Elin Hilderbrand - Beautiful Day

“Have you seen Jenna?” Margot asked.

Beanie shook her head. She said, in a froggy voice, “Is there coffee?”

“Downstairs,” Margot said.

Beanie entered the bathroom. The only room Margot hadn’t checked was the guest room, where Rhonda was staying. What were the chances that Jenna was in with Rhonda? Should Margot check? Of course, she had to check. But at that instant, the guest room door opened and Rhonda stepped out, wearing running shorts and a jog bra, which showed off her perfect, if slightly orange, six-pack abs.

Margot said, “You haven’t seen Jenna, have you?”

Rhonda said, “No, why? Is she missing? Is she, like, the runaway bride?”

“No,” Margot said. “No, no.”

“Do you want me to help you look for her?” Rhonda asked. She pulled her dark hair into a ponytail. “I’m happy to help.”

Rhonda was nice, Margot decided. She was, Margot realized-perhaps for the first time ever-her stepsister. But probably not for much longer.

“I’m good,” Margot said, flying down the stairs. “But thanks for offering! Enjoy your run!”

To avoid the kitchen-Nick, Finn, her father-Margot cut through the formal dining room, where the table was laden with hotel pans and serving pieces for the reception. The grandfather and grandmother clocks announced the hour in symphony. Seven. Margot popped out the little-used rear west door, wedged between the powder room and the laundry, to the backyard.

Margot checked the proposal bench, where she had been sitting a short while ago-empty. Then she entered the tent, which looked even more like a fairy-tale woodland now that the sun was dappling in. Margot searched among the tables and chairs, looking for her sister. Was she hiding in there somewhere? Margot peered up the center pole, where she had imagined her mother’s spirit hovering.

No Jenna.

Out the back of the tent, past the as-yet-unmolested perennial bed, to the driveway. All cars present and accounted for. Out to the front sidewalk, where Margot could just barely discern the ghost of her and Griff kissing. It was so early that the street was quiet; there wasn’t a soul around, which was one of the things Margot loved about Nantucket. In Manhattan, there was no such thing as a quiet street.

No Jenna.

She was gone.

Band or DJ

Band! Preferably one that can play both “At Last,” by Etta James, AND “China Grove,” by the Doobie Brothers.

She woke up sprawled across the massive, soft, luxurious hotel bed alone. She lifted her head. Hangover. And her eyes burned. She had fallen asleep crying.

“Jim?” she said. Her voice was as dry as crackers. Jim had pulled on khaki pants and a polo shirt and had left when she asked, clicking the door shut behind him. Ann figured he went down to have a drink at the bar, then slipped back upstairs after she was asleep.

But he wasn’t in the room.

“Jim?” she said. She checked the bathroom-there was enough room in the Jacuzzi for three people to sleep comfortably-but it was empty. She checked the walk-in closet and opened the door to the balcony.

No Jim.

Her head started to throb, and her breathing became shallow. She had lost H.W. once, when he was nine years old, at the North Carolina State Fair in Raleigh. Ann had had all three boys in tow; they were headed to the ag tent to see the biggest pumpkin and the prettiest tomatoes and to taste prize-winning hush puppies and dilled green beans. But Ann had stopped to talk to one of her constituents, and at some point during the conversation, H.W. had wandered off. He was missing for seventy-four minutes before Ann and the state fair security officers found him in the Village of Yesteryear, watching a woman in colonial garb weaving cloth on a loom. Ann had spent those seventy-four minutes in a purple panic; it had felt like someone had flipped her upside down and was shaking her.

She felt similarly now. Maybe Jim had come back up to the room to sleep, and maybe he’d left again. Maybe he was down in the restaurant having coffee and reading the paper. But no, Ann didn’t think he’d been back. There had been no imprint of his body on the bed; she had definitely slept alone.

She brushed her teeth, washed her face, took some aspirin, put on the outfit she had planned especially for today-a cherry red gingham A-line skirt and a scalloped-neck white T-shirt and a pair of red Jack Rogers sandals that pinched between her toes, but which she’d seen nearly half a dozen woman on Nantucket wearing. Her outfit was too cheerful for the amount of anxiety she was experiencing.

Where was he? Where had he gone?

