“My dad threatened a scandal that would end Moira’s career if our relationship ever became public.”
I fiddled with the lid of the chocolate box. “Could he have done that?”
Bennett braced a hand on the far end of the mantel. “Destroy her career? I’m not sure. Make things extremely unpleasant for her? Absolutely. And she was at a fragile point. The photographs that had made her name had been taken decades earlier. Her new works weren’t resonating as well—or bringing in as much income. She was about to turn her hand to filmmaking, a much more expensive medium—and a scandal was the last thing she needed.”
“Let me guess: This became a bone of contention between you two. You wanted to shout your love from the rooftops, but she was afraid of the repercussions.”
He looked up at the canvas above the mantel, a nostalgic photograph of the Amalfi Coast in the sixties. “It was the other way around: She didn’t want to keep things quiet anymore, and I was hesitant to test my dad.”
“This wasn’t the reason you guys broke up, was it?” I thought of his multiple attempts to take over the family firm. Now his actions made more sense—he was angry at the restriction the old man had put on how he could live his life.
He shook his head. “That particular disagreement was at most the creaky stairs in a house slowly sliding off its foundation. But it got more notice because it was right underfoot.”
I took a deep breath. “If you don’t mind my asking, what was the reason the house was sliding off its foundation?”
He studied the couple in the image above us, standing on a balcony of the hotel, the man in a suit that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Beatle, the woman sleek and mod in her miniskirt. “Moira was a true rebel, but I was just a punk. And once I got the teenage rebellion out of my system, it turned out that I had a lot more in common with my parents than I could have guessed.”
“Your parents are responsible, productive members of society. Hardly a demerit to be like them.”
He shrugged. “Moira felt differently. And feelings are what they are.”
I blinked. “Do you mean to tell me that she dumped you?”
“It was a mutual parting, but more mutual on her part than on mine.”
I needed a moment to understand what he was saying. “You would have stayed and worked on the relationship?”
He was still looking up at the young couple from half a century ago. Was he remembering the heyday of his own romance? Was he seeing it through lenses tinted with just as much nostalgia? “Yes, I would.”
The magnetic closure on the chocolate box snapped to with a click that reverberated in the stillness of the room. “And not just to prove your parents wrong?”
He looked at me, his gaze unwavering. “No.”
Each sentence he spoke about Moira emerged as a straightforward, unequivocal declarative. Every word he had ever said about us, on the other hand, was like the fog that still lingered thickly outside: something that couldn’t be pinned down.
Something without substance.
I opened the chocolate box again and took out a piece. “Okay, good night.”
As I passed him, he caught my wrist. My heartbeat accelerated at once. But he only said, “Are you all right?”
I put on my most guileless expression. “Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?”
His thumb slid down, drawing a line of warmth into the center of my palm. Then he let go of me. “Good night, then. And sweet dreams.”
AS SOON AS I WAS alone in my room I Googled Moira McAllister, starting with her pages on IMDB and Wikipedia, then clicking through to the reference articles one by one. Some of the articles were from the archives of major outlets like the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, others scans from magazines that had folded decades ago.
One thing was clear: Moira McAllister had indeed been hot. Not a classic beauty, but an unforgettable one, reminiscent of a young Anjelica Huston, all dark, brooding eyes and granitelike cheekbones.
And despite a sometimes uneven career, she had been an enormously accomplished woman, winning awards for her photography since she was a teenager, and racking up accolades for her short films even after her death.
Bennett’s cradle-robbing ex had been a bit of a caricature in my mind, but now she was all too real, a woman who had lived and died, who had laughed in front of the camera and commanded a crew behind.
A woman who was in every way my antithesis. I had but to sit down at a table with his parents for them to understand that he had brought the un-Moira: No need to worry about Bohemian passions that flouted conventions, no worldview dramatically different from their own. I was safe and familiar; I was Bennett saying, without ever having to use those words, that he was ready to return to the fold.
I was, in fact, the very girl they had chosen for him almost a decade and a half ago, when they still hoped he wouldn’t desert the fold in the first place.
All this I’d known the moment Zelda first told me about the Somersets’ role in securing my invitation to the Bal des Debutantes. But now I understood in my marrow that I wasn’t merely a facilitator in Bennett’s quest; I was the very symbol of it.
I wished he were using me for my body instead. At least lust was visceral and sometimes specific. This, the reduction of all that I was into a quick shorthand for conventional respectability, lay upon me, a welt across my heart.
Chapter 8
I WOKE UP WHEN IT was still dark outside. As soon as I’d texted Zelda—she’d see my hello when she woke up—I Googled Moira McAllister again, this time searching for anything that included both her and Bennett. Google didn’t autocomplete my search, but it did unearth an image of an outdoor meal on a picnic table, some dozen or so people on two benches, with Moira near one end of the table, Rob and Darren at the other end, Bennett standing next to them, everyone smiling at the camera.
It could have been the potluck get-together at which Rob and Darren first met Bennett—or it might have been a different party. But Bennett was young, eighteen or nineteen, a gorgeous, gorgeous boy in a white T-shirt, ripped jeans, and a pair of Vans.
