Panic. That was the only word to describe Marin’s feeling as she followed Rachel up the red-brick steps. Overhead, red geraniums dangled from a wicker basket.
Marin hung back as Rachel approached the front door, and a large chocolate Lab bounded up to her and licked the hand she put out in protest.
“The door’s open,” Rachel said, reaching for the doorknob.
“Wait! Shouldn’t you knock or something?”
“It’s a B and B—I think we can just walk in.”
Before this could be quietly settled between them, the dog rushed headlong through the open door, announcing them with a bark.
Inside, the only hint that the place was an inn and not just a picture-perfect private beach cottage was the white wooden wraparound desk to the right of the front door. The space was light and airy, all white and gray and sea green. White walls and woodwork, a white wicker table between two pale gray couches facing each other. Small, weathered-looking wood-topped tables covered in knickknacks—antique copper candlesticks, glass bowls filled with gray and moss-green stones. To her left, a framed antique map of Provincetown above a wooden shelf lined with mismatched green and blue glass bottles.
One entire wall was covered with mosaics, some tiled in vivid blues and greens, others monochromatic and made from pale stones and shells. The piece that really caught her eye was an enormous stained-glass starfish.
“Molly, enough barking! What’s all the fuss about?” A redheaded woman emerged from a doorway in the far corner of the room. She wore a V-necked white T-shirt and army-green cargo pants, her hair pulled into two messy low pigtails. She had high cheekbones and creamy skin brushed with freckles. The crow’s-feet around her green eyes and grooves around her delicate mouth were the only indicators of her age. “Oh—hello, girls. You must be the granddaughters!”
“Uh, yeah,” said Rachel. Marin simply nodded.
“I’m Kelly.” The woman held up one finger—Just a sec—and pulled a walkie-talkie-type device from her back pocket. “The girls are here,” she said, before turning back to them with a smile. “Amelia will be right down. Excuse this rambunctious beast. She’s our friends’ dog from down the street and for some reason she makes herself just a little too at home here. I’m going for a grocery run. See you at dinner—oh, any food allergies?”
Marin and Rachel both shook their heads.
“I’m, um, a vegetarian,” Rachel said.
“I used to be, until Amelia turned me to the dark side,” she said with a wink, and then she disappeared back from whence she’d come.
Marin turned to Rachel.
“Who is that?”
“Kelly.”
“Yeah, I get that. Does she run this place or something?”
Rachel shrugged. “Amelia said the inn was closed for the season. That’s why she has room for all of us. So I’m not sure if that woman works here or what.”
And then: footsteps on the staircase. An older woman in a blue batik-print dress made her way down, greeting them with a little wave. She was medium height and slender and had chin-length white hair, a broad nose, and a warm smile.
“Rachel,” she said, immediately hugging her. “You’re much more lovely than even your photos!” She turned her dark eyes on Marin, and they suddenly welled with tears.
“You look just like my Nicolau,” she said, grasping her firmly by the hands. “I wasn’t prepared for that.”
Marin glanced helplessly at Rachel, who shrugged.
The woman gazed around the room. “Are we missing someone?”
“Oh—yes. My mother. She’s at the coffee place. Getting coffee,” Marin said awkwardly.
“We have coffee here,” Amelia said, as if that were absurdly obvious.
“She’ll be here soon,” Marin said.
Amelia seemed to contemplate this. “Why wait? Let me show you to your rooms so you can get comfortable. Mom can catch up.”
Blythe had a direct view of the Beach Rose Inn from her table outside of Joe Coffee. She wondered how long she should wait before going inside.
It was extraordinary, how things happened in life. That she should be sitting there, on the verge of divorce, despite the decision she’d made all those years ago in order to save her marriage.
And this glorious day: a cloudless sky, the sun bright but not too hot. The type of weather that made it seem like it would never rain again. A mirror image of that early-summer afternoon when she’d first met Nick Cabral.
She knew when they said good-bye that she wouldn’t see him again. But she never imagined she would someday meet his mother—the mother who had done something so egregious, Nick never wanted to talk about her and said he didn’t care if he ever saw her again.
“This is my new start,” he’d said of Philadelphia, where he was earning a degree in studio arts. Where he was spending lazy summer afternoons making love to Blythe, a married woman.
By that point, she had felt like her life was already a tired story. There would be no new starts for her. She the wife of an ambitious corporate lawyer, living in a big house in the suburbs. Her marriage was lonely. She couldn’t remember the last time Kip had touched her.
Her infatuation with the dreamy, dark-eyed art student was a distraction, a temporary indulgence. It was wrong, but she couldn’t stop herself.
What did your mother do that was so bad? I mean, she’s still your mother.
She’s dead to me, he replied.
Blythe could envision his face exactly as he’d said those words. So much hurt in his eyes, the set of his strong jaw. She’d leaned forward and kissed him.
She grabbed her coffee and stood up. It was time to meet the woman who was dead to Nick—Nick, who was truly dead to them both now. Nick.
It hurt so much, more than she would have imagined. But how could she have imagined any of this? And then she remembered one of the last things Nick had said to her, something about the universe having its own plans.
He had been right.