Haven Point

by Virginia Hume

  “Since we were married?” When Georgie nodded, Maren’s heart sank. She had put a mental grandfather clause in place. She could accept Oliver not sharing something that occurred before their marriage. It was a terrible sting to discover he had withheld things since.

  “Oliver went straight to William, who just kept humiliating Pauline,” Georgie continued.

  Maren thought for a moment. Oliver had nothing like his father’s cruelty, but at a minimum he had been heedless about how William might use the information about his mother. Maren saw a casual negligence in this, which was not entirely unfamiliar.

  She had noted it recently, in the effort to replace Maren in Oliver’s orthopedic practice. Maren had found a nurse from rural Maryland whose niece had been a fellow cadet at Walter Reed. She was knowledgeable, practical, and dependable. Without even consulting Maren on the matter, Oliver instead chose to hire Khaki Trumbull, one of Bull Trumbull’s daughters.

  In addition to the nonchalance with which Oliver rejected her candidate, Maren also couldn’t help noticing his preference for a nurse from his own milieu over a better-qualified one with a background more like Maren’s.

  Initially, Maren felt sorry for Khaki. Her parents, Bull and Adelaide Trumbull, had managed to blow through an entire fortune in one generation. Khaki was skinny and flat-chested, with frizzy hair and an unprepossessing manner. She could not easily go the route of Pauline Powell and find a wealthy husband. She had pursued her nursing degree out of sheer necessity.

  The time spent training Khaki had drained Maren’s sympathy, however. Khaki learned the job well enough, but she hadn’t an ingratiating bone in her body.

  Maren knew it was not entirely fair, but the episode had contributed to a sense that she had been exiled—first from the practice, and now from D.C. Before she was pregnant, Maren had worked alongside Oliver, so his long hours had not bothered her. She had been unable to relate to the other young wives at the Kennedy Warren, their apartment complex, who one-upped one another with tales of woe about inattentive husbands.

  She still struggled to understand why anyone would battle for the title of Most Aggrieved, but she had developed some compassion for the feelings that underscored the competition.

  “Tell me about this ‘system’ of yours,” Maren said.

  It was nothing formal, Georgie explained. Maude and Georgie had identified a dozen or so women on Haven Point who they knew had Pauline’s best interests at heart, and who would make sure gossips did not catch on.

  “We don’t want someone like Harriet knowing what’s up with Pauline,” Georgie said.

  That’s for sure, Maren thought. She had not forgotten her previous interaction with Harriet. The following year, Harriet’s older brother had invited some friends from college to a house party on Haven Point, James Barrows among them. James was so bewitched by the place, he proposed to Harriet before the week was out. From all accounts, it was a miserable union and had done nothing to improve Harriet’s disposition.

  “Originally we tried to make it harder for Pauline to find alcohol,” Georgie said. “One night, Pauline had run through the stash she had hidden and tried to drive William’s car to the liquor store in Phippsburg. She ended up in a ditch.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Maren said. Pauline disliked driving, and didn’t even have a license.

  “It took a big conspiracy to keep that quiet,” Georgie said. “Sad to say, Pauline might drink herself to death. I’m not sure we can stop that. But if we can help it, she won’t die in an accident, and we can try to minimize her humiliation. That’s all we can do—keep her safe, get her home. That, and keep it all among the women. The men are too loyal to William.”

  “Cappy wouldn’t tell, would he?”

  “No. He doesn’t like William Demarest. But if I tell Cappy, the others will tell their husbands, and it will all unravel. Plus, it would eat at Cappy. He’d want to fix it.”

  Maren was surprised. Georgie and Cappy seemed the sort of good-friends-turned-married-couple who share everything. The enterprise around Pauline seemed to create a strange gender schism on Haven Point, or perhaps exacerbated one already there. She was hardly one to judge, though, given how much her own husband had obviously kept from her, and what she was all but agreeing to keep from him.

  “Well.” Maren lifted her chin. “She’s my mother-in-law, and I’m here now. I would appreciate people calling me from now on. I should be the one to see her home.”

  “In your condition?” Georgie looked at her skeptically.

