Sweet Salt Air (3 page)

Nicole was eyeing her shoes. “
Love
those. Paris?”

Charlotte grinned. “Absolutely.”

“And your sweater? Not Paris, but fabulous. So
authentic
.” Her voice grew urgent. “Where did you get it? I need one.”

“Sorry, sweetie. It’s a hand-me-down from a woman in Ireland.”

“
So
perfect for this place. It’s been a dismal, cloudy June. I should have warned you, but I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

“I’ve survived dismal and cloudy before.” She glanced up the hill. “The island looks just the same.” Past the Chowder House were the general store left and the post office right, both buildings long and low so as not to tempt the wind. “Like nothing’s changed.”

“Little has. But we do have Wi-Fi at the house. Got it set up last week.”

“For just us two?” she asked to be sure. Nicole had initially told her that Julian would be up with her the week before, but was planning to leave before Charlotte arrived. If he had decided to stay on, it would change the tenor of her visit, putting the fragility of her relationship with Nicole front and center.

But Nicole was all cool confidence. “Hey. We deserve it. Besides, if I don’t keep blogging, people will lose interest and wander away, and then there won’t be as many to hear me when I start pitching our book—which I feel a hundred percent better doing now that you’ve agreed to help. Thank you, Charlotte,” she said earnestly. “I know you have more important things to do.”

Charlotte might have insisted that this was as important a project as she’d done in a while, if a gruff call hadn’t cut off the thought.

“Hellooo.” The ferry captain shot a thumb at her Jeep. “Gonna get it off?”

“Oh.” She laughed. “Sorry.” Releasing Nicole, she ran back onto the ferry and slid behind the wheel. By the time she revved the engine, Nicole was in the passenger’s seat, sliding a hand over the timeworn dashboard. “I am paying you for this.”

Charlotte shot her a startled look and inched forward. “For this car? You are not.”

“You wouldn’t have bought it if it weren’t for my book, and you won’t take money for that.”

“Because it’s
your
book. I’m just along for the ride.” She laughed at her own words. “Can you believe, this is the first car I’ve ever owned?” She eased it onto the dock. “Is it real or what?”

“
Totally
real,” Nicole said, though momentarily wary. “Safe on the highway?”

“It got me here.” Charlotte waved at the captain. “Thank you!” Still crawling along, she drove carefully off the pier. When she was on firm ground, she stopped, angled sideways in the seat, and addressed the first of the ghosts. “I’m sorry about your dad, Nicki. I wanted to be there. I just couldn’t.”

Seeming suddenly older, Nicole smiled sadly. “You were probably better off. There were people all over the place. I didn’t have time to think.”

“A heart attack?”

“Massive.”

“No history of heart problems?”

“None.”

“That’s scary. How’s Angie?” Nicole’s mother. Charlotte had phoned her, too, and though Angie had said all the right words—
Yes, a tragedy, he loved you, too, you’re a darling to call
—she had sounded distracted.

“Bad,” Nicole confirmed. “They were so in love. And he loved Quinnipeague. His parents bought the house when he was little. He actually proposed to Mom here. They always said that if I’d been a boy, they’d have named me Quinn. She can’t bear to come now. That’s why she’s selling. She can’t even come to pack up. This place was so him.”

“Woo-hoo,” came a holler that instantly lifted the mood. “Look who’s here!” A stocky woman, whose apron covered a T-shirt and shorts, was trotting down the stairs from the lower deck of the Chowder House. Dorey Jewett had taken over from her father midway through Charlotte’s summers here and had brought the place up to par with the best of city restaurants. She had the gleaming skin of one who worked over steam, but the creases by her eyes, as much from smiling as from squinting over the harbor, suggested she was nearing sixty. “Missy here said you were coming, but just look at you. All grown up.”

A lifelong Mainer, she talked the part. Loving that, Charlotte laughed. “I was twenty-four when I was here last, no child then.”

“But
look
at you. That’s some sweater!” The sheer ebullience of the woman made Charlotte laugh again. “And Missy? Well, I’ve seen her these last years, but I tell you, the two a’ you put the rest of us to shame.” Her brows went up. “You hungry? Chowder’s hot.”

