The Beach House (25 page)

“You can't keep that up forever.”

“Who says?”

“That's no way to live, Julia.”

“What are my choices?”

“Just because Eric isn't the right guy doesn't mean one won't come along.” What in the hell was he saying? She knew as well as he did that any man she let take Ken's place would mean she was settling. Not even loneliness could drive her to that.

“Out of curiosity, what makes you think Eric isn't the right guy?” she asked.

“You're kidding, right?”

“Humor me.”

“You need someone who could help you run the business. Eric hardly—”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do I need someone to help me run the business? Are you saying I'm not capable of doing it myself?”

“No, of course not.” He couldn't tell if she was spoiling for a fight or really wanted to know how he felt. “But you need someone who'll fit into your world, at least. What does Eric know about the kind of life you live? More important, does he care?”

“I didn't know anything about corporate life when I married Ken.”

“But you weren't purposely headed in the opposite direction, either. Eric dropped out, Julia. He walked away from a practice he'd spent ten years building. I think that says a hell of a lot about the kind of person he is.”

Her shoulders slumped as if he'd dealt her a defeating blow. “I never wanted Ken's job.”

“He'd be really proud to see how you stepped in and took over.”

“Don't do that.”
Hit by a sudden, inexplicable anger, she rocked back on her heels, gritted her teeth, and stared at the ceiling.

Peter watched as a dozen emotions played themselves out on Julia's face. This was a woman he didn't know, tortured and confused by all that had happened to her, her fingertips raw from trying to hang on. Until now she'd presented herself as the regal, grieving widow, accepting her fate with a graciousness that allowed even those closest to her to go on with their own lives without a backward glance.

“I don't know what to say,” he told her.

“Neither do I,” she said, and smiled.

She'd given him an escape route by smiling. Much to his shame, he took it. “Why don't we go out to eat? How about that place where Ken ordered the curried shrimp that—” God, how could he be so stupid?

“It's all right, Peter,” she said in resignation. “I'll call down for a reservation while you put your bags away.”

She would forgive him anything. After all, he'd been Ken's best friend. The thought brought little comfort when she realized that he, above everyone else who knew her, should have understood what it was to live without someone to love.

Chapter 2

Katherine Williams stood in the driveway of the beach house and directed her youngest son, Paul, as he backed up the station wagon. She motioned for him to stop when the tailgate was in direct line with the front door.

“Why'd you bring all this stuff?” he asked, coming around to help her unload.

She could have reminded him that she'd come earlier than usual that year, or admitted she'd packed more out of habit than reality, but she knew it wasn't the “stuff” Paul was concerned about. He was afraid she might be harboring the hope that he or his brother, Michael, would change their minds and stay the month with her instead of just coming down for the promised Mondays and Tuesdays. “You never know, I might decide to open a homeless shelter while I'm here. Think of all the interesting people I'd meet.”

“Homeless people don't live at the beach.”

“Open your eyes, Paul. There are homeless people everywhere.” She picked up a bag filled with groceries and started in the house. Living in a small town his entire life had left Paul isolated from some of the harsher realities of life, especially in bigger cities. Although only twenty miles from Sacramento and in the midst of a building boom, Woodland would still be considered a small town by anyone's standards.

He grabbed a suitcase and followed. “Not the kind you'd want to take care of. The homeless people around here are that way because they want to be.”

She heard the trace of concern in his voice and knew better than to carry the conversation any farther. Paul was her worrier. He could never leave her alone at the beach house if he thought she really needed him to be there with her. His fledgling sense of freedom required not only her approval, but her example. Which was why she'd decided to spend her August precisely the way she had for the past twelve years. Paul needed whatever routine she could still provide.

“Don't worry,” she said. “I promise I won't do anything I wouldn't do if you and Michael were here with me.” She dropped her bag on the kitchen table and automatically looked for a welcoming note from Joe and Maggie. At the same instant she remembered Julia's phone call telling her why there would be no note that year.

Katherine's sorrow and sense of loss were tempered by the knowledge that Joe and Maggie had died the way they had lived—together. Her grandparents had expressed the same hope and wound up living in different long-term-care facilities miles apart, rarely even seeing each other the last two years of their lives. Who had the right to judge what Joe and Maggie had done? Certainly not her. Given the same circumstances . . . But then those circumstances no longer applied to her, so it was useless to speculate what she might do.

