Independence Day (10 page)

“I don’t buy that!” Frustrated, she almost didn’t recognize this stern, inflexible man. “We’re parents, yes, but we’re also individuals. Family life is a juggling act. I’m not going to give up being part of a couple to be a parent just as I’m not going to give up being me to be part of a couple.”

“This week proves that.”

And then it hit her. He was still upset with her for overturning the marital apple cart. She’d thought tonight at the beach she was beginning to get through to him, but that had just been physical. Any man would go along with the prospect of sex. But she didn’t want just any man. She wanted Nick.

“Try to put yourself in my shoes,” Nick said, his voice tired. “I found out we really didn’t agree on how we wanted our marriage to unfold, and now I find out we don’t agree on how we want to raise our kids. What’s next?”

His words hurt Chessie terribly. “We’re both tired. Stressed,” she said at last, trying to break the staring contest they seemed to be having. “I think we should
go to bed before either of us says something we don’t mean. Something we’ll regret.”

“Fine. I’ll check on the girls.”

As he left the room, she wanted to call out that he was overreacting, but he sincerely believed she’d overreacted in her quest to fine-tune their relationship.

It seemed they’d reached a stalemate.

She stayed up until just before dawn, scrubbing the kitchen, replaying over and over again Nick’s last question.
What’s next?

A week ago she’d thought she knew. Had seen a rollicking progression straight toward renewed marital bliss. Now, she didn’t have an answer.

N
ICK GOT
Isabel and Gabriella up at nine the next morning so they could have breakfast together before all four went to the hospital to check on Keri. The girls weren’t happy about the reveille. Chessie hadn’t come to bed at all. But she was in the very clean kitchen with the table set, cooking pancakes and sausage.

“I called across the street,” she said, looking up from the stove. “Still nobody home. I don’t like what that might mean.”

“Don’t go there, Chess. We’ll find out the whole story soon enough. And find out what we can do to help.”

She looked so worried, he wanted to comfort her. But sometime last night, they’d lost the intimacy necessary for comfort. He hadn’t figured out how to get it back.

“Why did you get us up so early?” Rubbing her head, Gabriella entered the kitchen behind him. “I have a headache.”

“Late nights will do that to you,” Chessie replied briskly, serving up breakfast. “Where’s Isabel?”

“Hey, I’m not her keeper,” Gabriella groused, reaching for a sausage.

Nick wrapped his hand around his daughter’s wrist. “Now that’s where you’re wrong. We’re a family. We look out for one another.”

“I’m here,” Isabel said from the doorway. It was a warm and humid morning, but she was dressed in cargo pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt.

Chessie eyed the outfit. “It’s supposed to get in the high eighties today,” she remarked as she placed orange juice at Isabel’s place.

“It’ll be air-conditioned at the hospital.” Ducking her head, Isabel sipped at her juice.

They ate in awkward silence, which persisted on the ride to the hospital. Visiting hours had begun when they arrived, and the volunteer behind the desk told them there were no restrictions for visiting Keri.

“A good sign,” Chessie said as they headed for the elevator.

When the doors slid open, Gabriella balked. “I’m feeling kinda sick. Maybe I should see her another time.”

Chessie drew Gabriella to one side. “I can wait down here with you. Dad and Isabel can give us an update. Then—”

“No,” Nick cut in. Gabriella needed to see the consequences of last night. Chessie shouldn’t baby her. “We’re all going up.”

Chessie looked as if she disagreed with his decision, but she didn’t say so. Instead, she urged Gabriella into the waiting elevator. The stiff set of his wife’s shoulders told him loud and clear the issue was up for discussion later when they were alone. So what else was new? Lately, he said black, she said white.

On the fourth floor, they found Keri’s room. Her door was open, but they hesitated in the hall before entering. Her back to the door, Martha sat by her daughter’s bed. Keri looked so frail, hooked up to an IV and lying stiffly under a white sheet. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t look at her mother.

Good God, that could have been his daughter.

“Martha,” he said quietly, entering the room first. “How are you? Both of you.”

