by Mary Simses
“Some people even called him a genius, but he always scoffed at that. I think he just had a talent for picking interesting stories and adapting them for the theater. He called it rounding them out. I remember right after Miss Keaton Returns won a bunch of Tonys, a reporter for the Boston Globe interviewed him and asked why so many of his shows had been so successful. You know what he said?”
David shook his head.
“Sheer luck. It wasn’t true, though. He was brilliant. But like I said, he was different from Mom. He loved that whole dramatic side of hers, but he was also good at reining her in when she needed it. He helped keep her grounded.”
A large group of hotel guests were walking toward us, probably heading to the shuttle bus. “Why did she need reining in?”
“She just gets crazy ideas sometimes. The reason why I’m in town is that she told my sister and me she was terminally ill. She hoped that would get us both here and we’d reconcile.”
“It’s too bad you and your sister don’t get along,” David said. “My brother and I were such good friends. I’d give anything to have him back.” He looked away, and I could tell he was reliving some memory of their time together, some skateboarding adventure or the construction of a Lego neighborhood. “People are always shocked when I tell them I was only twelve when Beau died. They say, How young you were, that’s terrible. But I didn’t think about it that way back then—that I was young or that he was young. All I knew was that was my life. My brother was dead, and I had to go on without him. As I get older, though, I understand what they were really saying. That I got cheated losing him so early. I have friends with brothers, and I think how lucky they are to still have them around.”
“I know what you mean, at least a little bit. Most of my friends still have both their parents, but I don’t have my dad anymore.”
We were back at the steps of the inn. On the wraparound porch, an elderly man and woman sat in wicker chairs, sipping what looked like lemonade. David glanced at them. “Do you think people make better couples when they’re more alike or when they’re different?”
I didn’t know the answer to that. “I’m not sure. I guess I’ve seen it work both ways.” I wondered why he was asking. I wondered which of those scenarios fit his relationship with Ana.
We walked up the steps and into the lobby. “I’ll run by the house this afternoon and grab that yearbook. And if you’ve already spoken to Ana, then we’ll drop it. I’ll call you and let you know what I find.” I handed him my cell phone. “Put your number in there, okay?”
He took the phone, tapped in David Cole, and added his number. “All right, Sara.”
“I have a good feeling about this.”
He winced, but at the same time he was sort of smiling. “You say that about a lot of things.”
Chapter 7
A Proposal
The house looked quiet when I pulled into the driveway. Jubilee and Anthem were in their paddocks, grazing, their tails swishing at flies. I looked in the garage window and saw both bays empty. Mom’s Mercedes was gone, as I’d expected, but so was the Austin-Healey, a 1965 3000 Mark III convertible in British racing green Dad had paid a fortune to restore. It was just like Mariel to help herself to that car. I shuddered thinking how awful it would be if she scratched or dented it.
I unlocked the mudroom door, stepped inside, and walked down the hall. The only sounds were my footsteps on the wooden floor and the heavy clunk of the pendulum in the grandfather clock. In the kitchen I helped myself to some strawberries and ate them at the counter as I stared at an old photo in a silver frame. Me in my cap and gown at my high-school graduation with Mom and Dad and Mariel. A moment after that picture was taken, a little group had gathered around Mom, asking for her autograph. Out-of-towners who just couldn’t resist, who didn’t know you were supposed to leave people alone. But she loved it.
Next to the frame was a coffee mug, The Best Mommy in the World on it in curlicue letters, fancy writing for my then seven-year-old hand. Underneath, Mariel had drawn a stick figure of Mom. I recalled our collaboration on that mug at a pottery-painting studio. How had the two of us arrived at this place where we wanted nothing but to avoid each other?
I saw a stack of unopened mail on the table. Maybe there was something wedding-related in there. I thumbed through the envelopes. Water bill, electric bill, invoice from the feed store. Nothing helpful. On the other side of the table was a leather three-ring binder, PHOTOS embossed on the cover. We had several albums in the house like it. Mom must have been taking a trip down memory lane.
