The Weekenders

by Mary Kay Andrews

  “I’ve started running. I want to try out for the cross-country team, but Mom doesn’t want me to.” Maggy stuck her tongue out at her mother.

  “I’m worried that her blood sugar could get low on one of those long runs and something … could happen,” Riley said.

  Billy ruffled Maggy’s hair. “Boring or not, you’ll still be my mixed-doubles partner this summer, right? Remember how we killed ’em in the round-robin last Memorial Day weekend?”

  “I left my racquet at home,” Maggy said, her face still sullen.

  “I packed both our racquets,” Riley said.

  * * *

  Riley and Billy made their way up to the ferry’s observation deck, stopping to greet and chat with island neighbors they hadn’t seen in months. Finally they reached their destination.

  Riley leaned against the railing and inhaled deeply—this, she thought, might be her favorite summer perfume—diesel fumes mixed with salt spray with top notes of sunscreen and popcorn. Seagulls wheeled and cried overhead in the dusk and, on the horizon, a line of pelicans flying in V-formation raced westward.

  As the ferry dock and the mainland slipped away, she felt the anxiety and frustrations of the past few months doing the same. Her shoulders loosened, her face relaxed, her heart rate slowed. She closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and let the dying sunshine wash over her face, the way she’d always done since she was a little girl.

  One way or another, this weekend, she would have to find a way to tell Maggy about the impending divorce. If she had to do it solo, so be it. Things were about to get really, really ugly. But for right now, she promised herself, she would live in this moment.

  Besides, being on the island, her island, her special place, would make things better. She and Maggy would burrow in here for the summer, weather the storm of divorce, and when the season ended, they would be healed.

  Riley found herself crossing and uncrossing her fingers, praying it would be so.

  “Where’s Scott?” Riley asked finally, opening her eyes after she was sure the last speck of land had disappeared.

  “Who knows? Atlanta? Vegas? One of those television chefs is opening three new restaurants this summer, and he’s been driving Scott crazy. One day he hates the dining room chandeliers in Atlanta, the next day he wants Scott to rip up the brand-new carpet in the Vegas dining room. The money’s fabulous, but the travel is killing him.”

  Riley nodded sympathetically. Billy’s partner, Scott Moriatakis, was a much-in-demand restaurant designer whose work took him around the world. They’d met years earlier, when Scott was called in to redecorate the dining room of an Art Deco hotel in South Beach, Miami, where Billy was the lounge act.

  Billy loved to tell people, “Scott pitched out everything in the joint. But he kept me.”

  “But he’s coming this weekend, right?”

  “Maybe. Did you know he’s been talking to Wendell’s hotel people about Pirate’s Point? They flew him down here in the corporate jet the first week in April so he could walk the property with the architect.”

  Riley felt her jaw clench. “Wendell told me the deal was dead.”

  “Whoops. Maybe I got it wrong.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Wendell knows I’m dead set against anybody putting anything on that land. This is just his latest stunt.”

  “Here comes Parrish,” Billy said, looking over Riley’s shoulder. “With red hair, yet. Yikes!”

  “Billy the Kid!” Parrish cried, embracing him warmly. “What’s with the George Hamilton tan? Don’t tell me. I’ll bet you and Scott have been cavorting in the Hamptons.”

  Parrish looked around the deck. “Where did Maggy get to?”

  “She was going to the snack bar for a drink, but that was twenty minutes ago,” Riley said, standing. “I’m just gonna go check to make sure she’s okay.”

  “Helloooo, helicopter mom! You’re hovering again,” Parrish said in a singsong voice.

  Riley shot her a dirty look over her shoulder and made her way down the stairs to the concession stand on the main deck.

  * * *

  The ferry’s main cabin was a simple affair. A large room with wooden benches lining the outer walls, and rows of booths lining the middle of the cabin. A concession stand on one wall sold coffee, soft drinks, sandwiches, snacks and, in the summertime, beer and wine.

  Every bench and booth was full, and the space buzzed with excited conversation from weekenders catching up after a winter away.

  She spotted Maggy sitting in a booth with a group of kids, preteens all, whom she recognized from previous summers. A smartphone sat in the center of the table blaring loud, raunchy rap lyrics.

