Elin Hilderbrand - The Rumor

She left to do so, and Grace pulled her checkbook out. She rolled her eyes at Madeline. “I can’t believe Eddie,” she said. “I’m totally mortified.”

“Please,” Madeline said. “I’m your best friend. I wish I could help.”

The waitress reappeared. “Our manager said that would be fine.”

“Okay,” Grace said. “Good. How much is it?”

“Fifteen thousand dollars,” the waitress said.

Grace wrote the check out, feeling Madeline’s eyes on her. Fifteen thousand dollars. Back when Grace and Eddie had just met Madeline and Trevor, they would go for dinner on Saturday nights and split the bill. Madeline later admitted to Grace that the cost of the meal weighed on her mind every second, to the point where she almost couldn’t enjoy her food. What had they ordered? How much had the wine cost? (Eddie always chose it.) Did they have enough cash, or would they have to pile it onto their credit cards, which were already sagging like a rained-on roof?

Oh! Grace had said. She’d had no idea Madeline felt that way. If she’d known, she would have encouraged Eddie to pay each and every time. But Eddie wouldn’t have liked that. He was a naturally frugal person, a result of having grown up dirt poor, living over a dry cleaner’s in downtown New Bedford.

If he paid every time, he might argue, what would happen to the Llewellyns’ pride?

Now Grace wondered what Madeline was thinking. Thankfully, the waitress vanished with the check, and the issue was over.

Madeline said, “What’s going on with Benton?”

Grace didn’t have anything to describe except her longing. No, Grace, I’m not leaving you forever. But what if he was? What if he got back in touch with McGuvvy, called her up in San Diego and convinced her somehow to come back to Nantucket? Grace had stood at her window and waited for Benton’s truck to appear in her driveway every morning. She took care of the chickens because they would starve without her, but the rest of the garden she’d ignored, because she just couldn’t make herself cut back the roses or wipe their leaves with lemon water. She couldn’t deadhead the perennial bed. She couldn’t even mow the lawn, and that was her favorite task.

She said, “The morning it happened, he started talking to Hope about the books he’d read that he thought she would enjoy. And it killed me. He became this other person. There I was, standing in front of my daughter-and with every book he mentioned, I fell more and more in love.”

“Grace,” Madeline said. “You are not in love. I know you think you are. But you’re in love with Eddie and your girls.”

Grace sipped her wine and looked out over the flat, blue surface of Nantucket Sound. “You’re right,” she said.

But Madeline wasn’t right.

Three glasses of wine had turned Grace’s attitude around. When she and Madeline parted ways in the parking lot, Grace said, “Thank you for listening.”

Madeline said, “That’s what I’m here for.”

Madeline pulled out of the parking lot toward home, toward her perfect marriage to Trevor and their shared adoration of Brick. Grace decided to call Eddie and let him know about the yacht-club dues, but she was shuttled right to his voice mail, and when Grace called the office-which she was loath to do, because she really didn’t want to talk to Eloise or Barbie, and those two screened Eddie’s calls like he was the CEO of Microsoft-she got the recording.

She stared at her phone. The wine was coursing through her veins. She imagined it taking her good sense with it. My phone is always on.

As she texted Benton, the tops of her ears started to buzz. Will you come tomorrow and have lunch? Just friends, promise. Noon?

She decided she would not move from the yacht-club parking lot until he texted back. If she was there at midnight, so be it. But he texted back right away.

I’ll be there.

She was in the gardening shed, scrubbing the copper farmer’s sink, when Benton came strolling around the house.

“Hey!” she called out. “I’m in here.”

Benton stepped through door and said, “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

Grace laughed. “It’s only been four days.”

He walked over to her, and his hands went immediately on her hips. Because it was so hot, she was wearing only a bikini top and a pair of shorts.

“Are the girls at school?” he asked.

She grinned. “Safely at school.”

“And Eddie?”

“Work,” she said.

His mouth met her mouth, his tongue met her tongue, which made Grace feel as if she were going to faint, or die. The kissing was sweet at first and then incendiary. The gardening shed was hot hot hot to begin with, but once she was kissing Benton, they were both sweating and pulsing with insane desire. He closed and locked the door and then lifted Grace up onto the lip of the sink. With a couple of deft movements, he untied her bikini top and pulled off her shorts, and then he knelt before her.

