“I didn’t tell him you’re here,” Annie continued. “But I asked him to come home.”
Meghan folded her arms, her eyes still staring straight ahead. “What did he say?”
Annie had thought it would be easier to tell her while they watched the rescue crew murmur soothing tones as they struggled to hold onto their patient while they clipped sheets of plastic away as waves were dancing around them; that way, Annie could focus on what was going on in the water and not have to look Meghan in the eye. “He didn’t say much. I told him he was shirking his responsibilities at the Inn, or words to that effect. I told him we needed him. Urgently. I guess he thought I was overreacting, because he called Earl and said I was losing my mind.”
Meghan laughed. “I can picture him saying that.”
Annie linked her arm through her sister-in-law’s. “Won’t you reconsider talking to him? Rather than taking a chance that he’ll find out some other way? Just by virtue of you being here, your beautiful face could pop up on the internet. Simon is only one person—we have no way of knowing or controlling what our other guests post—or where.”
Before Meghan answered, a boisterous “Woo-hoo!” rose up from the rescuers; one of them brandished a length of gnarled plastic—proof of human negligence imposed upon the sea. “Go, baby!” he shouted toward the turtle, and the crowd applauded as Tillie splashed again, then dove below the surface and disappeared beneath a rolling wave.
Annie put her hand to her heart. “Wonderful,” she said.
“Beautiful,” Meghan added. Then she turned to Annie. “I appreciate your efforts, but I can’t talk to Kevin. If he knows I’m well and that I’m here, he might not survive the flight. It’s a long trip from there to here; trust me, he’d be a basket case.”
One of the rescuers shouted to the Coast Guard that he’d seen the turtle resurface and head out to deeper water. He started his small craft engine and, with signals from the crew, he carefully steered away, southwest toward Aquinnah. The crowd applauded again, then slowly headed back toward the footbridge.
Meghan started to follow; Annie quickly caught up. “I’m sorry, Meghan. I only want both of you to be happy . . .”
But Meghan shielded her eyes from the sun and shook her head. “I know you do. But right now one of my headaches is coming on, so I need to get back to the Inn and rest.” She traversed the boardwalk again, that time with her head bent, watching every step. “I know you want things to be different,” she continued, “but not every story has a happy ending, Annie. Not everyone is like the turtle that got unstuck today and hopefully went back to her happy life. You might not know it, but Kevin is afraid of flying. In fact, he hyperventilates. Which made it hard for us to get work out of the Boston area. And now it tells me that he must really have wanted to see that woman to have screwed up his courage and flown all the way out there.”
They traveled the short distance back to the Inn in silence.
* * *
John was on the patio, his sullen demeanor suggesting that a warm greeting wasn’t going to be in store. Annie wondered if this day could get any more complex: the highs, the lows, the damn crosscurrents of it all. Meghan uttered a meek hello, made a limp excuse about going upstairs, and ducked inside. Annie wished that she, too, could claim a headache as a reason to avoid him.
“Hey,” she said, offering a tight grin, an act of “bucking up,” that she’d taught herself about a hundred years ago. “What brings you to Chappy?” It was an asinine question, seeing as how both his parents and his fiancé—her—lived and worked there.
At first, he did not reply.
Annie sat across from him on the rim of a stone planter that was packed with tall, orange day lilies that were bowing in the breeze. “What’s up?” she asked.
He closed his pearl-gray eyes. “I need a break.”
She didn’t know if that meant he needed a break as in a vacation from the chaos of August and the pressures of his job, or from his daughters and their squabbling, or from . . . her. Her heart, however, expected the worst, as hearts often do.
“Care to elaborate?” Her pulse quickened.
Opening his eyes, he looked toward the harbor and the lighthouse and the August panorama of sailboats in the distance and kayaks being paddled close to shore.
“I never thought of myself as someone who crumbles easily,” he said. “But now, I feel like I’m crumbling. I’m overloaded with too much responsibility, too many hassles. I’m trying to please too many people. And I’m not doing a good job at any of it.”
“How can I help?”
He stood up, his height, his strength, his virility more visible than when he’d been sitting down, yet his body, his person looked sapped. Tapped out. Done.
“John . . .” Annie said as she stood up and took a step toward him.
He held up one palm, a barrier. “I need a break from us.”
She supposed she should have seen it coming. The hours, the days, the nights that they’d been forced to be apart all summer; the addition of Abigail—and the sly insertion of the girl’s disturbing statement to Annie—tossed into the lobster pot of their relationship; and Simon. Simon Anderson and that stupid picture.
But Annie had not seen it coming. Earl had told her that his son could be ornery. “Give him time to cool down,” he’d said. It had been two and a half days since John had stomped up the stairs in the workshop and practically accused her of fooling around with Simon. If either of them should be angry, Annie thought it should be her.
But instead of being angry now, she felt a cold, gripping sensation enfold her chest, as if the air was being squeezed out of her lungs.
He ran his hand through the season’s buzz-cut of his hair. “I can’t do this right now. I can’t dousright now. I’m sorry.” He turned and walked from the patio, his footsteps crunching on the clamshell driveway. He was out of sight by then, most likely walking to theOn Time, as Annie had not seen his truck.
