The Summer Everything Changed (15 page)

Jeff took his iPhone out of his pocket before Isobel could protest.

Oh well
, she thought.
I can see the show at another time. Though it's too bad I'll miss the opening. Openings are fun. You get to meet the artists and there are usually some yummy miniature quiches or bacon-wrapped shrimp being passed around . . .

“Done,” Jeff announced. “Two tickets for the five-thirty show.”

Isobel smiled. “Okay,” she said.

Who knows? she thought. Maybe the movie would change her mind about action flicks. Anything could happen if you just gave it a chance and kept an open mind!

Catherine's house, on Ledge View Road, had been built in the early 1980s by a middle-aged couple that had peacefully grown old inside its walls. When Catherine bought the house a little less than two years earlier, it was in as pristine condition as when it had been built, thanks to its conscientious owners, now passed.

The walls and pine floors of each room on the first floor were painted white; the effect was of whitewashing, cool, crisp, and clean. All of the windows, on both floors, were large, some even appearing to be oversized, making the house bright with natural light. Even on a rainy day the house avoided being gloomy. Catherine boasted that her electric bill had never been lower.

The living room was inarguably oversized. A few throw rugs provided splashes of color underfoot while paintings in a variety of styles and media covered a good deal of the walls. There was a series of tiny oil paintings, still lifes, set in large ornate frames and hung in a horizontal row. A triptych—an abstract image of sand dunes—dominated an entire wall. And since moving to Ogunquit, Catherine had fallen in love with the work of local (though Midwestern-born) painter Judy Sowa. She owned several works, including a very large piece—an image of the Muse of History from a work by Vermeer—that hung over the fireplace in the living room. Louise's favorite of Catherine's collection of Judy Sowa's work was a smaller work, a copy of a Bronzino portrait of Laura Battiferri, a sixteenth-century gentlewoman and poet, originally painted around 1555–1560.

The furniture was minimal but comfortable—a love seat, two armchairs, and an ottoman for each chair, upholstered in a pale tan—with a liberal sprinkling of chocolate lab hair. A low coffee table set before the love seat completed the room's uncluttered décor.

Catherine's study, in contrast to the living room, was a smallish room stuffed with furniture, including a monstrously large maroon velvet armchair, two ladder-back chairs, and a low table with an elaborately carved wood base and a green marble top. The floor was mostly covered by an old but still vibrantly colored Oriental rug. Built-in shelves on two walls were crammed with books, an eclectic group that included novels by long-dead as well as contemporary authors, a collection of Restoration plays, the ubiquitous
Riverside Shakespeare,
biographies of men and women of European and American fame, and a hefty collection of good-quality art books. Another Judy Sowa painting hung next to a painting by another local artist, Michael Palmer. A sleek laptop sat on an old oak desk that was way too large for the space it occupied. Next to the computer were stacks of magazines (everything from
Time
to
Rolling Stone
) and newspapers (Catherine had the
New York Times
Sunday edition delivered, and she kept up with all of the local papers, including those out of Portland and Portsmouth).

The kitchen was state-of-the-art, and, in Catherine's opinion, totally wasted on her. She had never had time to cook much—too often on the road, too many late nights at the office—and now that she did have time, she had discovered she didn't care for it. Hence the stack of take-out menus on the bar top and the fridge bare of all but a few essentials—a carton of low-fat milk, a half a pound of butter, several jars of jellies and preserves from Stonewall Kitchen, a jar of pickles, and in the freezer, a few packs of frozen shrimp, easy enough to toss on the indoor grill.

The powder room was decorated in peach and pale green, and there was the ubiquitous shallow bowl of white seashells, along with a similar bowl of green and blue and amber pieces of sea glass. Sea glass was something guests liked to steal even more than seashells, which was why Louise kept her own collection tucked away in her room.

The second floor consisted of Catherine's bedroom, a small guest room, and a large bathroom. Louise had seen the bedroom only once, and that on her initial tour of the house; Catherine took her private space quite seriously, as did both Louise and Isobel.

There was always music playing from the stereo system in the living room, not too loudly but not too softly, either. At the moment Madeleine Peyroux was crooning her version of an old Patsy Cline hit.

Charlie was asleep on a braided rug in front of the fireplace. Every once in a while a paw would twitch. Louise wondered if human beings would ever know for sure what went on in the minds and hearts of four-legged animals. More was the pity if they didn't.

The women settled on the love seat, each with a cup of coffee.

“Did Isobel tell you I ran into her and Jeff in town the other day?” Catherine asked.

Louise shook her head. “No. At least, I don't think that she did. I've been so preoccupied lately what with this wedding and the usual assortment of fussy guests . . .”

“Well, I did run into them. And I have to tell you that Charlie had a very unusual reaction to Jeff. In short, she tried to bite his head off.”

Louise looked quickly to the sleeping dog; at that moment she was the epitome of peaceful laziness. “What?” she said. “I don't believe it.”

