Fortunate Harbor (24 page)

A few minutes later Tracy came out looking ready for bed. Janya took her into the bedroom and pulled down the sheets. As she watched, Tracy sat, pulled her feet around and rolled over to the side of the bed by the wall.

“You need an elephant in here,” Tracy said, closing her eyes. “And a pomegranate. So you can get…pregnant.”

Janya was glad Tracy was lying down, since she was now making even less sense than before. Janya didn’t need an elephant, and she didn’t need a pomegranate. She just needed a husband in her bed. And of the three, she was afraid Rishi was the one who was completely beyond her reach.

Somehow Tracy made it through Tuesday morning. Janya woke her early and drove her to the yacht club, with a terse explanation that Rishi had come home sometime after midnight. Luckily Tracy was able to convince an employee to get her keys, since the valets weren’t yet on duty. Then, head pounding, she drove home, showered and changed for work. She had time for one cup of coffee, but even that was too much on an unsettled stomach. If nothing else, she was jump-starting her weight loss. She would have to mention hangovers as a possible solution to the other Naughty Nibblers.

By midafternoon she was feeling a little better. She had lunched on half a turkey sandwich, no chips, and iced tea with artificial sweetener. Gladys brought her an apple to eat as a snack. She would do a little grocery shopping on the way home, and fill her fridge and cabinets with low-calorie food. By summer’s end she would fit back into all her clothes.

For what? And for whom?

That sent her rummaging through the supply closet. At Christmastime the swim team coach had given all her kids PEZ dispensers filled with assorted candies, and Tracy thought an extra Daisy Duck had ended up here. What could one little piece of candy hurt?

When she heard footsteps she guiltily slammed the closet door, realizing “footsteps” was a misnomer. These feet were running toward her. Bay appeared in the doorway, followed by one of his counselors, a young man named Gary, who was definitely earning his pay.

“Our group’s got the pool now, but Bay wants to talk to you. You have a minute?”

Tracy remembered her “discussion” with Marsh yesterday. She doubted she and Bay were supposed to be having any talks. But as she’d told Marsh, making sure the kids were okay was part of her job. And she sure wasn’t going to pump Bay for information she didn’t want to know.

“I’ll bring him outside in a few minutes,” she promised Gary.

Gary looked relieved. She wasn’t sure if the relief was because he’d gotten rid of Bay temporarily, or because Tracy, who’d been annoyed at everyone since she walked in the door, wasn’t annoyed at the interruption.

She motioned to the sofa. Bay joined her.

“So, what’s up?” she asked.

He bit his lip, as if he wasn’t sure where to start.

“I saw you at Gonzalo’s last night,” she said. “You got your pizza trip.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“I was just driving by. I saw you in the parking lot.”

He bit the other side of his lip. “They put mushrooms on the pizza.”

Bay wasn’t a picky boy. After all, Marsh was a fabulous cook and inclined to use whatever fresh ingredients he had on hand. She’d eaten everything from gator to conch at his table, and Bay had eaten them right along with her. But mushrooms were taboo. She knew that. Everybody who had ever eaten at the same table with Bay knew that.

“Somebody in the kitchen wasn’t paying attention,” she said.

“My mom ordered when Dad and I were in the bathroom, and she forgot to tell them.”

Tracy just nodded, keeping her thoughts to herself.

“I don’t like mushrooms.”

“Yes, I know.” She nodded again. “So you scraped them off and ate everything else.”

“Not ’zactly.”

“Uh-huh.” More nodding.

“I kinda made a fuss, and Mom got real mad. But the mushrooms had touched everything!”

“So they ordered you something else?”

“Mom said I had to eat what she ordered or just go hungry.”

Tracy wondered how she had gotten herself into this position. Here she was, hearing Sylvia stories straight from Bay’s mouth, and all she really wanted was a date with a Daisy Duck PEZ dispenser.

“So you made yourself eat it anyway, right?” she asked, hoping for a happy ending.

He shook his head.

She knew if Marsh had been handling the situation, he would have ordered something else for his son, then talked to him later about not making a fuss in public. Marsh spoiled Bay, it was true. Tracy had been forced to call him on it more than once. But Marsh was trying to make up for the absence of a
mother in Bay’s life. And in the year since she’d met him, Marsh had become better at setting limits.

Sylvia, it seemed, was about nothing else.

