The Winters

by Lisa Gabriele

  The sun was barely up by the time I had packed my small suitcase and checked flights. I wanted to avoid a scene. I left behind the few winter belongings I’d acquired since I’d been at Asherley, taking only what I’d need for the Caymans in early March. I had enough money in my own account to get me to the airport, purchase a one-way ticket, and stay at the hostel until I found work. My plan was first to prostrate myself at Laureen’s swollen ankles and beg for my job back, or any job, really. I would tell her she’d been right, not just about Max but about me, and my stupidity, the arrogance of thinking I was special enough to turn a fling into a marriage. If I couldn’t appeal to her sympathies, then I’d walk up and down Seven Mile Beach knocking on every office door of every hotel and restaurant. It was high season. Surely someone needed extra waitstaff or cleaning help.

  I wrote Max a letter and left it on his dressing table. It was short. I said I loved him very much but I couldn’t stay where I wasn’t wanted. I thanked him profusely for these past few months; they had been the best of my life. Something like that. I wish I’d kept it. I think back often on that morning when I called the cab, whispering that I’d meet the driver down at the gate in an hour since I did not know how to open it from the house. I crept across the second-floor gallery to the top of the stairs. There I listened for sounds. Everyone was asleep. Katya hadn’t arrived. Would she have stopped me from escaping? Probably not. She had the same middle-aged pragmatism as Laureen, which I had come to admire and hoped one day to emulate. Imagine not caring what people think. Imagine having the courage to talk back to people you don’t like, who don’t like you, or better yet, not reacting at all, simply shrugging it off and moving on with your day. I wanted to be more like that. I would let this experience toughen me up. I would recover and be better for it. And yet none of these thoughts, however true (or not), stanched the flow of my tears. This was a big love. I would grieve its loss for a long time.

  I carefully placed my bag on the tile floor of the foyer. When I crept into the anteroom, I glanced at the gun cabinet next to the one that housed my fleece. I recognized the handguns, the same kind we kept on the boats in case a shark or a large stingray threatened a client, or, though I never told Laureen, a client threatened me. I considered a few more months here, with the tension ratcheted up even higher. I could never hurt Dani, but she could hurt me, or herself.

  If you bring ur fucking fling home daddy ill kill myself.

  That these scenarios even crossed my mind meant it was time to go.

  As I shut the cabinet door, I heard footsteps. I closed my eyes and prayed. I wasn’t religious, but I asked a power from above, any power at all, to give me the strength to keep walking out that door. I left the anteroom clutching my fleece to my heart, knowing Max was prepared for a different kind of battle, which I knew already I would lose by the way he said my name in a low, hollowed-out voice, my letter wafting from his hand to the floor.

  “Don’t go.”

  “Max, I’m sorry. But I have to.” I picked up my bag.

  He grabbed the handle, gave it a gentle tug, and placed the bag on the floor behind him. “No. This is not what I want to happen. You can’t leave.” He looked more exhausted than I did, ashen-faced, unshaven, his eyes bloodshot. “Stay. I love you.”

  “I can’t. This has become too hard. For everyone.”

  “I’ll make it easier.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Yes. Yes, I can.”

  “I don’t belong here, Max. You know that.”

  “You do. I thought you were happy here.”

  “I thought so, too, until last night, when I realized I’ll never be enough. Especially not for Dani.”

  “Nonsense. Last night should never have happened.”

  “I know. I shouldn’t have opened the greenhouse.”

  “You did nothing wrong. I should never have spoken to you like that. I behaved like a monster. I can’t tell you how ashamed I am of myself. I didn’t come upstairs last night because I couldn’t face you. And now you’re—I don’t want to lose you. Stay. I need you. We need you. More than you know.”

  When the heart rules the body, it will always betray even the soundest, wisest corners of your mind. It’s hard to believe now how easily I could be persuaded by sentiment, how the feeling of being needed could murder all my resolve. It’s part of being young, I suppose, that malleability, the best and worst part, but there I was, crying “Oh, Max” and flinging myself into his arms, smelling that musty smell of a long, sad night on him.

