“You never did feed me last night,” she said accusingly.
“No, I did something a lot better for you,” he said.
“Way better,” she agreed.
51
Maggy burst into the kitchen door at eleven Sunday morning, her eyes shining with excitement. “Mom! I had the best time ever at Annabelle’s last night.”
“Who’s Annabelle?” asked Scott. He’d arrived thirty minutes earlier with his brunch contribution, a batch of blueberry scones fresh from the oven, but no Billy.
“My new best friend,” Maggy said, sitting down at the table across from her grandmother and beside her great-aunt Roo. “She lives in Durham, so after school starts back, we can probably hang out on weekends and stuff.”
“I’m glad,” Riley said, handing her daughter a plate. “Did you eat this morning?”
“Yes, Mom,” Maggy said, rolling her eyes. “And I tested my blood, and I took my insulin. Can I just have some strawberries?”
“Help yourself,” Riley said. “Can I ask what you did at Annabelle’s that was so fabulous?”
“Chantelle let us order takeout pizza. Two different kinds.”
Mimi set her bone-china coffee cup down on its saucer. “Young lady, does Annabelle’s mother have a proper name?”
“I don’t know, Mimi. Everybody just calls her Chantelle. Even Annabelle. And Chantelle said I should call her that.”
“What is this Annabelle’s father’s last name?” Evelyn asked.
Riley tried to signal to her mother to abandon this line of questioning, but Evelyn Nolan was not someone to be deterred.
“I don’t think Annabelle has a father,” Maggy said. “But Chantelle’s girlfriend’s name is Micki. Spelled with an i. She’s cool too, but she had to work this weekend.”
“Girlfriend?” Evelyn said, frowning.
“Domestic partner,” Maggy said. “You know, like Bebo and Uncle Scotty.”
Scott turned his head and discreetly spat a mouthful of French-press coffee into his linen napkin.
“Ohhh,” Roo said. “You mean this Chantelle is a lesbian. I didn’t know there were any lesbians on Belle Isle.”
Scott coughed violently, and Riley could see his back heaving with suppressed laughter. She passed him a glass of water and he took a sip, shooting her a grateful look.
“Do you know those girls, Scott?” Evelyn asked.
“Um, no, Evvy,” he said politely. “Actually not every gay person in Carolina knows every other gay person.”
“Hmm,” Evelyn said.
“Where is Bebo this morning, Uncle Scott?” Maggy asked. “We’re supposed to have our first doubles match at noon.”
Scott cut his eyes at Riley. “He’s got a bit of a headache this morning, Mags. But I’ll make sure he gets there in plenty of time.”
“Ohhh.” Maggy nodded knowingly. “A hangover. From the party last night, right?”
“How was the party, Riley?” Evelyn asked, skillfully changing the subject.
“It was nice,” Riley said. “I’ve never seen such a beautiful moon. It looked like it would drop into the ocean it was so huge and low over the water.”
“You must have had a good time. I didn’t hear you come in until after midnight,” Evelyn said.
“Was it that late? I guess I lost track of the time,” she said. She felt her phone buzz in the pocket of her shorts, signaling an incoming text message.
She jumped up and ducked into the butler’s pantry.
The text was from Nate.
Dinner tonight?
I’ll get back to you, she typed.
After Maggy had gone upstairs to change for her tennis match, Riley started clearing the brunch dishes.
“Um, Mama, don’t count on me for dinner tonight,” she said. “Parrish and Ed want me to come over before the fireworks, and I said I would because she’s upset that David and his girlfriend had to cancel their trip.”
“Just tell them to come over here,” Evelyn said. “You know I always plan for extras for Sunday supper.”
“Sunday?” Riley groaned inwardly. “This long holiday weekend has me all mixed up. I was thinking today was Saturday.”
“No. It’s Sunday,” Evelyn said. “I’m doing a tenderloin. Ed loves my tenderloin.”
