Off Season by Jean Stone Page A

what she really wanted from her famous friend Jill was some advice about Charlie, now that it was clear another woman was in his life.
    Rita moseyed through the scant crowd over to the recreation of an ages-old encampment on the north side of Aquinnah. She poked around the food tents where quahogs, chowder, and venison simmered in a blend of island aromas. Then she strolled from the crowd to the edge of the cranberry bogs, their bright red now reaped, their fertile fruit passed.
    She thought about how lucky she was to be having another chance, if that’s what this was. She thought about Kyle … Would he watch over this baby, his brother or sister? Yes, he would. Of course he would.
    Blinking back a mist that had come to her eyes, Rita looked back toward the festivities to see if Jill was finished. But before she saw Jill, she saw Charlie himself, wandering through the people, headed—oh, God, he was headed her way.
    Rita tugged at the edges of her big flannel shirt, trying to conceal her not-quite-plump tummy.
    “Hey, lovely Rita,” he said, which she could have taken as a compliment, but he—and many others—had called her that ever since they were kids, after an old Beatles song.
    “Hey, Charlie,” she said with a nonchalant toss of her red curls that were hinting of gray, thanks to Doc Hastings, who’d told her that pregnant women were warned not to use hair dye—one of the hundred or so new terror-inducing directives that had sprung up sometime between when she’d had Kyle and now. She had not hesitated to tell the doctor that she had smoked and drank and done God-only-knew-what and Kyle had turned out just fine. But the doctor had merely shaken his head as if to say things were different today, as if she didn’t know.
    She leveled her gaze on the unknowing father. “Looking for some old cranberry stories to tell at the tavern?” Though she looked straight at him, she was acutely aware of the right and the left of him. He was alone.
    “Actually,” he said, “I was looking for you.”
    If her heart leaped through her shirt, she wondered if he’d notice. Or was he drunkenly in love with Marge’s sweet mainland ass? “Is Amy okay?” She’d not seen Amy for a few days, having decided to back off work at the tavern until she had the courage to tell Charlie her news. Perhaps she would never work there again.
    “She’s fine. She’s busy planning the Halloween party. Doing a great job, too.” He stepped closer to her than she would have preferred. “What about you? How are you doin’? I haven’t seen you for a while.”
    Rita shrugged. “Tourists are gone.”
    “Not all of them.”
    “Enough. Besides, I stay on the island. These days you seem to prefer land.”
    Charlie’s laugh was gentle and warm. Kyle had hadCharlie’s laugh. She touched her stomach and wondered if this baby would, too.
    “I wanted to ask you a favor,” he said. “I’m thinking of renting my apartment.”
    She blinked. “What?”
    “My apartment. I’m going to take off for the winter. Florida, maybe.”
    She didn’t allow herself even the tiniest gulp. “Florida? I thought that was for whitehairs. Are you getting old, Charlie?” There would be plenty of time for gulping much later, like all winter or the rest of her life.
    “Maybe you could trade with my mother,” she added. “She has a nice trailer in Coral Gables. And if she stayed in your apartment, she’d be out of my house.” Her words sounded oddly as if she were happy he was going, as if there wasn’t a pain growing bigger in her stomach or an ache swelling in her throat.
    He put his hands in the pockets of his well-worn jeans. “It was just a thought,” he said. “I’ll close up the tavern for the season after Halloween as usual. But if I’m gone, I hate to think there would be no one upstairs. Watching out for the ghosts, or for vagrants or … whatever.”
    Rita remembered more than one time when “vagrants” had appeared—like when Kyle