Chowdah,
Charlotte thought happily. It was late afternoon, and she was starved. But Nicole loved to cook, and Nicole was calling the shots.

Leaning across the stick shift, Nicole told Dorey, “To go, please, with corn bread and fiddleheads.”

“You’ll be taking the last a’ those,” Dorey confided. “I had a vendor try to convince me to shrink-wrap and freeze, but they’re never the same. I only have ’em now because they’re from up north”—
nauth
—“and the growing season was late this year. They’d have been gone a week ago, if business hadn’t been slow, but the price a’ gas is so high, and no one’s out day-cruisin’ anyways when the wind’s so mean. Think you can tough out the chill?” she asked, seeming impervious to it herself with her bare arms and legs.

But Charlotte was still focused on hunger. “Maybe a couple of clams, too?”

“You got ’em. Drive up top. I’ll bring ’em out.”

Chapter Two

T
HE ISLAND WAS LONG AND
narrow, undulating on the surface of the ocean like a kind and gentle cobra. Its broad head, which faced the mainland, was raised to support the center of town. Once a fishing village, its narrow streets remained home to a handful of lobstermen and clammers, though most of the property was now owned by the locals that serviced newer residents. The latter, whose homes descended along the neck, included artists, businessmen, and computer programmers, all drawn to the island for its peace.

Beyond the neck was the body of Quinnipeague, accessed by a single sinuous road that slithered past mud flats, sheltered beaches, and rock ledges. The dirt drives leading to summer homes were marked by mailboxes that, come July, would be nearly hidden by wild roses and geraniums.

Nicole’s house was second to last, a full seven miles from the pier and two shy of the tip of the tail. Though less ostentatious than some of the newer homes that had been built since Charlotte had visited last, it was a grand white house, two stories high with a widow’s walk, black shutters, wide porches, and arms skimming the ground on either side. Those arms held guest rooms that had, on occasions like Nicole’s wedding, slept twenty.

The main house was for family. Bedrooms here were on the second floor to optimize their view, while the first floor, originally broken by doorways and walls, had been reconfigured into two large rooms, one for eating, one for living. Both opened to a wide patio that led to the sea.

Whereas life in the kitchen revolved around a trestle table of pickled oak, the Great Room was furnished to take advantage of the fireplace, which was floor-to-ceiling native stone. This was where Charlotte and Nicole now ate, sitting side by side on the floor at a huge square coffee table. Nicole had insisted on setting beautiful places, arranging their food just so, and photographing it before they started, but the camera was set aside now and the napkins unfolded.

Those napkins picked up the colors of the sofas, throw pillows, and rugs—all vibrant blues and greens that were lush against the fog outside. The logs on the grate had caught; while the heat slowly built, the chowder picked up the slack. Nicole’s jacket was gone, the scarf loosely looped on her silk shirt. Likewise, Charlotte had tossed her sweater aside.

Conversation was sparse, since Charlotte could do little but moan in delight at the food. At one point, after swallowing the juiciest clam belly she’d ever had, she laughed. “How can anything taste this good?”

Having dispensed with a spoon, her elegant friend was drinking the last of her chowder straight from the bowl. She finished, put it down, and wiped her mouth. “Dorey says the key to chowder is letting the ingredients cure in the pot for a day before dishing it up, which is counterintuitive since fried clams are best right after they’re dug. Personally, I think it’s the chives in the chowder.” Pensive, she studied her empty bowl. “Or the bacon. Or the parsley.” Her eyes rose. “Maybe it’s just the butter. Since Dorey’s chowder is Maine style, more milk than cream, the butter shines.”

Charlotte took a simpler approach. “Maybe it’s just that we haven’t had Dorey’s chowder in so long,” she said, but Nicole gave a quick headshake.

“I had it two nights ago. I have it all summer long, and it’s as good in August as it is in June.”

“Then you still come for the whole summer?” Charlotte asked in surprise. She had always gotten an e-mail or two from Quinnipeague—quick little holiday greetings or thinking-of-you notes—but had assumed Nicole’s visits shortened after the wedding. Julian certainly couldn’t be gone from the hospital for three months.