  As Riley watched, an older man approached the table, tapped the tallest boy on the shoulder, and then pointed at the phone—signaling that the boy should turn down the volume. He did so.

  “Thanks,” the man said. “Some of us don’t enjoy that kind of music.”

  But as soon as he stepped away, the tall kid smirked and returned the volume to its previous level, provoking a round of giggles from his admiring circle of friends. As though sensing her mother’s presence in the vicinity, Maggy glanced over her shoulder, saw Riley, then quickly looked away.

  “Hey!” the older man called angrily from his table, about to stand up.

  The kid turned down the music, to another chorus of giggles. The other passengers watched, shaking their collective heads in disapproval of this blatant infraction of unspoken ferry etiquette. Riley moved toward the table, intent on extricating her child from the midst of the troublemakers.

  Now the music was blaring again, and the lyrics were so obscene, Riley could feel the heat gathering in her cheeks.

  As she approached the table, a younger man strode across the cabin. In three long steps he was there. His hand darted out and plucked the phone from the table. A second later, all was quiet again.

  “What the hell?” The kid’s voice was sharp. “That’s my phone, man.”

  “Was your phone.”

  “No, man, it’s mine. Give it back.” The kid stood and stuck out his hand, expectantly. Now that he stood, Riley recognized him. Shane Billingsley was beanpole skinny, and the early stages of teenaged acne had ravaged his cheeks and chin. He was two years older than Maggy, and the oldest of Craig and Gynn Billingsley’s five kids.

  Riley didn’t recognize the man who’d confiscated the phone because the bill of his baseball cap obscured his face, but she felt like applauding him.

  Now he put the phone in the pocket of his shorts and addressed its owner in a low, terse voice that Riley couldn’t quite make out. Whatever he said to Shane Billingsley shut him up fast. He slumped back down onto the bench alongside his friends, and his assailant melted back into the crowd of holidaymakers.

  The cabin was eerily quiet for a moment or two, and then the passengers resumed their previous conversations.

  Riley was torn. Should she march over to the table and retrieve her daughter? Thus removing her from the bad influence of Shane Billingsley and company—and in the process humiliating her already ticked-off daughter? Or should she settle for a stern discussion with Maggy later—on the finer points of respect and courtesy?

  Maggy looked backward at her again, her face anxious, pleading even.

  The message was clear although unspoken. Do not act like a mom right now.

  Riley took a deep breath. And then another. Now was not the time.

  What it was time for was a glass of wine. She’d had a long, hot drive down from Raleigh earlier in the day. While she waited in line at the snack bar she searched in her pocketbook for cash, inching forward without really looking up. The concession stand didn’t take credit cards, and she’d left Raleigh in such a hurry, she hadn’t stopped at the bank for cash.

  She was still patting down the pockets of her shorts, inching toward the front of the line, when the person in front of her stepped aside and she found herself standing at the snack bar. “A glass of white w
ine, please,” she said, finally grasping a wad of bills at the bottom of her back pocket. “Pinot grigio if you’ve got it.”

  “Riley?”

  She looked up. The snack bar attendant wasn’t the usual college kid. This was a man. In fact, it was the same man who’d just snatched the cell phone away from Shane Billingsley.

  His green eyes were quizzical, but familiar. He was medium tall, though not as tall as Wendell Griggs, with a scruffy blondish beard, and a baseball cap that obscured much of his face. For a moment she was confused. She knew him, but she didn’t know how she knew him.

  “It’s me,” the stranger said. He laughed. “Nate. I can’t believe you’re still drinking pinot grigio after all these years.”

  “Nate?” She felt dumb and tongue-tied. Surely not …

  “Nate Milas,” he said, sweeping off his baseball cap. Dark blond hair spilled over his forehead and ears. Laugh lines radiated out from the corners of his eyes. He reached across the battered bar top, clutched her hand in both of his, and shook it vigorously.

  “Great to see you. God, it’s been forever.”

  Nate Milas? Forever, Riley thought, was not long enough.

  “You look terrific,” Nate was saying. “Really great.

