THE next day, Marnie and Christine shared yard duty at morning recess. The sun was shining and a playful wind was blowing from the sea; at any other time Marnie would have been happy to be outdoors. But not today. Today, the only thing that could make her happy would be to have Kit run into her arms as yesterday she’d run into Cal’s: with the complete naturalness of someone who knows where she belongs.
No hope of that, thought Marnie, and gave Christine a smile she did her best to make convincing. Christine, however, took one look at Marnie’s face and said, “You’re coming to my house right after school, I’ll feed you fish chowder, and you’re going to tell me what’s gone wrong the past couple of weeks.” As Marnie opened her mouth, Christine added fiercely, “And don’t argue. I’ve kept my distance for days, figuring you’d tell me what was up when you were ready. I’m not waiting any longer.”
Yesterday, after Cal and Kit had left the school, Marnie had felt cripplingly alone, but she didn’t have to feel alone with Christine today. “All right,” she said meekly.
“Good,” Christine said, the breeze disarranging her sleek brown hair. “Now I’d better go and stop Billie Shipley from peddling cigarettes on the school grounds. Does he think I’m blind?”
“Hey, at least it’s not hash,” Marnie said, her smile more genuine, and with affection watched her friend stride away. Christine was engaged to the local doctor; she was a loyal and fun-loving friend.
She was also a dedicated gardener and an atrocious housekeeper. At four-thirty, Marnie cleared a laundry basket full of crumpled towels from the nearest chair, deposited them on the dining-room table next to a pile of English exams and accepted a glass of Chardonnay in an elegant crystal glass that wasn’t quite as clean as it should be.
Oh, well, she thought, alcohol kills germs, and raised her glass. “To your garden.”
“Raccoons dug up half my tulips. So I’m going to drink to you instead. May you look like a human being again soon. Cheers.”
Wryly, Marnie took a sip. It was, as she’d expected, an excellent wine, dry with just a hint of fruitiness. Before she could think of what to say next, Christine’s cat launched itself onto the table; some of the exams slid to the floor.
“Good place for them,” Christine said gloomily. “I sometimes wonder if any of my students hear one word I say.” The vagaries of adolescents were a safe enough topic. Marnie latched onto it with relief. But as soon as she paused for breath, Christine said, “Can it, Marnie. What’s up?”
Marnie looked at her in silence. When she’d taken the job in Faulkner, she and Christine had hit it off right away and become the best of friends. Last year, Christine had been careful not to let her growing romance with Don, the doctor, harm the friendship. Such concern, Marnie knew, was far more important than piles of dirty towels. And if she hadn’t been prepared to tell all, she’d have turned down Christine’s invitation…wouldn’t she?
She said uncertainly, “Chris, only two other people know what I’m going to tell you. One of them lives in Australia and the other in Burnham, and it’s essential this remain between you and me. You wouldn’t believe what a mess I’m in.”
“Give,” Christine said.
So Marnie did. Slowly at first, then more rapidly as she lost herself in the story, she told Christine about her mother and Terry and the school dance; about the clinic and the adoption of her child. “I ran away a week after she was born, worked my butt off to get my arts and library degrees, then got my first job here three years ago September,” she said. Then she told about meeting Cal in the parking lot and everything that had ensued after that, even including Cal’s offer of a long-distance affair. She finished with the nasty scene in the school corridor before the basketball game. “I haven’t heard from either one of them since then, nor do I expect to,” she concluded, and took another big mouthful of wine.
Christine had paid her the compliment of complete silence during her recital. Now she said, “But Cal can’t go around pretending you don’t exist. And Kit will want to see you again once she gets over the shock.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It isn’t over,” Chris said forcefully. “It can’t be.”
“She hates me, and he thinks I deceived him. I’d say it’s over.”
“You’ve got to fight for her!”
“How?” Marnie demanded. “Ring the front doorbell and say I’ve come for tea? Kit thinks I’ve abandoned her twice now—thirteen years ago as well as outside the staff room. She’s an adolescent. We both know they’re not the most rational of creatures. Plus Cal doesn’t want me coming anywhere near her. As if I had some kind of disgusting disease. Pour me some more wine. Maybe if I get royally sloshed, I’ll feel better.”
