Summer Harbor (16 page)

The next morning, Kiley flattened
The Boston Globe
out on the kitchen table to look at the want ads. There were a fair number of nurse practitioner positions open, all in the greater Boston area; too far from Southton to commute to daily. Her local hospital was always on the brink of financial collapse, and she knew that the staffing was bare-bones. Maybe she could get a studio apartment in Boston and do three twelve-hour days. She could be home the rest of the time. Kiley leaned her elbows on the paper and rested her forehead on her clenched hands.
Come on, it’s time to live large.
Will would be in Ithaca. What was holding her to Southton except her parents? And she’d be home four days out of seven. When Will came home for semester break, they could do Boston properly, without the mad rush to get home. Museums, the theater. Fine dining.

Kiley folded the paper and crammed it into the wastebasket. She had time, and so much else held her attention; she just couldn’t focus on job hunting too. Sandy had called again this morning to tell her that everyone in the office had been given three months’ pay—a short reprieve from having to make a hasty decision. Will was right; it was time to try something new. Maybe she’d even get out of the medical profession and do something completely different.

Kiley went out to the front porch and sat down in one of the rocking chairs. Out in the wide cove, sailboats glided across the water. Will might be in one of them. Kiley wasn’t sure how she felt about it. On the one hand, she was quietly pleased that he wanted to learn how to sail; on the other, aware that he would probably badger Grainger for more of the story. What would Grainger tell him?

He still hadn’t called her back. If he didn’t want the business, he shouldn’t have told her to call him. She wasn’t going to try again. He’d backed off so quickly from her yesterday it was pretty clear he didn’t want anything to do with her. She should just leave him alone.

Kiley thumped her hand against the rocking chair arm. She hadn’t tagged the rockers yet. Wherever would she put them at home? They were too big for a living room, and her parents’ sunporch, with its white wicker, was all wrong for the painted chairs. She stroked the flat arm of the rocker and picked at its chipped paint. They needed painting; where it wasn’t chipped, the green paint was powdered.

Now that she had been here for a while, Kiley could see that everything wasn’t exactly like she remembered: everything was old and worn, and the warmth of their familiarity had gone. These objects had entered her present, and the luster of their existence in her memory was dimmed. Now she looked at these objects dispassionately. Just as she should look at Grainger Egan. Heaving a dramatic sigh, Kiley got up to call him again. She was only acting in her father’s interest.

As she was looking up the boatyard’s number, the phone rang.

“It’s Dad. Have you made arrangements for the boat yet?”

“I was just about to leave another message for Grainger. He apparently doesn’t return phone calls.”

“Well, I’ve had a change of heart.”

“I’m so glad. I think that selling both the house and the boat in the same summer is too much.”

“No, no. I’m still going to sell her, but first I’m going to race her one more time in the August Races. It’s a great way to draw attention to her. So I need you to find me a crew.”

Kiley rubbed her forehead with tense fingers. “Dad, I don’t think that’s doable.”

“Course it is. Just put up a notice at the club; you’ll have half a dozen interested.
Random
is a winning boat; everyone wants a chance on her.”

“How many do you need?”

“Well, you and I are two, if Will knew how to sail, I’d ask him…”

“He’s taking lessons.”

“Good for him. That’s my boy. Great, if he’s any good, we’ll bring him aboard. Now, we need at least one more. I’m not likely to be any real help, to tell you the truth, so get someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“One problem, Dad.”

“What’s that?”

“Will and I won’t be here in August.”

“You’re unemployed, so if you wanted to stay on, you could.”

“I don’t want to stay on. I’m almost done now with the inventory, and maybe we’ll head home sooner.”

“Don’t gyp Will out of his vacation.” Merriwell’s voice had begun to feather away, as it often did when he conversed for more than a few minutes.

“I’m almost done, and I might even leave early if a job suddenly comes up. But I’ll put a notice up on the board with your home number on it.”

“Think about it, Kiley. This is the last time you’ll ever be in Hawke’s Cove.”

The last time. Her father was right, but about something else besides simply being in Hawke’s Cove. This was her last chance to make things right with Grainger. Kiley dialed his number again, but this time the phone rang and rang without the answering machine picking up. Either he had it off or the tape was full. Kiley went back out to the porch. Shielding her eyes against the morning sun, she gazed out at the sailboats, wondering which one might hold her son, and Grainger.

Grainger saw the blinking red light on his answering machine as he plugged in the coffeemaker. He felt a slight guilt. He hadn’t checked messages for several days, a bad habit born of an innate distaste for the phone, and the tape was full. Most of the calls would be from anxious clients hoping to convince him to put their work first. Every year after the holiday, owners got nudgie, as if they suddenly realized half the summer was gone. Despite all his efforts to get these folks to call him in March instead of June, they persisted in believing they could get their boats in the water by the Fourth.

