Rainshadow Road

Four

As the rain worsened, Lucy headed to the place she always went when she wasn’t sure where to go. Her friends Justine and Zoл Hoffman ran a bed-and-breakfast in Friday Harbor, just a two-minute walk from the ferry terminal at the port. The bed-and-breakfast, named Artist’s Point, was a converted mansion with wide porches and picture windows with views of Mount Baker’s blunt crown in the distance.

Although Justine and Zoл were cousins, they were nothing like each other. Justine was slim and athletic, the kind of person who liked to test herself, see how far she could bike, run, swim. Even when she was sitting still, she gave the impression of being on the move. She was incapable of coyness or dishonesty, and she approached life with a kind of cheerful fortitude that some people found slightly off-putting. When confronted with a problem, Justine didn’t like to dither, she took action, sometimes before she had thought everything through.

Zoл, on the other hand, measured her decisions as precisely as the ingredients she used for her recipes. She loved nothing more than to loiter at open markets or produce stands, choosing the most perfect organic fruits and vegetables, buying jars of berry jam, lavender honey, crocks of freshly churned butter from an island dairy. Although she had earned a culinary degree, she also relied on instinct. Zoл loved hardcover books and classic movies, and writing letters by hand. She collected vintage brooches and pinned them on an antique dressmaker’s mannequin in her bedroom.

After Zoл had married and divorced a year later, she had let Justine talk her into helping her run the bed-and-breakfast. Zoл had always worked in restaurants and bakeries, and although she had toyed with the idea of starting her own cafй, she didn’t want the responsibility of management and accounting. Working with Justine was a perfect solution.

“I like the business side of it,” Justine had told Lucy. “I don’t mind cleaning, and I can even fix the plumbing, but I can’t cook to save my life. And Zoл’s a domestic goddess.”

It was true. Zoл loved being in the kitchen, where she effortlessly turned out confections like banana muffins topped with snowy mascarpone cheese frosting, or cinnamon coffee cake baked in an iron skillet with a melting crust of brown sugar. In the afternoons, Zoл set out trays of coffee and sweets in the common areas. Tiered plates were piled with pumpkin cookies sandwiched with cream cheese, chocolate brownies as heavy as paperweights, tarts heaped with shiny glacйed fruit.

Zoл had been asked out by various guys, but so far she had refused them all. She was still getting over her disaster of a marriage. To Zoл’s chagrin, she had been the only one surprised by the revelation that her husband, Chris, was gay.

“Everyone knew,” Justine had told her bluntly. “I told you before you married him, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“Chris didn’t seem gay to me.”

“What about his obsession with Sarah Jessica Parker?”

“Straight men like Sarah Jessica Parker,” Zoл said defensively.

“Yes, but how many of them use Dawn by Sarah Jessica Parker as an aftershave?”

“It smelled like citrus,” Zoл said.

“And remember when he took you to Aspen on that ski trip?”

“Straight men ski in Aspen.”

“During gay ski week?” Jessica persisted, which Zoл had admitted had probably been a giveaway.

“And remember how Chris always said ‘everyone has a little gay in them’?”

“I thought he was being sophisticated.”

“He was being gay, Zoл. Do you think any straight guy would say something like that?”

Unfortunately Zoл’s father was against divorce for any reason. He had insisted that everything would have worked out if they had gone into counseling, and he’d even suggested that Zoл should have done more to keep Chris interested. And Chris’s family had also blamed Zoл, saying that Chris had never been gay until he’d gotten married. For her part, Zoл didn’t blame her ex-husband for being gay, only for having made her an unwitting casualty of his sexual self-discovery.

“It’s so humiliating,” Zoл had confessed to Lucy, “having your husband leave you for another man. It makes you feel like you’ve let down your entire gender. Like I was the one who finally sent him over to the other team.”

Lucy reflected that a feeling of shame was often a result of being cheated on. Even though it wasn’t fair, you couldn’t help but take it as a sign that you were lacking something.

“What is it?” Justine asked with a frown as she opened the back door to let Lucy in. As usual, Justine was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, her hair pulled up in a swingy ponytail. “You look terrible. Here, come to the kitchen.”

“I’m all wet,” Lucy said. “I’ll mess up the floors.”

“Take off your shoes and come in.”

“I’m sorry. I should have called first.” Lucy slipped out of her mud-caked sneakers.

“No problem, we’re not busy.”

Lucy followed her into the big, warm kitchen. The walls were covered in wallpaper printed with cheerful clusters of cherries. The air was filled with good smells: flour, hot butter, melting chocolate. Zoл was taking a muffin pan from the oven, her hair drawn to the top of her head in a knot of golden curls. She looked like an old-fashioned pinup girl, her figure curvy and small-waisted, her cheeks pink from the heat of the oven.

