The Perfect Couple

by Elin Hilderbrand

  He waits. Nothing happens. Tag saw Thomas, but is it possible that Thomas didn’t see Tag or saw him but somehow didn’t register the face as that of his father?

  Enough time passes that Tag decides to take action. He peers around the column. Thomas is staring into his highball glass. He looks miserable. As much as Tag realizes the urgency of him leaving the bar while he can, he’s arrested by his elder son’s demeanor. He thinks back to the phone call from Sergio. Thomas is leaving work early; Thomas is taking unscheduled vacations. And now here he is having a drink at a hotel bar at the far tip of Manhattan, which isn’t anywhere close to his office. Tag wants to sit down next to Thomas and ask him what’s going on.

  Maybe he’s been fired?

  Maybe Abby lost the baby?

  If it’s either of those, Tag will find out soon enough. He needs to get out of the bar undetected. He turns and hurries out, hoping Thomas won’t recognize him from behind. He goes back up to the room for his bag and texts Merritt.

  Something came up. Room 1011 is yours for the night. There’s champagne and a little gift for you. But I have to take a raincheck. Sorry about that. Happy birthday, Parkway.

  Tag takes a taxi back uptown and walks into his apartment to find Greer in her yoga clothes, folded over in child’s pose on the living-room rug. She looks up and beams. “You’re home!” she says.

  And just like that, the spell is broken. Tag is finished fooling around. He is back to being a dutiful husband, a steadfast father, and an expectant grandfather. Merritt calls in tears; she leaves messages, sends texts. She calls him a bastard, she tells him to stick a fork in his eye, only that’s not how she phrases it.

  She calls Tag’s office and speaks to Miss Hillery, Tag’s very proper, very British secretary, who is so devoted to Tag that she followed him over from London.

  “A Ms. Parkway called?” Miss Hillery says, handing Tag the message slip. “She said it’s urgent.”

  “Thank you, Miss Hillery,” Tag says with what he hopes is a carefree smile. He closes the door to his office and collapses at his desk. Merritt calling him at the office is one step away from Merritt calling the apartment or—because Tag knows Celeste might naively give Merritt the number—calling Greer’s cell phone.

  Well, she’s going to get what she wants. Tag calls Merritt back.

  “Tag?” she says.

  “What on God’s green earth are you doing?” he asks. “You can’t call me here.”

  “I’m pregnant,” she says.

  Saturday, July 7, 2018, 12:00 p.m.

  NANTUCKET

  By midmorning, the entire island is buzzing with news of the Murdered Maid of Honor. Marty Szczerba calls his daughter, Laura Rae, initially just to hear the sound of her voice and to reassure himself that she is okay, but then he asks about Adi Conover—is she okay?—and Laura Rae says, “Yes, Dad, obviously. What’s wrong with you?” Marty ends up spilling the whole story, or what he knows of it. Laura Rae tells her fiancé, Ty, who works for Toscana Excavating and who is as tight-lipped as they come. But Ty swings by his mother’s house for a second breakfast and he tells her the story. Carla, Ty’s mother, volunteers at the Hospital Thrift Shop Saturdays at noon and she proceeds to tell every single person who walks in the door.

  Finn MacAvoy gets a text from his girlfriend, Lola Budd, saying I caught a murder suspect! Finn is at Cisco Beach giving surfing lessons to a group of overprivileged eight-year-olds who all want to be John John Florence. Finn casually flings out the content of Lola’s text. “My girlfriend caught a murder suspect,” he says.

  The next thing Finn knows, he is surrounded by the young surfers’ mothers, and they’re all talking about someone called the Murdered Maid of Honor and they ask Finn if the police had caught the guy and who it was and Finn is sorry he ever opened his mouth.

  Finn’s twin sister, Chloe MacAvoy, has taken to her bed despite the fact that it’s a hot, sunny summer Saturday and work that day has been canceled. Work has been canceled because Merritt Monaco, the maid of honor in the Otis-Winbury wedding, is dead. Roger Pelton found her floating just off the beach earlier that morning.

  Siobhan had called to tell Chloe about the death herself instead of having Donna, the waitstaff manager, do it because Siobhan is that kind of owner. She takes responsibility for her employees.

