Safe Harbor (29 page)

"He's only trying to connect, for God's sake!"

"Oh, please!" Ivy said, her anger rising. "Trying to connect is what hurts most of all. I'm sure Mom wouldn't feel as bad if he had just ignored the girls altogether. The way it is now, she has to face what might have been if Dad were here himself to give them the presents—
and
deal with the guilt from having the kids run away bawling."

"Guilt!
She
didn't take away their presents;
you
did!"

"For Mom!"

"Bullshit! For
you
!
You're angry with Dad and you're using the kids as weapons!"

"Oh-h-h, listen to Daddy's little girl," Ivy taunted. "How typical of you to defend him."

"I'm not defending anyone! All I'm doing is trying to see both sides."

"Both sides? How can he have a side? He sailed off from his entire family just to have sex on the sea, and now that
Eden
's dead—"

"She's not dead!"

"—he wants to get back in our good graces.
He's
the one who's using the kids!"

"That's twisted! When did you turn so sour on life? Does everything have to have an evil motive with you?"

"And speaking of sex on the sea, just because you're currently looking at life through an orgasmic haze—"

"Shut up, Ivy. Shut up!"

"No, I won't shut up! If you had kids, you'd understand what I was talking about! It's easy to act like a high-court judge when you have no emotional stake in the case."

Holly was outraged. "Of course I have a stake! My God, I
love
the kids
... and Mom
.
.. and you—and, yes, Dad, too! You don't stop loving someone just because he screwed up!"

"And that's another thing: you've never been married! Not even close! How would you
know
if a woman stops loving or not?" Ivy cried, driving the knife deep and then twisting. "How would you know?"

"I—wouldn't," Holly said, reeling from the attack. "You're right. I'm
not
married, I
don't
have kids." Furious, she fought back with the only weapon she could lay her hands on, bitter sarcasm. "Obviously I don't deserve to breathe the same rarified air as you and Mom. You're whole! You're complete! You've done it all! Whereas I—my goodness, whatever was I
thinking?"

She shot her arms out in front of her and bowed low in scorn, then turned and swept out of the hall, breezing past her stunned mother in her flight.

As she unhooked her purse from the back of a kitchen chair, Holl
y
overheard her mother say in a disapproving voice, "Th
at
was cruel, Ivy. She doesn't understand."

Ivy said angrily, "Maybe it's about time she learned! Forewarned is forearmed; there are a lot of Erics and Jacks out there!"

Jack?

Still in a state of roaring adrenalin, Holly slammed the back door behind her and went around to where her car would be if she had come in her car.

Shit.
This is what happened when you let your mommy drive you places. Too embarrassed to return and ask for a lift, Holly decided to go home on foot. Her house wasn't that far—and God knew, she had the head of steam to get herself there.

Ironically, the evening was a fine one for walking, dry and clear and with no trace of the bone-chilling fog that had shrouded the island the night before. Tourists strolled and islanders drove, and every last one of them was undoubtedly in a better mood than Holly was.

She loved her sister too much to stay angry; that, she knew. But it was hard not to feel hurt. If something had happened between Ivy and Jack, then why hadn't Holly been told? She was going to have to get married and then pregnant simply to have adequate credentials!

Her pride was smarting big time now, so she resisted the impulse to run back and make up and forced herself to plow ahead until she reached the turn onto the drive that led to the barn. To Sam. Out of all her relationships, hers with Sam was the only one that hadn't been tainted by
Eden
.

Eden
! Holly remembered now. Sam had wanted to tell her something about
Eden
, but between her mother interrupting them in bed, and the day's nonstop visit immediately after that, Holly had forgotten all about it. Instinctively, she began to drag her steps as she neared the barn. Whatever it was that Sam had to say about
Eden
, it was probably unpleasant. Holly wasn't in the mood for unpleasant. What she needed now was someone to tell her that she was right and everyone else was wrong.

As it turned out, Sam wasn't home; his Corolla was gone. Holly actually felt relieved. She was feeling too tired and too wretched to exchange another sorry sentence about
Eden
.

Maybe after a cup of tea.

****

The water hadn't yet come to a boil when the phone rang.

Holly ran and snatched it up. "Ivy?"

"Who is this?" a man's voice asked quietly.

"Who is
this?"
Holly challenged. Her heart began to pound like a piston.

"Miss Walker, I want my money."

"I'm
not
Eden
. You have the wrong wo
m
—"

The click at the other end sounded, like the caller's voice, lethally calm.

Again
Eden
! She was everywhere and nowhere, like an island fog. Stefan Koloman obviously didn't believe Holly's claim that
Eden
was missing and presumed drowned. Where was he, anyway? Watching the house?
Watching her?

Oh, God.
She hung up and then called her mother, just to hear a friendly voice.

"Ivy left in tears to look for you,"
Charlotte
told her. "The children are still all weepy over no presents. I seem to be the only dry-eyed one around," she said wryly.

Holly said nothing about the hang-up call, preferring not to rattle her mother. Better to wait and tell Sam.