“I’ll ask,” Riley said. “But the thing is, Parrish bought this gorgeous salmon filet when we went to town Friday, and I know it won’t keep another day. It won’t hurt for me to miss supper here this one time.”
“We always have family supper on Sundays, Riley,” Evelyn said. “You know that. Why would you make other plans?”
“Maybe I want to make other plans,” Riley snapped. “Good God. It’s just one Sunday. Billy and Scott will be here, and so will Maggy.”
“It’s not the same if everybody isn’t here,” Evelyn said, tears welling up in her pale blue eyes. “All I ask of you children is one night a week. Why is that so difficult?”
“Fine!” Riley said, throwing her hands up in defeat. “Fine. I’ll be here. I’ll eat the damn tenderloin, and then I’ll go out.”
“Good,” Evelyn said. “And what about Parrish and Ed?”
“No,” Riley said. “Parrish and Ed are not related to us by blood or marriage, so you don’t get to guilt trip them into making a command appearance here.”
* * *
Riley was waiting on the front porch when Billy pulled up in his golf cart. His hair was still damp from the shower, and the bags under his bloodshot eyes were impressive.
Riley hurried down the steps and snatched the plastic tumbler from her brother’s hand, dumping the contents onto the lawn.
“Hey!” he protested. “That was Sprite.”
“Sprite and what?” Riley demanded.
“Ice cubes. You can smell my breath if you don’t believe me.”
“No, thanks,” Riley said. “You want to drink yourself into a coma at home, be my guest. But I don’t want your niece seeing you shitfaced before noon. She happens to love you, Billy, and she’s already had enough loss in her life this summer.”
“Geez. Would you chill? I just told you I’m stone-cold sober, Miss Breathalyzer.”
“For a change,” Riley said.
Behind them, the screen door opened, and Maggy ran down the steps, racquet in hand. “Ready, Bebo,” she said. Billy had the cart rolling down the drive before Riley had a chance to say good-bye.
* * *
She waited until Evelyn and Roo had gone off to play bridge and the house was empty. Riley took her phone out to the bluff and sat in one of the oversize Adirondack chairs.
Nate picked up on the first ring. “Hi,” he said. “I was hoping you’d call. Are we set for tonight? I could pick up a steak at the market to grill over here, or if you wanted to eat out…”
“I can’t tonight,” she said. “It totally slipped my mind that today is Sunday.”
“You don’t eat dinner on Sunday?” He laughed at his own joke. “Have you joined some weird religious cult?”
“Sunday dinner with the family at Shutters is Mama’s religion,” Riley said.
“Can’t you get out of it, just this once?”
“I tried. It’s pretty much a nonnegotiable issue with her.”
Silence.
“I’d invite you to join us, but I really don’t want to subject you to the whole family just yet,” Riley said. “Mostly, I just want to keep you to myself for a while longer.”
“You mean, you don’t want Maggy to know you’re seeing me,” Nate said. “It’s okay. I guess I get it.”
“This is not what I want,” Riley said, sounding as miserable as she felt.
“How about later, after dinner, for the fireworks?” he asked.
“Perfect,” she said eagerly. “Mama hates fireworks, but Roo loves ’em. I’ll get her to take Maggy, who’ll want to be with her friends on the beach at the club.”
“And where will you say you’re going?” he asked.
“I’ll lie like a r
ug,” she said cheerfully. “I’m sure Parrish will cover for me with Mama. It’ll be like we were college kids again.”
“I don’t suppose you want me to pick you up?” Nate asked.
“No!” It came out a little faster and a little more emphatic than she’d intended. “I’ll meet you—how about at the Mercantile?”
“Under the cover of darkness?”
“I don’t like this any better than you do,” Riley said. “I’ll be there no later than eight. Okay?”
“See you then,” he said.
Riley was about to dial Parrish when her friend walked out onto the lawn and dropped down onto the chair next to her.
“It’s really uncanny how you always know when I’m about to call you,” Riley said. “It’s like you have some kind of superpower.”
