The Summer House (25 page)

“I made it,” he beamed. “It’s getting easier each time.” He slid behind the wheel, adjusted his dead legs, started the engine, and, with his hand, pressed what BeBe presumed was the accelerator that rested on the dashboard. He did not act as if he knew any dark family truth, or as if his mother had just lost her mind.

“Nice job,” BeBe said.

Danny shrugged. “All in a day’s work.”

BeBe smiled and touched his shoulder. “Well, I can see you’re doing okay. How about your mother?” She hadn’t planned to ask so quickly, but the question had tumbled out.

Danny flashed her a guarded look. “Geez,” he said, moving his eyes back to the road. “Have you been talking to Uncle Roger? I e-mail him every day.”

“I saw them last night at The Breakers. Briefly.”

“Dad must be doing good in Florida. The polls are up a little.”

BeBe drew in a breath. The more the damn polls favored Michael, the more she worried that Josh might play his trump card. She did not know which of the candidates it would hurt or help if he revealed to the world that Danny was his son, but in the bitter realm of politics, she figured Josh could come up with a way to use it in his favor, to make Michael look like a fool and Michael’s wife, lower than that.

She turned her head and saw the familiar white pines and the soft, sandy roadside of the “Cross Island Parkway.” “It’s not the polls I’m worried about, Danny,” she lied, then added, “I’m worried about your mother.” That part, of course, was the truth.

“Me too, Aunt BeBe. Mom’s been acting kind of weird. Not herself, you know?”

The catch in his voice underscored BeBe’s own fears.

She was so relieved to see the van—with Danny behind the wheel—pulling into the driveway, that at first Liz didn’t notice he was not alone. In the shadows of the afternoon sun, she did not see the van’s passenger until the door opened, a large tapestry bag dropped to the ground, and an orange-haired woman—BeBe—stepped out.

“I don’t know if I should hug you or kill you,” Liz said, shaking her head at Danny as she went to greet her sister.

“Don’t kill him,” BeBe said. “He’s my ride back to the airport when I decide I can’t stand this island another minute.”

“BeBe,” Liz said, then stopped. She looked at her sister, at the one person in her life who had been there for her, who had let her be herself, even when she’d been wrong. And now BeBe was standing there, once more her rock. Liz didn’t have to ask why. Surprising tears sprang to her eyes, floodgates of guilt opening wide. BeBe stepped forward and put her arms around her, and instantly, Liz had the urge to confess everything right there in the driveway, in front of everyone.

“I was in the neighborhood,” BeBe said, “and thought I’d drop by.”

Liz wiped her tears. “You are such a liar,” she said. “Danny, don’t ever listen to your Aunt BeBe. She is such a liar.”

“Well, I’m not lying when I say I need a glass of iced tea more than anything in the world.” BeBe turned to Danny. “Think you can spin that two-wheeler into the kitchen and rustle up some drinks for the old ladies?”

Danny turned toward the house. When Liz moved to go after him, BeBe stopped her.

“How are you, kid?” BeBe asked.

Keith and Joe were following Danny inside, and for this moment Liz and BeBe were standing alone. Alone,
with the scrub oaks and the hydrangea and the clamshell pieces dug into the dirt driveway that she remembered so well from when they were kids who shared secret daydreams and needed each other.

She choked back her thoughts and picked up BeBe’s bag. “I’m fine, Beebs,” she said. “Really I am.”

BeBe studied her face with an expression that said she knew otherwise. “Bullshit,” she said.

Liz hoisted BeBe’s bag to her shoulder, her need to confess now supplanted by a need to defend. “Did you come to visit me or harass me?” She wanted BeBe to say she had come to harass her, to save her from Josh Miller and from herself. But if BeBe knew he was there on the island—had been at the house—she was not saying. Instead, her sister simply looked at Liz with a small, fake smile.

“You decide” was all she would say.

The salt in the air—or maybe it was in her tears—stung Liz’s eyes. Liz stood and stared at her sister. She gripped the strap of BeBe’s bag as if it were a lifeline and she were on the Titanic. And then, her lower lip began to tremble.

“Oh, shit,” BeBe said. “Oh, shit.”

Liz set down the bag. Her shoulders began to shake.

“Oh, shit,” BeBe said again, then put her arm around her sister.

Liz leaned her head into BeBe’s shoulder. “I wish I could lie to you, Beebs. Oh, hell. Why can’t I just lie to you?”

“Because you’re kind and good and not a bit like me,” BeBe replied. “And because if you lied, I’d know it.”

So Liz did not lie. Instead, she just cried. And BeBe did not ask her why.

He’d give anything to know what the hell was going on. Danny wheeled from the bathroom, where dutiful Clay
had just emptied his pee bag, and parked his chair by the window overlooking the driveway.

His mother was sobbing, Aunt BeBe was comforting her, and none of it made any sense.

Sure, Gramps was dead, but Mom hadn’t seemed this upset at the funeral. Maybe she’d been hiding it.

Was that why Aunt BeBe was here?

Or had he been right in assuming Mom and Dad had a fight? And, if so, about what? Had Dad gotten caught up in that game of sex known to so many of his predecessors? Danny frowned. He’d never suspected his father of playing around—Dad simply wasn’t like those other politicians: last winter’s witch hunt had proved that.

Still, there must be some reason Mom had not returned to campaigning.

There must be some reason she was this upset.

Jesus
, he suddenly thought,
what if Mom wanted a divorce?
Who would vote for a man whose own wife didn’t want him? Especially when there was a viable opponent like Josh Miller on the other side of the ballot?