Paul gave her a mischievous grin. “Does that mean me and Michael can't do anything we wouldn't do if you were home?”

“Don't even start with me.” She took a box of cereal out of the bag and put it in the cupboard beside the sink. “Besides, you're going to be so busy while I'm gone you won't have time to get in trouble.”

“How much time does it take?”

She put her hands on her hips and looked at him through narrowed, threatening eyes. “You know, I can always change my mind about staying here.”

Instead of acting properly intimidated, he laughed. “I love it when you do that, Mom. All my friends do, too.”

Katherine tried, but she couldn't keep a smile from forming. She swatted him playfully. “Get out there and finish unloading the car.”

“What time is Michael supposed to get here?” he called over his shoulder.

“He said not to look for him before ten. He wanted to stop by Allison's first.”

Paul groaned. He came back, his still growing sixteen-year-old body filling the door frame. “If he does, he's not going to get here until tomorrow. What do you want to bet he calls at midnight and says he's too tired to drive all the way down here tonight?”

“What difference does it make whether he gets here tonight or tomorrow morning?” Michael was nineteen and chafing at the self-imposed restraints that came from living at home two months out of the year and being on his own at college the other ten. That summer, while he'd been with her, she'd tried to give him as much freedom as she could.

The question clearly made Paul uncomfortable. “None, I guess.” He headed back to the car before she could answer him.

He was anxious to leave, to get back to his friends and his new job. A sadness spurred by fear threatened to engulf her. She was bone weary of the process of letting go. Damn the psychologists and philosophers and anyone else who preached she should find fulfillment in watching her children proclaim their independence. She wasn't ready for the next step. She loved having her sons around, loved the laughter, the teasing, the introspective moments.

A year ago the four of them had been the happiest, most well-adjusted family in their wide circle of friends—in Brandon's entire congregation. Everyone had said so. They were held up as the standard for the community. The good minister and his wife not only represented the ideal marriage, they were the perfect parents, actually managing to be involved in their children's lives without suffocating them.

Could that really have been only a year ago?

Katherine pulled crackers and canned chili out of the bag and put them away. She'd had no idea what to bring or how many she'd be cooking for, so she'd wound up taking a little of everything out of the cupboards at home. As if afraid to come right out and say they wouldn't be coming down on the promised two days a week, Paul and Michael had acted as if she should automatically expect them. Later, she'd hear one and then the other making plans with friends that would keep them at home.

As much as she wanted her sons' company, she didn't want them there out of a sense of obligation. If she was lonely, it was her problem.

“Hey, what's this—daydreaming on the job?” Paul came in, a bag in each arm.

She forced a smile. “It's the salt air. Does it to me every time.”

He dumped the bags on the counter. “You love this place so much, maybe you should think about moving here.”

She reeled at how casually the suggestion had rolled off his tongue, as if he'd already accepted that she and Brandon would never get back together. Her experience working with families in their church who were going through divorce was that the children were willing to do whatever necessary to get their parents back together again.

“And where would you live?” she asked.

“I meant after I'm out of school,” he answered quickly.

“High school or college?”

He grinned sheepishly. “I suppose it depends on where I get accepted to college.”

He was infected with the same disease that had hit every teenager she'd ever known—self-centeredness. To expect anything different would be to expect bees to stop making honey. She folded the bag she'd finished unpacking and put it away. “Don't worry,” she said. “I'm not planning to move until you and your brother are—”

“Where is everybody?” Michael called from the living room.

“We're in the kitchen,” Katherine called back.

Paul lit up like a new convert at a prayer meeting. “When Mom said you were stopping by Allison's, I figured you wouldn't get here before tomorrow,” he said as Michael appeared in the doorway.

“Naw—there's nothing to keep me there,” Michael said, grinning.

“Since when?” Katherine asked.

Michael reached around him and pulled Allison into view. “Since I brought her with me.”

“Hi, Mrs. Williams,” Allison said. “I hope it's all right that I came. Michael wouldn't let me call first.”

“Of course it's all right,” Katherine said. She had to be careful not to let them see just how “all right” it was. Given the opportunity, she would have had both Michael and Paul invite all of their friends to stay with them—the entire month.

