The tech cottage was filled with people sitting at laptops and, unless her eyes were deceiving her, it looked like her parents had added an espresso machine in there. She could see it through the window. Krysta was craning her neck, looking at the wildflower beds, at some kids playing croquet in one of the overgrown fields, at the giant pirate ship that her parents had added and turned into an herb garden rather than a child’s playground.
She pulled up in front of her parents’ house and they climbed out. She knew it would take fewer than fifteen steps before someone recognized her. Sure enough, it was Caleb who shouted her name. Caleb’s hands and shirt were full of greenery, what Lydia suspected were herbs from the herb ship. Of all her brothers, Caleb was the oddball, the one who had managed to get some combination of genes from a couple of generations past that involved bright blue eyes and sandy brown hair. They jokingly called him the milkman’s boy, except that if you looked at old Mr. Michaelson there was no way that any boy was coming out of him, and besides, Mr. Michaelson was as black Irish as the Charles’.
Caleb had the body of a marathon runner and the smile of a used car salesman. But it was his hands that were so distinct, long surgeon’s fingers that he used with great skill, not to cut people open, but to cut great chunks of meat, to julienne varying vegetables, to twist and turn an icing bag into a cake that was a work of art. Caleb had gone to culinary school and had come back home, which pleased Sandy and Pete to no end, to become the resident chef.
Although Escape Shores didn’t have an official restaurant, Lydia knew they soon would. Sandy lived in fear that Grandma would lure Caleb into the city, to work at Grandma's diner. At twenty-four, Caleb was the closest in age to her and as youngsters had palled around, people called them Irish twins, for they were only fourteen months apart. She was proud of him, and his tarragon butter draw for dipping lobster really was worth the drive.
“Hey, sis!” he called out. The bottom of his t-shirt was curled up, making a cloth bowl of sorts, and it was stuffed silly with different shades of green, stretches of herbs that he’d clearly just picked. She spotted rosemary—was that some kind of mint?—and maybe a cilantro in there.
“That better not be cilantro!” she shouted back.
“Why?”
“Because it tastes like soap.”
“You’re the only one in the family with that freak gene,” he called out, smiling.
“Don’t talk about genes, Mr. Michaelson.” He rolled his eyes but the mirth was still there. Krysta watched them, her eyes lit up. It was no secret that Krysta had a thing for Caleb. Caleb, though, didn’t seem to notice that Krysta was there. He was polite enough and friendly, and they talked and joked just like Caleb talked and joked with everyone else. But she knew his eyes were on, funnily enough, the Stillman's daughter, Julie. He’d had a crush on her since third grade and she wanted to tell Krysta that it was hopeless but she couldn’t bring herself to crush anyone’s spirit when it came to love, least of all her own.
She couldn’t get Matt out of her head. But worse, she couldn’t stop thinking about Michael, and the fact that they were the same person just made her wonder why, if she had two men in her life, it had to be under these circumstances. From the look on Caleb’s face he hadn’t heard about the video, or seen it. There was no covert, sidelong glance, no non-verbal questioning, and so she breathed a sigh of relief. If anyone in her family took a really good, long look or put two and two together, they would know—and the shame that she felt, not at what she had done in that office, but at being so exposed, was something that ran so counter to how she normally felt when she set foot back home.
Home was a safe place. Home was comforting. Home was steady and stable and would always be there. Having it tainted by her life in the city was one thing, but having the biggest risk she had ever taken in her life exposed on camera and gone viral for late-night talk show fodder and gossip blogs and for jokes about her body, her sexual technique, the sounds she made in the throes of passion, that…that made nowhere safe. Home, absolutely, had to remain sacrosanct. She had seven people here to worry about. Seven people who might know the truth, and so far it was one down, six to go.
It is mint, she thought as Caleb embraced her, crushing the herbs between them, the scent of broken leaves and of released aromas tickling her nose and making her mouth water with anticipation of the culinary delights that would come tonight. Krysta, she knew, drooled for other reasons.
As Caleb released her and turned to Krysta to give her a polite hug, she watched her friend close her eyes and breathe in not the scent of the herbs but the scent of Caleb. It skeeved her out a little—she just didn’t like to think of Caleb that way—but if she pulled back and looked at him not as her brother, but objectively as a man, she could see that he was attractive, and she would love for Krysta to find that for herself.
She knew before she even got in the car to come up here that her mom couldn’t possibly know about the video because she would have had fourteen phone calls, nineteen text messages, and a smoke signal had Sandy been remotely aware of what happened. Grandma would keep her mouth shut. Hell, Madge knew where all the bodies were buried, and now Lydia owed her yet another favor.
“So, where are the rest of the gang?” she asked.
Caleb grinned. “Beats me. Adam and Dan are at some conference thing. I don’t know? Something business blah-blah-blah…increase your profits blah-blah-blah. And that’s down in Boston.”
