Safe Harbor (28 page)

"Which reminds
me:
what were you doing up at two in the morning?"

"Oh, just
foolin' around," Holly said vaguely. "You know how restless I can get when I'm working on something."

She watched as Cissy and Sally began to build a castle
at
the edge of the water. Foundation first: side-by- side went two inverted buckets of sand.

"Hey, look, a duplex castle," she said to her sister. "And you're worried that they can't get along."

Ivy twisted her head sideways for a view of her daughters and smiled. "They'll be best friends again by the time we leave, and then they'll spend the next eleven months forgetting what it was they liked about each other."

She rolled onto her stomach and turned her cheek to the sun. "If you're going to have kids, you'd better move
it along, Ho
l
. They take a ridiculous amount of energy."

Holly smiled and dug her toes into the warm sand at the edge of the blanket. "I'm working on it," she admitted.

Her sister squinted at her. "Oh? And how
are
you coming along with your Mr. Right?"

"He's looking right as rain to me."

"Mom's worried about you ending up hurt."

"I know. She thinks he's too involved in chasing after
Eden
to notice me."

"No one's found that engraving, I take it?"

"It's not for want of trying."

"Oh, well. The engraving is the least of our problems," said Ivy, reaching for the suntan lotion. "Did you redo the back of Cissy's shoulders?"

"
Yep."

"So—are we all caught up now on the family soap?" Ivy asked, sitting up to reapply lotion to her own shoulders. "Dad's deluded, Mom's deluded, and
Eden
's having the last laugh according to your Sam. Charming. Do my back for me?"

"Sure. There
is
one other thing," Holly said, taking the bottle and squirting a blob into her hand. "Sam and I made love aboard the
Vixen
last night."

"What?
"

"Mm. It kind of just happened. Stop twisting."

"What were you doing aboard the boat? What was
he
doing aboard the boat?"

"I was looking for the engraving and Sam was looking for me," said Holly, trying to coat her sister's pale skin. "Hold your hair up. Anyway—you know how it is when you and a guy are at each other's throats, and what you really want is sex?"

"It was like that?"

"No—but for a while
I
thought it was. I was
so
hot for him that I thought, okay, it must be because it's been
a
while
since I've been to bed with a guy. But when Sam and I finally made love, it wasn't just good sex or even great sex, it was
... more than that."

"How
much
more?"

Holly handed the suntan lotion to her sister and pivoted from the waist. "It was like, I don't know, finding myself. Completely. In Sam."

"Since when were you lost?"

Scooping up her hair, Holly bent her head down. "You know how it feels when you're looking for your car keys, and you look everywhere, and you get more and more frustrated, and then you finally see them and you think,
ah,
and for that one split second everything comes together? You're complete? It's li
ke that. You still have to get
in the car, do your errand, deal with traffic; but for that one fraction of a second, your existence is perfect. That's
what it's like when I see Sam."

"You're comparing Sam to a set of car keys?"

"I'm doing a really rotten job of explaining this, aren't I?" Holly said, laughing. "You're the analytical one in the family;
you
try. How was it with you and Jack
when
you
met?"

Ivy gave her sister a querulous look and then shrugged. "Do you know how long ago that was? Jack and I were seniors in college. We were young, we were stupid, we got caught, we got married."

She rubbed the lotion onto Holly's back with the same no-nonsense efficiency she used on her kids. "All in all, we weren't a bad match. There are things—a lot of them—about Jack that I'd love to change."

Her voice seemed to catch as she said it, but she sighed after that and said, "For one thing, I wish we hadn't married so young; we'll always wonder about paths not taken. And I
wish
he wouldn't roll up his socks in his shorts when he throws them in the laundry," she added lightly.

"But if you're asking, is he Mr. Right, then I'd have to say I no longer believe—if I ever believed—in the concept. I think lots of people are suitable for one another. Does that answer your question?" Ivy said, capping the lotion and tossing the bottle in her beach bag.

"Do you have any regrets?"

Smiling, Ivy nodded at her two little castle-builders and said softly, "What do you think?"

"That's great," said Holly, and it
was
great that Ivy had no regrets; that her
two children had made her not-
bad marriage worthwhile.

Holly gazed at their mother as she knelt with her granddaughters, dripping wet sand down the side of a giant turret on the duplex castle—and she wondered, really for the first time, whether Charlotte Anderson felt the same.

T
he tradition had been carefully established over the years: after the beach came cotton candy and carousel rides on the Flying Horses, and after the carousel rides came cheeseburgers, and after cheeseburgers came ice cream cones at Mad Martha's. This year the cast was smaller, but the play was the same.

Late in the day, five weary females—the middle two with stomachaches—returned to the beautiful Greek Revival on Main Street, where the twin beds under the gabled dormers had been made with special care in sheets splashed all over with pink geraniums, and pillowcases trellised in blue and white.

The children showered up the hall while
Charlotte
showered down the hall, and Holly and Ivy unpacked the trunk that Ivy had shipped east earlier in the month. After weeks of dreary emptiness, the house was suddenly abuzz with people and movement. Holly could hear the squeaks of excitement in the old wood floors, feel the sighs of relief on her cheek as the
s
eabreeze gusted through newly opened windows in rarely used rooms.

The house was happy again
.

