Stranger on the Shore (Mirabelle Harbor, Book 4) (12 page)

I dialed Kathryn’s cell phone and she answered on the first ring. “Jesus, Mom, where have you been?”

But I didn’t answer this. I had questions of my own. “Kathryn, honey, what’s wrong? Are you hurt? In trouble?”
Oh, God. Hopefully nothing serious...

“No, Mom, I’m just mad.” She huffed on the line, so much like my sister that it scared me a little. Once upon a time, Kathryn had been a shy and quiet girl. Now it was like having Ellen II around to railroad me all over again.

“About what?” I asked. Although I had to admit to feeling a tiny bit guilty for having left my cell phone at the bungalow, I hadn’t expected to be gone nearly that long and, obviously, I hadn’t expected a crisis to pop up on a random Thursday while I was out window shopping and buying fudge and water shoes. To discover my daughter was, thankfully, only
mad,
and not hurt or in trouble, took away some of my initial panic, but it also made me feel a bolt of resentment at having my unusually good mood shattered.

“I’ve been trying to reach you for
hours
about this, and you’ve been ignoring my calls.”

“Kathryn,” I said, exhaling very slowly, “I was not ignoring you. I was just out for the day and—”

“Whatever,” she interrupted. “The problem is with you and Dad. He’s so pissed off with you that he’s called me three times this week just to rant, and he almost never calls. He kept me on the phone for
an hour
this morning, asking me questions about the sale of the house. Why did you have to argue with him again? I thought you said all of that was over. You
promised
me it would be over.”

The accusation in her voice hung in the airwaves between us as I tried to process this latest betrayal by my ex. As always, when it came to the harebrained things Donny did, I saw shades of scarlet. I had to blink all of the red away and swallow twice before I could trust myself to open my mouth and begin to construct some kind of an answer.

“Sweetheart,” I began, “what did he want to know about the house?”

My daughter forced out another puff of air. “Oh, like how much it sold for, exactly, and what extravagant things you’ve already purchased with the cash, and some stuff about my scholarship. I really don’t know many of the house details, and I told him that. I just—I just don’t understand why you two can’t get along. And share things. Can’t you just give him some money from the sale? He said he’d help
you
if
you
were desperate and in need.”

This felt like being stabbed. Damn him.

I’d spent nearly two decades being the responsible parent. Being the one who set limits on our daughter’s behavior and her bedtimes. Who saved for her braces and took her to orthodontist appointments. Who had to say “no” to getting the puppy we couldn’t afford to take care of and “yes” to a reasonable curfew in high school. Who signed her permission slips and went to parent-teacher conferences. I was the one who, on principle, wouldn’t badmouth the girl’s father—just because
he was her dad
—even after our divorce. Even when I knew, from his infrequent phone calls to our daughter, that he’d never offer me the same courtesy.

This, however, was an example of Donny going way too far. I always figured Kathryn understood the truth without my having to say anything specific. That she knew he couldn’t be trusted. He’d left
both
of us after all. Maybe I should have been clearer, though. Maybe my days of trying to protect his image with our daughter were over.

Well, actually, there was no
maybe
about it.

I took a deep breath. “Sweetie, do you remember when you turned twelve and you got that locket from Aunt Ellen and Uncle Jared? It was your golden birthday, so they gave you a golden heart locket on a gold chain?”

“Yeah. So?”

“Remember how a few months later it disappeared? At first, I thought you’d lost it at school, but you insisted you had it when you came home on Friday afternoon. That you took it off in your room and put it in your jewelry box as always, but you couldn’t find it when you wanted to wear it the next week.”

“Yeah, I remember cleaning my room really well, but it never turned up.” She sighed. “What does that have to do with anything?”

I squeezed my eyes shut, dreading having to tell my still innocent daughter the rest of this particular story. “It was a 24-carat gold locket and chain, Kathryn. About a week or so after you told me it was missing, I was doing the laundry and I found the receipt from the pawn shop in your dad’s jeans pocket.” I paused to let this understanding sink in to my daughter’s mind, and to let myself have a moment to swallow back the bitterness of that discovery over seven years ago. It wasn’t just Donny’s theft of the necklace that made me realize it was the beginning of the end for us. It was also the lack of respect toward his daughter, his wife, and even his in-laws that this act demonstrated, underscoring our marital problems. Not to mention his stunning lack of remorse when I confronted him about it.

