Rachel shrugged. “Amelia said the inn was closed for the season. That’s why she has room for all of us. So I’m not sure if that woman works here or what.”
And then: footsteps on the staircase. An older woman in a blue batik-print dress made her way down, greeting them with a little wave. She was medium height and slender and had chin-length white hair, a broad nose, and a warm smile.
“Rachel,” she said, immediately hugging her. “You’re much more lovely than even your photos!” She turned her dark eyes on Marin, and they suddenly welled with tears.
“You look just like my Nicolau,” she said, grasping her firmly by the hands. “I wasn’t prepared for that.”
Marin glanced helplessly at Rachel, who shrugged.
The woman gazed around the room. “Are we missing someone?”
“Oh—yes. My mother. She’s at the coffee place. Getting coffee,” Marin said awkwardly.
“We have coffee here,” Amelia said, as if that were absurdly obvious.
“She’ll be here soon,” Marin said.
Amelia seemed to contemplate this. “Why wait? Let me show you to your rooms so you can get comfortable. Mom can catch up.”
Blythe had a direct view of the Beach Rose Inn from her table outside of Joe Coffee. She wondered how long she should wait before going inside.
It was extraordinary, how things happened in life. That she should be sitting there, on the verge of divorce, despite the decision she’d made all those years ago in order to save her marriage.
And this glorious day: a cloudless sky, the sun bright but not too hot. The type of weather that made it seem like it would never rain again. A mirror image of that early-summer afternoon when she’d first met Nick Cabral.
She knew when they said good-bye that she wouldn’t see him again. But she never imagined she would someday meet his mother—the mother who had done something so egregious, Nick never wanted to talk about her and said he didn’t care if he ever saw her again.
“This is my new start,” he’d said of Philadelphia, where he was earning a degree in studio arts. Where he was spending lazy summer afternoons making love to Blythe, a married woman.
By that point, she had felt like her life was already a tired story. There would be no new starts for her. She the wife of an ambitious corporate lawyer, living in a big house in the suburbs. Her marriage was lonely. She couldn’t remember the last time Kip had touched her.
Her infatuation with the dreamy, dark-eyed art student was a distraction, a temporary indulgence. It was wrong, but she couldn’t stop herself.
What did your mother do that was so bad? I mean, she’s still your mother.
She’s dead to me, he replied.
Blythe could envision his face exactly as he’d said those words. So much hurt in his eyes, the set of his strong jaw. She’d leaned forward and kissed him.
She grabbed her coffee and stood up. It was time to meet the woman who was dead to Nick—Nick, who was truly dead to them both now. Nick.
It hurt so much, more than she would have imagined. But how could she have imagined any of this? And then she remembered one of the last things Nick had said to her, something about the universe having its own plans.
He had been right.
Chapter Thirteen
They were mid-tour of the second floor, standing in the doorway of the bedroom Marin would call her own for the next six nights. Sunlight streamed in through the windows and glass-paned door that opened onto a terrace. The queen-size bed had a white bookcase headboard, sea-green sheets covered with a white down comforter topped with a colorful crocheted afghan throw that had to be handmade. The wooden side table had delicate white china knobs painted with cornflowers. A piece of driftwood rested against one wall.
Marin spotted the place where she could curl up and lick her wounds all week: a plank bench covered in mismatched cushions in front of a window, the ledge decorated with eclectic treasures, including old-fashioned wooden clothespins bleached from the sun, a smattering of round, smooth stones, and a mason jar filled with blue sea glass.
Downstairs, Molly barked loudly.
“Your mother must be here,” Amelia said. “Just leave your bag, hon, and you can unpack later.”
“Actually, I’m going to unpack now. If you don’t mind.”
“You’re not coming downstairs?” Amelia looked surprised. She probably thought it was strange, maybe even rude, for Marin not to greet her mother.
Amelia seemed about to say something, but then thought better of it. “Okay, dear. Whenever you’re ready. I’ll get your mother settled.” Marin thanked her, feeling impolite, feeling terrible, but wanting so desperately to be alone.
Marin turned to look at herself in the seashell-mosaic-framed mirror hanging above the white dresser. For the first time in her life, the puzzle about her looks was complete. The features she had that she had never been able to match to either her mother or her father (her brown eyes, the slope of her nose, her attached earlobes), she identified on Amelia.
Marin flopped on the bed, on her back, staring up at the ceiling. A fan whirred gently. She watched it churn and thought about her dad. What was she supposed to do about all of this? Living with the secret was unthinkable, but telling him the truth would only hurt him. It was, as he would say, lose-lose. Another thing he would say: When you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything.
Watching the fan made her feel dizzy. Her stomach churned. She was overcome with homesickness, not for a place, but for the life she’d had just two weeks ago. Now she was completely unmoored, dislocated—literally and in every figurative way. Even Julian seemed like a dream. He felt so unreal, it scared her.
She scrolled through her phone until she found a selfie she’d snapped of the two of them in his bed one lazy Sunday morning. Julian had a rare unguarded look, his shiny dark hair mussed, a smile on his face.
She moaned, her arm bracing her midsection, the pain almost physical. Beyond her window, the ocean stretched. An offering of peace, of happiness.
Marin dialed his number, prepared for his voice mail yet again. But for the first time since the day after they left the firm, he answered.
“Hey,” she said nervously. She was completely unprepared for an actual conversation. She was barely prepared to leave a voice mail. “How are you?”
“Doing okay. How about you?” The question was perfunctory, she could tell. She’d breached his request for space. But how much space and time did he need? She was three states away.
“I’m okay. I wanted to let you know that I left the city for a few days. I’m spending some time in Provincetown. A cute little place called the Beach Rose Inn, but it’s closed for the season. It’s a long story…” Her babbling was met by Julian’s reproachful silence.
She wished she’d told him about Rachel before now. It was an impossible conversation to have in their current fragile, disjoined state. It would seem emotionally manipulative.
“I’m in Chicago,” he said matter-of-factly. Chicago? In all the time she’d known him, she’d never heard him mention it.