“More like I’m super curious to hear how things went with Nate last night.”
“Fine.”
“How fine?” Parrish studied her face carefully.
“I think you could say very fine.”
Parrish sighed happily. “You slept with him. Finally! Thank God.”
“I never said that,” Riley said.
“You don’t have to. I can tell by the look on your face. I’m so glad. Nate Milas is a good guy. A great guy. He’s twice the man Wendell Griggs ever hoped to be.”
“He’s sweet,” Riley admitted. “I hate to admit it, but you were right. It felt so good, letting go of all that … stuff … I was carrying around. I can’t get over how easy it is, being with him. I’d forgotten how much fun he was, back when we were in college.”
“I just love being right,” Parrish said. “It makes my whole damn week. When are you seeing him again?”
“He wanted me to have dinner with him tonight, but I told him I couldn’t.”
“And why not?”
“Because it’s Sunday. And you know how Mama is about Sunday supper.”
“Just tell her you made other plans,” Parrish said.
“I tried. And she laid that ‘I never ask much of you children’ crap on me, and of course, I caved.”
“Of course,” Parrish said. “Everybody always caves in to Evvy. And that’s her superpower. She brandishes guilt like a light saber.”
“You’re just lucky I told her she couldn’t guilt trip you and Ed into coming tonight.”
“Us? How did we get roped into this?”
“I tried to tell her that I needed to have dinner with you guys, because you’re sad about the kids not coming, but then she insisted you could just have dinner with us. Because Ed loves her tenderloin.”
“No offense, but your mother’s tenderloin is indistinguishable from shoe leather.”
“I know. But since you don’t have to suffer her cooking tonight, I thought you could do me one other teensy little favor.”
“Which is?”
“Cover for me. I told her I was going to watch the fireworks from your house.”
“But instead you and Nate are going to have your own private fireworks.”
Riley found herself smiling again. “Something like that.”
* * *
Nate had one hand on the golf cart’s steering wheel and the other draped across Riley’s shoulder. It was twilight, and the cicadas were already tuning up.
“This isn’t the way to your cabin,” she said.
“I know.” He leaned over and sniffed her hair. “You smell nice. Is that the same perfume you wore in college?”
“I can’t believe you remembered,” Riley said.
“There is nothing I don’t remember about you,” Nate said.
“If we’re not going to your place, where are we going?” she asked.
“To watch the fireworks. At the Holtzclaw place.” He handed her a can of insect repellant. “You’ll need that.”
* * *
A new padlock had been installed on the gate since Riley’s last visit. “We should have a pretty good view from the dock,” Nate said. He produced a flashlight and trained it on the newly mowed yard, pointing in the direction of the creek.
“Is that dock safe to walk on?”
“It is now. I spent the morning over here, putting down new decking and cleaning up around the place.”
There was a light shining from the end of the dock, and as they drew closer, she saw that Nate hadn’t just nailed down a few boards. He’d also set up a pair of chaise longue chairs with a low table between them. A citronella candle burned in a jar, and an ice bucket held a bottle of wine.
“This is perfect,” Riley marveled. “You managed to do all this in just one day?”
“I sort of started planning this from the minute I bought the place,” Nate admitted. “The hard part was figuring out how to get you to stop hating me long enough to see what I see.”
“You amaze me, you know that?” Riley said.
He opened the wine and poured two glasses. “First things first,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her deeply.
As if on cue, a burst of silver-and-gold rockets shot upward from a barge anchored out in the sound, lighting up the inky night sky.
“It’s starting!” Riley said.
* * *
Somehow, they ended up on the same lounge chair, and then, eventually, on the newly repaired dock. “I should have put an air mattress out here,” Nate grumbled. “We’ll be picking splinters out of our asses for a week.”
Riley stood and pulled on her shorts. “My hair is a disaster,” she said ruefully.
“Your hair is beautiful,” Nate said, running his fingers through it.
They stood watching the fireworks until the grand finale, which featured a huge, waving American flag surrounded by cascades of Roman candles.
