Lauren
Sanctuary: a place of refuge
Lauren stood on the observation deck of the ferry and stared across the choppy sea. The water reminded her of grief, slapping at the boat, pummeling, swirling.
The other passengers, less preoccupied by their own problems, had chosen warmth over the view and long since vanished below deck to the snack bar to avoid the frigid squalls of air.
It was like a slap in the face, and Lauren needed that.
“Marriage can be whatever we want it to be,” Ed had once said to her. “There are people who believe in fairy-tale romance who end up in the divorce court a few years later crushed under the weight of crumbling expectations. Then there are people like us who are honest about what we want.”
How about the debts, Ed? Why didn’t you mention those?
How could there be no money? Ed had been good at what he did. The best, some had said, and yet somehow he’d managed to lose everything he’d ever worked for.
She’d tried to concentrate as words and phrases floated past her, although the look on James’s face had been enough to tell her how bad the news was.
Trying to get higher returns for the fund.
Acquired several private companies.
Lack of liquidity.
All the money tied up in the company.
Lost all his capital.
It had been Jenna who had pointed out that she still had the house, and Lauren who had to confess that Ed had taken another mortgage. He’d mentioned a temporary lack of liquidity. What he hadn’t mentioned was how serious it was.
According to James, there was unlikely to be anything left when the debts had been paid. It would take a while to untangle everything, but right now it seemed they would be lucky for the estate not to be declared insolvent.
Apart from that last day, there had been no signs that anything was wrong.
She hadn’t known the person she’d lived with for more than sixteen years.
The cold wind whipped at her hair and slid down the collar of her coat, but she didn’t notice. In the long list of things wrong with her life, being cold was right at the bottom. The feeling of numbness that spread through her had nothing to do with the weather.
She’d had to borrow money from Jenna to cover their journey from England to Martha’s Vineyard and right now she didn’t have the means to pay her sister back.
The seesaw of emotions was making her dizzy. One minute she was angry, the next she was devastated. Anxiety formed a tight band around her chest.
She missed Ed horribly, but she’d barely had time to process her emotions. Life was sweeping her along like a river in full flood. She was gasping for air, swirling, grabbing at anything she could but still couldn’t reach the safety of the bank.
She hadn’t only lost Ed and the house and the life she’d had, she’d lost her vision of the future.
Only now was she realizing how excited she’d been about this new phase in her life.
To support her daughter she would need to find a job that paid immediately. But what could she do?
“Do we have to stay with Grams?” Mack was slumped over the rail, watching the sea churn beneath them. “How long for?”
Until I can’t stand it any longer.
She killed the thought because she was truly grateful to have somewhere to go. Staying with her mother might drive her insane, but it would give her a chance to regroup and plan her future.
“I thought you loved The Captain’s House and Martha’s Vineyard?”
“This is different. This isn’t a holiday.”
And didn’t she know it.
“I know you’re coping with a lot. First Dad—”
“Ed.” Mack had refused to call him anything but Ed since the night of the funeral and it made Lauren feel sick with guilt.
“He was your dad.”
“I don’t have a single morsel of his DNA.” Mack glared fiercely at the water. “Does he have blue eyes?”
“Excuse me?”
“My real dad. Blue eyes?”
Lauren swallowed. “Yes, but being a father is about more than DNA. Ed was your father in every single way that mattered.” She was too tired for this conversation. Her head throbbed from lack of sleep and too much crying.
“Newsflash—the whole egg being fertilized thing matters, Mom, otherwise the rest doesn’t happen.”
“Your dad loved you. Love is showing up, honey. Sticking around.” Do you hear that, Ed? It’s about sticking around. Checking that your heart is working okay. Going to the doctor. She knew it was irrational to be angry with Ed for dying, but that didn’t seem to help. The words if only were stuck in her brain like an earworm. “He was there when I was pregnant with you, when you were born, when you cried in the night. He was the one sitting at the school concert when you sang solo, and the one who was right there talking to your teachers.”
Mack thrust her jaw out. “I’m calling him Ed.”
Lauren felt helpless. She was terrified of saying something that would make a bad situation worse. “I know it’s difficult for you, leaving London in the middle of a very important school year—”
“Are you kidding? That’s the only good thing about this. I don’t have to take those stupid exams.”