Turning to look at them, Martha began to tremble. “Get out,” she said, her voice unusually harsh.

“We just wanted to know how Keri was doing. What we could do.”

“Keri’s going to be fine, no thanks to you. You’ve done enough.” As Martha spoke, Keri turned her head toward the window, closed her eyes.

“I don’t understand.”

“Why am I not surprised Gabriella didn’t tell you?”

“Ken Nadick filled us in. He brought Gabriella home.”

“Keri would be home now, too, if it wasn’t for your daughter’s bright idea.” She looked hard at Gabriella who hung back in the doorway.

“From what I understand,” Nick said cautiously, “this was a group idea. A very bad idea. Gabriella’s grounded for her part in it.”

“Her part in it? She was the ringleader. Keri told us everything. How Gabriella thought up the idea. How she convinced Baylee and Margot to go along. How Keri didn’t want to do it, but Gabriella threatened not to be her friend anymore.” Martha cast a withering glance at Nick. “You of all people should know how dangerous peer pressure can be.”

“We’re sorry,” Chessie said, her arms around Gabriella and Isabel.

“Well, sorry doesn’t cut it.” Martha turned her back on them. “Now leave.”

“Come on, girls.” As Chessie urged them toward the hall, Nick could see the devastation in all three faces. After all, this was a friendship disintegrating.

Leaving the room behind his family, he saw George, still in uniform, coming down the hallway. “I’ll meet you in the car,” he said to Chessie, then waited for his neighbor.

George stopped reluctantly. “This isn’t a good idea,” he said.

“We’re leaving,” Nick replied. “But I need to know the score. What happened to Keri?”

“Someone put something in her soft drink.”

“What?”

“We won’t know till the blood work comes back. Maybe not then. They’re keeping her for observation. I insisted.”

“I’m sorry.” Nick hesitated. “Martha seems to blame Gabriella.”

“Keri told us everything. Considering how it played out for her, I don’t see why she’d lie now.”

Nick had seen more than one kid lie to the bitter end and more than one parent in denial. “I’ll get to the bottom of it,” he offered.

“You need to. With your daughter, I mean. In our lines of work, we both know how easy it is for a kid to get into trouble. And slide into more trouble if they’re not straightened out.”

“I thought the six of us could sit down and work it out. When Keri gets home, of course.”

“Sorry. Martha and I have worked it out already. Keri’s going to private school this fall. She won’t be hanging around with Gabriella.”

Stunned, Nick watched the man he’d counted a friend walk into his daughter’s hospital room and shut the door.

W
HEN
D
AD PULLED
the car in to their driveway, Gabriella opened the door before he’d come to a complete stop.

“Don’t go off the property,” he warned. “Remember you’re grounded.”

As if she could forget.

She ran around the barn to where the back gardens met the marsh. There was an enormous cranberry
bush that had grown so large it completely sheltered a granite boulder. Gabriella pushed through the tangle of branches to reach the rock. Once hidden inside, she let herself cry.

Keri hadn’t even looked at her. And she’d lied. Big time.

Dad had said she was grounded until she told him the names of the guys who’d gotten the fake ID and where Keri could have gotten the drugs. She couldn’t tell her father what she knew. He had too much power. As principal of her school, he could make life miserable for anybody. Not that she wanted to be friends with Danny or Kurt. They were jerks. But if kids thought she was a snitch to her father, she’d be cut so fast it would make her head spin.

As it was, Dad said Keri was going to private school next fall. Keri. The only real friend Gabriella had made since moving to Pritchard’s Neck. And what kind of a friend had she turned out to be if she could stab her in the back to protect her own rep with her parents?

Now Gabriella was headed to high school with no friends, her father for principal, a mother who wouldn’t act her age, and a dorky senior sister who was leaving for college in a year anyway.

So where did she fit in? Either in school or in her family?

For the first time in her life, Gabriella felt absolutely alone.

C
ELL PHONE IN HAND
and pottery class roster in front of her, Chessie sat at the kitchen table late Monday morning and felt a deep empathy for George Washington at Valley Forge. Her revolution had hit the skids, too.

