Beach Roses Read online

  Lowering her aching, tired, hairless head, Hannah let her teardrops fall onto the page.

  If reconciliation had a face, it would have been Greg’s; if it had a place, it would have been Sedona. They spent hours and days forgiving one another: Faye forgiving Greg, Greg forgiving Faye, Joe forgiving Faye, Faye forgiving … yes, Faye forgiving Joe. They spoke about Dana in good, happy ways.

  How she loved sailing, Faye exclaimed, before she even learned to swim.

  And looking for wampum, Joe added.

  Claire still wears the ring Dana made for her.

  But what about the skunks! Greg said with a laugh. Man, she loved to tease them. Remember when one sprayed the side of the house?

  That was Dana’s fault?

  We thought it was you!

  Joe had already told Greg about her first bout with breast cancer. She did not tell either one of them about the second.

  In the mornings they took leisurely walks; in the afternoons Faye napped at Greg’s, while Joe went to his own house to do the same; in the evenings she and Joe went to Crawdaddies, where Greg and his staff treated them to delectable offerings each night.

  Cajun Rattlesnake? Why not? Faye responded with unbridled gusto. She wondered how it happened that inner peace opened all possibilities, and that loving life made no task seem like a risk and no burden too heavy to fear.

  For the first time in a long time, Faye wanted to live.

  On the morning of the sixth day, reality returned.

  She decided to check her messages: maybe Claire had returned from her most recent jaunt; maybe the fact that Faye had found Greg would give her and her sister a new starting point, too.

  Four messages awaited, but not one from Claire.

  Faye? Hi. It’s R.J. Browne. I wondered if you wanted to join my friend and me for dinner. We’re at Mayfield House until Wednesday. Give me a call.

  Beep. She frowned a tiny bit, pleased that she’d not been there. A dinner date with R.J. and his ladyfriend would not be very cheerful.

  Hi, Faye, this is Katie. I guess I’m okay and so is the baby, but I’m in the hospital. Doc says I have to stay in bed for the rest of my pregnancy. How the heck will I do that? Anyway, if you’re around, I’d love to see you. I’m so bored! Bye.

  Beep. Katie. What had happened? Was she truly okay? Katie seemed so positive, so spirited, so like Dana had been. Did Joleen have any idea how lucky she was?

  This is Rita Rollins from the group. Pause. I wanted you to know that we’re meeting at Joleen’s tonight instead of at the hospital.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Faye, it’s Hannah.

  The voice was so strained that it was hard to believe it belonged to the kindly woman.

  I don’t know what to do, Faye. My Riley has run away. A long pause was followed by several sniffles. Oh, God, I don’t even know why I’m calling you. I know you lost your child … oh, never mind. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I’ll be fine, I’m sure.

  Despite the desert sun that drenched the wall of glass in Greg’s living room, Faye felt a chill rise from her toes.

  Hannah’s daughter had run away? But she was just a child …

  “Mom?” The question came so suddenly it shook her from her thoughts. It had been so many years since anyone had called her Mom.

  “Dad’s not going to join us this morning for our walk.”

  With a smile, Faye shrugged. “That’s okay, honey. I’m sure you’ll protect me from snakes and coyotes.” But instead of heading for the door, Greg sat on the overstuffed chair beside her.

  “Mom, do you know about Grace?”

  Faye frowned. “Grace? No, I don’t know anyone named Grace.” Grace? But Greg was gay. Had that somehow changed?

  Greg turned his gaze toward the red-rock canyon. “She’s a local artist here in Sedona. Silver jewelry; it’s really very pretty.”

  He was trying to say something; what on earth was it?

  “Greg?” she asked, because Greg, the little boy, had sometimes needed to be prodded.

  He sighed. “Dad’s known her about a year or so,” he said and that was all, but that was all that was needed.

  Oh. It wasn’t about Greg. It was about Dad.

  Faye waited for the flutter of hurt that would start in her stomach and move up to her throat, the way that it had when she’d been confronted with the facts of Joe’s other women. This time, however, the flutter didn’t come. “Your father’s a free man,” she said, “there’s no need to apologize for him.”

