Elin Hilderbrand - Beautiful Day

Helen sniffed. “Well, it’s better that it’s out in the open,” she said. “Stuart didn’t want to get married with that skeleton in his closet.” Helen’s red dress made her look like a she-devil. Evil incarnate.

“What do you even know about it?” Ann asked. “Stuart isn’t your son.”

“I heard the whole story from Jim,” Helen said. “I do ask him about the other kids; I always have. We are all one family, Ann, like it or not.”

Ann was rendered speechless. She squared herself in front of Helen. “You know what, Helen?”

Helen sipped her champagne. Her eyes were now fixed on Skip Lafferty, who was deep in conversation with Kevin Carmichael. Skip’s hand was resting on Kevin’s shoulder, and it was for this reason that Ann noticed Skip’s wedding band.

He’s married! she thought.

“What?” Helen said.

“I should never have invited you to this wedding,” Ann said. “I don’t know why I did. I guess I wanted to prove that I was the bigger person, I wanted to show myself that I had moved beyond what happened twenty years ago. I could offer an olive branch, I could invite you here. But the fact of the matter is, we are not all one family. You destroyed my family. You’re responsible for the worst catastrophe of my life.”

“Y’all can blame me,” Helen said, “but I wasn’t acting alone. I didn’t get pregnant alone.”

“I have made my peace with Jim,” Ann said. “But I find that I simply cannot make peace with you.”

“I could never believe you took Jim back,” Helen said. “It seemed pitiful to me. You’re a smart woman, Ann, and halfway attractive. You wield actual power in certain circles. You could have met someone else. You could have done better.”

“That’s where you and I differ,” Ann said. “For me, there is no one better. My life has always been about loving Jim.”

Helen opened her mouth to speak, but Ann was done listening. Ann walked away, leaving Helen and her lipstick-smudged teeth. Ann tapped Skip Lafferty on the shoulder, interrupting his conversation with Kevin Carmichael.

“I need to warn you about Helen,” Ann said. She leaned in closer to Skip’s ear. “She’s a pit viper.”

Skip smiled at Ann uncertainly; he might not have heard what she said over the strains of “The Entertainer,” but Ann didn’t care. Another woman might have repeated herself, another woman might have screamed at Helen, or called her a bitch or a whore, another woman might have made a snarky comment about the bright colors Helen had worn all weekend and the way they echoed the natural bright colors of poisonous snakes, and venomous frogs, fish, and spiders, another woman might have thrown a drink or accidentally “spilled” a plate of cheesy grits all over Helen’s red patent leather platform sandals. Another woman might have heard the phrase “halfway attractive” and made a scene, but not Ann. Saint Ann, Catholic schoolgirl Ann, state senator Ann. Ann had gotten the chance today to say what she’d wanted to say, and that was enough.

Jim approached her and took her in his arms. “You okay?” he said.

“Wonderful,” Ann said.

“I would marry you again, you know,” Jim said. “Again and again and again, every day of our lives I would marry you, Annie.”

The band launched into “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”

“Let’s dance,” Ann said.

The Wedding Night

Ha! Only kidding, sweetie pie! I’m sure you’ll do just fine without your mother’s input here!

All she had left to survive was the brunch. Then, at three o’clock, she would drive the Land Rover up the ramp of the ferry, the wedding weekend would be over, and she could get down to the business of putting her life back together.

Edge gone.

Griff gone.

Jenna married.

Her mother still dead.

Margot wouldn’t even be able to cry about these things in peace during the two-hour boat ride as she had planned, because now her father was driving home with them.

Pauline had thrown the Notebook into the bonfire, and it had gone up in flames. Margot had just accepted this as the final devastation of the weekend-until Jenna told them that Stuart really was the Intelligent, Sensitive Groom Beth had predicted. Stuart had scanned the Notebook, page by page, into his computer-so Beth’s words in Beth’s handwriting would be preserved digitally forever. Doug would finally be able to read the last page of the Notebook.

Pauline had spent the night in the guest room with Rhonda, and at the crack of dawn, she drove Doug’s Jaguar onto the early morning ferry. She was going home alone. Doug was planning to stay at the Marriott in Stamford until he found a place in the city.

Splitsville.

Rhonda, however, had remained at the Carmichael house. She had gotten up early to run, she’d made a pot of coffee, and by the time Margot and her twice-broken heart stumbled downstairs, Rhonda was home, sweaty and breathless.

