Once in a Blue Moon by Eileen Goudge Page B

was a view she never tired of. She recalled her sense of wonder, those first weeks after arriving here with her parents, in discovering that the picture-perfect ocean of Baywatch and Beverly Hills 90210 was actually a living entity, its moods as mercurial as the weather. Playful one minute and treacherous the next. On any given day, calm waters and blue skies could give way to a storm that would whip those swells into green-mawed combers and send them racing in to smash against the cliffs, sending geyser-like spumes of spray high into the air. It had its own language, too, one that whispered its secrets in her ear. It told her to be patient, to have faith. That it had endured, and so would she.
    She could see the house ahead, lit from within and shining like a beacon in the gathering darkness. It was modest compared to most cliffside homes in this area, small and low to the ground, built out of cedar, with a shingled roof and siding worn by decades of salt spray to the soft, silvery gray of the coastal grasses that blanketed the surrounding fields. It was also in need of repair: Its roof sagged, the front and back decks were riddled with dry rot, and more than a few of its shingles were missing. Even so, she wouldn’t have traded it for a mansion.
    “You’re the best—I owe you,” she thanked Ollie again when he pulled to a stop in the driveway. Her gray-muzzled Labrador retriever, Chester, short for Mr. Rochester, loped over on legs stiff with arthritis to greet her as she climbed out of the Willys, and she stooped to pet him.
    Ollie stuck his head out the window as he drove off. “Have fun at the party!”
    The party. Lindsay’s heart sank once more at the reminder.
    She walked in to find Kerrie Ann all dolled up for the occasion, her hair teased and moussed, glittery shadow applied to her eyelids, and her pouty lips glistening with a fresh coat of gloss. She’d changed into a pair of low-rise white jeans so tight they looked spray-painted on and an equally tight, scoop-necked pink T-shirt with shiny metal rivets spelling out the word “Bebe” across the front. She’d traded the high-heeled boots she’d had on earlier for a pair of jazzy platform shoes.
    She was a dead ringer for their mother.
    “Is that what you’re wearing to the party?” asked Lindsay.
    Kerrie Ann, seated on the sofa with the ginger cat, Fagin, curled in her lap, looked up from the magazine she’d been leafing through to give her a wide-eyed look. “Something wrong with it?”
    “No, it’s fine,” Lindsay lied.
    Her sister’s eyes narrowed. “I can change if you like,” she offered with a notable lack of enthusiasm.
    “No time now. We should get going.” Lindsay glanced at her watch. “Where’s Miss Honi?”
    Ignoring the question, her sister asked, “Aren’t you going to change?”
    “I’ll throw something on. It’ll only take a sec.”
    Kerrie Ann regarded her with the same dubiousness Lindsay had shown a moment ago when eyeing her, as if wondering what sort of outfit she could pull together in so short a time. But, unlike Lindsay, she obviously didn’t feel it was her place to comment. “Sure, whatever,” she said with a shrug, going back to her magazine.
    Lindsay’s gaze came to rest on an old chipped saucer sitting on the coffee table. In it were several lipstick-stained cigarette butts. Kerrie Ann caught her eyeballing them and said somewhat defensively, “Don’t worry. I smoked outside.”
    “I wasn’t accusing you of anything,” Lindsay replied, but her voice was tight.
    Kerrie Ann set aside her magazine and languidly rose from the sofa, sending Fagin racing off to join his sister, Estella, who was batting around a stick of kindling by the fireplace. “Hey, you weren’t kidding when you said this place was out of the way,” she remarked, clunking her way across the room in her mile-high platform shoes to gaze out at the view from the picture window. She turned toward Lindsay. “It must get pretty