Distant Shores (8 page)

A huge, gaping hole showcased the wet, winter-dead garden beyond. It was, by her precise calculations, exactly the right size for a standard set of French doors.

She scooped up lengths of thick blue plastic sheeting and stapled it across the opening. She'd have to order the doors tomorrow. Hopefully, it wouldn't take too long to get them in stock.

Whistling happily, she went into the kitchen and made dinner. It wasn't much tonight, just a chicken and rice casserole. Truthfully, her hands and arms hurt so badly she could barely open the oven door.

At almost seven o'clock, she heard Jack's car drive up. She couldn't wait to show him what she'd done. He always teased her about how long it took her to make a decision. Well, not today.

She hurried toward the living room.

He was smiling when he walked through the front door.

“Hi,” she said, taking his briefcase and coat. “I want to show you—”

“You won't believe what happened to me today,” he said. “I tried calling you, but you must have been out.”

“I made a couple of trips to the hardware store.”

“This was too cool to leave on the message machine. Come here.” He looped an arm around her and led her to the sofa. They sat down. He stretched his legs out, planted his feet on the coffee table.

From this angle, she could see through the house to the dining room. A long strip of blue plastic showed. She tapped her foot nervously, waiting for him to notice.

“Guess who called me today?”

She was no good at this game, but it never stopped him from playing it. She glanced at the dining room again. “Just tell me, honey.”

“Come on, three guesses.”

“Julia Roberts. Muhammad Ali. President Bush.”

He laughed. “Close. Larry King's executive producer.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding. He booked me for Tuesday. He bumped some political bigwig to get me scheduled. And it's not one of those via satellite gigs. I'll be in the studio.”

She sat back. “Wow.” This was big. She felt a flash of the old pride in him. “You're on your way now.”

Your way.
She'd chosen her words badly; they excluded her somehow, left her behind.

“He's sending two first-class tickets. We'll have a great time. There's a restaurant I've heard about—Birdie?”

She looked at the dining room, at the gaping hole in the wall. There was no way she could get it finished in time to go with him, and she sure as hell couldn't go out of town with the house like that. There wasn't much crime on the coast, but you still couldn't be crazy. She tried to think of someone she could call, but all of her friends had kids and husbands. They couldn't just pick up and move into this house for a weekend. She supposed she could close the gap with sheets of plywood—
if
she could find them locally on such short notice—but in truth, the thought of spending a few days all alone was pure heaven.

“What is it, honey?”

She pointed toward the dining room. “I knocked out the wall today.”

Frowning, he stood up. As he crossed the room, she knew he was seeing more and more of the plastic. In the archway that separated the two rooms, he stopped and looked back at her. “What in the hell?”

“You know I wanted a bigger window there. It overlooks the garden. Today, I decided on French doors instead.”

“
Today?
You decided today? It takes you seven months to choose a paint color for the kitchen and twenty-four minutes to decide to smash out a wall?”

She lifted her hands helplessly, feeling more than a little stupid. “How was I supposed to know Larry King was going to call you?”

Jack sighed heavily and stepped over the rubble on the floor. Without turning to look at her, he said, “You can't leave the house like this.”

She picked her way through the two-by-fours and crumbled bits of Sheetrock on the floor, and came up behind him. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she pressed her cheek to his back. “I'm sorry, Jack.”

He turned, took her in his arms. She could see how hard he was trying to be fair. “It's not your fault. I didn't mean to sound like an asshole. You did a lot of hard work here. I'm sure it'll be great.”

Why was this always the way of things these days? Nothing came easily anymore, not even a romantic getaway. She ought to
want
to go on this trip with him. In the old days, she would have moved a mountain to make it possible. “It shouldn't be this hard,” she said softly, realizing that he'd said the same thing to her only a few weeks before.

“Not tonight, Birdie,” he said, drawing back. She knew what he meant. She didn't have the energy for another what's-wrong-with-us discussion, either.

She forced herself to smile. “Well. Let's go figure out what you're going to wear. I might need to get Mrs. Delaney out of bed for a rush dry-cleaning job.”