She had seemed sheepish. “I’m sorry about my mother,” she said.

Margot poured herself a cup of coffee, hot and black; the more bitter it tasted this morning, the better. “It’s nobody’s fault,” Margot said. This had long been Doug’s party line in regard to 95 percent of the divorces he saw. “Things happen, people change, there’s no point placing blame.”

Rhonda nodded but looked unconvinced.

Margot said, “We should go out together sometime. Drinks or dinner or something. I’d love to meet Raymond.”

“Would you?” Rhonda said, brightening. “How about Thursday night? Are you free Thursday night? You could meet Raymond and me at Swine.”

Margot had been thinking of some vague future date, but she was charmed by Rhonda’s enthusiasm. “I am free Thursday,” she said. “And I’ve been dying to go to Swine.”

It was a date, then. Margot hoped that by Thursday the excruciating pain she felt about Edge and Rosalie, and, oddly, the even worse pain she felt from watching Griff walk away, would have subsided to a point where she could be halfway decent company. It seemed an awful irony that she and Rhonda would become friends now that their parents were separating. And yet Margot was happy to have gotten at least one positive thing from the weekend.

She grabbed a glass of champagne from the tray and stood in the buffet line with Ryan and Jethro, who both looked beyond haggard. Waves of alcohol fumes emanated off of Ryan that even the heady scent of Aventus couldn’t disguise.

Aventus. Damn Edge.

Ryan and Jethro told Margot they had stayed up until four in the morning doing Patrón shots with the bandleader, whose name was Ernie Sands. They had gotten into a long, discursive conversation about Moby-Dick, and Ryan had started calling Jethro “Daggoo.”

“Daggoo and I might come back to Nantucket next summer,” Ryan said.

Jethro said, “Yeah, we might get married ourselves.”

Margot clapped her hands and mustered what she hoped passed for enthusiasm, but the thought of anyone else getting married-even people as ideally suited for each other as Ryan and Jethro-depressed her.

Ryan said, “You look worse than I feel. We brought copies of the Times and the News and Observer so everyone could see the wedding announcements. You want to be the first one? We’re sitting over there.”

“I would,” Margot said. “But I have to talk to my mother’s cousins. I’ve been putting it off all weekend.”

Margot fixed a plate of things she didn’t normally allow herself to eat-fried chicken, hash browns, and a big scoop of cheesy grits topped with barbecue. What did it matter if she weighed five hundred pounds? No one had loved her when she was thin.

She sought out Everett and Kay Bailey, her mother’s favorite cousins. It was a sign of devotion to her mother that Margot did this. She had always loved Ev and Kay, but the whole “catching up” thing was the last way Margot wanted to spend her time at this brunch.

They were, of course, delighted when Margot sat with them.

“Oh, what a wonderful surprise,” Kay said. “Here’s Margot! Where are the kids?”

“Back at the house,” Margot said. “With their cousins and a babysitter.” Playing their iDevices, she thought. Eating cake for breakfast.

Margot hadn’t seen Ev and Kay since her mother’s funeral seven years earlier, so there was a lot to discuss. Like her divorce from Drum Sr.

“He’s getting married again,” Margot said. “To a Pilates instructor named Lily.” A woman I had never heard of until three days ago. She ate a few huge forkfuls of barbecue and grits.

Was Margot dating anyone? “No, nobody special.” Unless you count the fifteen months I spent in a nebulous haze of sex and unrequited texting with my father’s law partner.

And how about work? It sounded as though she’d had quite the meteoric rise up through the ranks at Miller-Sawtooth. “Work is good,” Margot said. “I love my job.” Work had always been Margot’s ace in the hole. The rest of her life might be falling apart, but work-promotion, esteem, salary-had always been gangbusters. Or at least it had been until Griff. The first event of Griff was bad enough, but the reappearance of Griff had been exponentially worse. She had liked Griff months ago and regretted her actions, but over the course of the weekend, he had revealed himself to be even kinder, funnier, cooler, and more genuine than he had seemed previously. And he had liked her! He thought she was pretty! And smart! And tough and discerning! (The ultimate compliments, in her line of work.) And she had picked him off like a sniper. She had been ruthless and unethical; she had blown, blown, blown it!

Maybe the expression on her face gave away that work was a sore subject.