Here, at RJ Miller, Meredith didn’t talk to Gabriella. She hid behind a copy of Vogue-which was filled with the cool and lovely things she could no longer afford-and tried to enjoy the pampering. She monitored the comings and goings of the salon over the top of the magazine. Every time a woman entered the salon, a chime sounded, and Meredith seized up in fear. Once, she jerked her foot, and Gabriella said, “Oh, no! I hurt you?”

“No, no,” Meredith said. She closed her eyes and leaned back, listening to the sticky, slapping sound of Gabriella rubbing lotion into her feet and calves.

Next to her, Connie was blissed out. She said, “This is sublime, is it not?”

“Mmm,” Meredith said. It was sublime in theory, though Meredith couldn’t relax. She wanted to get it over with and get the hell out of there. She bent forward in anticipation, watching the final steps of her pedicure like she was watching a horse race. Gabriella slid Meredith’s feet into the ridiculously thin foam-rubber flip-flops and gently inserted the stiff cardboard toe separators. She painted Meredith’s nails with two coats of Paris at Midnight and a shiny top coat. Finished!

Meredith practically jumped off her perch. Gabriella said, “You in hurry?”

Meredith gazed at Connie, whose eyes were at half mast, like some college kid who had smoked too much dope.

“No,” Meredith said guiltily.

Gabriella invited Meredith-again calling her “Marion”; Meredith almost didn’t respond-over to the manicure table. The manicure table was trickier. There were no magazines to hide behind; it was face-to-face business. Gabriella started working on Meredith’s hands and tried to make small talk.

“I like your ring,” Gabriella said, fingering Meredith’s diamond. Freddy had been dirt poor when they got married, too poor to buy a ring, so he’d been happy about Annabeth Martin’s enormous diamond. There had been times, in those early years, when Meredith had overheard Freddy telling people that he’d bought it for her, or letting them assume so.

“Thank you,” Meredith said. “It was my grandmother’s.”

“Are you married?” Gabriella asked.

“Yes,” Meredith said. “No. Well, yes, but I’m separated.”

Gabriella took this news in stride. She didn’t even look up. Maybe she didn’t understand “separated.” She certainly didn’t understand the kind of separated Meredith was talking about.

“So you live on the island, or you just visiting?”

“Just visiting,” Meredith said.

“From where? Where you live?”

Meredith didn’t know what to say. She defaulted. “New York.”

Gabriella brightened. “Yes? New York City? We have many clients from New York City.”

“Not New York City,” Meredith said quickly. “I live upstate.”

Gabriella nodded. She pushed at Meredith’s cuticles. Since everything that had happened with Freddy, Meredith had reverted to her childhood habit of biting her nails. She remembered her grandmother dipping her fingertips in cayenne pepper to get her to stop. This would certainly be considered child abuse now.

Gabriella said, “Upstate? Where upstate?”

Meredith didn’t want to answer. Gabriella couldn’t have cared. Upstate had none of the sex appeal that the city had; they were like two different nations. But the question had been asked in earnest, and it required some kind of answer.

Meredith defaulted again. “Utica,” she said. This had been the town where Freddy grew up, though he hadn’t been well off enough to live in Utica proper. He had been raised-if you could call it that-in the sticks outside of Utica.

“Really?” Gabriella said. This came out as “Rilly!” Gabriella’s voice was loud enough that conversation in that part of the salon came to a momentary halt. “My boyfriend, he come from Utica. Perhaps you know him? His name is Ethan Proctor.” She said his name carefully as though she had practiced long hours to pronounce it correctly.

“No, I’m sorry,” Meredith said. “I don’t know Ethan Proctor.”

“But same, from Utica, yes?” Gabriella asked.

“Yes,” Meredith said. Gabriella was transforming Meredith’s nails from ragged, splintery edges to smooth half-moons. Her hands needed this, but Meredith had to turn the conversation around so that Gabriella was the one talking about herself, otherwise Meredith was going to find herself in trouble.

Gabriella leaned forward and lowered her voice, in the perfect stereotype of gossiping manicurist. “Of course you know who used to live in Utica long time ago?”

No, thought Meredith. No!

“Who?” she whispered.

“Freddy Delinn.”

Meredith felt her nose twitch, and she thought she might sneeze. This was her goddamned stupid idiotic fault for saying Utica instead of making up the name of a town. Pluto, New York. Why hadn’t she said Pluto?

