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There was a pause, and then Tony replied “Mama thought she was doing you a favor.”
Dear Mama, with a forest of photographs growing on top of her television set. Photographs of Tony and Carmen. Sharon dragged a stool over from the breakfast bar with a practiced motion of one foot and slumped onto it. “I am not incompetent,” she said, shoving the fingers of one hand through her hair.
“Nobody said you were,” Tony immediately replied, and even though there was nothing in either his words or his tone to feed Sharon’s anger, it flared like a fire doused with lighter fluid.
She was so angry, in fact, that she didn’t trust herself to speak.
“Talk to me, Sharon,” Tony said gently.
If she didn’t do as he asked, Tony would get worried and come to the house, and Sharon wasn’t sure she could face him just now. “Maybe I don’t do everything perfectly,” she managed to say, “but I can look after Briana and Matt. Nobody has to step in and take over for me as though I were some kind of idiot.”
Tony gave a ragged sigh. “Sharon—”
“Damn you, Tony, don’t patronize me!” Sharon interrupted in a fierce whisper, that might have been a shout if two children hadn’t been in the next room watching television.
He was the soul of patience. Sharon knew he was being understanding just to make her look bad. “Sweetheart, will you listen to me?”
Sharon wiped away tears with the heel of her palm. Until then she hadn’t even realized that she was crying. “Don’t call me that,” she protested lamely. “We’re divorced.”
“God, if you aren’t the stubbornest woman I’ve ever known—”
Sharon hung up with a polite click and wasn’t at all surprised when the telephone immediately rang.
“Don’t you ever do that again!” Tony raged.
He wasn’t so perfect, after all. Sharon smiled. “I’m sorry,” she lied in dulcet tones.
It was after she’d extracted herself from the conversation and hung up that Sharon decided to take the kids to the island house in the morning. Maybe a few days spent combing the beaches on Vashon would restore her perspective.
She called Helen, her employee, to explain the change in plans, and then made the announcement.
The kids loved visiting the A-frame, and they were so pleased at the prospect that they went to bed on time without any arguments.
Sharon read until she was sleepy, then went upstairs and took a shower in the master bathroom. When she came out, wrapped in a towel, the kiss she and Tony had indulged in earlier replayed itself in her mind. She felt all the attendant sensations and longings and knew that it was going to be one of those nights.
Glumly, she put on blue silk pajamas, gathered a lightweight comforter and a pillow into her arms and went downstairs. It certainly wasn’t the first night she’d been driven out of the bedroom by memories, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
In the den Sharon made up the sofa bed, tossed the comforter over the yellow top sheet and plumped her pillow. Then she crawled under the covers, reaching out for the remote control for the TV.
A channel specializing in old movies filled the screen. There were Joseph Cotten and Ginger Rogers, gazing into each other’s eyes as they danced. “Does Fred Astaire know about this?” Sharon muttered.
If there was one thing she wasn’t in the mood for, it was romance. She flipped to a shopping network and watched without interest as a glamorous woman in a safari suit offered a complete set of cutlery at a bargain price.
Sharon turned off the television set, then the lamp on the end table beside her, and shimmied down under the covers. She yawned repeatedly, tossed and turned and punched her pillow, but sleep eluded her.
A deep breath told her why. The sheets were tinged with the faintest trace of Tony’s aftershave. There was no escaping thoughts of that man.
In the morning Sharon was grumpy and distracted. She made sure the kids had packed adequate clothes for the visit to the island and was dishing up dry cereal when Tony rapped at the back door and then entered.
“Well,” Sharon said dryly, “come on in.”
He had the good grace to look sheepish. “I was in the neighborhood,” he said, as Briana and Matt flung themselves at him with shouts of joy. A person would have thought they hadn’t seen him in months.
“We’re going to the island!” Matt crowed.
“For three whole days!” added Briana.
Tony gave Sharon a questioning look over their heads. “Great,” he said with a rigid smile. When the kids rushed off to put their duffel bags in the station wagon, the car reserved for excursions involving kids or groceries, Sharon poured coffee into his favorite mug and shoved it at him.
“I was going to tell you,” she said.
He took a leisurely sip of the coffee before replying, “When? After you’d gotten back?”
Sharon hadn’t had a good night, and now she wasn’t having a good morning. Her eyes were puffy and her hair was pinned up into a haphazard knot at the back of her head. She hadn’t taken the time to put on makeup, and she was wearing the oldest pair of jeans she owned, along with a T-shirt she thought she remembered using to wash the roadster. She picked up her own cup and gulped with the enthusiastic desperation of a drunk taking the hair of the dog. “You’re making an awfully big deal out of this, aren’t you?” she hedged.
Tony shrugged. “If you’re taking the kids out of town,” he said, “I’d like to know about it.”
“Okay,” Sharon replied, enunciating clearly. “Tony, I am taking the kids out of town.”