  “Chloe,” she said. “The wedding has been canceled. Merritt Monaco, the maid of honor, passed away overnight.”

  “Passed away?”

  “She died, Chloe,” Siobhan said. “She’s dead. She drowned out in front of the house last night.”

  “But…” Chloe said.

  “That’s all we know for now,” Siobhan said. “The police are working on it.”

  The police? Chloe thought. She had seen Uncle Ed out on the deck on his phone a short while earlier, but Uncle Ed was always on the phone.

  Chloe had hung up with Siobhan and closed her eyes. Chloe had been kept far away from death since she was seven years old, when Uncle Ed and Auntie came to tell her and Finn that their parents were dead. Both of them at once, killed in a sailing accident. Chloe hadn’t really gotten it then; she had been too young. What did she know of death at age seven? Not one thing. Her parents’ death has gotten much worse for Chloe as she’s grown older. Now she knows what she’s missing. She has no father to treat her like a princess; she has no mother to rebel against. She does have Uncle Ed and Auntie and they are strong, reliable, capable caregivers… but they aren’t her parents. Whenever Chloe thinks about her father playing “Please Come to Boston” on his guitar or her mother painting a rose on Chloe’s cheek, she feels unbearably sad.

  She texted Blake, a girl who worked with her, Merritt, the maid of honor, is dead.

  Blake texted back, I know. I heard there was a lot of blood.

  Chloe ran to the bathroom to throw up. After the rehearsal dinner the night before, Chloe had a few beers with Blake and Geraldo. Geraldo is twenty-four years old, from El Salvador, and he always provides Chloe and Blake with postshift alcohol.

  Uncle Ed had knocked on the door. “You okay in there?”

  “Fine,” Chloe said. She wanted to ask Uncle Ed about Merritt but she couldn’t handle the conversation right that second. She cursed Geraldo.

  Now, back in bed, Chloe revisits the events of the party. Most jobs go the same way. Chloe and her co-workers show up early in their immaculate black pants and crisp white shirts, showered, fresh-faced, ready to serve. Because she is only sixteen, Chloe can’t serve alcohol, although this rule gets bent all the time. Nearly the first thing that happened at this rehearsal dinner was that Greer Garrison, the mother of the groom, asked Chloe for a refill of champagne. Chloe told Ian, the bartender, that he needed to serve Ms. Garrison but Ian was three-deep and he told Chloe to find Geraldo. But Geraldo wasn’t around and Greer Garrison sang out for a refill again with a pointed look at Chloe, so Chloe grabbed the Veuve Clicquot from the cooler and discreetly filled Ms. Garrison’s glass.

  Chloe didn’t notice much else about the actual festivities other than the guests growing drunker and drunker. There was a blackberry mojito punch and the guests were inhaling it. Chloe cleared a bunch of half-empty punch cups with mint leaves and whole fat blackberries trapped among the melting ice; she brought them to the kitchen, where she found Geraldo manning the kitchen trash. He picked up the cup with the most punch and drank it.

  “Ew,” Chloe said. “Someone else’s mouth was on that. Also, if Siobhan sees you doing that, she’ll fire you.”

  “Siobhan just left,” Geraldo said. “She has four other events tonight. She won’t be back.”

  “Donna, then,” Chloe said, but they both knew Donna wasn’t strict at all. If she saw Geraldo drinking, she would do no more than roll her eyes.

  “Try it,” Geraldo said.

  “No,” Chloe said.

  “Just try it,” Geraldo said.

  Chloe had never been good at resisting peer pressure. Plus, the drink was a delicious-looking purple colo
r. Chloe drank half a cup without letting her lips touch the rim. The drink was so fruity and minty that she could barely taste the alcohol, but almost instantly she felt lighter, more relaxed.

  She fell into the habit of sneaking a few sips of punch whenever she cleared. She wasn’t getting drunk, she didn’t think; if anything, the punch was making her more perceptive. Chloe wanted to be a writer like Greer Garrison. But she didn’t want to write murder mysteries; she wanted to write a blog about fashion and lifestyle, what was new, what was hot. The great thing about this wedding in particular was how attractive and stylish everyone was. Chloe had mentally snapped pictures of at least four outfits, including the outstanding jumpsuit that Greer Garrison was wearing. She looked amazing and she was in her fifties!

