The Summer Everything Changed (8 page)

“Hi,” Isobel said. Still sitting, she gestured to Gwen. “This is my friend Gwen.”

Jeff nodded briefly at her and looked back to Isobel. “I was in the neighborhood and I thought I'd stop by.”

“Oh.”

Jeff held out the bunch of loosely tied orange daylilies he had been holding down by his side. “And give you these. Welcome to the neighborhood.”

Isobel did stand now, and accepted the flowers. “Wow,” she said. “Thanks. They're beautiful. Thank you.”

Jeff smiled. “I'm glad you like them.” He pulled back the sleeve of his taupe-colored linen blazer and checked his watch. “Well, I've got to run. See you around.”

Isobel just nodded. And she probably smiled back. She watched as Jeff got back into his car and drove off. If he had acknowledged Gwen in his parting, Isobel didn't know. She was in a sort of daze. She sat back down in the rocking chair, bumping heavily into one of the arms as she did.

“Ow,” she said.

“So, spill,” Gwen directed when Jeff had reached the end of the drive, safely out of earshot. “Where did you two meet?”

“In town,” Isobel said. “We literally bumped into each other. Wow. I can't believe he brought me flowers. That was so nice of him.”

“Hmm.”

Isobel frowned at her friend. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing. It's just that they look an awful lot like the flowers from Mrs. Baker's front yard. The woman down the road, the one with the antique carriage on the lawn?”

Isobel laughed. “I know who she is. And daylilies are daylilies. How can you tell which garden they come from?”

Gwen declined to answer the question. “You're not seeing him or anything, are you?” she asked.

Isobel shrugged. “No. Why?”

“I don't know. It's just . . .”

“Just what?”

“Just nothing. Probably exaggerations. I heard something once about his being a troublemaker.”

Isobel laughed again. “That's ridiculous. Jeff? He's so nice. People are probably just jealous of him because he's so cute and his parents have money or something. There are always people who can't stand when other people are happy or lucky or good-looking.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“Besides,” Isobel pointed out, “you were the one who warned me about how catty people in small towns can be. The rumor mill running twenty-four/seven and all.”

“True. But . . .”

“Anyway, this is only the second time I've laid eyes on him.”

“Okay,” Gwen said.

“We most certainly aren't dating.”

Gwen skillfully raised one groomed eyebrow. “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

Isobel felt herself blush. “Well, would it be so terrible if he did ask me out and I said yes? Assuming, of course, my mother agreed.”
And I bet she would,
Isobel thought, remembering her mother's almost glowing report of Jeff's visit.

“He's nineteen, I think. Maybe twenty.”

“So?” Isobel sat up as the thought finally occurred to her. “Wait a minute. Do you like him?”

“God, no! I mean, he's not my type at all!”

“Whew. I mean, if you liked him I couldn't go out with him. It wouldn't seem right at all.”

Gwen smiled. “You're a pretty cool gal.”

“You're pretty cool yourself,” Isobel said honestly. “It's a pact. No guy ever comes between us, okay?”

“Okay. But can you imagine how many women throughout history have made that pact and broken it without blinking an eye? I bet the number is in the millions. Trillions, from the Neanderthals on out.”

“Yeah. But it doesn't have to be us. We don't have to be a cliché of the backstabbing woman if we choose not to be.”

“True. How many people really understand that they have the right, the ability, the privilege of making choices about their lives?” Gwen asked rhetorically. “Every single day, big choices and little choices. It's like, so many people just walk around on automatic pilot . . . What a waste.”

“Well, we know about choices,” Isobel stated firmly. “And we're not going to grow up into zombie adults who do everything just like their neighbors do it and who dress exactly like the guy in the next cubicle and who—Gwen? Are you listening?”

Gwen, whose head had swiveled in the direction of the side yard, abruptly turned back. “What? Oh yeah. Cubicles.”

Isobel leaned forward to look off to Gwen's left. Quentin was at the far end of the side yard, busy trimming a hedge. He was muscled but wiry, not far from skinny, and for the first time Isobel noted that he moved with a kind of masculine grace.

