The Perfect Couple

by Elin Hilderbrand

  She is suddenly in an incredibly foul humor. She doesn’t even want to go to dinner.

  She peers down at the deck from her bedroom window. The champagne remains in the ice bucket—but Benji and Shooter are gone.

  There is a whisper of a noise and Celeste turns to see a slip of paper slide under the bedroom door. She freezes. She hears footsteps retreating. After a few moments pass, she tiptoes over to pick up the paper. It says: In case you have any doubts, I’m in love with you. The handwriting is unfamiliar. It’s not Benji’s.

  Celeste clutches the note to her chest and sits on the bed. This is either the most wonderful or the most horrible thing ever to happen to her.

  “Celeste!”

  Benji is calling up the stairs for her. Celeste crumples the note. What should she do with it? She reads it one more time, then she flushes it down the toilet.

  “Coming!” she says.

  Shooter has changed into Nantucket Reds, a white shirt, a double-breasted blue blazer, and a captain’s hat that Celeste had noticed hanging on a hook in the Winburys’ mudroom but that she assumed was just a prop of sorts.

  “Nice hat!” Celeste says. Shooter doesn’t crack a smile.

  Benji leads Celeste out to the end of the Winburys’ dock, where a boat is waiting. It’s Ella, the Winburys’ Hinckley picnic boat. It’s so sleek and beautiful with its gleaming wood and pristine navy-and-white cushioned benches that Celeste is afraid to climb aboard. Shooter gets on first and offers his hand to Celeste. She wants to squeeze his hand to let him know she got his note and she feels the same way—but she is afraid of Benji noticing.

  She and Benji settle in the back while Shooter takes the wheel. Benji opens the champagne, fills two waiting flutes, and hands one to Celeste.

  “Cheers,” he says.

  “Cheers,” Celeste says. She clinks glasses with Benji and forces herself to make eye contact with him. Every second is a struggle to keep her gaze off Shooter in the captain’s chair. “Is Shooter not having any?”

  “Shooter is not having any,” Benji says. “He’s our skipper tonight.”

  “Where are we going?” Celeste asks.

  “You’ll see,” Benji says.

  Celeste leans back in her seat but she can’t relax. Shooter is at the wheel in that ridiculous hat; it’s almost as if Benji has set out to humiliate him. But maybe she’s overreacting. Maybe Shooter offered to drive the boat; maybe he likes it. It is a stunner of an evening, the air clear and mild, the water of the harbor a mirror that reflects the rich golden light of the sun behind them. Other boaters wave as they pass. One gentleman calls out, “Beautiful,” and Benji calls back, “Isn’t she?” and kisses Celeste.

  Celeste says, “I’m sure he was talking about the boat.”

  “The boat, you, me, this incredible night,” Benji says.

  Right, Celeste thinks. From a distance, they must seem like the most fortunate, privileged couple in the world. No one would ever guess Celeste’s private torment.

  She sips her champagne. Benji wraps his arm around her and pulls her in close. “I missed you,” he says.

  “How was golf?” she asks. He doesn’t answer, which is just as well.

  They dock at the Wauwinet Inn. Shooter is surprisingly skilled with the ropes and knots, making Celeste wonder at his other hidden talents. Playing the harmonica? Shooting a bow and arrow? Skiing moguls? He secures the boat and then helps Celeste up onto the dock. Benji climbs up behind Celeste and checks his watch. “We’ll be back at nine o’clock,” he tells Shooter.

  “Wait a minute,” Celeste says. Her heart feels like it’s being squeezed. She turns to Shooter. “Aren’t you coming to dinner?”

  Shooter smiles but his blue eyes are as flat as eyes in a painting. “I’ll be here when you’re finished,” he says.

  Celeste wobbles in her wedge heels. She’s unsteady in heels on a good day, never mind on a dock under the present circumstances. Benji takes her arm and leads her down the dock to the hotel.

  When they are out of earshot, Celeste says, “I don’t get it. Why isn’t Shooter coming to dinner?”

  “Because I want to have a romantic dinner with my girlfriend,” Benji says. For the first time since she has known him, he sounds petulant, like one of the cranky children who are at the zoo past their nap time. This show of unexpected attitude provokes Celeste.

