The Guest House (2 page)

One

Harrisport, Massachusetts

July 2012

I
t was like opening a summer house after a long, dark winter.

That was how Lexi always thought of the start of peak season in Harrisport. Sure, it was a whole town and not a single dwelling, but in her mind, the rituals were the same. In fact, if you sat at the best booth in Dock’s, the one that had the clearest view of the village, like she was doing now while she waited for Kim to arrive, you could watch the transformation in its entirety. Almost overnight, Main Street would blink awake. The nine interminably plodding months that comprised fall, winter, and spring would practically vanish with the snap of a shade. Shop windows that rarely saw more than a few holiday decorations between Labor Day and July first would be stripped bare and dressed in a matter of hours. Overhangs unfurled like petals; sandwich boards came out and clapped into position on the sidewalk. Ladders went up and shopkeepers climbed them, ready to soap off winter’s grime and scan the horizon like newly appointed captains at the bows of their ships.

But it wasn’t just the store owners who jumped to attention. Preparing for the rush of summer people, or “wash-ashores,” as they were called on Cape Cod, was the responsibility of every local resident of Harrisport. Babysitter or fire chief, mail carrier or bar back, your world became a lot busier and (hopefully) a lot more flush when peak season arrived, because once the summer families returned to their cottages, the punch lists and the parties would follow. There were celebrations to cater, linen and silk to dry-clean. Repairs and renovations, planting and weeding. Roofs that had failed to endure particularly harsh winters, pipes and wiring that were finally showing their age. By July, contractors and landscapers would arrive at Pip’s to get their morning coffee a little earlier, and stroll into Dock’s for their after-work beers a little later. Traffic would increase through town, thicken and slow. Roy’s Bread Basket would sell out of their pecan toffee rolls before nine on a weekday, and if you wanted a table at the Osprey House you’d better have made your reservation a week earlier.

Fourth of July arrived like a car horn, a clear and startling burst of sound signaling that it was time to get out of the way; summer had begun.

Two years away from it, two winters, two summers, and Lexi marveled at how little had changed. When she’d returned from her graduate program in photography at the Royal Academy of Arts in London the week before, she’d expected to find alterations, stitches that had surely come apart in the town’s seams. But sitting here now, sipping her margarita in a plastic cactus-stemmed glass that might have been as old as she was, catching recognizable whiffs of fried clams and sunbaked Naugahyde as she watched familiar faces file through the tavern’s open door, she wasn’t so sure.

But what had she expected? Two years away was a drop in the bucket after thirty-two of them. She could have been gone from Harrisport for fifty years and come back to find her hometown the same: her mother and older brother, Owen, still running their father’s construction business in town; her best friend, Kim, still owner of the natural-food store.

Every bit of it, exactly the same.

“Sorry I’m late.” Kim Donnelly slid into the booth, swinging her beach bag–size purse across her lap and landing it on the bench beside her. “Jay couldn’t find Miles’s uniform. Miles freaks out if he doesn’t have his lucky socks.” She took a moment to shift the straps of her sleeveless shirt before she saw the electric green margarita in front of her. Her face lit up. “Please tell me that’s what I think that is.”

“You really have to ask?” Lexi directed her narrowed gaze at the bar. “I actually had to tell the new bartender how to make it. What happened to Kenny?”

“He moved to Phoenix,” said Kim, pushing back her blond hair and scooping up her drink. “And Johnny’s not new; he’s been here over a year.”

“A year? And he doesn’t know how to make a mint margarita? Shame on him. Shame on
you
.” The women raised their drinks and clinked them. “To summer,” said Lexi.

“To summer,” Kim repeated. She took a long sip, moaning with pleasure. “God, I’ve missed that taste.” She smiled at Lexi across the booth. “I can’t believe you remembered our drink.”

“Of course I remembered. I was gone two years, not twenty.”

“Trust me; some days it felt more like twenty.”

Lexi reached for her best friend’s hand and gave it a loving squeeze. For years, too many to count, they had been meeting at the dockside restaurant, sinking into the same booths, resting their elbows on the same gnarled tabletops and chipping away at the dents in the thick shellac with their thumbnails, falling into the same routines with the rest of their neighbors, all of them bound to the cycles of the seasons, as linked as the tides to the moon.

