FOUR

She ended up Googling Owen.

Gloria was not quite sure why. She was happy in her marriage, and if confronted with the same choice would instantly choose Benjamin again. But a part of her was curious and wanted to know what had become of her first boyfriend.

Owen, it turned out, was an artist, and he did live in Laguna Beach. He had not made the sort of mark on the art world that would have put him on the radar of the museum—which was why she was unfamiliar with his work—but he had his own small gallery in one of the touristy quarters of the city, and he had exhibited numerous times at the Festival of the Arts that coincided with the famed Pageant of the Masters. He was also married.

To a man.

That was a surprise. Gloria had never even suspected that Owen might be gay. Or bi, for that matter. He’d certainly been vigorously loving in his relationship with her, and she did not believe that any of that had been feigned.

The man Owen had married was named Charles Wister, and apparently he owned a downtown boutique and was also a Laguna Beach city councilman. Images of both men were displayed on the search engine, and Gloria was surprised to find that Owen was more handsome than she recalled. He was obviously one of those men who had grown into his looks, and she found it ironic that Benjamin, who had initially seemed so dashing, was now much less striking than Owen. His husband was quite good looking as well, for that matter. Their lifestyle clearly agreed with them.

One of the entries had the address and phone number of Owen’s gallery, and on impulse, she dialed the number. A man answered on the first ring. She almost hung up, but at the last second found courage from somewhere within her and answered the greeting “Good morning. Nightshade Gallery” with “Hello. May I speak to Owen Portis?”

“This is Owen,” the man said. His voice was not what she remembered and definitely not what she would have expected based on the photos she’d seen. This grown-up Owen sounded old. Old and humorless. Gloria decided that she didn’t like this voice.

She must have taken too long to respond. “May I help you?” Owen said, clearly irritated.

“This is Gloria,” she said. “Gloria Jaymes. I used to be Gloria Hiller.”

Silence on the other end of the line.

“I work for the Orange County Museum of Art now, and I saw recently that you have your own gallery.” She’d only intended to tell him where she worked and let him know that she’d recently found out where he was, but, too late, she realized that he might think she was calling to invite him to submit his work to the museum. “I’m only a P.R.O. I just publicize events and exhibits. But…look at you. You did it. You’re a real artist.”

There was a long pause.

“Owen?”

“You ruined my life,” he said bitterly.

The response shocked her. She’d been prepared for awkwardness, maybe even criticism for the cowardly and callous way she’d dumped him, but his blatant hostility surprised her. She’d ruined his life? How was that possible? He was gay. If they had stayed together, he would have ruined her life when he came out. It was pure luck that she’d bailed out of the relationship first. But he seemed to have built her up in his mind as a monster. Apparently, even after all these years, the hurt he’d felt at the time had not abated. She remembered that about him, the way he held grudges. Now that her memories were becoming clearer, she recalled his narcissistic self-absorption, his steely lack of forgiveness even for the smallest slight.

“Sorry to bother you,” she said, and hung up. Her hands were shaking, and there was a queasy feeling deep in her stomach.

Benjamin walked into the room just at that moment, and she had never been so glad to see him. If she had not known it before (and she had, hadn’t she?), Gloria knew now, absolutely and definitively, that she had made the right choice in picking Benjamin over Owen. Still, the phone call left her feeling as though she had lost part of herself.

Benjamin sensed her mood. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Remember Owen?” she said. “Owen Portis?”

He frowned, thinking. “Can’t say that I do.”

“The boy I was dating when I met you?”

He seemed surprised. “You were dating someone else when we met? You never told me that.”

“I did, too. I told you at the time. We talked about it. We even talked about it after. I brought it up many times.”

“Huh,” he said. “Don’t remember.”

“How can you not remember?”

“It was a long time ago,” he pointed out. “Do you remember everything that was happening back when we first met?”

As a matter of fact, she did. For the most part. There were gaps, no doubt, unimportant things that her brain had decided to remove in order to make room for new information. But on the whole, her memory of those days was as clear to her as her memory of last week.