He smiled back, and though it was tired, that smile, it was the effort that mattered. “I was thinking about that navy suit you bought me at the Nordstrom's anniversary sale this summer.”

“With the yellow tie and shirt?”

“What do you think?”

What do you think?
That was a well too deep to explore; better to keep on the surface of the water. “I think you'll look incredibly handsome.”

“I love you, Birdie.”

“I know,” she said, wishing the emotion came as easily as the words. “I love you, too.”

WINTER

Woman must come of age by herself …
She must find her true center alone.

—Anne Morrow Lindbergh,
Gift from the Sea

SEVEN

On this cold, bleak winter's day, not a glimmer of sunlight pushed through the heavy gray clouds.

Jack checked into the hotel and went up to his suite. There, he hung up his garment bag and immediately headed for the ornate cherry armoire in the sitting room. He chose a tiny bottle of Chivas Regal from the minibar and poured himself a drink.

The phone rang.

He knew it would be Birdie. She'd always had an uncanny ability to pinpoint the very second he'd arrive in his room. “Hello?”

“Mr. Shore?”

He sat down on the bed. The ice rattled in his glass. “This is Jack Shore.”

“I'm Mindy Akin, one of the producers. A car will pick up you and Ms. Maloney tomorrow afternoon at three o'clock.”

“Thank you.”

You and Ms. Maloney.
There was something ominous in that sentence. He wondered—and not for the first time—if it would have been better to come alone.

But Sally had earned this trip. And they'd sent two first-class tickets; it would have been stupid to waste one.

Besides, he wouldn't have invited Sally if Elizabeth had come. So, really, it was his wife's fault that Sally would be staying in a room right down the hall.

He had barely hung up the phone when it rang again.

This time it was Elizabeth. “Hey, honey. How was your flight?”

He leaned back into the stack of pillows and put his feet up on the bed. “You should see my suite, Birdie, you'd love it.”

“A suite, huh? Pretty cool, Jack.”

He frowned. Amazingly, even on this day of days, she managed to sound unimpressed, a little distant.

God, he was tired of this. Their relationship had become a sea of undercurrents and riptides with no shallow, placid water to be found. “Yeah, it's great.”

“The dining room is really shaping up. I can't wait for you to see it.”

The house again. Christ. You'd think it was a mansion in Bel Air instead of a redone summer cottage in the butt-crack of nowheresville. “That's great.”

“How long will you be there?”

“Two nights. The interview is tomorrow. I'll be home late Wednesday.”

“I'm jealous,” she said.

She
should
be. She'd had every reason in the world to be here with him. If she'd really wanted to, she could have gotten one of her friends to watch the house.

His second line buzzed. “Just a second, honey. I'm getting another call.” He put her on hold and answered line two. It was Sally, saying she'd meet him at the car in an hour. He felt a flash of guilt, as if he'd been caught doing something wrong. But that was crazy; it was simply dinner with a colleague.

“Great.” He went back to line one. “Honey?” he said, “I've got to run. I've got dinner reservations.”

“I'm proud of you, Jackson,” she said softly.

That's what he'd been waiting for—her pride in him—and he hadn't even realized it. “I love you,” he said, wanting to mean it with a ferocity that surprised him.

“I love you, too. I'll call you tomorrow after the interview.”

“Perfect. Bye, honey.”

He hung up the phone and went into the bathroom. By the time he'd taken a shower and dried his hair, he'd finished one drink and poured another. He dressed quickly in a pair of gray slacks and a black Calvin Klein sweater. Then he stood at the window, sipping his drink until it was time to leave.

At seven-thirty, he went downstairs. The limousine was waiting for him. The uniformed driver got out and opened the passenger door. “Good evening, Mr. Shore.”

Jack got into the car and settled back into the plush, dark seat. It was only a moment before the door opened again and Sally joined him.

She was stunningly beautiful in a plain black dress with a round collar and barely-there sleeves. Her hair—how was it that he'd never noticed how blond it was, almost white—hung straight down the middle of her back. When she sat down beside him, he couldn't help noticing her legs … or the sexy, spike-heeled sandals that Elizabeth wouldn't have worn in the middle of summer, let alone in the middle of winter.

