The Lighthouse Chapter 19

Chapter NINETEEN:

Alice kept her eye on Charlie and Ginny as they played with Robin’s girls. It wasn’t Ginny she was worried about, but she knew her son was popular with the girls, and she wasn’t so old that she couldn’t recognize flirting.

Mandie seemed absolutely smitten by everything Charlie said and did, and knowing him, he knew it. He was his father’s son, after all.

With her father off throwing a football with Duke and AJ, Alice was left to her own thoughts. She didn’t have much to say to Della, and the woman had laid a towel on the sand and fallen asleep soon after Alice’s father had left. She snored softly, and Alice wished sleep would come that easily to her.

Robin’s beds did the job, but Alice had found herself lying there, awake, for at least half the night since finding the letter.

The knowledge of it was slowly eating her alive, and she had to do something about it. She glanced to her left, where Eloise and Aaron had been. She hadn’t even noticed them leaving. Another peal of laughter erupted from the sand city several yards away, and Alice watched as Mandie shoved Charlie away.

Then Jamie and one of Aaron’s girls started stomping on all the structures they’d spent the last fifteen minutes building. Mandie turned back to it, and then she glared at Charlie. “Look what you did.”

“Oh, let’s just build it again,” he said, grinning. He ran his hand through his hair, and Mandie would probably go to the moon if he asked her to with that trademark Kelton hair swoop.

Alice folded her arms, trying to decide if she was happy about Charlie’s playful banter or not. She wanted her children to have fun while they were here, because she had pulled them from their friends and studies and plunked them down with her elderly father and step-mother.

Charlie had texted a lot last night, saying how much fun he’d been having, and that had alleviated some of Alice’s worries. But she still wanted to make sure their needs were provided for.

On the other side of the empty chairs, Robin sat under an umbrella, reading something on her phone. Kelli had joined her in the shade, and the two looked to be talking about something. Robin showed Kelli her phone, and they both laughed.

She saw her life from behind that pane of glass again, and she wanted to break right through it. The Alice she’d been when she’d gotten on her private jet and flown here wasn’t the same woman who saw herself as part of this group.

Alice got up and went to join them, gathering her billowing cover up around her bony body. “What are you guys doing over here?” she asked, inserting herself into their conversation as if she should’ve been in it all along.

“Oh, just cat memes,” Robin said, smiling at her. “The kids seem to be getting along okay.”

Alice watched them for a moment. Charlie raked the sand with one of the plastic toys she’d bought, and then he sat back on his heels. The girls surrounding him started to build, and he didn’t take his eyes from Mandie.

“Yeah,” she said, sure Robin could see how her daughter and Alice’s son flirted with one another. It’s harmless, Alice told herself, because it was. Charlie didn’t live here, and an innocent spring romance was harmless, especially between fifteen-year-olds.

“Listen,” Alice said, looking from Kelli to Robin and back. “I think I should tell Kristen about my mom.”

Robin leaned forward, her eyes suddenly earnest and wide, worried. “You do?”

“Yes.” Alice knelt in the sand and picked up a handful of it. The grains sifted through her fingers, and she couldn’t hold onto them no matter how hard she tried. Secrets were the same way. She could clench her fist for a while and keep some of the truth from coming out. But eventually, her fingers would tire, and whatever she’d been hiding would come to light.

She knew, because she’d been holding the lie of her marriage so tight for so long, and Alice was very, very tired.

She looked up from the sand, dusting her hands together to get all the grains off. “If it were me, I’d want to know.”

“There’s nothing she can do about it now,” Kelli said. “I’m not sure it matters.”

Alice nodded. “You might be right.”

“What are you thinking?” Robin asked.

“I’m thinking I can ask her if she wants to know.” Alice’s chest vibrated, and she reminded herself that she didn’t have to hold back the truth, not with Robin and Kelli. “And I’m thinking that I don’t want this secret on my shoulders for very much longer. It’s heavy.” Her shoulders sank, as if she had just unburdened a heavy load from them.

“I know what that’s like,” Kelli said, and Alice switched her gaze to her. Kelli had always been slightly quieter than Alice, and definitely less outgoing than Robin. She’d seemed happy in AJ’s shadow, and even Eloise had earned academic achievements while Kelli simply lingered in the background.

