Beach Plum Island Read online

  The river was surprisingly deserted for a summer Sunday. There were just a few kids on the rope swing, and a couple of families that had come by canoe from a place that rented them upriver. Gigi could still see her dad here, grinning like a monkey on that swing—a huge soft-bellied gorilla of a guy—but now the memory made her smile instead of cry. He had loved this place and taught her to love it, too. He would want her to be here.

  To her surprise, her mother stripped off her jodhpurs and boots, revealing a blue tankini, and took her place in the line of kids. Mom looked very serious, unlike the laughing, whooping teenagers, and suddenly Gigi couldn’t stand seeing her standing there alone, trying to be brave about the swing. She knew her mother had never been on the swing. Dad had tried to get her on it, but she was afraid of heights.

  Gigi hadn’t worn a suit, but she had on black underwear; she stripped off her jeans and boots and stood behind her mother in her underwear and T-shirt without saying a word.

  When it was Mom’s turn, she swung off the platform and over the river with a startled look, as if she hadn’t really expected the rope to hold her. She forgot to let go until Gigi shouted, “Jump, Mom! Jump!”

  She did, with a whoop of laughter. Gigi started laughing, too, and took her own turn off the rope, making the kind of cannonball her dad loved, splashing everyone around her.

  She came up out of the water and saw Mom treading water next to her, pale hair plastered to her head, her gray eyes smiling as she blew a stream of water between her teeth, hitting Gigi square on the forehead.

  • • •

  Mark was supposed to bring the boys back after dinner, but instead they were home by four o’clock. Mark looked sheepish; he didn’t come in like he usually did, but hugged the boys in the doorway and then hovered on the step. Ava could see Sasha sitting in Mark’s car, talking on her phone. Sasha waved but didn’t get out.

  “Everything okay?” she asked. Ava felt slightly responsible for whatever happened between Sasha and Mark. Sasha had been on Ava’s tennis team two years ago, and Ava was the one who’d told Mark to call her after first discussing him with Sasha.

  Sasha was divorced, a lawyer with a grown daughter and a nice house in West Newbury, an energetic brunette whose blistering tennis serve put opponents in their place. She was pretty in a no-nonsense way and extremely practical. Mark tended to be disorganized and forgetful. It seemed like the perfect fit.

  “Oh, yeah,” Mark said. “We spent the weekend at Sasha’s house on the Cape. I’m just not sure it was much fun for the boys. You know. A little too much white carpet and table manners, that sort of thing.”

  Ava laughed. “Did they take their shoes off and use their napkins, I hope?”

  “Sure. But their socks weren’t much better than their shoes. And I don’t think Sasha’s had a lot of experience with boys. Anyway, I hope you don’t mind me bringing them back early.” Mark gave another anxious glance over his shoulder. “I thought I might take her to dinner.”

  And to bed, probably, Ava thought, because Sasha wouldn’t have wanted to do anything with the boys in the house. She waved him off. “Have fun,” she said. “Tell her I said hi.”

  She closed the door and went to see the boys, who had immediately retreated into their iPods and computers. “Everything okay this weekend?” she asked Sam.

  He nodded. “Big glassy house. Good food. She’s nice enough, I guess.”

  “Good. Need anything else to eat?”

  Sam shook his head, his eyes on the computer screen, scrolling through Facebook. “Nope. I’m set.”

  Evan was similarly closemouthed and uninterested in food. All he said was “Sasha’s fine. She asks so many questions my ears started bleeding, though.”

  Ava smothered a laugh and closed the door. She’d forgotten that about Sasha. Lawyers loved to ask questions.

  Now that the boys were home but nobody seemed to want dinner, Ava was, at loose ends. She wandered out to the patio, into her studio, and back into the living room, wondering what to do with herself. So odd, this period in her life when the boys needed her to be around, but didn’t really want her to do anything beyond filling the fridge and driving them places. It left her feeling nostalgic for the days when they were babies and she was a part of their lives nearly every minute they were awake.

