Cottage by the Sea (45 page)

   "For God's sake, Blythe!" Ellie lashed back, a petulant glare kindling in her brown eyes. "Dad gave you the best piece of land—not to mention that you ended up with a couple of million bucks out of the divorce! Don't you think you're being a little greedy?"

   
Greedy?

   Blythe's last vestige of good manners and civility—the remaining thread of emotional restraint that she had been clinging to for dear life—suddenly snapped. She gazed at her younger sister through a haze of white-hot fury and worried that her blood pressure had zoomed into the stratosphere in the length of time it took Ellie to utter those two syllables.

   "Greedy?" Blythe echoed, feeling her temples begin to throb. "Believe me, Mrs. Stowe, I earned every damned cent of that divorce settlement, you little c—"

   Blythe was barely able to stop herself from uttering the most insulting epithet against women in the English language—a vulgarity that, under normal circumstances, she truly abhorred.

   "That's not what all your friends in California are saying behind your back." Ellie smiled malevolently. "That you got one sweet deal out of your divorce!"

   Blythe stared at her sister for a long moment and then began to speak in a tone of voice she hardly recognized.

   "You've been a whining, covetous pain in the ass your entire goddamned life," she said as a rush of blood stained her cheeks. She narrowed the distance between Ellie and herself, her fists clenched at her sides. "And despite everything that your family tried to do to help you, the older you got, the more
lethal
you became." Ellie glanced uneasily around the cottage and took a step toward the front door. Blythe began to wonder vacantly if she would, in the end, be able to refrain from scratching Ellie's eyes out. "All you ever wanted was to try to steal my life! You didn't give a flying fig that Chris was
my
lover…
my
husband…
my partner in a company we'd buil
t together. Well, now you're married to him, and I'm here to tell you that no matter how devious and manipulative you may be, you will
never get what you want from Christophe
r Stowe! You're too much alike! And furthermore—you disgusting little sneak—I hope he makes you as miserable as he did me!" Blythe shouted, having finally lost all semblance of emotional control. "Get out of here right now! Get
out
!"

   During the balance of Blythe's tirade Ellie had remained rooted to the flagstone floor. Now she inhaled deeply, as if she were about to dive into deep water.

   
"You're
the one who's terminally jealous!" Ellie yelled at the top of her lungs. "And it's not just about Chris preferring me over you!" The manic gleam in Ellie's eye bore witness to her delight at having successfully provoked her eventempered older sister into such a state of fury. "You're green with envy about the baby, aren't you?" she taunted, nodding toward her daughter who awoke with a start. The child's startled eyes grew wider and her brow began to furrow with distress. "And I'll just bet now you wish you hadn't always been such a Goody Two Shoes, and had chucked out the ol' diaphragm when you had the chance!"

   "Ellie, I'm warning you…" Blythe began, lowering her voice as the baby started to cry. She was grateful they weren't standing near the cliff outside her front door, for she knew that she was fully capable of shoving her sister over the steep precipice. "I'll give you exactly ten seconds to get the hell out of here!
Now
!"

   In response to this latest heated exchange, little Janet commenced a series of shrill wails. Galvanized by this convenient excuse to beat a hasty retreat, Ellie glared accusingly at Blythe, turned on her heel, and grabbed for the door latch.

   "If you don't sign over that forest property right now, you'll really regret it!" she threatened over her shoulder.

   "And why would I do that?" Blythe replied between gritted teeth.

   Ellie froze where she was, poised at the door, her hand still on the latch.

   Blythe's fists remained so tightly clenched by her sides that her knuckles ached. Fortunately some small shred of good sense prevented her from indulging in a burning desire to sock her sister between the shoulder blades. To her sister's back she said, "I'm sure Chris and I will have a chance to thoroughly discuss all the outstanding matters between us when he takes me to dinner tomorrow night—just the two of us."

   "Well, then, I hope he tells you what he
really
thinks of you!" Ellie screeched, whirling to face her older sister once more. Meanwhile Blythe clamped her jaws shut and returned her sister's glare as the baby's cries raised the decibel level to an excruciating pitch. "I hope he tells you what he's often admitted to me," Ellie continued, measuring her words in nasty little parcels, "that the last thing Chris ever wanted was to have a kid by
you."

   After several seconds, during which the infant's wails bounced painfully off the cottage's stone walls, Ellie shifted the infant seat to one hip and fumbled to lift the iron latch on the heavy oak door. Finally it swung open on its metal hinges. Then, clutching the plastic infant seat to her breast, the younger woman charged past the threshold and stalked along the path that led across the field.

   For a few moments Blythe gazed numbly at the retreating back of her sole surviving sibling. Janet's cries grew fainter and fainter. Blythe then closed the door. She waited for the purr of the Rolls-Royce starting up and wondered how things could get any worse.

After ten minutes of wandering aimlessly around the cottage and mulling over each nuance of the disastrous confrontation with her sister, Blythe determined that the only remedy to calm her unsettled state was to embark on a challenging walk before the sun set on the south coastal path that skirted Hemmick Cove. By the time she had made her way up the steep incline to Long Rock, she was out of breath.

   The rain had lessened to a fine, blowing mist. Gell Point marked the midway spot on the four-hundred-foot assault up to The Dodman, as the locals called it. Blythe paused to rest and take in the awe-inspiring view of a landscape that jutted for miles of rocky coastline stretching in both directions. The surf crashing below sent out "mare's tails" blowing off the waves. The Cornish swore such plumes of white sea spray predicted a gale in the offing. She wondered if perhaps she should turn back when she reached the deserted stone watch house, an octagonal hut that served in the late eighteenth century as one of a chain of Admiralty signal stations.

   However, she couldn't face returning to the confines of the cottage where she had finally come face to face with the primal force of her sister's envy—and her own pent-up rage.