The knock came right after she hung up. Holly peeked through a sidelight before opening the door to her red-eyed sister, who threw her arms around her and
said between wails of apology, "It's my fault, it's all my fault—"

"My fault, too," said Holly, hugging her tight. "I was being defensive—"

"No, no, it's
all
my fault; I'm taking Jack out on you—"

"I overheard you in the kitchen. What happened with Jack?"

"Mom didn't tell you?"

"Not a word."

"I thought for sure she would, even though I begged her not to. And when you never said a thing to me—"

"I didn't know! Start from the beginning," Holly said, heading for the kitchen. "We'll have our tea on the swing."

Ivy trailed after her, blowing her nose into a shredded tissue, then tearing off a square of paper towel to finish the job. "You know how Jack often has to fly to customer installations to upgrade their hardware," she said, after a big sigh to compose herself. "Well, sometimes he travels with others from his regional tech support team. One of them is a single woman."

"Uh-oh."

"Yeah. When they first started going off on assignments together, he talked about her a lot. She was good looking
and
she spoke computerese, a killer combination for someone like Jack. I asked him jokingly if I should be jealous, and he honestly laughed it off.

"Anyway, after a while—even though I knew they were still being sent off together occasionally—Jack didn't bring her up at all. Everyone knows what
that
means."

"How did you finally find out?"

Holding the screen door open for her sister, Ivy smiled ruefully and said, "I asked him."

"That's one way of doing it."

In the dim halo of the backyard light, they picked their way over a newly mulched path and took seats opposite one another on a wooden swing that Holly had built herself, over the winter, from a pattern she'd sent away for. It was dark out now, and strangely eerie. The birds had packed in it for the night, leaving the sisters with no other company than an army of crickets.

Holly peered in the direction of the barn, but a stand of scrub oaks and pines baffled sound and blocked all light from there. Was Sam back yet? She couldn't tell. In any case, right now her thoughts had to be for her sister.

Between sips of tea and bites of cookie, Ivy said, "There was no lipstick on Jack's collar to set me off, and he didn't suddenly start coming home late. No hangup calls, no attempts by him to lose weight—and you know what a pot Jack has. I don't know what made me eventually ask him. Just a routine check, I guess."

"And he actually
told
you?"

Ivy shook her head. "No—but he looked so guilty that I poked him in the middle of a sound sleep and asked him again. This time he snored out a yes."

"Oh, wow. Really?"

"Uh-huh," said Ivy, voice quivering. "It was a Saturday. I managed to hold myself together until I dropped the girls off at a birthday party, and then Jack and I had a knockdown, drag-out fight. He insisted it had been a one-time thing. I don't know why the hell
she
did it, but I know why Jack did: because she asked him to. I was stunned. You expect a fifteen-year-old boy to respond that way, not a man who's supposed to be ha
ppily married and has two kids.

"Ivy—I don't know what to say."

"Well, anyway," she said, sipping from the mug, "that's the whole story. He swears it was only the one time. We've been seeing a marriage counselor, but Jack keeps insisting that he has no complaints. He claims he loves me, adores the kids, likes his work
... But I resent him so much. He was so
stupid.
When I think about it, really think about it, I could kill him still. I don't think I'm making progress at all."

"I can't blame you," said Holly. "But if it was just once
... if he's sorry
... if you love him and want to save the marriage
.
.. won't you have to put it behind you?"

"I don't see how. I really don't. Bastard."

In thoughtful silence, in deepening night, they rocked idly back and forth, making the swing squeak in protest.

"I should get some oil on that,"
Holly said absent-
mindedly.

But she was thinking, what the hell was wrong with the men in her family? Why were they so restless? What were they looking fo
r? A supermom who earned super-
money and gave them supersex? What, exactly, was their problem?

Why, she wondered, couldn't they just be like Sam?

****

The squeak of the swing drowned out the low murmurs of their conversation, but if they had said
Eden
's name, he would've damn well heard it.

He stepped away from the shadows of the trees, straining to make out their conversation. The tall blond wasn't
Eden
, a disappointment. But the dark one—Holly Anderson. She was
Eden
's buddy, her landlord. How could she
not
know where
Eden
was, for chrissake? Waste of time, asking her nice. More than one way to skin a cat.

He took another step nearer and snapped a twig.

The creaking of the swing stopped.

"What was that?" he heard the one say.

"A deer, maybe?"

"So close?"

"There's a lot of development going on; they're losing habitat here, just as everywhere else."

"I don't like it out here, Holly. I don't know how you can stand the isolation."

"I'm an artist. It lets me think."

"Let's go inside. I have to be getting back, anyway.
 
I left Mom with the kids."

"When did you turn into such a scaredy-cat, Ivy? This is the
Vineyard,
for goodness' sake."

"Blame it on all the traumas. Nothing and no one seems safe anymore."

"Boy. You would've loved my pal Stefan."

E
ric Anderson looked less old than Sam had imagined him to be, and less miserable than his daughter had described him to be.

Sam found him waiting on the beach side of a wraparound porch on a house in Chilmark. Yes, it was dark, and yes, Sam had never seen the man before—but no way was this any grieving lover in a near-suicidal depression.

Anderson
's handshake was firm and his voice tight with repressed excitement as he said to Sam, "Let's walk along the beach. My hosts turn in early and I don't want to wreck their serenity any more than I have already."