Beach Plum Island (17 page)

Gigi called Ava to tell her all about the registry. “I can’t do it because I’m not eighteen, but you could,” she said.

There was such a long pause that Gigi thought for a minute her cell phone had died, or that she’d lost the connection. Then she heard a light tapping and Ava said, “I found the site. But I don’t know if this will work. I don’t really know anything except my mom’s name. I don’t even know the name of the hospital or the month and year he was born.” She sounded tired.

“Well, put in your best guesses,” Gigi said. “And maybe there’s somebody else who can help us, right? Dad’s parents are dead, but he must have cousins who are still alive or something.”

“Maybe,” Ava said, but she sounded doubtful. “I’ll think about that.”

After they hung up, Gigi wrapped her arms around her body, feeling jumpy and claustrophobic. Even if Ava put in her information tonight, they wouldn’t know anything right away. The Web site said it could take ten days. They probably got lots of registrations, an organization as big as that.

And Peter, if he was blind and disabled, might not even know how to use a computer. If so, he couldn’t possibly know what Gigi had managed to discover in just a few seconds on her iPad: there are ways to find your family even if they’ve given you away.

Which led her to other, more serious questions: What if Peter didn’t
want
to find them? What if he was already dead? Or so disabled, he was one of those people you saw sometimes in wheelchairs, being fed from a tube?

Gigi didn’t want to consider these questions. She flopped down on the bed and put her iPod headphones on to learn “Stairway to Heaven.”

She had been singing with her eyes closed, and the music was so loud that Gigi almost screamed when she felt something shaking her arm. Her eyes flew open.

It was her mother, who almost never came into her bedroom. Mom was sitting on the edge of the bed and touching her arm, mouthing words Gigi couldn’t hear over the music.

For the second it took her to pull out her earbuds, Gigi registered this fact: Mom looked good. She had washed and brushed her hair and she was wearing her favorite rose-colored sleeveless blouse, the one that set off her gray eyes and made her cheeks look pink. She smiled down at Gigi.

“What?” Gigi said, once she’d silenced the music.

“You sound good.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Gigi scrambled to a sitting position. “Why are you here?”

Hurt shadowed her mother’s eyes, but she quickly smiled again. “I wanted to ask if you’d go riding with me.”

“When? Right now?” Gigi glanced out the window. With the hours she’d put in on the computer, she would have guessed it would be dark already. But the sun was still blazing, trapped in the branches outside her window.

“Won’t it be too hot in the ring?” she asked, not daring to add,
Are you friggin’ insane? I’m not going back to the barn to train for Nationals. Ever.

“I thought we could go trail riding. Just you and me. I’m sure Bantam and Dolly miss us. We haven’t been to the stable in weeks.”

Gigi stared at her in disbelief. When had her mother ever wanted to ride in the woods? Mom was all about drills, taking jumps, or doing dressage for hours at a time. Perfection, not fun.

“I don’t know,” Gigi hedged, searching for an excuse. “I still think it might be too hot.”

“We could go to Bradley Palmer State Park, maybe swim in the river.”

That was tempting. Gigi did miss Bantam, the black Morgan she’d shared with Dad since she turned thirteen. And she hadn’t been to the river since she’d gone with Dad last year. She had a sudden, blindingly painful memory of Dad on the rope swing, yodeling as he swung out over the lazy green water.

“I can’t go back there,” she said, closing her eyes.

There was a small silence; then Gigi felt her mother’s hand on hers. “I know you and your dad loved going to the river together. I don’t know if I can take being there without him, either. But I think we should try. Dad would want us to.”

Gigi opened her eyes and saw that her mother’s cheeks were splotchy and red now, her gray eyes damp. “I don’t know, Mom,” she whispered. “I don’t even know if I can ride again.”

“You won’t know until you try. It’s hot. The horses would love the river. Let’s just go together and get it over with, and we can always turn around if it’s too awful.”

She couldn’t disappoint her mother, not when for once Mom was the one trying to be brave. Gigi nodded. “Give me a minute to change. I’ll be right down.”

The barn was empty, thank God. There was no riding camp on Sunday and most people were probably at their summerhouses for the weekend. They tacked up the horses and set off at a lazy trot. They talked a little, Mom mostly asking questions about Gigi’s pottery and the band, their dialogue interspersed with an occasional horse snort.

