Now that it was time to start the rest of her day, Annabelle slid into her satin monogrammed slippers that lay on top of a little cotton honeycomb towel on the floor. She draped her bathrobe over her shoulders and made her way to her own dressing suite.
As she began to submerge herself in her tub, Annabelle added spoonfuls of rosewater salts that fizzed in the warm bathwater and turned it a gentle pink. The color deepened to a purple hue when she added lavender buds. Closing her eyes, and leaning her head back against the terry-cloth cushion, she thought she might meditate for a few minutes before meeting the girls at the breakfast table. She and Caroline had taken a few classes together with that famous Bob Roth meditation guru who showed up in Aspen or anywhere his New York and Hollywood clients needed him. He was very good, no doubt, though they’d both gone into a laughing fit as he tried to coax them into another state of consciousness. And, though they’d each read his Harvard studies about meditation’s benefits, neither could sit still for a second without her mind wandering. What mother could?
Now, instead of calmly repeating her mantra, tah-leem, tah-leem, tah-leem, all Annabelle could think about was that if she hadn’t devoted herself to Arthur, she could have spent some time with Lily in her room, as she got ready for school. Lily loved to try out different bows with her. It was the only fashion self-expression left to the poor girl with the strict uniform rules of her private school.
She tried the mantra again, tah-leem, tah-leem, tah-leem.
Instead of focusing on nothing at all, Annabelle opened her eyes for just a teeny second as she stretched out her toes and inspected her new pedicure, noting that the pink she’d chosen was too orange. This is not a time to think about nail color, Annabelle! She would meditate for the remaining seven minutes. She repeated, tah-leem, tah-leem, over and over, vowing to push out competing thoughts.
Thirty seconds later, some black emptiness in her brain achieved, Annabelle looked at her phone on the little table beside her bath. The not-so-discreet texts from the morning entered her mind. She had deleted all the texts to and from Caroline and Philippe—one can’t be too careful with technology. She sat up in the tub, water splashing around her. “Arthur? Arthur? You in there?”
Silence.
He might be in his dressing room, or maybe in his study, ogling the Money Honey’s curves on Fox. Annabelle tried the tah-leem, tah-leem again, but again, after thirty seconds, she instead inspected her muscular legs, lifting one out of the water then the other. Was it true that many men really preferred fatty flesh on women? Um, no.
She repeated her mantra. This time, blackness, a void, took over her brain, and the physical world around her disappeared. It lasted about thirty seconds before a thought of Lily’s favorite bows intruded. Then another thirty seconds of nothingness. Bob Roth said TM Meditation meant no punishment for those thoughts, just push them away, which she did. A bit. Though she’d let worries slip into her mind, this was progress for her. And it did calm and soothe her.
However, there was an unintended consequence to Annabelle’s meditation session: she didn’t hear Arthur when he tiptoed to her bedside. He suspected something had changed in her. Why was she so distracted? It required immediate investigation.
Like most spouses, he knew her iPhone code. He’d watch her put it in thirty times a day. The phone wasn’t there, though, so he decided to lie in bed, and maybe she’d make a call from the bathroom. He would overhear her and maybe gain a little insight into his wife’s absent mood.
Arthur didn’t like the way snooping on her made him feel. Rather than think too much about his wife’s behavior this morning, he turned on the television above the mantel and settled into his side of the bed.
Instead of watching the business news, he turned on Apple TV, maybe he’d finish the last ten minutes of that spy series. He closed his eyes to rest a little. A few minutes later, when he opened his eyes, the Apple TV was playing Annabelle’s photo stream from her phone.
Arthur grinned as he watched shots of his girls on their horses from last weekend. First Cappa, then Parker, then Mouse, he thought, though he never could tell the horses apart. He once asked his assistant to construct a chart of horses’ photos and names so the girls would think he knew what he was talking about. He loved the girls, and those horses did teach them discipline and how to care for another living creature. The people who thought it was just a rich girls’ sport could bugger off. There were plenty of working students riding and competing horses in stables across America. Some people just didn’t understand the value of animals and competition and camaraderie in life.
Then Arthur saw some tight shots of lobsters on the beach, steaming in the seaweed as Hans had ingeniously shown them. Yes, the clambake on the beach in front of their house last week had been a good idea. A little sandy for his tastes though. He’d have the staff get better chairs next time, so his hands didn’t get quite so dirty. Next, some photos of furniture Annabelle must have bought yesterday. He’d have to go through her stream more often, have someone organize the family shots and make some albums too; plenty of assistants around his office with nothing to do.
And then . . . screenshots of texts floated across the TV: texts between his wife and a man.
His face felt hot; that was the adrenaline and the rage: that fuck-head Philippe de Montaigne, he’d paid that trainer a fortune to teach his girls.
Arthur charged toward the bathroom to confront Annabelle.
Then he paused.
He retreated and sat on the edge of his wife’s side of their bed. He slouched, his broad Teutonic shoulders collapsing. His expression, only moments ago so jolly and satisfied, now sunk down to the rug.
Part II
Summer Heat
Chapter 20
Make It or Break It
Tuesday, late June
It can all be traced to an inanimate object: wooden beams Caroline sourced for a client. The people who took that big Methodist church down in Vermont would never know the ripples that would generate in its wake.