“Time to go,” Riley said. “Maggy will be getting home from the club, and I don’t want to have to answer too many questions from Mama.”
Nate started to say something, but stopped himself.
“I’m headed out in the morning,” he said, after they started back toward the Mercantile.
“You mean to Southpoint?”
“For starters. I’ve got meetings with some of the marine-ecology faculty in Chapel Hill, then I’m going to Charlotte to meet with some architects and talk to the finance guys, and then I’ll head to Morehead City to tour the research facility there.”
“Finance guys?” she said.
“Yes. Buying the land was just the first step. There will be some development on this end of the island, you realize that now, right?”
“I guess.” She looked away.
“But it won’t be anything like what Wendell was planning. We’ll do a medium-density mixed-use project at Pirate’s Point. A much smaller boutique hotel, more like an inn, really. Some retail, and some town houses built around a sort of village green space. I’m also going to talk to some of the forestry folks at the university, to see if there’s some kind of mitigation we can do to that portion of the wildlife sanctuary that Wendell started clearing.”
“Really?”
“No promises,” Nate said. “Those were old-growth trees he knocked down, and you can’t exactly go to a nursery and buy that kind of thing.”
“When will you be back?” she asked.
“Week after next, I hope,” Nate said.
“That long?”
“Meet me in Charlotte next weekend,” he urged. “I’ll get a suite at the Ritz-Carlton, and we can have some nice dinners. It would do you good to get away from the island for a few days.”
“You don’t know how much I’d love that,” she said wistfully. “But what would I tell Maggy? And Mama? And, anyway, I’ve got stuff I need to do here.”
“Like what?”
“For starters, I need to get serious about looking for a job. Maggy starts back to her new school in a month. I’ve got to find a way to pay for her tuition.”
“A month?” Nate said, startled. “Summer’s just getting started. We’re just getting started. Labor Day isn’t until September.”
“As Maggy would say, ‘get in the now.’ Lots of the private schools, including hers, start in early August, because they let out in May.”
“Sending kids back to school before Labor Day is un-American,” he said. They’d arrived at the village, and he pulled his golf cart alongside hers.
Riley glanced around the lot, which was almost empty because the fireworks had ended nearly an hour earlier. Nate was kissing her, even before she could give him the “all clear” signal.
“You know what I wish?” he said, when she reluctantly started to get out of the cart.
“What?”
“I’m headed out on the first ferry tomorrow. Every summer, I’ve watched guys like your dad, and Wendell, and Ed Godchaux head back to work after the weekend, and for years I’ve watched wives and girlfriends sending them off and then picking them up the following Friday. Just once, I wish there was somebody waiting for me on Friday when the ferry docks.”
52
Scott was sitting on the chair opposite the sofa when Billy opened one bleary eye on Monday morning. He was dressed for travel, and his overnight bag stood by the door.
“Oh, God,” Billy moaned, jumping off the sofa and heading for the bathroom. “I overslept. What time is it? Don’t worry. I can take you to the ferry. Is there any coffee?”
“It’s seven. Riley is going to take me to the ferry. And there’s coffee in the kitchen.”
Scott stood outside the bathroom door, waiting.
“See?” Billy said, drying his hands and face with a towel. “I’m all set.”
“Too late,” Scott said. “But we need to talk before I leave.”
“Again?” Billy lurched toward the kitchen and the coffeepot.
“Your drinking is out of control. I think you need to go back to AA,” Scott said.
“No, I need to go back to work,” Billy said. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot, since, well, Wendell. I can’t just hang around the island all summer being Evelyn’s glorified houseboy. I’ve got a gig this week. That’s a good start, right?”
Scott walked over to the counter, to the half-empty jug of Stoli, and dumped its contents into the sink. “This is a good start, Billy. Spending one entire day sober. That’s a good start. When was the last time you went twenty-four hours without a drink? Do you even know?”
The Weekenders Page 33