  “So, what, you just hired him to drive the boat? He’s our friend, Benji. He’s not your servant.”

  Benji says, “I should have realized you would find this scenario unjust. But when I told Shooter my plans to bring you up here, he offered. He’s going to grab dinner in the bar.”

  “By himself?” Celeste says.

  “It’s Shooter,” Benji says. “I’m sure he’ll make some friends.”

  Dinner at Topper’s is an extraordinary experience, with attention given to every detail. Drinks are brought on a tiered cocktail tray; Benji’s gin and tonic is mixed at the table with a glass swizzle stick. The bread basket features warm, fragrant rosemary focaccia, homemade bacon-and-sage rolls, and twisted cheddar-garlic bread sticks that look like the branches of a tree in an enchanted forest. Under other circumstances, Celeste would be committing all this to memory so she could describe it for her parents later, but she is preoccupied with the one sentence written on the note that was slipped under her door. In case you have any doubts, I’m in love with you.

  Their appetizers arrive under silver domes. The server lifts both domes at once with a theatrical flourish. The food is artwork—vegetables are cut to resemble jewels; sauces are painted across plates. Benji ordered a wine that is apparently so rare and amazing, it made the sommelier stammer.

  Celeste doesn’t care. Shooter’s absence is more powerful than Benji’s presence. She does a desultory job on her appetizer—summer vegetables with stracciatella cheese—then excuses herself for the ladies’ room.

  On her way, she walks past a window that opens onto an intimate enclave that has five seats at a mahogany bar, a television showing the Red Sox game, and a handful of tables with high-backed rattan chairs. The bar has a clubby, colonial British feel that is a little cozier and more casual than the dining room.

  Shooter is sitting at the bar alone, drinking a martini.

  Celeste stares at Shooter’s back and does a gut check. Talk to him or leave him be? Talk to him! She will tell him she feels the same way, and then later they can make a plan to be together without hurting Benji. But before Celeste sets foot in the bar, a woman appears. She’s wearing black pants, a black apron, a white shirt open at the collar. Oh, she’s the bartender, Celeste thinks with relief. She’s quite attractive, with short, dark, bobbed hair, cat’s-eye glasses, and dark red lipstick. She approaches Shooter and he gives her a hug, then pulls her into his lap and starts tickling her. She shrieks with laughter—through the closed door, Celeste can just barely hear it—and just as Celeste’s emotions are curdling into hurt and rage, the bartender stands up, straightens her apron, and gets back to work.

  Celeste slams into the ladies’ room, startling a woman applying her lipstick at the sink.

  When Celeste returns to the table, Benji stands up. He is a gentleman, she thinks. And she will never have to worry about him.

  Between dinner and dessert—they have ordered the soufflé, which takes extra time to prepare—Benji pulls something out of his coat pocket. It’s a small box. Celeste stares at the box almost without seeing it.

  She realizes she knew this was coming.

  “I didn’t go golfing today,” Benji says. “I flew back to the city to pick up a little something.” He opens the box to reveal the most insanely beautiful diamond ring Celeste has ever seen.

  She bobs her head at the ring once, as if being formally introduced to it.

  “Will you marry me, Celeste?” Benji asks.

  Celeste’s eyes fill with tears. Not only did she know this was coming but Shooter did too. And yet he still took her to Smith’s Point, still showed her how to ride
the current, still bought her a birding book, still called her Sunshine, and still made her feel like she was, in fact, the brightest light in the sky. And then he slipped that note under her door.

  In case you have any doubts.

  He didn’t mean in case Celeste had any doubts about him. He meant in case Celeste had any doubts about marrying Benji.

  I’m in love with you.

  Shooter is a gambler. He’s throwing the dice to see if he can win. It’s a game to him, she tells herself. His feelings aren’t real.

  With her napkin, she blots the tears that drip down her cheeks. She can’t look at Benji because if she does, he’ll see they are tears of confusion, but right now he must be assuming—or hoping—that they are tears of overwhelmed joy.

  The whole thing is a mess, a giant, emotionally tangled mess, and Celeste has half a mind to stand up and walk out on both men. She will get herself home, back to Easton, back to her parents.

