The Perfect Couple

by Elin Hilderbrand

  Besides, Shooter is going. And Merritt—Celeste needs to keep an eye on Merritt. However, when they are all piling into cars, Merritt is missing.

  “Wait a minute,” Celeste says. She climbs out of the Winburys’ Land Rover and runs across the driveway to the second cottage. She pokes her head in but the lights are off; Merritt isn’t there.

  “Celeste,” Benji says. “Come on!”

  “I have to find Merritt,” she says. She tries to remember the last time she saw Merritt. It was during the dinner, obviously, but Celeste had to meet and mingle with so many people that she didn’t get to spend any time with her one true friend. And Merritt didn’t give a toast, even though she’d intimated that she might. Please, Celeste thinks, don’t let her be with Tag. But that has to be it. Where else could she be? She is always the one leading the charge when it comes to continuing the fun.

  Celeste tears through the house checking each room—the kitchen, the formal dining room, the casual dining room, the powder room, even the glowing cube that is the wine cellar. She goes down the hall and checks the alcove outside Greer and Tag’s room but she doesn’t have the courage to knock on their bedroom door or on the door to Tag’s study. She scurries down to poke her head into the white living room, even though she has never once set foot in there. She sees a figure in one of the chairs and she’s so startled, she cries out.

  “It’s just me,” someone with a British accent says. It’s that Featherleigh woman. “Are you looking for someone?”

  “My friend Merritt?” Celeste says. “Maid of honor? Black dress?”

  “If you bring me a bottle of whiskey, I’ll tell you where she is.”

  “Excuse me?” Celeste says. She has been told that Featherleigh is an old friend of the family but Celeste can’t imagine Greer abiding this kind of rudeness. “Have you seen Merritt? I’m sorry, I need to find her.”

  “I’m the one who’s sorry, love,” Featherleigh says. “I noticed her earlier, quite an attractive girl, but I haven’t seen her in hours.”

  “Okay, thank you,” Celeste says, hoping she doesn’t now seem rude by rushing out. What is Featherleigh doing in the living room, anyway? Certainly Greer didn’t offer to let her sleep there?

  Celeste sails through the laundry room and out the side door, hurrying toward the pool house. She hears coughing and can just barely make out the shadow of a figure bent over in the rose garden. It’s Merritt.

  “Merritt!” Celeste says. She crosses the arched footbridge over the koi pond into the rose garden. Merritt is spitting into the grass. “Are you sick?”

  Merritt straightens up and wipes her mouth. There are tears running down her face. “The oysters aren’t agreeing with me.”

  Celeste reaches out to embrace her friend. “You poor thing,” she says. “Let me walk you back to your cottage. I’m going to tell the rest of them to go to town without me. I didn’t want to go anyway.”

  “No,” Merritt says. “No, you go, please, or I’ll feel guilty. I just need some air.” She tries to smile at Celeste but then she starts crying again. “Only I could mess up a gorgeous night like this.”

  “Stop it,” Celeste says. “Weddings are stressful.”

  “Especially this one,” Merritt says. She holds out her left hand. “You see this ring?” Merritt points to a silver band on her thumb. “He gave me this for my birthday.”

  “Tag did?” Celeste whispers. She takes hold of Merritt’s hand and studies the ring. It’s set with tiny multicolored stones. It’s very pretty, but Merritt has a lot of cool jewelry, some of it given to her for free by various fashion labels.

  “It’s a ring,” Merritt says. “He could have given me anything for my birthday—a book, a scarf, a bracelet. But he gave me a ring.”

  “Yes, well.” Celeste is pretty sure Tag meant the ring to be a token of his fondness, nothing more, but he might have chosen something a little less emotionally charged. Just then, Celeste hears the Land Rover’s horn and she knows Benji is losing patience; she has been gone much longer than she intended. “I love you. You know that, right? And when you leave here Sunday, you never have to see Tag Winbury again. I promise I won’t make you attend any family functions.”