“No way. We’ve got to keep our heads here.”
“Do you think I haven’t stayed awake night after night trying to figure a way out of this mess?” Marnie cried. “There’s only one thing I can do. Next week when the transfers come in, I’m going to ask for a school at the very tip of Cape Breton. That’s about as far away as I can get from Burnham and still be in Nova Scotia.”
“You’re going to run away?” Christine squeaked.
“You’re darn right I am.”
“You can’t,” Chris wailed. “She’s your daughter!”
In a low voice, Marnie said, “I know that, Chris.”
“Oh, Marnie, I’m sorry. I’m not handling this well at all.” Christine plunked her glass down and gave Marnie a clumsy hug. “You’ve got to admit it’s been rather a shock. Although it does explain why you run a country mile any time a man gets the slightest bit interested in you.”
“I’ll never risk getting hurt like that again.”
“That might have been true before you met Kit and Cal. But it’s too late now. You have met them—and you’re hurting anyway. Hurting bad.” Christine paused, her head to one side, and asked with genuine interest, “What does Cal look like?”
“Oh, he’s a hunk,” Marnie said wearily. “So what?”
“Hmm… Marnie, there’s got to be something I can do to help.”
“Pray for a librarian’s post in northern Cape Breton.”
“I’m certainly not going to do that!”
“There’s nothing you can do,” Marnie said. “But thanks for listening…and now I’d really love some of that fish chowder, Chris. For the first time in days, I feel hungry.”
After supper, they walked over to Don’s place and the three of them went for a long walk on the beach. When Marnie got home, she fell into bed and slept soundly without a single nightmare.
She was glad she’d told Christine. It couldn’t change either Kit or Cal or the heartache that was her constant companion, but it did make her feel less alone.
Her mother had cut herself off from intimacy. Marnie didn’t want to be like her mother.
Several days went by. The first leaves came out on the trees, vibrantly green. Christine and Marnie made rhubarb chutney; on the weekend, Marnie went white-water canoeing. The days were getting longer and the heat of the sun more convincing.
Despite Christine’s best efforts at cheering her up, Marnie carried an ache of loss with her wherever she went: that Kit should be so close to her geographically and so far emotionally was like a form of unremitting torture. She endured it because she had to. But she didn’t regain the weight she’d lost, and her eyes had a haunted look she couldn’t seem to banish.
She tried very hard not to think about Cal at all but failed miserably. In three meetings, all of which had been fraught with emotion, he’d forced himself into her life, awakening sexual longings that had slumbered for years, as well as other needs less tangible, although equally unsettling. The need for love? she found herself wondering. Surely not.
She did her best to stifle all these longings. On the first really hot day of the year, when it seemed as though all the students in the school had made a pact to be uncooperative, Marnie went straight home at four o’clock, changed her clothes and went down to the beach below her house with her neighbor’s black Labrador retriever. A game of fetch ensued, during which both of them got very wet and Marnie laughed a lot. Maybe Midnight was laughing, too, she thought, amused by the dog’s gaping jaws and thrashing tail.
She threw the rubber ball out into the sea again, watching Midnight buck the waves. Then behind her, Marnie heard the crunch of footsteps on the loose stones above the sand. Expecting it to be her neighbor, she turned with a smile.
Her jaw dropped. “Cal!”
He was wearing beige cotton trousers with a short-sleeved white shirt, his tie loosened; his eyes were watchful. Like a hunter’s eyes, Marnie thought fancifully, and shivered from more than the icy shock of a wave over her bare toes. Then she noticed something else: how grim he looked, how he wasn’t making even a pretense of smiling.
In sudden terror, the color draining from her face, she stammered, “K-Kit…something’s happened to Kit.” Why else would he have sought her out? The sand lurched under her feet. She never fainted, she thought fuzzily. She couldn’t start now.
In a blur of movement, Cal was at her side, grabbing her around the waist. “Kit’s fine. Nothing’s happened to her. I’m sorry, Marnie, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
As she sagged in his hold, Midnight raced up the sand, dropped the ball and shook himself, showering them both with cold water. Marnie took a couple of steadying breaths, her head settling back on her shoulders where it belonged, and heard Cal ask, “Is that your dog?”
