Moon Shell Beach: A Novel Part 19

"Oh, what a cutie pie!" Clare came around the counter to stroke the baby's velvet cheek. "How are you, Bonnie?"

"I'm fine." Bonnie looked frazzled but lovely. "Actually, it's your friend I wanted to see."

"My friend?"

Bonnie strode across the room to stand at the window looking out at the harbor. "Lexi. There. There she is with Jewel. I want you to stop her, Clare."

Clare joined Bonnie looking across the blue expanse of water. At the end of the pier sat Jewel, and Lexi sat next to her. Their heads were bent together.

Bonnie said, "Lexi gave Jewel a bead kit. They're making some kind of bracelet."

"Well, what's wrong with that, Bonnie?"

"What's wrong is that Lexi's encouraging my daughter to have false hope!" Tears suddenly glittered in Bonnie's eyes. "Jewel will have a hard enough time dealing with Tris's loss without Lexi building up her expectations! For G.o.d's sake, parts of his boat washed up in Maine! Jewel has to face the truth!"

"I doubt that Lexi is telling Jewel that Tris is alive," Clare said softly. "I'm sure she's just letting Jewel talk about Tris. That's a good way to learn to let him go."

"But she's not letting him go! Why else would she insist on sitting out on that dock every d.a.m.ned day! When Lexi joins her, it makes it seem like a reasonable thing to do! Jewel should be playing with friends like a normal child!"

Clare backed away from the blast of Bonnie's anger. "It's Lexi you should talk to about this, surely."

"Right," Bonnie sneered. "Right. And sooner or later Lexi will tell Jewel that I'm the reason she's not joining Lexi, and then Jewel can blame me for keeping my daughter away from everyone she loves." She pulled a tissue from her shorts' pocket and blew her nose. "Jewel always loved her father best. She behaves like the most demonic brat around Ken, she won't even give him a chance. She's just perverse."

"She's a child," Clare said quietly.

"Oh, right, right, make me the monster. Everyone already thinks I am, leaving the sainted Tris. But I had to! I don't regret it one iota! You grew up here, Clare, you know what it's like to feel like some poor little peasant while everyone else is royalty! Tris would come home with grease on his hands, and I couldn't get it all out of his clothes-" Bonnie flung her arms around. "You have your shop, I'll bet you're making a ton of money. And Lexi! Well now, Lexi struck it rich all right, marrying Ed Hardin. She swans around like a princess and I look like a drone!"

Clare came to Lexi's defense. "Lexi works, Bonnie. I know, because I'm right next to her. She's working seven days a week in her shop-"

"Yes, and have you seen what she sells? I can't afford clothes like that! Can you? She's going to give Jewel a taste for the kind of life Ken and I can't possibly afford."

"Has Lexi been giving Jewel expensive gifts?"

Thwarted, Bonnie strode back across the store. "No," she admitted. "Just that bead kit. And a couple of books. Oh, come on, Clare, talk to Lexi for me, won't you?" A strange expression crossed her face. "Or aren't you talking to Lexi anymore?"

Oh, good grief, Clare thought, putting her hands on her hips. Would Bonnie go through this bizarre charade just to get the latest gossip? She had never been a close friend of Bonnie's. Bonnie had always been irrational and cranky and spoiled.

"You should take your concerns to Lexi." Clare's voice was cool. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to work."

THIRTY-SIX.

Clare felt so new with Adam.

Adam was taller, wider, and more ma.s.sive than Jesse. Next to him, Clare felt pet.i.te and somehow younger, more delicate. Adam touched her more than Jesse had-he kissed her pa.s.sionately in the morning, he rubbed her feet at night, sending her into swoons of delight, and when they watched TV, he pulled her against him, so that she nestled between his arm and his chest.

He talked to her more than Jesse did, too. He had opinions about national and town politics. He regaled her with humorous anecdotes about his furry and feathery patients. He asked her about her day, and he paid attention, he listened, he remembered. He said, "So did the chocolate baskets sell as well as you'd hoped?" It was lovely to have a man care so much about what she did and said.

He spent almost every night at her house. Her father liked him, and Ralphie adored him, and Clare loved seeing him at her table. Some nights he brought take-out so she didn't have to cook; he never expected her to cook. He brought her little gifts from time to time-roses, or a good bottle of wine, or a bit of costume jewelry that caught his eye in a shop window.

