A Month at the Shore (5 page)

Laura had grown up to the sound of that buoy. She was able to picture the big red mark lifting and falling as it rolled on the ocean swell; it was part of the panoramic seascape that was visible from the hilltop nursery. When she was a teenager, it had seemed to he
r that the buoy's breath-over-a-
bottletop moan perfectly expressed how she felt about life in the village of Chepaquit.

Bleak.

It was impossible for Laura to call up wonderful childhood memories, as others did, of carefree days on the shore. There weren't any. The nursery was a full-time chore, day in and day out. There were always plants to water, seedlings to transplant, stock to move, orders to fill, plants to water and water and water.

Even in the dead of winter, even in the dog days of summer, the work was never done. Laura had no friends in school because she'd never had the time to participate in any activities. She and her brother and sister were always getting special dispensations, and the other kids naturally looked on them as the hardship case they were.

Of course, it hadn't helpe
d matters that their uncle Nor
bert had been sent to jail for killing his wife. Uncle? All she knew of him was that he was a man with a violent temper who'd strangled his wife one day after an argument over a burned supper: a dumb, stupid, overcooked roast. Even though the murder had happened before their time, they had all grown up with the horrible stigma. How could they not?
Shore
Gardens
had been co-owned by two Shore brothers, Oliver and Norbert.

Take away the murderer, and then there was one.

Take away Oliver, and now there was none.

The old generations had all passed on, leaving Laura, Snack, and Corinne to find their way as best they could.

Sitting at the window, looking out at gray nothing and shivering from the penetrating chill, Laura couldn't shake her sense of foreboding. Something about Chepaquit wasn't right. It was as though the village had been cast under an evil spell. People ran off, people died young, people were sent away.

In Laura's mind, the one chance to have the spell broken was lost when Sylvia left. Sylvia—bright, beautiful, independent Sylvia, who had breezed into town, made everyone love her, and then had breezed right out again, breaking Laura's heart. Until the day that Sylvia quit her job at the nursery, Laura had truly begun to have hope. She used to think,
If Sylvia likes Chepaquit, then so can I.

If Sylvia can impress people, then so can I.

If Sylvia can make work seem like fun, then so can I.

If Sylvia fears no one, then
... why should I?

It was the single, most exciting time of Laura's life, filled with potential. At last she'd had a role model to show her the possibilities.

But then one day Sylvia left as suddenly as she'd appeared, without a goodbye, without a word to Laura or to anyone else
... and the spell resumed. It truly was like a fairy tale. Life in the village became more oppressive than ever. The ones who stayed, died. First Laura's mother, and now her father. Neither had made it to sixty-five. Was that so much to expect?

I miss you, Mom,
came her sudden, fervent thought. She brushed away a sting of tears.
Today, right now, more than ever.

So, yes, Laura would grant Corinne her month. But Laura would not be able to lift the spell. Only Sylvia could do that. After the month, when they inevitably admitted to defeat, Corinne would have to sell the acreage—to Kendall Barclay and his crowd, in all likelihood—and Laura would whisk her sister off to wonderful
Portland
, with its impressive blend of high tech and high mountains.
Portland
, where the growing season lasted year round.
Portland
, where she and Corinne could grow old together instead of alone.

The wind eddied and lifted the buoy's moan closer to Laura's open window. It was a ghostly dirge, come again to haunt her:
No-o-oh,
it moaned, followed by mournful silence. Again:
No-o-oh,
and mournful silence. And again.

She was sorry, sorry, sorry to be back. They said you couldn't go home again—but that was such a lie.
  Sometimes you were forced.

She sighed and caught a whiff of cigarette: Snack must be awake too, in his room. She wondered what thoughts he was having that were powerful enough to keep him from sleep.

Laura had forgotten what "up with the chickens" really meant. Over the years she had evolved into a night person; five
a
.
m
. was nearer to her bedtime nowadays than it was to her breakfast.

She dressed quickly in the May morning chill and made her way to the kitchen, where the aroma of strong coffee—even of sizzling bacon—wasn't enough to convince her that life was worth living.

"Here's the number one reason why your plan is doomed, Rinnie: the hours," she mumbled as she filled a mug for herself.

Her appallingly cheerful sister laughed and said, "I know. They suck. But you'll fall back into it; it's like riding a bike." She eyed Laura's workclothes and said, "Is that what you're wearing? Skin-tight jeans and a white linen shirt?"

"They're all I have," Laura said, yawning. "When I packed my carry-on, I wasn't exactly planning to dig ditches."

"You look great, by the way," Corinne said, a little glumly. "I'd give anything to fit into those jeans. What are they, size eight?"

Laura laughed. "Get real. Size ten. A very generous ten."

"I keep forgetting what an hourglass figure you have," her sister said, sighing. "And you've lost weight besides?"

"Yeah. After Max dumped me, I—yeah. I lost some weight," Laura admitted. "That's when I bought these jeans—which was a total waste of money," she added wryly, "because as soon as I get done moping over Max, I plan to put those pounds right back on. And that's a promise."

Instantly Corinne was all sympathy. "Is it definitely over, then? There's
no
hope?" she asked as she laid out oversized plates for the oversized breakfast to come.

"Hope? How can there be hope?" Laura had wanted to get in and out of Chepaquit without going into details of the breakup, but now that she was committed to staying a month
...

Better to get it over with.

"The fact is, I told Max about Uncle Norbert."

"Oh, no. You didn't," Corinne groaned. "You didn't go into any details, did you?"