“Believe it. She barked at him, growled, snarled, the whole bit. I had trouble holding on to her. Seriously, I thought she was going to break free and knock him down. I've never seen her take against someone so completely, especially not within a few seconds of meeting him. I have to say, it made me wonder about Jeff's character. You know what they say about animals having a better sense for character than we dumb humans.”

Louise glanced again at the slumbering lump of fur. “I'm shocked,” she said. “Jeff is such a nice young man. I don't think you should read too much into Charlie's behavior. Jeff's done nothing but treat Isobel with respect and kindness.”

“I'm not saying he's a criminal,” Catherine pointed out. “I'm just saying that Charlie's reaction was odd.”

“Charlie probably smelled something on him she didn't like. Maybe he was wearing cologne. Some dogs don't like those artificially sweet smells. Come to think of it, I might bark if a guy wearing too much cologne got too close to me.”

“Maybe,” Catherine conceded. “Anyway, I thought you should know, but maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it.”

Louise shrugged. “Oh, it's all right. Well, I've got to get going. Duty calls.”

 

Once back at the inn, Louise opened her laptop and went to Isobel's blog. She read the latest post and smiled. Isobel seemed to have so much fun writing CityMouse. And there were so many comments from Isobel's fans. Louise noted several recent messages from a girl who had been a friend of Isobel's back in Massachusetts. Huh, Louise thought. She hadn't heard Isobel mention Maureen in over a year . . .

That was one of the things Louise thought she might not have fully considered before uprooting her daughter and transplanting her to Maine—the friendships she would have to leave behind. But Isobel had offered very little resistance to leaving Massachusetts, aside from some initial grumbling about moving to a backwater. It was almost as if she couldn't wait to get far away from her father and the life she had known with him.

Louise had felt much the same way. Moving north to Maine had been like running away, and running away was rarely a good thing in the end—unless, of course, you were running away to save your life and there were simply no other viable options. But in Louise's case there had been other options, of course there had been. She could have stayed put, either in the house she and Andrew had owned together or in another house, one without the memories. She could have gotten a job with regular hours and far less risk to her (and Isobel's) financial future and to her sanity.

Louise exited CityMouse and closed her laptop. She wondered if Isobel had told any of her old friends back in Massachusetts that she had a boyfriend. She realized she had no idea of the nature of Isobel's relationships with anyone other than Gwen. Maybe there were no more real friends from “back home.”

And maybe Gwen was enough. Gwen and me, Louise thought.
Because, of course, Isobel has me—i f no longer her father.

Andrew and Isobel. There had been times throughout the years when Louise had felt downright jealous of the relationship they shared. She remembered now how once a month they had gone on a breakfast date to the local diner for French toast and sausage. Isobel probably never knew that her father paid for that indulgence with an extra-rigorous session at the gym later that afternoon. His usual breakfast was a bowl of high protein cereal with nonfat yogurt and sliced fruit. Andrew had always taken his health seriously; both of his parents had died of heart-related disease before reaching sixty. There was that—and there was Andrew's aforementioned vanity.

Even in the final months before the big reveal, when Andrew must have been almost wholly occupied with how to extricate himself from his marriage, he had never missed a breakfast date. “But while we were eating our French toast,” Isobel had remarked later, after the divorce, “and talking about the new bird feeder we were going to put up in the backyard, all he was thinking about was when he was next going to see Vicky. I feel like such an idiot. I feel like I was being used.”

Well, what could Louise say to that? She, too, felt that she and her daughter had been duped, fooled, and mistreated by Andrew Bessire.

Once Andrew had moved out of the house, Isobel had refused to see him. That last breakfast date had taken place well over two years ago. Louise wondered if Isobel ever thought about those mornings, or if she had cut all emotional ties to the old rituals and habits. She hadn't asked her daughter those questions, not directly. She didn't know if they were the sort of questions she should be asking.

Louise got up from the kitchen table. She thought about what Catherine had told her earlier. She had defended Jeff to Catherine so strongly, as if her faith in him was absolute. Why? Because she had to believe in him as a good and decent person. The idea that she had unwittingly allowed her daughter to date a jerk was deeply unacceptable; it was not a possibility she was willing or able to entertain.

“I'm a good mother,” Louise told the kitchen. “I would never let anything bad happen to my daughter. Never.”

“Um,” Gwen asked in a whisper, “why did he come with us on this excursion anyway?”

Isobel, Gwen, and Jeff were in a vintage clothing shop called Good Old Days. It occupied most of the first floor of a big old Victorian farmhouse out on Springfield Road and had an eclectic selection of clothes and accessories from the 1920s through the 1990s.

“Uh,” Isobel replied, also in a whisper, “he's my boyfriend.” It was the first time she had ever said those words to anyone but herself. She hoped it was true, that Jeff really was her official boyfriend. How did you know about something like that? Did someone make an announcement?
How,
Isobel thought,
can I be sixteen years old and not know this?

“Well, I know he's your boyfriend,” Gwen was saying, “but doesn't he have better things to do, like, I don't know, hang out with his guy friends? You can see he's bored out of his mind. He should be in a sports bar, cheering on the Red Sox. Isn't that what most straight guys do if they're not actually playing sports? Eat nachos and watch sports?”