“You know who I mean, Freddy Delinn?” Gabriella asked. “Monster psychopath, steal everybody’s money?”

Meredith nodded. Monster psychopath, curled up next to Meredith in bed by nine thirty every night, buying the children a golden retriever puppy, resting his hand on Samantha’s back, then snatching it away as though it had never been where it was not supposed to be. This was the boy who had walked her to Mental Health Services and had offered to come back and pick her up. He had talked her out of diving for the Princeton swim team so she could be his date at the holiday formal. He had been master of the fried chicken sandwich, king of the pool table. When, exactly, had he become a monster psychopath? The Feds thought 1991 or 1992, so when the kids were eight and six, right around the time Meredith was set free from the kitchen. No more making mac and cheese from a box. They could go out for dinner-to Rinaldo’s or Mezzaluna or Rosa Mexicano-every single night! Monster psychopath stealing everyone’s money. Meredith thought it might be hard to hear Freddy called a monster psychopath by Gabriella the Bulgarian or Croatian manicurist, but all Meredith could think was that it was true.

“Where are you from, Gabriella?” Meredith asked.

Gabriella didn’t answer. Gabriella hadn’t heard her because Meredith’s voice was nothing more than a strangled whisper. She may not have spoken at all, in fact; she may have only been thinking those words, desperate to change the subject, but had not actually managed to utter them.

Gabriella said, “There is girl? Here on Nantucket? Like me, also from Minsk?”

Minsk, Meredith thought. Belarus.

“She clean houses. She ask her boss, man who own house where she is cleaning, if he can invest her money with Freddy Delinn because man has account with Freddy Delinn, and man says, ‘Okay, sure,’ he will ask if she can also invest. And Mr. Delinn say, ‘Yeah, sure.’ So my friend invest her life savings-one hundred thirty-seven thousand dollar-with Freddy Delinn and now, all of it gone.”

Meredith nodded, then shook her head. The nod was meant to acknowledge the story; the shake was meant to say: That is a hideous, awful, sickening tragedy, caused by my husband. That money, your friend’s life savings, that hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars, could have been the same money I spent at Printemps on hand-milled candles. It could have been used to put gas in the Spitfire on the way to Cap d’Antibes. But what you have to understand, Gabriella, is that although I am guilty of spending the money in lavish and inexcusable ways, I didn’t know where it came from.

I thought Freddy had earned it.

Gabriella, perhaps picking up on something in Meredith’s body language, or in the pheromones she was giving off, which were broadcasting FEAR, said, “Did you know Freddy Delinn?”

“No,” Meredith said. The denial came easily and automatically, the same way it must have come to the disciple Peter. Meredith tried to convince herself that she wasn’t lying. She didn’t know Freddy; she had never known Freddy.


She met up with Connie again as they sat side by side at the nail dryers. Connie still seemed a little dazed, and Meredith wondered briefly if she was drunk. Had she been drinking at home before they left? Meredith didn’t think so, but then again, Meredith was oblivious. She should have made a vow to pay attention to the next person she became close to, but she hadn’t dreamed there would ever be such a person. She would pay closer attention to Connie, starting right now.

“Isn’t this heavenly?” Connie said. She wasn’t drunk, Meredith decided. She just had the nature of an addict, and the whole calming, peaceful, restorative atmosphere of the salon had permeated her skin and made her high.

“My nails look better,” Meredith said matter-of-factly. She wouldn’t tell Connie about her conversation with Gabriella, she decided. It was Meredith’s own fault for mentioning Utica. Freddy was so infamous now that the details of his life were known to everyone. The story about the housekeeper losing her life savings had gutted Meredith-that was how she felt every time, like she was being sliced open-although Meredith wondered about the mysterious relationship between housekeeper and man of the house. What kind of person would go to Delinn Enterprises on behalf of his housekeeper? Was it the same as Meredith going to see the school play of her manicurist’s son, a show of interest, a way of proving to himself that there was no class difference between him and his housekeeper-they could both invest with Freddy Delinn?

“I still have to get waxed,” Connie said.

“Oh,” Meredith said. She desperately wanted to leave.

“It should be quick,” Connie said.


Meredith decided the safest thing would be to wait for Connie in the car. She told Connie this, and Connie said, “What are you, a dog? Wait right here and read Cosmo. I’ll be out in a minute.”