  “I wish it were that easy,” Merritt says. She takes an exaggerated breath. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  The car horn sounds again. Celeste feels annoyed at Benji’s impatience, but she knows he has a caravan of people waiting on her. “I have to scoot,” she says. “Come with us.”

  “I can’t,” Merritt says. “I don’t feel well. I’m just going to hang around here, maybe go to bed.”

  “Before midnight?” Celeste says. “That would be a first.” She gives Merritt another hug. “Tomorrow we’ll find time to talk, I promise. I don’t care if a church full of people have to wait.”

  Merritt gives a small laugh. “Okay.”

  They are a party of twelve, and town is crowded with holiday revelers. There’s a line to get into the Boarding House; the Pearl is at maximum capacity, as is Nautilus. The Club Car piano bar is an option, but Thomas announces that one ends at the Club Car; one never starts there. Asian Alexander’s wife is wearing stilettos and doesn’t want to risk walking down to Straight Wharf or Cru.

  Celeste looks to Benji, waiting for him to make an executive decision. As it is, they are spilling off the corner of India and Federal into the street.

  “Let’s go to the back bar at Ventuno,” he says.

  Everyone agrees. It’s nearby, it’s open-air; they’ll go for one drink, then reassess.

  Somehow Celeste gets sifted to the back of the group, probably because she’s literally dragging her feet. She doesn’t see the point of yet another drink. If anything, she needs food. She was so busy worrying about Mac and Betty and getting them set with their lobsters that she hadn’t eaten anything.

  “I’m starving,” she says to herself.

  “You and me both.”

  Celeste turns to see Shooter at her right shoulder.

  She looks for Benji. He’s up front, talking to Mimi the Broadway dancer.

  “He’s occupied,” Shooter says. “Let’s go get pizza.” He grabs her hand.

  “I can’t,” Celeste says. She’s afraid to look at him, so she stares down at her feet in her jeweled sandals. Her toes are painted a color called Sunshine State of Mind to match her dress tonight. She does leave her hand in his, however, for a few forbidden seconds.

  “We’ll come right back,” Shooter says. He whistles sharply, and Benji spins around. “I’m taking your bride to get a slice. Back in ten.”

  Benji waves, then turns again to Mimi—and Kermit, who has joined their conversation.

  He couldn’t care less.

  “Okay,” Celeste says. “Let’s go.”

  There’s a line outside Steamboat Pizza and a steady stream of cars unloading from the late ferry. Celeste feels weirdly exposed and she distances herself half a step from Shooter. She has dreamed of being alone with him but now that it’s happening, she’s tongue-tied. Across the street she sees a woman with long jet-black hair wearing suede booties with shorts—suede booties in July; even Celeste recognizes that as a no-no—and the woman looks like she’s pointing her phone at Celeste and Shooter. Taking a picture? Celeste turns her back. She wants to make a joke about the care and feeding of the bride but she can’t manage small talk and, apparently, neither can Shooter.

  “Follow me,” he says.

  He gets out of line, which is fine—Celeste wouldn’t have been able to eat anything in front of him anyway—and starts walking down the street toward the ferry dock. Celeste follows, bobbing and weaving, skirting groups of teenagers, dodging couples with strollers, stopping short so an elderly couple can pass.

  She doesn’t ask Shooter where they’re going. She doesn’t care. She would follow him anywhere.

  They cross the Steamship Authority parking lot, Shooter striding ahead, and then he cuts to the right of the terminal building and turns t
o check that she’s behind him. He waits for her, places a hand on her back, and ushers her to a bench at the edge of the dock. The view is over the working part of the harbor. It’s not glamorous, but it’s still pretty. Everything on Nantucket is pretty.

  They sit side by side, their thighs touching, and then Shooter wraps his arm around Celeste’s shoulders. She suddenly feels the effect of the wine she drank earlier. She acts impulsively; she doesn’t care who sees. She buries her face in Shooter’s chest and inhales the scent of him. He is all she wants.

  “Run away with me,” he says.

  She takes a breath to say, Yeah, right—but he stops her.

