeered the kitchen to make dinner. There had been too many people around to make a scene.

But this morning it was just the three of them, and she was the one who should be fixing breakfast for her parents, not the other way around.

She glanced at the bedside clock. It was only 7:45. It wasn’t like she had slept the morning away. Feeling grouchy and out of sorts, she pushed back the sheet and summer blanket and climbed out of bed. She pulled on a pair of shorts and a knit top, then crossed the hall to the bathroom. Seeing her scowl in the mirror over the sink just made her scowl harder.

Time warped and she could hear her mother saying to her as a child, “Oh, Abby, dear. You mustn’t frown like that.” Gentle hands smoothed away the grooves on her little girl’s forehead and placed a soft kiss there. “You’ll get premature wrinkles.”

Well, who cared! Maybe a few wrinkles would give her character. As she washed her face in the freestanding sink with more vigor than necessary, her elbow collided with her mother’s travel bag of toiletries and cosmetics, resting on one edge of the sink. The flowered bag flew across the little room, struck the far wall, and tumbled to the floor, spilling vials of prescription medications and over-the-counter sinus capsules, little tubes of hand and body cream, tiny squirt bottles of hair spray and sunscreen, a disposable razor, a nail file and a bottle of soft pink polish, a tube of mascara and an eyelash curler, foundation, blusher, and two lipsticks that promptly rolled under the clawfoot tub. The pill vials preferred to hide behind the commode and under the radiator.

“Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice,” Abby muttered as she got down on her hands and knees. She rescued her mother’s Premarin and Synthroid from behind the toilet and the lipsticks from under the clawfoot tub. The hair spray and mascara had rolled under the radiator with the Tylenol. She had to lie on her stomach, sticking her hand into the darkness between the
radiator and floor. She kept expecting some small but diabolical creature, probably one with eight legs, to grab her fingers, but the only life-form she found was a family of small dust bunnies.

As she pulled herself painfully to her feet, using the tub as a support, she muttered, “ ‘I will rejoice in the Lord; I will be joyful in God my Savior. This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.’ ” She stuffed everything willy-nilly into the bag, zipped it shut, and stuck it behind the faucets until she finished rinsing her face. Why in the world had the woman left the bag open and on the edge of the sink anyway?

Abby looked for a better place to put the thing but saw quickly that there wasn’t any. The mirror over the sink was just that, a mirror, not a medicine cabinet. The toilet tank was lined with her own things—her hair dryer and curling wand, her giant bottle of sunscreen, her skin cream, her shampoo, and her collection of pill vials. Her father’s shaving kit was on top of the little radiator.

Wall shelves. That’s what she needed. Wall shelves hung behind the toilet where the awful picture of sparkly, smiling seashells shimmered. She studied the room as she brushed her teeth. Dark green wicker shelves, she decided, to go with the dark ivy of the wide border at the top of the wall and the green tiles that marched single file around the otherwise white room. Maybe she could find white curtains printed with ivy to replace the dark green ones now on the window. They were too heavy, too dark.

As she left the bathroom, Abby wasn’t smiling, but much of the grouchiness was gone. The next time Mom and Dad came to visit, she’d have a nice bright bathroom with plenty of space for their things. That was the joy of having her own place. She could fix it up, make improvements and changes as she liked. Living the last three years in her mother’s house had been difficult after years in her own home. No matter how often Mom said, “This is your home, too,” Abby knew it wasn’t.

But this wonderful, shabby apartment on the beach was hers. She hugged herself. Freedom. She was actually smiling when she reached the table and found her father sitting there reading the Sunday
Philadelphia Inquirer
. Orange juice sat at three places and she could smell bacon.

“Pancakes,” Dad said, answering her unasked question.

Abby made a face. She’d never liked pancakes. In fact, she had
told her mother innumerable times, but Mom regularly made them anyway. The only explanation Abby could come up with was that for some reason, pancakes meant love to Mom. Like the dutiful daughter she’d always been, Abby usually forced herself to eat one. At least Dad seemed to genuinely enjoy them. He certainly ate enough.

“Hey, sweetie.” Mom walked into the dining area with a huge platter of pancakes in one hand and a plate of crispy bacon in the other.

Abby stared at the mountains of food. “Mom, there are just three of us. You shouldn’t have made so much.”

“Why not, I’d like to know?” Mom set the pancakes in front of Abby. “Besides, pancakes freeze well. They’ll be a quick breakfast before you rush off to work.”

Resigned, Abby helped herself to a pancake and two strips of bacon. Maybe when Mom wasn’t looking, she could pop a piece of bread in the toaster.

“Oh, honey, no wonder you’re so thin!” Mom reached over, putting two more pancakes on Abby’s plate.

Abby stared malevolently at the pancakes. She didn’t want three pancakes. She didn’t even want one. Always before she’d eaten however many of the wretched things Mom had given her. Always before she’d been the good, cooperative daughter. But not today. She sat up straight, girded for battle. She skewered the top two pancakes and lifted them from her plate.