  “I’m not an invalid,” Maren sniffed.

  “All right, fine,” Georgie said. She looked at Maren appraisingly. “My mother likes you, you know.”

  “That’s nice to know. I like her, too,” Maren replied, wondering what Georgie was getting at.

  “She worried at first you were too pretty.”

  “What?” Maren was unable to mask her annoyance.

  “Oh, don’t get angry, Maren,” Georgie said with sigh. “Remember, she’s spent decades watching the wreckage from the last time a Demarest man married a beautiful woman. She knows now you’re not Pauline. We all do.”

  “Nor is Oliver his father,” Maren added, still riled. “He doesn’t exactly fit your description of the Demarest man.”

  “No, Daniel was much more his father’s son. Oliver is not pure Demarest,” Georgie said.

  Maren noticed Georgie’s emphasis on the word “pure,” and the strange ambiguity it left hanging in the air.

  * * *

  Georgie made good on her promise. Five nights later, the phone rang after midnight. Maren swam from a deep sleep and struggled to the landing to pick up the phone.

  “Maren?” It was a woman, whispering.

  “Yes, this is Maren.”

  “It’s Lillian Belmont. I just came downstairs and found Pauline passed out on our front porch. She must have been on her way home from somewhere. She’s dead weight. I called Georgie, but she wasn’t sure she could get out without waking Cappy. She said to try you.”

  “I’ll come,” Maren said, gratified. “Just leave her there.”

  “Okay. I have to get back to bed or Bill will wake up.” She hung up the phone with care.

  Maren was impressed. She’d met Lillian Belmont and thought she seemed meek, the type to defer to her husband. It was testament to Maude’s influence that Lillian had joined this band of conspirators.

  Maren stumbled into a dress, slipped on her tennis shoes, and walked out into the chilly night. With the help of light from the nearly full moon, she made her way to the Belmonts’ house on one of the interior roads, near an entrance to the sanctuary.

  Pauline lay on her side on a wicker love seat, hands pressed together under her cheek. She looked like a child tuckered out from a long day of play. Maren approached quietly. When she got closer, the smell of liquor dissolved any innocence that the scene evoked.

  Maren tried to rouse her, but Pauline wouldn’t budge. When she attempted to lift her, Maren understood what Lillian meant by “dead weight.” Dismayed, she realized she had not thought this through properly. This was not a job for one very pregnant woman.

  She looked around for inspiration and spotted a wheelbarrow next to the detached garage. In the absence of a car, which would be too noisy anyway, it seemed the only answer. Maren tiptoed over, dumped the soil from the wheelbarrow into a flower bed, brushed it out, and wheeled it to the porch.

  Her next task was to move Pauline onto the floor, then down the stairs. She grabbed cushions from a matching love seat on the other side of the porch and placed them beneath Pauline, then half dragged, half lifted her off the love seat. From there, it was a small task to drag the makeshift raft to the edge of the porch.

  But how to get her down the stairs? Maren groaned. Why on earth had she said she could do this alone? She had finally been entrusted by the group of women responsible for Pauline, and she had set herself up to fail her first test.

  Just as tears began to sting, she
heard a sound behind her and spun around to find her salvation: Georgie, in a nightgown, gray cardigan sweater, and green rubber boots—bleary-eyed, but approaching with her usual clunking purpose.

  “Sorry,” Georgie whispered. “I had to wait until Cappy fell back asleep.” Georgie’s eyes moved from Pauline to the wheelbarrow. “I think I see the plan.” She smiled.

  “Can you help me lift her in? Even you can’t carry her all the way home. Trust me.”

  Georgie eyed the scene one more time. “Wait a second,” she said. She quietly climbed the porch stairs, took a smaller cushion from a porch chair, and put it in the wheelbarrow. Then she grabbed Pauline under her shoulders, while Maren took her feet. Together they carried her down the stairs and placed her in the wheelbarrow, back against the cushion near the handles, legs hanging over the front. Pauline’s skirt had ridden up, so Maren pulled it down, sparing her this one indignity.

