Elin Hilderbrand - Silver Girl

Connie drove to the town pier alone, thinking that she had another fifteen minutes of peace before her summer detonated. When she’d told Dan what she’d done-or, more accurately, not done-he’d said, Don’t worry about it. With what we’ve been through, it can’t be a big deal, can it? But he might only have been saying that to make Connie feel better.

Town pier, eleven o’clock in the morning on a stunning summer day. The pier was crawling with families carrying coolers and fishing poles and clam rakes, clambering aboard motor boats to putter out to Coatue and Great Point. Connie was astonished how relaxed and happy these people seemed. Connie was sick with anxiety. Sick! She had followed her gut, and now she had to hope for the best.

Eleven o’clock, he’d said. But she didn’t see him anywhere. Typical. It was Veronica’s gene passed down: Late for my own funeral.

Connie walked the dock, checking out this boat and that boat, looking but not seeing, her heart thundering, her stomach sour like she’d eaten a dozen lemons for breakfast. Then she saw him, the square shoulders, the bowlegged lope. Unmistakable. The sun was a bright halo around his head.

Toby!

He was wearing a green polo shirt, a pair of khaki shorts, deck shoes without socks (did Toby even own socks?), aviator sunglasses. He was tan. (Toby and Connie were alike in many ways, but Connie freckled while Toby was now, and always had been, a bronze god.) He still had a full head of sandy hair, and his weight seemed stable. In the past, Connie had seen him both gaunt and underfed, and bloated and heavy. He whooped and gave her a big hug, lifting her right off the dock, and Connie was reminded that, when sober, he was just like a Saint Bernard puppy, all boundless love and enthusiasm. He had been sober now for nearly two years-or so he claimed.

“I called your bluff!” he said. “I’m here!”

“Hey, brother,” Connie said. He set her down and they kissed. He tasted clean, he smelled clean-not too minty the way he used to when he was drinking.

“This weather is amazing!” he said. He hoisted the canvas duffel bag he had owned literally his entire adult life over his shoulder. It was sky-blue with his monogram; it had traveled with Toby all over the world. “Maryland is brutally hot. We haven’t had a lick of wind all summer. So I took that as a sign. This guy Roy Weedon has been asking me about my boat for years, and when the offer came from the Naval Academy, I thought, Now’s the time to sell her.”

“I can’t believe she’s gone,” Connie said. Toby had saved for Bird’s Nest for nearly ten years, and she was the most exquisite sailboat Connie had ever seen. A classic. The Jackie O of sailboats, the Audrey Hepburn of sailboats. Toby had run the number one sailing charter in the state of Maryland, which gave him the freedom and the cash to island-hop in the Caribbean all winter long. “I can’t believe you sold her. You know you’ll never be able to get her back, right? You know you’ll never find another boat like her?”

“I do know that,” Toby said. “But I can’t be at the mercy of the wind or the economy, anymore, Con. And the gig at the Naval Academy was too choice to turn down. The premier collegiate sailors in the country will soon be under my tutelage.”

Right. When they’d talked on the phone the day before, Toby had confessed that the charter business had suited him because it left him free to do other things-primarily drink and chase after other men’s wives. He needed something more stable, more serious. He had to think of his son, Michael. He needed health insurance, retirement benefits. He needed to grow up, finally.

“Want to take one last look at her?” Toby asked.

“Won’t that be sad for you?” Connie asked.

“I’ve made my peace with it,” Toby said. “Come on, she’s down here.”

Connie was grateful for anything that delayed their arrival back at home. She followed Toby down the dock. And there she was-Bird’s Nest-thirty-three feet of polished wood, rope, canvas, and nickel. There was a guy on her, tying up the sails. He looked too young to be the new owner.

“Is that the man from Nantucket?” Connie asked.

Toby laughed. “You’re funny, Con.”

They ambled back to the car. He was going to think she was funny for another second or two. “So how are you doing?” Connie asked. The ride to Tom Nevers would only take twelve or thirteen minutes, so she had to work fast. “Are you sober?”

“Sure,” Toby said.

“Sure?” Connie said. “What kind of answer is that?”

“Geez, Con,” Toby said. “Are you riding me already? Can’t we just ease into it?”

“No,” Connie said. “We can’t just ease into it.” She wouldn’t be lulled by his boyish, gee-whiz charm, though this seemed to work on everyone else. Wolf, despite the fact that he had seen Toby at his very drunkest and most pathetic, had absolutely adored his brother-in-law. The two of them could tell sailing stories for hours, and when Toby visited Nantucket, they used to race each other in Indians. It was the highlight of Wolf’s summer-chasing Toby up the harbor and back again-and then settling with a cold beer at the Rope Walk so they could talk about the sail, tack by tack, afterward.

