Summer Rental (23 page)

“Nella needs to mind her own business,” Ty said.

“Look, Ty,” Angie went on. “I’m desperate, okay? Patricia’s definitely not coming in, and I’ve called all over, trying to round up somebody else to work, but you’re it. If you’ll stay ’til closing, I’ll owe you big time. You name it, you got it. Just don’t walk out of here and leave me without a bartender.”

Ty thought about it. Angie really was in a jam. If he left now, with only Nella and one other girl waiting tables, there’d likely be a riot. Anyway, he was in a jam of his own, wasn’t he? It was mid-August, and September was closing in. He needed to make some money, and he needed to make it fast. He looked over at Ellis, who returned his gaze. She smiled, raised her eyebrows, and gave a little wave.

He sighed. “You’re gonna have to spell me for half an hour. Then I’ll be back, and I’ll stay and close. But this is the last time. And it’s gonna cost you.”

“Anything,” she said fervently. “Name it.”

“You’re paying me twenty bucks an hour tonight,” Ty said. “Plus tip out. And no skimming. Nella and I can tell what tips oughta be tonight, and if you try and short us, it’ll be the last time I set foot in this place. Understand?”

“That’s extortion.”

“Yep,” Ty said. “And you could always refuse to pay, and I could take a walk.”

*   *   *

“Hey,” Ty said, sliding into the booth across from Ellis.

“Hey yourself,” Ellis said. “Pretty busy tonight, huh?”

“Yeah, and I’ve got bad news,” Ty said. “The chick who was supposed to be coming in at nine isn’t coming. Which means I’ve got to stay and close up—and I won’t get out of here ’til at least 1
A
.
M
.”

“Oh,” Ellis said, trying to hide her disappointment. “That’s too bad.”

“It’s a pain in the ass,” Ty said. “But they can’t get anybody else this late, so it’s all me. Look, I’ve got, like, a fifteen-minute break. I’ll run you home, and if you’ll give me a rain check, maybe we could hang out another night.”

“Sure,” Ellis said, trying to sound noncommittal. “But don’t worry about me. I can get a cab or something.…”

“No way.” He held out his hand. “C’mon. The quicker we get out of here, the more time I can spend with you.”

“All fifteen minutes,” Ellis said.

Ten minutes later they pulled into the driveway at Ebbtide. The porch light was on, and Madison’s room on the top floor of the house was lit up, but the rest of the house was dark.

Ty left the Bronco’s motor running. “This really sucks,” he said fervently.

“It’s all right,” Ellis said. “It’s not like we had a date or anything.”

“We didn’t really have a date, but that’s not all right with me,” Ty said. “What about another night this week? Most of the best restaurants are closed Mondays. Maybe Tuesday night?”

“Uh,” Ellis said. Her brain was frozen. He was asking her out. For a real date. Suddenly, she was fifteen again, tongue-tied and paralyzed with shyness.

“Wednesday night, then?” Ty asked.

“No, I mean, yes, Tuesday night would be fine,” Ellis finally managed.

“Great,” Ty said, relieved.

Grateful that the awkward moment had ended, Ellis fumbled around, looking for the door handle. But before she could find it, Ty leapt out of the car, jogged around, and opened it for her.

He took her hand and helped her out of the car, pulling her to him in one fluid movement, just as naturally as if he had done it a million other star-filled summer nights. And to her amazement, her arms went around his neck, just as though she’d been doing this all her life too. He found a tendril of dark ha
ir trailing on her shoulder blade, and tucked it behind her ear, kissing first her shoulder blade and then her ear. Finally, his lips found hers. He teased her lips open with his tongue. And then the front pocket of his jeans began to vibrate, and then ring.

“Damn it,” he said, reluctantly letting her go. “That’s Angie, screaming that I gotta get back. Which I do.”

He kissed the tip of Ellis’s nose. “To be continued, right?”

“Right,” Ellis agreed. “Absolutely.”

She made a concerted effort to march briskly up the steps to Ebbtide, turning at the door to watch Ty’s car backing down the driveway. She hummed lightly as she swept through the ground floor of the house, checking the locks, corking a bottle of wine somebody had left on the kitchen counter, turning off the lights.

Ellis was halfway up the stairs when she recognized the tune she’d been humming. “Dancing in the Dark.” In her bedroom, she hung up the pink sundress, slipped into her cupcake pjs, and climbed under the covers. She stretched and yawned contentedly, and clicked off the lamp on her bedside table. A summer fling! Ellis Sullivan was having herself a summer fling. As Julia had said, “It’s about damned time.”

