For the Girls' Sake

chapter THIRTEEN

"WHY IS DADDY SMILING at you like that?" Rose whispered loudly. She stared at her father with deep suspicion.

As a family, they were strolling the beach for goodies tossed up by this week’s storm. High tide had left a string of slippery, stinking seaweed and a long curving line of smooth small stones and broken shells, among which treasures might be found. Walking ahead with Shelly, Adam was relaxed and handsome in jeans and a cream-colored Irish fisherman’s sweater that added bulk to his shoulders. A breeze off the ocean ruffled his dark hair.

They were all supposed to have their heads bowed as they searched for bright bits of agate or perfect shells, although heaven knows, after living here for three years, Lynn didn’t need even one more sand dollar or stone, however pretty. Adam couldn’t be too serious about the hunt, either, because when Shelly crouched to poke at wet stones, he had directed a wicked and very charming grin at Lynn.

Little girls weren’t supposed to understand that the kind of smile he’d just given Mommy was something to make every smart woman wary. Rose’s knowledge was apparently instinctive.

Adam and Lynn had been married for six weeks now. The girls were only beginning to notice that something was different between their parents. Rose had looked thoughtful a few times, but was easily distracted.

Lynn figured she’d try again. "Maybe Shelly found something good," she suggested, knowing perfectly well, and with secret pleasure, that he wasn’t nearly as interested in a polished agate as he was in stealing a kiss when Rose and Shelly became preoccupied.

Bouncing back up, Shelly skipped beside Adam. Her small hand was in his; every so often he swung her over a log or rock protruding from the gravelly beach, to her delight. "Daddy is strong,” she had declared happily, preferring him as a companion on this walk.

Her eagerness to walk with Daddy would have hurt, if immediately afterward Rose hadn’t slipped her hand confidingly into Lynn’s and said softly, "I don’t like it when Daddy swings me like that."

Rose had a gift for such moments. Lynn couldn’t quite decide whether Rose really was afraid when Daddy swung her, or whether her empathy was already developed to the point where she sensed her new mommy’s distress. Surely at only three, she couldn’t be mature enough to understand other people’s feelings! Yet she seemed extraordinarily sensitive to mood, and despite the fact that she’d been given almost anything material she’d ever wanted, Rose was shyly grateful for small things that Shelly would have taken for granted.

Perhaps she wasn’t as smart as Shelly and would never be the leader, but she knew instinctively how to be a friend. Lynn worried only that, growing up, she might hide feelings or depression or anger because she didn’t want to upset anyone else. As the two girls became old enough to understand, what effect would the switch in the hospital have on them? Lynn had read about one of the best-known cases, where the child had ended up with big problems. Would the same thing happen with Shelly or Rose? Feelings of resentment or insecurity would be natural, surely.

Of course, she thought in rueful amusement, Shelly wouldn’t be able to keep them to herself. Already, she talked through everything. She was utterly incapable of keeping a secret.

Rose, however, was another matter.

Lynn breathed in the salt-laden air and gazed out at the broken surf and the curve of the earth far beyond.

When she glanced back, she found Rose’s gaze wide and inquiring. "How come Daddy went to bed with you last night?" she asked innocently.

Lynn gulped. Oh, dear. The kids hadn’t actually caught them in bed together yet, and she hadn’t been able to think of a way to casually say, Your daddy and I are going to sleep together from now on.

"I saw him come out in his ’jamas," Rose continued. "He only wears his bottoms, you know."

Lynn knew.

"He says the top wraps him up like a mummy ’cuz he rolls and rolls and rolls when he sleeps."

Lynn smiled down at her daughter. "That happens to my nightie sometimes, too."

Rose’s forehead crinkled. "What’s a mummy? Is it like you? Only, you’re not all wrapped up."

Lynn explained that a long, long time ago, before her grandparents’ grandparents’ grandparents were born, Egyptians had wrapped dead people in linen bandages before putting them in a tomb.

Rose’s face brightened. "I ’member this boy at my school! He came to the Halloween party with toilet paper around him." She gestured. "Like that. He was a big kid. Was he a mummy?"

"Well, pretending to be one," Lynn conceded. "He probably thought it would be a scary costume."

"He wasn’t dead," Rose said earnestly. "Kids kept ripping his toilet paper. He got raggedy."

"That’s what happens to costumes at a party, if you’re having enough fun." Lynn glimpsed something bright ahead, just poking out of the sand. She steered Rose toward it.

Rose pounced. "Mommy, look!"

It was a whole bottle that Rose pried out of dried seaweed. Probably a beer bottle, but the shape was unusual, the glass roughened by sand and salt water.