  “I’ll come back later and put the cushions away,” Georgie said. “Let’s get her out of here.”

  Maren picked up the handles, lifted the wheelbarrow, and began to push as quietly as she could manage. They froze when they heard a noise from the house, and only breathed when it was silent again.

  “Probably just Buster,” Georgie whispered. “Don’t worry. He’s the dumbest dog in Maine.”

  They rolled Pauline to the road and started toward Fourwinds. Maren felt a little thrill at their achievement, but her sense of triumph was short-lived. They were not a hundred yards down the road when she felt a surge of the nausea that accosted her with the slightest exertion. She pushed the wheelbarrow a little faster, hoping to get home before the inevitable.

  “Are you okay?” Georgie asked, squinting at her in the moonlight.

  Maren felt her mouth begin to sweat, the sure sign she’d reached the point of no return. She put the wheelbarrow down, held up her index finger, covered her mouth with her hand, and scurried behind a hedgerow in front of the Ballantines’ house.

  She got sick behind a juniper bush and said a silent prayer that rain would wash it away before Dee Ballantine, the most attentive gardener on Haven Point, caught sight of the mess. She returned to the road, wiped her mouth, then lifted her chin and picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow again.

  “Fine now. Let’s carry on.” Maren began pushing Pauline forward, doing her best to stand up straight and regain what remained of her own dignity. After a few steps, she realized Georgie was no longer beside her.

  She looked back and saw Georgie crouched in the middle of the road, hand over her mouth. Unable to make out more than her silhouette, Maren wondered if Georgie was sick now, too, or maybe in pain. She lowered the wheelbarrow and went to Georgie’s side.

  “Are you okay?” Maren asked. Georgie’s shoulders were shaking.

  Maren soon realized that Georgie, far from suffering, was laughing so hard that tears streamed down her face. Georgie looked up at Maren, a hint of apology in her eyes, but she was not sufficiently chastened to stop laughing.

  Soon Maren also began to laugh. Georgie tried to stand, but was too convulsed to achieve a completely upright position. Before long, neither could Maren. They held on to each other, doubled over in the middle of the road. Occasionally they would catch their breath, but one glimpse of Pauline’s motionless limbs sprawled in every direction would set them off again.

  Eventually they pulled themselves together enough to push the wheelbarrow the final distance to Fourwinds, occasional bursts of laughter emerging as unladylike snorts that made them laugh harder still.

  They managed to get Pauline to her room and Maren walked Georgie back to the front porch. Georgie promised to return the wheelbarrow and cushion to the Belmonts’ house. She took off without bothering to say good-bye, but Maren didn’t mind. Effusion was not Georgie’s way.

  Somehow, she knew everything had changed now—for the better.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  January 2008

  Washington, D.C.

  SKYE

  “Hurry up, will you?” Colette said into the intercom. “It’s colder than a cast-iron commode out here.”

  “Be right down,” Skye said. She pulled on her suede boots, locked the door to the apartment, and headed down the elevator. Colette was outside, rubbing her hands together and doing a little dance to try to keep warm.

  They race-walked through the snow to Soulas, where they left the frigid air for the cozy warmth. Adriene and a few of her colleagues from the U.S. attorney’s office were at the bar, seated at one of the high-top tables.

  Skye and Colette reached them just as Adriene’s uncle Nico was coming out of the kitchen. Nico plopped a plate on the table then greeted Skye with a kiss on each cheek.

  “You’re too thin. You eat some of that.” Nico nodded at the plate of pan-fried feta before bustling back to the kitchen. Skye laughed. Nico had greeted her the same way since she was fourteen years old.

  “Eat! Eat!” Adriene threw up her hands in imitation. “Such a cliché.”

  “I see you got him to paint over the mural, though,” Skye said, nodding toward the warm neutral walls of the restaurant area.

  “It was the worst,” Adriene explained to Colette. “Pillars, blue domes. Looked like a gift shop in Santorini.”

  Skye greeted Adriene’s colleagues, introduced Colette, then slipped onto the bar stool next to Adriene.

  “So, who’s this mystery guest?”

