The Summer House (26 page)

BeBe shoved another bramble out of the way and wondered if she should get on the next plane back to Florida where the stress of a sixty-million-dollar decision paled in comparison to this.

The underbrush finally opened and gave way to a small clearing—a clearing that BeBe did not at first recognize. Then she realized that this was it, the cove, surrounded now by trees that had grown much taller, shading the water and forming a canopy over the pine-needled earth. The water itself was no longer blue but slate-colored and dense with reeds and lily pads and cattails that formed a thick wall and seemed to have shrunk the size of the water to that of a large puddle. An unlikely spot for dreaming dreams or calling up memories.

Which was just as well.

Movement along the water’s edge caught her eye.
Looking through the light that spiked through the trees, she saw a dog, a black Labrador retriever, with a long, thick tail that wagged and wagged and propelled him into the water.

As if being directed, her eyes slowly moved to a tree beside the place where the dog had jumped in. And there was a man. He was sitting under a pine tree, his head down, his body inert. BeBe knew in a heartbeat who the man was.

“Josh,” she called out, stumbling around the cattails and through the half-sopping ground. “Josh, it’s me, BeBe. Liz’s sister.”

He raised his head. At first she thought he would get up and run. Hell, she wouldn’t blame him if he did. In fact, he probably should.

Josh stood up. He did not run. “BeBe?” he asked. “How did you find me?”

“No thanks to your guardian angels,” she said.

His laugh sounded empty and distracted.

“I told them I was going for a walk. They hate that.”

“Well, they will certainly never be accused of not being zealous enough.”

Josh brushed a few pine needles from his pants, his neat, khaki twill pants, not the cutoff jeans that had been their fashion staple so long ago. She wondered what else about him had changed. Maybe not as much as one would think, judging by what little she and Liz and any of them had changed. An unexpected twinge for Daniel nicked her heart.

“So you were looking for me,” Josh said. “Should I bother to say I’m surprised?”

“Save it,” BeBe said, “and promise me you’re not planning to use my sister to get her husband to lose the election.”

Josh blinked. “What?”

That never-go-away need to protect her sister bubbled once more beneath the surface, mixing with the vodka and tasting like anger, if anger had a taste. “Isn’t that why you came, Josh? Because you knew Liz was here, and that she’d be vulnerable and grieving and in need of … someone … to pay attention to her?”

He leveled his eyes on her. “You never really knew me, BeBe,” he said.

She laughed. “I never had to. I know your type. I’ve known hundreds of your type.” And suddenly the image of Josh Miller before her became not just the Jewish boy from New York of whom Father wouldn’t approve, but every boy from every state who had ever decided that BeBe was good enough to bed down, but nothing more. Every boy, and every man, Ruiz included, for whom, like Father, when all was said and done, she had not been good enough. Her head swam a little; she steadied her footing.

“BeBe,” Josh said, coming closer. “I would never hurt Liz …”

The words tumbled out, as if the more she said the more she needed to say. “Don’t try to deny it, Josh. You knew Liz could never say no to you, you used her …”

“You’re wrong,” he seethed, his throat reddening through the open collar of his neat white shirt. “You’re probably the only person on earth she feels she can trust. If she needs anyone now, it’s you, BeBe. Not me.”

She laughed again. “No, Josh, I’m not the only person. She has a husband, in case you’ve forgotten. She has a husband and three children who love her very much.” She raised a hand to her forehead, shielding a dull gray glare that had clouded over the sun. She half closed her eyes. “If you think this is going to help you win the election, you’re
wrong, Josh. And I don’t know what I’ll do, but believe me when I tell you I’ll find a way to stop you.”

“BeBe,” he said. “You’re talking like a fool.”

She tipped back her head. “I’m not a fool, Josh. I know as well as you do what’s been going on.”

He did not try and defend himself, which confirmed BeBe’s fears.
Oh, Christ
, she thought,
they’ve done it again
.

“BeBe,” Josh said, “I don’t expect you to understand this, but I loved your sister a very long time ago. I think I always have.”

The gray cloud grew grayer. The sky grew darker. “And you certainly picked a fine time to show how much you love her. Don’t you care who you hurt, Josh?” Her voice turned to a sneer. “Who am I kidding? You’re a man. That gives you license to hurt whomever you want. Pardon me for forgetting that.”

“BeBe, please understand. Liz has always been in my heart. If it hadn’t been for our fathers …”

“If it hadn’t been for our fathers, what? You and my sister would have been married? Come on, Josh, what kind of a man are you? It seems to me if you’d loved her that much you’d have found a way to be with her, fathers or no fathers. It makes me sick, when I think of all she’s been through …”

Josh’s eyes drifted off to the cove, where his dog seemed to be managing a swim in the muck. “What Liz has been through?” he asked. “What about me? I wanted to marry her, BeBe. When I came home from Israel, I was determined. But she was already married. She’d married Michael without waiting to see if we could work things out.”

BeBe looked at his face, which seemed quite sincere; but, then, he was a man and a politician on top of that and she wasn’t born yesterday. Still there was something about the way his head tipped a little to one side, about the way his eyes seemed rimmed with red …

She remembered the way he’d been sitting quietly before she’d arrived, before he’d known she’d been watching.

Suddenly, things became clear. She dropped the shield from her eyes. “Josh,” she said quietly, “please don’t pursue this. Please. Think about Danny.”

His gaze drifted away for a moment, then returned. “Danny? Liz’s son?”

BeBe nodded. “And yours,” she said. “I’ve known it, and I’d bet so have you. Please don’t do anything to hurt him. Or her.”

“What are you talking about?”

She closed her eyes. “It’s okay. I know all about the fact that Danny is your son. Liz told me a long time ago.”