I flipped through the pages. Mariel and me at Disney World, waiting in line at the Barnstormer, the mini–roller coaster in the Magic Kingdom. The two of us in front of Minnie Mouse’s country home, all that lavender and pink. Pages later I was graduating from preschool, holding a rolled-up “diploma.” Further along were Halloween parties and Christmases and birthday parties and school events.
I paused at a photo of Mariel with her hair covered in spaghetti and tomato sauce. She was six at the time, and I’d gotten so angry about something she’d done that I’d dumped the bowl of pasta on her head. For years she’d complained about that photo being in the album. I was surprised it was still in there.
There were other pictures she’d complained about as well, like the one from her middle-school years where she was imitating Britney Spears in her famous “…Baby One More Time” video. Mariel’s hair was in braids like the singer’s and she was in an outfit like the schoolgirl uniform Britney had worn, with the miniskirt and knee socks. I remembered how she danced around the house, singing that song. You couldn’t even mention Britney Spears’s name to Mariel now without her having a fit, she was so embarrassed about that period of her life.
As I flipped to the next page, something fell out and floated to the floor. A newspaper clipping from the Hampstead Review, August of last year.
Mariel Harrington to Wed Carter Pryce
Camille Harrington of Hampstead announces the engagement of her daughter Mariel Harrington to Carter Pryce, son of James and Sandra Pryce of Rye, New York. The bride is the daughter of the late John Harrington. She is a graduate of California State University and was most recently a receptionist with YogaBuzz in Los Angeles. The future bridegroom graduated from Cornell University and Georgetown Law and is a partner with Bingham Keith Rodrick, LLC, a Los Angeles law firm.
The couple is planning to wed next summer.
And there they were in a photo, the two of them smiling, Carter with his arm around Mariel, her head resting against his shoulder. They stood on a terrace, the blue California ocean in the background. I recognized the terrace. I knew the restaurant in Malibu. Carter and I used to go there, and after dinner we’d walk on the beach as the sun set, heading toward a tiny strip of land far down the sand that was immersed in that golden sunlight that comes at the end of the day. I could almost smell the salt air and the woody-scented aftershave Carter wore, could almost feel his hand in mine the way I did then as we strolled toward that light.
I took a picture of the photo with my phone. I’d edit Mariel out and keep Carter. He looked so handsome.
I needed to get into Mom’s computer, but I also wanted to find that yearbook. Upstairs in my room I scanned my bookcase, the shelves of which were full of horse-show trophies, novels, and trinkets from my childhood. I pulled my senior-class Hampstead High yearbook from the bottom shelf and paged through to the teachers’ section. Miss Baird was there, wearing a white gauzy top and a beaded necklace. Her hair, the color of corn, was styled in a braid. Her large green eyes made her look perennially curious. I tried to guess how old she’d been then. Early thirties, maybe. The name under the photo was Jeanette Baird Gwythyr. Gwythyr? What kind of a name was that? No wonder I couldn’t remember it. I wasn’t even sure how to pronounce it, all those consonants.
My phone seemed to digest the information when I put the name into the people-search website; a blue bar proceeded across the top of my screen. A mome
nt later she popped up: Jeanette Gwythyr, 516 Upland Road, Eastville, Connecticut. The words danced in front of me. She was still around here; Eastville wasn’t more than a forty-five-minute drive. This was going to work.
I tapped her number into my phone and took a deep breath. Pick up, pick up. I heard a click and then a woman’s voice. Hi there. You’ve reached the home of Cadwy and Jeanette Gwythyr. She pronounced it “Gwith-er,” like zither.
Leave us a message, she said. Share your story.
A message. My story. How could I explain it in a message?
“Hi, Mrs.…uh, Miss Baird. This is Sara Harrington. I don’t know if you remember me, but I graduated from Hampstead High twenty years ago. I know it’s been a while, but you were my three-D-design teacher in twelfth grade. And I still recall what a great artist you were. Are.” A little flattery couldn’t hurt.