Caroline was picking up some throws for a client at a design store in East Hampton when her phone buzzed in her jacket pocket. It was a text from Ryan:
How have you been?
The birch lumber arrived from that church in Vermont.
I’m putting it up today in a small cottage far off on the bay side, near Three Mile Harbor.
Caroline texted back:
It’ll be perfect, glad it worked out, those guys are so helpful.
Ryan:
Yes, they were. Thanks for connecting me.
She tried to remember something she’d learned in design school about cottage renovations:
Did you have to raise the structure to redo the foundation?
Ryan:
Yes. That’s all done. Measuring out beam placement now. The wood is perfect: splintered but structurally sound, chamfer edges, dark but not too dark.
Caroline:
I know, I use those guys all the time.
Those three little dots were blinking for almost ninety seconds; he was either writing an opus or rewriting something over and over, making sure it sounded right.
And then finally:
Would you like to see it?
Caroline:
Of course.
She’d answered a bit too quickly, but she’d been waiting so many days to hear from him again. She didn’t want to stall with little telltale dots flickering like he had—that would give him the impression that she cared too much. She moved into a more professional zone, to keep her tone friendly, and, on some level, married:
I studied that process—houses on the ocean being pulled back on train tracks to avoid beach erosion—but I’ve never seen a house lifted off the ground myself.
And so, under the wholly manufactured and entirely false pretense of work, Ryan and Caroline organized a rendezvous to discuss wooden beam placement. At the cottage in question, there were a few workers around, so they kept their distance, their conversation ov
erly work-related.
“Hey,” he said, as they walked to their cars. During the tour of the job site, Caroline hadn’t been able to concentrate on much of what he said. She kept avoiding his eyes and asking questions she already knew the answer to, probably, she figured, sounding like a nincompoop with little design acumen. As he talked, she had to reteach her lungs to expand and slowly empty.
Ryan stopped walking and touched her arm as if to get her to focus on what he was saying. It felt good to touch this woman; he was actually having trouble not touching her. “Are you working more?”
Caroline pushed the sand on the pavement around a bit with her foot, making little piles. “Not at all,” she said. “I’m done for the day. I got most of my work done by lunchtime.” Her pitch was higher than normal. She had to push breaths hard out of her nose to get her lungs back in rhythm.
“Morning work, all done midday, that’s good,” he said, fiddling with his car keys. “I’m, uh, just heading into Amagansett.”
“I’m actually going in that direction to Montauk,” Caroline said, smiling and trying hard not to sound the least bit suggestive. Breathing was still not automatic; it felt like the air was not passing down her throat.
Just as Annabelle had predicted, Caroline had met this guy on the first weekend of summer, and even by meeting one, she was ready to go. Whatever this was, it already felt difficult to walk away from it. She smoothed out the waist of her jeans. Her stomach was churning so much, she didn’t know how to calm it.
“I need a coffee, maybe something else,” Ryan said. “It’s almost two, and I haven’t eaten much today, and—”
“Oh, well, me too, I guess,” Caroline interrupted, almost immediately wishing she’d been a little cooler. “I’m hitting my early afternoon wall, and I need a little fruit or tea or something to keep me going.”
Only it wasn’t just coffee in town.
As they walked into Amagansett Square, by Wölffer Kitchen, Ryan held the door open to Jack’s Stir Brew, where the heavy scent of coffee pervaded the air. He said, “What the hell, this place is crowded.”
“It sure is,” she replied, sounding like one of her Ohio cousins who declared the obvious all the time.
“You know what?” Ryan said. “Screw the coffee, let’s get a dozen oysters down toward Montauk instead. Have some fun. You like oysters?”
“I do. A lot. But you mean right now?” Caroline said, looking at her watch. “I guess. I mean, I have a sitter taking the kids to playdates. I was going to check on a curtain installation on my way home, but it’s a sleepy Tuesday, why not spend it . . . I mean, in town, of course.”
“Why not spend a sleepy workday enjoying summer?” Ryan said and smiled. He placed his hand on her upper arm again, and this time, he left it there. “We can compare our favorite everything: beaches, fabrics, painters, and whatever . . . work or play. Let’s do it.”
He smiled again and said, “I had a rough morning with another client who can never be pleased no matter what gymnastics I do, so I need to blow off some steam.”
They took their cars to the Clam Bar on the side of Montauk Highway. During the ride, Caroline made work calls, checked on the sitter, and noted that her mouth was so dry she had trouble swallowing.
When the hostess offered them a table by the road, Ryan said, “How about in the back?” This was her first clue that he had felt the same heat she had at the jobsite.
Ryan ordered a dozen oysters, a bowl of fried clams, and two iced teas. Rather than hogging the moment by talking about himself, he fired questions at her and listened to the answers. He asked how she got her jobs done in summer when all the providers were so jammed that they weren’t promising to deliver orders until October. She already knew he wasn’t a man who required being interviewed to keep interested in a conversation.