“How long are you staying?” Paul asked.

“Allison doesn't have to be back until Monday,” Michael said.

It was impossible to miss the flash of disappointment that crossed Paul's face. “That's great,” he said with forced enthusiasm.

“Allison's never been to the boardwalk,” Michael said. “I thought we could all go tomorrow.”

Katherine gave Michael a private smile. She knew what he was doing and loved him for it. “I think that's a wonderful idea. It's been years since I've been there.”

The weekend was almost perfect. They tried, but not even the distraction of having Allison with them was enough to cover Brandon's absence. The most telling moment was Sunday morning when Michael suggested they skip services and go to Big Sur instead and everyone agreed, something unthinkable had Brandon been there with them.

On Monday the three of them lingered over breakfast before heading home. Katherine stood in the driveway and waved good-bye, waiting to turn away until the taillights of Michael's Honda disappeared in the fog. Realizing she would feel more alone than she already did, she was reluctant to go back into the empty house. Instead, with only a long-sleeved shirt to ward off the cold, she slipped out of her shoes and headed for the beach.

 

When Peter arrived home a half hour later, the first thing he did was drive by Julia's house to look for signs that Katherine and her family had moved in. Finding none, he went about his usual routine of opening up the house and unpacking from his two-month-long trip. As always, a sense of home settled over him like an old, familiar blanket that brought as much comfort as warmth. His homecoming was a reminder why he continued to live in a house too small for his needs, at times irritatingly close to his neighbors, and in constant need of small and large repairs. This was home. More than anywhere else on earth, in this house he was free to be himself; it was a place where he could escape the fawning expectation that came with being the current luminary of the art world, a place where he could work undisturbed.

And it was only a three-minute walk, a look out his kitchen window, an impossible dream away, from Katherine Williams the entire month of August.

Peter opened the blinds in his studio and absently noted the fog showed no sign of lifting that day. After two months of unrelenting sunshine in the six states and two continents he'd visited, the gray provided a nice contrast. He went to his easel and looked at the sketch of an otter and her pup he'd made before leaving. He'd promised to do a watercolor for a charity auction to be held that fall in San Francisco and still hadn't come up with something that satisfied him.

Otters in any form were a cliché in the Monterey Bay Area. Every gift shop, gallery, and drugstore had them printed on cards, etched in glass, cast in bronze, or painted on canvas. Still, for years Peter had wanted to make his own statement about the sleek, spirited creatures, something unsentimental and real that had never been said before.

Ignoring his still packed bags, Peter sat at the easel, put on a fresh sheet of paper, picked up a charcoal pencil, and started sketching. Sometime later he was working on the muted image of an otter swimming through a forest of kelp and was actually pleased with the way it was turning out.

Which was the reason he swore at the knock on his front door that broke his concentration. Normally he wouldn't have answered—he never did when he was working—but this time something compelled him to see who was there.

With a pencil stuck behind his ear, his face fixed in a frown, he yanked open the door.

Katherine took a step backward at the greeting. “I was on my way home . . . I saw your car and thought I'd stop by to say hi. But I can see that you're busy, so I'll come back later.”

The practical side of Peter's brain refused to let him believe she was really there. Wishes didn't come true, at least not for him. If they did, Katherine would have been standing on his doorstep a long time ago. He must have been a hell of a lot more tired than he thought—so tired that he'd fallen asleep at his easel and dreamed her there. It was the only reasonable, sane explanation.

“Peter?” She moved closer to look at him. “Are you all right?”

Dear God, she really was there. “I'm fine,” he said. “You caught me in the middle of something.” It wasn't much of an explanation, but it was the only one that came to mind. Lamely he added, “I wasn't expecting you until next Monday.”

“I decided to come early this year.”

“How are the boys . . . and Brandon?”

She hesitated before answering and then, in an oddly cheerful voice, said, “Great—they're all just great. Busy, too. Really busy. I'm not sure any of them will be spending much time here this year.”

How was it possible that she grew more beautiful while everyone else simply aged? He always thought he had every detail memorized, the way her naturally curly auburn hair became unwieldy in the fog, the way her eyes turned soft and seductive when she smiled, the way she tilted her head when she looked at him. Yet every year he discovered something new, something that fed his soul during the months he lived with nothing but her memory.