“If you don’t remember me, you might remember Christy Costigan. She made a huge cat out of clay. Claws and whiskers and everything. I sat next to her.” Maybe she wouldn’t even remember Christy. “Or Julia Feretti? She re-created sections of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in miniature on a set of rubber spatulas.” They were beautiful, although I heard her mom had used them by mistake and the paint came off in the dishwasher. “Oh, wait, that was painting class. You might not have taught Julia.
“Anyway, I’m in Hampstead for a few days and I could really use your help with something—a piece of art, a sculpture. I’d love to talk to you about it. It’s kind of important. Would you please call me as soon as you can?” I left my number.
It was probably a long shot. Still, I had a good feeling as I texted David and gave him the update. He replied, telling me to let him know what I heard back. Maybe he was actually going to go along with this. Amazing.
I was about to take a quick look at Christy Costigan’s picture when I heard footsteps in the hall. I figured Mom had come back early. But then I heard Mariel’s voice. She was coming up the stairs, talking on her phone. A moment later she stood in my doorway.
“I have to call you back.” She clicked off the phone, slipped it into her handbag. Her nails, the color of pink grapefruit, looked as though they’d just been done. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.
I closed the yearbook and put it on the bed as she strolled to my bureau and began to look at the things on top—a jar of loose change I’d collected from foreign countries, an old photo of our parents, a silver baby cup, a bottle of perfume. She picked up the baby cup, turned it around, and looked at my initials engraved on the front. “Can we, uh, chitchat for a minute?” She flashed me a little smile.
Chitchat? “It depends on what you want to chitchat about.” I wasn’t going to talk about the wedding. Or Carter. Or any of that. I stood by the bookcase, waiting for her to say whatever she was going to say.
She took a large coin from the jar on the bureau. “I think we need to move forward. Get beyond this.” She turned the coin over and then dropped it back into the jar; it landed with a clank. “I feel like we’re in a war. Like we’re in The White Queen.”
“White Queen?”
“The TV series. Haven’t you seen it? It’s sooo good. One side of this family is fighting with the other side because they both want to rule England.”
“I haven’t seen it.”
“Oh, you should. It was made…I don’t know, years ago, but it’s good.”
“I already know the story. I studied it in history.”
She started. “You mean it’s true?”
I thought she was joking, but she didn’t laugh. “Yes, of course it’s true.” How could she not know that? Oh, I forgot. She spent her four years of college taking History of Lipstick or something instead of real history. “It was referred to as the War of the Roses. You might look it up sometime.”
She picked up the perfume, sprayed it into the air, sniffed, and put the bottle back. “Look, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to tell you I’m sorry about what happened. So is Carter. I mean, we’re not sorry we’re together…” She twirled her engagement ring around her finger. “But we’re sorry about how you found out. You know, New Year’s Eve and everything. And that we never told you things were…happening the way they were.”
Well, that was at least something. Her phone messages and texts and e-mails had never included such a straightforward apology.
“So, like I said, I thought we should try to put it behind us.”
She was sounding more and more like Mom. You girls have got to put this behind you. Could I put it behind me? Oh God, a part of me wanted to, I had to admit. Deep down inside I knew the anger was eating me alive. But I didn’t know how to put it behind me. Too many things had changed forever because of what she’d done.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “I need to think about it. I need some time to process what you’re saying. To figure out if…and how…” You couldn’t just snap your fingers and expect the past to glide away, could you?
Mariel walked to the closet door and glanced at herself in the mirror. “Well, okay, that’s fine. Think about it. For sure. Because I’m dealing with a lot of things right now, and I’m getting stressed out.” She straightened one of the straps of her dress. “So I just think we should, you know, move forward.”
Move forward? Was that like putting your foot on the gas pedal and driving to another town? I wished it were that easy. Maybe it was for her. I knew it wasn’t for me. And yet, I was tempted to say that, yes, we should see what we could do to start putting things back together, or as back together as they could be.