His eyes were snapping. “Thanks,” he said, and then he headed right for the den. The man had an absolute genius for finding out things Sharon didn’t want him to know.
He came out with a payroll journal under one arm, looking puzzled. “You slept downstairs?”
Sharon took a moment to regret not making up the hide-a-bed, and then answered, “I was watching a movie. Joseph Cotten and Ginger Rogers.”
Tony leaned back against the counter. “The TV in our room doesn’t work?”
Sharon put her hands on her hips. “What is this, an audit? I felt like sleeping downstairs, all right?”
His grin was gentle and a little sad, and for a moment he looked as though he was about to confide something. In the end he finished his coffee, set the mug in the sink and went out to talk to the kids without saying another word to Sharon.
She hurried upstairs and hastily packed a bag of her own. A glance in the vanity mirror made her regret not putting on her makeup.
When she came downstairs again, the kids had finished their cereal and Tony was gone. Sharon felt both relief and disappointment. She’d gotten off to a bad start, but she was determined to salvage the rest of the day.
The Fates didn’t seem to be on Sharon’s side. The cash machine at the bank nearly ate her card, the grocery store was crowded and, on the way to the ferry dock, she had a flat tire.
It was midafternoon and clouds were gathering in the sky by the time she drove the station wagon aboard the ferry connecting Port Webster with Vashon Island and points beyond. Briana and Matt bought cinnamon rolls at the snack bar and went outside onto the upper deck to feed the gulls. Sharon watched them through the window, thinking what beautiful children they were, and smiled.
Briana had been a baby when her bewildered, young father had married Sharon. Sharon had changed Bri’s diapers, walked the floor with her when she had colic, kissed skinned knees and elbows to make them better. She had made angel costumes for Christmas pageants, trudged from house to house while Briana sold cookies for her Brownie troop and ridden shotgun on trick-or-treat expeditions.
She had earned her stripes as a mother.
The ferry whistle droned, and Sharon started in surprise. The short ride was over, and the future was waiting to happen.
She herded the kids below decks to the car, and they drove down the noisy metal ramp just as the heavy gray skies gave way to a thunderous rain.
2
Holding a bag of groceries in one arm, Sharon struggled with the sticky lock on the A-frame’s back door.
“Mom, I’m getting wet!” Briana complained from behind her.
Sharon sunk her teeth into her lower lip and gave the key a furious jiggle just as a lightning bolt sliced through the sky and then danced, crackling, on the choppy waters of the sound.
“Whatever you do, wire-mouth,” Matt told his sister, gesturing toward the gray clouds overhead, “don’t smile. You’re a human lightning rod.”
“Shut up, Matthew,” Sharon and Briana responded in chorus, just as the lock finally gave way.
Sharon’s ears were immediately met by an ominous hissing roar. She set the groceries down on the kitchen counter and flipped on the lights as Bri and Matt both rushed inside in search of the noise.
“Oh, ick!” Bri wailed, when they’d gone down the three steps leading from the kitchen to the dining and living room area. “The carpet’s all wet!”
Matt’s response was a whoop of delight. His feet made a loud squishing sound as he stomped around the table.
“Don’t touch any of the light switches,” Sharon warned, dashing past them and following the river of water upstream to the bathroom. The source of the torrent proved to be a broken pipe under the sink; she knelt to turn the valve and shut off the flow. “Now what do I do?” she whispered, resting her forehead against the sink cabinet. Instantly, her sneakers and the lower part of her jeans were sodden.
The telephone rang just as she was getting back to her feet, and Matt’s voice carried through the shadowy interior of the summer place she and Tony had bought after his family’s company had landed a particularly lucrative contract three years before. “Yeah, we got here okay, if you don’t count the flat tire. It’s real neat, Dad—a pipe must have broke or something because there’s water everywhere and the floor’s like mush—”
Sharon drew in a deep breath, let it out again and marched into the living room, where she summarily snatched the receiver from her son’s hand. “‘Neat’ is not the word I would choose,” she told her ex-husband sourly, giving Matt a look.
Tony asked a few pertinent questions and Sharon answered them. Yes, she’d found the source of the leak, yes, she’d turned off the valve, yes, the place was practically submerged.
“So who do I call?” she wanted to know.
“Nobody,” Tony answered flatly. “I’ll be there on the next ferry.”
Sharon needed a little distance; that was one of the reasons she’d decided to visit the island in the first place. “I don’t think that would be a good idea…” she began, only to hear a click. “Tony?”
A steady hum sounded in her ear.
Hastily, she dialed his home number; she got the answering machine. Sharon told it, in no uncertain terms, what she thought of its high-handed owner and hung up with a crash.
Both Bri and Matt were looking at her with wide eyes, their hair and jackets soaking from the rain. Maternal guilt swept over Sharon; she started to explain why she was frustrated with Tony and gave up in midstream, spreading her hands out wide and then slapping her thighs in defeat. “What can I say?” she muttered. “Take off your shoes and coats and get up on the sofa.”