When they went to bed, the exhaustion and petty worries of the day vanished as they explored each other's bodies. Clare felt new with Adam as his larger hands learned her curves and contours, her silky spots, the places that made her gasp. Her own hands felt new, her fingertips reborn as she drew them through his thick chest hair, down to the curly thatch of fur around his groin. She knelt over him on hot summer nights, her naked body sleek with sweat as she drew her tongue over his long muscular back and his enormous long limbs, as she softly sucked on his muscles, ligaments, tendons, knuckles, earlobes, the pads of his fingers and hand, the hard ropes of his veins. She wanted to ingest him. She wanted to pull all of him inside her. He would flip her onto her back and shove his p.e.n.i.s into her, filling her, and she would lie very still, not moving, not wanting to send either of them off on that spiraling explosion of pleasure; she would lie so still she didn't breathe, feeling the heat and width and length of him wedged into her so tightly it almost hurt.

Then he would move his hips, slightly. He'd shove himself in even further. And she was gone.

The summer days rolled on like the tides. Regular customers, renting on the island for the summer, dropped in for their daily treats. Day-trippers wandered in, went wild over Clare's truffles, and went out with their totes filled with Sweet Hart's boxes. Occasionally a friend would enter the shop, sample a chocolate-covered blueberry, then ask, "So, how's Jesse?"

"I'm dating someone else," she'd reply. "Someone very different from Jesse, an island man...it's all very brand-new, I can hardly talk about it yet." And saying even this much about Adam lifted her away from the confusion that had been her life with Jesse into a clear s.h.i.+ning bell of happiness.

Most nights Adam slept over. Clare would curl next to him like a cub nestling up to a big protective bear. They would lie in bed, wrapped around each other, skin to skin, resting after s.e.x. Clare held Adam's limp, exhausted p.e.n.i.s in her hand. She couldn't not be touching it.

One night Adam murmured into her ear, "I think I've always been a little bit in love with you."

Her heart thumped. Love. Such an enormous word. She knew she loved Adam, too. But then what had that been with Jesse? Clare s.h.i.+fted on the bed to look up at him. From here she could see the whiskers he'd missed under his chin when he shaved that morning. "Even when I was a snotty little kid?"

He ran his hand down her back and over her hips. "You were a cute little kid."

"Oh, come on, you didn't notice me. Lexi and I were always spying on you and your friends. All you cared about was football, baseball, sailing, and fis.h.i.+ng."

"So, you noticed me."

"Oh, Adam, I always had a crush on you." She twined herself even closer, kissing his chest, his muscular bicep, his neck. "And now..." She wanted to tell him she loved him, but would he believe her, so soon after Jesse? Could she mean it?

Adam rescued her. "You don't have to say it. And I don't need to hear it. This summer's been confusing and dramatic enough already. I don't want you to make any promises to me until you're sure you can keep them. It's enough, for now, to be with you, like this."

She nuzzled against him. "I know, I know, Adam. But sometime I guess we should talk about the future..."

"If you don't stop that, I won't be able to talk at all," Adam said, and rolled her onto her back, lifting himself up over her.

The island sweltered beneath a constant August sun. Everyone had sunburns, or went around with white cream slathered on their noses, and women didn't leave the house without wide-brimmed sun hats. Now business fell into a predictable pattern. Mornings were busy as women walked around town organizing themselves for the rest of the day, buying chocolates for the guest room or birthday parties, ordering special boxes for anniversaries. At lunch, a lull fell. It was too hot to be anywhere except the beach or a backyard hammock. Around four, freshly showered and ready for a long leisurely summer evening, people crowded back into town, refreshed, ready for the divertiss.e.m.e.nt of delicious chocolates, eye-catching clothes.

At home, Clare's father was perking up. He was always shaved, clean, and dressed these days, he talked to Adam at dinner, he watched the Red Sox with Adam, and sometimes the two men went together to take Ralphie for her evening walk. Clare couldn't figure out why her father was getting better. Was he relieved to have Jesse out of their lives? She'd always known her father wasn't crazy about Jesse, and she could understand that. How could a parent trust a man who had made his daughter cry so many times? Or perhaps her father was happy because Clare was so obviously happy, and life seemed so positive, so forward-going. For whatever reason, she was grateful.

THIRTY-SEVEN.

Along the southern coast of the continent, hurricanes began to brew, spinning their ghostly white whorls like mythical furies. Some days stiff breezes rose, sending papers skipping across the cobblestones and clattering rose branches against the walls. The stores were busy those days, when the sand blew into children's eyes or stung against ankles. Chocolate sales went way up, as people flocked in to buy the comfort and tranquillity contained in chocolate's chemicals.

Clare got to work early. There was so much to do. She was just lifting a tray of new Nantucket Nuggets into the display case and sliding the gla.s.s door shut, when the phone rang. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it up with one hand as she opened the next display case with the other hand. "Sweet Hart's."