Lynn squatted beside Rose, who was wiping sand and crusty seaweed from her find. "What do you think, is there a genie in it?"

Aladdin was one of Rose’s favorite movies.

"No." With one eye, Rose peered inside. "It’s empty. The top must’ve falled off, and he got out. Maybe he doesn’t have to give wishes no more."

"No more wishes?" Lynn’s gaze went to her husband’s broad back and dark head, bent as he listened to Shelly chatter. "What a terrible thought!"

"Genies get tired of doing wishes, you know," Rose continued importantly. "Sometimes they need a ’cation."

"A vacation?" Lynn pretended to think. "I suppose they do."

"Daddy said maybe we could all go on ’cation sometime. He said maybe Hawaii. It’s got beaches, he says. But you got beaches here, too."

"The ones in Hawaii are made of silky, golden sand instead of rocks. And the sun shines there lots more than it does here. Everywhere there are big colorful flowers and waterfalls tumbling into pools, and whales right offshore."

And Adam wanted to take her? It could be a sort of honeymoon, to make up for the one they hadn’t had.

Shelly suddenly crowed in delight. Face alight, she pointed into the foamy fingers of the waves. "Lookit! There’s one a’ those glass balls!" Hopping up and down with excitement, she exclaimed, "An’ it’s a big one!"

"Don’t you have sharp eyes." Adam lifted her onto his shoulders. "Okay, punkin, let’s go get it."

Rose and Lynn followed them across the wet gravel left by a receding tide. Sure enough, the Japanese float bobbed into sight and then vanished as a wave broke over it.

"Oh, no, it’s getting away," Adam said, pausing at the water’s edge.

"Catch it, Daddy!" His daughter bounced even harder and grabbed his hair. "Don’t let it get away!"

He looked ruefully down at his running shoes and jeans, then plunged into the ankle-deep foam. "Ah! It’s freezing!"

Knee-deep before he could get his hands on the glass fisherman’s float, Adam grabbed it then flinched and dropped it back into the water.

A mother’s anxiety seized Lynn, who watched with an eagle eye. He should have left Shelly behind. What if she fell off? What if an extra big breaker should knock him down?

A wave did surge in, soaking him to his thighs. Shelly seemed to have a grip on his hair as she kept bouncing and cheering him on.

"It’s going away again, Daddy! Those ol’ crabs won’t hurt you. You better get it, ’cuz it’s mine and I saw it first."

Gingerly he picked it up again and waded toward shore. One more cold wave washed up to his knees, and then he was squelching triumphantly up above the foaming edge of the surf, his teeth a flash of white as he grinned like a conqueror mounting the ramparts.

"What is it?" Rose asked dubiously, as he set it down and they all hunkered in for a look.

A foot in diameter, the green glass fisherman’s float still had the twine net encasing it. Tiny pale crabs scuttled all over it.

Lynn explained that it had floated all the way from Japan, where fishermen used glass floats still instead of plastic ones to anchor their nets. She helped evict the crabs.

"I bet somebody’d buy it, huh, Mom?" Shelly asked.

"I’m sure they would, but maybe you’d like to keep it." Two months ago, she’d have been grateful for the extra cash it would have brought, Lynn thought wryly. "To remember today by."

"Can I?"

"Yep." Adam smiled at her. "If not for your sharp eyes, we never would have seen it." His gaze touched Rose as if by accident, and then he lifted a brow at Lynn. "Do you find these often?"

"Hardly ever anymore," she admitted. "But see what Rose found?" She pulled the bottle from her coat pocket. "It’s empty, so we figure the genie must be taking a vacation. In Hawaii."

Shelly stared covetously at the bottle. "I bet a genie did live in it. Do you think he’ll come back?"

"Who knows?" Lynn let it slip back into her pocket. "You both found treasures today, didn’t you?"

On the way home Shelly and Rose ran ahead. Adam had to lug the big glass float. He paused once, when the girls found a tidal pool, to snatch a quick kiss, his lips cold but stirring warmth in her.

Shelly’s piercing voice penetrated Lynn’s euphoria. "Daddy’s kissin’ Mommy! Look, Rose. How come he’s kissin’ Mommy?"

Adam drew back. "It would seem I’m making a public demonstration of my affections."

"He kisses me,” Rose declared.

"Not like that," Shelly said in a tone of horrified fascination. "Not on the lips!"

Facing the girls, his free arm looped around Lynn’s waist, Adam said, "I like kissing Mommy, too. Mommies and Daddies do kiss on the lips."

"Eew." Shelly made a troll face.

“Trust me," Adam said with amusement, "you’ll understand someday."