Laura shrugged. "Max asked how he got caught. I told him that after Uncle Norbert strangled Aunt Mary, he left her body in bed and went off on a camping trip, trying to make it look as if someone broke in and killed her—even though he and Aunt Mary lived in a mobile home a few feet from our house. Even though he hadn't said boo about any trip to Mom and Dad before he took off. Even though he was arrested still wearing the shirt missing the button that Aunt Mary pulled off in the struggle."

Snorting, she
added
, "I think it was all just a little too gothic for Max."

"But it happened before we were even born!"

"Did that ever matter to any of our classmates? No. They just assumed that we shared our uncle's gene for stupidity. Max did too, I guess."

"Oh, come on. You're a systems programmer. How can you be stupid? It's not even possible," Corinne said, bowled over by Laura's admission.

"Obviously I must have the gene," Laura said, suddenly bitter. "Otherwise, why would I have tried to be honest with Max before we got married? How stupid was
t
hat
?"

The irony of it was that she had become a systems programmer precisely to show the world how smart she could be, and that's how she had met Max.

And that's how she had ended up suffering new humiliation: because Max had told everyone on the project the whole lurid, stupid story of Uncle Norbert. Thank God it had happened near the end of a job that Laura was able to finish and leave. Thank God at least for that.

Corinne had that teary look in her eyes; she was a bottomless well of sympathy, overflowing at the least provocation.

Laura put her hands up, palms forward, in a gesture of rejection. "Nope. No tears. I'll get through it fine; I'm just about there, in fact," she said defiantly. "Max was a jerk. I'm lucky to be out of it."

"He
is
a jerk; you
are
lucky," Corinne agreed. "So! Where were we? Oh. Clothes. I'll lend you workclothes of mine to wear. We know
they
won't be tight," she said with a wry grin.

Corinne
Shore
was five feet ten and heavily built. Neither of the sisters had ever been exactly slim, but there was something super-solid about Corinne. On the nursery grounds, she carried her size with an easy grace suitable to hauling big root balls around. When she was in her natural element, her smile was quick, her carriage straight, and her stride, long and sure. She was Wonder Woman.

But once she left her four-acre world, her confidence collapsed. Her shoulders drooped, her head hung forward. She became overly intrigued by her shoes. Often she mumbled. And she was forever clearing her throat.

It had always been obvious to Laura that when her sister was out in public, she became ashamed of her size and tried her best to shrink in place. Her classmates had picked up on Corinne's hunched-over manner; they used to tease her mercilessly about it.

But right now Corinne was on her home turf, surrounded by people she loved and cooking a meal for them. She was beaming.

"I know I shouldn't be so happy just months after the
... the funeral," she confessed as she turned the bacon. "And a huge part of me isn't. It's just that—"

"It's all right, Rin," said Laura, stroking her sister's cheek as she passed. "We're all weird mixes of relief and sadness right now."

Only the proportions differed. Laura changed the subject. "Is our brother—ha-ha—up?"

Corinne rolled her blue eyes. "I knocked. Gently. I didn't want to make him grumpy his first day on the job."

"Oh, good. Then I'll be able to."

Still sipping her coffee, Laura ascended the stairs past the landing window, almost opaque now with dust and dirt, and treaded down a runner worn through in places to the floorboards. The condition of the house was utterly dismaying to her, although it had been going downhill for her whole life. Now that she thought about it, the house hadn't been painted her whole life.

The shabby interior had been cleaner when her mother was alive, of course; meek, submissive
Alice
had always carried all of her energy and dreams in a plastic bucket with a soapy sponge.

Laura wondered what had become of the money she used to send her mother for buying something nice for the house—a carpet, new drapes, a television set. Anything to make her life brighter, a little more cheerful. A little more bearable.

Sunk into the damn business, obviously.
A bottomless hole if ever there was one.

After her mother died, Laura continued to send money, but to Corinne—who undoubtedly handed it right over to their father, just as their mother had done. But
Oliver
Shore
had been gone for half a year, and there was nothing new in the house that Laura could see. Where had the money gone?

Into the bottomless hole, of course
.

She paused at the door of Snack's room, knocked robustly, and stepped inside. Her brother was sleeping on his stomach in a tangle of sheet, his tattooed arm dangling over the side of the single bed, his toes looped over the edge of the mattress.

She clutched his ankle and shook it, but not too hard. "Hey. Time to go to school."

He didn't answer. His breathing was deep, just shy of a snore. She shook a little harder. "Hey. Up."

Aft
er a pause, she heard a muffled
"Go to hell."

"You haven't noticed? We're already there." She waved her mug of coffee under his nose and said, "There's more where this came from."

"Go to hell."

She straightened up and regarded her brother, behaving so much like the baby of the family that he was. "Oh, for Pete's sake, Snack. One
month.
You've just finished doing more time than that!"

It was a sharp little poke, but Laura was determined that, co-owner or not, Snack was going to give the job his all.

He rolled sleepily onto his back. He opened one eye and regarded his sister.

"I did not steal the car. I took it for a ride. Haven't you ever wanted to take a Corvette for a ride?"

"Wouldn't it have been easier to walk into a showroom and
ask
?"

He gave her a wry look from under half-lowered lids. "Well, unlike you, big sister, I haven't acquired that aura of success that would make a salesman take me seriously."

"Good point," she said briskly, annoyed by that taunting gaze. "So I'll give you a couple of tips. A haircut would help. So would a shirt that actually had sleeves. Tank tops won't cut it in the real world." She regarded the skull and crossbones tattooed on his pale arm with obvious distaste.