She wandered upstairs, taking it all in: the nightstands topped with crocheted doilies, a vase holding a bouquet of dusty plastic daisies, the bookshelves crammed with paperback novels—Peter Benchley, Robert Ludlum, Judith Krantz. The same faded watercolors hung on the walls alongside the amateurish oils done by Mrs. Innsley, the previous owner. In the hallway at the top of the stairs was a map of Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and Cape Cod circa 1838. There were the old baskets of seashells, and mason jars filled with beach glass—untouched, probably, in thirty years. The beds were topped with the exact same thin quilts over pilled blankets over bare mattresses. Laurel really hoped there were new sheets.
She claimed the master bedroom for herself. This was the room where she and Deacon had slept every night under one thin cotton sheet that had dried all day on the clothesline so that it smelled like clover and sunshine. Laurel took the room because she had had the foresight to arrive first—and to the victor went the spoils. It was the only room with a queen bed and an attached bath. She assigned the adjoining room to Buck; it had a double bed with a scrolled headboard and footboard. Buck was tall; he would have to sleep diagonally, but Laurel wasn’t willing to relinquish the queen, even for him. The other rooms each had two twin beds, as if the house had formerly been a convent or a monastery.
Down the hallway was Hayes’s room, with the sailboat wallpaper.
Angie’s room had a pink tulip border, peeling now along the ceiling, and an old Victorian dollhouse. That dollhouse had been here when Laurel and Deacon bought American Paradise; it had belonged to one of the Innsley daughters. Laurel crouched down to study its tiny furniture: a refrigerator that opened to display a dozen eggs in a carton, and a pizza the size of a dime; a grand piano; the white canopy bed in the triangular attic room, the canopy now frosted with dust. Laurel remembered the real estate agent telling her and Deacon that the dollhouse was the most valuable thing in the house, and Laurel had hoped that she and Deacon would someday have a little daughter to enjoy it.
That had never happened—thanks to Belinda.
The next room was narrow and cramped. It was the nursemaid quarters, which had been occupied by a woman named Clara, who had worked for the Innsleys for decades. Laurel would stick Belinda in there.
And finally, at the end of the hall, the “good” guest room—it had an antique luggage rack with embroidered straps, tucked all the way back in the closet, as well as the Eastlake beds and matching mirror—for Scarlett and Ellery, if they showed.
The house was exactly big enough to hold Deacon’s entire, variegated family. What would he have thought about having them all here together? He probably would have grabbed Buck and gone to the bar.
Laurel smiled. Deacon.
She found a linen closet full of sheets, and she ran six sets through the laundry, thinking that the most threadbare ones would go on Belinda’s bed. She made a pilgrimage to the grocery store, where she lost herself among the sunburned, sandy-legged families shopping for bologna and bing cherries and Popsicles. She felt woefully out of place and out of sorts. She was shopping for a family in mourning—did that mean bananas? A whole pineapple or honeydew melon? They had to eat, and dinner that night would be up to her, so Laurel loaded up her cart: coffee, milk, butter, sandwich bread, peanut butter, potato chips, grapes, three zucchini, a bulb of garlic, a box of cherry tomatoes, salad greens. Was Belinda a vegan? Probably. Laurel got a rotisserie chicken, steak, eggs, an expensive block of Parmesan, a stick of expensive Italian salami. She bought frozen garlic bread and pigs in a blanket. The store was freezing cold, and Laurel imagined that this was a sign of Deacon’s disapproval.
Frozen garlic bread? she heard him chiding.
You no longer get a say, she thought, and she headed to the checkout line.
Next, the liquor store. She bought a case of St. Pauli Girl, since Buck was coming, and a case of wine for everyone else—six bottles of the Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc that she knew Deacon loved, and six bottles of the Luigi Bosca Malbec that Hayes had turned her on to.
She could survive the weekend as long as she was sufficiently armed.
Laurel felt relieved when Buck showed up. He would be able to help her with the unbearable load of her grief. Buck was tall and as lean as ever, his face still boyish, with unclouded green eyes and the vestiges of childhood freckles, his red hair peppered through with some gray, which, for all Laurel knew, had appeared only in the past six weeks. He had come to Nantucket in a suit and tie, which made Laurel chuckle. Buck had been raised in a strict, formal Irish Catholic family on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. His manner was as straight and correct as the grid of city streets he’d grown up on; “laid-back” wasn’t in his lexicon. His only relaxed aspect had been his friendship with Deacon.
Laurel took him immediately out to the back deck. It was raised about three feet over the yard, which consisted of crabgrass and scrub brush. But the views across the island were stunning. The neighbor’s house was modern and flashy now by comparison. It had a swimming pool.
They both looked at the picnic table. This was where Deacon had been sitting when he’d died. He had been watching the sun go down, the tradition that he and Laurel had started eons before. Laurel could picture the exact way he sat: leaning back, legs splayed or one ankle resting on his opposite knee, cigarette in one hand, drink in the other. The drink had been a Diet Coke. He had been so careful about the alcohol and the drugs—but ironically, it hadn’t mattered in the end.
“Let’s sit on the step,” Laurel suggested.
Buck nodded in agreement. He stopped to remove his jacket and folded it neatly over a chair, then he loosened his tie and rolled up his shirtsleeves to the elbow. Laurel didn’t think she had ever seen John Buckley in such a state of undress. She sat down next to him and leaned her head on his shoulder.
Buck pulled her in tight. Laurel had forgotten how good it felt to be held by a man; it had been a while. She was hugged every day by grateful welfare mothers and dozens of children, and she was averaging one date every six months. Her assistant, Sophie, had posted a profile for Laurel on Match.com, but Laurel found the choices underwhelming. She wanted someone both strong and compassionate—compassion was mandatory, in Laurel’s line of work. She wanted someone employed, age appropriate, and full of life. Once she ruled out men whose profile included the words “fantasy football,” there was almost no one left.
“What are we going to do without him?” Laurel asked.
“I’m not sure,” Buck said.
Buck sounded bereft and far away, like a little boy floating down a river on a shoddily built raft. Laurel raised her face to look at him. His eyes were red and filled with tears. Laurel had never seen Buck cry until six weeks earlier; she had never imagined that he was capable of such an act. Deacon, however, had cried all the time. He cried when Hayes was born, he cried when he told Laurel he was leaving her for Belinda Rowe, he cried in 1986 when the Giants won the Super Bowl. He cried when his sister, Stephanie, died of breast cancer, and again four years later when his mother died, even though his mother had abandoned him. Deacon had carried a core of sorrow within him—his father leaving, his mother leaving. Laurel had known this since the first time she talked to him, in the Dobbs Ferry High School cafeteria—he’d been sitting all alone, wearing a Black Sabbath concert T-shirt with a hole in the neck. Laurel had never been able to rid him of his sadness. He became very successful and very popular—he had been nominated for a daytime Emmy; he had cooked for President Bush and then President Obama—but that hadn’t made his demons go away.
“He loved you,” Laurel said to Buck. “He was lucky to have a friend like you.”
“He loved you,” Buck said. “I will never understand why he left you.”
“That’s very sweet of you to say, Buck,” Laurel said.
“I’m serious,” Buck said. “If he hadn’t been my best friend, I would have snapped you up myself.”
Laurel laughed a little, but when she turned her eyes to Buck, his expression was earnest. He leaned in, and Laurel thought for a moment that he might kiss her, the way that a man kisses a woman.
“Hello?”
What? Laurel thought. No. She pulled away from Buck and stood up. “Wait a minute. I think…?”