Zoл smiled. “Lucy. Want to be a taste tester? I just tried a new recipe for chocolate ricotta muffins.”

Lucy shook her head dumbly. Somehow the cozy warmth of the kitchen was making her feel even worse. She raised a hand to her throat to soothe away a sharp twinge of misery.

Justine stared at her in concern. “What is it, Luce?”

“Something really bad,” Lucy managed to say. “Something awful.”

“You and Kevin had a fight?”

“No.” Lucy drew in a shivering breath. “He dumped me.”

She was immediately guided to a chair by the table. Zoл gave her a wad of paper napkins to blot her wet hair and blow her nose, while Justine poured a shot of whiskey. As Lucy took a sip of smooth liquid fire, Justine poured another shot in a new glass.

“For heaven’s sake, Justine, she hasn’t even finished the first one,” Zoл said.

“This isn’t for Lucy, it’s for me.”

Zoл smiled, shook her head, and brought a plate piled with muffins. She took the chair on Lucy’s other side. “Have one,” she said. “There’s hardly any problem that a warm muffin can’t help.”

“No, thank you, I can’t eat anything.”

“It’s chocolate,” Zoл said, as if that gave it medicinal value.

With an unsteady sigh, Lucy took a muffin and broke it open, letting its damp heat filter through her fingers.

“So what’s the deal with Kevin?” Justine asked, biting into a muffin.

“He’s been cheating on me,” Lucy said dully. “He just told me about it.”

“That jerk,” Zoл said in astonishment. “That slime, that … that…”

“I believe ‘dickwad’ is the word you’re looking for,” Justine said.

“I wish I could say I was surprised,” Zoл said. “But Kevin’s always seemed to me like the kind of guy who might cheat.”

“Why do you say that?” Justine asked.

“He’s a looker, for one thing.”

“Just because he’s handsome—” Justine began, but Zoл interrupted.

“No, not that kind of looker. I mean he looks at women. I always catch him looking at my chest.”

“Everyone looks at your chest, Zoл. People can’t help it.”

Zoл pointedly ignored her cousin as she continued. “Kevin’s not built for a sustained relationship. He’s like one of those car-chasing dogs. The dog doesn’t really want the car. It’s the chasing part he likes.”

“So who did he cheat on you with?” Justine asked Lucy.

“My sister, Alice.”

The cousins gave her identical wide-eyed stares.

“I can’t believe it,” Zoл said. “Are you sure Kevin’s telling the truth?”

“Why would he lie about something like that?” Justine asked.

Zoл gave Lucy a concerned glance. “Have you called Alice to ask her about it?”

“What if she says it’s true?” Lucy asked miserably.

“Then let her have it. Tell her she’s a turbo slut, and she deserves to rot in hell.”

Lucy lifted her glass of whiskey and drained it. “I hate confrontation.”

“Let me call her,” Justine offered. “I love confrontation.”

“What are you going to do for tonight?” Zoл asked Lucy gently. “Do you need a place to stay?”

“I don’t know. I guess I do. Kevin wants me to move out as soon as possible. Alice’s coming to live with him.”

Justine nearly choked. “She’s moving from Seattle? Into your house? My God, this is heinous.”

Lucy took a bite of her muffin, the soft tang of ricotta blending perfectly with the dark complexity of the chocolate. “I’ll have to leave the island,” she said. “I couldn’t handle running into them all the time.”

“If it were me,” Justine said, “I wouldn’t leave. I’d stay and make them feel as guilty as hell. I’d be in their faces at every possible opportunity.”

“This is where your friends are,” Zoл told Lucy. “Stay with us. You have a support system to help you through this.”

“I do?”

“Of course you do. Why would you even ask that?”

“Because I’ve met most of my friends on the island through Kevin. Even you. Do all the friends go back to him now?”

“He’ll probably keep some of them,” Justine said. “But you get us, and our awesome advice, and a place to stay for as long as you want.”

“Do you have an available room?”

“Only one,” Zoл said. “The room that’s always available.” She gave Justine a dark glance.

“Which one is that?” Lucy asked.

Justine answered somewhat sheepishly. “The Edvard Munch room.”

“The artist who painted The Scream?” Lucy asked.

“He painted things other than just The Scream,” Justine said. “I mean, yeah, I put that particular print in the room because it’s his most famous work, but I also included some pretty ones, like Four Girls on a Bridge.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Zoл said. “All anyone ever notices in that room is The Scream. I told you people don’t want to go to sleep looking at that.”

“I do,” Lucy said. “It’s the perfect room for a woman going through a breakup.”

Justine gave her a fond glance. “You can stay there as long as you want.”

“And after she leaves,” Zoл said, “we’ll redecorate with a new artist.”

Justine scowled. “Who do you have in mind?”