"What if a boy at preschool wants to kiss me on the lips?" Rose asked seriously.

"You pop him in the nose," he suggested.

The girls burst into giggles and scrambled onto a long log washed in by the sea and half-buried on the beach so that it made a perfect balance beam for three-year-olds. They could fall without hurting themselves.

"Rose already asked why you were sleeping with me," Lynn said, as she and Adam paralleled the girls’ path.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing. She got distracted. You told her you don’t wear pajama tops because they end up wound around you like a mummy’s wrapping, and so I had to explain that a mummy is not like me."

He laughed, creasing his cheeks and warming the cool planes of his face. The fluttering in her chest Lynn felt at the sight of him was becoming familiar. She’d married this man in cold blood, and now she was feeling everything she had when she’d imagined herself in love with Brian.

Everything, she admitted silently, and more.

In comparison, what she’d felt for Brian had been...a crush. A girlish stage that would have passed if they hadn’t rushed into marriage. If only she hadn’t been so inexperienced, so socially inept, she would have known whether her feelings for him were special or not.

Was she fooling herself again, just because...well, because she so enjoyed being with Adam? Lynn stole a sidelong glance at the man striding beside her, looking astonishingly carefree for the buttoned-down, austere stockbroker he was. She had fallen in love awfully fast, hadn’t she?

But in her heart she knew better. She had begun the tumble a long time ago. That day in the hospital, probably, when she’d seen how much he adored his Rosebud. When she realized he felt all the same conflicts she did. Every kindness he’d given her since, every smile at the girls, every willing boost onto a kitchen chair, every game played, every grave answer to a silly question, had polished the slide down which she rocketed. How could she help it? Despite his doubts, Adam was a wonderful father. Beneath his usual rigid courtesy and occasional bluntness, he was a marshmallow. Nothing was too good for Shelly and Rose. Or her, now that he felt an obligation to her. He was chivalrous, kind and determined to do the right thing.

What’s not to love? she asked herself frivolously.

Her feelings were anything but. She knew how lucky she was. Adam would be a good husband if it killed him. His moral standards wouldn’t let him look at another woman, even if he didn’t love his wife. But it wasn’t just that. They could be happy together; these past two weeks demonstrated that. She was sure he was contented, at least.

All she had to do was keep her mouth shut. He must never, never know that this marriage was no longer one of convenience and friendship for her. He’d only feel uncomfortable, perhaps even obliged to make up some pretty lies to reciprocate. She couldn’t bear that.

Be grateful for what you have, Lynn told herself. Why spoil it by wishing for more? If Adam came to love her in return, well, it would happen. Perhaps slowly, but heartfelt emotions couldn’t be forced, shouldn’t be pretended. She would never want that.

She had lived her entire life appreciating what she had and not hoping for too much. She could go on that way.

What she wasn’t sure she could do was bear the regular separation from Adam. Although she hadn’t yet said aloud, I will sell the bookstore, the idea had taken root and was settling in. Owning her own bookstore had been a lifelong dream, and she loved every moment of it. Working for someone else, even in a wonderful store like Powell’s in Portland, would never bring her the same joy.

And oh, how she’d miss Otter Beach! The sound of the surf and the bark of sea lions out on the stack, the tangy air, the fresh breeze and the fog that rolled in off the ocean on hot days. Let me count the ways! she thought. The crunch and slide of walking on the gravelly beach and the shoot of spray through the blowhole. The vendors along the boardwalk, the tourists and even the traffic on the brick streets. To her mental list she hastened to add her garden, and her new refrigerator and her rickety back steps she would decorate with potted geraniums come summer.

This was home, the first and only home she’d ever made for herself. But today was...she mentally ticked off days on her fingers...the tenth of February. Always, by the middle of April, she had gone back to her summer schedule, having the store open Tuesday through Sunday. Just over two months away.

That would mean two more days a week when she had to be here, and Adam had to be in Portland. Could she afford to hire someone to cover at least one day? Would she and Adam split the girls up? Or alternate who got to keep them? After only two weeks, she’d become accustomed to sleeping with him: to being able to tuck her cold feet beneath his calf, to the sound of him breathing beside her at night, to that exhilarating glint in his eyes when he wanted her.

Before Adam and Rose, she had loved her life here. Shelly and the bookstore were enough. Now they weren’t. It was that simple.

Soon, she told herself, she had to start looking for a buyer.

Lynn wasn’t quite sure why she hadn’t told Adam about her plans. Some residual caution held her back. Be sure, her fearful inner self whispered.

But she was sure. Not that he would ever love her, but that she did love him. And both her daughters. She was spread too thin. She had a family now, a real family, and they had to come first.

