Belinda recalled what Angie said about Belinda not caring about her own parents, which struck Belinda as painfully true. Belinda’s mother had been an old-school Iowa housewife who made casseroles and put up jars of stewed tomatoes and pickled dilly beans. She always made way too much food, as if confronted with the daily surprise that she didn’t have six children. Belinda’s birth had had complications that precluded her mother from ever having another baby. Belinda’s father was a quiet, balding man who blended in with the woodwork-except for Saturdays in the fall, when he put on his Iowa Hawkeyes sweatshirt and hat and cheered like a fiend at Kinnick Stadium.

Belinda’s parents had always seemed small to her-not in stature, but in dreams and ambition. They didn’t want anything; they didn’t aspire. It had been their great misfortune to have given birth to a daughter who had wanted to escape them from the moment she could walk. They were strict with her. She wasn’t allowed to date or, God forbid, bring boys home-which had forced Belinda to sneak out. When she was a sophomore, Craig Eskind used to wait for her at the end of Moyers Lane in his pickup. He had taught Belinda how to drive in the green F-100 with the finicky stick shift. Small girl, big truck-Belinda laughed now to think of what she must have looked like behind the wheel. And her parents had never found out!

Belinda left Iowa City right after graduating from high school-ostensibly on a summer road trip with her best friends, Judie and Joanne Teffeteller, from which she never returned. Now that Belinda was a parent, she could see how unspeakably cruel that had been. Angie was right: Belinda had never loved either of her parents the way that Angie loved Deacon.

“Look!” Ellery said, pointing to the commode. It had a pull chain.

Belinda gave her a smile. “That’s funny, isn’t it?” She rarely had time for introspection like this, which was a good thing, she realized, as it nearly always led her to dwell on the ways she had failed the most important people in her life.

Craig Eskind. It had been ten million years since Belinda had even thought of him. She had once cut his lip with her braces.

Belinda clapped her hands. “Downstairs you go, now,” she said in her Miss Kit Kat accent, which was half-British, half-Locust Valley lockjaw. “Find Mummy, show her your new ’do, and ask her to make you some lunch.”

“Aren’t you coming downstairs?” Ellery said. She grabbed Belinda by the hand. “Please?”

Belinda smiled. This was a new feeling: someone in this house wanted to be with her. “Well, if you insist,” she said.


Mummy was nowhere to be found. The only person in the kitchen was Buck, who was sitting at the counter, holding Deacon’s clamshell in one hand, running his finger over the swirl of blue inside.

“Where is everybody?” Belinda asked.

Buck barely looked up. “Laurel and Scarlett went for a bike ride,” he said.

“They did?” Belinda said. This was unsettling news. Most likely, they were talking about Belinda. At that very instant, Laurel would be describing Belinda’s indiscretions, and Scarlett would be on the phone to the New York Post. Belinda broke out in an unpleasant sweat. “How long will they be gone?”

Buck shrugged.

It was nearly noon. Belinda was starving, and she was sure Ellery was hungry, too. Who would make Ellery’s lunch? Was Belinda supposed to do it? She noted the reversal here, and she didn’t like it one bit: Scarlett had left Ellery in Belinda’s care, as though Belinda were Ellery’s nanny!

Belinda regarded Buck. He was lost in thought, preoccupied with the shell. They had barged in on his private moment of mourning. Belinda remembered that shell from the day Deacon had moved out of his apartment on West 119th Street and into the St. Regis with Belinda. He had come with one duffel bag and the canvas satchel that held his knives. When he’d unzipped the duffel, the clamshell had been on top. Belinda had picked it up.

What’s this? she’d said.

He had all but snatched it away from her. It’s mine, he’d said. It goes where I go.

Belinda wanted to apologize to Buck, but she didn’t know how to do so with Ellery right there. She lightly touched his back. “You finally look relaxed,” she said. He jumped. Belinda retracted her hand immediately. She had lost her right to touch Buck even casually, even in friendship. “Would you like some lunch?”

“I’m all set,” Buck said.

Belinda opened the fridge. At home, Mrs. Greene had food prepared and waiting. Before Mrs. Greene came into her life, there had been Deacon to cook for her and, when she was on location, catering crews. Before Deacon, Belinda had sustained herself on Tab and saltines. She had been terrified of gaining an ounce.

There was a whole roast chicken that had been basically picked clean, some green grapes, a box of Velveeta-oh, how Deacon had loved Velveeta, the greatest of all melting cheeses!-milk, butter, beer and wine. When Belinda checked the cabinets, she found bread, cereal, peanut butter, jelly.