Finally, Mom asked where Gigi had been all day yesterday, and Gigi had to tell her. She couldn’t lie; if she did, Mom might question Ava, and Gigi didn’t want Ava to get into trouble.

Mom listened quietly until Gigi got to the part about Finley not knowing what happened to Peter, and how Gigi had been trying to help Ava on the computer. Then Mom said, “This sounds like it’s pretty important to you. Why?”

Gigi was in the lead on the trail; she swiveled in the saddle to look at her mother. Mom’s head was bowed, the brim of her black velvet riding helmet shielding her expression. “Because if Peter’s alive, I need to tell him what Dad said. I promised I would. Plus, Peter’s a part of Dad, isn’t he?”

Her mom raised her head a little and smiled. “Yes, he is,” she agreed. “I think it’s good you’re looking for him. Your dad would be pleased.”

It was like a blessing, Gigi realized, to have her mother know what she was doing and approve of it. She felt some of the tension ease from her shoulders.

They had worn about a gallon of bug spray, but an occasional mosquito still whined around Gigi’s ears. Still, she’d forgotten how liberating it was to feel the power of a horse beneath you as you set off into a forest, away from cars and houses and everything else that made you so pathetically human. Here, deep in the woods, Gigi felt like she was part of the horse, bigger and better than her own small self. Her back relaxed and she let Bantam have his head, breaking into an easy canter ahead of her mother.

The river was surprisingly deserted for a summer Sunday. There were just a few kids on the rope swing, and a couple of families that had come by canoe from a place that rented them upriver. Gigi could still see her dad here, grinning like a monkey on that swing—a huge soft-bellied gorilla of a guy—but now the memory made her smile instead of cry. He had loved this place and taught her to love it, too. He would want her to be here.

To her surprise, her mother stripped off her jodhpurs and boots, revealing a blue tankini, and took her place in the line of kids. Mom looked very serious, unlike the laughing, whooping teenagers, and suddenly Gigi couldn’t stand seeing her standing there alone, trying to be brave about the swing. She knew her mother had never been on the swing. Dad had tried to get her on it, but she was afraid of heights.

Gigi hadn’t worn a suit, but she had on black underwear; she stripped off her jeans and boots and stood behind her mother in her underwear and T-shirt without saying a word.

When it was Mom’s turn, she swung off the platform and over the river with a startled look, as if she hadn’t really expected the rope to hold her. She forgot to let go until Gigi shouted, “Jump, Mom! Jump!”

She did, with a whoop of laughter. Gigi started laughing, too, and took her own turn off the rope, making the kind of cannonball her dad loved, splashing everyone around her.

She came up out of the water and saw Mom treading water next to her, pale hair plastered to her head, her gray eyes smiling as she blew a stream of water between her teeth, hitting Gigi square on the forehead.

•   •   •

Mark was supposed to bring the boys back after dinner, but instead they were home by four o’clock. Mark looked sheepish; he didn’t come in like he usually did, but hugged the boys in the doorway and then hovered on the step. Ava could see Sasha sitting in Mark’s car, talking on her phone. Sasha waved but didn’t get out.

“Everything okay?” she asked. Ava felt slightly responsible for whatever happened between Sasha and Mark. Sasha had been on Ava’s tennis team two years ago, and Ava was the one who’d told Mark to call her after first discussing him with Sasha.

Sasha was divorced, a lawyer with a grown daughter and a nice house in West Newbury, an energetic brunette whose blistering tennis serve put opponents in their place. She was pretty in a no-nonsense way and extremely practical. Mark tended to be disorganized and forgetful. It seemed like the perfect fit.

“Oh, yeah,” Mark said. “We spent the weekend at Sasha’s house on the Cape. I’m just not sure it was much fun for the boys. You know. A little too much white carpet and table manners, that sort of thing.”

Ava laughed. “Did they take their shoes off and use their napkins, I hope?”

“Sure. But their socks weren’t much better than their shoes. And I don’t think Sasha’s had a lot of experience with boys. Anyway, I hope you don’t mind me bringing them back early.” Mark gave another anxious glance over his shoulder. “I thought I might take her to dinner.”

