Family Reunion, Nancy Thayer [the kiss of deception read online .txt] 📗

“Thank you, Gram.” Ari blew her nose into her shredded napkin. “Maybe I’ll never marry. Maybe I’ll live here with you and we’ll be all alone in the winter with gale force winds shaking the house and the waves crashing.”

Eleanor said, “Maybe I won’t be living in this house this winter.”

Ari was startled. “Are you going to sell the house?”

“I don’t know,” Eleanor said. “I might. I have to think about it. Like Beck, I don’t like to be rash about important matters.” She stood up, pausing to let her blood pressure join her. “I haven’t had dinner yet. Have you? Let’s just have tuna salad sandwiches and watch television.”

“Gram,” Ari said, almost sternly, “what has gotten into you?”

“Ari, my darling girl,” Eleanor said, “whatever I’m doing is related to what has gotten into you.”

—

Friday was the last day of Beach Camp. Elementary school would start soon. Cal had to go to New York to begin his courses at the New Seminary. Sandy was packing up to move down to Florida to work for a hotel in Miami. Cleo would continue to work at Our Island Home, traveling up to Boston on her days off to spend time with her husband. Poppy would also commute.

Ari had thought about having a farewell party for the counselors at her grandmother’s home, but during the final week of camp it was clear that everyone was in a hurry to get back to real life. Friday, after the last parent had picked up the last child, Cal and Sandy hugged Ari and thanked her, but didn’t, as she’d assumed they would, suggest they all go for a drink.

“You were wonderful!” Sandy told Ari. “The best ever counselor. The kids adored you.”

“I adored them,” Ari said. She was almost in tears.

“Maybe you’ll work with us again next year,” Cal said.

“Maybe,” Ari replied. She hadn’t told them she was pregnant, and she suddenly realized that they probably had separate parts of their lives they didn’t share with her.

“Don’t look so sad,” Sandy told Ari, taking her hand. “We’ll email and text. We won’t lose touch.”

“Thanks. I had such a good time,” Ari said. “I think Beach Camp is wonderful, and so important for the children. I’d like to be part of it somehow…I’m not sure how, just yet.”

“We’ve got the whole winter to plan,” Cal said. “Really, Ari, you’re part of the camp now.”

What does that mean? Ari thought, because no sooner had Cal spoken than a car drove up to the curb and honked lightly. Cal and Sandy jumped into the car, waved at Ari, and drove away.

Ari walked to her Subaru and sat down. For a few moments she didn’t drive, she only relaxed into her seat, feeling the waves of emotion about it all—Beach Camp, those children, her growing baby, her grandmother, her crazy parents…and Beck. Would she have a future with Beck?

Twenty-Three

Eleanor hadn’t liked computers and the Internet immediately. She still fought with her television. But Cliff had shown her how to search real estate sites on which she could view the interiors of houses. She could contemplate in privacy the details of a possible house she could relocate to and be comfortable.

The house next to Silas did look tempting.

Friday morning, after Ari went off to Beach Camp, Eleanor put on what she considered a sensible dress, and her grandmother’s pearl drop earrings, and drove into town to visit her lawyer.

His name was Dirk MacIntosh, a nice Scottish name that made her trust him. He had been a friend of Mortimer’s and he’d done all their legal work. He was older now, of course, and limited himself to working in his office only three days a week.

“Come in, come in,” he greeted Eleanor as she waited in the firm’s reception area.

He held the door open for her. Once inside, he indicated a leather club chair facing his desk. “So good to see you Eleanor.”

“So good to see you,” she told him, and it was. It was comforting to see that his thick red hair was now white and his white eyebrows had thickened into a Groucho Marx joke. He’d put on quite a bit of weight. Well, hadn’t they all? “How is your family?”

They chatted amiably for a while, as if this was a social visit. Then Dirk said, “Eleanor. What can I do for you?”

“I want to revise my will,” Eleanor said.

—

Eleanor arrived back home in the early afternoon, hugging her secret to herself like a present. She’d had lunch in town with Silas and argued about whether science fiction movies were harbingers of things to come or just plain silly. After lunch, she’d walked with him to Fair Street, and down the narrow, one-lane street to his house. They strolled around the outside of his house and the outside of the house next door. The good news for Eleanor was that there weren’t too many trees. She was worried about feeling hemmed in, claustrophobic, after having such a wide-open view for so many years of her life. She could imagine, because Silas told her it was how he felt, that she might feel safe in this neighborhood, near neighbors and a short walk to the library, so that as she grew older, and less mobile—although, Silas insisted, that wouldn’t happen for years and years—it would be less of a problem to buy groceries and medicine and such.

“You know,” Silas told her, “when you borrow books from the library, the volunteers will bring them to you if you request it. Think how guilty you’d feel if they had to drive all the way out to your house on the cliff, especially on a stormy day.”

Eleanor nodded, busy thinking.

“You’ll miss seeing the ocean, though,” Silas said. “No going around that.”

“True,” Eleanor replied. “But look at the yard. They’ve planted dozens of blue hydrangea. I could add blue cornflowers and delphinium and iris for the spring, and larkspur and