Rainshadow Road (Friday Harbor #2)(6)

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. How many times do you want me to say it? I can’t be any sorrier than I am right now. I did the best I could, and I’m sorry that wasn’t good enough for you. No, I know you never said it wasn’t good enough, but I could tell. Because nothing I ever did could make it over your insecurity. And I finally had to face the fact that the relationship wasn’t working for me. Which was not fun, believe me. If it makes you feel any better, I feel like shit.” Faced with Lucy’s uncomprehending stare, Kevin let out a short sigh. “Look, there’s something you need to hear from me before you find out from someone else. When I realized our relationship was in crisis, I had to talk about it with someone. I turned to … a friend. And the more time we spent together, the closer we got. Neither of us had any control over it. It just happened.”

“You started going out with someone else? Before you broke up with me?”

“I’d already broken up with you emotionally. I just hadn’t talked to you about it yet. I know, I should have handled it differently. The thing is, I have to go in this new direction. It’s the best thing for both of us. But the part that makes it tough for everyone, including me, is that the person I’m with now is … close to you.”

“Close to me? You mean one of my friends?”

“Actually … it’s Alice.”

All her skin tightened, the way it did when you had just saved yourself from a fall but still felt the sting of adrenaline. Lucy couldn’t say a word.

“She didn’t mean for it to happen any more than I did,” Kevin said.

Lucy blinked and swallowed. “For what to happen? You … you’re going out with my sister? You’re in love with her?”

“I didn’t plan on it.”

“Have you slept with her?”

His shamed silence was her answer.

“Get out,” she said.

“Okay. But I don’t want you to blame her for—”

“Get out, get out!” Lucy had had enough. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was going to do next, but she didn’t want Kevin to be there when she did it.

He went to the doorway of the studio. “We’ll talk more later when you’ve had a chance to think about this, okay? Because I want us to stay friends. But the thing is, Luce … Alice is going to be moving in pretty soon. So you’ll need to find a place.”

Lucy was silent. She waited in shattered stillness for minutes after he left.

Bitterly she wondered why she was surprised. The pattern had never changed. Alice had always gotten what she wanted, took whatever she needed, without ever sparing a thought as to the consequences. Every member of the Marinn family put Alice first, including Alice. It would have been easy to hate her, except that at certain times Alice possessed a mixture of vulnerability and melancholy that had seemed like an echo of their mother’s quiet sadness. Lucy had always found herself in the position of taking care of Alice; paying for dinner when they went out, loaning her money that was never repaid, letting her borrow clothes and shoes that were never returned.

Alice was smart and articulate, but it had always been difficult for her to finish anything she started. She changed jobs frequently, left projects unfinished, broke off relationships before they went anywhere. She made a dazzling first impression—charismatic and sexy and fun—but she ran through people quickly, apparently unable to last through the mundane day-to-day interactions that cemented a relationship.

For the past year and half, Alice had been a junior scriptwriter for a long-running daytime soap. It was the longest time she had ever stayed in a job. She lived in Seattle, occasionally traveling to New York to meet with the head writers about overall story arcs. Lucy had introduced her to Kevin, and they had hung out on a few occasions, but Alice had never shown any interest in him. Foolishly Lucy had never suspected that the borrowing of her possessions would extend to stealing her boyfriend.

How had Alice and Kevin’s relationship started? Who had made the first move? Had Lucy been so needy that she had driven Kevin away? If it wasn’t his fault, as he had claimed, then it had to be her fault, didn’t it? It had to be someone’s fault.

She crinkled her eyes shut against the hot pressure of tears.

How did you think about something that hurt this much? What did you do with memories, feelings, needs, that didn’t belong anywhere?

Lurching to her feet, Lucy went to her vintage three-speed bike, which was propped near the doorway. It was a turquoise vintage Schwinn, with a flowered basket on the handlebars. She reached for the helmet that hung on a hook beside the door and took the bike outside.

Mist had settled on the cool spring afternoon, stands of Douglas fir puncturing a layer of clouds as light as soap foam. Gooseflesh rose on her bare arms as a breeze pressed a damp chill into her T-shirt. Lucy rode with no direction or destination, until her legs burned and her chest ached. She stopped at a roadside turnout, recognizing a trail that led to a bay on the west side of the island. Walking the bike along the rough trail, she came to a line of steep cliffs made of weathered red basalt and pods of pure limestone. Ravens and seagulls picked over the leavings of low tide on the beach below.

The island’s native population, a tribe of the Coast Salish, had once harvested clams, oysters, and salmon in their reef nets. They had believed that the abundance of food in the strait had been a gift from a woman who had long ago married the sea. She had gone swimming one day, and the sea had assumed the form of a handsome young man who had fallen in love with her. After her father had reluctantly given his permission for them to marry, the woman had disappeared with her lover into the sea. Ever since then the sea had offered, in gratitude, rich harvests for the islanders.