Alice exchanged a glance with Robin, silently urging her to say something first. After all, she’d been the one to call out Eloise on what she wanted from a relationship with Aaron Sherman.

But Robin leaned back in her chair and frowned.

“Kel,” Alice said gingerly. “What’s going on?”

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug, wearing her misery on her face plainly now. “I talked to Julian yesterday, and he says he can’t keep getting Parker this week. He wanted me to come home.”

“You can’t go yet,” Robin said instantly.

Alice held up her hand, and Robin clamped her mouth shut.

Kelli looked out at the water. “I never leave Parker. I do everything for him and Julian. I thought that was what I wanted, but…” She smiled as the kids laughed again, sighing in such a longing way that Alice felt it down deep in her own soul. Of course she did. She longed for so much more than what her life had become.

She’d once thought that money could buy her whatever she needed. If her husband didn’t come home one weekend, that was okay. She could get a new bedroom set. If she was lonely in her own bed, no problem. She could get a new luxury SUV to drive around the Hamptons.

Alice had been carefully bandaging her unhappiness for two decades, and no amount of money could cure her now.

“But what?” she prompted, because she felt like Kelli was right on the edge of something important for her.

“But being here with you all, and I see how Duke treats Robin. I see Eloise glowing when Aaron shows up—and you know what? He was glowing too. I can’t even remember the last time Julian slept in the same bed as me.”

Surprise darted through Alice, but she kept it carefully contained behind a stone mask. Robin, however, did not. A scoff came out of her mouth, and she only realized it too late. Kelli looked at her, and Robin just pressed her lips together and waved her hand. She’d gotten really good at taming what came out of her mouth, Alice would give her that. And she loved her for her maturity.

“Where does he sleep?”

“On the couch or in his office.” Kelli looked absolutely forlorn, and she swiped at her eyes. “He’s going to have his mother take care of Parker so he can keep working.”

“Does he ever take days off?” Robin asked gently.

“No,” Kelli said. “And it’s usually fine. It is. I just guess I’d told myself that we weren’t any different than any other couple. But… I mean, even Joel and Kristen were happier than I am. Sure, we’re learning now that he was kind of a jerk. Or different.” She shook her head, sighing. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“I know what you’re saying,” Robin said. “You’re saying that we all had an image of what Joel was like, who he was. And we’re learning that that image might be a lie.”

Alice nodded, and while she’d been struggling a little bit this past week, she knew it wasn’t anything like what Robin was going through. She’d also been living with someone who portrayed one image of who he was to the world but was actually something quite different behind closed doors.

She was used to the duplicity in people; Robin wasn’t. She took everyone at face value, a trait Alice wished she had.

“I guess I’ve just realized that Julian and I aren’t even connected anymore, and it’s my fault. I know it’s my fault.”

“How so?” Alice asked, not meaning to be challenging, though her voice came out a bit harsh.

“I let my whole world become Parker instead of my husband.” She looked at Alice with wide eyes. “That’s what he told me yesterday.”

“Kelli—” Robin started.

“And he’s right,” Kelli said, in a rare show of talking over someone. “He’s right, guys. He is.” She looked away again, studying something in front of her. “He’s replaced me with his business, and I replaced him with my son. We barely know each other anymore.”

Alice’s heart tore for Kelli’s plight, because it felt and sounded so familiar. So familiar, Alice could taste the disappointment in the back of her throat that Kelli surely did too.

She pulled in a deep breath and faced Alice again. “I think you should tell Kristen—if you think that’s the right thing to do. She should know the truth. Then she’ll be able to do something about it.”

“You think so?” Alice asked, still oscillating back and forth in her decision.

“We’ll support you,” Robin said. She looked at Kelli. “And you too, Kel. Tell us what you need, and we’ll do whatever we have to in order to make it happen.”

“Thanks.” Kelli smiled and nodded. “Do you think you could bottle up Duke and let me take the elixir home? Maybe if Julian just had one sip, he’d look at me the way Duke looks at you.”

“Oh, well,” Robin said, her eyes moving down the beach to where her husband played football.

“If she gets a bottle, I’d need a barrel,” Alice said, following that with a laugh. The mood broke, and she got up out of the sand and sat in the chair next to Robin, the echo of their laughter filling her ears as she went right back to thinking about how she could possibly tell Kristen about the letter.