Barefoot Girls (45 page)

Oh, God.

He swung his feet out from under the sheets and sat up. Maybe he’d…

There was a clattering sound from the other side of the door to the small bedroom. Pots and pans, someone in the kitchen. Was this her apartment? Had he gone home with her? He couldn’t remember. Nothing came, just that third shot of tequila in a row, the redhead’s raised eyebrows as she poured it, smiling at him wickedly. Then it was dark. And his head felt as if nails were being pounded through it.

“Oh, God,” he said in a low rough voice, and pushed his fingers through his hair, scraping at his scalp.

After the debacle with Hannah, the drive back to Manhattan had seemed endless. Glassy pain in his throat pulsed every time he swallowed and the bright sunny day mocked him. He’d returned the rental car, glad the clerk didn’t say anything about the early return; just took the keys and had him pay for the day. By the time he got back to his apartment, the threat of tears he had held back all the way home had departed, leaving a hollow ache in his chest.

For the first time he wished he hadn’t gained enough seniority to hold a line and was still flying on reserve. Then a call might’ve come, taken him away for a day or two: long busy days he could dive into and forget. Instead, he had the next three days off. Days that were supposed to be spent with Hannah, out on that island, making things right again. It had all seemed so simple when he’d been driving out there, cool ocean air whipping through the rental car’s windows. How wrong he’d been.

Knowing that sitting around at all would lead to thinking and thinking would lead to depression, he got busy. He cleaned the apartment, which was dirtier than he’d realized. Then he bought the bookshelf he’d been meaning to buy for the living room and assembled it. Then he’d cleaned out every closet and took bulging garbage bags filled with old clothes to Goodwill. He refreshed all the songs on his Ipod, organized his financial files, and finally got a safe deposit box for his important documents at a bank around the corner from his apartment. By last night, he’d run out of things to do, and found himself wandering his apartment, hoping to see something that would set him off on another project. That was when there was a knock on the door. He checked the peephole and then opened the door for Brian.

“Man, what is up?” Brian walked past him and into the apartment. “Damn, this place is clean. You can smell the bleach. What’ve you been doing?”

Daniel shrugged and shut the door. “Cleaning.”

“Seems like it. I’ve been trying to call you for the last few days. Thought you were flying, but then I saw you last night ahead of me, walking into the building. Tried to catch up but I missed you. Why haven’t you had your phone on? Avoiding the ball and chain?”

Daniel shrugged again. He didn’t want to tell Brian about Hannah. He’d jump all over it. “Ah, I don’t know. Has it been off?”

Brian turned around, smiled at him, and smacked him on the arm. “Look at you. You’re all wild-eyed. What you need is a drink, my man. Wine and women. Or whiskey. Whatever. Have you been to Magnolia yet? Models everywhere, I’m serious.”

Daniel smiled back. “Yeah? Let’s go.”

And for the first time since he met Hannah, he felt like his old self, the cruiser, the man on the move. Brian didn’t mention Hannah after that, and for the first time Daniel appreciated it, was glad. He wasn’t going to think about her tonight. She wasn’t wearing his ring, right? She was the one running away, shutting him out. What was he supposed to do? Curl up in a corner and die?

The city welcomed him back with open arms: every club was hopping and every woman was beautiful. Old friends came up to him and slapped him on the back, bought him drinks, told him hilarious and disgusting stories. The night flew. Then Dooley’s. And the redheaded bartender. What was her name?

There was a loud ding in what was presumably the kitchen. A low glug-glug-glug of a coffeemaker could be heard, too, the confirming smell of coffee wafting under the door to the bedroom. Daniel dressed quickly, preparing for his walk of shame, a dark dread settling in his chest. No matter how much fun last night had been, he really hadn’t wanted any more than a little flirtation, a few laughs. And now he’d screwed it all up, destroyed what remained of the two of them. You couldn’t un-break trust.

He opened the door slowly. The living room was similarly hyper-feminine, a fat purple couch stuffed with throw pillows dominated the narrow room, sheer flowered curtains covered the windows, and a large glass display case in the corner was cluttered with porcelain figurines of things like puppies in baskets and ducks wearing hats. Nothing like Hannah and her simple earthy taste.

