The Beach House (16 page)

Daniel struggles to form the words. This isn’t how he wanted it to happen. He had made a commitment to Dr. Posner to have some more private sessions with him, to work out how to tell Bee, but he has to do it now, and as he tries to speak, Bee’s hand flies to her chest.

“Oh my God,” she whispers. “You are. I think I’m going to be sick.” She jumps up, running to the bathroom where she retches into the toilet bowl.

“Bee, I’m so sorry.” Daniel runs after her and helps her up, standing helpless in the doorway as she rinses her mouth out.

“Just tell me,” she says. “Tell me why. Things are going well. I thought we were making progress, that’s the point of this vacation, for God’s sake. Oh God,” she groans. “The vacation. What am I supposed to do?”

“I’m just not happy,” Daniel says. “I can’t keep pretending that things are fine when they’re not.”

“What do you want me to do?” Bee says quietly. “Whatever you need, I’ll do. I’m sorry I put pressure on you about sex. I’m sorry. I won’t do that again. What do you need? Whatever you need I can do it, I swear. Daniel, I love you, I’ll do anything to make this work.” Desperation shines in her eyes as she pleads, convinced she will find a way.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Daniel says sadly. “I swear, this is nothing to do with you. This is just about me, about figuring out what I want.”

“So figure it out. You don’t have to leave to figure it out. Stay. I’ll help you, or give you the space. You can sleep in the spare room if you want, but don’t go. Please don’t go. What about the girls? What about me?” And the last ounce of strength seems to leave her as Bee collapses to the floor in sobs, Daniel wanting nothing more than to put his arms around her and make it better, but he can’t.

Nor can he tell her the truth. That already he feels relief. That he feels more pain than he could have imagined, hurting Bee, leaving the girls, but that the cloud that has weighed upon his shoulders his entire life, the cloud that has only grown darker and heavier throughout his marriage, has finally dispersed.

He can’t tell her this marriage is over, nor can he tell her the reasons why. Not yet. There is only so much pain you can cause one person in one go, he realizes, and it’s not necessary for her to know—there will be time for that later.

Perhaps other people find it easier to sever the ties with a clean cut, but Daniel can’t do that. The concept of needing space feels right. It feels like something Bee could live with, something that isn’t going to end her world.

It gives her false hope, he knows, but he would rather do this gently, kindly, figure out how to drop the bomb when she is stronger, a little more used to dealing with life on her own.

“I love you, Bee,” Daniel says. “I’m so sorry but I can’t stay here anymore.”

“Where will you go?”

“I’ll stay at the Inn tonight. I’ll figure it out. I’ll phone you tomorrow, maybe I can see the girls after school. Right now I have to go upstairs and pack.”

And he reaches down, but Bee pushes him away when he tries to console her, so he leaves her on the floor, with tears streaming down her face, and goes to throw a few of his belongings into a bag before heading out through the door.

It’s not often these days that Michael has a night to himself, he realizes. Most of his time has been taken up with Jordana, and the nights he isn’t with Jordana he’s usually with friends—drinks, a quiet dinner in a neighborhood restaurant: the typical New York life.

Tonight Jordana went back to Long Island—she and Jackson had a benefit of some kind, but Michael didn’t ask much. He tries not to think about Jackson, about how he would feel, about what kind of a person he must be, sleeping with Jackson’s wife. It’s the only way he can do it.

She has been his drug, his obsession, but slowly he is starting to feel as if he’s awakening from a dream. Slowly he’s starting to wonder what the hell he’s been doing.

Just two weeks ago he thought she was possibly the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen. He had always found her attractive, but once they got involved he thought she was beautiful, more than beautiful. Mesmerizing.

And now, overnight, he has started to notice that she has bad posture, her shoulders slumping forward when she walks. Her voice is high-pitched and nasal, which he used to find cute, and now finds ever so slightly irritating. He found it endearing, initially, that she was trying to change to please him, swapping her heels for flats, her hairspray for hairclips to pull her hair back into the natural ponytail he loves, but now he finds it odd that a woman would have so little sense of self-worth she would change herself entirely to suit whichever man she was with.

