Laurel! What had Laurel done?


Belinda heard another vehicle approaching behind her. Hoicks Hollow Road was becoming a regular autobahn! When Belinda turned, she saw a silver Jeep headed toward her. The Jeep stopped, and Belinda realized it was Angie and the cute, bearded ranger.

“Can we give you a lift back to the house?” the ranger asked.

Belinda very much wanted a lift back to the house. She was hot, nearly panting-this walk constituted the most exercise she’d gotten in months-but she was too upset for conversation, and she didn’t want to explain why.

“No, I’m fine, I’ll walk,” Belinda said. “You kids go ahead.”

The Jeep drove off.

By the time Belinda headed up the driveway of American Paradise, she was clutching her side. She saw the silver Jeep parked-and beyond that, the shiny black sedan.

What? she thought.

And then… she saw them, all standing on the porch in a grotesque tableau. Angie, the ranger, Laurel, Buck, a little girl wearing a silver, sequined party dress, and a tall, striking woman with black hair cropped into one of those pixie cuts that were currently all the rage.

The pixie cut was what threw Belinda. Who? Then she figured it out.

Scarlett was here.


She had won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and she’d been nominated for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, and she’d won an Emmy for Best Actress-but she couldn’t pull off the acting job that was required right now.

She turned around to face the road. She supposed she could walk back to the beach club and call a taxi. A taxi would take her to the airport; she would charter a plane to get off this godforsaken rock if she had to. She looked at her feet, in Laurel’s flimsy flip-flops; they were one step up from the disposable flip-flops one received after a pedicure. And Belinda was hot and tired. She looked down the road in the other direction. Maybe she could go knock on Mrs. Glass’s door. Mrs. Glass might know exactly who Belinda was five minutes from now; old people’s memories were sometimes like that.

“Mom!” Angie called out.

Why had Belinda even come? She should have realized that Scarlett would show up. Scarlett had never found a career path, and so she liked to attract attention in other ways-like this dramatic appearance. She couldn’t have taken a taxi, like the rest of the world; she had to hire a driver and that pretentious car.

Belinda would have none of it. Scarlett had slept with Deacon while he was still married to Belinda. After Deacon’s appearance on Letterman, Belinda and Deacon had had an awful blowout, and Deacon had flown down to the Virgin Islands.

Belinda had seen the charge come onto the AmEx, for five nights at Caneel Bay, and then she’d gotten a phone call from Renée Zellweger’s personal assistant, who swore she’d seen Deacon on a sailboat in Maho Bay with a blond in a bikini.

Blond, Belinda thought. The assistant was wrong about the blond; Deacon had taken Scarlett. Belinda’s suspicions were all but confirmed when Deacon got engaged to Scarlett two months after his divorce from Belinda was final. Belinda loathed Scarlett Oliver. She would never forgive her.


“Mom!” Angie said again. She wheeled her arm. “Come on!”

Nope. She would just stand here in the road until she melted.

“Mom!” Angie said. “We can all see you!”

Belinda waved as if just noticing her daughter and-Oh, look!-other people Belinda knew gathered on the porch.

She had no choice. She trudged up the driveway and, with her last vestiges of energy, climbed the porch steps.

“Hello, all,” she said.

“Belinda,” Laurel said. “Look who’s here!”

“Hello, Scarlett,” Belinda said.

Scarlett said nothing. Her eyes were red and watery; she was crying. She engulfed Belinda in a stifling, Chanel-scented embrace. Scarlett had been wearing Chanel since she was eighteen years old; all the Southern debutantes wore it, she’d informed Belinda during their first interview.

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Scarlett said. She was shaking in her ruby-red patent-leather ballet flats. Scarlett was six foot one; she always wore flats. As it was, Belinda’s head met Scarlett at her half-an-A-cup bosom. She had been bigger breasted when she worked for them, but after nursing Ellery for three years-three years!-her breasts had nearly vanished. “I. Cannot. Believe. This. Happened. Did you know he quit drinking for me? The drinking and the drugs-he was finished with all of it. Then this!”

“It’s okay,” Belinda said. “You have to be strong for…” Here, Belinda tried to extract herself from Scarlett’s embrace, but it proved to be as difficult as getting gum out of her hair.

“I shouldn’t have left,” Scarlett said. “But I was just. So. Angry. And what he did was inexcusable.”

“Scarlett,” Belinda said. “You have to be strong for your daughter.” Belinda broke free and smiled down at Ellery.