And to bed, probably, Ava thought, because Sasha wouldn’t have wanted to do anything with the boys in the house. She waved him off. “Have fun,” she said. “Tell her I said hi.”

She closed the door and went to see the boys, who had immediately retreated into their iPods and computers. “Everything okay this weekend?” she asked Sam.

He nodded. “Big glassy house. Good food. She’s nice enough, I guess.”

“Good. Need anything else to eat?”

Sam shook his head, his eyes on the computer screen, scrolling through Facebook. “Nope. I’m set.”

Evan was similarly closemouthed and uninterested in food. All he said was “Sasha’s fine. She asks so many questions my ears started bleeding, though.”

Ava smothered a laugh and closed the door. She’d forgotten that about Sasha. Lawyers loved to ask questions.

Now that the boys were home but nobody seemed to want dinner, Ava was, at loose ends. She wandered out to the patio, into her studio, and back into the living room, wondering what to do with herself. So odd, this period in her life when the boys needed her to be around, but didn’t really want her to do anything beyond filling the fridge and driving them places. It left her feeling nostalgic for the days when they were babies and she was a part of their lives nearly every minute they were awake.

She supposed it was a universal truth that mothers, after tearing out their hair and tacking their raw beating hearts to the outsides of their clothing for anyone to see, were given no warning that some-day their baby-holding days would be over. When that day came, there was no clanging bell or siren, no banner flown across the sky to pinpoint that single precious moment when you rocked your child for the last time.

Ava reminded herself that she was lucky to have such good relationships with her teenagers and that she was happy for Mark, glad he’d found a woman whose company he enjoyed. Still, she felt a familiar stab of regret. Did she try hard enough? Could they have worked things out, if she’d only hung in there?

She should have seen the affair coming. They were living amicable but parallel lives. She cared for the kids during the day and took classes at night to earn her teaching certificate. She did pottery on the weekends. Mark was working long hours at his engineering firm in Andover and occasionally traveled overnight for work.

The years went by. Then, one night, Sam had been seized with a sudden pain, a stitch in his side that rapidly became so acute that he was doubled over and feverish, howling. He wasn’t quite ten years old. Mark was on a business trip; Ava called the ambulance and then dialed Mark’s cell. He didn’t pick up.

The ambulance came and she followed it in the car with Evan, not wanting to leave him alone in the house. At the hospital, the doctors operated for a burst appendix. Mark still hadn’t called her back. In desperation, she’d phoned Padma, his secretary, whose cell number she had because Padma occasionally house-sat for them when they went to visit Mark’s mother in Florida. She thought Padma might know what hotel she could call to reach Mark.

Padma, distraught by the news, had handed her cell phone to Mark. It was two o’clock in the morning and Mark’s voice was blurry with sleep.

Ava hated remembering that night for all sorts of reasons, not least the fact that Padma had arrived with Mark at the hospital with an overcoat tossed over her pretty pink nightgown, her feet in white slippers, her hair a sleek dark curtain. She was young and beautiful. Ava was tired and frightened and betrayed.

She was also—though she had never admitted this to anyone—relieved. She had married Mark because he was sweet and good to her, the sort of courtly high school boyfriend who bought the right wrist corsage for the prom, helped her study for chemistry tests, and never lost his temper, even the time she rear-ended someone while driving his new Mustang. It was the opposite of the fractious relationship her own parents had, and Ava had taken that as a sign of true love.

They married right after freshman year of college, when Ava was only nineteen, not because she felt she couldn’t live without Mark, but because she couldn’t face ever living at home again. Mark was her escape. Her savior. She would always be grateful to him for that.

Then, when Sam and Evan were born, her passion for motherhood far outweighed any emotional or physical bond she’d ever felt with Mark. They had what Ava privately thought of as “good sport” sex around the edges of their busy domestic life; she sometimes counted the minutes and did whatever it took to satisfy her husband so she could get back to her book or go to sleep.

She had told herself she was content back then, excited by motherhood and by her new teaching career. Marriage wasn’t supposed to be a lifelong honeymoon; she was determined to find solace in new interests rather than despair in the lack of emotional connection she felt with her husband. Mark was a good man and she never wanted to hurt him.