“She’s a kid,” he’d said dismissively, even though I’d been in tears over the incident. “She won’t miss it, and we need to put food on the table.” Only it wasn’t food he’d used the money for. It was drink. Specifically,
his
drinks—and Vince Jordy’s—at Pritchett’s Pub, a place an hour away from Mirabelle Harbor, near the dog-racing tracks.

“That...that can’t be true,” Kathryn whispered.

“I wish it weren’t,” I told her. “But I swear it is. I even kept the slip. I could prove it to you.” The necklace was gone when I went to the pawn shop to try to find it. Not that it would’ve mattered. The damage had already been done as far as I was concerned. But I’d hoped, even then, that I could save Kathryn from this pain of his betrayal. “I’ve reached my limit with your dad’s irresponsible behavior. With trying to cover for him when he does something foolish or underhanded. I’m sorry to have to say this to you, but your necklace was just the tip of the iceberg. I’m not giving him any more chances.”

There was silence on the line for a full fifteen seconds and no further comments from my daughter on the subject—at least not at the moment. But I knew her. Knew she needed time to assimilate this information. To remember all the other incidents from her childhood that didn’t quite make sense before and to wonder if there had been anything else her father might have lied to her about. No doubt, Kathryn would think of several possible occasions. More questions would invariably come later.

In an attempt to lighten the mood, I inquired about her job at the campus store selling books and sweatshirts to students during the summer school session. (Answer: “Fine.”)

I then asked about her college friends in general and, specifically, about her two roommates. (Answer: “They’re good.”)

Finally, I asked about her boyfriend Sid, a young man Kathryn had been dating for five or six months. Exclusively. (Answer: “He’s really great. He’s just so wonderful to be around. And smart. And funny.”) Kathryn all but gushed, speaking of the boy using multiple—albeit short—sentences. This could only mean one thing: They were desperately in love and sleeping together.

Heaven help us all.

But, of course, I could hardly give my daughter decent relationship advice, and I’d already mentioned a few times that I thought she and Sid were getting serious
way
too fast. I didn’t dare bring it up again. From what I could sense, my baby girl was already teetering on the brink of cutting her annoying mom out of her life as it was, and Donny the Idiot wasn’t helping matters. I didn’t want to push my daughter away or close down the lines of communication, however thin. I didn’t want Kathryn to rebel against her parents like I’d once rebelled against mine. Look where that led?

“I love you, Kathryn,” I said before we hung up.

And I enjoyed the minor victory of hearing my daughter reply, “Yeah. You, too, Mom,” before clicking off.

But it was hard to know how Kathryn would react to this new information about her dad once she’d had a chance to think deeply about it. I suspected I’d still be blamed for it in some way, at least in part. For not being able to stop him from doing dishonorable things. For not being a stronger, more assertive woman. For not leaving him—and for letting him, instead, leave us. For not telling Kathryn a few truths about him much sooner.

I had to face it. I blamed myself for all of these. Why shouldn’t Kathryn blame me, too?

I set down the phone, finally, and closed my eyes. I could hear the crashing of the surf outside, and I let the waves wash in—and then out—all of the day’s memories:

My excursion to St. Armand’s Circle, visiting shops, buying fudge and beach-walking shoes.

Meeting Joy, Lorelei, and Abby, making jewelry with them, and experiencing the camaraderie of a group of women friends after such a long drought.

Seeing that man from the beach and finding out that he was kind, generous, funny...and a little insecure about his artwork...and a little weird about his father. Which kept him from being too perfect.

Everything in the Circle was so new and charming.

Then having the past collide with the present on the shores of my mind—talking with my frustrated daughter, hearing news of my cheap and childish ex, being reminded of the uncomfortable realization that this time down in Florida was just an escape from my old and un-charming daily life.

