The Forever Summer Page 20

  “Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d like to say something first.”

  Okay, this was a curveball she hadn’t expected.

  “Sure.”

  “Rachel, I’ve enjoyed spending time with you and talking. I have. But I’m afraid I’ve given you the wrong impression about our…friendship.”

  Her stomach dropped. “In what way?”

  “You understand that we’re just friends, right? Nothing more?”

  Oh.

  “It felt like something more,” she said. “I don’t think I was imagining it.”

  He sighed. “Don’t get me wrong. You’re extremely attractive. It’s not about that.”

  “What, then?”

  He smiled kindly at her. “Come on. We can be friends, right?” He held out his hand to shake. Rachel placed her hand in his. What else could she do? She wasn’t going to win this one. She felt sick with defeat. And as soon as her hand touched his, she felt something else—the searing, electric chemistry she’d felt that first day at the beach.

  It propelled her, with a centrifugal force, right onto his lap.

  Startled, his arms instinctively closed around her to keep her from toppling onto the ground. In his embrace, she seized the moment, kissing him full on the mouth. She figured what the hell—might as well go out in a blaze of glory. Surely he would push her away, let her fall to the ground after all.

  But no.

  He pulled her closer, kissing her back with as much fervor as she had fantasized about. Her heart beat wildly in her chest, and she was barely breathing but would not stop for air—would keep going forever, if he would let her.

  “Rachel,” he said, almost inaudibly. He pulled back, and she noticed his chest was heaving. His bare chest that had moments ago been pressed against her breasts, which were covered only with a flimsy tank top…

  “Rachel,” he said again, louder this time.

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  “You should go.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The sight of her husband affected Blythe in a way she hadn’t anticipated. She finally understood the expression to have one’s heart in one’s throat. That’s what it felt like, and when he hugged her hello, she started crying.

  She had underestimated just how very much she missed him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, alarmed.

  “Nothing,” she said, dabbing at the tears in her eyes with a paper napkin pulled from her handbag. “Here. Let’s sit.” She headed toward a stone bench on the outer circumference of the small park, but Kip was busy reading the monument.

  “So the Pilgrims first landed here, not Plymouth?” he said.

  “Apparently.”

  “Hmm. Learn something new every day.”

  They sat side by side on a bench with a view of the ocean and a three-mile-long stone jetty.

  “Okay, what the hell is going on with Marin?” Kip finally said.

  “Oh, Kip.” This was more difficult than she’d anticipated.

  “I assume the father is that fellow from the law firm?” Kip said. Blythe hesitated, then nodded. She felt it would be crossing a line to confide the entire truth, the messy ambiguity of it all. Especially in light of what else she had to tell him—her own messy truth. She started to speak but he interrupted her.

  “I know you’re concerned about Marin—I am too. But we can’t let that become a distraction from what’s going on between the two of us.”

  Blythe couldn’t help but feel a plunging disappointment. He wanted to talk about the divorce? Now? She thought he was there for Marin, but apparently he just wanted to take care of business. Well, it hurt. But it also made it easier to admit the truth to him. She would not lose him over it. He was already lost.

  “Kip. There’s something I need to tell you—”

  “Please. Let me finish,” he said. “I want to apologize about Candace. It was wrong. I should have dealt with what was going on with us, with myself, in a more honest way. An affair was lazy and ultimately just made things worse.”

  Wait, what?

  “Are you saying you’re not with her anymore?”

  “That’s what I’m saying. It was a distraction. Not from you, but from what’s been going on at work. That firm has been my whole life, you know.”

  “Believe me, I know.”

  He nodded, looking out at the water. “To the detriment of our family, yes. I admit it. It didn’t mean I didn’t love you and Marin. I never meant to make you feel that way. It’s just who I am. Who I was.” He turned to her. “They want to buy me out. They want me gone. The young bucks don’t need an old-timer like me anymore.”

  “Oh, Kip. Can they do that?”

  He shrugged, looking uncharacteristically forlorn. “They can’t force me to leave. But if I stay, I’m a lame duck. Frankly, I don’t want to be where I’m not wanted. Not valued. For a while now, I’ve tried to deny it. I think Candace was a way to say, See, I’m still vital. I’m still young and wanted.” He took her hand. “It had nothing to do with you. Not that it’s any excuse.”

  “What are you saying? Do you still want the divorce?”

  “I don’t know what the answer is, Blythe. Do you? I think we need to focus on getting Marin back on her feet before we make any big decisions about our marriage.”

  Blythe’s mind raced. Her prayers had been answered; there was a reprieve. The marriage might be savable.

  “Yes. Okay,” she breathed.

  “So what did you want to tell me?” he said.

  Oh my God. No, not now. This was the last thing she wanted to talk about now.

  “Just…Marin,” she said. “Let’s go find her.”

  Marin used both hands to squeeze the wheel cutter and slice through a piece of dark blue tile. A tiny sharp corner shot up and then fell to the floor. She had yet to master precision.

  “This makes me realize how long it’s been since I actually used my hands for anything except typing on the computer and my phone. It’s kind of crazy.”

