The Perfect Summer (Hubbard's Point) (25 page)

“He had an—it wasn't even really an affair. A ‘thing.' Got drunk and went home with some girl at the bank Christmas party. I found out because she called him at home.”

“That's terrible, Bay,” Dan said.

“You wouldn't have done that to Charlie, right?” Bay asked, trying to get some laughter into her voice, to make it all a little light. What was the point now, anyway? Sean was dead and gone.

“No, I wouldn't,” Dan said, not laughing at all. “I'd never have done that to her.”

“Well, Sean did it then, and he did it again on Saint Patrick's Day. Same girl . . . that time Tara saw them at the Tumbledown Café. I was going to kick him out. But he promised. He swore.”

“You were still pregnant?”

“Yes,” Bay said, and she touched her stomach in the dark of the truck, so no one, not even Dan, could see, just to remind herself that three children had come out of her belly, that she had carried them all and carried them with love. She thought back to her last month carrying Pegeen, when Sean would come home every night—not because he wanted to be there, but out of a sense of duty, personal responsibility, as if he had sworn to himself that he'd be faithful, that he'd be a good husband, that he'd be the father he'd been before.

Bay could picture Sean in his chair by the fire, staring at the TV. Focused on the screen, on basketball games and sitcoms, on anything but Bay. She'd try to talk to him about the kids, about being a week overdue with the baby, about his job at the bank and how great it was that he kept getting promoted.

She had tried to talk to him about the garden, how she wanted to plant a garden for each child, how the new one felt so light and buoyant that for it she wanted to have beautiful, airy, feather flowers like anemones and violets and larkspur.

And she had tried to talk to him about how lucky they were to have known each other forever, to be bound by history and family and Irishness, to have Hubbard's Point as the place they had met and where their kids would spend all their summers and maybe meet the loves of
their
lives . . .

And Sean had nodded and acted polite and stared at the TV, especially the thin, beautiful, large-breasted, not-pregnant basketball team cheerleaders on the screen with such interest and lust that Bay had longed to smash that TV—with a poker, a bat, her garden rake, or even Sean's stupid, selfish head.

She had gone into her bedroom and mourned alone. Her grief was deep and total; she had created a family with a man who could not care less for her. With their third baby on the way, he didn't know a thing about her. She felt as if they were two ships sailing in different directions, completely unconnected, an unbridgeable gulf between them.

Those hours were the darkest moments of her life—worse, even, than finding out about his affairs. Bay was filled with deep despair as she faced the truth about her life, her marriage.

And in that moment, the air had shimmered with a very particularly Irish magic. Bay recalled looking out the window, seeing the marsh sparkling under starlight.

And Bay had taken a swift emotional journey, down the marsh and into Long Island Sound, where salt water and the Connecticut River met in the estuary. History unfolded, backward and forward—all the way into the future, when her children would be grown, playing on the beach with children of their own. And with silt swirling, Bay had thought of her own name . . . Bay.

And she had thought of all the great bays, the powerful bays of the world, the bays that spawned shellfish and finned fish, the bays that provided dockage for great shipping lines: Hudson Bay, San Francisco Bay, the Bay of Fundy, the Baie des Anges, Biscayne Bay, Galway Bay, and of course, Hubbard's Point Bay . . .

“In a way you were there,” she said to Danny now, her voice and hands shaking as she turned to look at him across the front seat of his truck. “The night I named Pegeen.”

“I was?”

They sat there in the parked truck, looking deeply into each other's eyes. Bay remembered the end of that night: how, after Sean had gone to bed and she had known for sure her baby was Pegeen, she had called Tara and they had unplugged the bosom-laden TV set. Tara had muscled it barefoot through the nettles—telling Bay that being a week overdue entitled her to merely watch—and thrown it with a resounding and satisfying
splash-kerplunk
into the salt creek.

“You were,” Bay said.

“How?”

“Because it went through my mind, as I was christening my daughter ‘Pegeen,' that John Synge had been sent across Galway Bay to the Aran Isles by the greatest poet in Ireland, and how I had been given
my
other name, ‘Galway,' by you. So somehow, I'm not sure whether you can follow my logic in the same way I did that night and still do, but somehow you were there.”