She patted Bay’s knee. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I used to feel the same way about onions. I know it’s hard to make yourself eat something you hate.”

“I spoiled the evening.”

That sounded like something he’d heard and was repeating. “I know you’re disappointed,” she said.

“So I have to learn how not to do that anymore. ’Cause I don’t want my mom to leave ’cause I’m a brat.”

For a moment she didn’t know what to say, but that was fine, since she wasn’t sure she could speak anyway. That was the thing about kids, something she was learning every day. Who they were and what they thought was right there, out in the open, waiting to be trampled on. By the time they were teenagers, they learned to hide their secrets. But unless a child had been abused or threatened, his secrets were right there for the world to see.

“Bay, you’re not a brat,” she said at last. “But you do have a temper. The good news is you’re learning to control it.”

“Not fast enough.”

He sounded so grown-up suddenly. She wanted to hug him in commiseration, but that wasn’t going to help.

“You’re trying hard this summer, in every way,” she said. “You’re going to make a few mistakes.” And Sylvia was going to make a million more, she added silently. “But don’t get too worried, okay? Nobody’s perfect, and a boy your age isn’t supposed to be. I know your dad…and mom understand that.”

“I think I’m the reason they got a divorce.”

This launched a quick reply. “Of course you weren’t!

Grown-ups do what they do for a million reasons, but not because a kid doesn’t like mushrooms on his pizza.”

“I was prob’ly a bad baby, too.”

“Bay.” She put her hands on his shoulders and shook him a little. “Get that idea right straight out of your head. Your mom and dad got divorced because they realized they didn’t want to live together anymore. And you were not a factor.”

“I want them to be married again.”

And there it was. Simple, unadorned and so terribly sad.

She sat back. “That’s totally up to them, Bay. Nothing you do can make a difference. My parents are divorced, too, only I was old enough when it happened to see the divorce was all about them and not about me. You’re a little too young to understand, but take my word for it, okay?”

“Mom said if I behave—really, really behave—she’s gonna give me a super birthday party.”

He hadn’t heard her. Tracy wasn’t surprised. Because when did logic have anything to do with the heart?

“I might need some help,” he continued. “Can you help?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Gimme some behavior lessons.”

“You want the party
that
badly?”

“If I behave, maybe she’ll see how nice it is to be together, you know? We could be a real family again.”

Tracy’s heart hurt. It was a physical pain, and not, she was afraid, because she had abused her body last night. She knew for a fact that Sylvia would not stay in Palmetto Grove. Miami, maybe, where there was plenty of need for a criminal lawyer of her caliber, but if they became a family again, then Marsh and Bay would have to uproot and move with her. Maybe that had been her plan all along. Marsh wouldn’t leave Florida,
Tracy was certain of that, but he might be persuaded to move to a part of it where Sylvia could be happy, just so Bay would have his mother full-time again.

Or maybe Sylvia was simply leading this little boy on, a child so blinded by hope and love he was incapable of seeing the truth. Maybe she was offering him this possibility so he would try harder and make her life easier, the way parents bribed cranky toddlers with ice-cream cones.

“Well, the first thing you need to do,” Tracy said carefully, “is forget about little mistakes you’ve already made. So forget about the pizza, okay? Just be kind whenever you can. That’s the most important thing you can do. And if you get mad, try to work it out and don’t yell.”

“Will you help?”

“Tell you what, if I see you getting mad, I’ll pull you aside until you have a chance to recover. Okay?”

He nodded gravely and got up. Tracy rose, too, and took him out the sliding glass door, around the girls playing shuffleboard and over to the pool, where Bay’s group was batting a beach ball back and forth in the shallow end.

“You won’t tell my dad, will you?” he said. “You know, about the stuff I told you?”

She caught the eye of his counselor and nodded, then dredged up a smile and patted Bay on the shoulder. “I won’t.” She didn’t add that Marsh no longer wanted to hear anything she said anyway.

On her way back she was circling the shuffleboard court when Olivia—who she hadn’t realized was one of the players—stopped her.

“Can I talk to you, Tracy?” Olivia asked.

Tracy’s eyes flicked to the colorful mural over the rec room
door. She expected to see a new hand lettered addition: “The doctor is in,” but apparently that message was only in the eye of the beholder.

“Tell your counselor you’ll be with me,” Tracy said, nodding. “I’ll meet you in the rec room.”