With Cal’s arrival, the zest had gone from the game and all the hurt of the past few days had resurfaced. Marnie said, “No, it’s not. I don’t want you here, Cal. We’ve got nothing to say to each other.”
“I wouldn’t be here if that was true.”
“I’m not going to have an affair with you, I’ve stayed away from Kit and now I’m going home. I wish you’d do the same.”
Marnie marched up the beach, aware through every nerve ending in her body of Cal close behind her. After she crossed the shoal of stones, she sent Midnight home along the path that joined the two properties. Then she padded through the spruce trees behind her house.
When she opened the screen door, Cal followed her inside. She turned to face him, folding her arms across her chest, wishing she was wearing anything but the briefest of shorts and an old fuschia shirt whose tails she’d tied under her breasts and whose color clashed violently with her hair. Each word like a shard of glass, she said, “How did you find out where I live?”
His smile was ironic. “Following your example, I asked at the local gas station.”
“Very funny. Do you make a practice of invading people’s privacy like this?”
“Knock it off, Marnie. I didn’t bother phoning ahead of time because I was nine-tenths sure you’d slam the receiver in my ear,” he said. “Why don’t you go change? You’re cold. Then we’ll talk.”
“I don’t want to talk to you, so why don’t you leave? And don’t bother coming back.”
Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he said, “I’ve come to eat crow. Which will no doubt make you laugh yourself silly. But I’m not going to start groveling until you’ve changed. Right now, instead of focusing on Kit and what’s going on at home—why I’m here, in other words—all I can see is how long your legs are in those goddamned shorts. They aren’t even decent, for Pete’s sake.”
Her shorts had shrunk in the drier. She tugged at the hem. “So am I supposed to feel flattered?”
“I don’t give a damn whether you’re flattered or not! All I know is that when I look at you in that getup, I want to haul you to the nearest bedroom and make love to you until neither one of us has the energy to stand up, let alone talk about Kit. And what kind of father does that make me?” He swung around, staring moodily out to sea through the big window. “Go change. Please.”
He looked, she thought with unwilling compassion, like a man at the end of his rope. “Is this your standard approach to women? You won’t win any prizes for subtlety, I’ll tell you that.”
“The one way I don’t feel around you is subtle. For God’s sake, Marnie, will you go change?”
The rebellion Charlotte Carstairs had never fully quelled in Marnie flared into life. Instead of running for her bedroom, locking the door and changing into her most unbecoming outfit, preferably something black that swathed her from throat to ankle, she announced, “I’ll never understand men, not if I live to be ninety. You don’t like me or trust me or respect me and yet you say you want to make love to me.” Bitterness spilled into her voice. “You’re not interested in making love, Cal. It’s all the other words, the cheap four-letter ones, that’s what you want.”
He stepped closer; he could move very quickly for so big a man. “I want you in my bed, that’s what I want, and quite frankly I don’t care what words we use.”
It was not the right moment for Marnie to remember some of the things she and Cal had done in her dreams. She said coldly, “I already said no. And the way you and Kit behaved at the school has given me no incentive to change my mind.”
He said stiffly, “I came here—among other reasons—to apologize for that.” For a moment, he glanced through the window at the restless, sparkling ocean. Then he said hoarsely, “The way you kissed me at the picnic spot—were you just faking it? Was I way off base to think you wanted me as much as I wanted you?”
Marnie flushed, her mind skittering among a variety of replies ranging from truthful to downright lies. Then Cal added with savage emphasis, “I know as Kit’s father I haven’t got the right to ask you that. But I need to know—it’s important.”
She had no idea what he was getting at. “I’ve got a question for you first,” she said evenly, “a very obvious question, I suppose. Did you love your wife, Cal?”
His fists clenched at his sides. “Yes.” As though the words were being dragged from him, he said, “Watching her die, feeling so helpless—it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
No wonder he’d suggested a long-distance affair, Marnie thought reluctantly. He didn’t want Marnie encroaching in any way on his life with Jennifer. This realization hurt rather more than she was willing to admit; but it did help her understand Cal a little better. She said quietly, “When you kissed me, I wasn’t faking anything.”
