Laurel had been nonplussed; Hayes was then fourteen and could basically care for himself. But she had shaken Scarlett’s hand and noted how beautiful she was. She could remember thinking, I hope Deacon behaves himself.
She had been shocked when, a few months later, Scarlett appeared at Laurel’s office in the Bronx, crying. Scarlett thought she was pregnant, and she was afraid to tell Belinda.
Deacon told me you were a social worker, Scarlett said. And he said you had Hayes at a really young age.
Nineteen, Laurel said. She had given Scarlett literature about some of her options: adoption agencies, clinics where she could terminate the pregnancy. But then, a few days later, Scarlett called to say it had been a false alarm.
Laurel had never asked her who the father of the baby might have been.
Now, Scarlett dissolved into tears. “He left me with nothing!”
Laurel was tempted to say that that was how Deacon left people—with nothing. But then she remembered the birthday card he’d sent: Forever love. He had loved her, he had loved Belinda, he had loved Scarlett.
“How do you feel?” Laurel asked. “You look exhausted.”
“I haven’t slept in six weeks,” Scarlett said. “How could I? I left Deacon, and I took Ellery away from him. I wanted him to suffer! I wanted him to be miserable without us! I had no idea he was going to die!”
“Of course you didn’t,” Laurel said softly. She cut a quick glance at Angie, who was scribbling down a list of ingredients. “None of us did.”
Buck wandered into the kitchen wearing his board shorts.
“I’m going to the beach,” he announced. “Would anyone like to come with me?”
“Why don’t you ask Belinda?” Laurel said.
“I don’t want to ask Belinda,” Buck said.
“Belinda doesn’t know how to swim, anyway,” Scarlett whispered. “All those years I came here with Deacon, Belinda, and the kids, she never went in the water.”
Angie stood up to her full height, but she still wasn’t quite as tall as Scarlett. “Watch how you talk about my mother,” she said.
“Really?” Scarlett said. “You’re taking Belinda’s side? That’s something new.”
“There aren’t sides anymore, Scarlett,” Angie said. “Deacon is dead. The competition for who he loved best is over. We all lost.”
“I was so angry with him, I wished him dead,” Scarlett said. “But I thought that the way people think it. I didn’t mean it.” Scarlett broke down in tears, collapsing on one of the bar stools.
Buck looked hopelessly to Laurel, while Angie shrugged, grabbed the keys to the Jeep, and left the kitchen, saying, “I’ll be back. Dinner will be ready at seven.”
Laurel reached out to touch Scarlett’s arm. “Would you like to go for a walk? Or for a bike ride? We can go swimming at the pond. It’s so pretty there.”
“Pretty?” Scarlett said. “How can you care about pretty, or expect me to care? My husband is dead!” She screamed this last sentence at the top of her lungs, and Laurel bristled. She understood the bedroom issue—sort of—but she wouldn’t allow Scarlett to throw a tantrum. Scarlett had a child in the house, and she was setting a terrible example. Laurel wasn’t going to indulge Scarlett’s sense of entitlement. Deacon had been Scarlett’s husband, but he had also been Belinda’s husband, and long, long ago he had been Laurel’s husband. And he had left behind three children, not one.
Laurel said, “Well, I’m going to bike to the pond.” She marched out the back door.
Like the rest of the house, the shed was exactly as Laurel remembered it. It held two bikes that Deacon had bought from the classifieds in the Inquirer and Mirror—the royal-blue one had been Deacon’s, the silver one with the wicker basket, Laurel’s. In addition to the two bikes, the shed held a riding mower, some rakes, a snow shovel, half a bag of potting soil, and a hose and sprinkler. Laurel wondered if hooking up the sprinkler would be fun for Ellery, but then she decided that she was finished thinking about other people. Her whole life involved thinking about other people—solving their problems, making their downtrodden lives slightly more bearable—but now, today, she was going to think about herself. She was going to go for a nice, long bike ride in the sun. She would swim in the pond. She would come home, take an outdoor shower, put on a pretty dress, and enjoy Deacon’s chowder.
Make the best of things, she thought. Enjoy Nantucket while she still could.
Laurel took a few deep breaths of the cool air of the shed. It smelled comfortingly of gasoline and cut grass. Then she pulled her bike outside and adjusted the seat. It was like seeing an old friend. She wheeled the bike to the front of the house.
“Laurel!”
Laurel turned around. Scarlett was following her with Deacon’s bike.
“I want to come,” Scarlett said.
Well, now Laurel wasn’t sure she wanted company, especially not the Southern diva variety. But Laurel was too nice a person to tell Scarlett no.
“Okay,” Laurel said. She hopped on her bike and bumbled down the driveway; the wind and the motion were instantly exhilarating. “Let’s go.”
They pedaled out to the end of Hoicks Hollow Road, then took a right onto Polpis. The bike path was a mixture of sun and shade. At first, Laurel rode ahead, but eventually Scarlett caught up and they rode side by side. Scarlett had hitched up the skirt of her dress so that it didn’t get caught in the spokes.
“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” Scarlett said.
“It’s fine,” Laurel said. “Everyone’s emotions are running high.”
“Belinda makes me uncomfortable,” Scarlett said. “She always has.”
“You were her nanny,” Laurel said. “She trusted you with Angie for years, and then when you ended up with Deacon, I’m sure she felt betrayed.”
“I didn’t start dating Deacon until after they were divorced,” Scarlett said. “But Belinda has never believed that. When they had that big fight after Deacon went on Letterman? Deacon got arrested for drunk and disorderly, and then he flew down to the Virgin Islands for a week. Belinda was waiting for him when he got back and, I guess, knew he’d been with a woman, and she thought it was me. But it wasn’t me; it was someone else. And then, about six months later, I bumped into Deacon at a club downtown. It was very late, I was with a group of my photography-school friends, and Deacon was too drunk to stand, but he took my number and called the next day. Belinda never believed that story; she thought we were fooling around the entire time they were married.”
“Remember when you came to my office right after you started working for them?” Laurel asked.
Scarlett’s gaze followed a butterfly flitting around the rugosa roses.
“Scarlett? Do you remember that? You thought you were pregnant. I’ve always wondered… if you had been pregnant, would the baby have been Deacon’s?”
“No!” Scarlett said. “I see you don’t believe me, either.”
“I could never understand why you came to me,” Laurel said. “You said you were afraid to tell Belinda, and I thought that meant…”
“I was afraid to tell Belinda because I worshipped Belinda. I mean, she was a movie star. So beautiful, so famous, so talented…”
Laurel couldn’t help but chime in. “So dishonest,” she said. “So completely unscrupulous.”
“I didn’t see any of that until later,” Scarlett said. “At first, she was larger than life, and of all the girls she interviewed, she gave me the job. I didn’t have any college, no early-education classes, I didn’t know CPR, I wasn’t qualified at all, but she chose me anyway. She chose me. She said she had a gut feeling that I was supposed to be part of their lives.”
“Well,” Laurel said, “you certainly ended up that way.”
“I couldn’t tell her I’d accidentally gotten pregnant,” Scarlett said. “She would have been so disappointed in me. So that’s why I came to you.”
“Who was the guy?” Laurel asked. “You can tell me.”