Dreaming of Manderley

by Leah Marie Brown

  Olivia slants a disgusted look my way. The Beach was a movie about a nicotine-addicted American video-game junkie (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) who travels to a mythical island in search of adventure. Think Blue Lagoon meets Lord of the Flies and you will understand why it gets a 19 percent splat rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

  “One bad blip in an otherwise flawless career,” she says, holding up her finger. “One.”

  “I was riling you up a bit to get your blood pumping.”

  “Thanks,” she says, taking the umbrella from me and holding it over our heads. “We could try to find the toll road.”

  I look down the hill at the rising surf.

  “The tide is coming in,” I say. “We would never make it across in time.”

  “We could walk back to the cottage, but I doubt Madame Verite would let us use their phone. Assuming they even have a phone.”

  “And if they don’t we will have wasted time.”

  “I am starv-ing,” she whines.

  I pull a granola bar out of my purse and hand it to her.

  “Thank you,” she says, taking the bar and tearing open the foil package. “You wouldn’t happen to have a pot of coffee in that rucksack of yours, would you? Or a speedboat?”

  “I believe in being prepared.”

  “Okay, Eagle Scout. Can you rub two sticks together and start a fire so we can send smoke signals?”

  “I have a better idea,” I say, putting my purse strap over my head. “Come on.”

  We scramble back down the hill and walk to the end of the dock, where the rowboat is secured to a post with a rope.

  “We will row ourselves back.”

  “You have got to be kidding me!” Olivia takes a step back, a horrified expression on her face. “You know I don’t do cardio! Don’t you remember what happened when I tried the NordicRower at the Beverly? I suffered a stress fracture in my rib! My body is not made for manual labor.”

  “Well, I am not spending the night on this dock! Xavier sent me two texts this morning and I ignored them. If he doesn’t hear from me soon, he will worry and then he will call Madame Deniau and she will tell him I disappeared in his supercar. What will he think?” I climb down into the rowboat, no easy task with the waves moving it up and down, and my purse-strapped chest. “Come on, Olivia. If I can get into a boat after what happened to my father and Aunt Patricia, you can do a little cardio.”

  “Fine,” she huffs, sitting on the edge of the dock and scooting off it until her feet touch one of the boat’s wooden benches. “But only because you’re a little frightening right now. Just watch where you swing that oar, Tom.”

  “Tom?”

  “Tom Ripley split Dickie Greenleaf’s head open with a paddle-thingy when they were boating together. The Talented Mr. Ripley. Matt Damon. Jude Law. Ringing any bells?”

  “I’ve read Patricia Highsmith’s novel. Haven’t seen the movie.” I sit on one of the benches, scooting all the way to the right to make room for Olivia and then lifting the oar out of the bottom of the boat and securing it in the oarlock. “And it’s called an oar, not a paddle.”

  The thin rain has thickened to a steady downpour of fat, cold drops. I help Olivia secure her oar, pull the rope from the post, and we begin rowing.

  It takes a while to get a good rhythm, rowing in sync, but even then our progress is hampered by a strong headwind and choppy sea. We keep our heads down because the icy rain feels like needles of ice jabbing our cheeks.

  The inertia of this situation is driving me to ignore the fear clawing at my insides, fear a wave will capsize our boat and we will be swept out to the open sea by a rip current.

  “This is a futile endeavor,” Olivia says, looking over her shoulder. “My arms already ache and we have barely left the dock.”

  “Don’t look back,” I say, pulling on my oar. “Just keep your head down and keep rowing. We will be back on the mainland soon and we will drive to the château and drink Xavier’s scotch beside the fire. We will laugh about it all.”

  And I will call Xavier in Dubai and confess all of the sad, ridiculous details of this misadventure and beg him to forgive me for not bringing my concerns to him. I just hope he will forgive me and not see me as just another duplicitous, treacherous woman he married.

  “I’m sorry, Manderley,” she says, wiping her face on her shoulder. “It’s my fault we are in this mess. I talked you into coming to the island. If we drown, you don’t have to wait for me in the light.”

  “We aren’t going to drown,” I say.

  “But if we do . . .”

  “I will still be waiting for you in the light.”

