The First to Lie

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  Poor Lacey went through her mind. Back on the shore, somewhere, Lacey Vanderwald, who anyone would assume had everything she ever wanted, might be regretting and replaying and wondering, maybe, what might have happened if she’d stood up for herself, or taken action or found her voice. Brooke had to hope poor Lacey had a friend.

  The combination of beer with only one bite of sandwich was making her sleepy, and peacefully so, she had to admit, as she tucked the almost-empty bottle between her legs and yanked her visor down for some shade. She leaned against the sun-baked wall of the hold, watching Trev and watching the water, and wondering what to do.

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 41

  LACEY

  “Glasses, ice in the bucket, limes, Bombay Sapphire.” Lacey pointed to each item on the marble counter of her kitchen. “Sauvignon blanc if they want, and there’s the good chablis if they insist. Prosciutto, melon, Brie.” She pointed again, one pale fingernail indicating a pile of white linen squares, each one monogrammed with a dark green letter V. “Napkins.”

  The black T-shirted cater-waiter nodded, her seen-one-seen-’em-all expression bridging boredom and disapproval. And well, yes, it was another cookie-cutter cocktail party in seaside Bayellen. Lacey felt like defending herself from the judgment of banality. It was tradition, Bay tradition, and this is what one did, and if this gothy bitch wanted innovation she should take her too-short too-dark hair and go back to SoHo or wherever. Lacey was not about innovating. She was about fitting in. Even after eight years in D.C., with summers here in Bayellen, Lacey was still not quite sure she’d passed the family hazing, the initiation rite of passage, into the Vanderwald world. The more she tried to learn the rules, the more quickly another one emerged. The impatiens, white New Guineas, in terra-cotta on the porch, but only after Mother’s Day. The mums—not russet, only yellow—presented after Labor Day. No purple anything. Even under the best of circumstances, cocktail parties like today’s were always a test. Some unseen social oracle decreed Schweppes or Canada Dry, round ice cubes or square, citrus wedges or twists. And how did everyone get the message?

  “I think we’ll be outside,” Lacey went on. French doors, glistening panes of polished glass set in pristine white wood, opened onto a carefully weathered wooden deck, its fading planked floor elegantly battered by the Chesapeake winds and washed with countless summers of rain, and then sleeting winters. A dot-com-crash victim had lived here before her and Trevor, and before that, the mistress of some iffy diplomat had used it as a rendezvous spot. Now it was Lacey and Trevor’s, an anniversary gift from his parents. The nursery, an optimistic buttercup of a room, remained empty. As it would forever.

  Five weeks, it had been, since Lacey had heard from the doctor. She felt physically different now, lighter, and heavier, and somehow, at only twenty-nine, old. She’d examined herself in the bathroom full-length mirror, searching for external signs of her defeat. She was a shell, maybe, like a shell someone had forgotten on the beach. One of those that once had a creature inside, but it had shriveled in the sun.

  The deck looked out over the bay itself, a tapestry of whitecaps this time of day. Trevor was out there somewhere. With Brooke. Lacey had not yet decided how to deal with it.

  “How many people, ma’am?” The waiter, Ava or Arva or something like that, had twisted the linen napkins into a star shape with the heel of her hand, then arranged them on a white raffia tray.

  “Ten? Ish?” Lacey said. “Just small. My husband, his parents, a few others. And you can click on the music at six. It’s all programmed.” She pointed to a control panel installed in the Italian-tiled kitchen wall. “That button.”

  Lacey looked out over the water, wondering which speck in the far distance was the Caddy. And Trevor. And the sister.

  “Lacey?” Brinn Vanderwald’s voice, a warble of polite inquiry, as always, as if she might be intruding into a place she didn’t know, asking for someone she hadn’t met. Brinn had been Brenda, a doctor’s receptionist, Lacey knew, before she became Brinn, and now Brinn ruled the world. Somehow she had learned the rules. And then she began to make them.

  “On the deck, Mother!” Lacey tried to match the timbre of Brinn’s voice; society, she called it in her head, even knowing that’s how her own mother described it. Sometimes Lacey had a momentary glimpse of appreciation for her real mother—who on her rational days would have dismissed Brinn’s rules as “toe-tapping bull crap” and wondered why Lacey didn’t make some rules of her own.