Isobel sat back and laughed. “So
that's
your type!”

“It's not because he's good-looking,” Gwen said, defensively. “Well, it's only partly because of that. He's really smart and really nice. And his eyes are so brown. And when he smiles . . . Wow. It's . . . just, wow.”

“His hair is pretty great, too,” Isobel said. It was. It was a soft brown and loosely curled and made a kind of halo around his face. She doubted he ever had to comb it. Of course, Jeff's hair was pretty great, too, even greater then Quentin's.

“So, what are you going to tell your mother about the flowers?”

Isobel thought about that for a minute. Well, she hadn't told her mom about meeting Jeff in town. So, how would she explain a “complete stranger” stopping by the inn with a gift of flowers? But maybe her mother wouldn't consider Jeff a complete stranger. After all, she had met him. But would her mother believe that he had never met Isobel before today? Isobel's right leg began to bounce as it often did when her mind was wrestling with something.

“The truth, of course,” she said. But maybe she would just leave the flowers tucked away in the gardens out back, among their own stand of daylilies. If anyone noticed four flowers not rooted to the ground, they would more than likely attribute the destruction to the pesky groundhogs or the ravenous deer.

“You know, daylilies are kind of an odd choice . . .”

“Gwen!”

Gwen grinned. “I'm just saying.”

The Blueberry Bay Inn was fully booked for the Fourth of July holiday, which was a good thing, of course, but it also meant there was no holiday for its keeper. But that was all right. Louise had known the kind of life she was getting into when she bought the inn. Sort of. Knowledge gleaned from the reports of others was never the same thing as knowledge gleaned from your own gritty experience.

So, while Isobel and half of the town was at Gwen's family's house for their annual blowout party, Louise was busy sticking a broom as far under the fridge as it would go without snapping. An olive had escaped from its container and she was damned if she was going to let it mutate into an alien life form in her kitchen.

The job at hand wasn't exactly mentally taxing, so as Louise poked, she thought about times past when the Bessire family would roll the Fourth of July celebrations right into Isobel's birthday celebrations. On the Fourth itself there would be a visit to the town-sponsored fireworks after an afternoon barbeque at the Bessire house, to which the entire block was invited. On the fifth the Bessires would travel to Cape Cod for a lobster and clam chowder dinner. And on the sixth, Isobel's birthday, the family spent the day in downtown Boston.

While Louise and Isobel shopped, Andrew hung out at a sports bar; he was a rabid baseball fan. He joined his wife and daughter for cocktails at five (not at a sports bar) and then they went off for dinner at the Union Oyster House. That was Isobel's unlikely choice. She loved the old wooden booths and the rickety stairs to the second floor. Plus, even as a small girl she had loved oysters Rockefeller. Go figure.

“Aha!!” Louise cried. The olive, slightly smushed, had emerged. She picked it up with a paper towel and threw it into the trash.

Next on her agenda, cancel the order for the tables and chairs Flora Michaels had requested and then rejected, and place a new order for a different set of tables and chairs. “Shouldn't Flora Michaels be doing that sort of grunt work?” Catherine had questioned. Louise had shrugged. “Sometimes it's just easier to go along than to try to fight her.”

But there were some occasions when a good fight was in order.

The happy couple, it seemed, would be staying in a luxury suite at a luxury resort in Kennebunk. Louise guessed there was a limit to their interest in old-fashioned charm, especially once the cameras ceased to roll. Blueberry Bay Inn was not the sort of place that offered Jacuzzis and in-room massages. So be it. But Flora Michaels had wanted to book James and Jim's room for an “A-list surprise guest” who did enjoy roughing it at an old-fashioned inn. Louise had outright refused.

“They are loyal guests and they're paid up through the end of their stay,” Louise had said firmly. “There's no way I'm kicking them out for anyone.”

Flora Michaels had backed down, but only after Louise had agreed to find the “A-list surprise guest” a room at another inn or bed-and-breakfast, a near-impossible task as every room in town was usually booked months in advance of summer. (Where the hell were all the other guests staying at such relatively last-minute notice? A campground in Wells? It seemed the bride and groom didn't know or care. Neither did Flora Michaels.) After some finagling and promises she hoped she could fulfill, she managed to get the bigwig a room and called Flora Michaels with the good news.