In fact, when she tried to ask him some questions, first about his surfing, he just joked, “Look, I’ve always been the worst surfer on the lineup. My timing has been off since high school, but I still get out there.” He leaned over to her, getting more confident. “So I get credit for that, at least.” His eyes were looking very green now against his tan skin and the hedge behind him. He put glasses on to check out the menu, then combed his hair back with one arm, leaving it scratching the back of his head. Caroline noted the well-formed triceps.
The waitress came with a pitcher of iced tea, and Caroline turned to Ryan, placing her head on her palm, staring at him in an I-dare-you way, “How about one oyster shot?”
“Oh, really, is that what’s happening?” The way he looked at her over the brim of his glasses made her stomach churn more, this time in a good way.
And when she boldly answered, “Yeah, really,” she knew she was in trouble.
After one vodka shot each (with an oyster and cocktail sauce in the heavy, little glasses) and three dozen oysters (the third dozen inhaled with his knee pressed against hers), Caroline and Ryan walked back to their cars. As she opened her door, he said, “Don’t actually get in. Come over to my truck. Just for a second.”
“Your truck?” Caroline asked. “You mean, you want me to go there?” She felt as if she were falling into a hole and sliding down a tunnel with nothing to grab on to. It was the middle of a Tuesday. Maybe, after all, that bravado she felt at the table wouldn’t last; maybe she didn’t have it in her. Didn’t this kind of thing happen at night or sunset?
“Don’t worry,” Ryan said, reading her mind. “Harmless.” He knew what she was thinking because he was thinking the same thing: This is crazy, but I’m going to do it anyway. “Just come over, under the tree.” He motioned his head toward his truck, hidden behind some bushes in a far corner of the lot. “C’mon.”
She followed and stood before him, no one in sight near them. Before asking her if he could or explaining earnestly that he’d never done this before, he placed his hands on her hips and pulled her into him so hard that the seams of her jeans cut into her body. He then kissed her, first softly to mitigate the way he’d just grabbed her, then with more abandon, holding her chin with his hand to steady the intensity.
She reached around to fix her jeans a little and yanked them down an inch or so. He reached inside the back and clutched her flesh hard. He took a brief break, and whispered into her ear, “I’m not going to ask you to do anything else, but Jesus, you feel good,” he said.
After a few more moments of deep kissing, groping, and rearranging of denim, Ryan pulled back and made sure his secluded parking spot was indeed secluded enough. “Look, I’m sorry, I was going to ask if I could kiss you before, but I didn’t want to give you the opportunity to say no. I’ve never once done that.” And then he kissed her ear and whispered. “Maybe, let’s just stop here before I can’t stop.”
She whispered back, feeling an ache between her legs so fiery that it almost hurt, “I’m not sure I want you to stop.” Maybe that dangerous forties decade Annabelle kept referring to was barreling at her a few years early.
It was a surreal moment for Caroline: the first time she’d kissed a man other than Eddie Clarkson since they’d gotten married. Sure, the one vodka had warmed her up. And that natural effect of oysters maybe got her more primed than she’d expected, far more actually, but whatever caused it, she felt a sense of abandon with Ryan.
She felt kinship too. They shared the same interest in the way the height of cornstalks matched the amount of time one had left in summer; in the way the sun hit the water at certain times of the year; in the psychotherapy required to handle difficult clients. “Do we have to stop?” she asked him. “I mean, I’m just saying, do we actually have to stop?”
“I’m not sure, it’s daylight, like I said, my timing is always off,” Ryan said. “But where? You mean now?”
“Yeah. I mean now. I mean, why not now?” She was so hot inside her jeans, she couldn’t wait to get this guy somewhere darker, somewhere safer. Fast.
If they did stop, she was going to have a moment alone in a dark powder room inside, or
simply hump a tree nearby. Either way, her body was headed full speed in one direction only, no way to veer it to a rest stop.
“How about that cottage we just visited?” he said. “No one’s there, it’s past four.”
Chapter 21
A Little Surprise “for You”
A week later, Monday morning, 8:00 a.m., end of June
“It’s coming!” Theo yelled. The thud-thud-thud of the helicopter’s propellers could be heard in the distance at the airstrip known grandiosely as the East Hampton Airport. Eddie wrapped Theo in his arms and said, “I love you, my only son, and I got a surprise for you!”
“What is it?” Theo asked.
“What did you get me?” Gigi asked. “I’m your only daughter!” He often called Theo his only son, but never referred to Gigi as his only daughter. Caroline always found that strange and had mentioned it to him a few times.
“The same thing!” Eddie answered as he winked at Caroline beside him in the passenger waiting area. She’d driven him to the Monday morning Blade helicopter flight into the city that he shared with five other passengers.
“I got a surprise for all of us!” Eddie said, rubbing his hands together.
“Honey, please,” Caroline said. “You know the kids have camp in a half hour; it’s their first day.” She did not want to appear to be pushing him out the door. Every single thing she’d said to her husband all weekend made her prickle with paranoia.
No matter what she said to Eddie, she worried she was inadvertently revealing something about her Tuesday with Ryan. Even when she asked her husband if he wanted more sugar for his coffee, she thought, I usually don’t serve him like a handmaid; maybe he’s going to know I’m up to something?
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