The rose-tinted spectacles, it seems, are falling away from his eyes, and suddenly he realizes he doesn’t know how to get out. He’s been in this job for twenty years—it is more than his job, it is his life, his family, and although from time to time he has thought of leaving and going somewhere else, he never thought it would be because of a situation like this.

And Jordana, who can sense him pulling away, seems to be keener still, more desperate, more in love than ever before.

He needed tonight, a night off, a night to himself, more than he could have dreamed. A night of freedom, interrupted only by the numerous text messages flying in from Jordana.

v. boring here. Miss you LOTS! J xxx
where r u? want to phone! Love u!
Can u call me?
Tried to call. No answer. Am worried . . . xxxx

He pocketed his phone in the bar and left his jacket draped over the back of the chair, trying to ignore the buzzing.

“Looks like someone’s trying to get hold of you, mate,” said the English man sitting next to him, gesturing at his vibrating jacket pocket with a grin.

Michael raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “I’m trying to go AWOL tonight.”

“Ah, the missus giving you a hard time?”

"Sort of. Not the missus. The mistress.” He snorted at his own joke.

The English guy gave a knowing grin and a wink. “Big girl trouble, then. Husband found out?”

“Oh God,” groaned Michael. “I damn well hope not.”

“Friend of yours, is he?”

“You could say that.” Michael ordered another beer, and one for his new friend. “He’s my boss.”

“Wife of the boss? That takes brass balls, mate.” He shook his head. “We’ve got an expression at home: don’t dump on your own doorstep.”

“Yes, well,” Michael said. “I wish I’d heard that a few weeks ago.”

“Cheers.” The man lifted his glass. “Here’s to secrets and lies.”

Secrets and lies?
Michael knew that this wasn’t who he wanted to be, wasn’t how he ever wanted to live.

“No,” he said, pausing. “Here’s to fresh starts and new beginnings. ” And he drank the rest of the bottle down in one.

He is asleep when he hears the ringing. Over and over. At first he hears it in his dream, and swimming up to consciousness he understands it isn’t in his dream, it’s real. He reaches for the phone only to hear the dialing tone, at which point he realizes it isn’t the phone, it’s the doorbell.

He glances at the clock as he stumbles through the darkness to the buzzer. 2:37 a.m. Who in the hell is ringing his doorbell at 2:37 a.m.?

“Yup?” His voice is fuzzy with sleep.

“Michael? It’s me. Jordana.”

“Jordana? It’s 2:37 in the morning. What are you doing here?”

“Michael, will you just buzz me in?” she says. “It’s dangerous out here.”

Moments later she appears at Michael’s front door.

“I’ve left him,” she announces, rolling a large Louis Vuitton suitcase into his tiny apartment.

“What?” Michael is almost speechless, but manages to splutter out this one word.

“I’ve done it,” she says, looking at Michael, tears in her eyes, but whether they are of sadness or happiness he’s not altogether sure.

“What do you mean, you’ve left him?” Michael feels as if the wind has been knocked out of him; he has no idea what to say.

“We had a huge row tonight,” Jordana says, wheeling her case into the bedroom as if she belongs there. “I’m not proud of myself but I told him he didn’t make me happy and that our marriage was over.”

“He doesn’t . . .” Michael feels sick. He looks up at Jordana, incredulous at what she has done—and Jesus, if she’s done this, who’s to say she hasn’t told him everything. “He doesn’t know about . . . us?”

“No!” Jordana laughs. “Are you nuts? He’d
kill
me. God, he’d probably kill you too. There’s no way I was going to tell him about you, although he asked me if there was someone else.”

“What did you say?” Michael is still struggling to wake up from what is feeling increasingly like the worst nightmare he has ever had.

“I said why do men always assume there’s someone else, why couldn’t it just be that I’m unhappy and I don’t want him anymore?”

“Oh God, Jordana,” Michael says. “I just . . . I didn’t expect you to do this. We could have talked about this, you could have prepared me. Where are you going to go?” He looks up just in time to see her face fall.

“What do you mean? I thought I could stay here. With you. Jesus, Michael. I thought you’d be pleased.”