  “I’m serious, Celeste. I’m in love with you. I know it’s wrong, I know it’s unfair, I know all of our friends will hate us, especially my own best friend—hell, my brother, because Benji is by every standard my brother. I don’t care. I do care, but I care about you more. I have never felt this way about anyone before. My feelings for you are tragic; they’re Shakespearean—I’m not sure which play, some combination of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, I think. I want you to sneak out of the house and meet me here, right here, at six fifteen tomorrow morning. I’ll have two tickets on the six-thirty ferry. The boat gets to Hyannis at eight thirty, which is also our scheduled reveille tomorrow, so by the time people realize we’re both gone, we’ll be safely on the mainland.”

  Celeste nods against his chest. She’s not agreeing, but she wants to hear more; she wants to imagine this escape. The anxiety that has been squeezing her heart loosens its grip. She gets a clear breath.

  “You can say no. I expect you to say no. And if you do say no, I’ll show up at the altar tomorrow right next to Benji like I promised. I will give a sweet, meaningful toast with the appropriate amount of humor and at least one line about how Benji doesn’t deserve you. I will ask for one dance with you and when that dance is over, I’ll give you a peck on the cheek and let you get on with the rest of your life. With him.”

  Celeste exhales.

  “If you come with me, I will buy four tickets to Las Vegas—one for me, one for you, two for your parents. And I will marry you by the end of the day tomorrow. Or we can move more slowly. But I need you to know that I am serious. I’m in love with you. If you don’t feel the same way, I will still go to my grave feeling grateful for every second I have had with you. If nothing else, you proved that the heart of Michael Oscar Uxley is not made of stone.”

  Michael Oscar Uxley, she thinks. She realizes with shock that she has never asked his real name.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “What?”

  She raises her face. She looks into Shooter’s blue eyes… but what she sees is her parents in profile from the backseat of their old Toyota. They are turned toward each other, singing along to “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” Do you love me, will you love me forever? Celeste is eleven years old, she knows all the words too, but she doesn’t dare sing because the two of them sound so… good together.

  Then she flashes back to before they were Mac and Betty to her, before they were even Mommy and Daddy, back to when they were just ideas: love, security, warmth.

  Celeste is young, only one or two years old. They are playing a game called Flying Baby. Bruce has Celeste by one hand and Karen has her by the other. They swing Celeste between them until Bruce calls out, “Flying,” and Karen calls out, “Baby!” And they lift Celeste up off the ground. For one delicious moment, she is suspended in midair, weightless.

  Finally, she thinks of her parents as teenagers—her mother in her red tank suit, her father in his sweatpants and hoodie staring at the orange. The moment their eyes meet, the moment their hands touch. That certainty. That recognition. You. You are the one.

  This is what it feels like.

  Nothing, as it turns out, can take the place of love.

  “Yes,” she says.

  Saturday, July 7, 2018, 5:45 p.m.

  THE CHIEF

  He finds Thomas in the kitchen, scarfing down a turkey sandwich. Next to the sandwich plate is a highball glass of scotch, three-quarters full.

  “Mr. Winbury?” the Chief says.

  “Thomas,” he says, wiping his hands hastily on a napkin and then extending one to the Chief. “Mr. Winbury is my father.”

  “I have a few questions,” the Chief says.

  “You’ve talked to just about everyone else,” Thomas says. “I don’t know that I’d have much to add.”

  “Please,” the Chief says. He’s too low on patience to deal with the runaround. “Follow me.” He heads down the hall and around the corner to the living room. Thomas has abandoned the sandwich but brought the scotch, and the Chief can’t blame him. Thomas takes a seat on the sofa, crosses his ankle over his knee, and sinks back into the cushions like a man without a care in the world, and the Chief closes the door.

  “Events of last night?” the Chief asks. “After the party?”

  “Back bar at Ventuno, Boarding House. I left after one drink. My wife called to say she wanted me home. Pronto.”

  “What did you do at home?”

  “Went up to see Abby. She was asleep so I went downstairs for a drink.”

  “Did anyone join you?”