But those “stupid exams” were important.
What if she’d ruined her daughter’s life? “You’ll go to school here. There are good schools on the island.”
“But they don’t know, right? They don’t know everything that has happened?” Mack’s horrified tone said everything about the way she was feeling.
“No. It’s up to you how much you tell.”
“I won’t be telling anyone anything. It’s going to stay a secret. It shouldn’t be a problem. I learned from the best.”
Lauren felt as if her heart was splintering into pieces. “Don’t say that. It’s important to talk to the people you love.”
“You’re seriously saying that to me? If Aunt Jenna were here right now she’d be doing that word thing she does where she gives you a definition. Hypocrisy—when your mom tries to get you to do something she doesn’t do herself.”
It required superhuman patience to hold on to her temper. If circumstances had been different she would have called Mack out for her brattish behavior, but she knew her daughter was mixed up and miserable and taking that misery out on the person closest to her.
She gripped the railing. She felt dizzy and wasn’t sure if it was lack of food or whether she was coming down with something. Could hypocrisy make you dizzy?
She’d wanted to be everything her own mother wasn’t. Attentive, interested, loyal and, most important of all, present. Why hadn’t anyone told her it was harder than it looked? Why hadn’t anyone told her that what constituted “good” parenting wasn’t always obvious? She’d taken her own mother as an example and promised herself that she’d do everything differently. In the end she’d made her own set of mistakes.
“I know you feel I did the wrong thing. I’ve made decisions you disagree with, but I do want us to keep talking. I want to know how you’re feeling, even if it’s hard to hear.”
“I feel like crap, okay? And I don’t want to talk.” Mack’s jaw lifted and her expression was combative. It had been the same since the night of the funeral.
Lauren wanted to wrap her daughter in her arms and hold her while she cried and talked it out, but Mack had turned into a porcupine. She had a feeling that if she hugged her she’d be pulling needles out of herself for the next month.
“Mack—”
“A person is entitled to privacy, right?”
“There’s a difference between privacy and secrets, Mack. When you make new friends—” please let her make new friends “—you might find it helps to talk to them.”
“Yeah, like you did? You didn’t even tell Aunt Jenna about my real dad. I saw her face the day of the funeral.”
“Don’t model yourself on me. I’m starting to think I need a complete do-over.”
It had been a long and punishing few weeks, most of which had passed in a blur of meetings with lawyers and Ed’s accountants. The list of people he owed money to grew every day. She felt stupid for not taking a closer interest, but she knew she wasn’t stupid. She’d trusted her husband. Was it naive to trust the man you were married to?
How could he have hidden something so enormous from her? Why? How long had he had problems with the business? When had it all started? What had gone wrong?
Damn you, Ed.
She stared across the choppy sea to the island. Something stirred inside her, a deep unease, as if some part of her sensed that this place could somehow shake the foundations of the life she’d built. She’d always had mixed feelings about Martha’s Vineyard. Her visits home brought a rash of memories, many of which she could happily have deleted from her brain. She associated the place with teenage emotions and bad choices.
Most of all, she associated the place with him and that one spectacular summer that had never been matched or repeated. She’d experienced heartache and heartbreak and a breadth of other agonizing human emotions in the space of a few short months, and had changed forever.
Jenna had been right when she’d questioned whether there was a reason Lauren hadn’t returned often.
He was the reason.
She’d been afraid of bumping into memories. Afraid of bumping into him.
In London she was a different person. She’d reinvented herself. Part of her had always been a little nervous that she might revert to her original self when she stepped off the ferry.
Lauren stared down at the boil and swirl of the waves. For a wild moment she thought about jumping. With her current run of luck she’d probably land on a rock.
She looked away from the water, feeling guilty for even thinking of jumping. She had responsibilities, and now she was facing them on her own. There was no one else.
Had marrying Ed been a coward’s way out or the right decision? She no longer knew.
“Staying with Grams will be fun.”
“For two weeks in the summer, yes, but forever?” Mack turned her head slowly, the look in her eyes pure teenage disdain. “You promised to be honest. That night in my bedroom you said no more lying.”