“I don't have to follow,” Dan said, reaching across the seat as Bay did what she'd wanted to do for so many years: slid closer, right into his arms.

“You don't?” she whispered, forgetting to be nervous as she tilted her head back to kiss the only other man besides her husband she'd ever loved.

“No,” he whispered back. “I don't have to follow, because I'm right here with you.”

He's Irish all right, she thought, admiring Danny Connolly as a poet just two seconds before he lowered his face to hers, kissed her with such fire and passion that she felt it all through her body, all the way down to her toes, erasing every year and memory and event and sorrow that had ever happened in her life.

They kissed each other, the independent woman who had once played Synge's Pegeen and the Irish poet wooden-boat-and-boardwalk builder, the widow and the widower, who touched and tugged and moaned and needed so much more than they could get in a truck parked under a streetlight in Hawthorne.

Bay pushed her hands up under his barn jacket, touching a button of his chamois shirt, just touching that button, thinking what it might be like to undo it, feeling his arms come inside the sleeves of her jacket, pushing up the left cuff of her sweater, trying to do the same with the right, getting stuck on the lining, his hands so rough with calluses and so warm on her cold skin . . .

Skin that hadn't been touched in so long, a heart that hadn't been touched in even longer. His mouth was hot on hers, and his beard scratched her cheeks and chin. She wanted to kiss him forever, to feel her smooth face scrape on his beard shadow. Feeling his lips on hers, turning her inside out, making her live again! That's what this was—nothing less than
magic
, being touched where she'd thought she was dead, being brought back to
life . . .

They kissed, so unexpectedly, and as frantic as she felt inside, she wanted to be conscious of taking this slow—it wasn't at all slow inside, but they had kids and kids and kids and kids to worry about. There were the kids.

The kids.

What could a kiss have to do with those kids?

Bay didn't want to know, but of course she had to know. The heater blew hot air into the steamy, cold truck, and Dan's hands were so slow and hot inside her jacket but outside her sweater, and the instant he felt—
zzzt
—the electricity change, the thoughts of the kids stopping her in her tracks, mid-kiss . . .

She stopped herself by thinking of that sleigh, of Eliza's ancestor dashing through the snow with his precious silver cup for his true love . . . snow falling, the river frozen, Christmas angels singing above, the redcoats sleeping in their fort . . . Diana—the first Eliza's mother—not knowing whether her beloved general would make it to her alive . . .

Oh, there was love like that, she thought.

It allowed her to slow down, to not take everything she wanted from the kiss right then. It made her believe in something truer than she had felt in so long, so so long, in years.

She hadn't believed in love, that kind of love, for such a long time.

Probably not, as hard as she had tried, for the whole duration of her youngest daughter's life, for Pegeen's life.

“Are you okay?” Dan asked, pressing his rugged hand against her cool cheek, pushing the hair out of her eyes.

“
So
okay,” she said, knowing that her eyes were shining, seeing them reflected in his.

“I shouldn't have kissed you,” he said, shaking his head.

She laughed; she wished he hadn't said that, wished he felt just as incredible and miraculously alive as she did. “Why?” she asked.

“Because . . .”

The expression in his eyes took her aback. He was wrapped up, in his mind, with something bad.
He didn't want to kiss me, didn't want me, I started it
, she thought, suddenly confused, ashamed.

“I've wanted it so badly, for so long,” Dan said, reaching for her again, but visibly holding himself back. “I had to kiss you, but I should have waited—”

“Till what?” Bay asked.

Dan looked not just thoughtful but tormented, touching her hair, trying to make up his mind about something. “To tell you about Sean. He came to me, to build a boat, but that wasn't the only reason.”

“What was?” she asked.

“It's complicated,” he said.

“I need to know,” she said, feeling suddenly afraid.

“I wish none of these intervening years had happened,” he said, holding her face between his hands. “I wish I'd trusted what I knew deep down twenty-five years ago, that you were the one. That I'd waited for you to grow up . . .”

“So do I,” she said. “Everything but the kids—”

“I've made a big mistake,” Danny said. “You know what you used to say, about Sean flying too close to the sun?”

“Yes,” she said, feeling afraid.

“I was tempted to do that myself.”

“In what way?”