“I actually do. I started coming up with the kids”—there were two from his first marriage—“because what else were preteens going to do in Philly, and this place was perfect for them. That kind of set the pattern. When they got older and had jobs at home, I kept coming. Julian comes weekends or sometimes for a week. Same with Kaylin and John. Mom and Dad like the company.” She flinched. “Liked.” Looking around, she said sadly, “It’ll be hard not having this.”

Charlotte squeezed her arm. The house was only one part, she knew. The rest was Bob. Every available space held photos taken here and so many included him, pictured at various stages of his life. It was more a celebration than a shrine, though she knew Nicole was mourning still.

They were silent for a bit, eating more slowly now. Having finished the chowder and clams, Charlotte ate the last of her fiddleheads. There had been summers when she had come too late to catch these before they leafed out into ferns, but once tasted, they were never forgotten.

Wiping her fingers on a moss-green napkin, she cradled her wineglass and rested against the skirt of the sofa. “I feel your dad here. He was a wonderful man. I’m not sure I’d have gone to college without his pushing it. I don’t think I’d have had a career. I didn’t have a clue what ‘work ethic’ meant.” Bob Lilly was a lawyer, and though he had been adamant about spending summers on Quinnipeague, he was up at dawn every morning to study the packets delivered by the mail boat the previous day. In the last of Charlotte’s years here, there were a fax machine, a computer, and e-mail—and always the phone. Bob insisted on satisfying his clients before he ever went out for a sail. Charlotte remembered times when they had waited for him to finish. In each instance, when he finally joined them, he shared the bare bones of the case so that they understood the urgency. “He set an example for me that I didn’t see anywhere else.”

Nicole was suddenly on her knees, reaching across the table to straighten the thick candle that stood in an even thicker glass pillar. When she was done, she settled back on the rug. “Your parents died too young.”

Charlotte had freed up her hair when they came inside; now she gathered the mass in a single hand and pulled it away, needing clarity against the clutter of her parents’ memory. Their lives had been an ongoing orgy of self-absorption and excess. She was a freshman at Yale when they died in a fiery car crash that they might have survived, had one or the other been less stoned.

She took a sip of wine, briefly reflecting on what might have been if they had lived longer. The reflection held little optimism. And she was a realist. “They were never role models, Nicki. I try to romanticize them sometimes—y’know, their being gone and all—but I keep coming back to the mess of their lives. They were married three times, including twice to each other, and in between there were affairs and divorces and bankruptcies. They could act a part, like that of respectable renters of the house beside yours in Baltimore, but it was superficial. I was thinking about this while I was driving up today. When my parents met yours, they had just been kicked out of their apartment in Virginia, which, of course, the rental agent didn’t know because back then, there was no quick way to do background checks, and she had a high-end house that needed a short-term renter, and—voilà—in walked my folks. Your parents saw through them, but they kept up the charade. Why did they do that?”

“You.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. They loved our being together. They loved that you looked up to them. They saw your potential. Besides, your parents did great barbecue. I remember those ribs.”

“Likely lifted from the gourmet section of the supermarket,” Charlotte muttered. She was uncomfortable with praise. It put a spotlight on the guilt she was trying so hard to suppress.

“You’re too harsh.”

Releasing her hair, she let go of the turmoil of her parents’ lives. “I guess. And even if they did steal the ribs, I met you in the deal, so it wasn’t a horrible thing.” She and Nicole had hit it off from the start, becoming inseparable during the year they were neighbors. After Charlotte moved away, there were overnights, though always at Nicole’s house, and, of course, there were summers on Quinnipeague. “My parents would have been at a loss to find something for me to do. Your parents were a windfall when it came to that.”

“But it worked both ways. My parents got me a sister at a time when my mom was still having miscarriages. I think your being here helped her accept that I would survive without a sibling. Besides, they trusted you more than they trusted some of the island girls.” Eyes wide, she clamped her mouth shut against a smile that escaped anyway. “Remember Crystal? And
Brandy
?”

Charlotte laughed. “Bizarre Brandy. To this day, I’ve never seen so many piercings. What’s she up to now?”

“She’s a hairdresser on the mainland. Crystal’s still here. She married Aaron Deegan, who lobsters with his dad. They have five kids.”

“Five? Whoa. And Beth Malcolm? She was smart. I was always afraid you two would be friends, so you wouldn’t need me here.”