An Invincible Summer (Wyndham Beach) Read online

  She heard the front door open and close, and got up to peek around the corner. “Grace, did you lock the door?”

  Grace paused halfway across the foyer. “You sound just like Mom. Did she tell you to wait up to see if I could remember to lock up on my own?” Grace went back to the door, locked it, and said, “Locked.”

  Natalie could have pointed out that apparently someone did need to remind Grace about the lock but decided she was better off not commenting. Judging by the look on her sister’s face, teasing would not be appreciated.

  “Where’d you go?” Natalie plunked down on the sofa next to the magazine she’d been paging through.

  “I went for a walk.” Grace turned on the TV and, after jumping from channel to channel, settled on the opposite end of the sofa.

  “I hope you cooled off a bit. Honestly, Grace, I don’t understand why you’re taking this thing with Mom personally. I mean, I did at first, but it really has nothing to do with—”

  “Do you know she didn’t even tell Liddy or Emma? Her best friends? She never said a word to either of them about that baby.” Grace looked pissed off all over again.

  Natalie shrugged. “So? She wasn’t obligated to tell either . . . wait, how do you know she didn’t tell them?”

  “Because they told me.”

  “What, they just came out of the blue and said, ‘By the way, your mom never told us she had a baby after graduation.’” A feeling of dread welled up inside Natalie’s chest. “Grace. You didn’t.”

  Grace turned her face to the TV.

  “Grace. Tell me you didn’t tell Liddy and Emma.” When Grace didn’t respond, Natalie threw her magazine at her sister. “You told them. How dare you! That wasn’t your story to tell.”

  “I didn’t know they didn’t know. I assumed they did.”

  “So, what, you walked out of here and went over to Liddy’s or Emma’s—”

  “Liddy’s. And I didn’t leave here to go there. I was walking and I went past Liddy’s house and she and Emma were on the porch. They talked me into going up and sitting with them, and it just all sort of came out.”

  “You always did have the biggest damned mouth. You couldn’t wait to blab Mom’s secret, could you? You were angry at her, and you couldn’t wait to let everyone else know how pissed off you were.”

  “I didn’t know, Nat! I swear. The three of them have been so close for so long it never occurred to me she hadn’t confided in them. They could tell something was bothering me, so when they asked, I said we’d just found out about Mom’s baby and I was upset about it.” Grace looked sorry for the first and only time that night. “And then they both said, ‘What baby?’”

  “Grace, this is really bad. Mom’s going to kill you when she finds out, and I won’t blame her one bit. You shouldn’t have told them.”

  Too late, Natalie saw Maggie in the doorway.

  “She shouldn’t have told who what?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  MAGGIE

  Maggie drifted into wakefulness the same way she’d drifted to sleep, minute by minute, the scent of salt air surrounding her. She glanced at the clock—only five thirty. A quick storm had rolled through at some point. The wet spray blowing in through the window had awakened her, and she’d gotten up to close the window, then fallen back into bed. Turning over, hoping for at least another hour of sleep, the drama of the previous evening replayed in her head, and she knew there’d be no more rest for her that morning.

  She expected to have a rocky night, but she’d gotten herself ready for bed, climbed in, and pulled up the covers, her mind bouncing from one scene to another. Natalie’s revelation. Grace’s unexpected and unreasonable reaction. Natalie’s reversal from anger to kind understanding and apology. Grace spilling the beans to Liddy and Emma—and God only knew what the two of them were thinking. But the hardest punch to her gut had been Brett confessing his true feelings after all these years. She’d never suspected he’d suffered as she had.

  The discovery that her son was reaching out.

  My son is reaching out.

  Of course she would meet him. Nothing could keep her from that longed-for reunion, regardless of how nervous she might feel, how afraid she might be of how he might judge her. What did he look like? Brett had said he looked like him, but what did that mean beyond he had blond hair and he was tall? Lots of tall men were blond.

  “He has your eyes,” Brett had said.