The elasticity of time, she thought.

Gloria wasn’t sure where she’d first encountered that phrase, but the truth of it had never seemed more evident. She remembered that, as a young teen, two years between album releases, or between movies and their sequels, had seemed an eternity. Now, waiting five years for something seemed like the blink of an eye. In the same way, the years that had passed since she’d last seen Owen seemed like nothing to her, while to Benjamin it had been a lifetime ago. Objectively, he was probably more correct, but that was why time was elastic. It changed, stretching differently for different people.

“So what about this Owen?” Benjamin asked.

“Nothing,” she lied.

He looked at her strangely but didn’t push it. Not wanting him to get the wrong idea, she said, “I just found out he was gay.”

Benjamin laughed.

She wanted to tell him it wasn’t funny, but that would entail a deeper dive into the topic, something she was not in the mood for right now. Gloria forced herself to smile. “Weird world, huh?”

That night, in bed, Benjamin brought up the idea of The Beach House again. It was something her sisters had been trying to arrange for the past three summers, although Paul, when first presented with the idea, had said simply, “I’m out.” Gloria had declined as well, but Benjamin had been intrigued by the thought of staying in a rental house by the beach and, along with Myra and Janine, had refused to let the possibility die.

The reason her sisters were so sold on The Beach House was because when they were little, a wealthy friend of their dad’s had rented a house on Balboa Island for a week in the summer. Unfortunately, the man’s entire family had come down with some sort of illness (none of them could remember exactly what the illness had been. Gloria thought it had been the flu, Paul food poisoning, Janine chicken pox, while Myra refused to even venture a guess). It had been too late to back out—the full price would have to be paid whether they stayed or not—so their dad’s friend had invited Gloria’s family to go in their stead. It had been an amazing experience, easily the best and most memorable vacation of their childhoods, one that they all treasured, and it was perhaps only natural when Janine and her family spent a day at the beach a few summers back and overheard the family on the next blanket over talking about renting a beach house for a week, that she started researching home rental prices. As might be expected, the prices were exorbitant, but Janine calculated that if they all chipped in and got a three-bedroom house for a week, the kids sleeping on the floor, one couple taking a roll-out couch, they could get away with five-hundred apiece.

Paul thought that would be a nightmare, and Gloria said there was no way she would pay five-hundred dollars to share a bathroom and sleep on a couch—the most obvious outcome since she and Benjamin were the only ones without kids—but Benjamin’s proposal of renting a smaller, cheaper house, everyone chipping in, and each family staying for two or three days won the approval of Myra, as well as Janine and Sadeen. So it came up again every summer. Not wanting to be the Scrooge of the group, Gloria had to keep thinking of practical, realistic reasons why such a scheme was impractical. The most obvious one was the real one: wanting to save her limited time off for her vacation in August, Gloria would have to continue working, so it wouldn’t be worth the money just to sleep in another bed at night when she couldn’t enjoy the beach during the day (unless she and Benjamin took Saturday and Sunday as their days, which Janine was expressly against because Sadeen still had to work, also, and only had weekends off—and they had kids).

So it was a stalemate.

This year, however, Benjamin said Sadeen was taking time off mid-week, and both Janine and Myra had agreed to let Gloria and Benjamin have the weekend. “Let’s do it,” Benjamin said. “Janine said she found a place available the first week of August, two weeks before we go to Yosemite. It’s small, one bedroom, one bathroom, small kitchenette, but it’s on Balboa Peninsula, and is right on the beach. Within walking distance of the ferry and the Fun Zone.”

Gloria was tempted.

Benjamin could sense that she was wavering. Quickly, he grabbed his phone from the nightstand. “Janine emailed me pictures. Check it out.” He scrolled through a Newport realtor’s photos of a cute one-story clapboard house. The exterior was white, with large windows. A view through one of those windows showed an expanse of sand stretching to the ocean, where breaking waves fronted a setting sun. The interior of the house showed functional furniture and wall hangings with a nautical theme. Gloria had to admit that it looked appealing.