23

Tuesday morning, Dorie rolled down the elastic waistband of her pajama bottoms so that they barely rested on her pubic bone. She lay flat on the worn chenille bedspread, lifted her chin, and stared down at the soft, pale roundness of her belly. Sometime in the past ten days, when she’d been preoccupied with the future, the present caught up with her.

She closed her eyes and rested the palms of her hands lightly on the bump. Her belly. Her baby. This was really happening. She’d dog-eared her second-hand copy of
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
. And at fourteen weeks, she—and the baby—were right on track. Her boobs had grown at least a cup size, spilling out of all her bras and the last bathing suit that still fit. The nausea was gone, she was starting to regain her energy, and just the night before, she was sure—positive, really—that the flutter she’d felt was the baby stirring. Now, if only the rest of her life would get on track.

It was 10
A
.
M
. She’d been watching the clock since waking shortly after seven. At every hour mark, she thought about Stephen. He’d always been an early riser. Should she call him at daybreak? Dorie couldn’t
bear to think about her husband waking up in Matt’s bed. Or would he be alone? At eight, she forced herself to rehearse what she would say when she did call.

“Stephen? There’s something I need to tell you. I’m sorry to do this on the phone, but I just couldn’t see you before. And I didn’t know how to tell you. But now I do. And the thing is … I’m pregnant.”

She’d imagined a dozen different responses from him. Shock. Disbelief. Anger. Confusion. Happiness? Could this possibly be news he’d welcome? Could he possibly feel what she’d come to feel—deep, unalloyed joy?

The joy was something else that had taken her by surprise. Not that she wasn’t still worried about the future—she was! But thinking about this baby gave her a feeling of peace, of such completeness, such absolute rightness, she was almost afraid to allow herself to dip her toe in such a fountain of happiness. The baby books said it was hormonal, but she didn’t care. Whatever else happened next, nothing could change the fact of this baby.

At nine, Dorie told herself she should wait. Just a little longer. Let Stephen settle into the day. He would be at school now, she thought, putting together lesson plans for the coming year. Or maybe he’d be in meetings with the rest of the coaches, plotting the soccer team’s upcoming season.

Thinking about school, about their colleagues there, made Dorie queasy, and not for the first time. Our Lady of Angels Academy was a small community. Six hundred girls, thirty teachers. It was a Catholic school with conservative values, ruled by the sixty-six-year-old Sister Mary Thomasine, who’d been running OLA with an iron will and a velvet voice since way before Dorie’s own school days there. What would Sister Thomasine make of Dorie and Stephen’s situation—of Stephen leaving his wife, and for another man? And what would she say about Dorie—and her pregnancy?

Stephen was such an introvert; he had friends on the faculty, but Dorie couldn’t think of anybody he might have confided in about the demise of their marriage.

At ten o’clock, she could stand it no longer. She tapped the icon on her phone for Stephen’s number, holding her breath, half afraid he would answer, half afraid he wouldn’t.

On the third ring, he picked up.

“Dorie?” he was out of breath.

“Hey, Stephen,” she said softly.

“Hi,” he said. He took a deep breath. She did the same. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

“Yours too,” she said, frowning. He could have called her. He hadn’t even tried.

“So,” he said finally. “You’re still in Nags Head? With the girls?”

“Yes,” she said. Stupid question. He knew perfectly well where she was.

“How’s it going?” he asked. “Is it as hot there as it is here?”

“Maybe a little cooler,” she said. “We had a big rain Sunday, and that cooled things off. How is it down there?”

This was ridiculous, Dorie thought. If she wanted a weather report, she could just look it up on the Internet. She had to quit stalling.

“You know,” Stephen said wearily. “It’s Savannah in August. Hot. Muggy. Buggy. Pretty much unbearable.”

“How’s your dad?” Dorie asked. “Any better?”

“Oh.” His voice dropped. “Oh, God, Dorie. I … you didn’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Dorie, I left you a message. On the house phone. I thought you knew. Dad … Oh Jesus. Dorie, we lost Dad. It’s been, what? A week? I thought you knew.”

“What?” she cried. “How would I know? I never check the house phone for messages, Stephen, you know that. Why didn’t you call my cell?”

“It all happened so fast,” Stephen said, his voice sounding defensive. “They put him in hospice care on a Thursday, and Mom thought, well, we’d still have some time. And the next morning, as soon as she got to his room, he just … his heart just stopped.”