  She tossed the covers aside, stood, and stretched, then went into the bathroom, where she turned on the light and stared into the mirror.

  Were his eyes the same shade of green, the same shape? Were his lashes long and thick like hers? Did they darken when he was angry, as hers did? Did the corners crinkle when he laughed?

  Would she see anything else of her in his face or his mannerisms, the way she could see herself in Natalie and in Grace? Or would his gestures favor his adoptive parents, the people who raised and loved him? She thought about them, wondered who they were. She’d been given the option to meet them in the hospital, but she’d declined. Her eighteen-year-old self thought of them as the people who were taking her baby from her. Now, with so much time between the girl she’d been and the woman she’d become, she could honor them for who they were. They were the ones who tended to his scraped knees and kissed him good night, sat at his bedside when he was sick, read to him, and put up with his teenage antics. They gave him a life and made him the man who could reach out to a half sister he’d never met and wish her a beautiful, happy life, even if she chose not to be a part of his.

  They’d given him their name when she could not give him hers.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Whoever you are, thank you.”

  Twenty minutes later, Maggie sat at the kitchen table, her laptop in front of her, trying to compose an email to Joe Miller. She’d started it a dozen times but couldn’t find the words to make it sound exactly the way she wanted. This would be his first impression of her, and she couldn’t seem to strike the right balance between stiff and formal, and between familiar and chatty. It was so much harder than she thought it would be. There was no point in pretending she didn’t want to meet him, so she might as well set the ball in motion. Why waste more time?

  Should she take Brett up on his offer to call Joe and set it up? Was that the coward’s way out? Did that make her seem weak, too tentative?

  An email from her to him was definitely the way to go. She couldn’t hide behind Brett. If only she could say what she wanted and have it come out right.

  She was still sitting there, staring at the blank screen, when she heard a knock at the front door. She glanced at the clock—7:25. Who knocked on your door at that hour of the morning?

  Maggie peered through the glass panel in the door, sighed, and opened it. She should have known.

  “Neither of us could sleep,” Liddy announced as she stepped inside.

  “I called her at six thirty and told her we needed to address this head-on.” Emma followed Liddy.

  “Come on in, then.” Maggie gestured in the direction of the kitchen.

  “I don’t smell coffee.” Liddy sniffed the air. “Why don’t I smell coffee?”

  “I didn’t get to it yet,” Maggie explained.

  “Looks like you had time to start working on something.” Liddy pointed to the open laptop as she went right past Maggie and began filling the coffee maker.

  Maggie slid Joe’s emails to Natalie under the laptop and closed it. She eyed both friends. “Go on. Spit it out. Say what you have to say.”

  “Okay. You twisted my arm. I’ll go first. I—we—are hurt and offended you didn’t trust us enough to tell us what you were going through.” Emma needn’t have told Maggie she was hurt. Her eyes said it all.

  “It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you . . .”

  “Oh, I call bull.” Liddy opened the refrigerator and took out the half-and-half. “If you’d trusted us, you’d have shared this with us. It had to have been terrible, b
ut did you take us into your confidence so we could offer you moral support? No. You kept it to yourself. You deceived us and lied to us all summer long.” Liddy slammed the carton of creamer on the island top. “‘Maggie, want to come to the beach with us?’ ‘Oh, no, thanks. I have to help my dad in his office.’”

  “I couldn’t go to the beach. I couldn’t put on a bathing suit. I was okay in street clothes—by the time I started to really show, you’d already left for college.”

  “You could have told us the truth instead of lying all summer long. Friends don’t lock out friends when something bad happens. It’s thick and thin, not thick and thick.” Liddy’s eyes reflected her anger. “I’m really pissed off, Maggie.”

  “I can tell, and I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.” Maggie took the mug of coffee Liddy offered her and set it on the counter. “I understand why you’re angry. I wish I could have told you back then what I was going through. It was a very painful and confusing time.”

  “Did you think we’d judge you? Start rumors? Tell the whole town?” Liddy hadn’t lost her edge.

  “No, of course not. You’d never have done that to me.”