“Look at us. . . .” Kim glanced around at the busy tables and sighed. “It’s like we’re all a bunch of kids trying to smoke the rest of our cigarettes before our parents come home.”

Lexi had to agree. For all the anticipation and excitement of summer, there was a palpable melancholy too. As grateful as everyone was for the infusion of outsiders and their money, a part of each resident couldn’t help resenting the loss of their quiet, their privacy. But it was always a trade. Everyone knew that and accepted it.

For Lexi, that trade had never been a begrudging one. Once upon a time, her anticipation of peak season was colored only in shades of euphoria. The first week of July once meant more than just the arrival of crowds and longer lines for gas and everything else. For Lexi, it had meant the return of Hudson Moss, the return of a joy she’d kept tidily closed up all winter, just like the great Moss cottage itself, sealed up safe from the coldest, quietest months, just waiting for summer’s cue to throw open the sashes of her own heart, to be the object of Hudson’s affections once again. Yet no matter how excited he had appeared, no matter how deeply he’d kissed her or how long he’d made love to her, Lexi could never fully shake the feeling that for him, life in Harrisport would never be real—only a holiday life; that his real world had existed in the nine months between September and June—months that for her had been utterly purposeless without him. And just when the vines of her trust had finally grown thick and sturdy around her heart, he’d yank them out again like weeds.

A silver Porsche sped past the window; Lexi followed its path reflexively.

Kim smiled. “You still look, don’t you?”

“Old habits.” Lexi reached for her drink to cover the flush of guilt that climbed her cheeks. Eleven years after the last time Hudson Moss’s prized sports car had cruised the streets of Harrisport, and she was like one of Pavlov’s dogs whenever a similar car cut through her field of vision.

“I do it too,” admitted Kim. “It’s like I still expect them to be here every summer. You heard about the house, right?”

Lexi frowned quizzically.

“They’re finally putting it on the market,” explained Kim. “Thank God. That poor thing was rotting like a piece of fruit.”

The Mosses, sell their prized house? Lexi struggled to accept the news. For years, long before she’d ever fallen in love with Hudson Moss and been allowed entrance into his family’s vaulted rooms, she’d coveted the Mosses’ shingle-style cottage from afar. It had been in the Moss family for generations—Lexi’s mother and father had even helped to build a guest house on the property when they were young (and fallen in love in the process). It was unimaginable that another family would roost there.

Lexi felt Kim studying her. “You look upset,” said Kim.

Lexi shrugged. “I’m not upset. I’m just . . . surprised.”

“Why? You know how Florence hated it here. I’m shocked she waited this long after Tucker died to unload it.”

Lexi did know; of course she did. Throughout her relationship with Hudson, Lexi had witnessed plenty of chilly, sour looks from his mother—most of them during those sticky summer days, the suspicious stares that had made Lexi wipe self-consciously at her neck, sure there must have been some damning love bite there that Hudson had left during their frantic lovemaking in the guest house, maybe a missed button on her blouse, or a telling patch of knotted hair where he’d tangled his fingers.

Lexi shook her head, letting the memories go. “I just can’t believe no one in the family wants it, that’s all.”

“Like who? Hudson hasn’t been back since . . .” Kim paused, regret pooling in her eyes as she met Lexi’s gaze and knew there was no need to clarify. “There is Cooper, I guess.”

Cooper
. Lexi nodded absently, the mention abruptly steering her thoughts to the last time she’d laid eyes on Hudson’s younger brother. Eleven years ago, the same night Hudson had broken off their engagement in the guest house, Cooper had appeared in the doorway like a beacon, a shining light to lead her to safety when she’d been plunged into darkness and more than willing to step off the edge of the world. He’d kept her company while she’d bawled her eyes out, while she’d drained a whole bottle of champagne. He’d driven her home in his father’s car, driven her up and down the coast for hours because she’d told him she couldn’t bear to go home alone.