  Celeste thinks of Shooter pulling the sexy, bespectacled bartender into his lap, his wicked grin, his fingers tickling the other woman’s ribs. Celeste would have a miserable life with Shooter. Her feelings for him are too strong; they would be her undoing. A better, wiser choice is to marry Benji. Celeste will continue to be who she has always been: The center of someone else’s universe. Beloved.

  “Yes,” Celeste whispers. “Yes, I will marry you.”

  When Benji and Celeste arrive back at the boat, Shooter is waiting. He has the gleam of a martini or three in his eyes. His hair is mussed; there is a smudge of the bartender’s red lipstick on his cheek.

  In case you have any doubts, I’m in love with you.

  “So how’d it go?” Shooter asks with corny enthusiasm. It might have been more like five martinis, Celeste thinks. Shooter’s words are slurred. Benji will have to drive the boat home.

  Celeste holds out her left hand. “We’re engaged.”

  Shooter locks eyes with her. You lost, she thinks, gloating for a second. But then she corrects herself. They both lost.

  “Well,” he says. “Congratulations.”

  Benji insists that Celeste call her parents on the boat ride home, but strangely, they don’t answer. It’s even stranger when Benji tells her that he spoke to both Bruce and Karen earlier in the week, told them his intentions, asked for their blessing. They were over the moon, he says.

  Celeste leaves a message on the answering machine asking them to call her back. She doesn’t hear from them at all on Saturday. When she calls again on Sunday morning, her father answers, but something is wrong. Her father is crying.

  “Daddy?” Celeste says. She holds out hope for one second that he’s weeping sentimentally over news of the engagement.

  “It’s your mother,” he says.

  Saturday, July 7, 2018, 1:12 p.m.

  NANTUCKET

  As the day unfolds, news about the Murdered Maid of Honor spreads across the island. Because nobody knows what happened, everything and anything becomes a possibility.

  A group of New York Millennial women having lunch and cocktails at Cru are told the news by their server, Ryan.

  “As if being maid of honor isn’t hard enough,” says Zoe Stanton, a store manager at Opening Ceremony.

  “Maid of honor,” a PR associate named Sage Kennedy murmurs. A bell goes off in Sage’s head. “What was the woman’s name?”

  “Not yet released,” says Lauren Doherty, a physical therapist at the Hospital for Special Surgery.

  Sage pulls her phone out despite her resolution not to use it at meals (unless she’s dining alone). She is pretty sure she follows someone on Instagram who was serving as a maid of honor at a wedding on Nantucket this weekend.

  She gasps. It’s Merritt. Merritt Monaco.

  Sage gets a chill that starts at her feet and travels up her spine to the base of her brain. Once upon a time, Sage and Merritt worked together at a PR firm called Brightstreet, owned by Travis and Cordelia Darling. Merritt had an extremely ill-advised affair with Travis Darling and when Cordelia found out—well, Sage had never seen anyone so hell-bent on exacting revenge. She’d cringed as she listened to Cordelia bad-mouth Merritt to absolutely every single one of their clients, calling her disgusting names. Cordelia even contacted Merritt’s parents. Her parents, as though Cordelia were the high-school principal and Merritt had been caught setting a fire in the cafeteria. With Merritt’s dismissal, Sage’s own position in the company improved; she was, essentially, given all of Merritt’s responsibilities. Another girl might have delighted in the career-ending poor decisions of the person directly above her—but Sage just felt bad. She suspected that the affair had been Travis Darling’s fault. He was creepy.

  Sage had wanted to contact Merritt after the smoke cleared, but she was afraid of going behind Cordelia’s back. When Cordelia announced that she was moving the business to Los Angeles, Sage took the sparkling reference and robust severance package and immediately found another job. She texted Merritt with news of Cordelia’s departure, and Merritt had responded: Thanks for letting me know.

  They hadn’t become friends, by any means, but Sage kept a cyber-eye on Merritt. She followed her on Instagram under an account with a made-up name—which was strange, she realized, but less complicated than following, liking, and commenting as her real self. She found herself cheering Merritt on as she got a new job at the Wildlife Conservation Society and started stumping for Parker and Young, Fabulous, and Broke, as well as nearly every hot restaurant and club that opened south of Fourteenth Street.

