“Patrick is . . . he’s helped me in some ways.”
“Right.” His jaw set.
What was this about? He couldn’t be jealous. The odd interest he’d taken in her had felt one hundred percent brotherly.
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So what about Patrick? Was she involved with him or not?
She wasn’t. She couldn’t be. Next to Clive, he was about as substantive as space gas. “He can’t hurt me.”
“Okay.” Clive didn’t sound convinced. “Ready to paint?”
She nodded unhappily. More needed to be said, but the topic was enough of a mine field already that she didn’t have the courage to trudge on, in case she detonated some, or worse, planted more.
She finished her last bite and spooned up the remaining drops of cream, wasted since her taste buds had become as disoriented as the rest of her. “I’ll help you with the dishes.”
“The dishes will keep longer than your afternoon light.
You can help me do them later if you really, really want to.”
“Oh, I really, really do.” She slanted him a mischievous look, trying to recapture normalcy between them, and put her bowl and spoon in the sink. She did want to help him.
Outside, painting, she’d be on her own, and then she’d have to say good-bye and go back to stinking reality. For whatever reason, Clive felt like a loose end, and she hated having so little chance to tie him off.
Except today after she’d retrieved her bag from his truck and he led her to the lean-to, instead of running off to do his lobster guy duties, he settled on a chair in the far corner while she set up her paints and watercolor pad. Normally she de-spised being watched, but now she was glad of his company, to keep her thoughts from directions she didn’t want them going in. Being around Clive made her feel peaceful and centered, like when she’d tried to be the arrow. No wonder she craved him like a drug—her personal antidepressant.
She pulled the camera from her bag, which she’d finally As Good As It Got
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remembered to bring, and took a picture of the scene so she’d be able to finish the painting back home. The light was perfect for what she wanted to capture, not the hard-edged light of noon, but the softer, more golden tones of late afternoon, which brought colors to their richest and most vivid hues.
“Nice if you could paint from the real thing every day.”
“It would be. But tomorrow is packed, Friday is our cabin’s day trip, and I leave Saturday. I doubt the view will fit in my suitcase.” In spite of her efforts, misery showed in the words.
She took out a pencil and started a new sketch of the island to her left.
“Do you have to leave?”
A jolt of emotion, too complicated to understand. She turned to stare at him blankly. “Camp is over. Betsy gave me a free ride this session, I can’t ask her to do it again, and I can’t afford to—”
“I’m not talking about camp. I just asked if you have to go back.” He spoke calmly, as usual. And as usual, his expression gave nothing away. But she sensed the same tension in him as before . . . or was it coming from her?
“I have to go back and get a job.” Her voice wavered. She resumed her sketching, bumbling a line, clutching the pencil too hard. “I have to restart my life.”
“And there’s only one way to do that, and one schedule of how fast it has to happen?”
Ann dropped her hand to her lap. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re getting at.”
He got up and stood next to her, staring out into the bay with eyes that didn’t appear to register its beauty. “I was wondering if you wanted to stay for a while.”
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“Stay.” Another jolt. What was he talking about? “Where?”
“Here.”
“Here?” She gestured around her, indicating his property.
“As in right here? Or here as in Maine?”
“Right here. There’s plenty of room in the house. I’d like the company, and you can paint this view as many times as you want and give yourself more time to relax.”
Ann put her pencil down. Her heart was beating very fast.
“You’re not married?”
His dark brows lifted. “Not as far as I know. You thought I was?”
“I . . . the bride picture in your living room. And the . . . ”
She groped for the right words. “ . . . female look of the place.”
“That’s Angie. My sister. She lives in Rockport with her family. The house belongs to my parents. I grew up there.”
A wry smile curved his mouth. “The taste isn’t mine, but I haven’t bothered redecorating.”
Ann nodded, her body buzzing with peculiar excitement.
“Where are your parents?”
She needed to ask questions until her brain could catch up to the concept, and then she’d need even more time to figure out how she felt.
