The Weekenders

by Mary Kay Andrews

  Billy glugged down half a mug of black coffee, then poured a refill. “You make it sound like I’m a big lush,” he protested. “Okay, yes, I like a cocktail most days. Who does that hurt? You’re gone all week. I get bored.”

  “I was here this weekend. I got off the ferry Friday night, and you met me with a cocktail in your hand. You were wasted both Friday and Saturday night, and both mornings you made yourself a Bloody Mary before I’d even gotten up.”

  Scott pointed at the now-empty vodka bottle. “That was a new bottle on Saturday. Face it, Billy, you’ve gone off the rails. You need help.”

  Billy took the coffee into the living room and sat down at the piano, flexing his fingers before starting to do scales.

  “What I need is a job and a source of income,” he said. He looked up at Scott. “Can we not fight about this anymore? It’s giving me a headache.”

  They heard the firehouse’s front door open. Riley poked her head around the corner. “Scotty? Are you ready?”

  Scott sat down beside Billy on the piano bench and put his hand over his partner’s on the keyboard. “No more fighting. I’ve got to go. Will you think about what I just said? Please?”

  Billy sighed deeply. “I’ll try.”

  * * *

  Scott set his suitcase on the back of the cart beside Evelyn’s pink-and-white golf bag, then joined Riley on the front seat.

  “Did you talk to him?” she asked.

  Scott nodded. “I tried. He seems to think that if he goes back to work, that will be some kind of magic cure. He does have a paying gig this week. I forget where. I told him he needs to go back to AA, but he’s still in denial.”

  “What will you do if he doesn’t get sober?” Riley asked. “Have you thought about that?”

  “Look at these wrinkles on my face. Look at my new bald spot,” Scott said, turning to his sister-in-law. “I don’t think about anything else. But I don’t know what to do. I’d threaten to leave, but if I do, what happens to him?”

  “Maybe he figures out how to be a responsible adult?” Riley suggested.

  “Or maybe he just locks himself up in that damn firehouse and drinks himself to death,” Scott said.

  Riley looked stricken. “Please don’t talk like that.”

  She pulled the cart into the ferry lot.

  “You don’t have to wait,” Scott said. “You can just pull up to the front and I’ll jump out.”

  “That’s okay,” Riley said awkwardly. “There’s, um, somebody here I want to see for a minute.”

  “Is it the same somebody you were with last night?” Scott asked.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Relax. Nobody else saw you. We left the club late after the fireworks, but I had to go back, because your brother left his phone in the bar. I was passing by, and I happened to catch a glimpse of you two in a clinch.”

  “Oh, God,” Riley moaned, covering her face with both hands.

  “I won’t say anything,” Scott assured her. “He’s a good guy. I’m happy for both of you.”

  Riley gave him a grateful smile. “You’re a good guy too, Scotty. The best other brother a girl could ask for.”

  “He’s standing right over there, in case you were wondering.” Scott pointed toward the porch of the Mercantile. “Damn! He looks fine in a suit.”

  * * *

  Nate’s face lit up like a Christmas tree when he saw her climbing the front steps of the Mercantile. He had on a well-cut charcoal summer-weight business suit and dress shirt, with an unknotted tie looped around his collar.

  “You came!” He grasped both her hands in his.

  “I can only stay for a minute,” Riley said. “But I’m glad I got to see you dressed in a suit. As Scott said, you look mighty fine.”

  “For the bankers,” Nate said. “Take a good look, because it’s the only one I own, and it’s the same one I used to wear in California when I had to meet with the venture-capital investors.” He glanced down at his well-polished wingtips. “These shoes are already killing me.”

  “Very nice, but I think I prefer you in shorts and a T-shirt,” Riley said.

  “Or nothing at all?”

  “That, too,” she said.

  They heard the Carolina Queen’s horn blast from across the parking lot.

  “I better go,” Riley said. She leaned in and tried to give him a quick peck on the cheek, but Nate pulled her to him, wrapped his arms around her waist, and kissed her deeply. “Thank you,” he said. “See you in a couple of weeks?”

  “Call me,” she said. Her cheeks were cherry pink as she jogged back to the parking lot.