“My wife was very rich,” Danny said. “And your husband oversaw her trust. He—I think he wanted me to come in with him on something illegal.”

“Don't tell me this,” she said, bowing her head, not bearing to think of him this way.

“Bay, please listen. Nothing happened. I was tempted, though. I heard him out, thought it over, and told him I wasn't interested.”

Bay was silent, her heart pounding in her chest.

“Bay?”

“Drive me home, Danny,” she whispered. “Okay?”

But she never heard the answer, because instead of driving her anywhere, Danny Connolly just leaned over to pull her into his arms, to kiss her again. And in spite of all the questions and doubts raging through her mind, she could only kiss him back.

24

T
ARA,
”
CALLED AUGUSTA FROM HER DRESSING ROOM.
She was tangled up in blue, swaths of midnight blue, almost black, really, chiffon—or was it taffeta; she could never get them straight—and she couldn't extricate her arms. “Tara, dear! Can you come help me?”

“Augusta, what happened?” Tara asked, running in from the bathroom, smelling of lemon-scented cleaning fluid.

“I'm attempting to decide what I should wear to the Pumpkin Ball,” Augusta said, “and I have this marvelous bolt of witchy-blue taffeta—or is it chiffon?—that Hugh brought me back from Venice on one of his painting jaunts, and I thought to myself, Augusta old dear, it's now or never. Since the theme this year is ‘Witchcraft,' what better color than night-sky blue? Thank you, darling,” she said, as Tara unwound her like thread from a spindle.

“Steady there,” Tara said, supporting her as she finished untangling the cloth. Augusta felt as dizzy as a child who had been spun around too many times in Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey.

“My Lord,” Augusta said, plopping down onto the faded chintz chaise longue in the corner of her dressing room. “I loathe the feeling of being trapped . . . a prisoner . . .”

“In blue taffeta,” Tara said, a smile in her voice.

Augusta sighed. Her children had always thought her frivolous—constantly getting ready for the next party, preparing a costume for another ball, needlepointing yet more throw pillows—and now Tara was conveying the same emotion.

“Life isn't all costume parties,” Augusta said. “I do try to do good works.”

“You gave Bay a chance,” Tara said. “And she loves her job.”

“Well, she is enormously gifted. I watch her out the window, you know,” Augusta said. “She handles the soil and plants in such a way . . . the earth is her canvas. Believe me, I know an artist when I see one. I adore watching artists at work, when they are in their element and in touch with their muse. I can't wait to see her canvas come to life, into bloom, next spring.”

Tara nodded, pleased and proud of her friend.

“How is Bay faring?” Augusta asked, after a moment. “Emotionally and financially?”

“She's strong,” Tara said. And that was all she said.

Augusta admired her restraint. Loyalty to friends was paramount; she had always taught that to her daughters. Loyalty and love.

Augusta had learned so much about love over the years. She had once thought that it belonged only between a man and a woman, that romantic love was the real love, that all else was secondary. She had hated deeply, as well. The women who had slept with her husband, the man who had invaded her kitchen so many years ago with his gun and a desire to kill.

Her children, her brilliant and wonderful daughters, had taught her to forgive. To forgive everyone, and to love them. Wasn't that the point of life? To transcend your own suffering and try to love and give to others?

Augusta sighed. Such deep thoughts exhausted her. She must be making progress as a human being, though. Thinking of Bay and her family instead of her Pumpkin Ball costume.

But all good, saintly things had to come to an end, so Augusta took a deep breath and stood. Again, she began draping herself with the fabric. With the theme “Witchcraft” and her stature as Hugh Renwick's widow, Augusta planned to dress as a witch in a famous painting.

Should it be from “Witches Flying,” by Francisco Goya? Or “Four Witches” by Albrecht Dürer—a particular favorite, hanging at the Met in New York, and it might be such fun to raise eyebrows by going nude! Or—and for shock value and fun, Augusta was leaning in this direction—“The Obscene Kiss” from
Compendium Maleficarum
by Fra Francisco Maria Guazzo of Milan?

“Tara, what are
you
wearing to the Pumpkin Ball?”

“I'm not sure I'm going,” Tara said, diligently refolding Augusta's cashmere sweaters in her sweater drawer.

