Safe Harbor (13 page)

He issued a pungent curse. Blasphemy couldn’t
scare away his thoughts of her, though. She remained stubbornly
with him; he couldn’t stop seeing his surroundings through her
eyes.

Crossing the room, he removed the sticks that
propped the refrigerator and freezer doors open, then reached
inside to flick the switch. The lightbulbs in both compartments lit
up and the motor began to hum. He set the milk, juice and apples
inside, closed both doors, and unloaded the rest of his groceries
on the adjacent counter.

After filling a highball glass with bourbon, he
carried his suitcase up to the second floor, to the bedroom that
had been his. Summer people had been using the room for the last
decade, but he still thought of it as his. The rugs were where
they’d always been, the framed map of Block Island, the maple
dresser with its round knobs, the tan curtains with their white
swags. He placed the suitcase on the mattress and his drink on the
night table, then opened both the front and side windows to
ventilate the room. In the closet he found clean linens. He
unpacked and made up the bed, punctuating each task with a sip of
bourbon.

Yet when he was done emptying his suitcase and
his glass, he remained obsessed with Amanda. He thought about how
she would have loved the window seat, the stodgy design of the
furniture, the textured white spread covering the double bed...how
she would have loved sharing the bed with him.

Abruptly he left the room, descended to the
kitchen, refilled his glass and then headed back upstairs, into the
smallest bedroom, up the ladder-stairs.

Compared to the chilly air outdoors, the cupola
was stifling. Kip opened the windows and gazed out. It was too
foggy to see much, but he resolutely faced north, knowing that on a
clear day the view would be of New Harbor and the Great Salt Pond.
Looking east toward Old Harbor would mean looking at where he’d
come from. He’d journeyed to the island to turn his back on where
he’d come from, to escape from it. As if such a thing were
possible.

The bourbon slipped smoothly down his throat.
He rested his forearms against the window ledge and watched white
curls of mist skirt the ground. It reminded him of the fog in San
Francisco.

He cursed again.

The sound of an automobile rattling along the
gravel driveway jolted him. He had been so deeply submerged in
gloomy thoughts, he had all but forgotten about Shelley. Rotating,
he glanced out the southern window in time to see a Chevy Blazer
coasting to a halt near the front walk. The driver’s side door
swung open and Shelley emerged, dressed in blue jeans and a
colorful sweater. She reached back into the car and pulled out a
flat square box, a brown paper bag and a purse.

Her arrival couldn’t dispel the plumes of fog
blanketing the island, but it dispelled the fog in Kip’s mind. He
looked at the glass in his hand and frowned, as if not quite sure
how it had gotten there.

Less than a minute later he was opening the
front door to her. “Hi,” she said.

He held open the screen door and she stepped
inside. Her eyes were wide, flitting around the entry. “It feels so
strange to be here,” she said.

“It feels pretty strange to me, too,” he
admitted, taking the pizza box from her. It was hot, the bottom
beginning to wilt from its steamy contents, and he hurried down the
hall to the kitchen with it. Turning, he discovered that Shelley
hadn’t followed him.

He found her in the living room, hugging the
paper bag and gazing about her. He had a pretty good idea what she
was going through—the shock of recollection, the blunt impact of
realizing how much time had gone by since she’d last stood in that
room, how much had happened in that time, how much she’d changed.
He understood because he was going through the same
thing.

Unlike him, though, she didn’t seem upset. When
she rotated to face him her eyes were glowing, her lips spread in a
smile. “I’ve lived on Block Island for three years,” she said, “but
I haven’t felt I was truly here until this minute. Your house was
so much a part of the island for me. And now...” She sighed
happily. “I feel like I’m really back.”

Tentatively, he returned her smile. If being
inside his house could make her so happy, he was glad to have been
able to open the door and let her in.

She extended the paper bag toward him. “I
brought some beer, too,” she said. “I considered bringing lemonade,
but...” She shrugged.

Lemonade. How many times had he drunk lemonade
with Shelley? Yet they’d never drunk beer with each other. If she
had returned to the island the year after her unexplained
disappearance they would have; that summer, Kip had had his first
underage run-ins with beer.

He relaxed, his smile widening. “We’d better
eat the pizza before it gets cold,” he suggested.

They walked together into the kitchen. He
supposed they could use the dining room, but he felt more
comfortable in the kitchen. Shelley had never been one for
formality; he assumed she wouldn’t object.

While he set the table with dinner plates and a
roll of paper towels he found in the cabinet under the sink, she
opened the box and loosened a couple of slices. He pulled the beer
out of the bag, removed two bottles and slid the other four onto a
shelf in the refrigerator. “Would you like a glass?” he asked as he
twisted off the caps.

Shelley shook her head. She was looking at the
bottle of Jack Daniels and the filled highball glass on the
counter.

He wondered whether he should assure her that
he’d prefer a beer to bourbon right now, whether he should explain
to her that while bourbon was a good drink to consume in the
company of bleak memories, in the company of an old friend beer was
more appropriate. He decided to say nothing.

She sat, and he took the chair across the table
from her. After she’d placed two slices of pizza on their plates,
he closed the lid of the box, giving himself an unobstructed view
of her face. Her eyes were still shining, lucid and cheerful, more
silver than gray.

He raised his bottle and clinked it against
hers. “Here’s to you,” he toasted.

“To you,” she said simultaneously, then
laughed. “To both of us.”

“To friendship,” he said, then drank. It was
all he could do to keep from toasting her laughter. The mere sound
of it brought back so many memories—good memories of romping at the
beach and racing each other on their bikes, engaging in cut-throat
competition over backgammon, showing off their knowledge and
goofing around. Shelley Ballard was a woman now, but her laughter
was young and musical and infectious.