  53

  Riley stared at her own reflection in the bathroom mirror. The old silvering was peeling away, leaving moody, discolored freckling on the glass, which did her own moody, discolored skin no favors.

  She wasn’t typically a vain person, not by broadcast journalist standards, but since she’d gotten her first television job twenty years earlier, she’d always been aware that her looks were as important a professional asset as her reporting skills.

  Riley knew she’d been blessed with good genes, but in her business, DNA was never enough. To that end, over the years she’d had her teeth capped, her hair colored, and as a fifth-anniversary gift from Wendell, her slightly beaky nose reworked. She’d had Botox and dermabrasion and, since having Maggy, she’d lost and regained the same cruel twenty pounds half a dozen times over.

  Now, though, none of that was enough. Even though the current stress in Riley’s life had reduced her to her lowest weight since college graduation, with the advent of high-definition television, every inflamed pore, wrinkle, sag, bag, or pimple was magnified in the cruelest detail.

  And, to add to the indignity of her chosen profession, social media now made it possible for every snarky bitch on the planet to become a self-appointed media critic, which meant that the most unflattering screen captures and on-camera blunders went viral almost the moment they occurred.

  She pulled her hair back into a sloppy ponytail and frowned. The video clips attached to her résumés were all at least five years old. If and when she managed to score an interview for any of the half-dozen jobs she’d applied for—even the off-camera ones—she’d have to have some minor cosmetic miracles performed.

  “Why are you staring at yourself like that, Mom?” Maggy stood in the bathroom doorway, scowling. “Are you, like, a narcissist or something?”

  “Narcissist? Where’d you learn a word like that?”

  “It’s on the stupid vocabulary list I have to learn for school. It means somebody—”

  “I know what it means, sweetie. And no, I don’t think I’m a narcissist. But if I’m going to get a new reporting job, I have to look good.”

  “You mean you have to look good for your new boyfriend?”

  Riley felt a cold shiver run down her spine. “What are you talking about?”

  Maggy held out her cell phone. The photo had been shot from a distance, but the subject matter was unmistakable—Riley Nolan, caught in a passionate embrace with a tall man in a dark suit.

  Nate had been gone a week, and they’d talked every night, but she knew that photo had been taken the previous Monday, when she’d seen him off at the ferry.

  “Where did you get this?” Her hands shook with fury. Riley tapped the trash-can icon on the bottom of the phone’s screen and deleted the photo.

  “Cute, Mom. Real cute. But it’s too late. Everybody on the island has seen this. And now everybody knows my mom is a big ol’ ho.”

  “Stop it!” Riley said, her voice steely. “I want to know where you got this photo. Right now.”

  “No biggie,” Maggy said. “Shane Billingsley saw you making out with that Nate dude at the Mercantile last week. The same one you said was just a friend. And I know you’ve been calling him every night. I can hear you talking to him. And it makes me want to puke!”

  “Margaret Evelyn Griggs, you will not speak to me this way,” Ril
ey said.

  “Okay. I won’t talk to you at all,” Maggy said, turning away. “Ho.”

  “That’s it.” Riley grabbed her daughter by the arm.

  “Ow, cut it out,” Maggy cried. “Let go.”

  “I’ll let go, once we’re in your room,” Riley said, clamping her fingers tighter around her daughter’s forearm. “Now, march.”

  Maggy’s bedroom looked and smelled like a toxic waste dump. Riley shoved her rudely inside and slammed and locked the door behind them. In response, Maggy flung herself facedown on a bed-shaped mound of clothing.

  Riley stood with her spine against the wall, praying for some kind of composure or inner knowledge to help her deal with this newest single-parenting nightmare.

  “Turn over and look at me, please,” she said, trying to sound calm.

  “No.” Maggy’s voice was muffled.

  “Do it,” Riley said. “Or I’ll turn you over myself.”

  Maggy sat up on the bed, her arms crossed defiantly over her chest, glaring at her mother. “Mimi knows you’re a ho too,” she announced.

  “First of all, I am not a ho,” Riley said. “So I’d appreciate it if you’d stop using that word.”