She settled herself on the sofa again, and Olivia, hair plastered to her neck and legs growing longer by the moment, came over and flopped down beside her.

“Rough weekend?” Tracy guessed. She had known it wouldn’t be easy for Olivia to see her father in prison. In the last months Olivia had stopped talking about the things that had happened to her family last year, though she probably still talked to her grandmother. All in all she seemed to be recovering, but it was clearly difficult.

“It’s a long way there and back,” Olivia said.

Tracy nodded, feeling like a bobblehead doll.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Olivia added.

“No problem.”

“I want to talk about Lizzie.”

That surprised Tracy. “Did you two have a fight?” At Olivia’s age, girlfriend fights were the worst. Tracy remembered a few and inwardly cringed.

“No.” Olivia scrunched up her face. “It’s just that she’s tired of moving around. She says she and her mom have moved dozens of times, and she’s sick of changing schools and losing friends.”

Tracy considered. She wasn’t sure why Olivia was telling her this, because obviously Tracy couldn’t make Dana stay at Happiness Key. She wondered if Olivia wanted to fix her friend’s life as a way of making up for the problems in her own. Maybe seeing her father had set Olivia thinking.

“Being a single parent is hard,” Tracy said, feeling her way. “I imagine Dana has to go wherever she can find a job.”

“I don’t think that’s it.”

“Really?” Tracy said in a noncommittal tone. She was getting pretty good at the counseling stuff, and she wasn’t even sure how it had happened.

Olivia lowered her voice. “That’s why I came. To tell you what Lizzie said. She said her mom is afraid.”

“She told you that?”

“They’ve been moving forever. That’s what Lizzie said. And her mom won’t answer questions. When Lizzie asks about her dad, her mom says she’s too young to understand everything. But then she acts even more afraid. So Lizzie stopped asking, but she still really wants to know.”

“I see.” Tracy didn’t understand why Olivia was telling
her
this.

“Last year…when my dad…” Olivia rubbed her eyes.

Tracy knew the girl didn’t want to go into everything her father had done. Lee Symington was in prison for abusing his mother-in-law, and there was a possibility he might be on trial down the road for murder. Tracy wasn’t even sure how much Olivia knew or was ready to know.

“That was a hard time for you,” Tracy said sympathetically.

“Back then, before everything, you know, happened, I was afraid things were wrong at home.”

“But Lee’s your father, and you were listening to him, the way you’d been taught. You can’t blame yourself, Olivia. You’re not a grown-up.” The advice sounded familiar. She’d just told Bay the same thing.

“But I don’t want that to happen again. Not ever. From now on I’m going to speak up, no matter what. So that’s why I’m telling you about Lizzie and her mother. Because maybe some
thing is really wrong at their house, too, and what if I didn’t say anything? The way I didn’t say anything last year.”

“Okay.” Tracy took the girl’s hands. “Now you’ve told me, and I’ll see if I can figure out if we need to help Dana and Lizzie, okay? If you hear anything else that really worries you, let me know. But you don’t have to spy or dig for information. You’ve done your part now. You can get on with being best friends and enjoying your summer.”

“I’m not going back to see my father.”

The change of subject didn’t surprise Tracy, since the subject had never
really
changed in the first place. “That’s your decision.” She hoped it really was and nobody would interfere.

“He’s a bad person.”

Tracy didn’t respond, although she heartily agreed.

“Yesterday he got angry and told me I was no better than my mother.”

“That’s a compliment, Olivia. From what I hear, being as good as your mother would be an extraordinary achievement. I know I would have liked her a lot. All of us would have.”

“I told him it was a good thing I wasn’t like
him
. That I’m never going to be like him, no matter what.” Olivia stood.

Tracy rose and hugged her, and Olivia cuddled close. Then Tracy set her away, keeping her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “You’ll do fine without him, sweetie. You have a lot of people who love you for the wonderful person you are.”

Olivia’s eyes glittered with tears, but she managed a little smile.

Wanda had seen wrung-out sponge mops that looked better than Tracy Deloche. The woman badly needed a piece of pie, but she wasn’t having any. She was sucking up coffee, though, like she hoped it would bring blood back to her brain.

“I could pour some whiskey in that,” Wanda said. “You know, hair of the dog…”

“Don’t even say it. Please.” Tracy put her head in her hands.

“You ought to go home and get some sleep.”

“I need to talk to everybody.” Tracy looked up. “Except Dana.”