“Thank you, but no.” Her voice was flinty. With an exaggerated flourish, she returned the offending food to the serving platter while her mother watched with open mouth.

“I do not like pancakes.” Abby enunciated each word as she slathered butter on her single remaining cake.

“But Abby,” Mom began.

“I repeat: I do not like pancakes. I am twenty-nine years old. If I do not like pancakes, I do not have to eat them.” She grabbed the maple syrup and doused her pancake.

“I never knew—”

“Because you didn’t listen,” Abby interrupted in what she knew was a deplorable tone of voice. She just couldn’t seem to help herself. “I have told you for years that I don’t like pancakes.” She took a bite of her cake, forcing herself to swallow. “For years!
Just like I’ve told you and told you that walnuts make me feel ill. But did that stop you from putting them in the brownies and chocolate chip cookies? Uh-uh. I also don’t like seafood. I don’t like spinach except raw in salads with lots of bacon dressing. I don’t like jelly or jam on my toast. I can’t abide mushrooms. And I hate being told what I should eat!” She slapped her hand on the table for emphasis.

Abby shoved another bite of her one pancake into her mouth and chewed in the utter silence that followed her outburst. She shuddered with revulsion as she swallowed.

“Abby,” her father said mildly, “don’t you think you owe your mother an apol—?”

Abby put her hand up to silence him. She took a big bite of bacon and the only sound was its crunch-crunch as she chewed. “What I do like are things that crunch, things like toast and crackers and pretzels and potato chips. And crispy bacon!” She waved her bacon strip in the air. “I thank you for the bacon.”

At that, she got up, walked outside, down the stairs, and onto the beach. Tears poured down her cheeks. Walking on the sand with her blurred vision was difficult and she stumbled. She swayed but stayed upright.

Oh, Lord, I’m a horrid person! A horrid person!

“Hey, you’d better watch where you’re going.” A warm hand grasped her elbow. “You’re going to fall on your lovely face.”

Marsh! Abby ducked her head, embarrassed. Here she was crying again, and she hadn’t brushed her hair or her teeth. “Go away.”

“Can’t. You’ll kill yourself if I do, lurching along like that.”

“What do you do?” she asked, sniffing. “Sit there on your porch and wait for me to make a fool of myself so you can gloat?”

“Am I gloating? Here I thought I was being nice.”

Abby looked at him, then looked away. She sighed with self-loathing. “I’m sorry. Really I am. I’m usually very nice. It’s just—”

Marsh glanced back at the house when she didn’t continue. Abby looked too and then wished she hadn’t. Mom and Dad stood at the rail, watching her. Dad had his arm around Mom’s shoulders and even from this distance Abby could tell Mom was crying.

“Ah,” Marsh said, his voice suffused with great understanding. “The parents.”

“I’m such a terrible person,” Abby mumbled as new tears fell.

Marsh pulled his T-shirt out of his shorts, took the hem, and reached up to wipe Abby’s tears. “You may be a little nuts, but you aren’t terrible.”

Abby sniffed. “Yes, I am. If you only knew how terrible, you wouldn’t be so nice to me.”

Marsh took her elbow again and began walking toward the water. “Watch your footing, sunshine.”

She didn’t and staggered again. She grabbed at him, catching a handful of T-shirt to steady herself.

“It’s okay.” His voice and his hands were gentle. “I’ve got you.”

“They leave tonight.” She took a long breath, letting it out on a sigh that came all the way from her toes. “I can make it until then.”

“Of course you can,” Marsh agreed, unclenching her fist finger by finger to reclaim his T-shirt.

When they reached the firm sand revealed by the receding tide, Marsh dropped her elbow. He turned them north, and they walked for a while in silence “My father comes on Tuesday.”

Abby nodded. “Is he as nice as you?”

Marsh blinked. “You think I’m nice?”

Abby smiled through her tears at his surprise. “At least some of the time. Like now. Like when you gave Karlee the marker. Like when you let me cry all over you at the hospital.”

“Huh.” Marsh studied the horizon intently, and Abby could have sworn she had just embarrassed him. He cleared his throat. “Well, what I was going to say was that if you think your parents are controlling, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen the good senator.”

“The good senator?” Abby’s mind whirled. Winslow. Senator. “You mean that Senator Marcus Winslow is your father?” Her voice ended on a high screech of disbelief.

Marsh shrugged. “Well, someone’s got to be his kid.”

“But you live in Ohio.”

“Not as an adult. It’s not a requirement that a senator’s adult children live in their parent’s state, you know.”

Slightly embarrassed at her foolish remark, Abby said, “Boy, would my father flip if he knew.”

“Good flip or bad flip?”

“Oh, good. He thinks your father walks on water.”

“Yeah.” Marsh stuck his hands in his pockets and started walking back the way they’d come. “Most people do. Even those who don’t like his politics like him.”

Abby turned to him, surprised by the sorrow in his voice. “You don’t like him?”