"Clare, it's Lexi."

"Oh, Lexi, I'm straight out busy."

"I am, too. But I have to talk to you. Could you meet me at Moon Sh.e.l.l Beach tonight? After ten tonight?"

"Lexi-"

"Clare, this can't wait."

"All right, but why do we have to go all the way out to Moon Sh.e.l.l Beach? We're grown-ups now. Let's just have a drink."

"You'll know why when I tell you. I really need to tell you this at Moon Sh.e.l.l Beach."

"Miss?" Two women stuck their heads in the door. "Are you open yet?"

"Fine," Clare snapped. "Ten-fifteen."

Clare arrived at the marsh to find Lexi's Range Rover already parked on the side of the road. She found the entrance to the path and impatiently shoved her way through the thickets. She'd phoned Adam to tell him she couldn't see him tonight, and she was tired and cranky, so she crashed along, smas.h.i.+ng gra.s.ses and mosses beneath her sandals, and came out onto the beach to find Lexi already there, pacing on the sand.

Late-summer light, moonlight, and lights from all the boats in the harbor lit their beach in a cool blue glow. A breeze ruffled the waters and made the tide splash onto the sand.

Lexi's white-blond hair was twisted high at the back of her head, held with a clip. She wore a short-sleeved white tee with a dramatically swirling peach and ivory skirt.

"Clare! Thank you for coming. It's really good of you. I know you must be exhausted-"

"I am exhausted. You must be, too. So what's up?"

Lexi looked anguished. She hugged herself, then flapped her hands in the helpless gesture Clare had seen all her life.

"Oh, stop it, Lexi!" Clare snapped impatiently.

"Clare, I'm pregnant!" Lexi snapped back.

Clare gawked. "What?"

"Just a month, but I had to tell you."

"It's Jesse's?"

Lexi nodded.

A gull flew overhead, silent except for the flap of its wings.

"Well, d.a.m.n, Lexi. Didn't you use birth control?" Jesse had been a fanatic about birth control with Clare. She'd been on the Pill for years. That meant that Jesse was either so much in love with Lexi or so driven by uncontrollable pa.s.sion that he hadn't used a condom.

Lexi looked away, embarra.s.sed. "Not the first time."

That stung. As if trying to walk away from her emotions, Clare strode past Lexi down the small beach, until she was at the water's edge. A cloud drifted over the moon. Shadows caught, then vanished. Clare tried to still her racing heart. She thought of Adam. That helped. She thought of Lexi, pregnant. Turning, she asked, "What are you going to do?"

Lexi's voice was low. "Claire, listen. I got pregnant three times when I was married to Ed. And I had three miscarriages."

Clare's hand went to her heart. "Oh, Lexi. I'm sorry."

"So I want to try to keep this baby, Clare."

Jesse's baby, Clare thought. Clare's dream baby...in Lexi's arms. A kind of panic struck her. "Lexi, you know what? I can't do this."

"Clare-"

"I'm sorry. I'm not in love with Jesse anymore, and I wish you well, but I just can't-I can't be here right now." Abruptly, she turned back to the path.

"Clare!" Lexi followed. "Clare, please."

Clare kept walking, and the sharp-edged gra.s.ses lashed her bare skin. She wanted to run.

Behind her, Lexi yelled, "Clare, stop. Clare, you are my best friend, you've always been my only best friend. I need you now."

Clare stopped. She turned to look at Lexi.

Lexi stood with her hands on her waist. "Clare," she said softly. "A baby."

Clare remembered being a little girl with Lexi, carrying their dolls swaddled in blankets, solemnly discussing bottles and diapers as they held their babies close, patting their backs, rocking them. Clare thought of Penny's baby, Mikey. The snuggling weight. The trusting eyes. The gleeful laugh. She felt tears well in her eyes.

"Gosh, Lexi, it will be so beautiful."

Lexi's mouth trembled. "You think?"

Stepping forward, Clare put her hand on Lexi's belly. For a moment they both were very still, listening, waiting. Then Clare laughed. "Flat as a board, as always."

Together they walked back to the beach and settled down on the sand, side by side, their arms wrapped around their knees, looking out at the water.

"Does Jesse know?" Clare asked.

"No, I haven't told him yet. Haven't told anyone but you. I want to wait at least another month. I mean, I've miscarried before in the first or second months."

"Maybe it's was Ed's sperm causing the miscarriages," Clare suggested.

"Oh, I hope so." Lexi put her hands on the sand as she leaned back. "I don't know what Jesse will do. I don't even know what I want him to do."

"He's not Mr. Reliability."

"I know. This might completely freak him out."

"Or not. He might be in love with you."