  The island is probably only a mile, mile and a half, from the mainland. On a clear day, with no wind, we would probably be able to row across this channel in half an hour, forty-five minutes at the most, but the headwind is hampering our progress. We are also struggling against the waves. The current seems to want to take us in a southerly direction—away from Nicabar’s pier. Keeping my gaze focused on the distant shore—no easy task with the sideways-falling rain hitting me in the face—I pull harder on my oar to correct our course.

  My thoughts drift away from the boat and are carried on a current of memories, back, back to the day Tara called me, hysterical and crying.

  Daddy took Aunt Patricia sailing early this morning and they haven’t returned. I am so worried. They should have been back hours ago . . .

  When Tara phoned again, it was to say the Coast Guard had found the wreckage of Daddy’s boat and that they had retrieved two corpses.

  One minute, I am sitting in my dark apartment, my iPhone in my hand, praying I will wake up and discover Tara’s phone call had been a terrible nightmare, and the next minute I am talking my baby sister off an emotional ledge.

  After all of the practicalities had been dealt with—claiming the bodies, arranging funerals, meeting with lawyers, learning about my daddy’s serious financial troubles, packing up the more sentimental items the IRS wouldn’t care to claim—I plunged into a pool of grief. It felt as if my soul had been on my daddy’s boat and that it, too, had drowned one hundred miles off the coast of Sullivan’s Island. My body still functioned, but my essence was gone, my ability to feel deeply. I thought I would never feel again, never be happy or whole.

  I still find it inconceivable that a man as big-hearted as Daddy and a woman as vibrant as Aunt Patricia have faded from this earth, but I realize my soul did not fade with them. Not really.

  I recently watched a documentary on Netflix about the team tasked with restoring the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. After many months of painstaking work, the restoration was complete. Years of soot and grime had been removed to reveal a far more colorful and detailed painting than had been viewed before the team’s efforts.

  I now realize my soul did not die the day my daddy drowned. My more colorful details, my essence, had simply been hidden beneath the soot and grime of grief. Meeting Xavier, falling in love with him, marrying him, sticking with him even through my doubts, has restored me.

  “Uh, Manderley?”

  “What?”

  “I think we are in trouble.”

  I look at the water pooling around our feet in the bottom of the boat and pray there isn’t a leak.

  “We are taking on some water, but I think it’s—”

  “No,” she says, letting go of her oar and pointing out her side of the boat. “Look!”

  A large sport-fishing powerboat is racing toward us, its bow raised high in the air. If the captain continues on his present course, our rickety rowboat will be shattered into a thousand toothpick-sized pieces and we will be walking into the light together . . . soon.

  “I don’t think he can see us through the rain.”

  I reach into my purse and pull out my red pashmina and iPhone. I slide my finger up the screen and tap the LED flashlight icon.

  “Here,” I say, handing Olivia my phone. “Aim the light at the boat.”

  Olivia h
olds the phone high in the air and moves her arm back and forth, making a wide arc, while I frantically wave my scarf, but the boat doesn’t slow down.

  “We are going to die!” Olivia cries.

  “Keep waving the light!”

  It might sound ridiculous, but I am more concerned about how Xavier is going to feel when the French Coast Guard tells him they fished his wife’s bloated corpse out of the channel than I am about my impending dismemberment by boat propeller blades. And what about Tara and Emma Lee? How will they cope without their big sister around to order their rain boots and listen to their problems?

  I am about to suggest we jump overboard and swim for our lives when the boat decreases speed. Olivia lets out a whoop and throws her arms around me. We are hugging and laughing, nearly hysterical with joy at having been spared dismemberment, when the powerboat pulls alongside and gives a quick blast of its air horn.

  We stop hugging and look up at the ship. A person wearing a black hooded raincoat emerges from the wheelhouse and makes his way to the stern. He stands at the rail, staring down at us, rain streaming off the brim of his hood. My breath catches in my throat.

  Xavier.

  He removes his hood and my heart feels as if it is about to burst within my chest, so powerful is my love for him. Even from this distance, I can see the worry lines etched across his forehead and the fierce scowl pulling down the corners of his mouth.

  “I am going to toss down two life vests,” he says, his deep voice carrying over the waves and through the growing darkness. “I want you to put them on.”