  “He never thought you’d come back to him.”

  Faye took his hand, her son’s long, smooth hand. And her life and its purpose became crystal clear. “I didn’t ‘come back to him,’ Greg. I came to find you. I didn’t even know your father was here. In fact, if I had known, I might have chosen not to come.”

  Greg lifted his blue eyes—Claire’s eyes—up to her. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes,” she said. “These past days have been wonderful for the three of us to be together, but I never had any intention of anything more between your father and me.”

  “Lots of times he’s a jerk,” Greg announced, and Faye let out a laugh.

  “Don’t say that about your father!”

  Greg smiled and shrugged. “Well, he means well. Most of the time. He had a hard time at first, about Mike and me.” His words trailed off.

  “I’ve known since you were very young,” Faye said. “I know that you are gay.”

  At first he didn’t say anything, then he asked, “And that’s okay with you?”

  She patted his hand. “You are my son. I only want you to be happy. You seem happy with Mike.”

  He smiled. He took her hand in both of his.

  “I have a question,” she asked abruptly. “Do you think you could stand it if I was around more often?” She had not, until this moment, known what she would do. And all she knew now was that she wanted—no, needed—to spend her time, whatever was left, near her son.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, maybe it’s time I turned the business over to Gwen. Maybe it’s time to sell the Vineyard house. You’re settled here; only bad memories remain back there for you.”

  Greg didn’t respond.

  “It’s okay, honey,” she said. “I understand, truly I do. Besides, I’m sure it would be healthier away from that mildewy old island.”

  She thought that he might laugh, but he did not. Instead, he ran his hands through his thick hair. His blue eyes shimmered. “For years my therapist tried to get me to go back. More than once I almost did. But in the end I was too scared.” His voice was poised on the edge of quavering. “Mom, let me go back with you. Let me go back with you and, if you still want, I’ll help you sell the house.”

  “Oh, honey,” she said, “but the restaurant …”

  “I have assistants. And Dad can supervise. Just for a few weeks, Mom. Please?”

  “What about Mike?”

  Greg smiled. “We’ve been together for years now. We know the importance of sometimes being apart.”

  Faye put her thin arms around her son, and drew him close to her. Then she said yes, he could come home if he wanted; he could help her sell the house.

  There would be time later to tell him the rest.

  When Rita arrived back at the hospital, Katie was sitting on the side of the bed, swinging her feet as if she were ten. The act made Rita think about Mindy, and how youth might be stolen but the spirit could still thrive.

  “Remember, straight to bed,” Doc warned Katie as his last instructions, “and ice under that arm.”

  That’s when Rita noticed the padding wrapped under Katie’s right arm. Katie shrugged it off. “Lymph node biopsy,” she explained. “Doc’s making sure I get my money’s worth.”

  Rita glanced at Doc. “Just a precaution,” he said, and helped Katie into the wheelchair. “Results in three days.”

  “Precaution,” Katie said. “I’m so sick of that word. I’m s
urprised Doc didn’t expect me to leave on a gurney, just as a precaution.”

  Rita laughed and Doc shook his head and Katie adjusted her sunglasses and sun hat that Joleen had left, and then Rita and Katie set off down the corridor to “Freedom!” Katie cried.

  They went out through the Emergency Room because it was closest to the car. As Rita steered the wheelchair through the double doors, a flash of light nearly blinded her. The sun? Another flash. A glint off the windshields of cars in the lot?

  “Go away!” Katie screeched.

  Rita threw up her hands.

  “Rita!” Katie screamed. “Get me out of here!”

  Another flash. It wasn’t the sun. It was the flash from a camera. In the middle of the day.

  Rita whirled the wheelchair around and shoved it inside the door. She pushed Katie into the triage room, then took off on her well-sneakered feet, bolting back through the door, out into the daylight, charging after the asshole who had dared to take pictures of Katie in a moment not meant for the world.

  Pumping her arms and kicking up her legs, Rita saw that her prey was a man in jeans, a gray T-shirt, and a navy-blue baseball cap, which described about two-thirds of the men on the Vineyard at any given time.

