Page 24 of Ten Beach Road

“The house is valuable,” she said. “And so is the land,” she interrupted, hating how quickly the enthusiasm had leached from his voice. “ ‘As is’ the house is worth about a million, but this apparently isn’t a good time to list it. The land itself is worth three million—it’s one hundred fifty feet of prime waterfront, but we’d each have to put in five thousand dollars to have the house torn down, and again, it’s not a great time to list the property. Or we can stay and spend the next three to four months getting it ready under the supervision of a contractor that Avery Lawford knows. He’s willing to get paid out of the proceeds from the sale.”

There was a silence, and in it Madeline had this wild hope that the old decisive Steve was going to choose one of the options and offer to take over. She waited, almost breathless, for this to happen.

When he finally spoke he said, “We don’t have an extra five thousand dollars.” As if she had somehow managed to remain ignorant of this fact. “And we don’t have any extra months to wait around for a return.”

“I know,” Madeline said, though what she really wanted to say was, “Ya think?” “That’s why I thought maybe you could come down and help, so that we could work on the house together. It might be good for us, for you.”

Again there was a silence.

“It’s beautiful here, Steve,” Madeline said. “And at least we’d be doing something constructive to get everything back on track. Andrew could come down when the semester’s over—that’s only a few weeks from now. The more people working, the faster we could get it ready.”

“Jesus, Maddie,” he said, and she could picture him running a hand through his hair. She wondered if that hair had been washed recently, if he’d showered and shaved. Before she’d left he’d barely bothered to dress. “We can’t all go traipsing down there to work on a house that we may or may not ever see anything out of.”

Did he have something more pressing to do? Was he perhaps out every day pounding the pavement looking for a job? “Why not?” she asked.

“My mother . . .”

“Your mother and Kyra can look after each other. Or they can come down and help.” She did not want to think about her daughter’s problems right now. Or her mother-in-law.

When he didn’t answer she said, “Steve, I need you. I need you to be a part of this.” She hesitated, hating the pleading tone in her voice, hating that she had to beg him to do the right thing. “Our marriage needs you to be a part of this.”

There was another silence. Through the receiver she could hear his mother’s voice sharp with concern. “What’s wrong? Are you all right, Steven?”

“I can’t, Maddie,” he said so quietly she had to press the phone tighter to her ear to hear him. “I’m sorry. I just . . . I just can’t do it. Not right now.”

“Steve, no, don’t hang up. I . . .”

The line went dead before she could finish. He hadn’t even done her the courtesy of allowing her to finish begging.

Slowly, she turned and headed back down the beach, but the pleasure she’d felt in her surroundings had evaporated. Picking up her pace, she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as the smarter seabirds scurried out of her way.

At the Paradise Grille Madeline, Avery, and Nicole ordered breakfast at the counter and then sat at a table that overlooked the beach, sipping coffees as they waited for their food. Nicole had once again slicked back her deep red hair and was dressed in the kind of expensive resort wear more appropriate to a high-end cruise ship than a picnic table. Avery wore an HGTV T-shirt and a pair of cutoffs, clearly unworried about her public image.

It took two cups of coffee apiece and the delivery of their meals to loosen their tongues. Eating and talking were made more difficult by the defensive posture required to protect their breakfasts from marauding seagulls.

“All right,” Avery said, still hunched over her plate after shooing off one of the bolder birds. “I guess we need to go ahead and see where everyone stands. All in favor of tearing down and selling the lot say ‘aye.’ ”

They contemplated each other carefully, assessing what, Madeline didn’t know, but she felt her pulse quicken. What would happen if they couldn’t agree? Before her conversation with Steve, Madeline might have gone for the option if she’d had the nerve to ask one of the others to loan her the five thousand. Now she couldn’t even imagine going home and watching Edna enable Steve while he deteriorated further. She felt once again like that Little Red Hen with a good deal of Chicken Little thrown in, because she could no longer pretend that any day now Steve was once again going to be . . . Steve. There was simply no question that her whole sky had finally fallen in.

Nicole sat very still; her patrician features might have been sculpted from marble. They continued to watch each other as carefully as the seagulls watched their uneaten food. After a protracted silence, Avery continued. “All in favor of working on the house and paying Chase back out of the proceeds from the sale say ‘aye.’ ”

Madeline noticed that Avery didn’t use the words “trained monkey” or “grunt” as she laid out the option, though the motion itself did seem to be passing through heavily gritted teeth.

Almost in unison all three of them said, “Aye.” It took a moment for the reality of that to sink all the way in. Then Nicole picked up Avery’s cell phone from the table and handed it to her. Practically choking on the words, Avery told Chase Hardin that they accepted his terms. She also accepted his father’s offer of some mattresses and odds and ends of furniture from a model home they’d recently sold. Chase would bring the things with him when he came to discuss their job the next morning.

Avery ended the call and put down her phone as they all registered the fact that their gruntdom was now a mere twenty-four hours away. Nicole closed her eyes briefly before offering a rueful smile. ‘Oh, boy,” she said, “a whole summer here on the very tip of the back of beyond. Let the good times roll.”

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