  “It is,” Kelly said. She glanced up from the piece she was gluing onto the mosaic. “So, as much as I love the meditative silence in here—are you going to tell me what’s going on with you or what?”

  Marin had known the question was coming. Since the morning at the pharmacy, Kelly obviously knew. It was okay; she wouldn’t judge her too harshly. The only person she truly dreaded telling was her father. All her life, she’d wanted to make him proud. Now look at her: unemployed, single, and pregnant, sitting around doing arts and crafts in the middle of a workday.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said to Kelly. “As you clearly figured out.”

  “Well, the test could have been negative.”

  “Yeah. It wasn’t.”

  “How far along are you?”

  “About eight weeks.” She couldn’t believe it.

  “So…is this good news? Bad news? Mixed?”

  Marin shrugged. “I can barely process it, to tell you the truth.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to have the baby. Aside from that, I don’t know.” She hadn’t considered not keeping the baby. This surprised her, actually. Finding a job at a law firm while pregnant would be challenging. No one would admit it, but of course firms didn’t want to hire someone who was going on leave in a few months. And raising a child as a single mom? What would that do to her billable hours? She understood these complications, but they did nothing to change the strange certainty that she should keep the baby. She was afraid hormones had already overtaken the logic side of her brain. Or maybe it was her new understanding of her own all-too-complicated origin story.

  “What’s the deal with the father?” Kelly asked.

  Marin groaned. “I don’t want to get into it.”

  “Why not? Talking helps. And I trusted you with something major. Something really big and really bad.”

  Marin looked at her. “Yeah, about that. I’m not the only one you should be talking to. I really thi
nk you need to tell Amelia. She’d want to know.”

  Kelly shook her head. “I want to spare her for as long as possible.”

  “I don’t think you’re doing her a favor.”

  “Don’t get off topic. We’re talking about you. You and your baby. Hell, Amelia’s going to be a great-grandmother.” She coughed. “This will be good for her. Just what she needs after…” Kelly teared up. Marin moved from behind the table and put her arms around her.

  Kelly pulled back after a minute, wiping her eyes. “Nadine is trying to get her to sell the house.”

  “This house? Well, that’s ridiculous.”

  “It’s not as ridiculous as you would think. Amelia has a lot of guilt about our relationship, estranging the kids. Now I’m sick. I’m worried the two things are enough to tip the scales and make her do something really misguided.”

  Someone knocked on the door. “Marin, there’s a call for you on the house phone,” Rachel said.

  Marin put down the cutter. “Really? Are you sure? Who is it?”

  “Julian Rowe?”

  Julian? Why hadn’t he called her cell phone? Then she realized it had been days since she’d looked at her phone. It just wasn’t a natural part of life’s rhythm out there. How strange that she hadn’t looked at it, hadn’t even thought about it.

  Marin brushed past Rachel and ran down the two flights of stairs. The receiver was set on the top of the front desk.

  Marin took the phone into the office and closed the door. She sat at a desk, surrounded by calendars and vendor-order forms and a dozen framed photos of Amelia and Kelly and groups of smiling people at the inn, guests from summers past. Three framed wedding photos were on the walls, different couples posing with their bridesmaids and groomsmen on the steps of the front porch.

  “Hello?” she said, heart racing.

  “Marin—finally. I’ve been trying to reach you for two days. Your phone goes straight to voice mail.”

  “How did you get this number?”

  “You mentioned where you were staying, and I looked it up.” Had she mentioned it? She couldn’t remember. She was amazed that he had. “I thought you would be back in New York by now.”

  “Um, yeah. Change of plans,” she said.

  “I was hoping to talk to you in person. When are you coming back?”

  “I’m not sure exactly.”

  “Marin, I feel bad about our last conversation. I’m sorry for cutting things off so quickly. It was a difficult situation. I was stressed out, and I couldn’t think about our future until I figured out my future.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No. It’s not. I’m sorry.”

  Her stomach was in knots. Don’t be so sweet. It makes this harder.

  “Babe, listen,” he said. “I have some good news. Genie offered me a job as in-house counsel. I can stay in New York.”

  “Julian, congratulations. I’m happy for you.” And she was. She also felt wistful. Their lives were taking opposite turns.

  “I want to see you. We need to get back on track.”

  “What?” Her hand instinctively went to her belly.

  This could not be happening. The conversation she’d dreamed about—at the worst possible time. “Well, I’m not going to be in New York for a while.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly. “I’ll come out there for a few days.”

  “No! Don’t.” The only thing worse than losing him the first time would be losing him a second time, face to face, when he learned she might be pregnant with another man’s child. No—the worst would be if she found out it was his and he still rejected her. Julian might be willing to see her now, maybe talk about how things would work out in the future. But if the messiness of what happened at the firm was too much for him, how would he handle this?

  “Marin, I reacted badly last month. There’s no excuse, no denying it. And I’m sorry. Please give me a chance to make it up to you. I’ve missed you very much. Let me come out there so we can talk in person.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” she said.