  “Then why? Even after all this time, you never told us. We had to find out by accident from Grace. After all the things we’ve gone through together, all the times when we had to be there for each other. When Harry flipped out at Emma for siding with Chris because he didn’t want to follow in Harry’s footsteps . . . the death of our parents . . . when my daughter took her life . . . the three of us were solid. We held each other up. Why didn’t you let us do that for you?”

  “I think what Liddy is saying is that when you’re very close to someone, and they’re going through something very difficult, you want to share their burden because you love them,” Emma said softly. “We love you, Maggie. We would have been there for you. We are hurt because you wouldn’t let us share in what must have been the worst thing that ever happened to you.”

  “I didn’t think of it that way. I was constantly badgered by my parents, who were insisting I give the baby up and go on with my life as if nothing had happened. Brett sided with them, and I couldn’t make him or them believe I could keep the baby and still have a life. I could still go to college. He could still go to college.” Maggie’s sigh was deep and came from her heart. “I was very confused and very scared.”

  “We could have shared that with you.” Emma reached out her hand, and Maggie squeezed it. “We would have taken your side.”

  “I know you would have. But there was so much drama. I just wanted the talking to stop—the arguing and the cajoling and all the talk about facing reality and stop being selfish and think of the baby and what’s best for it. Him,” she corrected. “That whole summer was a blur. I was embarrassed and scared and my parents were on me about disgracing them, and Brett’s father went on these rants about how I was ruining Brett’s life and how if he had to worry about me and a baby he wouldn’t be able to focus on football and he’d never make the pros.”

  “Brett’s father was an asshole.” Liddy sat next to Maggie. “Everyone in town knows that.”

  “I’m surprised Brett didn’t stand up for you.” Emma sat across from the others.

  “He’ll never admit having let his father bully him, but I think that may have influenced his wanting me to give the baby up.” Maggie rubbed her head. As always in times of stress, her head began to pound.

  “So what did you do?” Emma asked.

  Maggie explained how she and her mother had gone to Maine and stayed there until the baby was born.

  “It hurts me to know you went through this. And while I respect your reasons for keeping it to yourself, I wish I could have been there for you.” Sweet, softhearted Emma was crying.

  “Me too.” Liddy got up and went into the adjacent family room.

  “Bring the box, Lids,” Maggie called to her.

  “What box?”

  “The box of tissues I know you’re looking for. It’s on the mantel,” Maggie told her.

  “So what are you going to do now?” Liddy returned with the box in her hand. She took a tissue and passed the box around.

  “You mean about Joe?” Maggie explained: “His name is Joe. Did Grace tell you? Brett met him and said he’s wonderful. Which, of course, he would be, just meeting for the first time.”

  “Well, yeah, he’d be on his best behavior.” Liddy nodded. “He wouldn’t want to come off like an ax murderer when he meets his birth father for the first time.”

  Maggie laughed. “I have the emails he sent Natalie. He sounds so nice.”

  “Can we see?” Liddy asked.

  “Liddy, those are personal,” Emma admonished her.

  “Oh, like we have secrets now?” Maggie lifted the laptop and slid out the emails she’d stashed away. She handed them over to Liddy. “Pass them on to Emma when you’re done.”

  “Well, if you’re going to have one secret, might as well make it a good one.” Liddy began to read, passing the sheets of paper to Emma as she finished each one. “Oh my God, he does sound like such a nice kid.”

  “He’s not a kid,” Maggie reminded her. “He’s forty.”

  “Yes, but he’s your kid.” Emma smiled as she read. “Aw, he was so nice to Natalie.” When she finished reading the last email, she wiped away a tear and asked, “So when do you think you’ll meet him?”

  “As soon as we can arrange a mutually agreeable time and place.” Maggie arranged the emails in a neat stack. Maggie looked from Liddy to Emma. “You didn’t tell Grace that Brett was the father.”

  “No. We didn’t tell her anything. We just let her talk.”

  “If she’d known, she would have mentioned it. When she didn’t, I figured she didn’t know,” Liddy added.