“You’re right, I did.” She rejected the instinct to protect her daughter from the truth. “It might not be that much fun, but we don’t have much choice.” What could she say? That she wasn’t looking forward to it either? That a grown woman of thirty-five shouldn’t have to move back home with her mother, especially when they’d never had that great a relationship in the first place? That she had no idea how to talk to her own mother about what was happening in her life? “It’s hard, but we need to keep going.” She tried to inject some normality. “We’ll do some of the things we always do. Beach, bike rides, maybe go shopping—”
“Last time I looked you couldn’t buy a new life.”
They’d been given a new life whether they wanted it or not. And they couldn’t shop for anything until she’d worked out a way to produce income. That was top of her list of problems to solve.
“We’re lucky Grams has a big house and can easily accommodate us.”
Lauren loved her mother, but the thought of living in close quarters after so many years made her hyperventilate. Her mother didn’t really know her, although to be fair that was probably as much Lauren’s fault as Nancy’s.
Apart from her sister, there was only one person who had truly known her and he’d sailed away from her life a long time ago.
As the ferry docked and people started to disembark Lauren was tempted to stay on board, but she knew she had to start facing her problems. She had to deal with them one by one, the best she could. Lists. Plans. Control.
Her mother had promised to meet her.
Lauren would have preferred it to be Jenna, but her sister was teaching and she’d already missed more than enough classes flying to London to support Lauren.
She held out her hand but Mack shot her a horrified glance and dipped her head.
“I’m not six. Please don’t kill my credibility dead before I’ve even set foot in the place. There’s only so many times a person can move, you know?”
Lauren wondered how they were going to get past this. Ed’s death should have pulled them closer, but it had pushed them apart.
Patience and time, she thought. That was all she had.
At least there was nothing more that could happen.
Perhaps the only advantage of being at rock bottom was that the only way was up.
They hauled their luggage off the ferry and she saw the familiar figure of her mother clutching the edges of the same unflattering gray coat she’d worn for the last decade. For someone lauded for her use of color, it had always puzzled Lauren that her mother now showed such a lack of interest in clothing. Despite the fact that her paintings commanded eye-watering sums, she never seemed to spend anything on herself. Her once-blond hair was now a uniform gray and a pair of glasses perched on the end of her nose.
Next to her stood a man. His shoulders were wide and powerful and he hunched them slightly as protection against the relentless buffeting of the wind. His legs were long and strong and his hair was the color of the sky at midnight. Although she wasn’t close enough to see his eyes, she knew they were blue. Ice blue, like frost on the water or a pale winter sky.
Lauren stopped walking and Mack bumped into her, almost knocking her off balance.
“Whoa! If you’re going to put the brakes on, some warning would be good.” Steadying herself, Mack stepped round her mother and kissed her grandmother. “Hi, Grams. Yes, I’ve grown. Yes, I’m taller. It’s an amazing feat of nature.”
Nancy gave a distracted smile, either not noticing teenage sarcasm or unfazed by it. “How was the crossing? Lauren, I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t drive. My car is in the garage. You remember Scott Rhodes? He’s been doing some work on the house and he gave me a ride.” She gestured vaguely to the man standing next to her and Lauren tried to control the waves of dizziness.
Scott Rhodes.
So in fact she hadn’t hit rock bottom yet. She was still falling.
It had been more than sixteen years since she’d seen him, but the recognition was instant and visceral. Heat seared her skin and shot through her pelvis. Her legs started to tremble.
Her gaze locked on his and she felt as if she’d slammed headfirst into a wall.
Her senses felt as if they’d been woken from a long sleep.
Through a cloud of mist she heard Mack say, “Wait a minute, did you say your name was Scott Rhodes?”
The world started to spin. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t suck air into her lungs. Something heavy pressed against her chest. Heart attack?
As if in slow motion, she felt the bag slip from her fingers and her legs start to give way under her.
I’m going to faint, she thought. Maybe I’ll hit my head and all this will be over. Maybe I’ll fall in the water and drown—
But she couldn’t let that happen, could she?
Mack needed her—
She crumpled to the ground and through the shadows and rolling gray mist heard Mack’s horrified scream.
“You’ve killed my mom!” Her voice was high and shrill and came from far away. “Thanks a lot. Now I’m an orphan.”