Nick had barely spoken a dozen words to her in the past twenty-four hours. Gabriella was supposed to be helping Isabel pick up, vacuum and dust the downstairs, but she’d done far more complaining than cleaning. And the fully enrolled pottery class Chessie was supposed to have taught this morning? Only half those enrolled had shown up, all of them summer residents. As Chessie had gone down the list, phoning those who hadn’t shown, she’d been treated to a lot of chilly excuses. When she came to the bottom and Martha Weiss’s name, it dawned on her. Martha had originally spearheaded a movement to pack the class with her considerable circle of friends and acquaintances. Now that Martha was no longer speaking to them, it appeared her friends weren’t either.

Chessie couldn’t even find solace in the newspaper and a cup of coffee. The new carrier had been on the job a week and hadn’t managed to hit the driveway once. This morning’s paper was so far up on the roof she’d have to get a ladder to retrieve it. The kid was supposed to collect today. She’d have to have a word with him.

Mondays sucked.

“You look as if you’d lost your best friend.”

Chessie was startled to see Nick’s sister-in-law Emily standing next to her. “Hey, Em,” she said, brightening. “What brings you by?”

Emily glanced over her shoulder to her minivan in the driveway. Chessie could see Emily’s four children, plus Alex bouncing so hard in their seats the van was rocking.

“Did Isabel forget?” Emily asked. “She promised to be mother’s helper at the beach today.”

“Oh my gosh, I forgot,” said Isabel suddenly appearing in the doorway. This past week she seemed never to be out of earshot. “Give me a minute to get a towel, and I’ll be right with you.”

“Teenagers.” Chessie smiled weakly.

“How is Gabriella?” Emily, normally very self-assured, seemed tentative. “Brad listens to the police scanner.”

“She’s okay physically. She’s in full rebellion, however.”

Chessie expected Emily to say,
Like her mother.

But she didn’t. “I wanted to call yesterday. To see
if there was anything I could do, but Brad told me not to.”

“I don’t understand.” Chessie had expected the McCabes to descend
en masse,
and was perplexed when they hadn’t. “Why would he not want you to call?”

“I…don’t know exactly. Brad, Jonas, Sean and Mariah have always looked up to Nick because he had such a big part in raising them. But when you moved back to Pritchard’s Neck… Brad said Nick seemed to distance himself. Seemed somehow unapproachable and self-contained. He was a little intimidating. Brad said he didn’t think Nick would welcome help, would see it as a sign his family thought he couldn’t handle his own affairs.”

Chessie was stunned. “Do the others feel this way?”

“Pretty much. It doesn’t help that we see you and the girls more than him.”

So Chessie wasn’t the only one who’d seen a change in Nick.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Emily quickly said. “And if there’s anything you need—anything—you just ask.”

“I will.”

“I’m ready.” Isabel reappeared in the kitchen with a towel.

“Honey, you’re going to roast!” Emily exclaimed, looking at her long pants and long-sleeved tee.

“I don’t want to get sunburned.” Isabel headed to
the car where the cousins set up a cheer the minute they spotted her.

“I have to run,” Emily said, “but remember we’re all here for you.”

“I’ll remember.” Chessie tried to smile.

When exactly had they all lost the flesh-and-blood Nick?

“Gabriella!” She went in search of her daughter and found her in her room, lying facedown on her bed. “Isabel’s helping Aunt Emily. I have to meet Dad at school. You’re to finish the vacuuming, and you’re not to go off the property.”

“Where would I go? I don’t have any friends.”

“You’ll make new friends.”

Chessie hated how curt her answer sounded, but she needed to see Nick immediately, talk to him.

Gabriella waited until she heard her mother’s car pull out of the driveway, then she headed downstairs. She grabbed a handful of cookies from the cookie jar and walked right by the vacuum cleaner and out onto the side steps where she plopped herself down in the sun to contemplate the rest of the world enjoying the freedom her stupid parents had taken away from her.