And then, when they’d finally run out of road and he’d delivered her to her apartment, Cooper had kissed her, a bold and passionate kiss that she hadn’t expected. And in the years since, when Lexi had remembered that night, she’d felt a sense of confliction. She’d wanted Cooper to kiss her; there was no denying it. Somehow, in the midst of her heartbreak, her wounds still fresh, she’d felt a startling attraction to Hudson’s eighteen-year-old brother. Even now the memory warmed her skin with a strange mix of embarrassment and recalled desire. No wonder she’d been too ashamed to ever admit the kiss to Kim. She’d been turned on by her ex-boyfriend’s teenage brother. It was criminal.

“He’s a writer now.”

Lexi looked up, snapped out of her musings.

“Cooper,” clarified Kim. “Lynn carries his books in the store. Mysteries. He has some series about a detective who lives in a camper on the beach with his dog. She was telling me about the most recent one.
Sundown
, I think she said it was called. Apparently it was a big seller for her last summer.”

A writer. It made sense, Lexi thought as she reached for her drink. While Hudson had been the gregarious one, quick to entertain and command a room, Cooper had been studious and quiet, content to hang back in the wings and observe, which was why his kiss—and the intensity of it—had shocked her.

“Okay, enough stalling.” Kim leaned forward, arms folded, eyes narrowed firmly. “Spill.”

Lexi smiled into her margarita. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Oh, come on. What about that professor? Anton?”

“Alden,” corrected Lexi. “It wasn’t serious.”

“You said it was.”

“I
thought
it was.”

“Has he at least
called
?”

Lexi licked salt off her lip. “I told him not to.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because there’s no point,” said Lexi. “He’s there; I’m here.”

“Because you
left
.”

“Of course I left. It was a two-year program, Kimmie. We both knew it couldn’t go anywhere.”

Kim frowned, unconvinced. “Both of you—or you?” When Lexi refused to answer, Kim tried again. “Then what about that bartender at the pub you always went to, the one in the picture you e-mailed me?”

Lexi shook her head. “I only went there a few times.”

Kim blew out an exasperated breath. “You were in London for two years and you didn’t meet anyone?”

“I met plenty of people.”

“
Men
,” said Kim.

Lexi’s smart phone hummed on the table between them; she picked it up.

Kim grinned. “It’s the professor, isn’t it?”

Lexi didn’t recognize the number (area code 919—where was that?), but with her drained savings account, she didn’t have the luxury of sending a possible job offer to voice mail.

“I should take this,” she said, already shimmying out of the booth.

“I’ll get us an order of clam strips,” Kim said.

Lexi nodded approvingly, then answered the call as she navigated among the crowded tables. “Hello?”

A male voice said, “Can I speak to Alexandra Wright?”

A job offer, it had to be. Only people who didn’t know her well called her that—and the voice had come on too quickly to be a telemarketer. “This is she.”

“Alexandra, this is Cooper Moss.”

Lexi frowned, not hearing clearly over the roar of customers as she passed the bar. “I’m sorry—who?” she said, pushing through the front door and emerging into the soft evening air.

“Cooper,” the man said again. “Cooper Moss.”

Lexi stopped at the edge of the steps, catching the name finally.

“Hudson’s younger brother,” he added after a moment. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

Her breath caught, the recollection of his kiss still fresh in her mind, filling her with an irrational embarrassment, as if he’d been eavesdropping on her recent conversation with Kim.

“Is this a bad time?” he asked, his Southern accent noticeable now.

Lexi turned and blinked at the tavern, seeing Kim in the window, talking to the waitress.

“No,” she said, finding her bearings at last. “No, it’s fine. Of course I remember you, Cooper. What can I do for you?”

“I don’t know if you heard—I don’t know why you would have—but I’m coming back to Harrisport to see about the house. My mother wants to put it on the market. I’m trying to convince her to wait, but she’s determined.

“The reason I’m calling is that I’m finally having the property listed on the historic register. Jim says my dad never did that.”

Lexi thought of all the times her mother had chastised the Moss family for their negligence, their home being the sole holdout of all the massive summer cottages along the shoreline to seek nomination—an oversight the Moss family had chalked up to forgetfulness, but Lexi’s father, Hank, had always insisted it was just another way for Tucker Moss and his clan to assert their influence, and their entitlement, over the residents of Harrisport.