  When Chloe was heading back to the kitchen—there was a British woman at table 4 who demanded more biscuits—she smelled smoke, and as Greer had decreed there was to be absolutely no smoking anywhere on the premises, Chloe decided the biscuits could wait and she went in search of the source. She had found the maid of honor on the side porch, smoking a cigarette and ashing into the lace hydrangea bush below.

  Chloe was about to open her mouth to let her know smoke was blowing into the house when a man walked up the outside steps of the side porch. It was the groom’s father. He took a drag off the maid of honor’s cigarette and he leaned his elbows on the railing next to her.

  Chloe should have gone back to work. If the father of the groom, who owned this house, sanctioned the smoking, then it must have been okay. But Chloe stayed plugged in right where she was. The maid of honor was cooler than cool. She wore a stretchy black tank dress with straps that crisscrossed and a very low dip in the back and a leather-and-crystal choker that Chloe thought could have come from Van Cleef and Arpels or could have been purchased at a flea market in Mumbai; it was impossible to tell, which was what made it cool.

  “You have to get rid of it,” the father of the groom said.

  “I can’t,” the maid of honor said.

  “You can,” the father of the groom said.

  “I won’t.”

  “Merritt, you don’t want a baby.”

  Chloe pressed her lips together.

  “I don’t want a baby,” Merritt said. “But I do want you. I want you, Tag, and this is your baby. It’s my connection to you.”

  “I could call your bluff,” Tag said. “How do I know the baby is mine? It could just as easily be Robbie’s.”

  “I haven’t slept with Robbie since last year,” Merritt says. “And nothing happened a few weeks ago. You saw to that, didn’t you?”

  “How can I be sure you’re really pregnant? How do I know you haven’t gotten rid of it already? Here you are smoking. If you’re so set on having the baby, why not start taking care of it?”

  “It’s none of your business what I do,” Merritt said.

  “Either it is or it isn’t,” Tag said. He flicked the cigarette into the lace hydrangea. “Make up your mind.”

  “Tag…”

  “We are going to get through this wedding,” Tag said. “And when you leave on Sunday, I’ll write you a check. But then that’s it, Merritt. This is over.” Tag disappeared from Chloe’s view—down the stairs, she imagined, and back to the party.

  “I’ll tell Greer!” Merritt called out after him.

  There was no response and Merritt dissolved into tears. Chloe had the urge to comfort her, but at the same time she was thinking, What a scandal. The maid of honor was pregnant with the father of the groom’s baby! He wanted her to get rid of it; she wanted to be with him. He wanted to pay her off; she threatened blackmail.

  “Chica!” Geraldo was gesturing from down the hall, and Chloe hurried toward him. She needed to get back to work.

  Despite what she had witnessed, or maybe because of it, Chloe continued to sneak drinks. It didn’t seem to be affecting her work performance. She served the clambake, cleared the clambake; she half listened to the toasts. She served dessert and then cleared dessert. People started to dance. Chloe looked for Merritt, the maid of honor, but didn’t see her. Tag, meanwhile, was dancing with Greer.

  The party was coming to an end. The band played its final song and Chloe switched into what she thought of as turbo-clear mode. Anything not nailed down was going back to the kitchen. There had been champagne toasts, so there was a slew of slender flutes, which were more difficult to transport than punch cups because of their high center of gravity. Chloe tried to be mindful. It was dark, the terrain was uneven, and she had had no small amount of punch herself. She was carrying a full tray of flutes with varying levels of champagne remaining. Chloe was debating whether she should start drinking the champagne—Veuve Clicquot was very expensive, she knew—and she was also thinking of a musical instrument she had once seen that was nothing more than a collection of water glasses filled to different levels that some dude played with one wetted finger when the toe of her clog caught the raised lip where the lawn met the beach. The tray went flying; the glasses shattered. The sound was one from the recurring nightmares of servers everywhere. Chloe cringed. She willed the tray to fly back up into her hands like a film in reverse, the glasses restored to whole. She was relieved that the party was ending and no one seemed to have noticed her display of utter gracelessness.

  But then a voice came from out of the darkness. “Here, let me help.”