  “Whatever. What you’re doing is gross. I mean, how are you any different from Dr. Cranshaw, sleeping around with his nurses?”

  “First of all, unlike Dr. Cranshaw, I’m not married.”

  “Yeah, but you were. And you were practically in that guy’s pants even before we knew Dad was dead.”

  “Margaret!” Riley bit her lip. “You know that even if your dad were still alive, we wouldn’t be together. You admitted to me that Dad told you we were probably getting a divorce right after Easter. And I was not, emphasize not in Nate Milas’s pants.”

  “I don’t care. It’s disgusting! He’s disgusting, the way he looks at you. Like, even on the ferry when we were coming back from seeing Dad’s body, he was hitting on you. You think I didn’t know that? I’m not stupid.”

  Riley tried to think back to that time on the ferry, then remembered that Nate had approached to offer his condolences.

  “He was not hitting on me. He was being kind and sympathetic.”

  “I saw the way he looked at you. And Mimi told me that even though he’s like, super rich now, he used to be poor, and you used to go out with him, until he barfed all over you at some big party.”

  Riley sighed. “Mimi doesn’t have any right to tell you stuff like that. And your friends don’t have any right to take pictures of people and share them without permission. It’s called invasion of privacy.”

  “So, what, you’re gonna have Shane arrested?”

  If only, Riley thought.

  “Most importantly, neither you nor your friends have any right to call me something as hurtful as what you just did.”

  “Well, it hurts me for you to go around acting like you do,” Maggy retorted. “If there’s nothing wrong with what you’re doing, why are you sneaking around with him all the time? Why do you only talk to him late at night, when you think nobody can hear you?”

  Good question, Riley thought ruefully. Why was she so intent on keeping her relationship with Nate secret?

  Riley sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. “I’m a grown woman, Maggy. And I’m single. And Nate is single and he is somebody really special to me. And yes, he makes me happy, in a way that I haven’t been happy in a long, long time. Aren’t you tired of me being sad all the time? I am. I’m ready to be happy again, and I hope that you want that for me, too.”

  “Not with him!” Maggy cried. “He’s a prick, and I hate him, and I hate you.”

  * * *

  She found Evelyn in the library, dusting the bookshelves. Her mother frowned as Riley walked in. “What was all that door slamming I just heard from upstairs? Are you fussing at Maggy again?”

  “As a matter of fact, I was,” Riley said. “She just called me a disgusting ho because one of her friends shared a picture of me kissing Nate Milas at the ferry last week.”

  Evelyn shook her head. “Well, she’s upset, naturally. Honestly, Riley, what were you thinking?”

  “Me? I was thinking I’m a grown woman—a single grown woman, by the way, who is allowed to have a relationship with a single grown man without having everybody in my life freaking out and calling me names.”

  “You’re a widow, for God’s sake. We haven’t even buried Wendell yet! And I did not raise my daughter to act like this, going around necking with some man in public at seven o’clock in the morning. It’s indecent. Have you no sense of propriety at all?”

  “We weren’t necking, Mama. He kissed me good-bye. It was at the ferry. People kiss each other hello and good-bye all the time. I saw you and Daddy do it a million times, growing up. And I’m not scarred for life.”

  “Your father and I were married. And I seriously doubt you ever saw him put his tongue in my mouth in public, for God and everybody to see.”

  Riley felt her face get hot. “So you saw that picture, too.”

  “I did. And I found it revolting. So it’s no surprise that your daughter would, too. You might not care that Wendell is dead, but Maggy is still mourning her father. I would think you would be just a little sensitive to her feelings before you go cavorting around like some gay divorcée.”

  Riley was struggling to keep her temper. “No, the timing of this isn’t the best in the world. But we don’t live in the past. I’m not Queen Victoria, and I’m not going to wear black and hang scarves over mirrors for the rest of my life just because my soon-to-be ex-husband got himself murdered.”

  Evelyn threw her dust rag onto the tooled-leather desktop. “Nobody expects you to throw yourself on some funeral pyre, Riley. But I don’t think it’s too much to expect for you to wait a decent amount of time before you start dating again, out of respect for Wendell.”