“Perhaps you should invite Agent Holmes.” At Tara's look of surprise, she said, “Oh, yes. I've picked up on your feelings. He
is
one to turn a woman's head.”

“He's turned mine, but I'm not turning his.”

“Darling, I'm sure you are. But he's worried about conflicts of interest. Or the appearance of impropriety. Why not just come out and tell him that the Pumpkin Ball will be a grand place to encounter all Black Hall's white-collar criminals? You can be his Mata Hari and help him to go undercover.”

“I'll think about it.”

“Well, you must attend the ball even without him,” Augusta said. “You are young, vibrant, and single. And you should take Bay with you. There's a lot of pressure in this town to become a professional widow—believe me, I know. But she should go anyway.”

“Sean's only been dead for five months,” Tara said. “I don't think she'll want to.”

Again, Augusta sighed. If only she could impart to these young women that life was terribly attenuated. Too short, too short. One never knew whether another Pumpkin Ball would even come to pass. It always took place on the night of the November Full Moon, just before Thanksgiving, and while it was often devastatingly romantic, the point had always been to celebrate life's harvest.

“She should attend,” Augusta said firmly. “And you should get her there.”

Tara laughed, dusting Augusta's shoes. “The last time I tried to meddle in her well-being, I nearly lost her friendship. And yours.”

“Well. Look how it all turned out: She's happy, I'm happy. My garden is going to be an earthly delight. Oh!” Augusta said, shocked by the brilliance of her own subconscious.

“What is it, Augusta?”

“That's it! Hieronymus Bosch—‘The Garden of Earthly Delights.' One of the wickedest paintings ever done. A triptych of creation, heaven, and hell . . . a depiction of the world, with the progression of sin. Sinful pleasures! It will be marvelous! I'm ancient now, but darling, there's no one in this town who's partaken of more sinful pleasures than I. I'll wear a midnight-blue cape, and as a prop, I'll carry a magic cup. Which reminds me!”

“What's that, Augusta?” Tara asked.

“Have you found my Florizar cup yet?”

“The silver cup . . .”

“I still can't put my hands on it! I've looked high and low. It would be the perfect addition to my costume. What good is a witch without a magic potion?”

“I'll pay extra attention today, Augusta,” Tara said. “It can't have gone far.”

“The last time I recall using it—and this is rather haunting—was when Sean McCabe stopped by the week before his disappearance. To bilk me, as it turns out, but at the time, I thought it was just that he wanted me to sign checks moving money from one place to another. We toasted the success of my yield . . .”

“Oh, Sean,” Tara said under her breath.

“He can't possibly have taken my Florizar cup,” Augusta said, rejecting the idea. “He wasn't a kleptomaniac, after all. White-collar confidence men don't get their hands dirty with actual
stealing
. . .”

The words were suspended in air, in time, as Augusta and Tara pondered the notion of stealing—the act of one person taking from another, whether from bank accounts or trust funds or from a wallet or a pocket or from the wall of a museum or the vault of a jeweler—and whether in the Piazza San Marco, the Place Vendôme, or Firefly Hill. The “hows” and “wheres” didn't matter, and neither, ultimately, did the “whys.”

“Stealing is the true sin,” Augusta said. “Not earthly pleasures.”

“I know.”

Augusta took a long breath in, and then let it go. “I have too many things,” she said. “Accumulation is a fact of life . . . and not a good fact. When I get to heaven, Saint Peter won't let me carry in Hugh's paintings, my photos of the girls, my black pearls, my Florizar cup.”

“No, I suppose he won't,” Tara said.

“Just as I'm certain he didn't admit Sean with all that stolen money.”

“If he admitted Sean at all,” Tara said sadly.

JOE HOLMES THOUGHT BLACK HALL WAS PROBABLY A FINE
place to be if you lived here—nice houses, views, stores, schools, restaurants, music shops—but as a place for temporary assignment, it was pretty lonely, geared toward couples or families.

He sat at his desk, drinking yet another cup of coffee from the place next door, doing what FBI agents did best: paperwork.

One of Joe's recent girlfriends had always answered the door with expectation in her eyes, as if she was expecting him to be James Bond. Or at least Tommy Lee Jones. When she realized that what he did was more in line with geek accountants than glamorous movie spies, she left him for a lawyer.

