Sea Glass Inn (25 page)

“Sure. Lisa, you’ll be okay without me here for a bit?”

“Oh, I think I can manage,” Lisa said without looking up from her crossword puzzle. Pam could guess what she was thinking. Of course she’d be okay. She’d been running the gallery single-handed all morning while Pam had sat in her office and stared blankly at the tax form she was supposed to be completing. The numbers had made no sense, and the only figures she had been able to see were Mel and Tracy tangled together in Mel’s sheets. She grabbed her coat and followed Mel outside.

Mel crossed the street and led them to the beach. She was silent on the short walk, and Pam’s daydreams of Mel stopping by for a quickie in her office faded away. She let Mel set the pace of their meeting and didn’t ask the questions she had burning in her mind.

Mel was obviously a woman with something serious to say. Never a good thing. Pam saw no reason to rush into whatever trouble was ahead.

Mel climbed up to sit on a large tree trunk, which was weathered and smooth from the ocean’s waves. Pam sat next to her and hugged her coat tighter against the chilled breeze. Mel stared out at the ocean for a moment, her chin-length hair whipping across her face. Finally she turned to face Pam.

“I lied. To you and to myself,” she said, brushing her hair out of her eyes and tucking it behind her ear. “After all my claims to want an open, honest life, I lied. I told you I didn’t want a serious relationship, that I was opposed to marriage. The truth is, I didn’t like my marriage. I didn’t like who I was in my marriage. But I believe in love and commitment, and I want those things in my life.”

Pam felt the crashing ocean waves competing with the beating of her heart. Of course she had known Mel needed forever. As much as she had tried to convince herself Mel was like her—a player, able to separate sex from any emotional attachment—she had always expected their relationship wouldn’t be enough to satisfy Mel. And Pam had let her own feelings get out of control. She had gotten involved with a woman who had come here to settle, to make a home.

And she had needed to get away before Mel trapped her in the life she was building.

She had been too late, though. Mel had already trapped her. Pam wasn’t satisfied with their few nights together, the few weeks they had lived in the same house. She wanted more. And if she were given months to be Mel’s lover, years to be her friend, Pam still wouldn’t be satisfied. She’d never get tired of Mel or bored with her. Better to stick with tourists, strangers. Because an hour or two, a night or two, was always enough. And when they left, they didn’t leave a hole in your heart. An aching for more. Yes, Mel ought to have someone who loved her, was committed to only her. Forever. Not just because Mel wanted it, but because no woman could possibly be satisfied with only a brief moment in time with her.

“You deserve those things,” she said. She brushed her fingers through Mel’s unruly hair and cupped her cheek. “And I believe you’ll find them. But not with me.”

“I won’t accept secrecy or being used,” Mel said, raising her hand to cover Pam’s. “We’d be good together. We balance each other. And I love every part of being with you. Your talent, your sensitivity, your body, your touch. But I’m offering a whole relationship. I won’t settle for less.”

Pam shook her head and withdrew her hand. “I care about you. More than I should. But what you want—it’s just not who I am.”

“I think deep inside you want the same thing. You’re just afraid of it.” Mel leaned over to give Pam a kiss. Her mouth lingered for a moment, and then she pulled away and stood. “Good-bye, Pam.”

Pam could hear the sadness in Mel’s voice, and she saw determination in her posture as she walked down the beach toward her inn, the waves breaking at her feet. Pam wanted to run after her, to convince Mel to resume their halfhearted, comfortable arrangement.

But Mel was forcing her to give more than she had. She said Pam was afraid, and she might have been right. Mel had been brave enough to survive when her world shattered, to rebuild her life from scratch.

Pam was too broken to match Mel’s courage. She could get through, day by day, but only if she protected herself from the chance of being hurt again.

❖

Mel pushed against the wind’s current as she made her way back to the inn. She had stopped just short of telling Pam she loved her, but she knew what she felt. She should be sad, brokenhearted, because Pam wouldn’t accept her love, but instead she only knew a sense of lightness, as if the breeze might pick her up and fly her like a kite. She had stood up for love, for what she wanted and deserved, and somehow that mattered even more than having her feelings reciprocated.