  “Thank you. One less explanation to make. Guys, I have to admit, I’m scared to death. Curious and excited, but mostly I’m scared.”

  “He’s going to love you. I know it.” Emma patted her heart.

  “I’d be happy if he just liked me.” Maggie’s shoulders were hunched. “So. That’s where we are.”

  “So that’s why you and Brett broke up. It all makes sense now,” Liddy said. “We could never figure out why. After you moved to Seattle to be with him, we kept waiting for the call telling us you’d set the date for your wedding. But then you called and said you were moving to Philadelphia and you’d decided marrying him wasn’t what you wanted after all. We figured maybe he’d cheated on you.” Liddy glanced across the table at Emma, who nodded.

  “Brett wanted to get married right away after we graduated from college. Like, as soon as I got to Seattle. But I just couldn’t decide what to do. That first year out there, he was so busy trying to make the team. Over the summer I’d obtained my teaching credentials so I could teach, so that kept me occupied. Then when the season ended, he wanted to plan a wedding for the spring.” Maggie shook her head slowly. “But I was so broken up about that baby, and he seemed to have put it behind him, and I couldn’t understand how he could do that. The more it haunted me the less it seemed to bother him. After a while, I felt I couldn’t love him the way I had, so I started looking for places to move to. I found a job in a private school outside of Philly that seemed to suit me, so I took it. Then I had to tell Brett, and that wasn’t a fun conversation. But in the end I felt it was the right thing to do. So I went my way, and he went his.”

  “I don’t know what to say, except that’s one of the saddest stories I ever heard.” Liddy put an arm around Maggie and gave her a hug, then smacked her lightly. “That’s for not letting us be there for you.”

  “Give her a pop for me, too,” Emma said.

  “Not necessary. I get the point, and I apologize. But now you have the whole story.” Maggie sighed. “Could we talk about something else now? There’s nothing more any of us can say on the subject.”

  “Except where you all go from here.” Liddy sipped her coffee. “Especially you and Brett.”

  “Don�
��t go there, please.” Maggie turned to Emma. “Talk about something else. Anything else.”

  “Okay. Well, Liddy has news.” Emma looked pointedly across the table and said, “Liddy, tell Maggie your news.”

  “What news?”

  Liddy brought the coffeepot over and topped off everyone’s mugs. “So I told you about Fred Lattimore thinking about selling the bookstore.”

  Maggie nodded. “Right.”

  “Well, he did.” Liddy’s grin lit the room. “He sold it to me.”

  “Liddy, that’s wonderful!” Maggie got up and gave her friend a hug. “Congratulations.”

  Still grinning, Liddy said, “The sale won’t be final for about six weeks, but I’m taking over as of Saturday. I’m so excited I can hardly stand it. I’ve always loved that little building. Did you know the lot goes back almost to the harbor? I’m thinking I could do something out there. Not sure what. Looks like there could have been a patio. Anyway, Carl’s going to show me how to do the books—no pun—and how to take inventory and invoice vendors and all the bookkeeping stuff. Payables. Receivables. I have an accountant, but Carl said I need to understand the business before I hand everything off to someone else.” Liddy rolled her eyes. “He suggested I set up a website and start offering internet sales—about which I know nothing. Do some sort of internet promotions. Ditto, I know nothing. Carl said he tried to get his father to get online, but he wasn’t interested, and Carl didn’t have the time to do it for him. So I’m going to have to find someone who knows how to design a website.”

  Grace came into the kitchen dressed in sleep shorts and an old tee. She glared at her mother before acknowledging their company. “I thought you two were never going to speak to my mom again. I thought the plan was to do away with her in a very painful way and toss her remains off the side of a boat in Buzzards Bay. Feed her to the fishes. That was the plan, wasn’t it?”

  “That was last night’s plan. This morning, your mother explained everything.” Emma added a little more sugar to her coffee. “We love her, and we’ve forgiven her. I suggest you give serious thought to doing the same.”