Footsteps(13)
His father was settled comfortably in a beach chair, the happy glow of the day still suffusing his face. This was always a good day for him. Even the first year after their mother, he’d done okay on this day. Carmen sat next to him, and they were holding hands. She looked content, too.
Joey had a little blonde on his lap, his hand up the leg of her shorts.
Trey had dropped off to sleep in Rosa’s arms, the remnant goop of his s’mores giving him a white and brown goatee. Elsa was curled at the end of the log on which Carlo was leaning, and he dropped his hand to nestle into her warm, soft fur. He felt a peace he hadn’t felt in months. He’d needed this. He needed the summer to cleanse the fall and the winter from his mind and soul.
At this time last summer, Jenny had still been with them. Things hadn’t been good between them, but he had not realized it at the time. What he’d thought of as a another rough patch had, in fact, been the beginning of their end. She’d already been cheating on him, and by the end of the summer, she was gone.
He shoved that thought away and turned his head to look out over the water. As his eyes adjusted to the change in light from the orange blaze of the fire to the inky blue of the night sea, he realized that there was someone standing alone at the tideline. In the faint illumination of mingled moonlight and firelight, he made out a woman’s figure. Something about her seemed lonely. Maybe it was that she seemed to be watching the bonfire, as if wishing she were invited. She would be welcome, of course. This was the tail end of a town party.
He had no idea from where he’d gotten the idea of loneliness; all he could see was a silhouette, standing where the water rushed over her ankles. He had no idea why he stood and headed down the beach toward her, either. But he did.
As he came toward her, she turned and headed away down the beach. “Hey, hold up. Join us, if you’d like. It’s not a private party.”
She turned back, and he got a tickle that he knew her somehow, but he wasn’t sure. Then she brought her left hand up to tuck her errant hair behind her ear, and the moonlight caught the massive ring on her finger. Dressed as she was in jeans cuffed midway up her calves and a bulky fisherman’s sweater, her hair loose and tossed by the sea breeze, he hadn’t recognized the woman who’d worn the plum-colored sparkly dress so well the night before. But that ring was unmistakable.
“Um…Sabina? Er…Mrs. Auberon, I mean?”
~ 4 ~
Sabina had merely been out walking. Alone at the beach house facing an expansive, magnificent week entirely on her own, with no James, no staff, no obligations for luncheons or fittings or charity board meetings or galas, nothing but her own time and her own company for seven—no, eight—glorious days, she’d spent the first couple of hours simply being in the house. In the quiet. Feeling veritably weightless without the constant pressure of James’s gaze, or that of the people he’d tasked to keep track of her, burdening her shoulders. She’d kicked off her pumps, uncovered the furniture, made the bed, opened the windows. Then, without bothering to change her clothes, she’d selected a book from the library and sat out on a dune and read in the waning sunshine for a while.
At James’s behest, she’d driven to the shore in the afternoon, shortly after the museum docent’s luncheon. He’d been gone, at the office, when she’d gotten home to pack. She’d found her bags already packed for her and sitting neatly at the foot of the sweeping center staircase. Not even pausing to wonder what clothes he’d had packed for her week-long vacation from their marriage, not even changing from her ‘philanthropic socialite on the go’ slacks and pumps, she’d snatched up her Coach luggage and trotted happily back to her BMW.
She’d spent the previous few hours thinking about this fascinating new development, and she continued to ponder it on the drive shoreward. By the time she pulled her bags from the back of her car and carried them into the beach house, she’d become quite certain that James planned to kill her—no, correction, to have her killed—during this unusual week away. It was perfect, really. She would have an ‘accident’ on the beach and he would ‘grieve’—oh my sweet, silly Sabina, this is why I kept her so close, she was always being reckless and getting hurt, she could never be trusted to take proper care of herself, I’ll never forgive myself for not going with her to the shore—and then probably open a hospital wing in her name. Then, after an appropriate amount of time had passed, he would wed whatever hapless twenty-something he probably had queued up already. One whose breasts hadn’t yet met gravity. Not the little miss in last night’s white bandage dress. He’d never deign to wed one of his extra confections, or any woman who would behave so wantonly in public. He wanted purity in his home.