Ocean Beach (30 page)

“But why?” Nicole asked.

Maddie turned her gaze back out the window. Her hands wrapped around the coffee mug, which was still full and, Nicole suspected, long cold.

“Because he’s embarrassed. Or maybe that’s humiliated. I can’t remember which.” Maddie drew a breath, exhaled it. She looked at Nicole. “He can’t bear that he was portrayed in such a negative light on the pilot. As if I had anything to do with that.”

“Tell me about it. I’m not exactly doing a happy dance over the fact that now when the headlines about Malcolm have finally begun to disappear, the scandal is being played out all over again to promote
Do Over
.” Malcolm had cost her her business; she suspected the pilot had cost her Amherst. Despite her vow to get him to sign, or to die in the attempt, she’d barely had a moment alone with him.

Nikki stood and took Maddie’s cup of coffee. Dumping the remnants in the sink, she poured her a fresh cup then creamed and sugared it the way Maddie liked.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” Maddie said. “He didn’t even want to come. I’ve had to hunt him down to get him to talk to me on the phone.” She clutched the new cup as if trying to warm herself. “Last fall when he came down to Bella Flora, he told me he was proud of me and that he liked that I was strong, that I was able to take charge. But he doesn’t really like it. He wants things to go back to the way they were before we lost everything.”

She sighed and blew out a breath of air. “But even if we had all our money back and his new job was completely secure, we couldn’t go back.
I
couldn’t go back. I don’t want to be that totally dependent person again.”

Nicole heard the pain in her friend’s voice, felt the ache of it.

“You’re the matchmaker and dating guru,” Maddie said. “If I were your client, what would you advise me to do?”

The words
screw Steve
were on the tip of Nicole’s tongue. The D-word wanted to push its way out right after them. But Maddie had been married for a long time; she and Steve had two children and a grandchild. It wasn’t up to Nicole to rabble-rouse.

“Your daughter once asked me for advice,” Nicole said,
choosing her words carefully. “And I explained to her that I was a matchmaker not a therapist or a marriage counselor. And she was smart enough to listen to her mother’s advice rather than any I might have offered.”

Maddie didn’t respond, but she did raise the coffee cup to her lips. Nicole waited while she took a first tentative sip.

“Actually,” Nicole said, “I do have an idea.”

Maddie looked at her expectantly.

“It’s still early and no one needs us here. I’m too tired to run anyway. Let’s go for a walk on the beach and then I’ll treat you to breakfast at Big Pink.” She named the neighborhood restaurant known for its bright pink VW delivery cars and comfort food. Its motto was “Real Food for Real People.”

“Oh, I don’t know—” Maddie began, but Nicole cut her off.

“Well, I do. I bet Steve’s already kicking himself for being such an asshole. And if he isn’t, we can suggest it to him later. In the meantime, you’ve got five minutes to get dressed.”

“But—”

“Four minutes and forty-five seconds.” She motioned for Maddie to hurry up. “Come on, let’s go. We deserve it. And I’d like to get outside while the humidity is under ninety percent.”

Like a patient on an operating table, The Millicent lay open, her guts spilling out, her innermost self put on display. The kitchen had been stripped down to walls, floors, and windows. They were down to one bathroom for however long it took to replace miles of rusted galvanized iron pipe and reconfigure an equal amount of cast iron. Because they were trying to preserve rather than rip out existing walls, tiles, tubs, showers, and sinks, it often took an excruciating amount of time to move a pipe as little as ten feet. It seemed that for every hole that Mario and Salvatore patched, another was opened up as first electricians and then plumbers reached inside to remove, rearrange, or replace The Millicent’s vital organs.

The workday finally over, Avery stood in the shower directly under the stream of frigid water, her eyes closed. Getting shower time wasn’t easy and she didn’t intend to move until her body temperature lowered to something approaching normal. It was mid-July, which meant temperature
and humidity levels that melted your bones and zapped your will. The breeze off the ocean and bay was neither cool nor dry.

“Are you almost done?” Deirdre’s voice sounded through the closed bathroom door.

Avery sighed but didn’t move. The water was still running. She’d answered what seemed like a million questions today and made even more decisions; she wasn’t about to use up the last of her energy to answer Deirdre. Leaning her forehead against the shower wall, letting the cold water sluice down her back, she wondered if people, like horses, could sleep standing up.

The shower door slid open and the water stopped. She straightened and opened her eyes. A towel appeared in her line of vision and was placed in her hands.

“Come on,” Deirdre said. “We need to be at Ted’s in less than fifteen minutes and we can’t all leave together.”

Avery wrapped the towel around her body but didn’t dry off. She did not want to get dressed. Or move. She’d forgotten that they’d agreed to find ways to leave that wouldn’t arouse the Lifetime crew’s suspicions and wasn’t sure she had an ounce of subterfuge to spare.

“Giraldi picked up Nikki a few minutes ago,” Deirdre continued. “They’re going to get a table. Maddie and Kyra are going to meet us there; they’re pretending they’re going to a movie.”

“So what are you doing here?” Avery finally asked. “Other than harassing me?”

“I know how hard you’ve been working and how tired you are.” Deirdre stepped aside so that Avery could get out of the shower. “I told them that I was taking you out to dinner.”

“Seriously?” Avery asked. “You couldn’t come up with anything better than that? They’ll never buy it.”

Hurt blossomed in Deirdre’s eyes, gone as quickly as it appeared. It was nowhere near as satisfying to Avery as it should have been.