To make room for her visitors,
Charlotte
had moved back into the master bedroom for the first time since learning that her husband no longer wanted to share the big four-poster bed there with her. Holly noticed, when she popped into the bedroom to see how her mother was, that she had bought new sheets of periwinkle blue to replace the white ones trimmed in eyelet that she always used to prefer.

Whatever works,
Holly thought as she paused outside the bathroom.

"Mom? You okay in there?"

"Of course I am; why shouldn't I be? I didn't eat a double cheeseburger." She opened the door for Holly, then went back to toweling her hair.

"You got some color today," Holly observed.

"I know. My nose is going to peel," her mother said, grimacing at herself in the mirror. "I was so busy running after the girls that I forgot to use the lotion myself."

She turned back to Holly and said, "Is that why you're here? To check on my sunburn?"

Holly returned her wry smile. "You know why I'm here."

"I'm fine. Really, I'm the best I've been so far. The children are a wonderful tonic; I don't know why I was afraid of their coming. The visit's going to work out perfectly. Now beat it," she said, nudging Holly's bare foot with one of her own. "Before you ruin my mood with your constant hovering."

The doorbell rang and Holly yelled that she would get it. Silly thought; she never stood a chance, not with Cissy and Sally in the house. They thundered past her down the stairs, barely glancing back for permission before swinging the door open to their caller.

Parked outside was the van from Beauty and the Beast, a toy shop in Edgartown. Holly's mother had complained during the previous week that she no longer had any up-to-age toys for the girls. She must have gone shopping.

Both girls took in the van, then the festive pink and yellow bows on the shopping bags. They exchanged a quick, sisterly look of understanding—
loot
!
—and stepped back with uncharacteristic restraint so that Holly could tip the delivery girl and take the bags.

"Well, well, well—what have we here?" Holly said as she carried them high over her head so that no one could reach the envelope ribboned to the shopping bag handle. "This must be the curling iron and hot rollers
I
ordered for myself."

Cissy giggled and said, "They're from the toy store, Aunty Holly, and anyway, you already have curls in your hair."

"You can never have too many curls. All right," she said, setting the bags on the sofa. "Let's see now; what could be in the envelope? Directions for the hot rollers?" She pulled the envelope free without letting the children see their names written on it in a calligrapher's hand.

Sally said, "I'll read it!"

Cissy said, "No, let me!"

"No, me!"

"Me!"

Their mother appeared in the doorway, hands braced on hips, and said,
"I'll
read it." Turning to Holly, she said, "Is this your doing? Didn't I say—?"

"Don't look at me; I took you at your word."

Ivy sighed and said, "Obviously Mom did not." She took out the card and scanned its contents, then handed it without comment for Holly to read:

Sorry I can't be there with you girls; have fun with these the next rainy day. Hugs and smooches, Grampa.

"Oh,
boy," muttered Holly.

"My goodness. What's all this? Presents?"

Everyone turned around. Charlotte Anderson, smiling and pink-nosed and summery in a yellow shift, had come downstairs to see what all the fuss was about.

"We don't know who they're from, Gram," said Cissy. "Mom won't let us see the card. Are they from you?"

"We don't even know who they're
for,"
Sally pointed out. "Aunty Holly wouldn't even let us see the envelope."

Charlotte
glanced at the store's logo on the shopping bags and said, "Well, I imagine they're for—"

In that instant it became obvious to Holly that her mother had figured out not only whom they were for, but whom they were from.

Her smile ratcheted up a notch and became brave. She said, "I think your morn should let you read the car
d for yourself. Don't you agree,
Ivy, dear?"

A direct order. Reluctantly, Ivy handed the card over to her daughters. Each of them insisted on holding half of it as they read together
.

"From Grampa!"

Sally attacked the shopping bags; Cissy said, "How did Grampa get these presents if he's in
Providence
?"

Her older sister rolled her eyes as she began lifting out the first gift-wrapped package. "Did you ever hear of telephones, stupid?"

It was all the excuse that Ivy needed. "Sally! That is
no
way to address your sister. Give me the bags," she said, taking them angrily from her daughters as Holly watched uneasily. "I'm putting them away."

Sally's eyes got huge. "
Mom
!
You can't
do
that!"

"
Those are for
us
!"

"Not if you're rude. Besides, you read the note: these are for a rainy day. It's not raining. When it rains, we'll think about it. And that's that."

Cissy burst into tears; Sally tried not to.

"That's so unfair! You're so unfair!" cried Sally, and she ran up the stairs with Cissy howling behind her.

Ivy said grimly, "Well, at least they're not on opposite sides, for once," and shoved the bags to the back of the closet in the hall.

Holly was considering how she'd feel if someone had ripped presents out of her hands. Kid or grownup, the answer would be the same: rotten.

"Ivy," she ventured, "wasn't that a little harsh?"

Ivy glanced at their mother, who was hugging herself as she stared out a window overlooking the garden. Seething, she said to her sister, "Don't you get it? He's done it
again."

"Done what? Tried to reassure his grandkids that he cares about them? That's not despicable behavior, Ivy."

"He's doing this for himself, for his own selfish need. How do you think Mom would feel, having to watch the girls opening the gifts, asking her when Grampa's coming, w
o
ndering why they can't at least talk to him on the phone?
How?"