by Luanne Rice
Tom took off his personal flotation device and uniform shirt. Even though Gwen was so small she swam in them, he buttoned and buckled them tight around her to keep her warm and safe. He held her tight while the Jayhawk lowered the rescue basket.
He climbed into the basket with her and shielded her with his body as the winch roared and hoisted them up. He held his hands over her ears, so the booming sound of the rotors wouldn’t scare her, and he didn’t let her go until he carried her into the chopper’s cabin, laid her on the gurney so the medics could take care of her. He took her hand; it was ice cold. She neither squeezed his hand nor pulled away.
She didn’t flinch when the medics took her vital signs and pricked her arm with a needle to start an IV. They all spoke to her, making sure to say her name: “Gwen, you’re safe now.”
“Gwen, do you know where you are?”
“Hey, Gwen. How old are you? Are you nine?”
“Gwen, what’s your favorite color?”
But she didn’t reply to any of them. She just kept staring off into nothing—or at least nothing that Tom or any of the others could see—peeping like a baby bird, in a language that made sense to no one but Gwen.
Then she said one word: “Mermen.”
After that, the tiny sounds resumed.
FOUR DAYS EARLIER
11
SALLIE
Love was truly a series of blunders. That’s how Sallie Benson had started to think about it. Even knowing that she was making a mess of her life, she felt powerless to stop. Here she was at West Wind Marina, on a boat two docks over from where she and her husband kept the Sallie B, waiting for her true love—a man who wasn’t her husband. Dan was at work, their kids were at school, and she was breathless with desire and guilt. She was addicted; she might as well be waiting for her dealer.
Sitting in the cabin of Elysian—the sexy sixty-five-foot sportfishing boat that she had been paid to decorate—she wondered for the hundredth time that day what she was doing. She knew everyone at the boatyard, and they knew her. She had parked in her usual spot, next to where her family’s boat—named for her, by her husband, a gift for their fifteenth anniversary—was docked.
Then she’d had to walk past dockhands and guys who had worked on the Sallie B. She felt their eyes on her, watching as she held her head high and strode down a completely different dock to someone else’s yacht. She had said hi to Eli Dean, the yard owner, and she was positive his normally friendly smile had turned into a leer.
She glanced in the mirror in the main salon: she had white-blonde hair—the same color she’d had as a child but now maintained at a price—big blue eyes that, to her, reflected the innocence she felt about the world and those she loved, and a white piqué sundress that revealed the fact she didn’t have much of a tan. How had the nice woman she’d always been become someone who committed adultery—and couldn’t get enough of it?
She had worked hard to build her business, and she was so grateful she had become the go-to designer for the moneyed set. Even some of the oldest blue-blood families on the shoreline wanted to redo their houses and, lately, yachts, with her signature style. Designing the interior of Elysian had come with particular challenges, namely, Edward’s wife, Sloane.
Sallie felt very at home here, although, naturally, she had no ownership rights. Every inch of the interior bore Sallie’s mark. Edward had insisted on it. Sloane—had there ever been such a boarding school name?—loved bright colors, especially deep shades of pink, and she had cozy inclinations. That was not what Edward wanted.
When Sallie designed the Hawkes’ house on Catamount Bluff, she had had to convince Sloane that white was the perfect base color for seaside living. It caught and reflected light sparkling off the water. And many people didn’t realize how many variations there were in the white palette—all kinds of shades, with hints of blue or green or yellow or even pink. Depending on your choice, you could warm or cool a room—or do both at the same time. Sallie would have expected that Sloane, as an artist, would understand that.
Benjamin Moore paints made over a hundred shades of white. The names were poetic: cloud white, Chantilly lace, white heron, distant gray, white diamond, dove wing, sea pearl. Sallie loved perhaps their most famous shade—linen white. With hints of pale, almost invisible yellow, it spread warmth through a room and flattered everyone in it.