  “Wow,” he said, running a hand through his messy hair. “I can’t even remember the last time we saw each other.”

  Riley could remember precisely the last time she’d seen Nate Milas. It was a moment indelibly etched on her brainpan. Still, Evelyn Nolan hadn’t raised her to be rude. Not even to him.

  “It’s good to see you again,” she said coolly. “What brings you back to Belle Isle?”

  “Oh, uh, just some family stuff,” he said. “I’m, uh, helping my mom out now that the season’s getting started.”

  Nate Milas’s father was Captain Joe, who ran the ferry. His mother, Annie, ran the Island Mercantile. The Milases had been running the Belle Isle ferry for as long as anybody on the island could remember.

  “How nice for your mother,” Riley said, the essence of civility. “Could I have that wine, please?”

  He hadn’t missed the ice in her voice.

  “Sure thing,” he said, turning to grab a bottle. He poured the wine into a plastic cup and handed it across to her.

  “So how are you? How’s uh, Wesley?”

  “It’s Wendell,” Riley said crisply, pushing the money across the counter toward him. “He’s super. Supergreat.”

  She took a step backward. “Good to see you again, Nate.”

  She sped away from the snack bar and Nate Milas and all the horrible memories of that horrible December night in 1992, as fast as her flip-flops would carry her.

  And Nate Milas stood, staring down at the three crumpled dollar bills she’d paid him for a five-dollar glass of wine.

  4

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Parrish said as Riley rejoined the others on the top deck. They’d moved to a bench near the bow, and Riley was careful to wipe the salt spray from the seat before she sat down.

  “Not a ghost. Worse. Nate Milas.”

  “Belle Isle Nate Milas?” Billy asked.

  “Yes.” Riley left it at that.

  But Parrish couldn’t. “For reals?” She craned her neck and surveyed the deck. “Where?”

  “Downstairs in the snack bar. He’s like, working as a soda jerk. And now that I think of it, I’m pretty certain I shorted him a couple of bucks for my wine.”

  “Serves him right,” Parrish said, laughing.

  “I remember Nate Milas,” Billy said. “He was a decent guy. What’s he ever done to you, sis?”

  “Only shattered her heart,” Parrish said.

  “Ancient history,” Riley replied airily. “I didn’t even recognize him until he introduced himself. I wonder what he’s doing these days? Besides running the snack bar for his parents.”

  “Are you kidding?” Parrish said. “What kind of journalist are you?”

  “Retired.”

  “Still. Have you been living in a cave? Nate Milas is a dot-com boy wonder. After college he ended up bumming around in California, and then he and one of his fraternity brothers started Cribb.”

  “Which is?”

  “Even I’ve heard of Cribb,” Billy volunteered. “It’s a real-estate-listing app. Right, Parrish?”

  “Which they just sold to Google for about a bajillion dollars. He and the other two partners were on the cover of Fortune magazine a month or so ago.”

  “So what’s he doing back here slinging wine on the ferry?” Riley asked. “Not that I care. Because I don’t.”

  “His dad died recently, you know.”

  “Captain Joe? Oh, that’s so sad. I hadn’t heard. That’s a shame. He was a lovely man. Unlike his prick of a son.”

  Billy blinked. “Not Captain Joe? Shit! I loved that old guy. He used to let me come up to the wheelhouse and pretend to drive the ferry.”

  Riley felt her face turning crimson with embarrassment. “Now I feel like an idiot. When I saw Nate downstairs, I just assumed he was here working for his dad.”

  “More like he’s probably here helping his mother deal with estate stuff,” Parrish said. “From what I read in that article, Nate Milas could buy and sell this ferry. Hell, he could probably buy and sell Belle Isle, and everybody on it, ten times over.”

  “Hmm,” Billy said thoughtfully. “A real-life tycoon in our midst. I wonder if he’s straight?”

  “Ask your sister,” Parrish said, waggling her eyebrows for effect.

  “Can we please drop this?” Riley begged. “I was nineteen, okay? It was a long, long time ago.”

  “She can’t drop it until you tell me why you hate this guy so much,” Billy declared. He squeezed his sister’s arm. “Come on. Tell BeBo.”