“Uh, oh! Someone’s awake.”

He turned and saw the redhead, now dressed in pale blue sweatpants and a yellow hoodie with a pink flower on the chest, standing barefoot in the kitchen holding a mug in both hands. In daylight, without the benefit of flattering lighting and tequila-goggles, she looked different, pig-faced.

“Uh, hi,” he said, still unable to remember her name. This was horrible.

She smirked at him, looking him up and down. “Oh, stop. Don’t look so guilty. We didn’t do anything.”

“What?”

She shook her head, tilting it sideways and looking at him. “No, you have a big thing for someone named Hannah. Couldn’t stop talking about her. Hannah, Hannah, Hannah. Here I thought you were interested in me, flirting your head off, following me home.”

“We didn’t do anything?”

“Nope. We went right to the bedroom, but you just wanted to talk about that girl and some island. I went to the bathroom and when I came out, you were snoozin’. I figured I’d just leave you there and sleep on the pull-out.”

“But, uh. I was only wearing boxers when I woke up.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Well, I had nothing to do with that. You must have gotten undressed on your own. Though, I wish I’d stuck around to see the show.” She gave him the same flirty glace she always did, but it didn’t have the same effect anymore. Instead, it seemed like an act, Betty Boop and Mae West rolled up into one. Come up and see me sometime, boop-oop-a-doop.

The relief was enormous. He took a deep breath. A pain shot through his right eye, and he put his hand to his temple.

“Yeah? I thought the fourth shot was a bad idea.”

He laughed a little.

“Do you want some coffee?” She tilted her head at the coffeepot which had stopped dripping and gurgling.

The coffee smelled wonderful, but the heavily perfumed air of her apartment was oppressive. He spotted a huge bowl of potpourri sitting on the coffee table and wondered if that was where that cloying smell came from. “Thanks, but I better go.”

Her eyebrows dropped back down and her face became flat, walled-off. “Sure. Let me get the door.”

“Thanks again, sorry about last night.”

“Oh, no, don’t worry about it.  See ya,” she nodded at him with a tight-lipped smile and then shut the door behind him.

He ran down the stairs, not wanting to wait for the elevator, desperate for fresh air, and burst out onto the street. He stood in the light rain and took deep breaths of the cold moist air, trying to clear away the faux-rose smell that seemed to have lodged in his nostrils.

Then his phone rang in his jeans’ pocket. It wasn’t Hannah’s ring, it was his default ring again: a loud tweeting sound. He took it out and looked at it. The number was a local two-one-two area code. Some other horror from last night? Well, he had to face the music sometime.

“Hello?”

“Daniel?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Keeley Cohen. Hannah’s mom?”

“Oh, hi!”

Hannah’s mother?

“Listen, I hope you don’t have any plans today, but if you do, I really need you to cancel them. I need your help. It’s Hannah.”

“Hannah? Is she okay?” He was shocked at the fear that zipped through him. He still cared. Even now.

He stood in the misting rain and listened as Keeley explained, interrupting occasionally with a question, the hope he had presumed dead rising up again within him, its wings spreading.

Chapter 41

It was soup weather, inside and out, but all they had was tuna and some stale white bread. There wasn’t even any lettuce or celery in the fridge. Hannah stood with the pantry door open and scanned the shelves again and again, hoping to spot something she’d somehow missed.

The rain had dampened everyone’s spirits as it often did on the island, though the Barefooters were the least susceptible of all. Usually when it rained on Captain’s, the four women pulled out board games and playing cards and played with enthusiasm, injecting their own brand of fun by creating new and crazy rules for every game. Suddenly, Monopoly involved dares and poker bets included storytelling. Later in the day, cocktails would be mixed and the singing and dancing would begin.

Today, though, it was different. Perhaps it was the intensity of their conversation the night before. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that Aunt Amy had slept on the couch and Aunt Zo on the stiff narrow daybed in the sun room. Both were uncomfortable places to sleep, but they had all insisted on a “sleepover”, letting Hannah remain in the master bedroom with Aunt Pam taking Jacob’s bedroom.