Each receding wave seemed to erode the wall of regrets she had built around her. Regrets over how she had lived her life. The choices she had made. She was finally ready to move forward and stop reliving the past. She had hoped Pam would choose to join her, but she wasn’t ready. Mel was finished with changing herself to meet other people’s needs. Her love wouldn’t ever go away, but eventually it would ease. Until then, until she found someone who was willing to accept and support the person she truly was, she would be fine alone.

With her inn, with Danny, with her new friends and community.

❖

Pam arranged her brushes in an orderly row, from slender ones with fine-tipped hairs to a couple of thickly bristled ones for background work. She spent another half hour searching through boxes for a fan-shaped paintbrush to add to the lineup. Finally, she faced the canvas she had set up in the entryway to her home, the only place where she could find the clear morning light she needed.

Until Mel’s starfish painting, Pam had kept her house free of art.

Separate from any creative impulse she might have. She had painted her mosaics in the gallery, locked alone in her office as if she were hiding a dirty secret. Then Mel had asked her to paint, and she had needed to capture the starfish immediately, no time to drive into town and shut herself away. And she had gone on to paint in Mel’s house, in the studio with Mel and Danny there to see her. Coming to life, coming out of hiding.

Even her house was showing signs of emerging from a long hibernation. Paints and brushes were near at hand, covering her tables and countertops and no longer stuffed in boxes, in closets. She had even hung a few paintings she had purchased over the years and stored in her office. By other artists. Each step had been difficult, but it had brought light and color back to her empty walls. She had been patient with the small successes, nurturing her budding creativity as if it were a frail child. But now she was ready to paint something of her own, hang it on her wall, live with it.

She had brought out the half-finished painting yesterday, after her talk with Mel. Hiding in the back of her closet for years, moving with her from home to home but never completed or displayed on a wall.

She had taken it out as a reminder of how much pain relationships caused. As a warning not to give in to her foolish heart and go running back to Mel. Pam brushed her fingers over Kevin’s face. She had started the portrait only a few days before Diane left. She had never wanted to finish it. Until now.

Pam started with the background—the park near their house, where Kevin loved to play. The swings and slide, the grass and sandboxes. She worked quickly, filling in details she had left out during the early stages of painting. Eight years later, and she was still sore inside. Falling in love, being a family, losing her family had been too much to take. She couldn’t risk having it happen again. She had no choice but to stay here alone. To go back to occasional one-night stands with women who were only passing through town. To suffer the longing every time she’d go into their small town and run into Mel, and Danny, and the inevitable woman who wouldn’t be stupid enough to let Mel get away.

Pam wanted to be that woman, and she was well aware of the immediate advantages of accepting Mel’s offer of a relationship, a partnership. But how would she survive when it inevitably ended?

After just a couple of outings, a few conversations with Danny, Pam had let her guard down long enough to care. And Mel. A handful of nights together had only left Pam wanting more. Had made her fall in love. Pam touched up the details of Kevin’s face in the picture. His curly hair, the pink of his toddler cheekbones. She had vowed to avoid love forever. Mel had somehow made her lose sight of her promise and the reasons behind it.

But Mel wasn’t Diane. Diane had been jealous of her art. Painting had defined Pam—and it was slowly starting to again—and she had felt constrained by the constant need to hide her talent, downplay the joy and pain of creating, stifle those unexpected urges to sketch and capture moments on paper. But Mel had encouraged and supported her, had eased her transitions between the worlds she created and the one she lived in.

Because Mel understood what it meant to give up part of your soul to please another person. Pam paused and braced her left hand against the wall. Why hadn’t she seen it before? How different Mel was from Diane. How different she would be in a relationship. Pam had been so wrapped up in protecting herself against Mel and what she would take from Pam if she left. Pam hadn’t given Mel enough credit, hadn’t fully appreciated what she’d
bring
to her.