She bit off the narrow point of her slice of
pizza, chewed and swallowed. Her eyes never straying from him, she
grinned. “I feel very self-conscious,” she declared.

“Why?”

“You’re staring at me. Why don’t you
eat?”

He dutifully took a bite. He didn’t stop
staring, though. “So, you actually live here on the
island.”

“I actually do. I’ve got a B.I. zip code, a
four-six-six telephone exchange and a Rhode Island driver’s
license.”

“And you’re here year-round. What’s it like in
the winter?” In all the years his parents had owned this house, he
had never been on the island during the winter.

“Empty,” she told him. “Cold and blissfully
empty. There are fewer than a thousand people here in the winter.
Everyone knows everyone. We look out for each other, but everyone
respects everyone else’s privacy. It’s very quiet.”

Why an attractive young woman like Shelley
would want that sort of quiet existence puzzled him. He had come to
the island to heal in solitude. What if Shelley had come for the
same reason?

“How did you wind up a pharmacist?” he
asked.

“God knows,” she said, then laughed again, a
shimmering laugh that warmed the room. “I don’t think it was a
conscious decision. It was subliminal.”

“Come on,” he argued with a smile. “Nobody
becomes a pharmacist subliminally. You’ve got to take all those
chemistry and biology courses.”

She sipped her beer, her lips curved in a grin
even as she tipped the bottle against her mouth. “Once I decided to
major in pharmacology, I took the courses I needed. I can assure
you I was very conscious of the curriculum. Amazingly enough, I
discovered I had a knack for applied science.” She took another
bite of her pizza. “How about you? What sort of work do you
do?”

“Financial consulting,” he answered. “You were
right--I’m a yuppie.”

“Wasn’t your father in finance?”

“Real estate and urban development,” Kip
corrected her. “My specialty is helping small companies organize
their financial strategies.”

“Did you do that in California,
too?”

He nodded, refusing to acknowledge the
reflexive twinge any mention of California invariably caused. “I
took an M.B.A. at Stanford. My life is really disgustingly
yuppie-ish,” he summarized with a smile. When was the last time
he’d been able to joke about his illustrious education and his
fast-track career? Only Shelley could get him to laugh at himself.
“For a while I was in danger of taking up golf, but the urge seems
to have faded.”

“Thank God,” Shelley said with pretended
solemnity. “You don’t wear plaid slacks, do you?”

“I avoid them like the plague,” he swore,
holding his hand up.

“Suspenders?”

“Never.”

“I guess you aren’t too far gone,
then.”

He chuckled. “And meanwhile, you’re running
around in a white coat, drugging people. You’ve got some nerve
making fun of me.”

“Kip, if anyone has the nerve to make fun of
you, it’s me.”

“Only because you know I’ll retaliate. So tell
me more about this white-coat job of yours. I still can’t imagine
you reading prescription slips and counting tablets.”

“Sometimes I can’t imagine it, either,” she
confessed, toying with a strand of mozzarella, her gaze distant as
she chased her thoughts. “I think I became a pharmacist because I
knew, deep in my heart, that I wanted to live here. I wanted to
come back to the island and settle down. And the island didn’t have
a pharmacist. If I got the training, I could provide a needed
service and support myself, too. It took a while to work it out. I
held a job in ‘America’ for a couple of years after graduation, and
waited until the pieces fell into place.”

“Do you own the pharmacy?”

She let out a snort. “I’m in debt up to my
ears, Kip. Even if I’d wanted to take out a business loan I
wouldn’t have qualified for one.”

That surprised him. He had never thought of the
Ballards as super-rich, but surely they’d been comfortably well
off. Shelley had never been strapped for funds when he’d known her.
He couldn’t believe her parents would refuse to lend her some money
if there was no other way to finance her dream.

Unless, of course, they couldn’t afford to help
her out. Perhaps that was what had happened to her the summer she’d
disappeared: a reversal in her family’s finances. “Was that it?” he
guessed. “Your family went broke?”

She had been reaching for a second slice of
pizza, but as soon as he’d verbalized his hunch she stopped. Her
hands fell to her lap and her gaze darted about the room, as if
searching for something to focus on.

“You don’t have to answer that,” he said
contritely.

“I think I do,” she responded. “That’s why I
came for dinner, isn’t it?”

“You came because we’re friends,” he said,
astonished at how right that sounded, how true it was. After so
many years without a word from her, she could reenter his life and
he could still think of her as a friend.

He watched as she curved her fingers around her
beer bottle and lifted it. Her hand trembled slightly as she
brought the bottle to her lips and sipped. Then she lowered it and
met his probing gaze. “Yes, Kip, my family went broke. In every
sense of the word.”

The confession seemed to exhaust her. She
returned her hand to her lap and leaned back in her chair, fixing
her eyes on something behind Kip, something just above his right
shoulder.

He waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t.
“I hated you for a while,” he said, then cringed at how reproachful
he sounded.

She accepted his rudeness without blinking.
“Because I never called you?” she asked.

“Never called, never wrote... I wrote to you,
but my letter was returned, stamped ‘Addressee Unknown.’ In all the
time we were friends, Shelley, we’d never had secrets—and then you
left without any explanation, without a single word.”

She seemed to be struggling to resurrect her
smile, but her eyes brimmed with sadness as they narrowed on his
face. “I had planned to call you,” she confessed. “I should have.
But...things didn’t work out the way I had hoped.”

“How did they work out?” he asked
gently.

She toyed with the label on her beer bottle,
tracing its edge with her fingernail. “It was my father,” she said,
her voice taking on a harsh quality. “You remember my father, don’t
you?”