  “You’ll see.” Adriene looked Skye up and down, taking in her jeans and green cashmere sweater. She nodded in approval. “Looking good.”

  Adriene had called that afternoon to tell Skye she had invited someone to join them for drinks.

  “Smarten yourself up. I don’t want to see you in your uniform,” she said.

  “It’s called a capsule wardrobe. This isn’t another setup, is it?”

  “It’s someone you know,” Adriene replied.

  Adriene, of course, had come straight from work but still managed to make her conservative suit look like a “sexy prosecutor” Halloween costume.

  “So, how’s work, girls?” Adriene asked as her cousin Petra delivered glasses of wine to the table.

  “Same as always. Mac’s crazier than a shot-at rat,” Colette said, in her southwest Virginia accent. “We’ve got this new fund-raising consultant, Jennifer Heubert. She’s been prancing around the office in skirts so short you can see her religion.”

  Adriene shot Skye a look that said huh? Skye loathed almost everything about her job, but at least she had Colette. Not only was she the only other sane person in the office of Virginia congressman Randall Vernon, trying to decipher her Southernisms gave Skye and Adriene something to do.

  “Now Jennifer’s got the congressman’s attention, which I’m sure is what she was after,” Colette continued. “That Vernon’s a hard dog to keep on the porch as it is, and you can bet Shelley Vernon’s watching Jennifer close.”

  “I can’t imagine a more vigilant species than the third wife of a billionaire,” Adriene said drily.

  They had been chatting for a while when Skye noticed Adriene sit up a little straighter.

  “And there he is.” Adriene smiled and waved in the direction of the door.

  Skye had not laid eyes on Ben Barrows since the summer she and Adriene were on Haven Point together, but she would have known him anywhere. Evidently some muscle in her heart also stored the memory, because it fluttered involuntarily.

  “Ben? What brought him to town?” Skye asked.

  “He lives here.” Adriene raised her eyebrows.

  Ben caught Skye’s eye, smiled, and headed in their direction.

  “He’s clerking for a federal judge. I ran into him at a legal event,” Adriene quickly added, before he was in earshot.

  Skye rose, and he greeted her with a kiss on the cheek.

  “Good to see you, Skye,” he said. “I didn’t realize you’d moved back from Chicago until Adriene told me today.”

  “Good to see you, too,” Skye said, sur
prised he even knew she had lived in Chicago.

  Petra reappeared and helped Adriene move coats and drag stools from another table, while Skye managed the introductions. Adriene, with customary command, ordered everyone around until Skye found herself at the end of the table next to Ben.

  Ben had gotten ridiculously handsome. He had tamed his wavy brown hair with a shorter cut. His face was more defined than she remembered, but had none of the harsh angularity of his grandmother’s. He did not seem particularly aware of the transformation, however. He still had the same easy, unaffected smile she remembered.

  They filled each other in on the intervening years. After playing lacrosse at Williams, Ben worked for the mayor of Hartford. He ended up at UVA Law School and had started his clerkship the previous September.

  Until the year before, Skye had been on a reasonably steady path, too. After she graduated from Northwestern, she got a job in corporate communications for a Fortune 100 company and eventually became one of the CEO’s top speechwriters.

  When Ben asked what brought her back to D.C., however, she found herself slipping into her old habit of selective editing.

  “Oh, it just felt like time. And political communications is a pretty natural transition from what I’d been doing,” Skye said. It was all true, just wildly misleading.

  “Is your mom still teaching?”

  “She’s just selling her own work now,” Skye replied, omitting the fact that her mom would not even be doing that had Flora not found galleries and online retailers to market giclée prints of her mom’s old bird paintings. Anne hadn’t worked on anything original in more than a year. When Skye moved home, she discovered she wasn’t even depositing checks from what she did sell.

  Fortunately, before Ben could ask more questions in that vein, Colette interrupted from the other end of the table.

  “Skye, these guys don’t believe me about Mac and the height discrimination. Tell them.”

  “So blatant. Every time our chief of staff fires someone, which is about once a week, he brings in one of his henchmen as a replacement. They’re all shorter than him.”