  Brinn appeared, hair chopped into this year’s steel-blond pixie cut, round tortoiseshell sunglasses masking the wrinkles that advanced on her eyes, and this season’s turquoise drop earrings complementing her pale pink tunic and black silk pants. Seeing Lacey, she burst into a trill of practiced laughter, lifted a glass of white wine. Which she must have gotten before she came out to the deck. Unless she’d driven over with it.

  “Well, darling.” She used one forefinger to lower her sunglasses, peered at Lacey over them. “One of us is definitely going to have to change.”

  Lacey looked at her own hydrangea-pink tunic, the one she’d so carefully chosen for tonight. She leaned closer to her mother-in-law, kissed her once on each cheek, abiding by the rule that prohibited lips from touching skin. “Oh, dear,” she said.

  “Or we could pretend we planned it, I suppose.” Brinn’s voice did not sound as if she honestly thought that was a good idea. “Your chablis is not cold enough, dear.”

  “I’ll go change. Thirty seconds,” Lacey said.

  “Where’s our Trev?” Brinn had turned away and, taking her sunglasses off, scanned the deck, as if her son might be hiding behind the stand of forced mandevilla vines, hot-pink flowers on glossy leaves. She pivoted to peer through the sliding doors into the living room, where canvas-slip-covered couches and chairs, low-slung and voluptuous, sat empty.

  “He’s sailing,” Lacey told her. “He’ll be back soon.”

  Lacey took a step toward the staircase to the second-floor bedrooms. She’d imagined, over and over and over, how to deal with what haunted her, what enraged her, and now she felt as if this moment, this space in her life, had opened a door.

  “Mother? While we have a moment before everyone gets here,” she began, “I’ve been thinking about what happened. And I want you to know, I—I … don’t blame it on you.”

  “Blame what?” Brinn had positioned herself at the bay side of the deck, her wineglass balanced on the wide railing. If it toppled, it would fall two stories, past the first-floor garage level, over a hedge of white hydrangea and onto the mermaid-blue tiles of the swimming pool below. It had happened before.

  Lacey felt the warmth prickle the back of her neck again, the flush of anger and resentment. She tamped it down. Not now. Not now.

  “What happened last month. When you took me to the doctor.” Lacey tried to modulate her voice. This was supposed to be a moment of generous loving forgiveness.

  “What—”

  “And I don’t blame Pharminex either,” Lacey continued, determined to get this accomplished. “I even accept that the doctor thought he should tell you, even though—”

  “I know him, dear. He works for us. And you’re my daughter-in-law.”

  Lacey pressed her lips together. Why was everything so difficult? “I know, but information like that is supposed to be confidential. Personal.”

  “We’re family,” Brinn said. “I might as well be your real mother, since yours is no longer with us, dear.”

  Which was the good news, Lacey supposed, embracing that perception. “Oh, Mother. And I know—I love you and Winton so much, and Trevor, and I don’t want this to come between us.”

  Brinn crossed one linen leg over the other, revealing this year’s gold-link sandals, complemented by metallic-gold polish on her toes. She took a sip of wine, then stared through her glass, as if examining the wispy sky through a filter of chablis. “What does Trevor say? How does he feel about it?”

  “Trevor?” Lacey t
hought about what to say. Trevor? How about me? “He feels the way I do. He’s devastated. Disappointed.”

  “Hmm.” Brinn took another sip of her wine. Made a face.

  “But, Mother? What I wonder about—you knew this might happen. You and your Pharminex people.”

  “The doctor explained that, dear, how rare it is.”

  “How rare, though, Mother?” Lacey took a step toward her. “Exactly?”

  “You’ll have to ask your father—well, Winton. Trevor’s father. But from what I know…” She consulted her watch, a chunky silver mesh that draped from her too-thin wrist. “Mightn’t you want to go change? Is now the time for this discussion?” Her low-wattage smile telegraphed her meaning.

  “Of course, I’m sorry. I only—” Then Lacey bit off the end of her own sentence, hating herself for apologizing. “I thought that since we had these few minutes alone we could talk.”

