Page 42 of Summer Longing
Olivia told her about HotFeed, and Jaci oohed and aahed about the clients and Olivia’s job. “So what are you doinghere?” Jaci said. “If that were my life, I wouldn’t leave for a day. Not for a minute.”
Olivia felt a compulsion to check her phone. Something nagged at her. It was the fact that her phone was oddly quiet for a Monday.It just means everything is running smoothly,she told herself. She shouldn’t need a million beeps and buzzes to feel that everything was okay in her universe. That’s why people went to places like Provincetown, right? To let go of all that for a few days.
“You must be so bored,” Jaci said.
Finally, someone who was on her wavelength. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” Olivia said.
“Are you coming to the party tonight? Please say yes. I want to hear all about your job, and New York, and just…everything!”
A party might be a good idea. A party could be just the distraction she needed to feel better. Either way, one more night, that was it; no matter what condition she was in tomorrow, she was back on the road. By Wednesday, she’d be sitting behind her desk.
And everything would be back to normal.
Chapter Twenty-One
To Ruth’s great surprise, Olivia agreed to go to the party with her.
Olivia had spent the entire day alone, hobbling around the house, which must have made her mother’s company a bit more palatable. Still, Olivia was quiet as they walked west on Commercial to Rachel and Luke’s house, not speaking until they reached Big Vin’s Liquor, where Ruth bought a few bottles of wine.
“Who are these people again?” Olivia asked.
“Amelia and her granddaughter Rachel run a bed-and-breakfast in town. I met Amelia my first day here—long story. At any rate, she teaches the mosaic class. The house we’re going to is Rachel and her husband’s. I’m sure the food will be delicious. Rachel is quite the cook, from what I’ve heard. Amelia taught her everything she knows.”
“Must be nice,” Olivia said pointedly. Ruth ignored the dig. Fine, so she had never so much as cracked an egg in Olivia’s presence.Sue me,Ruth thought.
The sidewalk crowds thinned as they reached the far West End. It quieted enough to hear the call of birds. A fox dashed under a parked car.
The air was heavy with water and salt, and Ruth inhaled it, breathing in the heady scent of freedom, youth, possibility. The beach was her reset button, always had been. When she was a child, that beach had been the Jersey Shore, the miles of boardwalk and the casinos glittering like jewels at the tip of Atlantic City. As an adult, she’d spent some time in the Hamptons as a guest at some very memorable homes, all glass and sharp edges with expertly designed infinity pools that suggested the ocean was not enough. But the beach closest to her heart was this three-mile stretch of fantasy that declared, with every breathtaking sunset and every art studio and novelty shop and waterfront café, that she was home.
Ruth glanced over at her daughter, resisting the urge to reach for her hand, to look at her and say,There’s so much I want to tell you if you’d just give me a chance.
When they reached the address, Ruth realized she had noticed the house—a white-shingled cottage with turquoise shutters—several times before. Like Shell Haven’s, the front lawn bloomed with hydrangeas in violet and white and pale pink. On the front porch, a rocking chair painted the same bright blue as the shutters.
On the front door was a pink Post-it note that readDoor is open. We’re out back.
“Can you imagine that in New York?” Olivia said, referring, Ruth assumed, to Provincetown’s very literal open-door policy that had so surprised her when Fern offered to leave her house key in the mailbox.
“I think it’s nice,” Ruth said, turning the doorknob. “People trusting others. Too bad we can’t all live that way.”
Inside, the décor was spare but elegant with lots of pale wood and splashes of color everywhere. The living room had a skylight and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. They walked through, traversing a narrow foyer to a bright kitchen with a white marble island, hardwood floors, and a farmhouse sink. Here, too, the bright accents—lime-green Shaker cabinets, a mosaic fruit bowl made of green glass.
Rachel stood at the island tossing a giant salad of yellow and ruby heirloom tomatoes with feta. “So glad you could make it,” she said. Ruth handed her the wine, and Rachel said she shouldn’t have.
“This is my daughter, Olivia,” Ruth said. It struck her for the first time that Rachel and Olivia were around the same age. She still had a strange mental tic of thinking of Olivia as being younger than she actually was, perpetually just out of college. It was some kind of subconscious denial about the passage of time.
“What a lovely house,” Olivia said.
“Thank you—I love it, but I can’t take any credit. It’s Luke’s father’s; he gave it to us when he moved west. We did make a small addition to the back, sort of a guest suite. In fact, our contractor Santiago is here tonight. You’ll meet him outside.”
“Meet who outside?” a familiar voice sang from the French doors at the far end of the room. Clifford Henry.
“I was just telling my friend Ruth here about Santiago’s work on the house. Ruth, this is—”
“We know each other!” Clifford said with a clap of delight. He air-kissed Ruth on each cheek, then turned to Olivia. “Who is this gorgeous creature?”
“Clifford, this is my daughter, Olivia. She’s visiting from New York. Olivia, this is my real estate agent.”
“I promised Rachel no shop talk tonight,” he said. “But the hors d’oeuvres have not been served yet, so I consider this a grace period.”