Belinda spun around to Ellery. In her best Miss Kit Kat voice, she said, “You can have cereal, my darling pet, or you may have that timeless classic, peanut butter and jam.”

“I eat toast with brown sugar,” Ellery said.

Toast with brown sugar. Belinda could only picture the look of Mrs. Greene’s extreme disapproval. Belinda wasn’t much of a cook, but she knew Scarlett was even less of one. The woman didn’t eat at all, and now she was passing her poor habits along to her daughter. But Belinda wasn’t going to argue. She could do toast. She checked the cabinets again for brown sugar.

“We have white sugar,” Belinda said. “That will have to do.”

Just then, Angie burst into the kitchen, loaded down with bags. She eyed Belinda holding the bread knife.

“Let me do that,” Angie said.

“I can handle it,” Belinda said. “It’s toast.”

“Mother,” Angie said. If Belinda wasn’t mistaken, there was a playful note in Angie’s voice. Belinda looked up. Angie was giving her a warning look, but with amusement in her eyes. “If you want to help, you can put these groceries away.”

Belinda stared at the bags on the counter.

Angie said, “If it’s cold, put it in the fridge. Otherwise, set it next to the stove.”

Buck stood up. “I’m finally going to go for that swim,” he said. “Anyone else want to go?”

“I’ll meet you in a little while,” Angie said.

“I’ll go!” Ellery said.

“You have to eat lunch first, El,” Angie said.

“And then you must wait an hour for your food to digest,” Belinda said.

“No,” Angie said. “That’s an old wives’ tale.”

“Is it?” Belinda said. She was certain Mrs. Greene would disagree.

At that instant, Buck’s phone rang. “Hello?” he said. “Hello, hello, hello?” He jabbed his finger at the display. “Gosh darn it! I’m going down to the end of the driveway. When I get back, we can go for a swim.”

“Deal,” Angie said.

Buck disappeared. Belinda pulled mussels and clams from the bag. “These go in the fridge?”

“Yes,” Angie said. “It’s fish.”

“Right,” Belinda said. She didn’t like her daughter talking to her as if she were the class dunce, but at least Angie was talking to her. She set the mussels, clams, and scallops in the fridge. She would quit while she was ahead.

“I’m going upstairs for a while,” she said. “To Clara’s room.”

“But that room is haunted,” Ellery said.

“It’s okay,” Belinda said. “I’m not afraid of ghosts.”


Upstairs, Belinda heard a groan coming from Hayes’s bedroom. For a second she thought she had caught him in a private moment-Oh no, awful!-but then Belinda realized he was groaning in pain. She tapped on the door. “Hayes?”

Another groan, but one that contained a “come in.”

Belinda cracked open the door. The sight of Hayes’s face-beaten to a bloody pulp, half of it swathed in bandages, half of it discolored and misshapen-startled her even more than being faced with the apparition of Clara Beck.

“Hayes!” she said. “What happened?”

“Beat up,” he said. “Can you please… reach my… pills?”

“Of course,” Belinda said. She had played a nurse once in a terrible film called Dire Emergency that had nearly won her a Razzie and ended her career. Belinda picked up the bottle of pills-Percocet-and shook out a few in her hand.

“How many?” she said.

“Three,” Hayes said.

Belinda checked the prescription bottle: 1 to 2 pills every six hours. And Hayes wanted three. Belinda sighed. When Hayes was little, she had tried to mother him, but he had been obstinate. He had spent an entire year alternately throwing tantrums, complete with flailing limbs, and ignoring every word Belinda said, nose turned defiantly in the air. Belinda had cried about it to Deacon. She had wanted the three of them-and then, after they adopted Angie, the four of them-to be a family. But Hayes would have none of it. How many nights had he cried for his mother? Deacon had told Belinda not to worry, to just concentrate on being his friend, but Belinda didn’t know how to make friends with a little boy, and so she had resorted to giving in and bribery.

Hayes had once thrown a keg party in her and Deacon’s apartment in the Waldorf Towers, when Belinda was filming Macbeth and Deacon, Angie, and Scarlett had come to Scotland to visit. Hayes had allowed the girls at the party full access to Belinda’s closet, which was how he’d gotten caught. Belinda came home to find her Valentino and YSL gowns in silk puddles on the floor, beer spilled all over her dressing table, and vomit in her Birkin bag.

Then there was the time Hayes had come to L.A. during his spring break from Vanderbilt and gotten into an accident in the parking lot of Paradise Cove while driving Deacon’s Porsche.