  “Goddamnit! Get back here, you slimy son of a bitch!” Rita shouted as she crossed the lot, her sneakers barely touching asphalt, her pulse thumping, her mind thanking God that she no longer wore stilettos, had not worn stilettos since she’d become pregnant with the twins.

  “You son of a bitch!” She kept screaming, chasing the figure that still carried the camera and was now racing across the street toward the water where a rental Jeep waited. He leapt inside the Jeep, then turned over the ignition just as Rita reached him, banged on the back door, and shouted “You son of a bitch!” one more time, before the Jeep roared away.

  Sand and gravel spit at her from under the wheels, and Rita was left standing there with only the baseball cap that had flown from the man’s head and was now upside down on the ground.

  Rita put her hands on her hips and bent forward, panting, trying to catch her breath, wishing she’d been faster, or at least that she’d been smart enough to look at the goddamn license plate.

  But she wasn’t faster and she wasn’t smarter, so all Rita had was a great sense of failure and two huge questions:

  Who the hell had told the press Katie was in the hospital, hiding out on the Vineyard?

  And how soon would it be before the whole world found out?

  Rita picked up the dusty baseball cap. It had a Yankees logo on the front, which ruled out most every man from there to Boston and back.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Mindy sat at her desk, her social studies book opened in front of her, her headphones stuck on her ears, her hands and feet tap-tapping, her head nodding to a silent beat.

  Rita watched from the doorway. She knew there were a million other ways the paparazzi could have found out. Well, not a million, maybe, but surely from the mailman or from a nurse or from someone at the A & P. There were a million other ways, but something gnawing at Rita’s gut told her Mindy was involved. And whether Rita liked it or not, her gut was a trustworthy source.

  “I don’t care who told them,” Katie had said once she was settled in the daybed in Joleen’s sunroom. The bed was plump with watercolored pillows and made with crisp, white sheets. Perhaps Joleen was a fine mother, after all.

  Rita hadn’t said, “Well I care,” because she didn’t want to admit that, compared to Brady, she was a lousy bodyguard. Nor did she want to say she suspected her own daughter—well, not really her daughter, but close enough—might be behind what had happened. As Rita stepped into the girl’s bedroom now, she felt as if she’d run the Chilmark Road Race and, despite hard work and effort, she had finished dead last.

  “Mindy,” Rita said, as she plucked off the headphones.

  Mindy jerked at the surprise interruption. “I’m studying,” she said. “I have a test tomorrow.”

  “We have to talk,” Rita said. She sat on the edge of the small bed facing the desk. “Did you tell anyone Katie is on the island?” Straight to the point was the best way for an honest reaction, to see whether eyes flicked guiltily from one side to the other, or whether the body shifted and twisted while struggling to regain some comfort.

  If Mindy just sat there, she’d no doubt be innocent. But the girl flicked her eyes, then twisted on her chair, and Rita felt her heart sink to her no-longer-manicured toes.

  “I didn’t tell anyone,” Mindy said defensively. “I promised you I wouldn’t, and I didn’t.”

  Rita was reminded of her teenage days of keeping things from Hazel, of not revealing what she had said or done with whom or when. “Did someone ask?” Rita asked, because “I didn’t tell” didn’t mean someone hadn’t asked. Semantics were what counted when one was being evasive.

  Mindy turned her head back to her book. Rita’s gut gnawed once again. She took a long breath.

  “Honey,” she said, “please. Just tell me what happened. Katie needs our help.”

  A quick flash from Mindy’s eyes landed on Rita. “I told him to leave, Rita. I didn’t tell him anything, I promise.”

  Rita’s heart tightened. “Who, honey?”

  With small shoulders that rose, then fell, then rose again, Mindy replied, “Some man. I don’t know who he was.”

  Rita supposed it was the man she’d chased. “Where was he? When?”

  The shoulders arched again. “The other day. He was standing where the school bus lets me off. He said he saw you with Katie on the ferry, and someone on the dock told him who you were. He said he’d give me tickets to the Central Park concert if I told him some stuff. Like where Katie was, what she was doing, stuff like that.” She closed her eyes. “Even if you can’t get us tickets, Rita, I figured it wouldn’t have been worth it to tell him because I’d never get to go because you would have killed me.”