  “Respect for Wendell? For the man who bankrupted me, stole from me, stole from my family, and who, by the way, was sleeping around on me? I’m sorry, Mama, but yes, that is too much to expect. I didn’t go looking to find somebody new. It just happened. And I can’t believe I got this lucky—that this man, this wonderful, kind, decent, caring guy, wants to be in my life.”

  “You obviously see something in Nate Milas that I can’t see,” Evelyn said with a sniff. “Yes, he’s been successful in business, but that hardly makes him suitable for somebody like you. You can call me a snob if you want, but it’s the truth and you know it. And have you forgotten how he ruined your debut? I haven’t and, no matter what, I’ll never forgive him for humiliating our family that way.”

  “Okay,” Riley said wearily. “I give up. I do. Unfortunately, I don’t have the financial resources at the moment to allow Maggy and me to find a place of our own here on the island. Out of respect for your insane dislike for him, I won’t bring Nate around here. But I’m not going to keep our relationship a secret any longer. I’m going to keep seeing Nate, and I’m going to create a new life for my daughter and me.”

  “Do as you like,” Evelyn said, carpet-bombing the desktop with Pledge.

  “I intend to,” Riley said.

  54

  Riley’s cell phone rang, and, when she saw that the caller was Porter Burroughs, she grabbed it. Porter was her longtime agent. The agent she’d been calling and e-mailing for a month. Riley hit the connect button.

  “Riley!” Porter’s booming voice reflected his roots in shock radio. “How are things at the beach?”

  “Oh, you know, sunny and beachy. I’ve been hoping I’d hear back from you. Getting a little anxious, you know?”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. One of my client’s contracts expired, and we got involved in a bidding war. Pretty exciting stuff, but also crazy-making. Bottom line is she’s gonna be evening anchor at the number-one station in a top-five market. And I’m gonna be one happy son of a bitch when I cash that commission check.”

  “How nice for both of you,” Riley said, feeling long-dormant pangs of professional jeal
ousy. At one point in her career, she, too, had aspired to that kind of a career trajectory. Now she’d be happy just to be able to pay her mounting bills.

  “Has anything turned up for me?” she asked.

  “Honey, you know everybody in the business loves you, right? You’ve got class, experience, smarts…”

  “And a forty-two-year-old face,” Riley said.

  “Yeah. Don’t take this wrong, but one of my clients down in Florida just flew to Mexico for a little tune-up. Fabulous results. It’s like a spa, right? You stay two weeks, get a little R-and-R and some ice packs, and boom! When you come back, you’re ten years younger. Only ten thousand dollars. Think about it, okay?”

  “I just thought about it. But I don’t have ten thousand dollars, Porter, which is why I really need for you to find something for me.”

  “Did I say I haven’t?”

  “Does that mean you have an offer for me?”

  “I’m getting to that. You know there’s just not a lot out there right now. I do have an assistant line producer opening in Huntsville, Alabama.…”

  “Nothing out of state. Remember I told you that?”

  “Which is why I’m calling to tell you about a great opportunity. It’s right near you, in Durham. That’s near you, right?”

  “Right,” she said cautiously. “Tell me more.”

  “It’s a new concept for that market. A lunchtime magazine format, heavy on women’s interest. It’s an owner-operated ABC affiliate, four times a week…”

  “I’ll take it,” Riley said. “What’s the pay?”

  “Welllll, it’s not what you’re used to making,” Porter said. “But they’re building it from the ground up, so I’d say if ratings are okay, we can go back and renegotiate at a later time. The main thing is to get you back on the air and your foot in the door.”

  He named a salary so low that Riley was momentarily too stunned to speak. “Porter, I can’t survive on that. I’m a single mom now,” she said.

  “I thought about that, but we’ll get you lined up to do some commercials, endorsements, and some voice work. There’s actually a vinyl siding company in town that wants to hire you to do Riley from Raleigh commercials. You’d do live shots, travel around to home shows, that kind of thing. Money’s decent. And one of the sponsors for the show is a snazzy local women’s boutique, so your wardrobe is comped.”