The most likely culprit was the whispered argument between Aunt Amy and Aunt Zo that Hannah had overheard early this morning when she was halfway down the stairs en route to the bathroom, an argument that ended with the front door slamming. Hannah, paused on a step, could only make out a few of the words spoken, but her name and her mother’s were among them. “Time” also was mentioned by both of them. After the door slammed, Hannah snuck back up to her room and waited a while, legs crossed in discomfort from her full bladder, before venturing back downstairs to the bathroom.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she spotted Aunt Amy standing in the living room and looking out the window. So the slammed door had been Aunt Zo leaving, walking out into the rain. If Amy heard Hannah’s footsteps on the stairs, she didn’t acknowledge it, her gaze trained on the boardwalk. Later, after Hannah dressed and came back down for breakfast, she found Aunt Pam sitting in her robe at the kitchen table with her iPad, furiously typing with knitted brows. She looked up when Hannah entered.

“Hey, sweetie. Sorry, stupid things going on with work, as always. I can never leave without something blowing up. And I’ve got to get this press release out, too, but after that we’ll look at those albums. I made coffee, if you want some,” Aunt Pam said and tilted her head at the range where the old-fashioned stainless steel percolator was sitting. Hannah got a cup, savoring it more than usual as Pam was far better at making coffee than she was, and then sat down across from Pam and watched her godmother type and sigh. In the living room, she could hear Aunt Amy’s husky voice, her tone reasonable but firm, clearly talking on her cell to one of her sons.

Hannah hadn’t thought about it until now, the difficulty these women must have had extricating themselves from their busy lives to come to the island. They probably had to scramble. Aunt Pam had her busy PR business and her son, Jacob, who wasn’t old enough yet to be without supervision. Aunt Amy had three energetic young boys and a dog to care for and, Gus, Amy’s husband, was already overloaded running a general contracting business. Gus had to have been pulled in to this drama, too. And Aunt Zo – well, she was the only one who really could easily find time, and she had always gone out of her way for Hannah.

Yesterday, Hannah’s heart had finally felt light, but now it was heavy as ever. They had dropped everything to come out here and take care of Hannah, their worry obvious. They had come to tell her the truth about Keeley’s childhood, which had been horrible and sad, and in some ways, relieving. Her mother hadn’t left her alone all those times because she didn’t love Hannah. She left, maybe, because she didn’t know how to handle being a mother. If only she could talk to her mother, really talk. If only her mother would let her past that high bolted gate that guarded her heart.

The thing was, even after a wonderful day spent with her godmothers, even with Aunt Amy’s tale told, the problems – her defective relationship with her mother, the venomous novel that should never have been written, her broken engagement, her self-destructing life – were still all waiting for her this morning. All the sacrifices that her aunts had made, their efforts to cheer her and to inform her, didn’t change a thing. And the saddest part was that they thought it fixed everything, that all that was wrong was a misunderstanding between Keeley and Hannah, one that could be resolved by the telling of Keeley’s family’s tragic history.

Now Aunt Amy and Aunt Pam were sitting in the sun room, poring over their photo albums and reminiscing, forgetting their originally stated goal of helping Hannah see how well-loved she was. Well, Hannah didn’t need that, anyway. She knew she’d been loved, knew it now that it was too late, now that the poison had been unleashed. What she did need, though, was for Aunt Zo to come back. She had started to worry. Crazy Mrs. McGrath was out there somewhere, spewing her own poison. Hannah closed her eyes and said a prayer. Please, God, protect my Aunt Zo and bring her safely back soon. Please let her and Aunt Amy stop fighting. Please help me with-

There was a knock on the front door, shave-and-a-haircut. Hannah’s eyes flew open. Oh, no! Was it Mrs. McGrath? She had knocked, too, though shave-and-a-haircut seemed too jaunty and joking for that miserable woman. Hannah shut the pantry door and walked into the living room. Amy and Pam had gotten up and were looking out the window, smiling. They turned to her. “Someone’s got visitors,” Pam sang out.