“You look beautiful.” He'd meant to say “nice.” He tried to loosen his collar. It felt too tight suddenly. “Is the heat on?” he asked the driver.

She leaned toward him. “Here, let me.”

He smelled her perfume, and the sweet, citrusy fragrance of her shampoo.

She unbuttoned the top button of his sweater. “There. Now you look a little more hip.”

He looked down at her. All he could see were red lips. “I'm too old to be hip,” he said, trying to put some distance between them. Years were a natural boundary.

“Henry Kissinger is old. You're … experienced.”

The shimmering heat of possibility suddenly swirled between them.

He looked at the driver. “Tagliacci Grill,” he said. “We've got eight-o'clock reservations.”

Elizabeth was exhausted. She'd spent the last twelve hours working on the dining room. Amazingly, the local hardware store had had a perfectly lovely set of French doors on sale. Someone had ordered them and declined acceptance.

The doors were exactly what Elizabeth wanted, and she got them at a discounted price. The only downside was that she'd had to increase the size of the opening by six inches, then frame the damn thing and figure out how to mount the doors. The whole back-breaking process had taken her hours to do.

Now her shoulders ached and her fingers were cramped up like an old man's, but the new doors were in place. She set down her hammer and tool belt and made herself a cup of tea. Sipping it, she went out onto the porch.

A full moon hung overhead, huge and blue-white against a silvery sky. From this small, jutting lip of land, the stars seemed near enough to touch. It made Elizabeth feel small and safe; no more important in the great scheme of things than a blade of grass, but no less important, either.

She walked down the porch stairs and stepped out onto the mushy grass of her front yard.

She was about to go back inside when a sound caught her attention.

At first she thought it was the wind, moaning through the trees. But there was no wind. Turning slowly, she faced the ocean.

Far out to sea, moonlit waves radiated in broken rows away from the shoreline.

She heard it again. A plaintive, elegiac like sound that lingered long after the final note had run out. She knew what it was.

She crossed the front yard, ignoring the way her old work boots sank into the wet soil. She stopped at the edge of the cliff steps.

The rickety stairway snaked thirty feet straight down to a crescent of sand. Caution held her as firmly as any mother's touch. It was dark and the stairs could be slippery, dangerous.

Then she saw them.

Killer whales, at least a dozen of them.

Their fins rose tall and straight out of the water. Each one seemed to cut the moonlight in half.

She held on to the splintery railing and hurried down.

It sounded again, haunting and mournful. A vibrato, humming that wasn't of this world at all; it was a music borne of water, carried by the waves themselves. Out there, a whale breached up from the water and slammed down again; a second later, there was a great whooshing sound, and air and water sprayed up from one of the animal's blowholes.

Elizabeth was mesmerized.

After they were gone, the sea erased all evidence of them. Moonlight shone down on the water as it had before. It would have been easy to wonder if they'd ever been there at all, or if she'd dreamed it.

She wished Jack were here. She would have turned to him, then let him take her in his arms. But he was faraway, with—

Larry King.

“Oh,
shit
.”

She'd forgotten to call him.

Forgotten. Worse yet, she hadn't even watched the show. What in the hell was wrong with her?

She ran up the stairs and back into the house.

Nervous excuses cycled through her mind as she dialed the number:
Sorry, honey, I was in a multicar accident. The Jaws of Life just set me free only minutes ago. I ran right to the phone booth.

I ate something that disagreed with me and lapsed into a coma.

The hotel operator directed the call to Jack's room.

It rang. And rang.

“Get out of bed, Jack,” she whispered desperately. She couldn't screw up this badly. She
had
to talk to him tonight. He deserved that at the very least.

The voice mail kicked in. She left a message and hung up. For the next three hours, she called every fifteen minutes, but he never answered.

There was no way Jack could sleep through all those rings. Not even if he'd gotten drunk after the interview.

She knew him too well. Jack
always
answered the phone.

So, where was he?

Jack stole the show.