  How could Rita help but smile? Then she said, “What did he look like?”

  “He was an old guy.”

  Old? Well, to Mindy that could mean anyone over thirty. Or twenty-one.

  “He had on a blue jacket. And a Yankees hat.”

  The Yankees cap. Yes, it was him. “Shit,” Rita said, because she couldn’t help herself. “What else?”

  Mindy’s eyes grew wide. “Nothing. I told him to get out of my way or I’d whack him with my backpack and scream for the police. He got in his Jeep and drove away.”

  Rita laughed and rubbed the child’s back. “You did good, honey. Thanks.” She was glad Mindy hadn’t told the man anything, but she wished there was a way to track him down and help Katie find out what she could expect.

  Hannah didn’t look well when Rita picked her up. Her skin had that dull pallor once again, and her eyes had lost their color, too, maybe from the chemo, maybe from the fact that her daughter had disappeared. Rita said a quick prayer that Mindy would not do something so terrifying once she turned fourteen.

  “Any word?” Rita asked as they drove toward Joleen’s.

  Hannah shook her head, and her silence said it all.

  • • •

  The group had been reduced from four to three: one confined to bed; one deeply depressed; the other continuing to fumble as if she knew what she was doing. Rita hoped their benefactor wasn’t a fly on Joleen’s cottage wall.

  As Rita had expected, Faye didn’t show up.

  “I’m sure she was tired of my whining,” Katie said, adjusting the bag of frozen peas tucked under her arm. It was a crude ice pack that Doc and many of his patients swore was more comfortable than the new fandangled stuff and worked nearly as well.

  “No,” Hannah piped in. “I’m sure Faye didn’t want to hang out with someone whose mother committed murder. It wouldn’t be exactly ‘proper’ up in Boston. Not exactly great publicity for her business.”

  Rita supposed she should tell them about her and Joe. Then they’d know Faye’s departure had not been their fault, and i
t would explain the inevitable demise of Doc’s dreams for the center.

  From her bag, Rita unpacked a stack of fabric squares, ingredients for another project she’d read about: small, pretty pillows to make and then donate to women having breast surgery. The pamphlet said the pillows helped cushion physical pain that followed some procedures. Rita wondered if someone could make a cushion to buffer the discomfort of simply being a jerk. It would be a product she should be first in line to get.

  She set the fabric squares on Joleen’s table and tried to choose the words to tell the others about Joe and Faye and her. Then she realized Katie was chattering to Hannah about what had happened at the hospital with the lunatic and the camera. Rita’s confession now, thank God, could wait.

  “So I expect my face and pregnant belly will be plastered any day now across newsstands from here to L.A. and back.”

  Rita removed two packs of foam pieces from her bag. Should she mention the man who’d approached Mindy? What good would it do anyone if she dragged the poor kid into it? And why was Rita suddenly at such a loss to know what to do or say?

  “Well,” Hannah replied flatly, “maybe it won’t happen. No sense dwelling on the negative until you know for sure.”

  Rita knew when a woman was doing her damndest to stay upbeat while everything around her had turned to shit. With or without her daughter, in a short time, Hannah would face the mastectomy; with or without a boyfriend or a father or the peak of a career, Katie had the worry of the baby and then radiation.

  Compared to them, Rita’s life was a piece of freaking, pink-frosting cake with or without her not-so-nice behavior in her not-so-distant past. She plunked down at the table. Maybe it wasn’t a good night to begin a new project. She felt disjointed, out of touch. Muddled, Hazel would explain. Detached, her friend Jill would say.

  “While I was in the hospital,” Katie continued, “I decided that no matter what, I won’t do Central Park.”

  Rita took a hefty bite from one of Mindy’s carrot cupcakes and decided not to get involved. Was muddled detachment suitable grounds for Doc to fire her?

  Hannah passed up a cupcake and drank her tea instead. “If you change your mind, it might be too late.”