Page 41 of Ten Beach Road

Fifteen

When Madeline left for Tampa International Airport the next morning to pick up Kyra, Bella Flora was almost completely encased in scaffolding and footsteps thudded on the roof overhead. Four trucks, including Chase’s and Robby the plumber’s, were lined up along the front garden wall. The house bulged with people and reverberated with the noise they produced—in stark contrast to the gently swaying palms and the folks strolling the sidewalks and along the water’s edge.

It was a gorgeous weekday. The lush greens teemed with golfers and cars puttered in and out of the condo communities and strip malls that lined the Bayway. The population as a whole was significantly older, and unlike in Atlanta, no one seemed in a particular hurry to get wherever they were going. Madeline eased up on the gas pedal and resisted the urge to tailgate or rush around the large Cadillac in front of her. According to her GPS’s stated arrival, she had plenty of time to get there.

As she drove she thought about the dynamic at Bella Flora and tried to picture her daughter, make that her pregnant unmarried daughter, thrown into the mix. After a short wait in the Tampa airport’s cell phone lot, a far more civilized alternative to the constant circling required at Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, she pulled up to the Delta arrivals to find Kyra already waiting. A suitcase and a collection of equipment bags sat at her feet.

“It’s okay, I’ve got it.” Kyra accepted Madeline’s hug but shrugged off her offer of help. “I’m used to carting equipment around.” Her skin was pale, and her long dark hair was pulled back in a barrette at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses.

Madeline climbed back into the driver’s seat while Kyra stashed the bags in the back. In a matter of minutes they were on the Howard Franklin Bridge and heading toward St. Petersburg.

“It’s pretty,” Kyra said as she gazed out the window to the water. Her tone, like her smile, was brittle.

“Are you all right?” Madeline asked, though it was obvious she wasn’t. “Are you still nauseous?”

Kyra turned to her then. “The morning sickness is pretty much gone, thank God. But I don’t feel any of that energy that the book says is supposed to kick in after the first trimester. And before you ask, the answer is no, I still haven’t heard from Daniel.” She swallowed and looked away again, out over the concrete balustrade of the bridge to the sparkling blue green water of Tampa Bay. “But I’m sure I will.”

Madeline would have liked to agree, but she had no idea what the celebrity’s feelings or intentions might be, or if he even had any. The things Nicole had said about his wife, Tonja Kay, did not bode well. Maybe Daniel Deranian’s publicist knew what he was talking about.

“I, um, haven’t mentioned your pregnancy to Avery or Nicole,” Madeline said. “And maybe it’s not a bad idea to keep Daniel’s name to yourself until you’ve had a chance to talk with him.”

Kyra’s hands stilled in her lap. Her face was ashen as she turned to look at Madeline. “You’re embarrassed, aren’t you? You don’t think I’ll ever hear from him.”

“No, Kyra, it’s not that. I just . . .”

“Well, I’m not ashamed of being pregnant,” Kyra said quietly. “And I’m definitely not ashamed that Daniel and I are in love.” Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “You’ll see,” she said, sounding like a desperate child. “I won’t say anything for now if that’s what you want, but you’ll see how important the baby and I are to him when he comes to get us.”

Madeline couldn’t think of a thing to say to this, so she remained silent. Not far from St. Petersburg’s downtown, they shared a bowl of black beans and rice and a pressed Cuban sandwich at a tiny Cuban restaurant. Without her sunglasses, Kyra’s eyes reflected an unhappiness that smote Madeline’s heart; the dark circles beneath them attested to her sleepless nights. The last bites of Cuban bread stuck in Madeline’s throat. She wished she could wave a magic wand that would produce her daughter’s hoped-for “happily ever after,” but the days when a word from her or a kiss on a skinned knee could make it all better were long gone.

The thrift store she’d found online was just a few blocks away and was filled with interesting accessories and old bits and pieces of furniture that Madeline imagined had been shed over the years as the elderly population continually downsized. In the housewares section she picked up a blender, pots and pans, a decent cast-iron skillet, and a set of utensils. Eight place settings of surprisingly fine china and silver along with an equal number of water glasses and wine goblets brought the total to just over fifty dollars.

In the furniture department, Madeline pulled out a full-sized futon in a bright floral print. “This would be a lot better for you than sharing my mattress, Ky. What do you think?”

Kyra pulled a face. “I think we should go to a real store. Don’t they have any here?”

“We can get a lot more here for a lot less,” Madeline said, waving to the sales clerk to carry the futon up front for them. “And that’s pretty important right now.”

On the way to the cash register they passed a display of old Halloween decorations. Madeline’s gaze was drawn to a life-sized Frankenstein with big blocky feet and the bolts sticking out of its neck. It hung from a tall shelf by its own frayed noose. Madeline headed right for it. “Here, help me pull this down.”

“I had no idea a stuffed Frankenstein could be so cheap,” Kyra said once they’d gotten it down and laid it across their cart. “Or that you’d become so . . . thrifty.”

Kyra’s tone made it clear this was not a compliment and Madeline realized that in her effort to give her children all she could, she’d done them a disservice. No life was without its bumps, and even in the best times, money wasn’t something that simply flowed from a faucet.

“I knew the thrift stores in the Atlanta area intimately when you were small and your father was trying to build clientele,” Madeline said. “I’d forgotten how satisfying it is to wring as much as possible out of each dollar. At this point, it may be my most valuable skill.”

Kyra made no comment.

They checked out and carried their purchases to the van, an employee following with the futon. “It makes me realize how much I’ve taken for granted. How much I didn’t teach you and Andrew.” She blew a stray bang out of her eyes. “I wish I’d known how much pressure your dad was under. I wish he’d told me what was going on. If he hadn’t felt like he was facing everything alone he might not have . . . reacted so badly.”

She looked Kyra in the eye and she knew her own were filled with regret. “We’re all facing challenges and changes that we never imagined,” she said. “But if he’d said something, I might have been able to help, you know?”

Madeline saw the color drain out of Nicole’s face when she walked into Bella Flora later that afternoon and got her first sight of the Frankenstein dummy dangling from the top landing. Madeline had scrawled the name Malcolm Dyer in big black letters across a sheet of paper and pinned it to the oversized chest. Avery had helped her affix it to the upper baluster. Kyra had her video camera out and was getting some shots.

“I knew the minute I saw that monster with a noose around his neck that the time had come to hang Malcolm Dyer in effigy,” Madeline said, still surprised at how compelled she’d felt to drag the dummy home with her.

“It would be a lot more satisfying to see him hanging in the flesh,” Nicole said curtly, but her face still looked pale.

“I know it’s not quite as good as the real thing, but at least we have a visual aid for imagining him getting his just rewards,” Madeline said.

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