“Please give the girls my love,” she said. “And tell them I miss them.”
Bob cleared his throat. “Stella picked up a phone message off the main line for the stables,” Bob said. “The call came in at four o’clock in the morning.”
“Oh yeah?” Belinda said. She wasn’t sure why Bob was telling her this. Half his owners lived in Dubai, Hong Kong, Macao. The phone at the stables rang all night long.
“The call was from Laurel,” Bob said. He cleared his throat again. “Laurel Thorpe. She said there was something she wanted to tell me. Any idea what that might be?”
Belinda nearly dropped the phone on the road. Hang up! she thought. She could pretend she lost service. She needed to think!
Laurel had called Bob. She had something she wanted to tell him. Something about Belinda, obviously. Had she found out what happened with Buck?
“Um…,” Belinda said. “We had a discussion last night about the house. It’s going into foreclosure. Deacon left me a third interest and a third to Laurel and a third to Scarlett. But the debt needs to be cleared.”
“You’re not going to do it, are you?” Bob said. “How much money are we talking?”
“A hundred and fifty grand, for my portion,” Belinda said.
Bob whistled. “Deacon really got in over his head.”
“Yeah.” Belinda knew what Bob was thinking: Deacon may have been a great chef, but he was a terrible businessperson. Whereas Bob was a great horse trainer and an even better businessperson. The stables turned a huge profit every single quarter.
“Let it go, Belinda,” Bob said. “I don’t want you sinking our money into a pile out there.”
Our money. Ignoring advice from her accountant and Leif Larsen, her agent, Belinda had consolidated her finances with Bob’s because that was how she had run things with Deacon: what was hers, was his, was theirs. Belinda wasn’t naive, of course—she stashed all the money she’d earned in points from The Delta into an escrow account that Leif oversaw. Last time she’d checked, it was hovering just above five million. She kept it to the side, just in case.
“I know,” Belinda said.
“So, I’m sorry?” Bob said. “Do you think Laurel was calling to ask me for money? Because somehow I don’t think so. That wasn’t how it sounded.”
“Oh really? How did it sound?”
“Like something else,” Bob said.
Like Laurel had found out about Belinda and Buck and she had called Bob to tell him.
Wow, Belinda had to hand it to her: that was an effective scare tactic.
“I would just forget about it,” Belinda said. She tried to keep her voice modulated. “I’ll handle Laurel. I’m sorry she bothered you.”
“No bother,” Bob said. “I have to admit, Belinda, my curiosity was piqued.”
“Stay out of it, please, darling,” Belinda said. “Things are tricky enough here as it is.”
“Well,” Bob said. She heard him exhale smoke. Was he going to let it go? Oh please please please. “When are you coming home?”
“Wednesday,” she said. “I’ll be home on Wednesday.” She would, in truth, be home on Tuesday, but if she told him Wednesday and showed up on Tuesday, she would catch him at whatever he was doing. He was the philanderer here, not Belinda, short of one tiny indiscretion with Buck, which had lasted all of two minutes. Belinda could not believe Laurel had called the stables!
“We’ll see you on Wednesday,” Bob said. “Let me know when you’re flying in, and I’ll have Tenner pick you up at the airport.”
Tenner was the driver; airport pickups and drop-offs were his job, but was it too much to ask to have Bob pick up Belinda, either with or without the girls?
“I love you,” Belinda said.
“Okay then,” Bob said, and he hung up.
Okay then. Bob wasn’t effusive by anyone’s standards, but he could normally be counted on for an “I love you, too,” or at least a “You too.” But not today. Today, Bob Percil was suspicious—or maybe he was just distracted by the gait of Shadow, his prize dappled gray. Belinda hung up the phone and stepped into the grass to get out of the way of the approaching car. As opposed to Mrs. Glass, who drove like a sloth on barbiturates, the driver of this car was moving way too fast.
Slow down! Belinda thought. The car was a sleek, black sedan, a car-service car, one step down from a limousine, and Belinda’s mind came up question marks. But then she reasoned that someone on Hoicks Hollow Road might be an investment banker or a corporate attorney and would be used to employing this very un-Nantucket-like vehicle.
Belinda didn’t much care. She moved Bob up in her worries from number four to number one. Tears sprang to her eyes. It wasn’t fair! Belinda did one little thing, and now it was a federal case, whereas Bob had screwed around for years and years—and it was far worse than Belinda even suspected, she was sure. That was always how it worked, wasn’t it? She thought he had been with three girls, which probably meant there were thirty.
Laurel! What had Laurel done?
Belinda heard another vehicle approaching behind her. Hoicks Hollow Road was becoming a regular autobahn! When Belinda turned, she saw a silver Jeep headed toward her. The Jeep stopped, and Belinda realized it was Angie and the cute, bearded ranger.
“Can we give you a lift back to the house?” the ranger asked.
Belinda very much wanted a lift back to the house. She was hot, nearly panting—this walk constituted the most exercise she’d gotten in months—but she was too upset for conversation, and she didn’t want to explain why.
“No, I’m fine, I’ll walk,” Belinda said. “You kids go ahead.”
The Jeep drove off.
By the time Belinda headed up the driveway of American Paradise, she was clutching her side. She saw the silver Jeep parked—and beyond that, the shiny black sedan.
What? she thought.
And then.… she saw them, all standing on the porch in a grotesque tableau. Angie, the ranger, Laurel, Buck, a little girl wearing a silver, sequined party dress, and a tall, striking woman with black hair cropped into one of those pixie cuts that were currently all the rage.
The pixie cut was what threw Belinda. Who? Then she figured it out.
Scarlett was here.
She had won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and she’d been nominated for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, and she’d won an Emmy for Best Actress—but she couldn’t pull off the acting job that was required right now.
She turned around to face the road. She supposed she could walk back to the beach club and call a taxi. A taxi would take her to the airport; she would charter a plane to get off this godforsaken rock if she had to. She looked at her feet, in Laurel’s flimsy flip-flops; they were one step up from the disposable flip-flops one received after a pedicure. And Belinda was hot and tired. She looked down the road in the other direction. Maybe she could go knock on Mrs. Glass’s door. Mrs. Glass might know exactly who Belinda was five minutes from now; old people’s memories were sometimes like that.
“Mom!” Angie called out.
Why had Belinda even come? She should have realized that Scarlett would show up. Scarlett had never found a career path, and so she liked to attract attention in other ways—like this dramatic appearance. She couldn’t have taken a taxi, like the rest of the world; she had to hire a driver and that pretentious car.
Belinda would have none of it. Scarlett had slept with Deacon while he was still married to Belinda. After Deacon’s appearance on Letterman, Belinda and Deacon had had an awful blowout, and Deacon had flown down to the Virgin Islands.
Belinda had seen the charge come onto the AmEx, for five nights at Caneel Bay, and then she’d gotten a phone call from Renée Zellweger’s personal assistant, who swore she’d seen Deacon on a sailboat in Maho Bay with a blond in a bikini.
Blond, Belinda thought. The assistant was wrong about the blond; Deacon had taken Scarlett. Belinda’s suspicions were all but confirmed when Deacon got engaged to Scarlett two months after his divorce from Belinda was final. Belinda loathed Scarlett Oliver. She would never forgive her.