If Thomas Duncan could just pick up and move to Provincetown, leaving behind a wife and son, surely Rachel could extend her visit.
“Maybe I’ll stay another week or two,” she said carefully. She didn’t want to scare him off. It’s not like she was staying for him. Three days into her trip, she still had almost no idea what her dad had been like. The photos were a first step. But a small one. She barely felt any closer to answering the question: Who was he?
More important, she felt she needed to start answering questions about herself. Not the least of which was whether or not she was falling in love for the first time.
Marin slept straight through the afternoon and through dinner, and now, at nine at night, she was wide awake.
She stood on the balcony of her bedroom, looking out at the backyard. Hours earlier, Amelia, Kelly, and her mother had had dinner out there together. Their voices had woken her from her last nap of the day. They spotted her up there, gazing out, and they waved her down. They were happy; it was a done deal—everyone was staying until the Fourth of July weekend.
Marin ignored them, though she would have liked to spend some time with Kelly. Instead, she retreated back to bed.
Now the backyard was dark and empty, lit only by the moonlight reflected off the bay. Maybe she should go outside, sit by the water for some fresh air. Afterward, she might be able to return to her room and slip easily back into sleep.
Movement caught her eye. Two shadowy figures close together near the roped-off, outermost edge of the property, just beyond the farthest point of the long table. Her first thought was that people were trespassing, and then she wondered if maybe that’s what people did around there. She wouldn’t be surprised. Everyone’s boundaries seemed a tad fluid, to say the least.
Laughter floated up to her. That’s when Marin realized it was Rachel and Luke Duncan.
I could have closed that deal, Marin thought, and then she hated herself for it. That was heartache talking. Oh God. It hurt. She missed Julian so much, she felt in that moment she would do anything to make it stop. Even something stupid, like call him again.
She closed the balcony doors and sat on the edge of her bed. Heart pounding, she dialed.
“Hello?”
His voice brought pain and relief in the same instant.
“Hey,” she said. “Sorry it’s so late.”
“It’s not that late,” he said. His voice was warmer than it had been on their last phone call—she could tell that already. Or maybe it was wishful thinking.
“How was Chicago?” she asked.
“Well, the job’s a long shot. So it went as well as could be expected.” Silence.
She was about to say, I’ll be back in New York this weekend, but then remembered they were staying. It was probably for the best. He wanted time and distance, and he was getting it.
“How’s your vacation going?” he asked.
“It’s not really a vacation.”
Julian didn’t ask her to clarify. She felt she would have given anything in that moment to be with him in person, to see his face. To look into his eyes and tell him everything. She remembered their last morning together, the Sunday after her visit to Philadelphia. Telling him how odd it was that her mother practically shoved her out the door. There had been a warmth and wisdom in his eyes that had calmed her then, and she needed it now.
“Can we FaceTime?” she said. It felt like a juvenile request, like they were teenagers talking surreptitiously under the covers in their respective bedrooms on a school night.
“Marin…”
“What? You don’t want to see me even on a screen with two states between us?”
He sighed. “It’s not that I don’t want to see you. It’s not that I don’t care about you—because I do. But our relationship was a distraction, one that cost us both. I don’t know about you, but I need to regroup.”
She felt a surge of anger. “Regroup? You have no idea what I’m dealing with here. Genie turned my whole life upside down!”
“Genie? What does that have to do with anything?”
In that instant, her sorrow turned to fury. She had lost more than he had. She’d lost her identity, the man she’d thought was her father, her relationship with her mother. And, yes, her job. What had he lost? Nothing that couldn’t be replaced.
“Yeah, so, I’m sorry our relationship was a distraction. I won’t distract you further with more phone calls.”
She hung up.
And, remarkably, she felt better than she had in weeks.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The morning was cloudy, not a beach day. Still, Amelia and Marin had already left for Herring Cove. Blythe had her own plans for passing a few hours; she curled up on the porch rocking chair with a copy of Diane Keaton’s memoirs. The last time she’d cracked it open had been the night before she went to New York to check on Marin, completely unaware how dramatically things were about to change. And now, Nick Cabral was back in her life. Or, rather, she was in his life—in the house where he had spent his summers. At the beach that she had seen in his drawings.
While parts of Nick’s life had come to the surface, others were still deeply hidden. What had happened between him and Amelia? How had he died? She wanted to know but didn’t want to risk upsetting the woman who had been so generous to all of them. Still, how could she leave this place without asking?
Another question gnawed at her: Should she tell Amelia the truth about her relationship with her son? That he hadn’t been an anonymous sperm donor? That she had, in fact, known him and cared for him—if only for a brief time?
After that first afternoon of passion at his studio apartment, she had started seeing him once a week. Then it was a few times a week. Oh, how it pained Nick—someone who loved spontaneity and impulse above all else—to have to plan. But these were the days before cellular phones (how different their affair would have been today with all the modern technology seemingly built for subterfuge) and they had to pick meeting places and times, and stick with them. Usually it was his apartment during the workweek. They made frantic love, and if they were lucky and had a few hours, they would lie in bed and talk. They discussed artistic and worldly things—conversations that made Blythe feel sharp and engaged. But when she tried to get more personal, he shut her down. He would not talk about his family, alluding only to a big falling-out with his mother. Once, when looking through his older sketchbooks and remarking on the recurring images of the ocean and beaches with high dunes dotted with flowers, he spoke of his Portuguese grandmother’s house by the sea.