His breath escaped in a small whoosh. “Come here,” he said.
“Cal, neither of us should—”
He rested a fingertip on her lips, then bent his head to kiss her, his hands resting on her shoulders. It was a long, exploratory kiss, his tongue dancing with hers, his mouth traveling the line of her throat to the hammering pulse at its base. He murmured, “You taste of salt,” and kissed her full on the lips again, deeply and passionately, taking Marnie to a place she’d never been before, a place where sunlight glinted on white foam and waves of longing surged through her body. Unconsciously, she swayed toward him, feeling the tautness of his chest brush her breasts. Her nipples hardened under her thin shirt, and for the first time in days, she forgot about Kit and the pain of loss. This kiss wasn’t about loss. It was about discovery and wonderment.
Roughly, Cal put his arms around her, drawing her to the length of his body so that she felt, unmistakably, the hardness of his erection. The shock ran through her body. Wary as a wild creature, she raised her head, in her eyes a mingling of passion and panic. “Cal, we mustn’t! Don’t you see? Kit’ll always be between us and—”
“You think I don’t know that?” he muttered, and kissed her again.
She was drowning, she thought confusedly, drowning in the throb of blood through her veins and the fierce impulsion to know more. Of what use caution when Cal’s hands were cupping her face, his lips searching the softness of her own, his body heat warming that place deep inside where no one had ever reached her before? In one kiss, Cal was teaching her something that Terry, in his awkward lovemaking by the lake, hadn’t even known.
But Terry’s lovemaking had given her Kit.
Marnie dragged her head free and struck away Cal’s hands. “Stop it! Oh, God, what am I doing? I must be out of my mind.”
She was trembling, her expression distraught. Cal said urgently, “Don’t tell me it’s wrong, what we’re doing—it can’t be. Not when we both feel—”
“Cal, Terry and I were together just once and I got pregnant. Are you planning a repeat? Is that why you’re here? To make a little sister or brother for Kit?”
“Don’t be ridiculous! When you and I make love, we’ll use protection. Do you think I’m totally irresponsible?”
“When we make love? You’re very sure of yourself!”
In one searing glance, he traveled her body from head to foot, missing, she was sure, not one detail of her tangled hair, her flushed cheeks and heightened breathing, the thrust of her breasts against her shirt and the slim length of her legs, bared by the skimpy shorts. Then he looked straight at her, his eyes boring into hers. “Yeah, I came here today to talk about Kit. That’s true enough and it’s extremely important. But there was another reason I came. I couldn’t stay away. Even though I know I’m a fool for being here, I had to see you again.”
“You’ve seen me,” she said stonily. “Now you can go home. Because all you want from me is sex.”
“And what’s wrong with that? It’s been two years, Marnie!”
“There must be a dozen women between here and Burnham—not one of them related to Kit—who’d be delighted to go to bed with you. But I’m not available. Please—just go home and leave me alone.”
“I’m not going anywhere until we sit down like two reasonable adults and discuss my daughter. Who also happens to be your daughter.”
“So what were you doing? Softening me up with a few kisses first?” she taunted, and watched him flinch as though she’d struck him. “Oh, hell and damnation,” she muttered, “I turn into the prize bitch of the year when I’m around you. I’m going to get changed.”
Marnie shut the door to her bedroom with a decisive snap and stared blindly at the clothes in her closet. She shouldn’t have accused Cal of an ulterior motive when he’d kissed her. She was no expert, but she’d swear those kisses hadn’t been fake, any more than her own. He had, she was almost sure, been speaking the truth when he’d said he couldn’t stay away from her.
And how he hated that.
Absently, Marnie ran her fingers along the row of hangers. The truth was achingly simple. Cal desired her. But he loved Jennifer, who to all intents and purposes had been Kit’s mother.
With a jagged sigh, she changed into a pair of cotton trousers and a loose green shirt, jamming her bare feet into socks. Then she brushed her hair and pulled it back into a ponytail. She didn’t put on lipstick or earrings.
Let him see her as she was.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and walked back into the living room.