She would definitely look for a buyer. But when Adam wrapped an arm around her and steered her away from the breaking surf and toward the stairs that led up to the boardwalk and the town, she didn’t say, "Adam, I have something to tell you."

He was the one to speak instead, calling to the girls, "Come on, munchkins. We need to get you cleaned up, so we can head out for Portland. Daddy’s got to go to work tomorrow."

As usual, they had to take two cars, one of the drawbacks of their commuter marriage. Today, the girls rode with him. She followed his Lexus all the way to Portland. When he got too far ahead, he slowed; when she missed a light, he waited on the shoulder of the road. She pulled into his driveway right behind him and helped him unbuckle the girls from their car seats and carry them, both sound asleep, into the house that was now her home, too.

Although the subject had been on her mind, she still didn’t tell him while they put together a quick dinner and ate it, or even later when, without a second thought, she passed the bedroom that had once been hers and joined Adam in his spare, masculine bedroom dominated by a king-size bed.

In the master bathroom, she brushed her teeth at her own sink—this bathroom alone was bigger than her kitchen above the bookstore—and slipped on her nightgown. She came out to find Adam waiting, wearing only pajama bottoms. He drew her into his arms for a tender kiss that quickly became more intense.

He held her close, stroking her back. "When the girls are grown—" he ran a hand through her hair, his low voice husky "—we’ll sleep in every day. Let’s make a pact."

A thrill swelled in her chest, out of proportion to his idle words. He must be happy with her, or he wouldn’t be thinking about such a distant future. Would he? Was it possible that he was starting to feel something special, too?

Lynn couldn’t have spoken to save her life. She only sighed and let her head fall back as he massaged her neck.

Why couldn’t he love her? she asked a nameless somebody, in hope and defiance. Was it so impossible? Was she unlovable?

"I’m so glad you’re here." He smiled, light shining in his eyes.

Foolish words trembled on her tongue, but she swallowed them. She could not tell him. She couldn’t ruin everything.

"I’m all yours," she whispered instead, and hoped he didn’t know how completely that was true.

* * *

ALMOST THE BEST PART of being married was having somebody to talk to. Lynn loved the evenings, after the girls had gone to bed. She and Adam invariably cleaned the kitchen together and then took herbal tea or coffee to the living room, where they read some of the time in companionable silence, but most often talked. "Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—Of cabbages—and kings," to quote Lewis Carroll.

Not so far off, either. She and Adam hadn’t yet discussed sealing wax, but she thought they’d covered cabbages—she detested them, he loved even such horrors as corned beef and cabbage—and kings, in the form of royal weddings. They had taken the girls shoe shopping one day, and gone to a park overlooking the Columbia River where they could see huge freighters unloading cargo from foreign climes.

She had missed such conversation dreadfully. Lynn and her mother had always been good friends. Until Adam, Lynn had never been able to talk to anyone the way she could to her mother. In college, she’d had friends and roommates, of course, but all of them were so busy with finals and labs and boyfriends, and really everyone at that age was so self-centered, she realized now, that nobody listened very well. Probably including her.

Brian was a natural storyteller, but the stories were all about himself. His prowess as a high school and college sports star, his adventures mountain climbing and skiing, his starring role in campus theater productions. She had been fascinated and awestruck and grateful that he wanted to be with her, but after the first year she began to notice that he wasn’t very interested in her dreams or successes, and he’d cut off her attempts to discuss politics or philosophy or a book she had read by reaching for the remote control or grabbing his jacket and saying casually over his shoulder, "I promised Cranston I’d whip him at one-on-one. You were just going to read or something anyway, weren’t you?" He always said it that way: just. You’re going to do something unimportant, dull.

Adam enjoyed reading as much as she did. Lynn was flattered when she discovered him reading a book she’d mentioned loving. Since then, he had read several based on her recommendations. He didn’t always feel about them the same way she did, which she didn’t mind. They’d had some rousing arguments.

The television was rarely on here, she’d discovered. The girls watched a couple of favorite shows and, naturally, Rose had a huge collection of movies mostly bought by Grandma McCloskey, but Adam limited how much Rose could watch a day, as Lynn had always done with Shelly. He religiously watched the news, primarily because world events had such a bearing on the next day’s stock market. A revolution in some tiny country half a world away would impact the U.S. economy because a raw material for manufacturing came from there. She was impressed by Adam’s instant grasp of the import of such news. Obscure political events took on meaning for her, too. She found that she read the newspapers and watched the television news with more interest now.

Only occasionally did she bump against a closed gate beyond which she wasn’t welcome. A very few topics brought stinging reminders that their closeness was illusion.