Isobel started to respond with something like, “Yeah, but—” when she realized that she had no idea who Jeff's friends were. She assumed he had friends—after all, he was so nice and good-looking!—though he hardly ever mentioned anyone, and the one or two times he had mentioned a name, it was that of a guy he knew from school in Vermont. Jeff had pointed out that this guy—Terry—was the son of someone rich and powerful, or maybe the son of someone nearly famous. She couldn't remember, exactly. Did Jeff really have no other friends? She remembered how he had asked why she hadn't invited him along to the beach the other day. He had seemed a bit put out, even a bit hurt. “It's just that I'm crazy about you,” he had said. “If I could, I would spend every minute of my days and nights with you.”

She had felt enormously flattered and then, a tiny bit worried. It was a big responsibility, meaning so much to someone that they wanted to spend all their time with you. But with her characteristic optimism, she had dismissed those tiny worries. Maybe Jeff was the proverbial Lone Wolf. Maybe he liked it that way. That was all right. Actually, it was kind of cool, being the One and Only for the Lone Wolf.

“He's just being supportive,” Isobel said to Gwen, finally.

Gwen glanced at Jeff, who was standing a few yards away, arms folded across his chest, yawning. “I guess,” she mumbled. “But I wish he didn't have to lurk like that.”

Isobel laughed. “He's not lurking. Come on, Gwen!”

“Well, if he has to be here maybe he could actually help us. Not that we need help, but he could offer to be useful. Carry my tripod or something.”

“You don't have your tripod today,” Isobel pointed out.

“Whatever.”

“He offered to drive us wherever we wanted to go. You were the one who insisted on driving your car.”

“I didn't insist. I prefer to drive myself. Us. Besides, he drives too fast.”

“He does not! Only sometimes.”

“Once is all it takes,” Gwen said in an ominous tone.

Isobel turned toward a circular rack of dresses. Gwen could be so dramatic! Why did she have to make her question Jeff's being with them as anything other than, well, normal? She took a deep breath. They were having a nice time. There was no need for drama, even if Gwen thought there was.

Her eye stopped on a dress and she carefully removed it from the rack.

“What did you find?” Gwen asked, joining her.

Isobel studied the dress for a moment before answering, “The seams are in good shape, it's got all its buttons, which are very cute—see? They've got a tiny running horse stamped in—and the length is just right. I adore the V-neck. It's not too low, but it would really frame the right necklace. What do you think, Gwen?”

“I think it's cool,” Gwen said. “The color is so unusual. Like a cross between watermelon and, I don't know, Orangina. It's definitely a summer statement. Is there a brand name?”

“The label is cut out. I'm guessing maybe a Forma, about ten, twelve years ago.”

“Good call.”

“Jeff?”

Isobel turned to Jeff, and held the dress up against her.

“What do you think?” she asked.

Jeff raised his eyebrows in an expression of disbelief. Or was it puzzlement?

“What?” she said. “You don't like it?”

For answer Jeff turned away and idly began to flip through a rack of plaid work shirts.

“Good thing he doesn't have to wear it,” Gwen muttered. “So, are you getting it?”

Isobel hesitated. “Well,” she said, “maybe not . . .” She returned the dress to the rack. She wasn't sure it was a great idea to purposely choose to wear something your boyfriend didn't like. If it were an accident, then no worries. But it could be kind of insulting to be all,
hey, I know you loathe and despise this dress but I'm wearing it anyway.
Wouldn't it? She wasn't so sure she would do that to her mother, either, or to Gwen . . . But would her mother or Gwen even care what she wore as long as Isobel herself liked it?

“It would look great on you,” Gwen said, emphatically.

Isobel shrugged. “I'll think about it. It's not like I need another dress right now . . .”

“Since when is need the issue?” Gwen sighed. “Whatever. If we're not going to buy anything, let's get going. Are you coming with me?”

Isobel didn't answer immediately. She really didn't want to abandon Jeff; he had driven his own car and could take off whenever he wanted to, but . . . Poor guy, she thought. He was probably bored beyond belief. As a rule men didn't like to shop. Everyone knew that. It really had been nice of him to offer to come along. “You go on,” she said finally to Gwen. “I think I'll hang out with Jeff.”

Gwen shrugged. “If he exceeds the speed limit, tell him to slow down. 'Bye, Jeff,” she called out.

Jeff didn't react. “He must not have heard you,” Isobel said. “I'll tell him you said good-bye.”

“No worries. Have fun,” she said, and headed out of the store.

Jeff was at Isobel's side the moment Gwen was gone. “I thought she would never leave. Now we can be alone.”

“Didn't you hear her call out good-bye?” Isobel asked.

“No,” Jeff said. “Did she?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“So, you really don't like that dress? Gwen thought it would look good on me.”

Jeff laughed and drew her into his arms. “Izzy,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head, “what am I going to do with you?”