  “My father.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Thomas’s eyebrows shoot up, but it’s acting. He’s a man pretending to remember something. The Chief is surprised he doesn’t snap his fingers.

  “Oh! After a while, Merritt joined us, as well as a friend of my parents’ named Featherleigh Dale. She’s an antiques dealer from London, here for the wedding.”

  “Why was Featherleigh Dale at the house so late?” the Chief asks. “Is she staying here?”

  “No. I’m not sure why she was still around.”

  “You’re not?”

  “I’m not.”

  The Chief lets the lie sit there for a moment, stinking.

  “The four of you sat under the tent drinking rum, is that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who was the first to leave the tent? Was it you?”

  “It was. My wife called down. I had pushed my luck by then already, so I went up to bed.”

  “Do you have any idea what time that was?”

  “Around two, I think.”

  “I need you to focus here. Do you remember Featherleigh Dale going into the kitchen for water? A glass of water for Ms. Monaco?”

  Thomas shakes his head, but then says, “Yes.”

  “When Featherleigh went in to get the water, do you recall how long she was gone?”

  “Five minutes. Maybe a bit longer.”

  “Did you have any of the water?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you remember anyone else having any of the water? Even a sip?”

  “I was there to drink rum, sir,” Thomas says. “I don’t remember much about the water.”

  Somewhere in the house, the clock strikes six. The Chief is dying to get home, take off his shoes, crack open a beer, hug his wife, talk to Chloe. This day has lasted five years, but that’s the way it is with murder cases. He’s sure that, back at the station, his voice mail is filled with messages from insistent reporters. When this is all over, he’s going to need another stress-management class.

  “Let me switch gears. Does your mother have a pillbox?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Does your mother have a box where she keeps her…”

  “Her sleeping pills?” Thomas says. “Yes. It’s round. It has a picture of Queen Elizabeth on it.”

  “Would you say this pillbox is well known to members of your family?”

  Thomas laughs. “Oh, yes. My mother’s pillbox is infamous. It was a gift from her grandmother.”

  “And would you say that everyone in your family is aware that it holds sleeping pills?”

  “Yes. And she won’t share them. I asked for one once and she told me I couldn’t handle it.”
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  “Really,” the Chief says. Greer claimed she offered Merritt one of the sleeping pills. So they were “too strong” for her son but she gave one to a houseguest? Does that seem likely?

  No, it does not.

  “Did you see the pillbox in the kitchen last night?”

  “No,” Thomas says. “Why? Was it left out?” He sits up straighter. “Do you think Merritt took one of my mother’s sleeping pills?”

  “You didn’t see the pillbox?” the Chief asks. “You didn’t touch the pills?”

  Thomas slaps his knee. “I most certainly did not. But Merritt must have seen my mother’s pills and taken one—or even two—not realizing how potent they are. And then she went for a swim.” He stands up. “I think everyone will be fine with this being called an accidental death. There’s no reason to manufacture any more drama. This little inquisition has produced enough anxiety as it is—”

  “We’re not finished here,” the Chief says. He waits while Thomas reluctantly sits back down. “Do you know anything about a cut on Merritt’s foot?”

  “A cut?” Thomas says. “No. But if she did cut her foot, maybe she went into the water to rinse it.”

  This isn’t something the Chief has considered. She did have quite a nasty gash on her foot. It’s possible she rinsed it off in the water to avoid tracking blood into the Winbury house. The only place they’d seen blood was in the sand.

  “Also, Merritt had been drinking,” Thomas says.

  The Chief doesn’t respond to this. It’s interesting that Thomas is so eager to offer up theories about what happened. The Chief has been at this long enough to know that that is how a guilty person acts.

  “What is your relationship with Ms. Dale?” the Chief asks.

  “My… I already told you, she’s a friend of my parents.”

  “And that’s it? You don’t have a personal relationship with her?”

  “Not really,” Thomas says. “No.”

  “My colleague with the Massachusetts State Police interviewed Ms. Dale,” the Chief says. “She told him that she had been romantically involved with you but that you broke things off in May when your wife got pregnant. Is that true?”