  Both of the orange vests land in the rowboat, floating in the water at our feet. I put mine on and then help Olivia fasten her straps.

  “Now, I am going to toss you a rope,” he says. “Secure it to the eye hook on the hull and I will pull you closer.”

  The rope flies through the air and lands across our laps. I grab the end and climb to the front of the rowboat, threading the rope through the eye hook and doing my best to tie an anchor knot, despite my frozen fingers and trembling hands.

  Xavier pulls us alongside his vessel and Olivia climbs out of the rowboat and onto the powerboat’s bathing platform. Xavier helps her over the low wall and onto the deck. As soon as my feet hit the bathing platform, I feel his arms around my waist, lifting me over the wall and into his arms.

  Like a frightened child lost in a shopping mall who bursts into tears only after being safely reunited with her parent, my legs begin to tremble and I bury my face against Xavier’s warm neck, sobbing.

  He holds me tight, tighter than he ever has before, and murmurs in my ear in French. I think he is trembling as well, but I am not sure because I am shaking violently now, my teeth chattering.

  “Thank God you are safe, ma bichette,” he says, pressing his lips to my wet forehead. “I don’t want to think of what could have happened if I had not found you.”

  I close my eyes and concentrate on how it feels to be in his arms again, to hear him calling me his little deer, and I commit it all to memory, just in case it is to be the last time.

  Chapter Forty-one

  We are back at the château. Olivia has moved to a guest apartment above the stables and I am sitting on the couch in the living room, Coco curled up on my lap, her tweed blanket wrapped around my shoulders. Xavier is leaning against the armoire, rolling a glass of scotch around in his hand. We showered as soon as we arrived home. I am wearing my nightgown and a pair of Xavier’s thick wool socks pulled up to my knees. Xavier is wearing a pair of dark jeans and a cashmere pullover, his wet black hair finger-combed off his forehead.

  “How did you know where we were?”

  It’s a lame way to begin what I am sure is going to be the most difficult confession I have ever had to make, and a pathetic attempt to stall.

  “Caroline Gaveau.”

  “Caro?”

  “When I arrived home this afternoon, I discovered the burnt photograph of Marine in the liquor cabinet, beside my bottle of scotch.”

  “I can explain.”

  “Please do.”

  “I found the photograph of Marine on the floor in the foyer shortly after you left for Dubai. I don’t know how it got there, but seeing it made me realize there was so much about you I didn’t know.”

  “Like my marriage to Marine?”

  Guilty heat suffuses my cheeks and I can’t meet his gaze. I look down at the little dog nestled in my lap and stroke her soft ears.

  “Yes. She looked so happy in the photograph, with Coco curled up on the pillow behind her, so in love. I told myself a love like that does not simply disappear in a week, a month, even a year. Imagining you still had feelings for her made me jealous. It sounds silly, but I thought if I got rid of the picture it would help you to forget about her.”

  “So you set it on fire?”

  “Yes,” I say, stroking Coco’s curly fur. “But then I felt bad, so I rescued it from the fireplace, tossed it in the armoire, and tried to forget about it.”

  “You didn’t leave it for me to find, then?”

  “No.”

  Xavier sighed. “Madame Deniau left the photograph for you to find.”

  “Why?!”

  “It was her strange, misguided attempt to communicate with you.”

  “What was she trying to say?” My voice wavers. “That Marine was beautiful and happy and obviously well loved?”

  “No.” I want him to tell me he never loved Marine, not the way he loves me, but he just gazes into his glass of scotch. “She wanted you to know Marine abandoned Coco. Madame Deniau loves that little dog, but she never cared for Marine.”

  “What about the stationery? Why did she leave Marine’s personal stationery on the table?”

  “She noticed you looked sad and thought perhaps you were homesick. She left the stationery in case you wanted to write to your family.” He looks at me and shrugs. “She is old-fashioned and doesn’t believe in emails. Too hurried and thoughtless, she says.”

  “I see.”

  “I did warn you she is a bit unusual.”

  “I was wrong about Madame Deniau.”

  “You are wrong about a great many things.”