   Instead Blythe set her sights on Dodman Point and kept walking. The demanding hike gave her time to consider the only reasonable explanation for Eleanor Barton's wanton betrayal and utter lack of remorse.

   Resentment, obviously. Jealousy, obviously. The loss of a mother at such a tender age? Unresolved guilt about a brother's tragic death? Wasn't this the poisonous brew that had prompted Ellie to look for love in all the wrong places, and to sneak around gathering crumbs from her big sister's table—even if they were rancid?

   When it came to Otis McCafferty… he had been a bullriding lothario with charm like July snow on the Tetons—it evaporated quickly in the harsh light of day. And as for Christopher Stowe, Blythe could see now that Ellie had set out to beguile the man in some twisted and continuing rivalry of one-upmanship. Over the years her behavior had increasingly taken on an aspect of "settling past scores." But what scores? And how old were they? Blythe wondered.

   The biting wind lashed at her face, forcing Blythe to concentrate on traversing the narrowing path that led to the headlands. After about twenty minutes of hard climbing, she reached the Iron Age fort on the promontory of Dodman Point. A two-thousand-foot-long ditch was all that remained of the surviving earthworks. The icy gusts whipped her auburn hair into a tangle of curls as she gazed at the large, stark stone cross on the summit. Luke had told her on one of their expeditions that it had been erected in 1896 as a navigational aid to mariners. It had been built at the direction of the rector of St. Michael Caerhays, a quaint Norman-style church that was adjacent to the castle of the same name.

   Gazing through the mist at the imposing religious symbol that had endured countless gales for nearly a century, Blythe had difficulty gauging whether she felt better or worse for having finally confronted Ellie over their lifelong series of clashes. Today's debacle had been their first brawl since that wretched day on the Paramount back lot. Given the horrendous circumstances, their meeting at Painter's Cottage certainly could never have turned into a forgive-and-forget fest. But why was it
so
bitter? Why had both of them said such egregious things to each other?

   It occurred to Blythe that in real life, unlike some cleverly contrived final scene in the movies, deep-seated emotional problems could not always be resolved by the last reel. Predictably, Ellie's ingrained covetousness had asserted itself in spades again this afternoon, despite the fact that the younger Barton was now the sister with the glamorous director-husband, the new baby, and the elegant house in Brentwood. And, just as predictably, Blythe had allowed herself once again to get hooked into trying to defend against her sister's perverse view of the world.

   As Blythe more calmly considered Ellie's parting shot— that Chris had not wanted to have a baby with his first wife—she wagered that this vicious crack probably reflected Ellie's own secret fear that the prodigiously self-centered director had not wanted to have a child with any woman.

   But why was Ellie so vituperative when she appeared, now, to have everything she'd formerly begrudged her older sister?

   DNA or no DNA, Blythe realized suddenly that her sister's long-standing feelings of inadequacy, coupled with her conviction that she had somehow been shortchanged by her entire family, had transformed her into a kind of unguided missile. When it plowed into the earth, anyone who happened to be in the vicinity could get wounded by shrapnel. The trick, Blythe supposed, was to try her damnedest not to take Ellie's behavior too personally—and to stay out of the line of fire.

   She turned her gaze from the stone cross standing sentry on the headlands to face the churning English Channel. Cornwall was about as far away from Hollywood as you could get, she thought, her spirits lifting a notch. If you can't fight 'em, best to put six thousand miles between you and such lethal weapons!

She began the return journey to Hemmick Beach and felt relieved that the blustering wind was now at her back, making the trip considerably easier. As she resolutely put one foot in front of the other, it occurred to her that she could never have controlled Ellie's or Christopher's actions. She could, however, do her best to understand the forces that had brought about their gut-wrenching collision today, as well as on that unforgettable November afternoon on the Paramount lot last year.

   Despite the emotional blows Blythe had been dealt by her nearest and dearest, she wondered now if the only way to go forward was to systematically recover the bits and pieces of herself that had been stolen from her, or that she had given away to the likes of Chris and Ellie—people who had demanded chunks of her time, talent, and nurturing, and hadn't given much in return.

   
I must gather the scattered bits of my soul…

   It was a daunting task—this process of putting a life back together—but somehow she knew that she had at least begun this process by coming to Cornwall. It was time, now, that she made some decisions concerning exactly how she wanted to live in the future.

   And that brought her full circle to Luke—and the baby they might have created together. She must tell him. And she must be certain of what she truly wanted when she heard his response.

   "I'll sleep on it," she said aloud to a gannet dive-bombing for fish in the turbulent waters at the base of the cliff.

   In the gathering dusk, Painter's Cottage now seemed a welcoming refuge from the stiff wind that had been pushing her along the entire walk home. She fixed herself a light supper that, fortunately, settled nicely at the bottom of her fragile stomach. Then she tucked herself into bed even before a sliver of moon winked between the billowing dark clouds overhead. She was grateful for the sheer physical exhaustion from her arduous hike that had invaded every atom of her body—and prayed it would ensure a dreamless slumber.

Luke poked his head into Mrs. Q's kitchen and called, "Good night, son," as Richard surveyed his supper in silence.

   "Night," he mumbled.

   "Good night, sir," the housekeeper added quickly. "Tonight Dicken and I are going to give that puzzle another go, aren't we, lad?"

   "I wish Blythe were here to help," was Richard's only reply.

   "She's not feeling well," Luke said evenly. "Perhaps we can pay her a visit in the morning and see how she is."

   "She's ill?" Richard said with a worried glance toward Mrs. Q.

   "Nothing serious," Luke assured him. "A touch of the flu, I expect," he added, recalling her hasty retreat into Painter's Cottage earlier that afternoon.