“Hurry up,” Deirdre said. “I don’t want to give them time to think about it or follow us. We don’t want them to film us talking about Max’s son—not until we have something positive to report anyway.”

Avery blew out a breath and walked into the bedroom with its battered walls and scarred floors. At the moment the amount of work that remained to be done seemed endless. She moved toward the dresser.

“Here,” Deirdre said, gesturing toward the bed. “I’ve already laid something out for you.”

Avery moved to the bed. A turquoise-and-white-striped sundress with a fitted halter top and a dropped waist had been artfully arranged on the spread. A strappy pair of wedged sandals sat on the floor ready to be stepped into.

“Thanks,” Avery said. “But I’m not wearing that.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, because Ted’s is not a sundress kind of place. And for another, because it sends out the wrong signals.”

“Which ones?” Deirdre asked. “‘I’m young and attractive? I don’t buy my clothes at Walmart’?”

Avery moved toward the dresser and pulled out a T-shirt and a pair of baggy khakis. “No,” she said, stepping into underpants then turning her back and dropping her towel to shrug into a bra. “My message is actually, ‘I have a brain and I’m not afraid to use it.’”

“You looked incredible at the premiere party,” Deirdre
replied. “I thought you’d come to terms with things, with your body. There’s a happy medium between presenting nothing but cleavage like those morons on
Hammer and Nail
wanted to do and dressing attractively.” She grabbed the pants and top from Avery’s hands and shook them at her. “These are ugly and boring. And they’re two sizes too big.”

Avery grabbed them back. She had talked a good game at the premiere and she had enjoyed keeping Chase a bit off balance, but when they’d screened the footage from the party, she’d seen what kinds of shots Troy had gotten. She couldn’t really count on the network to be moderate.

“You tried hiding yourself once before,” Deirdre pointed out. “Did that work out well for you?”

“How would you know?” Avery snapped, remembering the “camouflage years” after college when she’d been so desperate to be judged on her abilities. “You weren’t there.”

“I was trying to be,” Deirdre said. “The fact that you wouldn’t see me doesn’t mean I didn’t see you. Beige and baggy are not any woman’s friend and they’re especially brutal for vertically challenged blondes like us. As your mother, I—”

“Oh, please,” Avery said, unwilling to listen to another word. “Stop with the mother crap already.” She put on the pants and zipped them, then pulled the T-shirt down over her head. “I don’t need anyone, especially you, picking out my clothes or dressing me.”

Avery expected Deirdre to huff off or at least concede the point, but she refused to back off.

“When you’re ready to stop hiding, there are other ways to get respect, you know. Trent wouldn’t speak up for you. He liked being top dog on
Hammer and Nail,
but I’m
willing to bet that if you make it clear that you won’t accept being presented in such a one-dimensional way, everyone here will stand behind you. You don’t have to go to such…unattractive…extremes.”

Deirdre kept talking even though Avery was no longer responding. She followed Avery back into the bathroom, yammering on while Avery swiped on mascara and lipstick and ran a comb through her still-wet hair. “No one’s going to be looking at your face or hair when the rest of you is so…” She finally gave up on trying to find the right word, for which Avery was grateful. “Besides, we’re not going to be on camera tonight—or if we are it’ll only be whatever Kyra shoots. And while she always showed our ‘warts,’ she never dwelt on cleavage.”

“This conversation is over,” Avery said. “You can accept the way I dress and my reasons for it and we can pretend to go out to dinner together. Or you can keep this up and I’ll just see you at the bar.” With only the slightest glance at the great-looking wedge sandals and not even a tiny peek at the dress, she slid her feet into a pair of flip-flops and grabbed her purse.

With a sniff, Deirdre picked up her own designer handbag and followed her down the stairs.

Maddie puttered in the pool-house kitchen while Kyra nursed Dustin in the privacy of what was now Andrew’s bedroom and put him down to sleep. Immediately after the premiere party, the pool house had been turned into what Troy liked to refer to as the male bastion and the women referred to as “sweat-sock city.” Max now occupied the master bedroom, Troy and Anthony and their editing
equipment resided in the second bedroom. Andrew, and an extra bed for guests, filled the third, while the kitchen and living room had been declared gender-free zones, open to all.

With The Millicent’s kitchen temporarily obliterated, Maddie had moved command central out to the freestanding building. She kept the refrigerator and pantry stocked, made coffee there each morning, and made sure Max, at least, had breakfast of some kind there every day.

Dinners were often casual pickup affairs eaten in shifts or sometimes carried into the dining room. Maddie also kept Cheez Doodles and other sunset favorites on hand, but with both balcony railings torn out for replacement, sunsets had become more complicated. They’d done a few picnics at the South Pointe Park and even on the jetty, but when they could afford it they went back to Monty’s at the Marina. Or took a table outdoors at Smith & Wollensky’s on the promenade overlooking Government Cut.

Maddie, who was always up far earlier than she wanted to be in the mornings, continued to lobby for sunrise on the beach, but so far they’d done this exactly twice and there’d been far too much whining and complaining for it to become a regular activity.

Now Max and Andrew sat at the table with plates of reheated lasagna in front of them. Troy and Anthony lounged on the couch watching a Yankees game. Maddie refreshed Max’s and Andrew’s iced-tea glasses and tried to act like someone whose only concern was getting to a movie on time.

Kyra came out of her brother’s bedroom, pulled the door shut behind her, and handed Andrew the baby monitor. “Keep this next to you at all times,” she instructed.