Too late to pretend she hadn’t seen him, she turned to smile at the mayor of Avalon. A sixtyish man in a tropical shirt, with a bald head and plump pink face and chins that dissolved into his neck. A sweetheart, but she couldn’t look at him without thinking of a melting ice-cream cone.
“…so hard for you,” he was saying now. “The council thought that one of your beautiful art pieces would be a fitting tribute to your mother.” He patted her arm and made room for a couple of straw-hatted tourists. “No pressure, though. We’d never want to do that. How you doing, anyway, honey?”
“Fine. Busy of course.”
“Well, that’s good.” His eyes lingered on her for a moment. “You know Muriel was just saying this morning—she runs the grief-counseling program at the hospital, you know—anyway, she was saying that all most people really need is someone to listen to them.”
Ava kept smiling. “It’s great that they have someone as dedicated as Muriel.”
“She’s a good listener,” the mayor said. “A real good listener.”
“Tell her I said hi,” Ava said.
“Will do. And, Ava, you take care now. And when you’re ready to think about that piece for your mother, bless her soul, you just give me a call.”
“Right,” Ava said. She crossed the road and walked along the seafront, killing time until she returned to the hospital to meet her father. A crowd of little girls in pigtails and Crayola-colored clothes were giggling and hitting each other with their backpacks. She caught the eye of one of them and winked. She kept walking, past the signs hawking rides in glass-bottom boats, past Olaf’s ice-cream store, past the guides hawking tours of the Casino and Jeep excursions into the interior. It was hard to walk through Avalon without running into someone she knew, but she’d discovered that if she kept her head down people were sometimes reluctant to approach her.
Which suited her just fine. Anything to avoid The Look. People had started treating her differently after Rob died. They’d smile and chat, but there was a new solicitousness in their voices. A caution, as though they were dealing with a convalescent who might relapse. They’d peer into her eyes as though to make sure someone was really there. Now, since her mother’s death, it was happening again.
She hated it. They meant well, but she hated it. Either she avoided people completely or, when that wasn’t possible, she became so impossibly bright and chipper that she was always expecting someone to rap her on the head and say, “Knock it off. We know you’re hurting. Just admit it.”
But she couldn’t. Instead, she’d breeze around doing her happier-than-thou schtick until she couldn’t stand herself anymore. Then she’d go home, wrap herself up in an old afghan her grandmother had knitted, pig out on whatever was on hand—amazingly, ice cream was always on hand—and fall asleep watching a cheesy movie on late-night TV. Then wake up hours later, screaming because she’d seen her mother’s face again staring up at her from beneath the water. I’m not happy, Ava. I haven’t been for some time.
BACK AT THE HOSPITAL, she found her father in his small office, just off the main corridor, waiting for the next patient. Dr. Sam Lynsky III wore a gold paper crown and a white lab coat over jeans.
“That place was falling apart when your grandmother had it,” he said after she told him about the cottage. “It needs to be torn down.”
“I can fix it up.” Ava folded her arms over her chest, ready to do battle. “Don’t give me a hard time about it, Dad. What’s it to you if I want to live there?”
“Ava, I am rattling around in a two-million-dollar property that was and still is your home. It’s lonely and unwelcoming and far too large, and I’d like nothing more than to come home in the evening to my daughter’s company—both my daughters, but I realize that’s asking too much. I can’t imagine how it could be a question of privacy, but—”
“It’s full of Mom,” Ava blurted, exactly the kind of reasoning she hadn’t intended to use. “Maybe it doesn’t bother you, Dad. Maybe you’re getting on just fine without her, but I can’t take it.”
“Ava.” Sam leaned back in his chair. “Your inability to deal with your mother’s death is hardly a plausible reason to buy a ramshackle piece of property. At some point, you’ll need to accept what happened. In the meantime, there are any number of other houses on the island.”
“Maybe so,” Ava said. “But I want that one.”
“Jerry the pharmacist is going to sell his place.” Sam had emptied a canvas briefcase onto the consulting-room floor. “Got the information in here somewhere… Oh, here’s something you might be interested in.” He tossed a brochure at Ava.
Ava glanced at the glossy ad for a Los Angeles gallery. “Dad, what does this have to do with Grandma’s cottage?”
“Nothing. Just pointing out the sort of marketing you need to do. Never going to get anywhere painting three tiles a week. Need to think big.”
Ava fumed inwardly. Her father kept digging, papers flying all around him. He wasn’t a large man, but with his extravagant gestures and nonstop barrage of words, he always seemed to make a room feel too small.
“Jerry’s house would be a smart buy,” he said. “Now where did I put that piece of paper?”
He continued to shuffle through papers as he told her what a wise investment the pharmacist’s house would be. Her father had bought and sold plenty of real estate in his life, and he could be quite persuasive on financial matters. In fact, as she listened to him, she found herself thinking that maybe the pharmacist’s house was indeed the way to go. On the verge of saying she’d take a look, she stopped herself. Sam eventually wore everyone down. This time he wouldn’t prevail.
“Dad, just give me an answer on the cottage. I don’t feel like sitting here while you turn everything upside down. Lil said I could move in—”
“Hold on a minute.” He stopped to examine a piece of paper. “Asthma Foundation holding some fancy-schmancy conference in L.A. Waste of time and money. What they should do—”
“I don’t give a damn what they should do.” In one move Ava scooped up all his papers and shoved them back in the bag. “I want Grandma’s cottage.”
“How are you going to pay for it?”
“I have money.” She felt her face color. She knew, as her father certainly did, that she had money from Rob’s insurance and in her trust fund. Although work was picking up, her commissions were by no means steady and she barely scraped by on what she made.
“Big commission?”
“Dammit, Dad, why do you have to make everything so difficult? The place is empty, I could move in tonight and rent it until the buy closes.” She saw him wavering. “Come on. I really want the cottage.”
“A lesson in life,” her father said, “is that we don’t always get what we want.”
The intercom on his desk buzzed to indicate a patient was waiting. “I’ll let you know,” he said. “I might decide to tear the place down.”
Ava left, slamming the door behind her, and walked back down the hill into town. He’d let her have the place, she knew that, but not before he’d made a huge and unnecessary production of it. Not so long ago she’d loved him so unreservedly it frightened her. Lately everything he did irritated her. And then she’d feel guilty. Guilt and irritation, an endless seesaw. And the irony was that all he was doing, all he’d ever done, was be himself. How her mother had stood it for forty years, she had no idea.
CHAPTER THREE