  “Marin…”

  “No,” she said, her voice catching. “Please don’t call me again.” Marin disconnected the call, set the receiver down on the desk, and cried, her arm bracing her midsection. Stop it, she told herself. You have to be strong. For two people now.

  She walked out of the office, determined to keep it together.

  “Marin, there you are!” said Blythe. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  Her mother. Standing with her father. Marin lost it all over again.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Amelia didn’t like to lie, had sworn never to lie again after her disastrous falling-out with her children. But now Blythe was asking her to do just that.

  She turned away from the kitchen window, where she had been peeking out at the handsome man talking to Marin, the two of them sitting side by side on one of the benches, gazing out at the water. Their heads occasionally bent together.

  “I’ll tell him the truth eventually. I will,” said Blythe. “But our relationship is in a very fragile state right now.”

  “So why does he think you are both out here? Who does he think I am?”

  “Marin lost her job in New York. Her boyfriend broke up with her. She needed to get away, and Kip knows that. I told him you and Kelly are friends of Marin’s.”

  Amelia shook her head.

  There was another reason, a deeper and more disturbing reason, why Amelia wasn’t in the mood to do Blythe’s bidding. The conversation with Nadine was bothering her more than she cared to admit. Whatever had happened between Blythe and Nick was none of her business, but the thought of their affair being the last straw, the event that drove him to end his life…it was tough. She had long blamed herself for his unhappiness. But to learn that he had had his heart broken all over again by someone else?

  “I don’t appreciate being a party to this. Especially since my son was the one hurt the most.”

  “What?” Blythe looked stricken.

  “Nadine told me he came to Italy heartbroken after your affair. Why? Did he ask you to leave your husband and you refused? Did he know you were taking his baby away from him?”

  Blythe’s eyes widened. “Amelia,” she said slowly. “I don’t know what Nadine told you—but none of that is true.”

  “Well, it might be unpleasant. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

  “No. Nick did not leave Philadelphia heartbroken. He was excited to leave Philadelphia, to see his sister. He told me he never felt comfortable far from the sea. He wasn’t in love with me. It was a passing thing. By the time I found out I was pregnant, we were out of touch. He told me he was never coming back—that he was happy in Italy.”

  Amelia shook her head. “If he was happy in Italy, why did he kill himself?” she shouted, her voice shrill despite her best efforts to stay calm. Blythe flinched.

  “I don’t know anything about how he died. That’s something I’d hoped to learn on this trip and I just never found the nerve to ask you.”

  “He drove his motorcycle off a dirt road one night.”

  Blythe shook her head. “It was an accident. It had to be. The Nick I knew loved life. He was reckless, maybe a little lost. But that’s it.”

  “I wish I could believe you.”

  “Amelia, I want you to know, for your own peace of mind, that Nick never wanted anything more from me than the brief affair we had. And he wrote to me about how happy he was in Italy.”

  Blythe seemed so earnest. Either she was in denial or she had rewritten the script of her own history. “You don’t have to tell me these things just to appease me. I won’t give away your secret.”

  Amelia couldn’t look at that woman another minute. She tossed her apron on the counter and walked out of the kitchen.

  “Dad, I can’t believe you came all the way out here,” Marin said, wishing for a more private place to talk with him. But the season was peaking and the town was jam-pa
cked. Amelia’s house was a refuge—albeit an emotionally complex one.

  It was a comfort to look into his sharp, confident blue eyes, to feel his steady arm around her shoulder. His calm, his confidence, had been her emotional benchmark for her entire life, and she had been foolish not to reach out to him sooner.

  But her happiness at seeing him was tempered by her certainty that he was disappointed in her for the pregnancy, and also by her mother’s terrible secret. A secret Marin was now complicit in keeping.

  “I considered coming up to New York to talk to you after the whole situation at Cole, Harding,” he said. “I didn’t know you would be leaving.”

  “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision.”

  “It’s not like you to run away from problems.”

  She sighed. “It’s complicated.” Understatement of the year.

  “Marin, I think the best thing you could do for yourself is get your career back on track.”

  “Dad, come on. You know better than anyone that would be challenging enough after the way things went down at Cole, Harding, and Worth, the gossip item in the Post. Now I’m pregnant. I’m not exactly a desirable candidate.”

  “It’s a temporary setback.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “I can pull some strings.”

  She shook her head. “Dad, no. That’s the last thing I want.”

  “We’ll discuss that more another time. The most important thing is your health. You’re okay?” He turned to her, his eyes crinkled in concern.

  “I’m fine, Dad. The doctor said everything looks good so far. Strong heartbeat.”

  Kip nodded and squeezed her hand. “And the father?”

  “I haven’t told him yet. I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You must be so disappointed in me.”

  He tightened his arm around her. “Never. We all make mistakes. I think you’re handling yours with great strength. I’ve never loved you more.”

  It suddenly felt difficult to breathe. The weight of it all was just too much. In that moment of unconditional love, she couldn’t keep her mother’s secret. Her parents’ marriage was over, but he would always be her father. In the end, her paternity was her truth to tell.