She looked at the cookies in her hand. They weren’t even homemade. Because of her mom’s stupid, stupid strike, they were eating cookies from the store. And cheap store brand, no less. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Across the street Mrs. Weiss pulled her SUV into the driveway, followed by Mr. Weiss in his police
cruiser. When Keri got out of her mom’s car and walked into the house as if it was just a normal day, Gabriella felt glad her friend was home and seemed okay. But neither Keri nor her parents had even glanced across the street. It was as if Gabriella didn’t exist.

Could her life get any worse?

A long shadow passed across her outstretched legs. Shading her eyes, she looked up to see a kid on a bicycle. With the sun behind him, she couldn’t see his features.

“Madison! You live here?”

The voice was strangely familiar. But why was he calling her Madison?

She moved only enough that she could see his face. It was the guy she’d danced with at the Surf Club Saturday night. Oscar or Olaf or Omar.

“Owen,” he said as if reading her mind.

“What are you doing here?” Sure she sounded rude, but what was he, some kind of stalker? She’d had enough of Saturday night.

“I’ve come to collect. I’m your new paper carrier.”

Gabriella tried not to let her jaw fall on the ground as she took in his words. And that…bicycle?

“Geez-o-Pete!” she said at last. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen.” He grinned down at her as if it was a huge joke.

“But—”

“You thought I was twenty-one.”

Gabriella didn’t reply.

“I wash dishes part-time at the Surf Club. On my break I dance.”

Just how weird was this guy?

“Did you have to go to jail?” he asked as if he had a right to know.

“I wasn’t drinking. Officer Nadick just brought me home.”

“Lucky you. Did you ever find your friend?”

Tears stung Gabriella’s eyes. “She had to go to the hospital.”

“So she was the one dehydrated from E.”

“What are you talking about? Her father said someone slipped drugs in her soft drink.”

“Right. If you’re talking about Keri Weiss, I saw her take an Ecstasy tablet from Danny Aiken.”

“You saw her take it? What else did you see?”

“Not much. She was dancing pretty hard, but she wasn’t hydrating. Big mistake.”

“Why?”

“E dries you out.”

Gabriella thought about how hot Keri had felt when she’d found her in the restroom. How she’d been hooked up to an IV in the hospital. Maybe this kid was right. Could he be right about Keri taking the drug voluntarily? Then she’d lied to her parents about Gabriella—sacrificed her—to save herself. How low could you go?

“You didn’t take any, did you?” Owen asked.

“No.”

“Smart move.”

“As if that bought me any cred with my parents.”

“What’d they do?”

“Grounded me.”

“You’ll live.”

The matter-of-fact way he said it irked Gabriella. “Yeah, well, you know nothing about my stupid life.”

“So, tell me.”

“They treat me like a baby.”

“Do you act like a baby?”

Gabriella clammed up. She didn’t have to talk to this jerk. And she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of getting up and going in the house. This was her territory. She wasn’t about to surrender it to some stupid paperboy.

“Let’s put it this way,” he said as if he didn’t get that she was ignoring him. “Kids are more grown up than their parents think they are and less grown up than we think we are.”

“What are you—some kind of philosopher?”

“I’m going to be a playwright. I go to the School for Visual and Performing Arts in Portland.”

So that’s why she hadn’t seen him around. Wouldn’t have to see him around next year. Good.

“What else is so awful about your life?” he asked.

“You gonna put it in a play?”

“I might. That’s what I like about working at the Surf Club. Good material.”

“How about parents who turn their daughter into slave labor.”

“What kind of labor?”

“Laundry. Dishes. Cooking. Cleaning.”

“Grow up. I’ve been doing that since I was in elementary school. It’s just my mom and me. She can’t do everything. Plus I work at the Surf Club, run this paper route and mow lawns for money.”

“A regular Boy Scout.”

“I pull my weight.”

“I can pull my weight.”

“So do it.”

“If I do, what’s to stop me from going out on my own?” She thought of her sister leaving home in a year. How lucky was she?