“They’re in Boston and they didn’t tell me?”
“You know them, they’re all business. Besides, maybe they were planning to surprise you. It’s not like you just hop in the car and drive four hours north every Thursday, Lydia.” He looked at her with suspicion. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, just thought I’d come up and say hi.”
“Okay,” he said, clearly unconvinced. Krysta tried desperately to keep a straight face and Lydia, if she’d been close enough, would have kicked her in the ankle to convince her to do so, but right now she was just mooning over Caleb, so luckily Lydia didn’t have to worry about having her secret spilled.
She did some quick family math. If Adam and Dan were gone, then it was Miles she had to worry about—and Mom and Dad. She had already crossed Sandy off the list so, worst case, Miles or Pete might have figured it out. She wasn’t worried about her dad. Dad was about as technologically savvy as an Amish guy in an Apple Store.
“Mom’s going to fall over. She had no idea you were coming.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s a surprise visit. It’s all good.”
He narrowed his eyes and now she wondered. “You okay, Lyd?”
“I’m okay.”
She put on her best fake smile and hoped he believed it, and it looked like he did. Distracted by whatever he was cooking, he suddenly took off at a sprint and shouted, “My sauce! Gotta go, bye!” And then she heard him in the distance shouting, “Hey, Mom! Go out to the store!”
“What a view,” Krysta said. Lydia turned and looked at the ocean, the water gleaming as the mid-afternoon sun shone down on it.
“Yeah, it is.” She looked back at Krysta and realized Krysta was watching Caleb’s ass. “The water’s nice too, Krysta.”
Krysta just shrugged. “Can’t blame a girl for—”
“Lydia!” her mother screamed. Never one to leave guests feeling unloved, she followed it up with a shout of, “Krysta! Both of you! This is fabulous!” She then embraced both of them in a giant group hug, listing to and fro, arms eating up as much of them as she could, planting kisses on Lydia’s face. “What brought you all the way up here?”
Krysta looked at Lydia, and Lydia carefully chose not to look back. She didn’t want to tip her mother off. “Just thought we would come up for a surprise visit, Mom. It’s all good.”
“On a Thursday?” She cocked her head. “What’s going on, Lydia?”
“We’ll talk. It’s good, Mom. It’s fine.”
“Pete! Pete!” her mother screamed. “Oh, hang on a second. I keep forgetting I can’t holler anymore for him.” She reached into her pocket and fumbled for a smart phone and pressed until she saw her mom calling Pete.
“You got…you got smart phones?”
Sandy grinned. “Yeah, we finally broke down and did it. I mean, we bought twenty more acres over there from the Parsons and this place is just getting too big to holler and to even use walkie talkies. So, we gave in and now we have these fancy contraptions. But you know”—she perked up, smiling at the two women—“that YouTube is pretty neat. You can see all kinds of things on there.”
“You would be amazed,” said Krysta, fighting for composure and trying not to laugh. This time Lydia did reach over and kick her in the ankle. “Hey! What was that for?” she said.
Sandy just looked at them, mystified.
“Oh, nothing. You had a scorpion on your ankle,” said Lydia.
“We don’t have scorpions in Maine.”
“It looked like one. So, where’s Miles?” she asked as innocently as possible.
“Oh, he’s around here. Look for his red golf cart. I’m sure he is doing something in terms of water flow or ditches or helping somebody to put their RV up on blocks.”
Miles was fourth out of the six kids, and two years older than Lydia. He was the stable, steady one who had planned his entire life around taking over or sharing the responsibility for Escape Shores Campground. He took the physical caretaking of the 140—now apparently 160—acres quite seriously, making rounds like a policeman on watch. He was kind and considerate, always helpful to those customers who matched his sentiment, and quick to act with determination and firmness for those customers who went over the edge, who couldn’t respect the property or their fellow campers. He was like the bouncer of the campground, but benevolent.
He resembled Pete the most, the big bear with black curly hair and green eyes, and an unassuming, self effacing, hunched over physical look—because at six-five he had worked very hard through his puberty growth spurt to be as small as possible. Which was pretty damn hard and made him easy to spot, especially since he had painted his golf cart red years ago in an effort to stop his other brothers from stealing it.
The problem Lydia had with Miles was that, as unassuming as he could seem, behind those green eyes, which now that she thought about it were nothing like Matt’s, was a brain that ticked constantly, that made connections, that put two and two together to get a calculus that Lydia feared was not going to be in her favor today. He was exactly the type to catch a whiff, a couple seconds of some news show, go on the computer and find the dreaded video.
The upshot to having Miles be the one to discover it was that he, of all the Charles clan, could actually keep a secret. And so, if she had to pick a brother to discover it, she’d have picked Miles. But if she could pick no one discovering it, she’d pick that in a heartbeat.