"Thank you. I'm sure I'll be fine."
"Then I'll see you soon," he said, waving as he departed for the front door.
She heard it slam, then listened for the sound of the vehicle as he drove away. At last, it faded completely, leaving her with birdsong and sea.
"Perfect," she said to herself, imitating Jimmy's slightly clipped English pronunciation. It wasn't a word she would have thought of using until she'd heard it on Jimmy's lips; but was there any place on earth, or any time in her life, when it had seemed more appropriate?
No; this was perfect, perfect.
She decided, now that Jimmy was gone and she had the house to herself, to delay her visit to the beach and instead shower and make herself a drink. He'd stocked the kitchen with wonderful thoroughness. When she'd cleaned up and changed out of her traveling clothes into a light summer dress, she went in search of the makings of a Bloody Mary and to her delight found all she needed. A bottle of vodka, tomato juice, Tabasco sauce, a little horseradish; even celery. Drink in hand she made one telephone call to Margie, to tell her that she'd arrived safely. Margie wasn't home, so she left a message, and then headed out to the beach.
The balmy afternoon had mellowed into a lovely evening; the last of the sun catching the heads of the palms, and gilding the clouds as they sailed on south. A couple of hundred yards from her a trio of local boys were surfing, shouting to one another as they plowed up and over the waves to catch a ride. Otherwise, the vast crescent of the beach was deserted. She set her glass in the sand and walked down to the water, venturing in until she was calf-deep. The shallows were warm, passing over sand heated by a day of sun. She let the waves break against her legs, the spray splashing her torso, her neck, her face. The trio of surfers had meanwhile given up their sport for the night and had built a small fire at the top of the beach, which they were feeding with driftwood. Rachel was starting to feel somewhat chilly, so she left the water and went back up the sand to fetch her drink. It was Jess than twenty minutes since she'd stepped out of the house, but the short, tropical dusk was already almost over. The clouds and palms had lost their gold, and there were eager stars overhead.
She drained the spicy dregs of her Bloody Mary, and went back to the house. In her haste to be out on the beach she'd neglected to turn any lights on, and once she got onto the path that wound through the scrub she was stumbling in near darkness. But the house, even in this murk, looked beautiful, Its pale walls and white paintwork all bluish in the deepening night. She'd forgotten what it was like to be in a place where there were no street lights nor car lights; not even a distant city glow to taint the sky. It made her aware of the world in a new way; or rather, a very old way that she was suddenly rediscovering. She heard nuances in the air around her she would normally have missed, in the voices of frogs and nightbirds, in the subtle shifting of palm and bough; smelled a dozen different scents: up out of the dewy earth beneath her feet, and from blooms the night was hiding.
Eventually she got back to the house, and after some fumbling around switched on a couple of lamps. Then she went upstairs to change out of her damp clothes. As she did so she caught sight of herself in the long dressing mirror in the bedroom. What she saw made her laugh out loud: in the space of a few minutes the combined effects of wind and sea-spray had made a wild woman of her: tangled her hair and reddened her cheeks; undone any pretensions to chicness she might have entertained. No matter; she liked what she saw. Perhaps she hadn't been entirely tamed by sorrow and the Gearys. Perhaps the Rachel she'd been in the easy years before Daddy's death, before the disappointment of Cincinnati and all that came after, was still alive in her. Yes, there! There! Smiling at her out of the mirror: the unrepentant wildling of her youth, the scourge of schoolmistress and sheriffs, the girl who'd loved nothing more than to make mischief; there she was.
"Where the hell have you been?" she said to herself.
I never left, that smile seemed to say. I was just waiting until the time was right to show myself again.
She made herself a light supper of cold cuts and cheese, and opened a bottle of wine-red, not white, for a change; something with a bit of body to it. Then she curled up on the sofa, and ate. There was a small television in the living room, but she had no desire to watch it. If the stock market had crashed, or the White House gone up in flames, so what? The rest of the world and its problems could go to hell, at least for now.
Halfway through her leisurely meal, the phone rang. She was sorely tempted to let it ring out, but thinking it was probably Jimmy Hornbeck checking to see that she was comfortable she picked up. It wasn't Hornbeck, it was Margie, returning her call. She sounded weary.
"What time is it in New York?"
"I don't know: two, two-thirty," Margie said. "Are you all settled in?"
"I'm perfect," Rachel said. "It's even better than you said it would be."
"It's just beginning, honey," Margie said. "You'll be amazed what happens when you get into the rhythm of the place. Did you take the big bedroom?"
"With all of the carved furniture…"
"Isn't that place amazing?"
"The whole house is amazing," Rachel replied. "I felt right at home as soon as I stepped inside."
"You'll never guess where I've been," Margie said.
"Where?"
"With Cadmus."
"Loretta had a dinner party?"
"No, just the two of us."
"What did he want?"
"It was weird. He swore me to secrecy. But I'll tell you when you get back." She laughed. "I don't know," she said. "This family."
"What about it?"
"All the men are crazy," Margie said. "And I think we must be even crazier, because we fell in love with the bastards." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I've got to go, honey. I hear Garrison. Love you."
Without waiting for a reply, she put down the phone.
The call unsettled Rachel slightly, putting back into her head a notion she didn't want there: that until she divorced Mitchell she was a part of the Geary story.
She was too tired for the uneasiness to keep her from sleep, however. The bed was a joy to lie in, when she got there; the pillows deep, the sheets fragrant. She had scarcely pulled the cover up over her body then she was gone into a place where the Gearys-their crazy men, their sad women, their secrets and all-could not come after her.
She woke at first light, got up, went to the window, admired the way the world was looking, and went straight back to bed for another three blissful hours. Only then did she clamber out of bed and go down to brew herself some coffee. The feeling of rediscovery she'd experienced the night before-dead senses awakened, the wildling Rachel in the mirror-had not deserted her; nor did the morning light diminish the charms of the house. She was as happy wandering around as she'd been the afternoon before; every shelf and nook carried some new interesting item. She'd even missed a couple of rooms in her previous explorations: one a little writing room facing out to a side yard, with a desk, some old, comfortable chairs and several shelves of well-thumbed books, the other a much smaller room, which seemed to have been used as a depository for items found on the beach: pieces of sea-smoothed timber, shells, fragments of coral, lengths of unraveling rope, even a cardboard box filled with stones that had caught some beachcomber's eye. The most promising discovery however was in a cupboard in the living room: a collection of old phonograph records, still neatly sleeved; and on the shelf above a player. The last time she'd seen either was at the house in Caleb's Creek, although these recordings looked to be much older than anything in George's treasured collection. Later, she promised herself, she'd select a few tunes and see if she could get the phonograph up and running. That would be her one and only project for the day.