  She supposed it was a universal truth that mothers, after tearing out their hair and tacking their raw beating hearts to the outsides of their clothing for anyone to see, were given no warning that some-day their baby-holding days would be over. When that day came, there was no clanging bell or siren, no banner flown across the sky to pinpoint that single precious moment when you rocked your child for the last time.

  Ava reminded herself that she was lucky to have such good relationships with her teenagers and that she was happy for Mark, glad he’d found a woman whose company he enjoyed. Still, she felt a familiar stab of regret. Did she try hard enough? Could they have worked things out, if she’d only hung in there?

  She should have seen the affair coming. They were living amicable but parallel lives. She cared for the kids during the day and took classes at night to earn her teaching certificate. She did pottery on the weekends. Mark was working long hours at his engineering firm in Andover and occasionally traveled overnight for work.

  The years went by. Then, one night, Sam had been seized with a sudden pain, a stitch in his side that rapidly became so acute that he was doubled over and feverish, howling. He wasn’t quite ten years old. Mark was on a business trip; Ava called the ambulance and then dialed Mark’s cell. He didn’t pick up.

  The ambulance came and she followed it in the car with Evan, not wanting to leave him alone in the house. At the hospital, the doctors operated for a burst appendix. Mark still hadn’t called her back. In desperation, she’d phoned Padma, his secretary, whose cell number she had because Padma occasionally house-sat for them when they went to visit Mark’s mother in Florida. She thought Padma might know what hotel she could call to reach Mark.

  Padma, distraught by the news, had handed her cell phone to Mark. It was two o’clock in the morning and Mark’s voice was blurry with sleep.

  Ava hated remembering that night for all sorts of reasons, not least the fact that Padma had arrived with Mark at the hospital with an overcoat tossed over her pretty pink nightgown, her feet in white slippers, her hair a sleek dark curtain. She was young and beautiful. Ava was tired and frightened and betrayed.

  She was also—though she had never admitted this to anyone—relieved. She had married Mark because he was sweet and good to her, the sort of courtly high school boyfriend who bought the right wrist corsage for the prom, helped her study for chemistry tests, and never lost his temper, even the time she rear-ended someone while driving his new Mustang. It was the opposite of the fractious relationship her own parents had, and Ava had taken that as a sign of true love.

  They married right after freshman year of college, when Ava was only nineteen, not because she felt she couldn’t live without Mark, but because she couldn’t face ever living at home again. Mark was her escape. Her savior. She would always be grateful to him for that.

  Then, when Sam and Evan were born, her passion for motherhood far outweighed any emotional or physical bond she’d ever felt with Mark. They had what Ava privately thought of as “good sport” sex around the edges of their busy domestic life; she sometimes counted the minutes and did whatever it took to satisfy her husband so she could get back to her book or go to sleep.

  She had told herself she was content back then, excited by motherhood and by her new teaching career. Marriage wasn’t supposed to be a lifelong honeymoon; she was determined to find solace in new interests rather than despair in the lack of emotional connection she felt with her husband. Mark was a good man and she never wanted to hurt him.

  In a way, then, his affair, as short-lived and painful as it was for both of the
m, had been a gift. Now there was a “real” reason for a separation, a divorce, where there hadn’t been one before. Ava was able to tell Mark how she had been feeling—well, not about the sex, she never told him that—and to absolve him of the betrayal. He, in turn, understood her, as he always had.

  Remembering this led her to recall that first awful Christmas alone. She’d had the boys for Thanksgiving, so Mark, per their agreement, had taken them on Christmas. They’d gone to ski in Vermont, so Ava was alone on Beach Plum Island. She and the boys would celebrate Christmas the following weekend.