Joe's father had taught him that lawyers were much more likely to have Aston Martins than FBI agents. Also, much more likely to get sent on sexy missions that included good hotels with pools and fancy sheets and expensive drinks at sleek bars. If FBI agents wanted to track a suspect around the country—even staying in airport Radissons—getting a supervisor to sign off on the expense requisition would be as thrilling as actually solving the case.

“You're not doing it for the glamour,” his father had said to Joe one time when Joe complained about life on the road. “You're doing it to catch bad guys.”

“I know, Dad,” Joe had said. “Just like you.”

“You make me proud, son,” his father had said.

That had really been enough to make up for the crummy motels and the fast food.

Now, outside, the rain beat down. Perfect for Joe's mood as, again, he went through the Shoreline Bank documents. One confusing aspect was the discovery that Sean had paid back ten thousand dollars from one of the accounts he had starred.

Had he been intending to move it somewhere else, convert it to cash later on? Joe wasn't sure. In another case, last May, Sean had stolen six hundred dollars from one account on Friday, put it back the next Monday. What had caused his change of heart? Joe pored over the account statements, looking for answers. Could it have had something to do with the mystery woman—“the girl”? Or with “Ed”?

There still wasn't any clear-cut “Ed.” Ralph Edward Benjamin's nickname was “Red,” a contraction of the two names as much as a reference to his childhood hair color. There were also Eduardo Valenti and Edwin Taylor, neither of whom seemed very promising. Valenti had been at Columbia until May, and Taylor's record seemed spotless.

Joe stretched, listening to the rain fall. At least he didn't have to slave in a wet garden, like Bay McCabe. He'd driven by Firefly Hill twice that week, and both times he'd seen her laboring outside.

That second time, he'd seen Tara O'Toole running across the wide expanse of lawn, toward her friend. The image endured in Joe's mind: She looked like a young girl, wild with abandon, oblivious to the driving rain. Her long legs, slender arms, black hair . . .

And last night he had dreamed about her.

About them, really. These two best friends, right at the center of Joe's investigation. In his dream, they were all in a boat on the Sound. Joe was someone's husband—a novel idea in itself. He was at the helm, steering over the waves. Shards of memory, long buried, of being on the deck of his father's fishing boat, came up and took hold. The joy of being at sea, running with the wind.

And the two women were there. Bay leaning against the coaming, Tara with her arm slung around Joe's neck. The wind ruffled his hair, tickled his ear. No, it was a kiss. The sensation was so intense, her kiss even stronger than the breeze itself, moving him even as the wind moved their boat.

“Joe,” she whispered in his ear. “You don't have to steer anymore. Just take your hands off the wheel . . . go ahead . . .”

But Joe's hands couldn't relax their grip; he had to hold tight, keep the boat on course. She caressed his neck, his back; all he wanted to do was grab her in his arms and take her down below, rip off all her clothes, make love to her, his wife.

Tara O'Toole Holmes. She seemed to spend a lot of time in Andy's. Yesterday she had been talking to the clerk about something called “the Pumpkin Ball,” pointedly, it had seemed to Joe. What did she have in mind? That Joe walk over from the “Over the Hill” rack to ask her if he could have the pleasure of taking her? Sad to say, dating someone in the investigation was against Bureau policy.

Nothing so tormenting in his dreams, though . . .

Joe had wakened, smiling, content, but then, right away, the sense of connection was broken. He had held his motel-room pillow close to his chest, as if it was Tara, as if he had rolled over to actually find her in his bed.

He wondered what it would be like to spend time with Tara, to go with her to Bay's house on a fine fall evening. He had seen them sitting there together often enough, just the two of them together in the midst of Bay's kids. Two lifelong friends with such beautiful smiles and spirit, riding through the garbage Sean McCabe had left behind for them. Joe would never do that to a woman he loved.

He just wouldn't. On the other hand, he couldn't figure out why a good guy like himself had had so little luck finding a girl like Tara to love. He had high standards. His parents had loved each other so much, he knew he couldn't settle for anything less than that. And he knew he needed someone like his mother, who understood the crazy life of an FBI agent and wasn't scared off by a guy who wore a 10mm gun out to pick up a quart of milk.