“My father died a year ago. Four months ago Mom had a stroke. I couldn’t care for her and I had to find a place that could.” He was choosing his words carefully, struggling with emotion, but she also sensed a bigger story lurking around his edges.
If she stayed, would he tell her? Would they be platonic roommates or did he have more in mind? Why would he ask As Good As It Got
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her to stay with him after he’d known her such a short time?
Unless . . .
“Was this Betsy’s idea?”
“It was mine.” He pulled the chair closer, sat with his hands loosely clasped between his spread knees, crowding her, and also . . . not.
“Why on earth would you want to invite in a woman you barely know? ”
“Seemed like a good solution. You’re lost and I’m lonely.”
The bristles went up instantly. “I’m not lost.”
Clive sighed loudly, exasperated and amused, which made her want to giggle and laid her bristles flat again.
“Okay, maybe slightly lost.”
He shrugged, looking past her into the woods. “People who are never lost are just traveling paths that are too easy and too obvious.”
Ann’s heart gave a small jab of pleasure. There was a lot more to this man than good food and bait bags full of herring. “What would I do all day?
He chuckled. “You can take the rat out of the race but you can’t take the race out of the rat?”
“Hmph. Let’s just say I wouldn’t be happy keeping house for you.”
“I’m not asking you to do that. Betsy said she could use your help next session.”
A tug of disappointment. “I thought you said this was your idea.”
“I talked it over with her. And before you do your insta-huffy thing, if our positions were reversed, you’d check me out too. Betsy and her staff have seen more of you than I have.”
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Okay. Cancel insta-huffy thing, she’d give him that. But
her
, a staffer at camp? “What part of you thinks I’d be any good cheerleading for basket-case women?”
“When you back off the attitude, you’re a good person.
And a natural leader.”
Ann frowned. “That
has
to be from Betsy’s files.”
“She confirmed it.”
Another jab, pleasure mixed with annoyance. “I can’t give you an answer now.”
“I didn’t expect you to. I’ve had time to think it over, I knew you’d need time too.”
“Right.” She fidgeted. “Have you done this before? To help other ‘lost’ women?”
“No.”
“Why me?”
He shrugged again. “Just a feeling it would work out. For both of us.”
“I’d get a reprieve from my ‘lost’ life. W hat would you get? ”
He shifted position uneasily. “Company.”
His discomfort put Ann’s insta-huffy thing on orange alert. “Uh, how many bedrooms are we talking here?”
“Two.” He held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor from a genuine if lapsed scout. That’s not what I had in mind.”
Ann nodded, head throbbing, so irritated and confused by not understanding what she was feeling and what she wanted that she registered neither relief nor disappointment. The idea of staying here was crazy. But it was mostly crazy to the old Ann, a woman who counted every second not sprinting forward as time spent slipping behind.
Part of her wanted to hang on to the New Ann, who’d As Good As It Got
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been here for the last week or so, gradually slowing down, starting to realize that part of her had remained undeveloped and unattended in her marriage; to grab that woman by the tail and see where she could fly. Back home next week, she’d spend all her time and energy trying to re-create her old life from ashes, because she didn’t know how to create anything else.
And yet, she didn’t want to be one of those New York-ers who traded in the big city for a farm in Vermont and in the simple beauty of their new lives slowly lost their minds.
Being here awhile longer with Clive could represent a middle ground. A taste of that different, simpler life without having to make a full investment.
Then there was the man himself. “You have Betsy for research on me. What do I know about you?”
“What would you like to?”
She picked up her pencil again and started roughing in the gentle familiar curve of the sandbar, her movements stiff and clumsy. “You grew up here, but you haven’t always lived here.”
“I left after high school.”
Ann sent him a withering look. “Am I going to have to ask a separate question for every piece of information?”
He grinned. “What’s the matter, you don’t like talking to me?”
“O-
kay
.” She rolled her eyes. “Tell me where you went after high school.”
“Away.”
She growled her frustration and he chuckled.
