Chapter 42
Zooey’s steps slowed as her temper cooled, and now she was down to a stroll. Her parent’s house, her house now, was coming up on the left, only three houses away. She was that far up-island. When she’d left Pam’s she was so angry she couldn’t see anything - houses flew by in a colorful blur. She also couldn’t feel the cold and wet, but now it was a different story. She was freezing and drenched to the bone from the rain, the jeans and fisherman’s sweater she’d put on that morning clinging heavily to her body, her canvas dock shoes making squishing noises with every step.
She kept walking, though, letting the last of her righteous fury dissipate, knowing it would be gone soon. Amy was right, of course. But it didn’t feel that way earlier. Zo was tired from a horrible night of tossing and turning and then there was that awful voicemail from Neil, saying he was coming out to Captain’s, that they needed to have it out once and for all. Couldn’t he tell they had already had it out, that it was over? Was he really that dense? She should have said it plainly before she left, been direct instead of subtle. But no, she wanted him to believe it was his decision to end their marriage. It would be better that way. She prayed he was lying about coming out here, that it was one of his empty threats, designed to get her to call him back.
She came to a stop in front of her house and looked up at it. It was huge and white, a Victorian showplace with high ceilings that trapped the heat and cooled the rooms, long tall windows that were always thrown open to the sea breezes, gleaming wooden floors that inevitably became strewn with sand despite the mat at the front door and the little shallow bath beside it for rinsing sandy feet. All the furniture was her parents’, lots of white-painted wicker, oriental rugs that had been too threadbare for their spotless house in Rye, NY, the same old gas range and propane-run refrigerator and gray-painted hand pump at the wooden sink in the kitchen. The only thing she’d changed had been the old lumpy mattresses, bringing out new ones on the open flush desk of a neighbor’s antique clamming skiff.
Whenever an islander referred to the house, they either called it the Delaney house, her family’s name, or the “wedding cake house”. She used to love the romance of that, the celebratory air of it. Looking up at it now, she realized that she didn’t love it anymore. Three weddings under her belt, she was tired of white lace and overblown fantasies. She wanted something simple and small, a cozy bungalow down-island near her friends and their shared little house. That was it. She’d put the house on the market in the spring, start checking around to see who was selling down-island so she could be first to bid. It was time to move on - let go of the past and its hold over her life.
As she stood regarding her house, she felt the prickling feeling of being watched. She looked around. The wet windswept boardwalk was empty in both directions. She looked at the nearby houses, their beaches dusted with small tangles of seaweed, their long spare docks. Three doors down, there was a boat tied up to a dock. Someone was here, then. Watching her.
She narrowed her eyes and then widened them, realizing whose house the occupied dock belonged to. It was Rose’s house, a tall pale yellow house with a whale weathervane and scallop shell cut-outs decorating the shutters and a deep screened-in front porch. Rose, who used to be at the center of the social whirl when they were young, had retreated to the periphery of island life sometime in her thirties. They never saw her at any of the parties anymore. The house was locked up and empty most of the summer. But she was here now. And, somewhere in that house, she, or someone else who was staying there, was watching Zo. How strange.
She tried to picture Rose, but couldn’t. It had been too many years since they’d seen each other face to face. All she could remember was Rose in her late twenties, still as beautiful as her name suggested, still as cruel and cutting as that flower’s thorns. The last time Rose had shown up at a party, she’d brought a new boyfriend, who promptly started flirting with Keeley. Keeley, not realizing whose boyfriend it was, flirted right back. Rose had left the party in a huff a few minutes later, while her boyfriend was the last to leave.
Zo shivered, both from the cold and from the eerie malevolent feeling she was getting from whoever it was that was watching her. Was it Rose? There was no movement in the house or on the porch, though she thought she could make out a figure there.
“Jeez,” she whispered, another shiver crawling up her back. She gave Rose’s house one last look, and then turned and started walking quickly back toward Pam’s, breaking into a jog after a few steps, a hunted feeling suddenly sweeping over her and propelling her away from that picture-perfect yellow house that was anything but cheerful.