“Picasso,” Zoл said decisively.

“You have a problem with Munch, but not with a man who painted women with three eyes and square breasts?”

“Everyone who checks in to the bed-and-breakfast asks if they can stay in the Picasso room. I’m tired of telling them we don’t have one.”

Justine heaved a sigh and turned her attention to Lucy. “After you finish your muffin, I’ll drive you over to the house to pick up your stuff.”

“We may run into Kevin,” Lucy said gloomily.

“She’s hoping to run into Kevin,” Zoл assured her.

Justine smiled grimly. “Preferably with my car.”

* * *

A couple of days after settling into the room at Artist’s Point, Lucy finally worked up the nerve to call her sister. The situation felt unreal. After all the years of enabling Alice, giving her whatever she wanted or needed, had it now come to this? Had Alice actually felt entitled to take Lucy’s boyfriend without worrying about the consequences?

Lucy sat on the bed with the phone in hand. The Munch room was attractive and warm, the walls painted a spicy reddish-brown that contrasted perfectly with the crisp white trim, the bedding a colorful geometric pattern. And the giclйe prints, such as Four Girls on a Bridge, or Summer Night at Asgardstrand were nice. It was only the nightmarish The Scream, with its gape-mouthed anguish and palpable suffering, that brought the mood down. Once you caught sight of it, you couldn’t focus on anything else.

As Lucy pressed the speed-dial button, she stared at the openmouthed figure clutching his ears, the bloodred sky above him, the blue-black fjord below. She knew exactly how he felt.

Her stomach flipped over as Alice picked up.

“Hello?” Her sister’s voice was wary.

“It’s me.” Lucy took a shallow breath. “Is Kevin there with you?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

It was a different kind of silence than they had ever shared before. Choking, chilling. Lucy had practiced many ways to have this conversation, but now that it was here, she couldn’t get the words out.

Alice spoke first. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

Lucy found refuge in anger, clinging to it like a survivor with a life preserver. Supposed to say? “You could tell me why you did it,” she said.

“It just happened. Neither of us had any control over it.”

“You may not have been able to control your feelings,” Lucy said, “but you could have controlled your actions.”

“I know. I know everything you’re going to say. And I know it doesn’t help for me to say I’m sorry, but I am.”

“Alice. Every time in your life that you’ve said ‘I’m sorry,’ to me, I’ve always said it was okay. But this is not okay. It will never be okay. How long have you been doing it?”

“You mean how long have we been dating, or—”

“Having sex. When did you start having sex?”

“A few months. Since Christmas.”

“Since—” Lucy broke off. There wasn’t enough air in the room. She was breathing like a landed fish.

“We haven’t gotten together all that often,” Alice said quickly. “It was hard to find the time to—”

“To sneak around behind my back?”

“Kevin and I should have handled this differently. But I didn’t take anything away from you, Lucy. You and Kevin had grown apart. It was obvious things weren’t going well between you.”

“It wasn’t obvious to me. We’d been together for two years. We shared a house. We had sex just last week. So from my perspective, things were going pretty fucking well.”

The word didn’t come easily to Lucy—she wasn’t one of those people who could swear naturally. But it felt good to say it right now. Appropriate to the occasion. And she could tell from Alice’s silence that she hadn’t thought Lucy and Kevin were still sleeping together.

“What do you expect is going to happen now?” Lucy asked. “Am I supposed to forgive you, and forget all about my relationship with Kevin, and make small talk with the two of you during family get-togethers?”

“I know it will take time before that can happen.”

“It won’t take time. No amount of time would be enough. You’ve done more than break my heart, Alice. You’ve broken our family. What’s supposed to happen now? Was it really worth it to steal my boyfriend?”

“Kevin and I love each other.”

“Kevin only loves himself. And if he cheated on me, don’t you think he would do the same to you? Do you think anything good can come of a relationship that started this way?”

“He has a different relationship with me than he did with you.”

“Based on what?”

“I don’t understand what you’re asking.”

“I’m asking, what is the difference? Why you and not me?”

“Kevin wants someone he can be himself with. You’re so perfect, Lucy. You have standards that no one can live up to. Except, apparently, you.”

“I never said I was perfect,” Lucy said unsteadily.

“You didn’t have to. It’s the way you are.”

“You’re actually trying to blame me for what you did?”

“We joke about what a control freak you are,” her sister said ruthlessly. “Kevin said you couldn’t handle it if he left a sock on the floor. You’re so busy controlling everyone and everything, you never stop to notice what’s right in your face. I can’t help it if Kevin wanted me more. I don’t push him the way you do. And in the future you’re going to keep losing boyfriends if you don’t change.”

“I didn’t need your help in losing this one,” Lucy said unsteadily, and hung up before her sister could reply.