Later, they ate lunch.

Grace served a cold roast chicken, a fresh head of butter lettuce, a crock of herbed farmer’s cheese, and fat, rosy radishes pulled from the garden. She cut thick slices of bread from a seeded multigrain loaf with a nice chewy crust, then she went back into the fridge and pulled out sweet butter, a jar of baby gherkins, a stick of summer sausage, and some whole-grain mustard.

“A ploughman’s lunch!” Benton said. “Like the ones I used to have in Surrey.”

“I’m glad you like it,” Grace said.

“I like everything about you,” he said.

You are not in love.

Benton helped Grace carry everything to the teak table outside, and they sat down with their feast, within full sight of the garden.

Together, they dug in, piecing together bites for each other: radish, sweet butter, and mustard. A slice of bread spread thick with farmer’s cheese and topped with sausage.

Grace’s hands were shaking as she fed him. He nibbled at the tips of her fingers.

He said, “Do you know the song ‘Loving Cup’ by the Rolling Stones?” He started to sing. “I’m the ploughman in the valley with a face full of mud.”

Did she? She said, “I think so?”

“Here,” he said. “I’ll play it.” He plugged his phone into the outdoor speaker, and music filled the backyard.

Benton took Grace’s hand and pulled her to her feet. They started to slow dance to the song right there on the deck, Benton’s arms around Grace, Grace’s face resting on Benton’s chest. She hadn’t even known such happiness existed. What a beautiful buzz, what a beautiful buzz.

When Benton left, Grace ran up to her study.

She needed to call Madeline.

The apartment, which had seemed so freeing to Madeline initially, now felt like a jail cell. Madeline had to drag herself there, and when she walked in, she experienced something like panic. She had paid twelve thousand dollars for the place, and now she needed to make it earn its keep.

Pressure.

She couldn’t write a word under such pressure.

She had no ideas for another novel. Not one.

She was plagued with all kinds of upsetting thoughts. They were running out of money, she had promised more than she could deliver, they should never have invested the fifty thousand with Eddie. Trevor would have to ask for it back, since Madeline’s plea had done no good.

She was past her deadline, the deadline Redd Dreyfus had extended for her. Redd had called her cell phone and left two exasperated messages, and both Angie and Angie’s assistant, Marlo, e-mailed and then called. They needed the copy; otherwise she would be bumped from the list and there would be “financial repercussions.”

Madeline capitulated. She had no choice. She would write a sequel to Islandia.

But when Madeline sat down with her legal pad and began an outline, the book she described wasn’t a sequel to Islandia. The book she described was a hot, steamy love affair between a stay-at-home mother of two and her contractor.

I am not writing this, Madeline thought. I am not writing this. But she was writing it. The words were flowing out of her like something she spilled on the page.

Grace had said it herself: Everything was normal and boring. And now… now, my life is a novel.

Madeline didn’t even commit to giving her two lovers names. She called them B and G.

The male protagonist, “B,” is the project manager of the female protagonist’s home renovation. The female protagonist, “G,” is a stay-at-home mother of two girls-Irish twins, born eleven months apart. B and G start conferring every day on the renovation. Did G want an undermounted porcelain sink in the kitchen or a double stainless steel? What kind of countertops-granite, limestone, Corian? Backsplash of decorative tile or plain drywall? What kind of hardwood flooring-maple, cherry, antique knotty pine? What style for the cabinets? What kind of cabinet pulls?

B and G end up kissing for the first time in the first-floor powder room, during a discussion of fixtures for the sink. The quarters are tight-and dark, as the electrician has yet to come hang the lights. G is in the powder room when B walks in, and they accidentally bump hips. The next thing either of them knows, they are passionately kissing.

B starts bringing G Moroccan mint tea every day, as well as a box of four pistachio macarons from the local bakery, which they would share.

Madeline didn’t even bother changing the kind of cookie. She supposed she could have made them white-chocolate melt-aways or peanut-butter truffles. She could have changed the Moroccan mint tea to an iced vanilla latte.