And why did she love white so much? The answer seemed sacrilegious, waiting on Elysian for her lover to arrive, but it was because of her mother. When she was fifteen and her mother was dying of cancer, Sallie had sat beside her hospital bed.
Her father and little sister, Lydia, had gone downstairs to the cafeteria. Mass cards and get-well cards were propped up on the wide windowsill. It was a Catholic hospital, and there was a crucifix and a painting of Mary on the wall above the bed. Sallie had prayed the rosary while her mother slept.
“Sallie,” her mother said, taking her hand when she woke up. She gazed at Sallie with loving blue eyes that seemed to be getting cloudier by the minute. “When I get to heaven and it’s full of angels, I won’t meet anyone better than you.”
“I don’t want you to leave,” Sallie whispered. “Please stay . . .”
“Sweetheart, I would if I could. But that’s why we have to stay connected, no matter what. That’s why I want you to stay the same as you are now, as smart and kind, so when I look down from the sky, no matter how much time goes by, I will always recognize you. You’re my angel, Sallie.”
“You’re mine, Mom.”
Her mother died before her father and sister returned to the room.
Sallie had been wearing her school’s summer uniform—a white cotton dress—that day. White was the last color her mother ever saw her wearing. So even now, Sallie gravitated to white and almost always wore it.
And after she graduated from Parsons School of Design, put in her time with a famous New York design firm, and started her own company, she found herself drawn to the beauty of angel-white rooms, the color she had been wearing the day her mother died.
She wanted her mother to be able to see her, to recognize her always, as she watched over her from heaven. She hoped her mother would forgive her for what had started at Catamount Bluff: love and trouble.
That was where she had fallen in love with Edward. It had started slowly, but she had noticed that he would often show up at the house around lunchtime, when Sloane was over at Claire’s studio or taking yoga at Abigail Coffin’s wellness center in Black Hall.
He would sit at the kitchen table, watching Sallie with such admiration in his eyes. One day he walked right up to her, touched the back of her hand as she held up swatches of fabric for him to examine. Sallie’s heart had practically stopped.
She felt overwhelmed—she had never had an affair, never been unfaithful to Dan in spite of how unloved she felt. She had not felt so excited, so wanted by a man, since before Gwen and Charlie were born. She found herself thinking of Edward all the time. She lost sleep fantasizing over what might happen. Lying beside Dan, she could practically feel Edward holding her, kissing her, undressing her.
As time went on, she felt an unspoken agreement with Edward that he would come home for lunch and Sallie would be there. Every day.
The “trouble” part of Sallie’s time on Catamount Bluff came in the form of one of Griffin Chase’s twin sons. They looked nothing alike, but at first she kept forgetting which was which. After a while she figured it out—Ford was the brash one; Alexander was reserved. Also, Ford was the one who developed a big ridiculous crush on her.
In the beginning, she had thought it was semiadorable, the way he would show up to swim in the Hawkes’ pool. He would drive a half hour back to Catamount Bluff from where he housesat near the Rhode Island border and stand by the pool—shirt off, covered with coconut oil—watching her out of the corner of his eye before diving in, leaving a slick of oil on the water’s surface.
But when he’d started coming into the kitchen while she was wa
iting for Edward, helping himself to cold drinks from the refrigerator, reeking of coconut, Sallie began to get annoyed. He would prattle on about his sailing prowess, his college baseball batting average, the way girls were always calling and texting him, how they all seemed so young to him, without substance—he needed a woman he could really talk to.
“An older woman,” he actually said one day. “Do you mind if I text you?” he asked.
“Why do you want to?” she asked.
“I don’t know, just send you stuff I think you might appreciate. Videos and stuff.” He tried to smile. She could see he was holding back strong feelings. “I just want someone who gets it.”
“Ford, I’m not that person.”
“Maybe no one is,” he said. “Girls my age don’t. My mother bailed, and my stepmother . . .” His mouth twisted, and his eyes were full of pain.
