“Mom!” Angie said again. She wheeled her arm. “Come on!”
Nope. She would just stand here in the road until she melted.
“Mom!” Angie said. “We can all see you!”
Belinda waved as if just noticing her daughter and—Oh, look!—other people Belinda knew gathered on the porch.
She had no choice. She trudged up the driveway and, with her last vestiges of energy, climbed the porch steps.
“Hello, all,” she said.
“Belinda,” Laurel said. “Look who’s here!”
“Hello, Scarlett,” Belinda said.
Scarlett said nothing. Her eyes were red and watery; she was crying. She engulfed Belinda in a stifling, Chanel-scented embrace. Scarlett had been wearing Chanel since she was eighteen years old; all the Southern debutantes wore it, she’d informed Belinda during their first interview.
“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Scarlett said. She was shaking in her ruby-red patent-leather ballet flats. Scarlett was six foot one; she always wore flats. As it was, Belinda’s head met Scarlett at her half-an-A-cup bosom. She had been bigger breasted when she worked for them, but after nursing Ellery for three years—three years!—her breasts had nearly vanished. “I. Cannot. Believe. This. Happened. Did you know he quit drinking for me? The drinking and the drugs—he was finished with all of it. Then this!”
“It’s okay,” Belinda said. “You have to be strong for…” Here, Belinda tried to extract herself from Scarlett’s embrace, but it proved to be as difficult as getting gum out of her hair.
“I shouldn’t have left,” Scarlett said. “But I was just. So. Angry. And what he did was inexcusable.”
“Scarlett,” Belinda said. “You have to be strong for your daughter.” Belinda broke free and smiled down at Ellery.
“Hello, Ellery,” Belinda said. “I’m Belinda.”
“No,” Ellery said. “You’re Miss Kit Kat.”
“That’s right,” Belinda said, trying not to sound startled. Belinda had starred in three seasons of the HBO series Boarding, about a group of precocious teenagers at an exclusive New England prep school; Belinda had been the slightly dotty headmistress, Miss Kit Kat. Did Scarlett allow Ellery to watch the show at the tender age of nine? “I am Miss Kit Kat.”
“Ellery is destroyed,” Scarlett whispered.
“Well, yes,” Belinda said. She wasn’t about to let Scarlett corner the market on grief. “We all are.”
LAUREL
Things were happening very quickly, but Laurel, for one, was happy Scarlett had come. On the one hand, it felt right—Deacon’s entire family was now assembled, which was as it should be—and on the other hand, Laurel had backup in her struggle with Belinda.
When JP left, the rest of them filed inside. Laurel put her hand on Scarlett’s arm. “I have you and Ellery in the guest room.”
“The guest room?” Scarlett said. “This is my house. I sleep in the master.”
“I’m in the master,” Laurel said. “Sorry about that. I got here first.” And I was married to him first, she thought. And I bought this house with him.
“You’re the guest here,” Scarlett said. “You can move out of the master and take the guest room.”
Laurel immediately retracted her sanguine feelings about Scarlett’s arrival. Scarlett was making Belinda look like Glinda the Good Witch.
But then, as Scarlett stormed up the stairs, lugging her two monstrous suitcases behind her—bump bump bump—Belinda yanked Laurel into the living room.
“You called Bob?” she whispered. “You called my husband at his place of work and said you had something to tell him?”
Laurel closed her eyes. Yes, she had called Bob Percil. After she had gotten home from the hospital with Hayes, she had been in a state. Buck had wanted to comfort her, but she sent him away. He was half her problem! Once the house was quiet, Laurel had wandered down to the kitchen, and she’d poured herself a shot of Jameson from the liquor stash. One shot calmed her somewhat, and so she did another. After the third shot, she wondered if anything would make her feel better aside from more Jameson. That was when she’d decided to wander to the end of the driveway… wait for a signal… and call the famed Percil Stables in Louisville, Kentucky.
This message is for Bob, she’d said, her voice slurring despite her intention to sound sober, serious, reliable. It’s Laurel Thorpe. I’m on Nantucket, and there’s something I want to tell you about Belinda.
This morning, when she had woken up, her stomach roiled with regret. What had possessed her? She was the nice wife, the good wife, the altruist. She had made a career of helping people, saving people—but after twenty-four hours in Belinda’s presence, she had become a vengeful bitch, unrecognizable even to herself.
“I did,” Laurel said. “I called him.”
“And what, pray tell, did you have to tell him?” Belinda asked.
Belinda thought she could get away with anything. That’s the problem, Laurel thought. Some people were like that. They thought they couldn’t be touched; they thought the rules didn’t apply to them.
“What do you think I had to tell him?” Laurel asked.
Before Belinda could answer, they both heard the sound of things being thrown out into the hallway above, then Scarlett’s voice. “The master bedroom is mine! This is my house!”
Is this happening? Laurel wondered.
Buck appeared in the living room. “Should I tell her that only a third of the house is hers?”
“Now is not the time,” Belinda said.
“Right,” Laurel said.
At that moment, Angie came flying down the stairs. She grabbed Laurel’s arm. “Talk to you?”
Laurel followed Angie to the kitchen.
“Hayes got mugged?” Angie said.
“Yes,” Laurel said, sighing. “He said he was in a taxi heading to town, and he and the driver had a disagreement about which way to go, so Hayes got out of the cab by the state forest. And then he got beat up and robbed.”
Angie’s eyebrows shot up. “Taxi?” she said. “He probably called the six-sided nut hut who brought us here. The guy was dressed like a pirate. Hayes asked him for his card.”
“Hayes didn’t tell the police anything,” Laurel said. “He just wants to let it go.”
“I asked what would make him feel better, and he said he wanted me to make Dad’s chowder tonight.”
“That’ll be delicious. Thank you, sweetie,” Laurel said. Tears sprang to her eyes, even though the last thing on her mind was what they would eat for dinner. But Deacon had made shellfish chowder at least once during each of those long-ago Nantucket summers.
“And I’ll make an arugula salad with warm goat cheese, and a tri-berry crumble using those strawberries JP dropped off,” Angie said. “And I’ll get freshly baked baguettes from the Sconset Market. They come out of the oven at four o’clock.” Angie grabbed a notepad and started making a list.
Ellery skipped into the kitchen. She studied the hash marks on the door frame and trailed her finger down, looking for her name.
“Do you want me to measure you, sweetheart?” Laurel asked. “I bet you’ve grown a lot since last summer.”
“No,” Ellery said. “I want Miss Kit Kat to measure me.”
“Miss Kit Kat will measure you later,” Scarlett said as she stormed into the kitchen. Belinda and Buck had now vanished, a fact that irked Laurel like an itch she couldn’t reach. Maybe they were upstairs in Buck’s room, consummating their sudden love affair. To Laurel, Scarlett said, “Listen, I’m sorry, but you have to understand, I am Deacon’s wife, and the master bedroom is my bedroom, our bedroom. I didn’t even sleep in the guest room when I came here as the nanny. Back then, I stayed in the room Buck is in.”
Laurel had first met Scarlett on one of the Sunday nights when Deacon brought Hayes back to the apartment. I thought the two of you should meet, Deacon said. Since Scarlett will be the primary caretaker while I’m working and Belinda’s away.