It was like reading a hot romance novel or watching a humorous chick flick. When the book ended or the houselights went up or the summer vacation at your sister’s bungalow was over, it was back to reality. I had to face that as the truth. No use getting too attached to anything here. It would all disappear, like Cinderella’s fancy gown and carriage, just as soon as six more weeks were up.

I flipped on the TV, suddenly in need of noise. There was news, some weird music videos, a really tasteless sitcom, and a talk show I’d never seen.

“Christina Chats!”
the placard behind the wild-looking woman proclaimed.

The Christina in question was about twenty-five, had purple streaks in her long dark hair, and was wearing what looked to be a zigzag-patterned body suit—in shades of fuchsia and lilac. I tilted my head and stared at the screen to get a different angle. Gotta wonder how a person like Joy might describe the talk-show host if, even to me, the woman looked like some kind of bizarre fusion between a zebra and a bunch of Concord grapes.

“We’re talking with my girls—Tatiana, Brandy, and Jenni,” Christina said with an enthusiastic shimmy that should be banned in at least forty-seven states. She added a fist pump, which set her abundant chest jiggling, more noticeable than ever in that skintight outfit. I wondered idly what the woman’s mother thought of Christina’s television wardrobe.

“Starting over at
thirty
. That’s our topic tonight!” Christina all but shouted from her faux-hardwood-floor stage as the three guests sat awkwardly behind her on a faux-brown-leather sofa. “These wonder women gave it a shot and are stoked to share their results.”

Not sure I wanted to watch this. Well, actually, I was absolutely positive I
didn’t
want to watch this...but I was even less inclined to watch news reports from a war zone, a dumb sitcom, or Lady Gaga singing anything.

“Jenni, I know there was tremendous heartbreak in your past.” (Cue the maudlin background music as a twenty-second video clip played on the screen just behind them all.) “You got fired from your job, your boyfriend cheated on you, your brother was incarcerated, your great aunt, who was like a mother to you, died suddenly, and even your pet Rottweiler was taken from you and put in a shelter—all within just six months,” Christina said, furrowing her thinly tweezed brows with faux concern. (“Faux” was big on
Christina Chats!
) “Can you tell us your story?”

Jenni, a perky little blonde, went on to describe her sad tale in well-rehearsed sound bites, ending with how she began getting, and I quote, “life coaching lessons from this awesome surfer from Pasadena” and was now planning their beach wedding for August. “It totally just took the power of positive thinking and finally finding the courage to get that cute flamingo tattoo I always wanted,” Jenni confided, flashing her lower calf where the lanky bird was etched in dark pink just above her ankle. “‘Cuz the tat shop was where I met my surfer man.”

“And
that
,” Christina added sagely, “was when you realized you could stand on your own two feet—or even just on
one
—and you went to work on
you
.”

The studio audience clapped wildly at this insightful connection. Jenni giggled in a series of surprised little bursts and said, “Oh, my God, I never thought of it like that!” And I found it impossible to watch even a minute more of this dreck.

Maybe Lady Gaga wasn’t so bad.

However, I managed to find my own courage and clicked off the TV instead. Then I began sifting through Ellen’s and Jared’s books on the shelf next to the DVD player.

I’d already rifled through the magazine stack, but there were novels and Siesta Key guidebooks still left unexamined. I set aside anything that might include fun and inexpensive daytrips around this region of Florida and turned my attention to the other books: A couple of Jared’s legal thrillers; some serious women’s fiction tale about friends and death; a series of historical romances set in Scotland, featuring hunky, shirtless men (wielding swords) on the cover; a few Jane Austen-inspired stories, including this odd one where the heroine has the ghost of Jane in her head, giving her dating advice; a number of nonfiction books on sailing; a collection of essays on shells; and a memoir or two.

I picked up the essay collection—
Gift from the Sea
by Anne Morrow Lindbergh—and flipped through it, reading random passages. Anne wrote lyrically, though with utter clarity, on topics such as how shells were the homes of various sea creatures, but how the structure of those shells fit them individually and perfectly—at least for a time. How the different shells could represent different stages in a woman’s life. How Anne herself managed to find peace and some small measure of serenity on the shores of her beach. Reflecting on her life experiences, with all of their gifts and challenges, in solitude.