“You’re not close to Claire?” she asked.
He snorted, as if he’d never heard anything more absurd.
Sallie felt bad for him, and she wound up giving him her card. His mother had left the boys. It was a terrible thing to do, but Sallie knew there had to be another side of the story. Dan and Griffin had caroused around when they were young, and from what Dan had said, they were lucky they’d gotten away with so much. They were both members of the Last Monday Club now, but Dan kept his distance.
He once said he felt sorry for Margot and for Claire. “Griffin is hell on women,” Dan had said. “And I wouldn’t want to be his sons. He belittles them. I hope they don’t turn out like him.” That made Sallie feel even sorrier for Ford, the way he tried to make himself sound important, indispensable to his father.
“My dad’s going to be governor,” Ford said. “I’m helping with his campaign.”
“Really,” she said.
“Yeah. Basically, I do oppo research.”
“Excuse me?”
“Opposition research. I help look into the guy who’s running against him but what a socialist. He doesn’t have a chance. My dad’s going to sail right through.”
“My husband said he’s quite a guy,” Sallie said.
“Oh yeah? He talks to you about my dad?” Ford asked.
“Yes, they had some adventures when they were young,” Sallie said, pausing. Then, “My husband tells me everything. That’s the way we are. Very close. No secrets.” She was sure that Ford had picked up on the heat between her and Edward, and she thought by talking about Dan, she would throw him off. But by the strange glint in Ford’s eye, she realized her statement had somehow set him off—maybe now he was jealous of Dan too.
She regretted giving Ford her card, because he sent texts or emails nearly every day—videos of dumb comedy sketches or his favorite bands. Tell me about the adventures that your husband and my dad had. I wanna tease him, he’d write. For the first couple of weeks she had replied just to be polite, but then she stopped. She knew her silence might hurt him, but she needed him to get the hint.
After Edward hired her to redo Elysian, she began to notice Ford showing up at the dock. True, the Chases had a sailboat and a skiff, both kept here at West Wind. Was Ford’s being at the marina a coincidence, or was he following her?
Sallie told herself she was being paranoid about Ford. Instead she focused on Edward and began wondering whether they could really have a life together—leave Dan and Sloane and become a couple. The agony of that construct was her love for her children. In her grandparents’ day, Catholics didn’t divorce. Some of her parents’ friends had split up, but fingers were always pointed, someone was always bad, a sinner, whispered about. The kids always paid the price.
If she left Dan, he would fight her for custody. Sallie could never be without her children. Gwen was such a little toughie, the way she raced her bike against all the boys in the neighborhood, could swim from one end of the beach to the other without resting. She did cartwheels and backbends and was in constant motion, all day long, until she was ready to collapse into bed after dinner.
And Charlie. Even at seven, he was still her baby. Sallie loved the way he tried to keep up with Gwen—and how Gwen let him. She took him almost everywhere. Would most big sisters do that? Maybe it would change when they got older, but for now they were an inseparable pair.
Sallie had been like that with her sister, Lydia. She still was; she and Dan had agreed that if anything ever happened to them, Lydia would be the guardian for the kids. Of course, Lydia had agreed.
It made Sallie feel horrible, to be thinking of her kids while she waited for Edward on his boat. She heard her phone buzz, and she grabbed it from her purse.
“Hello,” she said, seeing his name on the caller ID.
“Are you at the boat?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Everything okay?”
“Yes, and I’m so sorry to be running late. In fact . . .”
She heard it in his voice: he wasn’t coming.
“Sallie, I’m so sorry. I thought I’d be there by now, but I’m stuck at work, waiting for a conference call with the other side. They’re scrambling to get documents together. Then tonight I have Last Monday Club.”
It was Dan’s club, too, but he had stopped going in recent months.
“I’d skip it,” Edward continued, “but tonight’s especially important. We’re presenting Griffin with a big campaign contribution. I can stop at the boat between the call and the meeting. Will you wait for me?”