  Chloe looked up from the wreckage. It was Merritt, the maid of honor, in her cool black dress.

  “You don’t have to,” Chloe said. “It’s my fault.”

  “Could have happened to anyone,” Merritt said. “Would have happened to me, I assure you, if I’d been brave enough to do this job at your age.”

  Chloe stared at Merritt for a second. She was intrigued and embarrassed now that they were face-to-face. Chloe knew Merritt’s secret but Merritt didn’t know that Chloe knew. If Merritt had realized Chloe knew that she was pregnant with the groom’s father’s baby, she would have been… what? Angry that Chloe eavesdropped? Mortified by the example she was setting? Chloe kept her face down so as not to give anything away in her expression. She picked the bigger shards out of the grass. They clinked on the tray.

  “What’s your name?” Merritt asked.

  “Chloe MacAvoy.”

  “Where do you live, Chloe?”

  “Here,” Chloe said. “On Nantucket. Year-round.”

  Merritt sighed. “Well, then, you’re the luckiest girl in the world.”

  “Where do you live?” Chloe asked.

  “I live in New York City,” Merritt said. “I work in PR there and I do some influencing stuff on Instagram.”

  “Oh.” Chloe swallowed. “Really? What’s your name? I’ll follow you.”

  “At Merritt—two r’s, two t’s—Monaco, like the country. Can you remember that? I’d be honored if you followed me, Chloe. I’ll keep an eye out and follow you back.”

  “You will?” Chloe said. She felt insanely flattered—Merritt was an influencer!—even as she knew she should not put Merritt on any kind of pedestal. If she ever got into the position Merritt was in, Auntie and Uncle Ed would be extremely disappointed. Still, she couldn’t help but feel a bit of starstruck awe. “I love your dress. Do you mind telling me who it’s by?”

  Merritt looked down as if to remind herself what she was wearing. “Young, Fabulous, and Broke,” she said. “Which describes me.” Her smile faded. “Well, two out of three, anyway.”

  Once the glass was all picked up and Merritt had hurried off to find Celeste, Chloe wanted to finish cleaning up and leave. She presented the tray of broken glass to Donna, who frowned but then said, “Happens to the best of us, kid.”

  Geraldo said, “Let’s get out of here, chica.”

  Chloe had to go to the bathroom. Badly. Siobhan didn’t like them to use the restrooms unless it was an absolute emergency, and this definitely qualified. There was a powder room designated for guests, and now that most of the guests had left, it was unoccupied.


  When Chloe emerged a few minutes later, she turned left down the hall toward what she thought was the front door and freedom. But the hall led her into a living room.

  “Hey,” a voice said.

  Chloe peered into the room but saw no one. Then, from a chair that looked like a scoop of vanilla ice cream, a woman sat up. It was the woman who had been so rude about the cheddar biscuits and had sent Chloe in search of more. And see that they’re warm!

  “Hello?” Chloe said.

  “Can you bring me a bottle of something, doll face?” the woman said. “Whiskey? Vodka? Some of that champagne Greer was drinking?”

  “Uh…” Chloe said. “The party is over, actually.”

  “The official party is over,” the woman said. She had a bad dye job, blond turning a rust color at the part. “Now is the after-party and as I’ve run dry, I need your help.”

  “I’m only sixteen,” Chloe said. “I can’t serve alcohol. It’s against the law.”

  The woman laughed. “Ha! What if I give you a hundred pounds? Or, wait, a hundred… what do you Yanks call them? Bucks!”

  A hundred bucks? It was tempting. Chloe knew how easy it would be to pluck a bottle from the boxes waiting to go back out to the catering truck. But she thought of Merritt. One wayward decision might lead to another, she feared.

  “I’m sorry,” Chloe said. “I have to get home.”

  “Sweetie, please,” the woman said. “I’m desperate. I would have bet my last shilling that Tag Winbury kept scotch in every room, but I can’t find a drop. And you are the catering help, aren’t you? So it’s your job to bring me what I want.”

  “I’m sorry,” Chloe said. “I’m off the clock. I’m leaving now.” She gave the woman what she hoped was a professional smile and turned around. She headed back the way she’d come and zipped out the side door of the house. Because, really, how much could she be expected to deal with in one night?