“Okay,” Toby said. “I’ve been sober for twenty-two months. But I don’t take it for granted. I fell off the wagon once, early on.” He squinted out the side window. “The evil combination of Marlowe Jones and the Treaty of Paris.”

“Ah,” Connie said. The Treaty of Paris was Toby’s former watering hole. Marlowe Jones was the lonely wife of the Annapolis district attorney. Evil combination indeed.

“But like I said, that was nearly two years ago. I’ve come to terms with my relationship with alcohol. I inherited the disease. You’re lucky you didn’t.”

Connie felt a complicated mix of emotions. She was ashamed, thinking of how drunk she’d gotten the day of the boat ride with Dan. But what that had taught her was that she wasn’t immune; she had to watch herself. A part of Connie stupidly mourned the old Toby, the Toby who had been Connie’s boozy, fun-loving comrade. Two years earlier, when Toby had come for Wolf’s memorial service, he’d hit every bar downtown and had been dropped off at Connie’s house in a cab, a sloppy-if-happy drunken mess. Then he and Connie had stayed up drinking wine on the deck until sunrise. Jake and Iris had found them passed out on the outdoor furniture in a dead-on reprise of their own parents.

Toby’s not good for you, Iris, with her degree in psychology, had said. You’re not good for each other.

“Are you dating anyone?” Connie asked him. “Other than Marlowe Jones?”

“I’m not dating Marlowe,” he said.

“She’s still married to Bart?”

“Still married to Bart. It’s one of the worst marriages I’ve ever seen, but it just won’t die.”

“Like mom and dad,” Connie murmured.

“Exactly,” Toby said.

“And there’s no one else?” Connie asked.

“No,” he said. “Nobody special.”

It might have been better if he’d been dating someone, Connie thought. But Toby’s romantic life was impossible to keep track of. There were always women, but rarely anyone who lasted more than a few weeks. Toby had been married twice. He’d met his first wife, Shelden, crewing on the boat Cascade, which was the boat he captained before Excelsior. Shelden had family money, much of which she spent financing Toby’s lifestyle-the drinking and carousing in places like Portofino and Ios and Monaco. It wasn’t hard to see why Shelden left-at that time, Toby was at his most uncontrollable and irresponsible, and Shelden was bankrolling all of his bad behavior. He would go to the most popular waterfront bar, buy a round for everyone in the place, and then arrive back at Excelsior with fifteen people ready to party until three in the morning.

Several years later while working in Norfolk, Virginia, Toby met Rosalie, who was a shore-bound single mother of two small children. Toby was like some kind of romantic hero who sailed in to save her-though “saving” her turned into getting her pregnant, marrying her, then making her so miserable and doing such a piss-poor job as a father and stepfather that Rosalie fled back to her family in New Orleans. Toby’s son, Michael, was now ten. Rosalie had remarried a coach with the New Orleans Saints, a guy who Toby liked and admired. “The guy is so responsible,” Toby said, “I want him to be my dad.” There had been trips to New Orleans where the whole blended family-Rosalie and the coach had children of their own now-went to JazzFest and took river cruises.

“How’s Michael?” Connie asked.

“He’s great,” Toby said. He flipped open his phone to show Connie a picture. She glanced at it quickly: Michael in a baseball hat. “He’s a U-eleven all-star in Little League, and he’s doing Pop Warner again in the fall. Starting QB. Kid’s a natural athlete. Quick hands.”

“Takes after his aunt,” Connie said. She saw Toby staring at the picture. “Do you wish you saw more of him?”

“Huh?” Toby said. He flipped the phone closed. “Yeah, of course. I lobbied for him to come to Annapolis for two weeks, but he had camp.”

“He still could have come for a little while,” Connie said. “Did you ask Rosalie?”

“Of course I asked Rosalie,” Toby said. “She said he had camp.”

Connie shook her head, thinking, Did you not fight to see your son?

Toby said, “Michael’s fine; he’s happy, I’m happy he’s happy. We Skype each other.”

“Skype?” Connie said.

“Connie, it’s fine,” Toby said. And he did, indeed, sound fine.

Growing up, Toby had always been the better kid, at least in Connie’s mind; possibly, this was a notion she’d gotten from her parents. Toby was the golden-haired son, the gifted athlete. He’d shown promise as a sailor during their summers at Cape May, but there was also football, basketball, and lacrosse. At Radnor, he’d been captain of all three varsity teams. He had always been kind and generous to Connie, perhaps because he understood that Connie wasn’t as lucky as he was. She was smart, but he was smarter and better liked by his teachers. Connie was beautiful, but because she was a girl, this beauty was seen as a problem and not as a positive as it was for Toby. Connie’s beauty required that she go to Merion Mercy, an all-girls Catholic school, instead of the super fun, incredibly social, less stringent public school that Toby attended. Connie’s beauty led to boys sniffing around the house, none of whom her parents approved of.