I stared at him for a long time before I realized this must be around the time we almost met—if he had bothered to come to the Bal des Debutantes. Not that he’d have found anything in me to hold his attention then—he was clearly drawn to the sex and drama of a woman who had experienced the full spectrum of life, and I was but a young girl completely wrapped up in the state of her stepmother’s mental health.
I hadn’t changed much in the years since. I used to go to school and come back home right away. Now I went to work and came back home right away.
And my life had all the sex and drama of a filing session at a county registrar’s office.
A WINTER STORM SHOULD SWEEP across the Amalfi Coast. Instead the sun rose in a bright, clear sky, and Bennett somehow managed to convince me that we should head out and see Capri.
We were on the ferry, not far from the island, when he set a hand on my shoulder. “You all right?”
“Yeah. Just enjoying the scenery,” I said mechanically.
Although one could easily be rendered speechless by the sight of Capri: white sea cliffs rearing from cobalt blue waters, houses and roads clinging to dizzy slopes, and a lemon-bright light that had probably dazzled generations of artists.
“Let me know if you need anything,” Bennett said softly.
Our ferry disgorged us at the Marina Grande. We rode the cable railcar up to the town of Capri and from there set out on foot toward the ruins of Villa Jovis, the retreat once beloved by Roman emperor Tiberius.
The street that led out from the center of the town was barely wider than a table runner. I stopped by a café and browsed the postcards for sale on a spinning rack. While I made my selections, Bennett ducked into a tiny shop across the lane and emerged with a bag of groceries. As I tucked my purchases into my purse, he offered me a handful of dried figs.
The way he peered at me, half-curious, half-conce
rned, made me realize that it had again been a while since I’d said anything other than, “Sure, we can go that way,” or, “Do you mind if I have a look at the postcards?”
I took the figs and searched for something to say, something so banal it would be a waste of breath. Nice weather. Beautiful place. Do you know what time is it?
“What happened after you and Moira broke up?”
What was wrong with me? I used to be able to say all the right things.
Bennett shrugged. “I got smashed and then went out and got laid…or was it the other way around? You know, stuff everybody does—except you, I guess.”
How did he do this? How did he turn the topic back to me—and always manage to catch me flat-footed? “Why do you presume I don’t?”
“Do you?”
His voice held a hint of incredulity. And he was right; I never had. The ends of my affairs were always a relief, a return to equilibrium.
Or what passed for equilibrium for me.
I bit into a fig and wished I hadn’t retorted. “Never mind me. So you do know how to get laid.”
His eyes were on me again. Did he notice how ungainly my conversational pivot had been? How could he not?
“It’s an acquired skill, like anything else,” he said finally. “When Moira and I broke up for good, I was like a man in a midlife crisis: I’d been with one woman for so long, I had no idea how to work the room anymore. It took me months to rediscover my predatory instincts.”
I’d have preferred a smirk in his voice, the usual masculine boastfulness. But he was matter-of-fact—dismissive, even.
“What did your predatory instincts tell you to do?”
I couldn’t help my tawdry curiosity. I’d never bothered to glance at any celebrity sex tape. But I’d watch every second of his, aroused and angry at the same time, if there was one floating around.
“I learned that it worked pretty well if I went up to a woman and said, ‘Hey, I just broke up with my girlfriend after seven years. Why are you here?’”
The first rule of communication: It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it. And the way Bennett said it, with sexual interest belied by aloofness—or was it the other way around?—did something to me. It made me, who already knew his story, want to know infinitely more about it. And it made me wish I were half so cool and nonchalant, that I too could take it or leave it.
“And what did you tell them about Moira when they asked?”
“Not many did—it’s not that hard to keep people talking about themselves. And if anyone did ask, I told the truth: that she was my first and I wanted to spend my life with her, but it didn’t work out.”
I wanted to spend my life with her, but it didn’t work out. A man perfectly capable of commitment, paying to pretend-date me, about as demonstrable an instance of noncommitment as possible…
“Lucky for me you never tried to pick me up.”
But as soon as I said those words, I began to wonder. I’d always viewed our first time together as somewhat inevitable, from the moment I rather unsubtly invited myself to his house for tiramisu.
Had I been looking at a limited picture? What if everything he had done—tossing me the key to his car, walking away, promptly saying good-bye in front of his house—had all been calculated to put me at ease and gain my trust?
“You wouldn’t have fallen for anything like that,” he said.
“I wouldn’t?” I murmured. “How would you have picked me up?”
He dropped the bag of groceries into his scuffed messenger bag and stuck his hands into the pockets of his trench coat. We walked for a minute in silence, me wondering whether my question had gone unheard, before he glanced at me.
Our gaze met. Electricity crackled along the surface of my skin. He looked away. Another minute passed before he looked at me again. This time I kept my eyes on my feet, not wanting to be so affected, but feeling the jolt all the same, the force of his attention.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
There was no particular change to his voice, yet for some reason he came across as just perceptibly nervous.