“I was Kid Fuck-up. I stayed out of jail but I deserved to go. My father came down hard on me and I pushed back 250 Isabel
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even harder. I left swearing I’d never come back. I bummed around long enough to know I needed college, put myself through and worked my ass off. Blah blah blah, ended up on Wall Street and discovered I could handle it like the big boys. After a few years I was on top of the world, making ridiculous amounts of money, planning to marry a beautiful woman. I was going to ask my dad to the wedding.”
Ann stopped drawing, kept her eyes on the water, knowing what was coming and hating it. “Before you could talk to him again he died.”
“Heart attack hauling a trap. My last words to him at age eighteen were about making sure he knew how pathetic his life was and how I hoped I’d never turn out anything like him.”
Ann squeezed her eyes shut against the empathy pain.
“My last words to Paul were, ‘Could you please get something accomplished today for a change?’”
He whistled. “And he did.”
“Oh yeah. He did.” She shook her head, throat tight, wanting to fling off the memory and the guilt. “You never get those words back.”
“Nope.” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “After he died, everything I was doing in New York seemed pointless.
My relationship tanked, I quit my job, sold my condo, and came back here to help Mom and to honor Dad’s memory by doing what he loved.”
Tears slipped effortlessly from Ann’s eyes. She tried to speak but her throat wouldn’t work.
“Arnold was one of my father’s best friends. He’d lost his stern man and was having trouble finding another one he could work with. He took me on. ”
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slide. He told the story with such simplicity and humility, the emotional punch hurt ten times worse. She couldn’t help thinking of Patrick’s self-conscious bravado that night of the first bonfire, bragging about his struggles. She’d listened, heard the words, but they hadn’t touched her, not like this.
“So that’s my sad tale.”
She wiped her eyes. “Obviously I don’t think it’s sad, or I’d be crying.”
“Obviously.” He grinned at her with warmth in his eyes she hadn’t seen there before, and she felt their connection pop, like the moment of contact flipping on a light switch. It startled her to realize she hadn’t felt that with someone in a long, long time. She and her family had little in common. She and Paul had grown so separate. “You don’t need to be sad, Ann. I wish things had gone differently, but I’ve made peace with it. I hope you can do that too, with your sad tale. This part of the world is great for soul-searching. In the city you can hide who you are behind all there is to do. But it’s pretty hard to bullshit yourself in these woods, and on this water.”
“I’m sorry about your dad.”
“Thank you.” He stood and stretched, flexing his shoulders, then caught hold of a rafter and hung on so she had to tip her head back to see his face.
“Will you go back to New York someday?”
“Will you go back to Boston?”
Ann opened her mouth to say
Of course,
when her subconscious rose like a mighty mob and shouted,
Hell no, we won’t
go.
Damn it. Since when did she hear inner voices? Where else was there
to
go? “I don’t know.”
“Then we’re in the same boat, figuratively this time. I don’t know either.” He grinned, hands braced against the rafters as 252 Isabel
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if he were holding up the roof. “I miss many things about my old life. A few I miss a lot.”
“Your fiancée?” What the
hell
prompted her to ask that?
“Ex-fiancée. And no.” His voice went flat. “When I lost interest in making money, she lost interest in me.”
“I’m sorry.” She wasn’t at all.
“Better to find out before the wedding than after.” He brought his hands down, put them on his hips, gazed out through the trees. “I miss the culture, the opportunities, the energy. I don’t miss the rest of it, the crowds, the stress of daily life. Too much happened. Too much of me changed.”
“I know what you mean.” Exactly. She knew exactly.
“I had an idea we might find some answers to our separate questions together.” He was looking full at her now, measuring, asking, and she stared back, her mind too jumbled to come up with a coherent way to respond, feeling his pull much the same way she’d started to feel the pull of this beautiful place. The current between them was overwhelming, enticing and terrifying, made her want to run away and dive in all at once.
She heard her voice answer before she’d consciously ordered it to.