  “It’s really not that fascinating a story,” Riley protested.

  “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that? Now, tell.”

  “Parrish can tell you the whole sordid tale, since she seems so fascinated with it,” Riley said.

  “They started dating the summer before our freshman year, and from the beginning, it was a story of forbidden love,” Parrish began in a stage whisper.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, it was not forbidden. Daddy really liked Captain Joe, and Nate.”

  “But Evelyn did not approve. At all,” Parrish said.

  “As far as Mama was concerned Nate was not ‘our kind,’” Riley agreed, making air quotes with her fingertips. “She considered him the help, which made him seem that much more attractive to me.”

  “Nate Milas wasn’t just attractive, he was H.O.T.,” Parrish said. “Anyway, in the fall, we both went off to Carolina, and he went back to Wake Forest.”

  “And I went back to Ravenscroft, a lonely little queen in the Waspiest wasps’ nest of a prep school in the South,” Billy said wistfully.

  “You guys kinda drifted apart once classes started back, right?” Parrish asked, consulting Riley.

  “He dropped me because I wouldn’t put out,” Riley said.

  “And right away you started dating that obnoxious S.A.E. from Greensboro … what was his name?” Parrish asked, snapping her fingers to summon the information. “Jason … something?”

  “Rohrbaugh,” Riley said reluctantly. “Mama loved him. She’d been in Junior League with his mother.”

  “The question is, did you put out for Jason Rohrbaugh?” Billy asked, poking his sister in the ribs, already enjoying her discomfort.

  “She totally did,” Parrish volunteered. “I came home early from a date one Saturday night and caught them in the sack together.”

  Riley fixed her best friend and former roommate with a steely glare. “Do we want to start dredging up all the times I caught you in bed with various guys—including our English 201 teaching assistant?”

  “So I was a little bit of a ho back then. It was called youthful experimentation.”

  “She was a big ol’ ho,” Riley told her brother. “She put out more
than the Tab machine in the Tri-Delta house.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s all fascinating stuff, but could we get back to why you still despise Nate Milas? It can’t be just because he dropped you all those years ago,” Billy said.

  “Oh no, it gets much worse,” Parrish said. “She eventually broke up with Jason.…”

  “Because he was screwing every girl on campus, including my Tri-Delt big sister,” Riley said.

  Parrish picked up the narrative. “So the next summer, before our sophomore year, Evelyn decides Riley has to be a debutante, which means nonstop parties all summer long. And Nate shows up at some of those parties, looking all dreamy and buff, and how could she resist? So they hooked up again.”

  “We did not ‘hook up,’” Riley protested. “We went to a couple of parties together. I’d asked Jason to be my junior marshal, but then we broke up, and Nate was available, so I asked and he said yes. It was mostly a matter of convenience.”

  “You were crazy about him,” Parrish insisted. “Totally gaga for the guy.”

  “I mostly asked him to piss off Mama,” Riley said. “Anyway, the night of the ball, I’m standing around the ballroom of Carolina Country Club in Raleigh, wearing my fluffy white dress and elbow-length gloves.…”

  “I remember those gloves. And that dress,” Billy said dreamily. “I might have borrowed them for my first drag performance my junior year at UVA.”

  Riley stared at her brother. “You wore my deb dress to a drag show? Really?”

  “I had my very own coming-out party! But I did have to cut it down a little,” Billy admitted. “Lucky for me you were always kind of, um, flat-chested.”

  “I bet Evelyn doesn’t have a silver-framed photo of that on the baby grand at Shutters,” Parrish said. She waved at Riley. “Continue, please.”

  “There’s not much more to tell. Nate pulled the classic show-up-and-throw-up stunt. There we were, all lined up, ready to take our bows, and I kept looking for him, but nothing. I was so upset, and Daddy felt so bad, he shared his flask of Maker’s Mark with me. When Nate finally did get there, he was falling-down drunk. The first dance, he took me in his arms—and blew chow all over my white dress.”

  “I took her in the bathroom and managed to mop most of it up,” Parrish said, “but Evelyn went all to pieces and ordered him to leave.”