  She was determined to put up a tree, and she had, but while unraveling the Christmas lights she’d suddenly fallen apart: there was no end to the tangled wires. She had put the Christmas tree outside instead, and made cranberry and popcorn strings to wind around its brittle branches, an offering to the cardinals and blue jays that fluttered like patriotic scarves on the snowy beach.

  Ava shook her head. She had survived, and so had the boys. They were happy. Mark was doing well. They were still a family with lots of love between them. That was more than most people had.

  And now, perhaps, she was about to add to their family. She had registered with the International Soundex Reunion Registry this afternoon, as she’d promised Gigi. The process hadn’t been difficult, exactly, but it had been emotionally taxing. She was having mixed feelings now about the search. Or maybe she was just tired. Either way, her energy seemed to have drained away.

  “Do I really want to know the truth?” she said aloud, staring at the little one-eyed stuffed dog she’d taken from Finley’s house and put next to her computer in the kitchen.

  She had run the dog through the washing machine; now its fur was white and fluffy instead of dingy and matted down, but that one eye still glared at her accusingly. It was a common enough glass eye; she wondered if the fabric store at the mall would have one to match it.

  “Hey,” she yelled up the stairs, “do either of you guys want to go to the mall?”

  “No!” the boys answered in unison, so she tucked the little dog into her purse and headed out to buy an eye.

  This, at least, was one thing she could fix right now.

  As it turned out, however, she was wrong, at least about the “right now” bit. Ava stared in frustration at the CLOSED sign on the fabric store. She had forgotten the mall closed at five o’clock on Sundays. She had even forgotten it was Sunday. Now what? She was hungry, but she hated eating alone in restaurants.

  She sat in her car, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel and feeling lonely. She finally phoned Elaine, but Elaine’s phone went to voice mail. So did Caroline’s. Olivia answered, but she was out with a friend. There was nothing for her to do but turn around and go home to scrounge dinner.

  Then, almost as if she’d willed it to, her cell phone rang as she was tucking it back into her purse. She hit the button without recognizing the number, her heart beating hard. What if the registry had already found Peter?

  “Hello?”

  “Ava?”

  “Yes?” She didn’t recognize the man’s voice.

  “It’s Simon. Simon Talbot.”

  As if she knew a hundred Simons. As if there was any Simon who could unnerve her more than this one. “Oh. Hi,” she said, grinning foolishly out her windshield at the nearly empty mall parking lot. “What’s up?” She cringed, hearing herself. What was she, twelve years old?

  “I know this is last-minute, but I was wondering if you might want to come to dinner at my place. I was just about to start the grill when the guy I invited to dinner bailed on me. Now I’m stuck with too much food and nobody to share it with, and I’ve been meaning to do something for you as a thank-you for being so nice to Gigi.”

  Ah. A charity call, then. “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

  “I know,” he said patiently. “But I want to. Will you come? The view here is spectacular. So is the service. I know it’s a bit of a drive, but I promise to make the meal worth your time. Please say you’ll join me.”

  She glanced down at her outfit: her usual tank top, but at least it was a clean one, and a decent denim skirt. She’d actually had a shower this afternoon before the boys came home. She was halfway to Boston already, Ava realized. It was Sunday night, so there would be no commuter traffic.

  “I can probably be there in half an hour,” she said. “I’m actually in Peabody right now.”

  “Peabody?” Simon sounded amused. “Why?”

  “I was trying to buy an eye,” she said, laughing. “I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. What can I bring?”

  “Just you,” he said, in a way that made her hand tremble as she hung up the phone.

  Simon’s condominium was in one of the long wharf buildings overlooking Boston Harbor. She gave the car to a doorman, feeling like an impostor, then made her way into the lobby and walked up to his condo on the second floor.

  He opened the door and kissed her lightly on the cheek before leading her into the kitchen. The condo was the sort photographed by architectural magazines. The living room had a soaring ceiling, an exposed brick wall, and massive wooden beams. No cautious beige or white walls, either, but bright gold. The furniture was black leather and the tables were made out of bamboo with glass tops. Waist-high statues of giraffes and elephants stood scattered about the hardwood floor at the edges of the deep red Oriental carpet.