Sallie’s heart fell. He wanted her to stay, so they could have sex, and then he’d run out to be with the guys. She made some sort of sound into the phone.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She hung up and checked the time again. The kids’ after-school programs would be letting out in an hour; she’d planned to be in the parking lot to pick up Gwen and Charlie, but now she wouldn’t have enough time.
She’d have to call Dan, make up an excuse. She would say she was stuck at a client’s—not a total lie—and ask if he could get the kids. He wouldn’t care that she was late. He’d take the kids to the tennis courts and then out for an ice cream.
She walked forward, into the owner’s cabin. She sat down on the bed, the fluffy comforter sheathed in the pure-white Sferra duvet cover, Elysian embroidered in cream-colored silk thread. Edward had told her that Sloane had not spent even one night aboard.
What was she doing? She had never thought this would be her life, yet she had created it. She had brought herself to this point.
She typed a message to Edward on her phone:
Can you tell me what this is? Is it love? It is for me.
She hesitated ten seconds, then hit send.
Tied to the dock, Elysian rocked gently on the tide, but she heard a thump and felt the boat jounce. Footsteps sounded on deck, and for a second, she imagined it was Edward. Someone stumbled down the companionway.
Ford Chase bumped into the stateroom door, steadied himself, and walked toward her. He was disheveled, unshaven, with bloodshot eyes full of pain.
“I didn’t want you to be here,” he said. “I hoped you wouldn’t be.”
“I’m not sure why you’d care or why it’s any of your business,” she said, her heart thudding. “The Hawkes are my clients. Just like your father and Claire were.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said, shaking his head. He stepped closer, smelling like alcohol and slurring his words. “That’s not why you’re here.”
“Ford,” she said.
“I love you,” he said quietly.
“You don’t,” she said.
“Why are you with Edward? Why him? You don’t know him at all. He’s a bastard, just like my dad,” he said.
“If your dad is so bad, why are you working to help him win office?” she asked, challenging him and hoping the shock would sober him up.
“You think he shouldn’t win?” he asked.
“Not if he’s a bastard,” she said.
Ford just stood there, weaving, staring at her.
<
br /> “Come on, Ford, you’ve had too much to drink. Let me drive you home.”
“Home? Where’s home? I live in someone else’s house making sure the pipes don’t freeze all winter and the sprinklers work all summer, with my goody-goody brother, while our father lives in our family home with a whore.”
“Claire?” she asked, shocked.
“I bet they started up before my mother even left. Cheating to be together, just like you and Edward.”
Sallie felt sick.
“Come on,” Sallie said. Her tone was gentle, but she was falling apart inside. She stepped toward him and took his arm. “You tell me where you’re living, and I’ll take you there.”
He started to nod, then lurched toward the head, using one hand to steady himself, projectile vomiting all over the sleek white wall and falling to his knees.
Sallie turned away, disgusted by Ford but, even more, devastated by what he had said because his words had rung so true.
12
CLAIRE
With just four days till my opening at the Woodward-Lathrop Gallery, I had jitters. I was most comfortable in nature or in my studio, and being the center of attention made me nervous.
It was six p.m., and Griffin was on his way to the Last Monday Club. He took it very seriously, but Sloane and I secretly laughed about the whole thing. All those men dressing in black tie for their secret society meeting—they got together the last Monday of each month, went hunting and fishing several times a year, and planned how to get one of their own, Griffin, elected governor. We wondered if they had a special handshake.
The group did have a philanthropic side. Each year they chose a local nonprofit, and the members donated $1,000 each. Last year’s charity was the Domestic Violence Prevention Center of Southeastern Connecticut. I wondered if Griffin had steered them to it as a private joke. I doubted most of them realized that emotional abuse was as devastating as physical—the scars were just as painful, but they were internal, where people couldn’t see. The abusers were so good at it that no one but their partners knew what they were doing. Or at least my husband was.