Just as Grainger began to play the messages, Will pulled into the driveway. Grainger pressed the stop button. Time enough to catch up once they were back from Will’s lesson. Will was a little early and waited on the doorstep, shivering in the early morning chill. Grainger let him in and handed him a cup of coffee. “Go get a life jacket out of the locker and meet me on the beach.”

Ever since hearing that Kiley and her son were in town, a viselike grip in Grainger’s chest had begun to tighten, its constriction more pronounced after his having seen them together in the Osprey’s Nest, tighter as he watched Will play baseball and Kiley pitch the way he had taught her. Tightest of all when he saw her with Conor MacKenzie. Grainger wondered briefly if there was something physically wrong with him, but it was an all-too-familiar sensation. There was no cure. He was too old to be jumping off mainmasts, too old to be running away from unhappy memories. This kid, so like his mother, had him reliving a past he had successfully suppressed. Will’s existence destroyed his former ability to keep his past in check simply by not thinking about it. How could he keep this kid out of his mind?

Grainger had promised to tell Will the story. The sorry tale of how three best friends could lose the very thing they held most dear, because of human nature.

He pushed the dinghy into the water and waited for Will to amble out of the boathouse. He had the life jacket on but not fastened, and Grainger gestured to him to get it done. “Safety first, Will.” He took Will’s mug of coffee and sat in the bow of the dinghy. “Do you know how to row?”

“Sure, I’ve rowed a dozen times on lakes.”

“Row us out to the boat, then.” Grainger sipped coffee out of his own travel mug as the boy rowed them out to the waiting sailboat.

In literature the protagonist is brought face-to-face with his bête noire; why else would the story be written? In the person of this boy, a boy exactly the age they had been, Grainger couldn’t shake the sense that there was no escaping his demons.

They climbed aboard the little Beetle Cat and into the cockpit, Will’s bare knees as coltish as Mack’s had been. It suddenly seemed exactly the right place to be. Where else could this story be told except on the water?

Will followed Grainger’s orders with a minimum of questioning, and they were under way in a few minutes. Grainger handed Will his cool coffee and reviewed the lexicon with him, then helped him settle in at the tiller. Will was a quick study, and in fifteen minutes they were into the arms of the little private cove, and swept by the outgoing tide into the open waters surrounding Hawke’s Cove. He jibed correctly if not gracefully at Grainger’s orders, and they set off, keeping the length of the peninsula as their guide. Grainger and Will were half a mile offshore. The most private place on earth.

A fine sizzle marked their speed. There was nothing left to do but sit in silence or speak.

“Mr. Egan?”

“Yes, Will?”

“Will you tell me what happened now?”

“What are we going to tell Mack?” Kiley had gone into the small bathroom and taken a quick shower. Grainger remained on the bed, breathing in the scent of their lovemaking. She stepped out, fully dressed. “What are we going to do?”

Grainger pulled the bedsheet over his nakedness. “I don’t know. Maybe we don’t say anything.”

“He’ll know.”

“How?”

“The same way you knew.” She sat down on the bed.

Grainger watched her bend to tie her sneakers. “How I knew what?”

Her hair was loose and sheeted across her cheek, hiding her face from his view. “That he and I had, I don’t know, paired off.”

Grainger knew that he had robbed Mack of the woman he loved. It was worse than the way that Mack had deprived him of Kiley; Grainger had stolen her. And Grainger had slept with her; they’d made love all afternoon. That made her his, and bonded them together now in a way he could never have imagined a day ago. Grainger lay back and pressed a pillow against his face to hide the guilt. “What are we going to do? I don’t want to hurt him.”

Kiley took the pillow away from Grainger’s face. Hers was a mask of sorrow. “No matter what happens, someone is going to be hurt.” She touched his cheek, then touched his lips with the tips of her fingers, but did not kiss him. “I have to go.”

“Do we tell him together?”

Kiley paused in the doorway. “I think I should do it alone.”

Grainger trusted her. She would be gentle and explain to Mack that, although she loved him, with Grainger it was more powerful. They’d slept together. With that act, they had memorialized the sincerity of their new relationship.

There was a break in Grainger’s story as he instructed Will on coming about. Tall but agile, Will ducked easily under the boom. They had gone halfway to the end of the peninsula; now they had to come back. Not much farther lay glacier-strewn boulders, often hidden by water-shifted sands, making navigational charts and Loran a necessity to avoid them. It wasn’t enough to have experience. Here and there Grainger could see lobster buoys marking pots, and he knew that they were coming close to dangerous waters.