“Hello, Ellery,” Belinda said. “I’m Belinda.”

“No,” Ellery said. “You’re Miss Kit Kat.”

“That’s right,” Belinda said, trying not to sound startled. Belinda had starred in three seasons of the HBO series Boarding, about a group of precocious teenagers at an exclusive New England prep school; Belinda had been the slightly dotty headmistress, Miss Kit Kat. Did Scarlett allow Ellery to watch the show at the tender age of nine? “I am Miss Kit Kat.”

“Ellery is destroyed,” Scarlett whispered.

“Well, yes,” Belinda said. She wasn’t about to let Scarlett corner the market on grief. “We all are.”

LAUREL

Things were happening very quickly, but Laurel, for one, was happy Scarlett had come. On the one hand, it felt right-Deacon’s entire family was now assembled, which was as it should be-and on the other hand, Laurel had backup in her struggle with Belinda.

When JP left, the rest of them filed inside. Laurel put her hand on Scarlett’s arm. “I have you and Ellery in the guest room.”

“The guest room?” Scarlett said. “This is my house. I sleep in the master.”

“I’m in the master,” Laurel said. “Sorry about that. I got here first.” And I was married to him first, she thought. And I bought this house with him.

“You’re the guest here,” Scarlett said. “You can move out of the master and take the guest room.”

Laurel immediately retracted her sanguine feelings about Scarlett’s arrival. Scarlett was making Belinda look like Glinda the Good Witch.

But then, as Scarlett stormed up the stairs, lugging her two monstrous suitcases behind her-bump bump bump-Belinda yanked Laurel into the living room.

“You called Bob?” she whispered. “You called my husband at his place of work and said you had something to tell him?”

Laurel closed her eyes. Yes, she had called Bob Percil. After she had gotten home from the hospital with Hayes, she had been in a state. Buck had wanted to comfort her, but she sent him away. He was half her problem! Once the house was quiet, Laurel had wandered down to the kitchen, and she’d poured herself a shot of Jameson from the liquor stash. One shot calmed her somewhat, and so she did another. After the third shot, she wondered if anything would make her feel better aside from more Jameson. That was when she’d decided to wander to the end of the driveway… wait for a signal… and call the famed Percil Stables in Louisville, Kentucky.

This message is for Bob, she’d said, her voice slurring despite her intention to sound sober, serious, reliable. It’s Laurel Thorpe. I’m on Nantucket, and there’s something I want to tell you about Belinda.

This morning, when she had woken up, her stomach roiled with regret. What had possessed her? She was the nice wife, the good wife, the altruist. She had made a career of helping people, saving people-but after twenty-four hours in Belinda’s presence, she had become a vengeful bitch, unrecognizable even to herself.

“I did,” Laurel said. “I called him.”

“And what, pray tell, did you have to tell him?” Belinda asked.

Belinda thought she could get away with anything. That’s the problem, Laurel thought. Some people were like that. They thought they couldn’t be touched; they thought the rules didn’t apply to them.

“What do you think I had to tell him?” Laurel asked.

Before Belinda could answer, they both heard the sound of things being thrown out into the hallway above, then Scarlett’s voice. “The master bedroom is mine! This is my house!”

Is this happening? Laurel wondered.

Buck appeared in the living room. “Should I tell her that only a third of the house is hers?”

“Now is not the time,” Belinda said.

“Right,” Laurel said.

At that moment, Angie came flying down the stairs. She grabbed Laurel’s arm. “Talk to you?”

Laurel followed Angie to the kitchen.

“Hayes got mugged?” Angie said.

“Yes,” Laurel said, sighing. “He said he was in a taxi heading to town, and he and the driver had a disagreement about which way to go, so Hayes got out of the cab by the state forest. And then he got beat up and robbed.”

Angie’s eyebrows shot up. “Taxi?” she said. “He probably called the six-sided nut hut who brought us here. The guy was dressed like a pirate. Hayes asked him for his card.”

“Hayes didn’t tell the police anything,” Laurel said. “He just wants to let it go.”

“I asked what would make him feel better, and he said he wanted me to make Dad’s chowder tonight.”

“That’ll be delicious. Thank you, sweetie,” Laurel said. Tears sprang to her eyes, even though the last thing on her mind was what they would eat for dinner. But Deacon had made shellfish chowder at least once during each of those long-ago Nantucket summers.