  “People will be here soon, dear,” Brinn said.

  Lacey took two more steps toward the staircase, then decided. She turned back. Brinn had already turned away, so Lacey spoke to her back. “I’d hoped there’d be one more for this evening,” she said. “A special surprise guest for you. But…” She sighed, smoothing the linen sleeve of her now imitative pink tunic. “It was not to be.”

  “Who?” Brinn turned to face her, curious.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Lacey said over her shoulder, setting the bait. She felt like counting how many seconds it would take for Brinn to demand an answer, demand it in that tone Brinn had perfected. One. Two.

  “Lacey? Darling? Who?”

  Lacey turned back, adjusting one of her own turquoise earrings, gifts from Trevor, which she would not, damn it, take off.

  “Brooke,” she said. “But she declined my invitations.”

  “Brooke? My Brooke?”

  Lacey was gratified at the spike in Brinn’s pitch, a jagged peak into the red line, an un-Brinn-like yelp, raw and unfiltered.

  “She’s out with Trev, in fact. Sailing. Right now.” Lacey stepped closer to her mother-in-law, as if the reappearance of the child Brinn hadn’t seen in seven years was as common as the Brie melting appropriately on her raffia platters. “On the Caddy. You didn’t know, I completely understand. I wanted it to be a surprise for you. I shouldn’t have said anything, I suppose. But you know me. I want you to be happy.”

  “But—”

  Even under the sunglasses, Lacy saw Brinn’s expression change, her entire face devolve, as the woman stood, one hand on the railing to balance herself and the other sending her wineglass down down down to clatter on the mermaid stones below.

  “She can’t just—Trevor never told—does anyone else—”

  Lacey enjoyed it, as ungracious as it was, as unloving as it was, as inappropriate. As ugly. Now Brinn knew there was something Lacey possessed that she didn’t. Something that with all her money and all her power and all her rules had—nevertheless—been taken from her. Brooke. And with that, a daughter’s love. Lacey had no idea why Brooke had rejected her mother. She couldn’t wait to find out.

  The doorbell rang, one discreet ping.

  “People are arriving.” Lacey fluttered one hand to her tousled hair, its waves too long for the rules, but she didn’t care about that either. Lacey could make her own rules. “And as you said, there’s not enough time to talk now. I’ll have someone clean up your glass.”

  “But—” Brinn looked everywhere but at Lacey, as if searching for her power.

  “I fear we’ll have to go with the matching looks, Mother, so let’s make the best of it. We’re all friends here, after all. And you and I are family.”

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 42

  BROOKE

  The clatter of—something—startled Brooke awake. For a confused flash of a second she recovered her bearings—the boat, the water, the waning afternoon—and Trev? Her empty beer bottle rolled across the deck, clunked against a metal fitting, and then rattled back toward her, as if it were on a mission of its own. The boat was dead in the water, otherwise, sails luffing half-heartedly, knowing they had to wait for a human hand to coax them to do their jobs.

  “Trev?” she called. The Caddy’s tiller was still lashed into place, same as she’d last seen it. Her heart twisted in alarm. “Trev?”

  “What?” Trev’s head appeared from the hold, then the rest of him and then the Caddy’s red canvas spinnaker bag. He plopped the bag onto the deck, and it thunked with the weight of the heavy sail folded carefully inside.

  “We’re screwed.” He held on to the mainmast, steadying himself. “Wind’s shifted, and the spinney’s our best bet for getting back. Before it’s totally dark.”

  “Is it rigged? Set to go? Why not use the outboard?” Brooke’s brain was still adjusting from the beer and the sun, and from the inevitable lassitude that came after a day on the water.

  “Rigged? As always, kiddo,” Trevor said. “And the outboard’s on the fritz. Pain in the butt.” He unzipped the top of the spinnaker bag, dragged the front halyards from the mainmast and clicked them into place in the grommets of the sail. The spinnaker would become a billow of bright orange when the wind filled it, Brooke knew, with the giant letters P-X in the upper right. Her mother had insisted, years ago and over her father’s impotent reluctance, that it would be good advertising. It’s not all about Pharminex, Brinn, he’d pleaded, attempting to have a say in the matter. Mom, languidly reigning from her chaise on the yacht club’s weathered wooden deck, hadn’t bothered to argue. She always won.

