Was that what had happened? Probably. By the time Deacon had married Scarlett, Hayes had acknowledged to himself that Deacon was hopeless when it came to women. One reason Hayes hadn’t married Whitney Jo was because he feared he would fail, just as his father had.
“Right,” Hayes said. “Good for you, Mom.”
“There’s no point holding on to old anger,” Laurel said. “Deacon is dead.”
Hayes nodded. It had been six weeks, which was right around the time Hayes expected someone to announce it had all been a joke or a mistake and for Deacon to reappear somehow.
His mother still hadn’t answered his question about swimming. He said, “So… the beach is okay? Not okay?”
Laurel said, “I went swimming yesterday, and it was very therapeutic. We gathered to honor Deacon’s memory, and if I’m sure of one thing, it’s that he doesn’t want us to sit inside and cry.”
Hayes breathed a sigh of relief. He knew they were here to mourn, whatever that meant, and they were going to spread the ashes on Monday—but that was two whole days from now. Two days was a very long time under circumstances such as these.
“We’re not eating until seven thirty or so,” Laurel said. “So you have time to unwind.”
Hayes was down with that. He could refresh his buzz once he was alone. He needed a little bump; his tolerance had grown remarkably while he was in Bali—he and Sula were shooting up four or five times a day. But first he had to get past the land mine in the kitchen.
Belinda.
“Hello, Hayes,” she said in that famous, famous voice. She gave him dual-cheek air-kisses, a greeting Hayes excelled at, thank God.
“Belinda, it’s nice to see you,” he said, not meaning it.
“And you,” Belinda said, not meaning it either, he was sure.
“What happened to Angie?” Hayes asked. He congratulated himself for noticing that his sister was missing. The key to not letting the world know he was high was constantly monitoring his surroundings. Angie had been here; now she was gone. “Did she go upstairs?” This was Hayes’s goal. Go up to his room, shut the door, pull out the precious H, which he was hiding in a secure spot. Shoot up. But just a bump. The mere thought set Hayes’s teeth chattering.
Belinda said, “I heard you ran into Naomi at the Escondite last month.”
Boom, just like that, he was lost. He repeated the sentence in his mind, looking for landmarks. The Escondite rang a distant bell. It was… a hotel? In the past month, Hayes had been to Bali, of course. Before that, he had been in Ecuador and Peru; before that… Vegas, where he had stayed at Aria. Before that… Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica. That was Belinda’s part of the world. He tried to remember something, anything, about his time in California other than the sheer size of the muscles on the dealer he found in Venice Beach. And who was Naomi?
“Naomi Watts?” Belinda prompted. “She bumped into you at the Escondite? The rock club?”
Yes! Hayes thought. He had gone to the Escondite on the recommendation of the Shutters concierge to see a band called Pretty Little Demons. The place had a burger called the Fat Albert, which was a bacon cheeseburger with maple syrup served on a glazed doughnut bun—the concierge said it was so good, it made her want to punch someone in the face—and Hayes had ordered one but not eaten it. Naomi Watts was a blond, he knew, so she must have been the woman who grabbed his arm when he was coming out of the men’s room. He hadn’t been sure if it was her or Kate Beckinsale.
“Yes!” Hayes said. “I did see Naomi at the Escondite. Great burgers there. And we saw a phenomenal band. It was two little girls—they’re in, like, seventh grade, but boy, do they rock!” He made a sloppy hand motion indicating drumsticks. He constantly impressed himself with the way he could pull stuff out of his ass.
Belinda narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you okay, Hayes?” she asked.
She knows, Hayes thought. Or she suspected.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Other than the fact that, you know, my father is dead.”
Belinda continued to study him in an unnerving way.
“Where’s Angie?” Hayes asked. He couldn’t remember if this question had been answered or not.
“Oh, she ran off,” Belinda said, nodding at the front door. “She got a bee in her bonnet.”
Bonnet? Hayes thought.
“Hayes, honey, come with me,” Laurel said, saving the day. She swept Hayes past the ticking time bomb that was Belinda and up the stairs.
His room was the room of the little boy he had been when he first came to Nantucket with his parents. There was still the blue sailboat wallpaper, now dulled by years of sunshine, the blue muted and dusty but so familiar, as though the pattern had been embossed on Hayes’s heart. The wallpaper had not been selected for him but rather for one of the Innsleys’ children, but one of the unwritten rules of this house was that nothing was allowed to change. The porthole mirror encircled by nautical rope still hung over the dresser. Deacon was dead, never coming back, D.E.A.D.—and yet that stupid mirror had endured, unchanged. Was Hayes the only person who understood how patently unfair this was?
Hayes crashed on the bed that had seen him through childhood summers to teenager summers to adult summers, some of them with Whitney Jo—they had nearly broken this bed—to today.
Laurel sat down on the bed next to him and smoothed his hair off his face. “We’re going to get through this,” she said.
His mother needed comfort—Hayes could sense that much—and he knew he should be the one to administer it; he was her son. But he couldn’t go down that long and winding road right now. He was too… tired.
His eyes fell closed. He worried he would never be able to get them back open. He wanted Laurel to step out of the room and close the door behind her with a definite click.
“Mom,” Hayes said, “I’m sorry. The trip from overseas wiped me out. I just need a quick nap…”
“Of course, sweet—” Laurel said, but that was all he heard.
BUCK
He could barely bring himself to look at Belinda. The memory of earlier that afternoon was too disturbing. Had it even happened? Well, yes, there she was… wearing clothes now, at least, as she poured herself a glass of wine. She gave him a wicked smile.
“Beer?” she asked.
“No, thank you,” he said. He’d gone through nearly a six-pack over the course of the day, and he was starting to feel dizzy. He had blown any chance of asking Belinda for financial help with the house, he realized. He could ask her for one favor but not two, and he needed her to keep quiet about what had happened that afternoon.
“Listen,” he said. “About earlier…”
Belinda waved a hand. “Already forgotten,” she said.
He breathed a sigh of relief while at the same time feeling offended. Already forgotten?
He needed air.
“I think I’ll walk to the beach.”
“Dressed like that?” Belinda asked.
He was still wearing half his suit. When he’d told his secretary, Margaret, that he was going to Nantucket for the weekend, her mouth nearly came unhinged. (Margaret had something of the marionette about her as it was—exaggerated makeup, long chin.)
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Say a proper good-bye to my best friend,” he said, and this had made Margaret, who was a big Deacon Thorpe fan, weepy. All women were big Deacon Thorpe fans, Buck thought. It was the damnedest thing.
Margaret had gone to the Billabong store on her lunch break and bought Buck a pair of board shorts. They were blue and red striped and sort of resembled a nautical flag. Buck had stared at them, baffled.
“You’re going to an island,” Margaret said. “You might want to swim.”
Swim? he’d thought.
Before Buck left for his walk, he went upstairs and tried the board shorts on, then checked himself out in the mirror. He looked as though he were wearing clown pants, but oh, well. When in Rome.
He decided he would ask Laurel to come with him. Maybe he would try to kiss her on the beach. It could be like a scene from a Nicholas Sparks novel; Buck’s ex-wife Mae used to gobble up those novels as if the pages were potato chips. She would always cry, and Buck had learned to comfort her and listen to her explain about how Noah loved Allie or whatever, and Buck would nod and pluck tissues—and then, he would nearly always get lucky.