  There had been recent posts about Merritt’s upcoming maid-of-honor duty this weekend on Nantucket. Earlier this week, Merritt had posted a photo of herself modeling her bridesmaid dress—it was antique-ivory silk with black embroidery on the bodice, meant to look like classic scrimshaw, which Sage thought was such a cool idea—with the caption: Tonight I am Nantucket-bound. #MOH #weddingoftheyear #BFF.

  Had someone murdered Merritt?

  Sage stared down at her lobster roll and her full glass of Rock Angel rosé, her appetite for lunch gone. Who would want to kill Merritt?

  Cordelia, she thinks. She sips her rosé for fortitude and wonders if it’s remotely possible that Cordelia came to Nantucket, somehow infiltrated the wedding festivities—maybe dressing up as one of the catering crew—and got to Merritt that way. Absurd? Only happens in the movies? Normally, Sage would think that, but she will forever be haunted by the vitriol she had seen emanating from Cordelia Darling in the days following her discovery of the affair.

  Cordelia is in Los Angeles, Sage tells herself. There is no reason for her to celebrate the Fourth of July week on Nantucket; the West Coast has its own beaches.

  Sage puts her phone away and smiles at her friends. It might not even be Merritt, she thinks. She follows Lauren’s gaze out the open sides of the restaurant. The vista is nothing short of spectacular: sparkling blue harbor, sailboats, seagulls, the bluffs of Shawkemo in the distance. How could anything bad ever happen here?

  The Murdered Maid of Honor is all anyone is talking about across town at the Greydon House on Broad Street. Heather Clymer, who is staying with her husband, Steve, in room 2, has just gotten back from the Hospital Thrift Shop, where she heard the whole story from one of the volunteers. Heather brought the story back to the Greydon House, where it spread like a virus: the maid of honor in a big, fancy wedding out in Monomoy was found early that morning floating in the harbor, and both local and state authorities suspect foul play.

  Laney and Casper Morris are standing by the hotel’s front desk and are just about to head down the street to the Nantucket Whaling Museum when they hear the news. Laney digs her fingernails into Casper’s forearm.

  “Ouch,” Casper says. He’s already a bit irritated with Laney for making him go to the Whaling Museum on such a gorgeous, sunny day, the final day of their vacation. They should be headed to the beach! The Whaling Museum isn’t going anywhere; they can tour it when they’re old.

  “A big, fancy wedding out
in Monomoy?” Laney says. She pulls Casper back into their elegantly appointed room, where Casper collapses on the bed, grateful for the delay in their day’s agenda. “The maid of honor was found floating. She’s dead. You know whose wedding that is, right? Out in Monomoy?”

  “Benji’s?” Casper guesses. He knows this is the right answer; it’s basically all Laney has been talking about this week because Laney’s best friend is Jules Briar, Benji’s ex-girlfriend. Casper isn’t a big fan of Jules and he knows the friendship wears on Laney as well, but she and Jules have known each other since first grade at Spence and some habits are hard to break. Jules somehow discovered that Benji was getting married this weekend on Nantucket, and when Jules learned that Laney and Casper would be on the island as well, she implored Laney to keep an eye out and report back. Jules is insanely jealous of Benji’s fiancée, whom he had met when Benji and Jules took Miranda to the zoo!

  Laney had done exactly as Jules asked. Last night, when they were standing in line at the Juice Bar, Laney had seen Shooter Uxley, Benji’s best friend, outside of Steamboat Pizza. He was with a blond woman. Laney took a picture of Shooter and the blonde and texted it to Jules.

  Jules responded immediately. That’s her! That’s zoo woman! Benji’s fiancée!

  They texted back and forth about why the fiancée—Celeste Otis, her name was; Jules had done the requisite stalking—was getting pizza with Shooter instead of Benji. Then they texted about how much they missed Shooter. He had been so much fun.

  Now Laney says, “The maid of honor was killed. Poor Benji!”

  “Maybe Benji did it,” Casper says, and then he laughs because Benjamin Winbury is one of the nicest guys to ever walk the planet, so nice that Casper used to give him a hard time for making the rest of the male population look bad. And, too, Casper has had his own murderous thoughts about some of Laney’s friends; the subject of their present conversation ranks at the top of the list.