The muscles in his face did not move. “Well,” he said slowly, “I’m glad she told you. She never bothered to tell me.”

The air grew silent and still, thick with island dampness, devoid of the music of birds, even that of the gulls, as if some invisible force had put life on pause.

And then the iced tea and vodka sloshed inside BeBe and she knew she’d been wrong: Josh had not known that Danny was his son; he had not been planning to use it against Liz, to use it against Michael.

She had been wrong. And now, she had fucked up. Big time.

BeBe turned around and headed back through the undergrowth, her stomach as tangled as the vines and the shrubs all knotted and webbed around the old pirates’ cove.

He had thought his aunt BeBe was probably the coolest person on the face of the earth, which was why he had followed her, why he had tried to catch up to her and talk to her about Mom.

But he had not been able to make it as far as the cove. He had barely made it onto the path. But where his feet
could not go, his ears could still hear. And now, from the place on the path where the hard-packed dirt turned to impassable sand, Danny sat without moving a muscle, not even the ones that still worked.

Had he heard what he thought he’d heard?

He’d heard the words.

But they made no sense.

Sounds of leaves crunching and twigs breaking came toward him. He had to get out of the way. He could not let anyone know he’d heard.

With frantic motion, he yanked at the wheels. He could not turn on the motor. He could not risk the noise. And yet … the damn wheel was stuck. Stuck in the rut it had made in the sand.

The footsteps came closer.

Danny pulled on the wheel, his body twisted. Just as he feared he would be caught, he noticed the brake lever. It was locked; he must have flipped it in his haste.

With a single thrust, he popped the lever. And just as he backed into the brush that, thank God, had him fairly well-hidden, BeBe passed by hugging her stomach, her orange hair limp, her freckled cheeks pale, her eyes so glazed she probably wouldn’t have seen him if he was parked in the middle of the damn path.

It wasn’t until she was safely past that Danny began to comprehend what he had heard.

Josh Miller was his father.

Josh Miller. Not Michael. Not Dad.

It was only one statement, one lousy bunch of words strung together. So why did the top of his body feel as numb as the bottom? And why, when Danny tried hard to swallow, was there no spit left in his mouth?

Chapter 24

It had started to rain. Liz stood at the window looking out toward the sea, toward the place where so many dreams had once begun. She could see the thicket where the skunks had once lived—those big, fat, furry creatures that Daniel had twirled by the tail, each summer getting a little braver—Daniel, not the skunks, though maybe they did, too. Maybe they knew Daniel would never hurt them, that he was the perfect son of Will Adams, that he would do nothing to mar the family name, because one day he was going to be president, in charge of the whole damn world.

She had wanted to name her firstborn after Daniel long before she knew that the father of the child would not be her husband. She had wanted to do it, and yet, she realized now, it was only what Father would have expected, in honor of Daniel, war hero or not.

Many years had passed now since that morning when Liz dropped off her urine specimen at an unfamiliar gynecologist’s—unfamiliar because she had been so afraid that her own doctor would somehow know the truth.

So she had gone to a doctor’s office in Back Bay, down
one of the narrow cobblestone alleyways that had been restored but had not yet been discovered by anyone she knew or who would know her.

She was volunteering at the museum then, even though she’d just earned an associate’s degree in secretarial science—not exactly a teacher as Father had wanted, but acceptable enough. The fact was there was no need for the wife of Michael Barton, daughter of Will Adams, to have a real job. Later that day, she called the doctor’s office from a phone booth outside the museum. The nurse said, “Oh, Mrs. Smith”—Liz hadn’t given herself time to think of a more believable fake name—“I’m so happy to tell you that the test is positive. You are very much pregnant.”

On the way home that night, Liz sat like one of the mummies on display at the museum, as she tried to decide how she—
what
she—would tell Michael. He’d been in China all summer at an exchange program for young international attorneys; they’d made love before he left and three months later when he returned. But he’d been home a month now and she was two months pregnant, not four, and not one.

“You can’t tell anyone the truth,” BeBe said. “Especially Michael.”

Liz had telephoned her later that night, when Michael had gone off to a meeting at the state house. She had not had the courage to tell him at dinner, but she told BeBe, her trusted sister, her confidant. She also told BeBe that the baby was Josh’s.

Her sister had freaked. “I thought he went off to Israel. For chrissakes, Liz, I thought he was out of your life.”

Liz had cried. “He did. And he was. He joined the Israeli military. But that was after Daniel died, and then he came home again … and it’s been five years … and, oh, God, BeBe, what am I going to do? When I told him
I was married he just about died. He’s gone again. He went back to Israel. I’ll never see him again.”

“Which,” BeBe said, composing herself quickly, “will be just as well.” She then convinced Liz that it would be easier to pretend the baby came early rather than two months late. “Keep your weight down and no one will know. You’ve been married over a year, so no one will raise their eyebrows or count on their fingers. You can pull it off.”

Liz wondered how other girls made out when they didn’t have a big sister—the older, wiser sister always there to bail them out.

She pulled back the curtain now and watched the gray rain beat harder on the small-paned window, feeling that twenty-some-year-old kernel of guilt rise to the surface once again. She, indeed, had “pulled it off.” It had helped that Danny was born two weeks late—or two weeks early, depending on whether you knew the truth or knew the lie. And she had kept her weight down—Danny weighed only six pounds four ounces, so no one assumed he was anything but an eight-month baby. Thank God, she realized now, no one back then had known enough to ask details.

Except, of course, Father, who had taken one look at Danny and known. Or perhaps he’d always known.

For a moment, only a moment, Father and Liz were left alone in her hospital room. “We will leave things as they are, Lizzie,” he said. “No one will ever have to know.”