“But don’t think about it for too long,” she said, “because I’d like you to be in the wedding. Be a bridesmaid. The way we always planned.”
I flinched, my elbow bumping a photo on the bookcase—me at seven, riding Crackerjack. The frame fell to the wood floor with a smack; the horse-show ribbon clipped to it went flying. I picked up the frame and put it back on the shelf. A little piece of glass had been chipped off. This was all happening way too fast. I hadn’t even said I could move forward, let alone go to the wedding, let alone be in the wedding. How could I be a bridesmaid at the wedding of the man I was in love with?
And why did she say, The way we always planned? That was teenager talk, years ago. We hadn’t spoken of it in ages.
Mariel must have mistaken my shock for delight. A smile bloomed on her face. “You’re surprised,” she said, sitting on the bed. “I know.” She picked up the yearbook and began leafing through it. “Here’s the thing. It’s kind of weird the way it worked out, but I think it’s all good. See, my friend Baily…you remember her? From Newport Beach? Tall, blond, cute?” That could have described half the women in California. “She can’t come because she broke her leg in two places. Skiing in Argentina.” Mariel turned a couple of pages. “We’re supposed to have a maid of honor, a best man, three bridesmaids, and three groomsmen. And now we’re short a bridesmaid. So I thought you might want to take Baily’s place.”
She couldn’t be serious. She wanted me to sub for another bridesmaid? The one she picked first? “You’ve got to be kidding. You’re asking me to be a second-stringer?” I could barely get out the words.
“You can use her dress,” she went on. “The bridesmaid dresses are gorgeous. In this mauve color. They call it rose quartz. With a little ruching here.” She ran her hands across her bust. “And a cinched waist.” She grasped her sides. “I had Baily send it to me. She’s taller than you, but we could get it altered.” She closed the yearbook. “I need to get my gown altered too. The waist needs to be taken in a little. We could go together.”
A stand-in bridesmaid with a stand-in dress. She wanted me to be in her wedding to my former boyfriend as a stand-in for her girlfriend to even out the bridesmaids-groomsmen count. And with a mauve dress. I couldn’t wear mauve. It made me look completely washed out. She must have known from my expression that I wanted no part of it.
“This is my wedding,” she said. “And you’r
e my sister. You’re supposed to help me out here. It’s my big day. You have no idea what it’s like being the bride. I know you’ve planned a lot of weddings, but you’ve never been on the other side of one. I’ve got a lot of anxiety about this, Sara. Carter’s invited some of his partners and clients. Everything has to be perfect. It has to be right. I really need your help.”
I was about to refuse when I realized she’d presented me with a fantastic opportunity. Being in the wedding party would give me the chance to gather all the details I needed about the event. It would also give me the perfect excuse for staying in town. I’d leave the Duncan Arms and move right here, into my old room, where I could be in the middle of everything.
I waited for a minute, pretending to give a lot of thought to what she’d asked. “You’re right,” I finally said. “We should put our differences aside. What happened in the past needs to stay in the past. Let’s look to the future.”
Mariel’s eyes brightened. “You think?”
“Yes, I do. I’ll be your bridesmaid. And I’ll do more than that. I’ll even be your wedding planner for these last couple of weeks so you don’t have to deal with any more stress.”
Mariel flopped down in the middle of my bed as though she were exhausted. “Oh, that’s great.”
I smiled. “Leave it all to me.”
Chapter 8
Alterations
I checked out of the Duncan Arms and brought my suitcase to the house. I’d barely finished unpacking when Mariel appeared in the doorway of my room and insisted we bring our gowns into town to get them altered.
Twenty minutes later, we walked into Marcello’s Tailoring with our garment bags. A black-and-white cat curled up in a chair near the door opened his eyes, raised his head, squinted at me, and collapsed back to sleep. Halfway across the room, Bella, mid-fifties, olive complexion, thin frame, knelt in front of a small platform with a mirror around it and directed a customer to turn as she pinned the hem of her dress. Bella had been running the business since her father, Marcello, retired a few years back.