Rain was thrumming against the windows, and the room was cold. Sharon went resolutely to the fireplace and laid crumpled newspaper and kindling in the grate, then struck a match. A cheery blaze caught as she adjusted the damper, took one of the paper-wrapped supermarket logs from the old copper caldron nearby and tossed it into the fire.
When she turned from that, Bri and Matt were both settled on the couch.
“Is Daddy coming?” Briana asked in a small voice.
Sharon sighed, feeling patently inadequate, and then nodded. “Yes.”
“How come you got so mad at him?” Matt wanted to know. “He just wants to help, doesn’t he?”
Sharon pretended she hadn’t heard the question and trudged back toward the kitchen, a golden oasis in the gloom. “Who wants hot chocolate?” she called, trying to sound lighthearted.
Both Bri and Matt allowed that cocoa would taste good right about then, but their voices sounded a little thin.
Sharon put water on to heat for instant coffee and took cocoa from the cupboard and milk and sugar from the bag of groceries she’d left on the counter. Outside the wind howled, and huge droplets of rain flung themselves at the windows and the roof. “I kind of like a good storm once in a while,” Sharon remarked cheerfully.
“What happens when we run out of logs?” Briana wanted to know. “We’ll freeze to death!”
Matt gave a gleeful howl at this. “Nobody freezes to death in August, blitz-brain.”
Sharon closed her eyes and counted to ten before saying, “Let’s just cease and desist, okay? We’re all going to have to take a positive approach here.” The moment the words were out of her mouth, the power went off.
Resigned to heeding her own advice, Sharon carried cups of lukewarm cocoa to the kids, then poured herself a mugful of equally unappealing coffee. Back in the living room, she threw another log on the fire, then peeled off her wet sneakers and socks and curled up in an easy chair.
“Isn’t this nice?” she asked.
Briana rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Mom. This is great.”
“Terrific,” agreed Matt, glaring into the fire.
“Maybe we could play a game,” Sharon suggested, determined.
“What?” scoffed Bri, stretching out both hands in a groping gesture. “Blindman’s buff?”
It was a little dark. With a sigh, Sharon tilted her head back and closed her eyes. Memories greeted her within an instant.
She and Tony had escaped to the island often that first summer after they bought the A-frame, bringing wine, romantic tapes for the stereo and very little else. They’d walked on the rocky beaches for hours, hand in hand, having so much to say to each other that the words just tumbled out, never needing to be weighed and measured first.
And later, when the sun had gone and a fire had been snapping on the hearth, they’d listened to music in the dark and made love with that tender violence peculiar to those who find each other fascinating.
Sharon opened her eyes, grateful for the shadows that hid the tears glimmering on her lashes. When did it change, Tony? she asked in silent despair. When did we stop making love on the floor, in the dark, with music swelling around us?
It was several moments before Sharon could compose herself. She shifted in her chair and peered toward Bri and Matthew.
They’d fallen asleep at separate ends of the long couch and, smiling, Sharon got up and tiptoed across the wet carpet to the stairs. At the top was an enormous loft divided into three bedrooms and a bath, and she entered the largest chamber, pausing for a moment at the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sound.
In the distance Sharon saw the lights of an approaching ferry and, in spite of her earlier annoyance, her spirits were lifted by the sight. Being careful not to look at the large brass bed she and Tony had once shared—Lord knew, the living room memories were painful enough—she took two woolen blankets from the cedar chest at its foot and carried them back downstairs.
After covering the children, Sharon put the last store-bought log on the fire and then made her way back to the chair where she rested her head on one arm and sighed, her mind sliding back into the past again, her gaze fixed on the flames.
There had been problems from the first, but the trouble between Tony and herself had started gaining real momentum two years before, when Matt had entered kindergarten. Bored, wanting to accomplish something on her own, Sharon had immediately opened Teddy Bares, and things had gone downhill from that day forward. The cracks in the marriage had become chasms.
She closed her eyes with a yawn and sighed again. The next thing she knew, there was a thumping noise and a bright light flared beyond her lids.
Sharon awakened to see Tony crouched on the hearth, putting dry wood on the fire. His dark hair was wet and curling slightly at the nape of his neck, and she had a compulsion to kiss him there. At one time, she would have done it without thinking.
“Hello, handsome,” she said.
He looked back at her over one broad, denim-jacketed shoulder and favored her with the same soul-wrenching grin that had won her heart more than ten years before, when he’d walked into the bookstore where she was working and promptly asked her out. “Hi,” he replied in a low, rumbling whisper.
“Have you been here long?”
Tony shook his head, and the fire highlighted his ebony hair with shades of crimson. “Ten minutes, maybe.” She wondered if those shadows in his brown eyes were memories of other, happier visits to the island house.