“Louise, dear,” Flora Michaels cooed, “how sweet of you to go to all that trouble! Unfortunately, our guest won't be able to attend after all, something came up in Paris, so if you could just cancel that reservation, that would be awesome.”

What could she say to that? When Paris called, you answered. And she never passed up an opportunity to do something awesome. Blushing with embarrassment, Louise had called the manager at Loon Isle and ate a heaping portion of humble pie. “You still owe me,” Gus pointed out. “Now I've got an empty room to fill. Again.”

The new table and chair order placed online, Louise treated herself to another cup of coffee. She wondered what Catherine and Isobel and Flynn were doing at that very moment. Not only had she been forced to miss the party at the Ryan-Roberts house but also to miss (well, to postpone) Isobel's birthday celebration. They had planned a day in Portland that was to include a massage at Nine Stones, a lovely spa on Commercial Street, lunch at the Portland Lobster Company, a visit to the museum, and, of course, shopping at all of their favorite stores.

The night before, while she had been sitting with Catherine on her little deck, drinking wine, Louise had told her how bad she felt having to cancel on her daughter. Catherine had said what any good friend was supposed to say.

“You're not required to be a saint,” she had stated flatly. “End of story.”

But there was more to confess. “I was a teeny bit relieved when Andrew called off their vacation,” Louise had told her. “Of course, it would be a positive thing if Isobel developed a decent relationship with Vicky, but I would probably like it better if they never met again. Am I crazy? I feel jealous of a relationship that doesn't even exist but that probably should exist, at least for Isobel's sake.”

“Au contraire,”
Catherine had replied, “I think you're pretty gosh darn normal. What would be odd is if you were working to make Isobel and Vicky BFFs.”

“Really? You don't think Isobel and I are too close? Sometimes I wonder if I've smothered her or if I interfere too heavily in her life.”

“About that you're asking the wrong person,” Catherine admitted. “I look at your relationship with Isobel with something between admiration and raging envy.”

“Oh. Thanks, I guess. You know, Isobel and her father used to be so close. I can't help but wonder if she's really as all right with things as she seems to be.”

“Do you think she's pretending she's over the pain?” Catherine asked.

“No,” Louise said, “not pretending. Not really. But I worry that maybe she decided she just doesn't want to deal with any more bad feelings. She can be terribly impatient . . .”

“Don't assume trouble. If there's no smoke, there's probably no fire.”

“True. But if you don't properly grieve it all comes sneaking back at some point, the pain, the anger, and it can be that much more intense.”

“Yes,” Catherine said. “But maybe Isobel is simply one of those ridiculously resilient people. They do exist, though I suspect they're a rare breed.”

Louise remembered finishing her second glass of wine and wondering if she should have a third. “There's one more thing I feel I should confess,” she had said, still considering the important question of more wine, “if you don't mind being my confessor.”

“Confess away. Though I have no official power to absolve.”

“You know, Andrew made no attempt to introduce Isobel to Vicky before the wedding last December. He had a million reasons why he wanted to keep them apart—some downright cowardly, other reasons having to do with Vicky's messy divorce—and so I dropped the issue.”

“You feel guilty for not forcing your daughter to meet the woman who had an affair with her father?”

“Well, yeah,” Louise said. “I mean, my motives were entirely selfish. In the interest of peace I probably should have pushed Andrew to—”

“No,” Catherine interrupted, “you probably should have done just what you did. Let Andrew handle the introduction. Really, Louise, his behavior, good or bad, is not your responsibility. You might have thought that it was when you were married—it seems to me, and maybe I'm wrong, that a lot of wives feel responsible for their husband's actions—but no more.”

“Innkeep! Innkeep!”

Louise came back to the moment with a start. Thank God Mr. Peters, a pompous little pastry shop owner from Connecticut, who declared Bella's baking skills sub-par, was only staying for one more night. He treated her as little more than a slave. Louise went out to the front hall to deal with his latest urgent and no doubt utterly ridiculous demand.