“Stephen!” She was weeping now. “I am so, so sorry.” Sorry for the sweet man Henry had been. For Stephen’s mother, a quiet, reserved Midwesterner whom Dorie had never quite felt comfortable calling “Mom.” And yes, she was crying for Stephen, and for herself, and for this baby she was carrying, who would never know its grandfather Henry.

“Is your mom okay?”

“You know,” he said. “She’s sad, she misses him, but my mom isn’t one to talk a lot about that kind of stuff. Stoic, I guess that’s the word for her.”

“Have they already had the funeral?” she asked, sitting up, dabbing at her eyes with the corner of her bedsheet.

“Well, yeah,” Stephen said. “It was last week.”

“And you didn’t think to try to call me? To make sure I knew?” Dorie’s face grew hot as her voice rose. “How could you?”

“I just … I don’t know,” he said, his voice drifting away. “I’m sorry, Dorie. After what’s happened with us, I didn’t know if you would, you know, care.”

“So that’s it?” she cried. “You sleep with somebody else, move out, and you think that’s it, you just click your heels together and we’re done? All our history, what we had together, all that’s over because you’ve decided you don’t love me anymore?”

“Dorie!” Stephen’s voice cracked. “Don’t. You know it’s not like that.”

“No, Stephen,” she said. “I don’t know that it’s not like that. How would I? We haven’t talked all summer.”

“I tried to call you. I came by the house. You saw me. I know you did. I’m sorry I didn’t let you know about Dad. Truly. He loved you, Dorie.”

“And I loved him,” Dorie said. “Which is why it hurts that you didn’t let me know.” She was being unbelievably bitchy, unfeeling, cruel even. She sounded just like her mother had, screaming at her father, back in the bad old days. And she just couldn’t stop herself. “Let me ask you something, Stephen.”

“What?”

“Did you tell
Matt
about your dad’s death?”

“Stop it, Dorie,” he said.

“Just tell me. Did you?”

“Of course. He was standing right there when I got the call.”

“And did
Matt
go to your dad’s funeral?”

“God. No. Just stop it, Dorie. I mean, what’s the point of all this?”

“Did he go to Omaha with you? Did he?”

“I’m not discussing this with you.”

“He did, didn’t he?”

“Cut it out.”

“No. I won’t cut it out. I think I have a right to know who’s taking my place. So, I think we’ve established that Matt went to Omaha. How did you introduce him to your mother? ‘Hey Mom, Dorie’s out of the picture, meet the little mister?’ So now the next question is this: did the two of you sleep in your old room? The one with the
Star Wars
bedspreads and all your soccer trophies? In the same bed
we
slept in?”

“Fuck you, Dorie,” he said. “I’m hanging up now.”

She had never heard him use that kind of language before. But then, she’d never talked to him this way before either. “Don’t you dare hang up,” she said shakily. “Wait just a minute. There’s a reason I called you today. And I’m so glad I did, since we seem to be sharing secrets.”

“What? I’ve gotta go, Dorie. I don’t have time for your crap.”

She hesitated, feeling the bile rise in her throat. This was not how she wanted to share this news. Not this way. She did not want to float the baby news on this regrettable torrent of anger. But the toothpaste was out of the tube now, as her grandmother would say. And there was no going back.

“Congratulations, Stephen,” she said finally. “You’re going to be a father. I’m pregnant.”

“What? What did you just say?”

Not the reaction she’d been expecting from him, this sudden deafness.

Dorie took a deep breath, enunciating each syllable with care. She didn’t intend to repeat herself again. “I said … I’m pregnant.”

There was a long silence. She could hear his breathing, rapid and ragged. Maybe he’d just gotten back from a run. Or maybe her news was giving him a heart attack.

“Stephen?”

“I’m here,” he said. “Oh, God, Dorie. A baby? When?”

“February. I’m almost four months pregnant.”

“Wow. Just … I don’t know what to say, Dorie. I mean, you call me up and yell at me because I didn’t tell you about my dad, and now you just casually blurt out the news about this baby?”

Dorie tried to laugh, but it wasn’t funny. “Not so casual. I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you for weeks and weeks. I even rehearsed what I
’d say. Somehow, it didn’t go as well as I’d planned. I’m sorry I yelled at you. And I’m really so sorry about Henry. The sweetest, dearest man … I wish he could have known about the baby.”