Read Online Off Season by Jean Stone - Free Book Online Page A

how I always felt about the Vineyard. After I came home, after I found my mother’s diary, after I met Ben, well, I realized that the only place we’re ever trapped is inside ourselves.”
    As she heard herself say the words, Jill was not thinking of Rita. And then things became clear. Rather than feeling like victims, Ben and Jill needed to act. They needed to go on the offensive. And they needed to do it fast.
    She stood up. “I’ve got to get home, Rita. But no matter what your decision, please promise me two things.”
    Rita stood and brushed sand from her jeans. “That depends.”
    Jill took Rita’s hands. “Promise me that this timeyou’ll consider telling Charlie. And that—no matter what you decide—you’ll keep me informed.”
    Letting go of Jill’s hands, Rita gave her a hug. “I won’t promise that I’ll tell Charlie, but I’ll let you know what I decide. Some secrets are meant to be shared with your very best lifelong friend.”
    As Jill hugged her back, she squeezed her eyes shut, knowing that, sadly, some secrets were not.
    Okay, so maybe she should tell Charlie, Rita thought as she slogged through the dunes from the lighthouse en route to the tavern. Maybe she should tell Charlie and they should be married and live happily-ever-fucking-after in her little red saltbox with their adorable little child.
    Maybe not.
    She’d have to make a decision soon. Her first trimester was almost shot. After that an abortion could get tricky. Not to mention that although she’d hung up her form-fitting miniskirts and crop sweaters long ago (not long after Kyle died), soon it would be obvious that she was plump with child.
    Hopefully, she thought with a shiver, her mother would have returned to Florida by then.
    Hopefully Charlie would not ask if the baby was his.
    Hey!
she realized, her spirits brightening, her walk quickening. Maybe that was the answer. Why would Charlie have to know the baby was his? He didn’t know she hadn’t been with anyone since that last night they’d slept together back in …
    Oh shit.
    It had been the night of Jill and Ben’s wedding.
    If Jill knew that, she’d probably see it as some kind of magical good omen. She’d probably want to run and tell Charlie herself.
    Oh, shit.
    She huffed a little and slogged some more, trying not to remember the night, trying to forget that it had, indeed, been magical.
    Which was why she could not forget.
    It had seemed so right, so natural. She’d been mellow with nostalgia, happy for Jill, feeling safe among friends, feeling close to Kyle because from the Gay Head lighthouse on the cliffs where the ceremony was, Rita could look across the dunes and the inlet and see Menemsha House, Ben’s dream, which Kyle had died trying to protect.
    She had felt safe and comforted as if wrapped in a blanket of Kyle’s strong presence, his sweet love. She had felt all these feelings as she stood and listened to the vows and heard the soft cry of seagulls and felt the setting sun on her face.
    It had been magical, and it had been the last time she’d had sex with Charlie, for afterward it had all seemed too close, too choking, too much like … commitment.
    She stopped and pressed her hand against a gas pain in her side. “Fuck!” she wanted to shout as loud as she possibly could, so that her voice bounced off the neat windowpanes of the perfect white houses that lined North Water Street, the houses she’d been inside only to clean or to sell, rich people’s houses like her friend Jill’s that were made for normal, happy families, not the Rita Blairs of the world.
    Then Rita smiled as she rubbed the pain. Maybe it wasn’t gas. Maybe it was a miscarriage, a saving grace in progress, a miraculous event unto itself that would end this nightmare and let her return to her life.
    Such as it was.
    Such as it would be.
    The pain subsided. No other symptoms followed.
    And then her eyes were drawn up to the sky as if the answer, the solution, were there.