Owen shrugged. “Nothing.”

That was the smartest thing he’d said. And Gabriella filed it away for future reference. She didn’t need this guy and his superior attitude any more.

“My folks aren’t home.” She indicated the money pouch he held in his hand. “If you’re collecting, that is. And they’re a little PO’d you can’t hit the driveway.”

“Hey,” he shrugged, “it’s my first week. I’ll be back.” He wheeled his bike out of the driveway. “See ya.”

Not if she saw him first.

“C
HESSIE
!” Hattie looked up from her desk in the outer office. “You’re just in time. Nick and a group of us were going out for lunch. Still planning for staff field day. Join us?”

Talk of staff field day was no inducement.

As Nick appeared in the doorway, Chessie held up
the takeout bag from Branson’s deli. “I thought I might kidnap my husband for the lunch hour.”

“That’s an even better idea.” Hattie moved to the door. “I even think there might be a clear corner of his conference table. But hurry. You know how nature abhors a vacuum.”

Hattie left, but Nick remained in his office doorway, looking unsure. Chessie never invaded his work space. She knew he liked to keep his work and private life separate. But maybe he needed a reminder that he actually had a private life.

“Do you want to eat outside? In the senior courtyard maybe?” he asked.

“It must be ninety outside. I’d rather stay in the air-conditioning.”

Reluctantly, it seemed, he stood aside to let her in his office. “How’s your day been?”

“Not so great. Half my pottery class didn’t show up. Martha’s friends.”

He didn’t seem to hear her.

“Where are the girls?”

“Izzy’s acting as mother’s helper for Emily. At the beach. I left Gabby cleaning downstairs.”

“Do you think it’s wise to leave her alone?”

“Nick, she’s fourteen.” She placed the bag on a pile of papers on his conference table, and began to clear a space for them to eat. “Do you think we should get one of those parolee ankle monitors?”

He didn’t appear amused. Very soberly, he reached for a sheet of paper in his computer printer tray.
“Since you’re here, you might as well take a look at my plan before it goes into effect.”

Confused, she looked at what seemed to be a very detailed list. A professional document. Since when did he consult her on school matters? And then she saw the items on the list, articulated with bullet points:

There was more, but Chessie stopped reading. “What’s this?”

“It’s a contract for the girls, to keep them out of trouble.”

“Were you planning to discuss it with them first?”

“There’s no discussion.”

This wasn’t like Nick. Sure, he was a strict father, but they’d always had a round table approach to parenting. As parents, they had final say, but the girls had always been part of the process.

Then an ugly thought hit her.

“Were you planning to discuss it with me before you put it before the girls?”

“You’re here now.”

“But you didn’t know I would be.” Alarmed, she held the paper under his nose. “Was this going to come as executive fiat?”

“We have a problem. I thought of a solution.”

“In the past, Nick, when we had a problem,
we
came up with a solution.”

“In the past I’ve pretty much left the girls up to you.” He took the contract out of her hands. “It’s time I got more involved.”

“You’re saying I’ve done a lousy job of managing our daughters.” She felt her blood pressure rise.

“I’m not saying that. But considering the events of Saturday night, we need to develop some new strategies.” He held up the contract. “They’re in here.”

“And you were about to unilaterally set them in motion.”

“If I recall, about a week ago, you went for a few unilateral changes.”

“That was different!”

“How?”

“I made some temporary moves to get your attention and set up a dialogue.”

“Temporary, huh?” He began to pace. “After a week, the situation’s starting to feel awfully permanent to me. The house is a disaster. Gabriella’s never
behaved so badly. And you’ve slept in your studio as much as you’ve slept in our bed.”

“Which should highlight the need for that dialogue.” Chessie sighed deeply. “Sit down, please. Let’s have lunch together.”

He sat and perfunctorily began to eat one of the sandwiches she’d brought.

“I’m not saying those aren’t good points in your contract,” she conceded. “But I think the four of us need to discuss them. In a safe and neutral environment.” She hesitated, knowing she was heading into sensitive territory. “Like family counseling.”