  As Xavier stares at me I think of the day he took me to visit Thierry Lambert’s farm, my fears he was involved in illegal activity or that he was a licentious playboy toying with the naïve American tourist, and how he looked when he handed me the bottle of jasmine oil. I had misjudged him. He isn’t a criminal, nor is he a playboy.

  “Would it make you feel any better if I told you I didn’t take that photograph of Marine?”

  “You didn’t?”

  “Her lover took it right before I caught them in bed together.”

  “Nicabar?”

  “Oui.” He narrows his gaze. “How do you know Nicabar?”

  “I met him today.”

  “Where?”

  “Olivia hired him to take us to the island. He promised he would wait until we came back from speaking to the Verites, but he took our money and left us stranded there.”

  “Bâtard!” The venom in his voice frightens me. “I will deal with him when we pick up the McLaren tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry I drove the McLaren,” I say.

  “Do you really think I give a damn about the McLaren right now?” He shakes his head. “You could have died tonight. You know that, right? You took a leaking rowboat out on the sea in a storm with eighteen-knot wind gusts.”

  Xavier stares into the flames in the fireplace, a muscle working at his jaw. I close my eyes and listen to the crackling logs, Coco breathing softly, the rain pattering against the mansard roof, and pray he will forgive me for invading his privacy.

  “Why did you go to see Madame and Monsieur Verite?”

  I look at him and realize the moment I have been dreading is upon me. I can’t avoid it any longer. I pluck a fuzzy ball off the wool blanket.

  “Stop fidgeting, please.” He finishes his scotch and returns the empty glass to the armoir
e. “Is it that difficult for you to tell me what you are thinking?”

  “Yes,” I say, trying hard not to cry.

  “Why?”

  “Because I love you so, and I am afraid by visiting that island I ruined any chance I might have had for you to ever love me.” I look at Coco lying on my lap, so trusting and content, and am ashamed I didn’t give Xavier the same trust. “I heard rumors, terrible rumors, about your marriage to Marine. I went to speak with her grandparents because I wanted to prove the rumors false. I should have waited until you were home and asked you, instead. I am sorry, Xavier. Can you ever forgive me?”

  “Can I forgive you?” He sits on the edge of the coffee table in front of me, his hands on my knees. “I am the one who should be asking for forgiveness. I might have spared you a lot of pain if I had just told you the truth about my first marriage. I was too proud and too afraid of what you might think if you learned the truth so early in our relationship. I intended to tell you one day, but I realize now I should have told you sooner. It wasn’t fair of me to bring you here, to Saint-Maturinus, without being completely honest. So, ma bichette, can you forgive me?” I am about to tell him that there is nothing to forgive when he holds up his hand. “Before you answer that, you should know everything.”

  He has the look of a battle-fatigued soldier, dead-eyed, a part of him still lost in the conflict, as he tells me about his two-year marriage to Marine. I listen without interrupting, resisting the urge to massage the frown lines from his brow, when he tells me how Marine fooled him into believing she loved him and how devastated he was when it became clear she had married him for his wealth. An arrow of guilt lances my heart as I remember I still haven’t told Xavier about my father’s shameful financial situation. I haven’t told him before now because I didn’t really see how it mattered, but I don’t want him to think I married him for the same cold, avaricious reasons Marine married him.

  “She married me for a lifestyle, not love, and she became very nasty when our reality did not match her fantasy. She thought we would be part of the idle jet set who spend their winters on the pistes at Klosters and their summers yachting around the Greek isles. It got to a point where I was spending more time at work than at home. Once I saw through her mask—that beautiful, manipulative, selfish mask—to the woman she truly was, I couldn’t bear to be around her. She could be breathtakingly calculating and cruel.” He takes a deep breath and exhales. “I didn’t want to divorce her because of the scandal I knew it would create. As you have already discovered, Saint-Maturinus is a small village. As the oldest and most venerated family in the area, we de Malorets are expected to be above reproach. And there was my family to consider. My uncles are devout Catholics. They think divorce as mortal a sin as murder. In fact, there’s never been a divorce in my family. So, I made an agreement with Marine: I would pay her bills, send her to Klosters each winter and Santorini each summer, if she promised to organize and host charitable and business functions here, at the château.”