“Evangeline.” Did I sound similarly on edge?
“Do you come here often?”
I looked at the ornate wrought-iron gate we were passing, and the red-roofed villa inside—and imagined us instead at a crowded nightspot, with throbbing music, pulsing lights, and the odor of too many bodies pressed close together. “No, hardly ever.”
“Why not?”
“Not my scene.”
“Do you want to get out of here? Have a drink somewhere?”
“Why?” I countered. “Because a nice girl like me shouldn’t be alone?”
“A nice girl like you should be alone as long and as often as you prefer,” he said quietly. “But I want to be there for when you’d like someone next to you.”
Pain pinched my heart, the pain of being understood when I didn’t wish to be, by someone who was only playing a game.
“That’s not bad.” I put on my shades. “Look, we can see the sea again.”
THE WALLS AND ARCHES OF Villa Jovis that still stood were massive. Despite two millennia of harsh maritime weathering, the mastery of their construction remained evident in the precision of the masonry and the levelness of the brickwork. And Tiberius sure knew how to pick a spot for his pleasure palace: The ruins, surrounded by a heart-stopping panorama of sea and sky, occupied the easternmost tip of the island, twelve hundred feet above a sheer drop to the waves below.
Bennett and I sat on a small outcrop overlooking a cluster of cliff-hugging pines and made a picnic from his bag of groceries—bread, cheese, olives, and a tiny bottle of white wine. I didn’t eat much—and didn’t take more than a sip from the bottle.
I should have driven by him that night.
I should have said no to everything that followed.
And I should have backed out the moment I understood what had made me say yes to his crazy scheme.
It still wasn’t too late. People broke up all the time, didn’t they, even in the middle of “romantic” trips to beautiful places?
“Tell me about the ball—the one in Paris,” said Bennett, putting away the remnants of our lunch. “What did I miss?”
I frowned. What had he missed? I remembered very little of the ball itself—a flash of my stark red lips in a mirror, the iciness of Pater’s fingers in mine as we danced the first dance together, the conspicuous absence of Zelda, kept back in our hotel suite with the kindly French psychiatric nurse who had agreed to come on short notice.
Ingrained by years of practice, my mind immediately turned away from those memories. This was where I’d find myself back on the night of the rehearsal, at the beginning of my alternate history. At the very last moment, when our hope was spent, my most generic Prince Charming would appear as if by magic, a little out of breath and full of apologetic smiles.
But I could conjure up nothing at all. Meeting the Somerset boy in person had destroyed my alternate history: He would never have come to us, not under any circumstances or in any parallel universes.
Yet now the one who had taken the road less traveled wanted to know where the other path would have led.
“You didn’t miss much,” I said, staring at a distant sailboat. “A bunch of girls in big dresses—by and large not having the time of their lives.”
Bennett picked up a pinecone and ran his fingers along its scales. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. My parents asked again and again if I meant it—that I’d actually go to Paris as I promised. And again and again I said yes, even as I packed up all my belongings. I was afraid that if I answered truthfully, they would swoop in and do something drastic. And I needed the master of my residence house to give me my passport so I could take the flight to San Francisco that Moira had booked.”
I shrugged. “The ball wasn’t really my thing anyway. And your replacement was a count, so my father was satisfied on that front.”
“I spoke to your father once, bef
ore my parents sent me to England.”
I looked at him, astonished.
“My grandmother had left some paintings that would come to me on my twenty-first birthday—nobody knew which ones, but I’d hoped that it would include the Pissarro over her mantel that I’d always loved. Your father had come to our place to look at some pieces of art my uncle had bought. When he was leaving I met him outside and asked how much a Pissarro painting might be worth.”
“But he didn’t deal in Impressionist works.”
“That’s what he told me. But he also told me that if he were me, he’d hold on to the Pissarro for some time—he felt Pissarros were undervalued and would appreciate in a decade or two. And he was exactly right: Recently a Pissarro sold for almost twenty million pounds. He was exceptional at what he did, your father.”
“Yes, he was.” Pater had an encyclopedic memory and, even more important, an uncanny feel for the zeitgeist. He was almost always ahead of the trends, much to the delight of his clients, who had the pleasure of watching their investments quantum-leap in value. “Did you ever meet with him again?”
My father had not been the kind of man who inspired others to come up to me and talk about him. Perhaps for that reason, when it happened I was always struck by how much I missed him.
“No, but right after he gave me the advice about Pissarro paintings, my brother walked up and I introduced them. He was very taken with Prescott.”
“Oh?”
“Most people my parents’ age were very taken with Prescott. He was at Harvard then, a member of the debate club and the rowing club—all-around impressive. Still is today.” Bennett tossed the pinecone in the air and caught it again, slanting a look at me. “Your father would have been surprised that you took up with the punk brother instead.”
“Nah,” I told him. “My father was used to being disappointed by my choices. All he ever wanted was for me to be a hostess with the mostest, and all I ever did was tinker in our basement with experiments that might blow up the house.”
“Did you ever? At least cause enough smoke to have fire trucks come?”
The One in My Heart Page 11