Mel insisted she’d never lose herself in a relationship again, never lose sight of her needs, her dreams, her desires. And Pam knew she’d never want her partner, her lover to suffer those losses. Mel would offer support because she had lived without it. She’d cherish and encourage her partner’s dreams because her own had withered for so long. She would share without forcing compromise, love without demanding change. She had lost her identity in her marriage and had fought bravely to rediscover it. She was strong and confident because she’d earned it. She had climbed out of her dark place on her own, not by stepping over Pam or anyone else. Instead, she had reached out and pulled Pam along with her.

Unlike Diane. Who had built up her own shaky self-confidence by expecting Pam to downplay her talent, hide it. Pam had tried to do whatever it took to keep her happy, to stay in Kevin’s life. Even after Diane left, Pam had continued to deny her art, had almost stopped painting completely. As if punishing herself for failing Kevin. She hated being separated from him, hurt so deep inside she wanted to crawl out of her skin sometimes. But how long would she have survived with Diane? Starving her soul?

Pam stopped painting and stared at the canvas. She picked up a different brush and leaned close, adding fine lines to the portrait.

Coppery hair slightly mussed so it looked natural. Delicate strands, wispy and out of place, because he loved to run and play and explore.

She switched brushes again, swirling a flat one through the oils on her palette, darkening the flesh tones for the shaded areas of Kevin’s neck, his chin, alongside his freckled nose. To give his face depth.

Her hand was smudged with oils, her short fingernails green like the grass she’d been painting. She felt the brush handles, so comfortable to hold. Wood. Smooth and fat, or delicate and narrow.

But as she worked, she felt connected through the brushes to the humid summer day at the park. Sand sifting through her fingers. The metal slide so hot to touch. Kevin’s small hand tight in hers as they stood in line to get ice cream. The air filled with the sweet scent of cottonwoods and vanilla-infused waffle cones. She breathed deeply.

The narrow entryway was heavy with the smell of linseed oil. For years, she had barely survived on the empty air in her sterile house.

Now the scent of paint, of living, nourished her. But she craved other smells, too. Roses and citrus and freshly baked scones. Cinnamon and apples and the verbena she’d planted next to Mel’s back door.

On a flash of inspiration, Pam tossed aside her small brush and chose a wider, fatter one. She squeezed some paint onto her palette and mixed rapidly, impatiently rummaging through her tubes in search of the right shade of red to add to the mix. Once she was satisfied with the color, she made broad strokes across the canvas and transformed Kevin’s pale yellow shirt into a bright orange one he had loved. The sweeping strokes eased some of her tension. The vivid color brought back a series of memories. She had focused so often on the moment of loss and had too often forgotten the three years of happiness he had brought to her life.

Pam finished with Kevin’s eyes, adding depth and brightness, blinking tears out of her own eyes when she stood back at last. A little paint on canvas, a few details and brushstrokes, and she had managed to put some of the pain of losing Kevin behind her while allowing the good memories to resurface. Pam put down her brush and palette. She had made a start on dealing with the past. Maybe it was time to look forward to the future.

Pam carried a blank canvas out of the laundry room and found Piper curled in a ball under the easel she had set up next to the dining-room table. She bent down to scratch her dog’s ears before she set the canvas in place. Brushes arranged in a neat row, trays filled with scrunched tubes of paint lined up, a clean palette. She had everything she needed. Except an idea.

She stared at the white canvas and let her focus soften. A memory of painting the starfish surfaced. Her first commission piece for Mel, and an emotional battle to paint. Back then, the unpainted canvas had seemed threatening, a temporary respite in oblivion before the painting was finished and she was jolted back to the pain of real life. A foolish illusion of beauty and permanence, when all Pam had known was abandonment and grief. Now the pain of losing her son was like the distant roar of the ocean waves instead of a battering storm.

Always with her, in the background of her mind, it no longer eclipsed the joy of having been his mother for a few short years. His portrait hung on the wall near her, out of hiding. And someday, maybe, she would try to mend her relationship with Diane enough so she could see him again. But today the blank canvas was full of possibilities, of promise for the future.