“Our share for the weekend is literally less than our one-night stay in Yosemite. And it would be fun!” He scrolled back to the ocean view. “That’s what we would see each morning.”

“The sun’s setting,” Gloria pointed out.

“Each evening, then. We could lounge around, drinking wine, watching the sun set. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“All right,” she said impulsively. “Let’s do it.”

Over the next few days, Gloria warmed to the idea. She had agreed on the spur of the moment, more to keep Benjamin happy than anything else, but she found that she was actually looking forward to spending a couple of days by the beach. She recalled the week her family had stayed on Balboa Island, the trips on the ferry, the way they had swum in the bay, the times she and Paul had fished off the public pier, the way her dad had sent the kids to downtown Balboa in the mornings to pick up a newspaper. Fond memories all, memories of a simple small-town life that they had lived for one week and never again.

Myra and Janine were on the phone with her several times a day, tag-teaming her. They were both so excited about renting the beach house that Gloria didn’t understand why the two of them hadn’t gone in together earlier to make it happen. Sure, it was expensive, and Myra obviously wouldn’t have been able to contribute as much (they’d even had to pare her contribution for the upcoming week), but Janine and Sadeen could have easily swung it by themselves.

Janine had always been miserly, though.

It was Myra’s idea that all of them should come by for a barbecue lunch on the first day, even Paul if he wanted to. Gloria wasn’t that thrilled with the idea since it would eat into her and Benjamin’s time and, as usual, she would have to act as host, but Benjamin happily and instantly agreed, so on the first Saturday in August, they found themselves meeting with her sisters and their families at the realtor’s office to pick up the key, then convoying to the house. It was as cute in real life as it had been in pictures, but with so many people, its smallness was emphasized, and Gloria ended up sending all the kids to play in the water and their parents out to supervise them, just so she could get lunch ready. Paul had declined to come, which was just as well; there would have been no room for him or his family.

It was clear that her sisters planned to stay all day, maybe even through the evening, but after lunch Gloria put her foot down and politely but firmly told everyone that it was time to go.

“We practically just got here!” Myra complained.

“And you’ll be back in a few days,” Gloria told her. “Right now, Benjamin and I need a little privacy.” She met her sister’s eyes, making it clear what she was hinting, and Myra turned away, embarrassed.

All of the guests were gone within the hour, and though there was still a lot of cleaning up to do, both she and Benjamin agreed it could wait until later. Locking up the house, they strolled along the crowded sidewalk that ran in front of the row of homes facing the beach, with bicyclists and skaters swerving around them. Eventually, they reached the pier, walking onto it, past amateur fishermen casting their lines over the side, until they reached the end. Gloria looked back at the shore, surprised to see how far they’d come. In the water, a group of wet-suited swimmers were being dropped off by a boat, the first of them beginning to swim toward the beach.

“Lifeguard training,” Benjamin guessed.

Gloria nodded. “You’re probably right.”

They remained by the railing, watching the scene around them, the swimmers all ultimately reaching the shore, an elderly Vietnamese man next to them pulling in a fairly large fish that he unhooked and dropped into a plastic bucket half-filled with water. They ambled back down the pier, checking out the little tourist shops that lined the short street in front of the Balboa Pavilion. A sign on a kiosk announced whale watching tours every hour, and Benjamin remarked that it might be fun to go on one.

“Let’s do it,” Gloria said. “Tomorrow morning.”

So they went up to the kiosk and made reservations for a nine a.m. excursion.

On the way back to the rental house, Gloria’s cell phone started ringing, and she pulled it out of the oversized beach bag she was carrying to answer. “Hello?”

“Glore?” It was Paul, and he sounded panicked.

“Paul?”

“We don’t have time!” he said, speaking so rapidly that he almost ran out of breath. “It’s Dad! He was here!”

“What?”

“I talked to him, and you’ve got to get out of there!”

“I don’t unders—”

“He’s on his way! He’s going to kill Benjamin!”