Tonight, for example, Lynn curled her legs under her at one end of the sofa and said, "I forgot to tell you that your mother called today."

Adam laid down his book willingly. "What did she want?"

"Nothing special. I think she just wanted to chat." Lynn frowned, trying to remember. "She didn’t leave a message."

"What did you ‘chat’ about?" He looked unwillingly fascinated. "I didn’t know my mother knew how."

“Oh, she has an opening in a San Francisco art gallery next weekend. She asked if I’d like to come over and use her potter’s wheel and kiln." As explanation, Lynn added, "I’d told her I took a couple of years of ceramics in college. I loved using a wheel."

"Ah." He sounded amused and a little bitter. "The way to her heart."

"Did you learn?"

"She tried," Adam said shortly.

"Did you?"

"Probably not." He laughed without much humor. "I felt about her studio like most kids do about a baby brother. It was my competitor for her attention, and it always won." This smile, though crooked, became more relaxed, more genuine. "Besides, I have not a grain of artistic ability. I made the ugliest pots you’ve ever seen."

"It’s odd that we were both only children. I felt a little more secure than you did, though."

"Were you lonely?" He looked as if he really wanted to know.

"No." Why hadn’t she been? "We were such good friends. Mom didn’t seem lonely, so how could I be?" Lynn had never told this to anyone, but now she admitted, "I was terribly shocked when Mom got married. It made me wonder—oh, this sounds terrible..."

Adam finished for her, "You wondered if she’d ever really been as happy as you thought she was."

"Yes." Lynn made a face. "I suppose everyone grows up and looks at their parents and one day realizes maybe they weren’t quite who you thought they were. If that isn’t too muddled a sentence."

“Clear as Perrier," Adam assured her with a grin. "Except ‘everyone’ doesn’t have to reevaluate a parent, because some of us knew ours. Mine are just who I concluded they were."

"Are they?"

He went still. "What’s that mean?"

"Just that..." She hesitated. "I had the impression your mother was probing to find out whether I’d be a suitably loving wife for you. She seemed concerned."

"Concerned," he repeated flatly.

"Some people aren’t very demonstrative."

He gave a short, hard laugh. "My mother is not demonstrative."

"You think she doesn’t love you?" But he was so quick to hug Rose, to smooth away a tear or tickle her into laughter. He couldn’t possibly have learned that from books!

"I think she feels an obligation."

"Well, I think you’re wrong," Lynn said stoutly. "She was definitely suspicious of me." She thought for a moment. "I guess that’s natural since she knows why we got married."

"Then she doesn’t have any reason to worry about you breaking my heart, does she?"

"No." She spoke quietly, not letting him see that he had hurt her. "You’re right. Maybe I misunderstood."

Say, You could break my heart, she begged him without words, her gaze lowered to the pale amber of her cinnamon apple tea. Say...

Gentler, his voice broke her pitiful thoughts. "You’re not unhappy, are you?"

“Me?" Lynn made herself look up with wide eyes, as if astonished at the question. "Why would I be unhappy?" Because I love you, and you don’t love me, she answered her own question.

"Some women are romantics." His tone was odd.

She would have sworn she wasn’t one of them. She had never intended to remarry; she was incapable of the depth of passion and commitment a man would want in a wife.

She was an idiot, Lynn thought, and fully deserved the fix she’d gotten herself into.

"Not me," she claimed, and took a calm sip of her tea.

She felt his gaze resting on her and would have given almost anything to know what he was thinking. But for some peculiar reason her emotions seemed close to the surface. If she had met his eyes just then, she might not have been able to keep her secrets.

And she must. She must! She was so lucky, had so much, she wouldn’t be foolish enough to let herself ache for the little that Adam couldn’t give her.

"Did I tell you what Rose said today?" she asked with a smile so bright it felt brittle.

Without moving a muscle, Adam relaxed. Lynn sensed it with every fiber of her being. He had feared she would ask him something he couldn’t answer, or didn’t want to answer. Like, Can I break your heart? Or even, Are you happy?

Instead she was deliberately reminding him of what they had in common: their children.

He laughed in the right places at her story, told one of his own, then commented on the book he was reading. The evening was ordinary, pleasant; outwardly both were comfortable.

After turning off the lights and going upstairs to bed, Lynn sighed and turned away from Adam as if already half-asleep.

They could be content, even happy, without both being deeply, passionately in love. And so she reminded herself again: enjoy what you have, be grateful for Shelly and Rose’s sake, and don’t grieve for what you can’t have.

Hot tears, falling silently, wet her pillowcase.