Laurel sat with Buck along the horseshoe, and Joel sat on the other side of Buck. Hayes stood in the front of the boat like some kind of damaged figurehead. Angie ended up sitting next to Ellery, who was next to JP.
“Are we all ready?” JP asked.
Belinda clenched the bench beneath her with one hand and the side of the boat with the other. The harbor was flat, and they cut smoothly through the water. The sun was hitting that place in the sky where it ceased to be hot and was merely warm as it cast a golden glow on the surface of the water and on the sails of the other boats. What did Deacon used to call it? The golden hour.
Sailors manning other boats waved and called out to the Lena Marie.
“She’s beautiful!” one man called out. “And so are her passengers!”
Belinda smiled, though it was wrong to assume they were speaking of her when Scarlett, Laurel, Angie, and sweet Ellery were all on the boat. And Buck, wearing a pink shirt and a pair of shorts embroidered with whales. He had certainly bought into the whole New England summertime fashion disaster.
JP maneuvered around the other sailboats and power yachts. He headed toward Brant Point Lighthouse. Hayes sat down next to his mother and leaned his head on her shoulder. Laurel clutched the urn to her midsection and put her arm around her son. Belinda closed her eyes and imagined herself on dry land.
Belinda had had no intention of “catching up” with Scarlett, or of even speaking to her. But almost involuntarily, she said, “How far out do you think we’ll go?”
Scarlett didn’t answer. When Belinda looked at her, her lips were set in a grim line.
“Oh, come on, Scarlett,” Belinda said.
“Come on, what?” she said.
“We need to get past our past,” Belinda said. “You, Laurel, and I are all in the same boat.” She laughed at her own joke. “Ha! We are literally in the same boat. We’re scattering the ashes of the man all of us were married to. Not just you, my dear. All of us.”
“I had a child with him,” Scarlett said.
“So did I!” Belinda said.
Scarlett sniffed. “That’s not the same.”
The breeze was blowing from the back of the boat, so it wasn’t likely that Angie was overhearing any of this exchange, but still, Belinda was… well, “furious” and “indignant” didn’t begin to cover it. She was egregiously offended. She leaned into Scarlett’s shoulder and lowered her voice. To everyone else, they probably looked like a couple of women sharing a trusted confidence.
“If you’re trying to tell me that Angie is any less Deacon’s child because she was adopted…” Belinda trailed off. “Or, even worse, because she’s black and adopted, then you are revealing just how ugly you are on the inside, Scarlett. Maybe I should have been more wary when I interviewed you in the first place.”
“I love Angie,” Scarlett said. “And I was good to her all those years you left her in my care. I practically raised her. Deacon and I raised her like a husband and wife.”
Belinda clenched the seat beneath her so hard, she felt the nail on her middle finger snap, but she was too afraid of letting go to inspect the damage. They were out of the harbor now, puttering around the stone jetty.
“The boat isn’t really built for this,” Belinda heard JP say to Angie, behind her. “But your dad wanted his ashes scattered in Nantucket Sound, so that’s where we’ll go. Besides, it’s a flat night.”
A flat night? The boat was now a Mexican jumping bean every time they hit a wave. Would it get any worse? Belinda imagined the front of the boat rising so high that the whole thing flipped over, dumping all of them in the drink.
Drink. When this was over, Belinda was going to have a big, fat glass of wine. Or, better still, a margarita.
All of these thoughts served to distract her from Scarlett’s last statement—but only for a matter of seconds.
“I didn’t leave my daughter for you to raise,” Belinda said. “You were her nanny. You watched her while I was working.”
“You were never around,” Scarlett said. “Ever.”
“And when you say that you and Deacon raised her as a ‘married couple,’ what does that mean? Were you sleeping with Deacon back then, Scarlett? I know now that it was Laurel he took to St. John, but that doesn’t mean you and he weren’t carrying on years before that. When I was in Scotland? When I was in Vietnam?”
“We were not,” Scarlett said. “But when I reconnected with him, he admitted to me that he fantasized about me all the time. So it’s probably safe to say, when he was making love to you all those years, he was thinking about me. Pretending you were me.”
Belinda wanted to slap her. She wanted to throttle her. “How dare you say that to me, Scarlett. How dare you.” Belinda stood up. She had to get away—but she was trapped. Belinda made her way to the back of the boat, where she lost her thoughts in the drone of the motor and the sharp smell of diesel fuel. The Ativan made her hazy and mixed up; she shouldn’t have taken so many pills.
But desperate times called for desperate measures.
ANGIE
The boat ride would have been excruciating without Joel present, but Joel was making it a thousand times worse. Angie should have told him to turn around the second he arrived. She could have talked to Joel later, back in New York, where she wouldn’t have had to witness him trying to make sweet love to Scarlett.
It didn’t matter, she told herself. He could pursue Scarlett, but he would end up falling on his face.
It did matter. It hurt. It was humiliating.
She tried to focus on the task at hand. JP maneuvered the launch over the building swells and into the sound, and then, just off the coast from the Cliffside Beach Club, he cut the motor.
Laurel stood up and held the urn out to Buck.
Buck said, “Are we ready?”
No, Angie thought. She would never be ready.
Hayes stood up. Belinda stood up. Scarlett stood up and took a few wobbly steps across the boat until she was tucked under Joel’s arm. Angie could not believe it. She felt a hand on her arm: JP.
You okay? he mouthed.
Angie got to her feet and gave JP a weak and defeated smile. It was both comforting and mortifying to know she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed Joel’s unbridled pursuit of Scarlett. JP had been through this. His girlfriend was now dating his best friend, and he had survived just fine.
Buck said, “I feel like I should say a few words, but I don’t know what those words might be.”
Hayes took a stumbling step forward and reached into the urn. He brought forth a handful of remains—chunks of bone, Angie supposed, and a powder that looked like talcum.
“I love you, Dad,” he said. Then he flung his handful into the water.
“I want to try!” Ellery said, darting forward. She reached into the urn, took a prodigious handful, and tossed it overboard.
Scarlett sobbed into Joel’s shoulder.
JP nudged Angie forward. She reached into the urn, thinking, This is not Deacon. Deacon was the man who had lifted her up onto his shoulders so she could feed leaves into the hungry mouth of the giraffe. Deacon was the one who had played endless games of Monopoly with her, in which his favorite strategy was to put up houses and hotels right away and then half the time watch himself fall into foreclosure while Angie cleaned him out. Deacon was the one who always saved Angie the last glass of wine. Deacon was the one who called her when a new Jamaican jerk place opened on Avenue C. We have to go! Can you meet me in five minutes?
He was my father, Angie thought. But, more than that, he was my friend.
She took a handful of remains and let them drop into the water, then she dusted off her hand on her shorts. She turned back to look at JP. He was wearing his sunglasses, but she saw the shine of one tear run down his face. He smiled at her. I thought it would give you something else to think about, something else to want. Certainly, JP had realized that nothing would trump what Angie wanted now and what she would want for the rest of her life: five more minutes with Deacon, so she could hug him and say good-bye.
Laurel threw a copious handful of ashes with exuberance, as though she were a passenger on the deck of the QE2 throwing confetti at well-wishers on the dock. Buck followed suit because, as Angie realized in that instant, Buck was besotted with Laurel and would do anything to make her happy.