  “I feel like I’m on safari,” Ava said.

  Simon made a face. “The decorator got a little carried away. She was having so much fun that I didn’t have the heart to stop her. I think she felt like she had to compete with the view.”

  He pointed and Ava turned around. The far wall of the living room was floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the harbor. Tonight the water lay like a sequined cape fanned beneath the dusky sky.

  “Wow. I see what you mean about vertigo.”

  “You get used to it after a while,” Simon said, “but you still can’t have more than two drinks, or you want to throw yourself into the water. How hungry are you?”

  “As in portion size or timing?”

  “Both.”

  “A lot, and soon. I’ve had an exciting weekend.”

  “How so?”

  “The short version is that your niece, my sister, and I went on a hunt for our brother.”

  Simon raised an eyebrow, his blue eyes puzzled. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

  “Neither did we.”

  In the kitchen, Simon poured them each a glass of prosecco while Ava told him everything she knew and showed him the one-eyed dog, which Simon studied with the same deliberate attention he seemed to give to everything. “What are you feeling now that you have this information? What do you hope to find out?”

  Ava frowned, turning the glass between her hands for a moment before answering. “Of course part of this is motivated by Dad dying,” she said, swallowing hard as the grief welled in her chest. “And by Mom’s death as well. This baby was part of their lives, so naturally he’s a part of ours, too.”

  “What if he doesn’t want to be?” Simon asked gently. “A lot of adopted kids aren’t that keen on finding their birth parents.”

  “I know.” Ava took a shaky breath. “But, even if that’s the case, I thought if I were in his shoes, I’d want to know that people cared enough to look for me, no matter how my life was going. I’d want to know why my mother gave me up, and yes, I’d want to know if I had other family anywhere.”

  Simon nodded. “Fair enough. I think I’d feel the same way.”

  She looked up at him gratefully. “Thanks. That helps. Anyway, we might not ever know anything.”

  “But at least you’ll know you tried.”

  “Yes. That’s something.” She smiled. “What smells so amazing in here?”

  “Garlic roast potatoes. They’re in the oven. I was going t
o grill the steaks and corn.” He frowned. “Unless you’re a vegetarian? I can scramble eggs if you’d prefer.”

  “Only if I can have steak on the side.”

  Simon smiled at her. “Have I told you yet how happy I am to see you?”

  “You’ve told me that by cooking. No need to say more.”

  “All right. No more words, then.” He reached out and pulled Ava to him. His kiss was swift and hard.

  She returned the kiss instinctively. Simon felt bigger, broader than she’d thought he would; he was such a tall, slender-looking man. He smelled familiar to her somehow, his musky scent just right. Ava could have stayed locked in that position all night, her skin humming, but she forced herself to step out of his arms.

  Simon looked chastened. “Sorry. Did you not want me to kiss you?”

  A complicated question, Ava thought. “I can’t imagine what your sister would say.”

  “Katy?” Now he laughed, surprised. “Katy would be fine about it, I think. She’s afraid I’m going to die alone because I never date. And she says you’re the one responsible for helping Gigi get through the summer without falling apart.”

  Ava was pleased by this. “Katy’s a lot stronger than she knows.”

  “Oh yes. But I suppose that’s true of all of us, isn’t it?” Simon asked. “We blithely go along until some tree falls across the road in front of us and we have to suddenly figure out how to use a chain saw to keep going.” He began removing the steaks from their packages. “So what is it, then? Not Katy. What else?”

  “Elaine,” she said simply.

  “Ah. I see.”

  “I’m not sure you do. Elaine seems bitchy and spoiled, but she’s not really, not on the inside. She’s really generous and loving.”

  “You’re right. I don’t see her that way, so I’ll have to take your word for it. I’ve only seen her act horrible in every possible circumstance involving the people I love.”