Grainger was grateful Will said nothing as he talked, because then he could tell this the way he remembered it, to better explain himself when he approached the conclusion of the story. Will never looked directly at Grainger, either, keeping his eyes like a sailor on the sail or the tiller or the horizon. Grainger let him sail on, confident he was listening, confident that he would let him finish the story his own way.

Grainger got up and headed back to Hawke’s Cove. Only a coward would stay away. Despite Kiley’s desire to be the one to tell Mack of their love, he knew he couldn’t let her do it alone.

It was a moonless night, and the only light as he approached the Yacht Club came from the three post lamps that cast a weak light along the boardwalk. Storm pennants snapped from the flagpole. They should put chafing gear on
Blithe Spirit,
Grainger thought as he felt the northeast wind against his face. He took a small comfort from the momentary reprieve from his crowded and uncomfortable thoughts. How was Mack going to take this? Would he behave as badly as Grainger had, sulking and hurt? Or would Mack rise to it, and be happy for them?

Inside, the lights were bright. Music blared out through the open doors—the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” song, signaling the end of the dance, the end of the dances for the summer of1984. Grainger could see the Doublemints through the lighted windows, smiling at each other like faces in a mirror. He knew that Kiley and Mack wouldn’t be inside; they’d have gone to the privacy of the beach.

As Grainger’s feet crunched the moist sand he strained to hear their voices, but could hear only the high whine of the wind through rigging. He was nearly to the Yacht Club pier with its dinghy platform tied alongside. Grainger stood still and listened again.

Then he heard their voices. They were on the end of the pier, looking out into the darkness, speaking so softly their voices might have been the lapping of the waves against the pilings. Kiley’s white blouse caught his eye, a ghost of shape, a slight movement against a motionless black.

“I’m so sorry.” Distinct words, thickened by regret.

They both turned toward Grainger as he stepped on the splintery planks of the pier.

Mack stood up, and Grainger could see the belligerence in his posture. “You fucking bastard!”

“Mack, we couldn’t fight it.” Grainger kept moving toward where they stood on the end of the pier, compelled to close the space. “It was too powerful. We love each other.”

“Is this true, Kiley?”

Kiley stood between them. She placed a hand on each of their chests, as if holding them apart, and, at the same time, connecting herself to both of them. She didn’t answer.

“After what we did, how can you say you love
him?”
Mack grasped the hand that was touching his chest.

Grainger took a step back, away from Kiley’s hand. “What did you do?”

“Grainger, I thought you knew.” Kiley reached out for him, but he moved back another step.

His heart was pounding; he felt submerged, afraid to gasp for air because he might drown. “You slept with Mack and then with me?”

Grainger never saw the blow coming. His head hit the plank decking and he was numbed with the fall. He heard Kiley scream, but it seemed distant. Mack stepped on his fingers as he ran down the length of the pier. The pier beneath him was spinning, and the starless night gave him no point of reference to climb back onto his feet.

Then Kiley was there, tugging at his hands to get upright. “He’s taken the dinghy. Stop him, Grainger!”

Grainger slumped on the pier, his legs unable to hold him up. Mack had sucker punched him, and with his blow came the realization that Kiley Harris had come between them. She would go on with her life elsewhere, graduate from her prestigious school, marry a lawyer, and laugh about the summer she’d come between best friends. Slept with best friends. Grainger pushed her away from him and struggled to his feet. “Leave him alone. Leave me alone.”

Kiley grabbed at his arm, pleading with him. “Stop him, Grainger.”

“
You
stop him.” Kiley Harris had cost him everything. Foolishly, he had believed that her love would be worth Mack’s hurt and anger, worth losing the only stable home he’d ever had. He’d even believed Mack would accept it over time. But Mack’s punch had cleared his head, and the magnitude of his mistake tightened the pressure in his chest. She had slept with both of them. What he’d believed had been only his was a sham, a joke, a lie. “I never want to see you again.”

“Grainger, no. Please. Let me explain.”

The sound of a two-cycle engine cut through the inharmonic chiming of halyards against aluminum masts.

It was more than he could bear. “Get the fuck out of my life, Kiley Harris.”

“Mack went out that night in
Blithe Spirit.
It was a stupid thing to do—there were storm warnings up, and he didn’t have a life jacket. He was hurt and angry, and when you’re in that state of mind, you do stupid things. Lobstermen found
Blithe Spirit
the next morning, on the rocks.” It was as far as he could go with the story.

“But what happened to Mack?” Will adjusted his tension on the mainsheet, still not looking at Grainger.

How could he not know what had happened? Or did he just need to hear it said?

Grainger reached over and covered Will’s hand on the tiller with his own. “Mack is dead, Will. Lost at sea.”

Will looked down at their hands, then up to meet Grainger’s eyes at last. “So, which one of you is my father?”