The anger BeBe felt rushed from her head to her heart to her fingers—which wanted to wrap themselves tightly around Josh Miller’s neck—and down to her legs, propelling her across the dunes toward Josh Miller’s house.

She had smuggled a little vodka from Father’s study into her iced tea, drank it and made another, then told Liz she wanted to go for a walk—alone. Or, at least, alone with her drink. She had said it was difficult being back on the Vineyard, thinking about all those things she’d never resolved with Father, thinking that if only she had been a better daughter they could have had a happier life together, all of them. BeBe wasn’t sure how much of
it was crap to throw Liz off track about BeBe’s real mission.

But as she trucked along the dunes, stopping for frequent sips from her glass, she knew it wasn’t all crap. It was strange to be back on the island; strange to feel the damp Vineyard beach between her toes instead of dry Palm Beach sand; strange to hear the fat, gray gulls instead of skittering, light sandpipers; strange to see thick, purple-lined clamshells instead of delicate pink conch.

And it was strange to feel surrounded by generations of her roots embedded there on the island, instead of the rootless, shiftless, here-today-gone-tomorrow Ruizes of the world.

But with the old weight came the old ache, the ache that was too familiar, carrying with it memories of hundreds of summer nights, hundreds of long, steamy, usually miserable summer nights.

In fairness to the others, summers on the Vineyard had sometimes been fun, filled with swimming and clamming and saltwater taffy stuck in her teeth. But that had all been ruined those last years, when she could never do anything that pleased Father—as opposed to Daniel, who could do no wrong in anyone’s eyes, including her own.

And now, the one Adams sibling on whom everyone’s leftover high hopes had hinged, was about to fuck everything up.

“Stop right there!” The shout came from a dune up above, from a deep-voiced male who must have excelled in Gestapo training.

BeBe stopped. She looked up, shielding her eyes against the summer sun.

“Where are you going?”

“For a walk. I happen to own this beach, in case it’s any of your business.” She didn’t really know if she
owned the beach at all: she had never shown any interest in Father’s property when he was alive and did not intend to start now—let Roger and Evelyn haggle with Liz and Michael over who was entitled to what. At the funeral BeBe had told Michael to let her know sometime if the old man had completely cut her out of the will or not, if he had ever gotten around to it, not that it mattered.

She stuffed her hands into her pockets, ignored the Gestapo, and kept walking.

“You’ll have to stop, lady,” the commando said. “You’re too close to protected property.”

BeBe stopped again.
Protected property
. Of course. Josh’s property would be protected these days, and this man must be one of the gray-suited henchmen like those camped out with Liz and Danny.
Argh
, she thought.
Why would anyone want to be president?
She chalked it up to masochism, then put her hands on her hips.

“I am a personal friend of Josh Miller’s,” she said.

The henchman came down off the dune, speaking into a walkie-talkie, most likely to an equally nervous henchman on the other end of the beach.

“Give Josh a call,” she said. “Tell him BeBe Adams wants to see him. I’m sure he’ll know why.”

The man reached her. “Please, ma’am. We don’t want any trouble.”

BeBe laughed. “I’m not interested in politics. What I have to say to him is personal. Damn personal.”

The agent paused. He whispered something else into the walkie-talkie. In the distance, BeBe could see two other figures approach at a brisk clip.

“If you feel you must see Mr. Miller in private, you have to go around front like everyone else,” the guard said. “We can’t have just anyone walking along this strip of beach.”

BeBe put a hand on one of her hips, looked out toward
the fast-approaching cavalry, and huffed. “Tell that to the seagulls,” she said, and pranced off in the other direction, knowing there was more than one way to skin a Secret Service cat, and that’d she’d do it as soon as she figured out what it was.

Chapter 23

On the way back BeBe spotted the entrance to the path she remembered from when they were kids. The path led to the cove where she and her brothers and Liz often paddled the rowboat, where long ago they pretended they were on the high seas, trying to avert pirates and shipwrecks.

It was only a small cove, not like the ocean, but Father had forbidden them to take the boat on the open water. Once, BeBe supposed, she thought he was being protective. Later she decided it had been just one more way for him to exert control. Because while he certainly wanted nothing to happen to Daniel or Lizzie, if BeBe and Roger had been capsized and washed up on the cliffs of Gay Head, Father would not really have given a shit. Okay, BeBe thought, so maybe that was overstating it.

It was only a small pirates’ cove, but it had kept the Adams children from drowning. And it was where Liz had met with Josh.

“Maybe we all should have drowned,” BeBe murmured. She drained her glass, flung it into the brambles, and pushed her way down the path.

It was overgrown now with wild grape vines and sassafras
and thickets of underbrush, some dotted with bright flowers of purple and yellow, some knotted with prickly-looking thorns that had dug into BeBe’s young, summer-tanned legs more than once. Carefully, she pushed back the tangles and continued toward the cove. It had always been so secluded there—maybe if she went back to the scene of the original crime she could figure out what to do; maybe a Vineyard sea monster from their old pirate days would surface on thick, murky water and give her an answer … or maybe, she thought as she stumbled a little over a small rock, maybe she’d just had too much booze.

Seeing the majordomos on the beach today had reinforced the gravity of the situation. That and the fact that Liz had not been forthcoming, had only said she would not lie, but had not told all there was to tell. Nor had she said she did not plan to see Josh again. For all BeBe knew, they would be screwing on the dunes tonight and every night until one of the media piranhas caught them at it.