She checked her cell phone, now showing a dangerously low 12 percent battery. Nothing from Jim, only a text from Olivia that said, Party was wonderful. Madame X can go fuck herself.

Typical Olivia.

Where would Jim have gone? Ann racked her brain. She was a problem solver; she would figure it out. The Lewises and the Cohens and the Shelbys were all staying at the Brant Point Inn, which was a bed-and-breakfast. None of them would have had space to accommodate Jim in their rooms.

Had he imposed on the Carmichaels and slept on their sofa? God, Ann hoped not. How would that look, the father of the groom kicked out of his hotel room? Ann couldn’t believe she had ordered him out. But she had been angry last night, angrier than she could ever remember being in all these years. Jim had been right: it was Ann’s fault that Helen was here.

Then a ghastly thought encroached: Had Jim gone to spend the night with Helen? Had more transpired between them at the hospital than he’d admitted? They had looked pretty chummy upon returning to the yacht club.

Ann raced into the bathroom. She was going to be sick. Her body was in rejection mode, just as it had been twenty years earlier. For weeks after the hot air balloon ride, she had been unable to keep her meals down.

She retched into the toilet. Of all the things for the mother of the groom to be doing on the morning of her son’s wedding.

One day, of course, Chance would get married, and Ann would be subjected to the humiliating sight of Helen and Jim as “Chance’s parents” again. She had successfully avoided attending Chance’s graduation from the Baylor School because Ann had a senatorial session she couldn’t miss. But Chance would graduate from Sewanee in a few years. There would be the baptisms of Chance’s future children and then those children’s graduations and weddings.

Ann would never be rid of Helen. They were tethered together forever.

Ann rinsed her mouth and made a cursory attempt at applying makeup, although she had a salon appointment for hair and makeup that afternoon. As she was applying mascara, staring bug eyed and purse lipped at herself in the mirror, she realized that Jim must have gone and stayed with the boys.

She snapped up her purse and, filled with a cool wind of relief, dashed out the door.

Jim had taken their rental car-it was no longer parked in the lot across the street-and so Ann was stuck taking a taxi. This was okay; she didn’t know her way around anyway, and she might have popped a tire bouncing over the cobblestones. She had the address of the house Stuart had rented for himself and his groomsmen. She had all the important wedding information written down. Catholic schoolgirl Ann, organized Ann.

To the taxi driver, she said, “130 Surfside Road, please.”

The taxi negotiated the streets of town, including a bucking and bouncing trip up Main Street, and Ann ogled the impressive homes built by whaling fortunes in the 1800s. She would have loved to be out strolling this morning, peeking in the pocket gardens, admiring transom windows, and reading the plaques that named the original owners of the houses. Barzillai R. Burdett, Boatbuilder, 1846.

Instead of tracking down Jim.

So far the wedding weekend had been distinguished by Ann doing things, regretting them, then attempting to undo them. Looking at her behavior here, no one would believe that she had effectively served the city and county of Durham, representing 1.2 million of the state’s most educated and erudite citizens, for twenty-four years. As the taxi headed out of town, the houses grew farther apart. They passed a cemetery; then the land opened up, and there were pine trees, some low-lying scrub, the insistent smell of the ocean. A bike path bordered the road on one side-families pedaled to the beach, there were joggers and dog walkers and a group of kids sharing a skateboard. Then the taxi signaled and pulled down a sandy driveway. Back among the pine trees was a two-story cottage with front dormer windows and gray shingles. Two cars were parked out front, but neither was their rental car.

“This is it?” Ann said. “You’re sure?” She checked the piece of paper from her purse. “130 Surfside Road.”

The taxi driver was about twenty years old; he wore a blue button-down oxford shirt and Ray-Ban aviators and appeared to be the identical twin of Ford from Colgate, their waiter at the yacht club.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He wrote something on his clipboard. “This is 130.”

Ann climbed out of the cab, paid the kid an astronomical fare of twenty-five dollars (the same-length ride anywhere in the Research Triangle would have been seven dollars), and then felt utterly abandoned as the cab backed out of the driveway.

Ann walked to the front door, the damn Jack Rogers sandals torturing the tender spot between her first two toes, and knocked.

A moment later, H.W. answered.

Henry William, named after Ann’s father. Ann was nearly as happy to see him now as she had been when he turned up at the fairgrounds seventeen years earlier.