A few minutes into the interview, Larry had asked him a straightforward question—something like “Are today's athletes good role models, Jack? Should they be?”

Jack had rehearsed his answer to that a dozen times. He'd known exactly what to say, but then, when he'd opened his mouth, he'd spoken from his heart instead.

“You know, Larry,” he'd said, “I'm angry. We've taken nineteen-year-old kids and turned them into multimillion-dollar celebrities. We've absolved them of responsibility for everything except performing well in the arena. They drive drunk, we slap their wrist. They rape women, we say the women should have known better. They bite off their opponents' body parts, for God's sake, and a few years later, they're back in the ring, earning millions. When I was in the NFL, the world opened up for me. All I had to do was play well. I was unfaithful to my wife and unavailable to my kids. And you know what? No one blamed me for any of it. Everyone talked about the pressures of being a star quarterback. But life is tough for everyone. It took me fifteen hard years, but I finally learned that I was nothing special. I could throw a ball. Big deal. We have to quit letting our celebrities and our athletes live by their own standard. We need to become a nation of good sports again.”

“There are a lot of people who are going to like that answer,” Larry had said. “And more than a few who won't.”

That was when Jack knew. He hadn't ruined his career by being honest; he'd made it. Bad-boy athletes and team owners would hate him. Fans and parents would love him.

And nothing caused a media sensation like controversy.

By tomorrow, sound bites from his impassioned speech would be replayed from one end of the country to another.

After the show, he'd gone straight to his hotel to call Birdie. There had been no answer. Then he called his daughters. There, too, no answer.

Disappointed, he'd wandered down to the lobby bar and ordered a drink. A double Dewar's on the rocks.

Now, an hour later, he was on his second round.

He drank it down, then stared at the empty glass. Weak light created myriad colors in the melting ice. He'd never been good at being alone, and it was worse at a moment like this. “You shouldn't be alone tonight.”

Jack looked up. Sally stood beside him, wearing a clingy blue dress that was held in place by two impossibly skinny shoulder straps. A glittery dark butterfly clip anchored the hair away from her face. Her cleavage was milky white.

She smiled, and it took his breath away.

“Are you going to invite me to sit down?”

“Of course.” His voice was thick and raspy. He cleared his throat. “I thought you were off to your aunt's house tonight.”

She laughed and sidled into the booth. “A few hours in suburbia is plenty for me. One more anecdote about little Charlie's first tooth would have sent me screaming into a busy street. I mean it's a
tooth
, for God's sake. Everyone gets them. It's not like he wrote a piano concerto.”

Jack felt her leg against his. The heat of her body felt so good. He tried to remember the last time Elizabeth had looked at him as if she truly desired him; that memory would form his armor. But he couldn't find it. Elizabeth hadn't reached for him in bed in years. It was easy now to forget how hot their sex used to be. Some fires just went out and left you icy cold.

The waitress came by. Jack looked at Sally. “Margarita on the rocks, no salt, right?”

“You remembered.”

He downed his own drink and ordered another. He could practically
hear
the steel girders of his marriage vows weakening. It made a low, grinding noise that sounded like a man's despair.

“You were phenomenal today,” she said when they were alone again.

“Thanks.”

The waitress came, delivered the drinks and left. Somewhere, a jukebox started. “Time After Time” started to play.

“You'll be a star after tonight.”

Her words struck that soft, needy core deep inside him. He felt suddenly as if
he
were the young one and she had all the experience. He couldn't help looking up.

“I know you're married,” she whispered. “I don't want to ruin that. I just want to spend a night with you. One night, then we can forget it ever happened. No one ever has to know.”

Jack tried to summon Elizabeth's face, but he couldn't remember what she looked like, and he hadn't touched her in so long he couldn't even pretend to recall how she felt. For the first time in forever, he felt wanted. His body ached to give in to desire. “I'd know,” he managed to say.

She touched his face, forced him to look at her. “Just a kiss, then,” she murmured.

He felt her breath against his mouth, hot and moist. He almost groaned.

“You can say it was a victory kiss.”

Now she was even closer. He could smell her perfume and the sweet scent of her shampoo. Her lips brushed his.