  “You okay to hoist it alone?” Brooke didn’t mention all the empties she saw.

  “Duh,” Trev said. “Couple of Bohs, I’m sailin’ fine. Sailin’ just fine.” He reeled in the anchor rope and stowed the prongs. Then, stumbling once, he dragged the heavy spinnaker bag toward the bow.

  Brooke unlashed the tiller, stashing the bungee cord. She could take over steering, no problem, but hoisting the spinnaker could be a pain for one person, with its unwieldly pole, and the necessity to balance the folded spinney, lift and drop the jib, rebalance to place the spinnaker pole, then step back in time to let the huge front sail fill.

  Brooke remembered one afternoon, so long ago, with city boy Liam—Liam Endicott; her brain called back the face, the fragrance, the loss. The feel of the sunscreen on his back. Liam’s eyes, looking at her. Liam had been bummed the spinnaker wouldn’t send them skimming at top speed across the sound. She’d tried to explain about the wind, how the spinnaker was mainly used in racing when you had to go the same direction as the wind, and not against it. He’d stopped listening, she remembered. And, after his touch, she’d stopped caring, stopped thinking about anything but him. And where was he now? Even on her most wine-sodden late nights, she hadn’t succumbed to the temptation to google him. He was gone and the past was gone, and there was only now.

  The Caddy lurched with a random wave. “Whale!” she yelled, before she even realized it. A family joke. Long ago, on one of her first sails, an unexpected swell had put her in mortal terror. Instead of comforting her, Brooke remembered, her father had yelled Whale! They’d laughed about it for years, whenever something came as a surprise. Back when they all still laughed.

  “You okay?” She’d seen Trevor bobble, lose his balance again, saw the top corner of the orange and white sail flutter and catch in the wind.

  “All good, little Smidge,” Trev shouted. “Cope-a-freaking-cetic.”

  She saw him grab the mainmast, still off balance. Three beers, she’d counted. Or four?

  “Whoa,” he said. “Keep her steady.”

  Brooke planted her feet, holding the tiller with her right hand, feeling the increasingly choppy swells beneath her, an occasional spray of salty water exploding onto the deck. Perfect, she thought. It had been a long time since she’d sat at the helm, but the waves and the wind were reassuringly the same.

  They were still far from shore, the telltales showing the wind from the south, Trev setting the spinney on the br
oad reach home. Brooke stared into the distance, wondering how far she’d come, not only today, but in the last seven years. Wishing she could see into the future. Poor Lacey. Poor Trev. The golden couple, on the surface, but deep down … disappointment and sorrow didn’t care who you were.

  Brooke thought it was an angry seagull at first, that harsh squawking call. She looked up, shading her eyes, expecting white wings in the cloud-streaked sky. But there were no gulls.

  And then she heard the splash.

  “Trev?”

  She leaped to her feet, the tiller loose, grabbed her way hand over hand toward the bow. No Trevor.

  No Trevor.

  The spinnaker pole, loose, clanked and rattled across the deck, then rolled into the ocean, so quickly Brooke could have believed it never existed.

  “Trev!” But he was not here, he wasn’t, and then she saw Trev’s life vest, red and taunting, and bobbing in the waves as if it hadn’t a responsibility in the world.

  She saw him. A cap, an orange and black Orioles cap.

  “Trev!” she screamed. He was a great swimmer, a terrific swimmer, and the first rule of lifesaving was that the other person should not leap into the water too. Or they’d both drown.

  Keep your eye on the person, her training reminded her. He’d gone under again, but he was there. She kept focus on the spot, backing up as she did, her eyes on the water, then by feel, grabbed the white life preserver and yanked it from its hooks. But where was Trev now, gone again, which way to throw it? And why wasn’t he coming to the surface? Even after a beer, or three, he knew what to do.

  The radio was inside the hold. She stood, panicked and terrified, trying to decide. Scramble belowdecks, call for help? Or wait until she saw him, then reach with the life pole and haul him in?