“I . . .” He sighs. “I’m just shocked, Jordana. Of course you can stay here. Tonight. But you can’t stay here after tonight. If Jackson found out it would kill him.”

“Jackson’s not going to find out.”

“It’s not a chance I’m willing to take.”

“Fine,” Jordana says. “I’ll get a hotel around the corner or something so we can sneak back and forth. Hey! Sounds kind of romantic!”

She walks over to where Michael is sitting on the bed and stands in front of him with a seductive smile on her face, a smile that Michael used to find so sexy, but now finds downright terrifying.

“Tell me you’re pleased,” she coos, reaching down with her small, cool fingers, stroking him gently in just the way he likes. “Tell me you’re happy to see me.” She pouts like a little girl. “I thought Mikey was going to be happy to have his girl all to himself.”

“I am happy,” Michael lies as Jordana pushes him back on the bed and climbs on top of him, and then he stops thinking about anything at all.

“I feel so nervous,” Nan says with a laugh, pulling off the gardening gloves and sitting down on the bench in the kitchen garden, taking a packet of cigarettes from the trug at her feet. Sarah has finally managed to rid the house of the smell of smoke and is refusing to let Nan smoke anywhere other than outside.

“Why?” Sarah looks up from where she is helping Nan plant out the rest of the garden, a handful of seeds in her hand.

“I know it’s ridiculous—how could he not love Windermere? But I feel like I’m being interviewed, and what if he doesn’t like us?”

“You said you liked him on the phone, so that’s a good start, isn’t it?”

“That’s true. He sounds terribly sweet. Unhappy but sensitive. A good first tenant, I should think.”

“Do you know anything about him?”

“He said his wife and children were spending their holiday up on Quidnet, and he wanted something small and inexpensive on the island so he could be close.”

“He wants it for the rest of the summer? That’s a good start.”

“He said he’d be back and forth a bit, but he’d love a room for the whole of August, and obviously he’ll pay for everything in advance.”

“So when does he get here?”

“Around three. Oh I do so hope he likes us.” Nan stubs out her cigarette with her foot and pulls her gardening gloves back on. “Now, where do you suppose is the best place for me to stake these tomatoes? They’re so overgrown, I wish I’d cut them back earlier.”

If it is possible to gain a new lease on life after three weeks of scrubbing, painting, plastering, hammering, staining and sewing, then a new lease on life is exactly what Nan has got.

She has had no time to swim in neighbors’ pools, although the summer crowd is now firmly ensconced and Nan knows better than to risk getting caught, and she has had little time to cycle around town on her bike.

Other women might be exhausted at her age, having worked the way she has worked to get the house in shape, but Nan feels alive again. She knew as soon as Daniel phoned that he would be perfect for the house, and hopes the house is perfect for him.

For the first time in years, Nan feels like giving parties again. She is well aware of her reputation as something of a recluse, for even though she is out and about in town all the time, it is rare for people to come up to the house, and the truth is she hasn’t felt like entertaining these past few years.

But now, walking around her house that is so fresh and clean it feels almost new, cycling up her driveway that she and Sarah tackled with gallons of Roundup so the crushed white clam shells are no longer hidden by the copious weeds, she wants to show it off.

She wants Windermere to be the house she remembers of old.

“Sarah!” she shouts, gazing at the big old maple tree in the garden. “Do you think it’s possible to get fairy lights this time of year?”

Sarah puts her trowel down and walks over to where Nan is standing. “I think anything is possible in the age of the computer. Why? What are you thinking?”

“I’m remembering the parties we used to have. Lydia, my mother-in-law, used to string little white fairy lights through the branches of this maple tree. We’d string lanterns overhead and it was like dancing under a thousand moons.”

Sarah starts laughing. “Good heavens, Nan. Are you planning a party already?”

“I don’t know,” Nan says. “But I was remembering how beautiful it used to be. I’d like to see it look like that again. I’d like to see this place come alive.”

Michael looks up wearily as the door to his workshop opens. It used to be that he was left on his own in here for days at a time. He loved the solitude, loved the silence. Creating jewelry was like a meditation for him—he didn’t have to think, he just felt his mind settle into a peace that enabled him to tap into his deepest creative well.