  He held me tight for a while, murmuring that he had wanted to come up to our bed a thousand times, to put his arms around me, to comfort me, but he thought I wanted to be alone with my kitten, and that a night apart for him to contemplate what he’d done and how he might make it up to me might fix some of what he had broken.

  “I should have come to you. I should have begged your forgiveness right away. Dani, too.”

  “Max, she’s never going to come around.”

  “That’s not true. I saw something last night. A glimmer. Something softened in her. You saw it, too. With the kitten.”

  Before I could tell him how quickly she had hardened, he reached into his front pocket and held up my engagement ring, given to me after a different taxi had once nearly separated us.

  “Remember when you met me by the car yesterday, before you took me down to see the boat? I told you I had something I wanted to talk to you about. This isn’t how I planned it, but here it goes. I can’t bear to be away from you. Put this back on, because what I’m trying to say is we should get married. As soon as possible. Why wait?”

  There were many good answers to that question, chief among them being the way he had looked in the greenhouse, haunted and aggrieved, confirming we’d be wise to put more time between Rebekah’s death and the start of our marriage. But there was such naked need in his eyes. I was flattered to be wanted this much, to know that Max Winter was desperate to marry me.

  So instead of no, I said, “I don’t know why we’re waiting, Max. Yes. Let’s do it. Let’s get married right away.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The first person Max suggested I call was Louisa. Perhaps he felt I needed to be buoyed a little before we broke it to Dani. When Louisa squealed with delight at the news, I could have cried.

  “Have you told Dani yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  She offered to come over right away to help with the planning. “I’ll make it so all you have to do is show up,” she said.

  I thanked her and told her that wouldn’t be necessary. We wanted it to be very small, and I had plenty of time to tackle most of what needed to be done. “But I would love your advice, Louisa.”

  “Well, here’s some: Don’t worry about what Dani says or does. Just plow ahead. She’ll catch up. She always does.”

  Finally Max texted Dani to come down and join us in the den. I still hadn’t told him she had absconded with my kitten. When she made her entrance holding Maggie, my heart hurt all over again. She was trailed by Claire, an arresting beauty whose height and bearing made her seem closer to my age than Dani’s. Though Claire was dark where Dani was blond, her eyes icy blue where Dani’s were brown, they dressed alike, both wearing pastel cotton shorts that they likely slept in, and both were braless, the points of their nipples tenting their loose white T-shirts.

  I spoke first. “You must be Claire. We sort of met last night.”

  “Yeah. I was a little distracted. She’s just so cute,” Claire said, giving the kitten a scratch behind her ear, then drawling, “Hi, Mr. Winter.”

  “Claire. Dani, we have something we want to tell you. Claire, would you mind waiting for us in the kitchen?”

  Claire went to leave.

  “Stay,” Dani commanded. “Anything you tell me I’m going to tell her anyway.”

  Max looke
d at me for permission. I shrugged. Now was the time to cultivate some of that grown-woman insouciance. Whatever Dani’s reaction, I would weather it, as Louisa suggested. As for Claire, I was glad for her to stay, if only to witness the fact that good things can happen to not so beautiful women, too.

  “First of all,” Max began, “I want to apologize for how angry I got last night in the greenhouse. I had no right to yell like that. It was wrong. I was wrong.”

  “It’s okay, Daddy,” Dani said. “I know no one is supposed to go in there.”

  “Yes, well, with everything that’s happened . . . it’s just made me realize how short life is, and how lucky I am to have you both in my life.”

  Dani began to pet Maggie more aggressively, perhaps less to soothe the kitten than herself.

  “You know I love you very much.” He looked at me. “I love you both. And I know we got engaged pretty quickly. Well . . . we’ve decided to push up the wedding. We haven’t really talked about the details yet, but it will be here, and soon, and though we’d love your blessing—”

  “You’re going to do it anyway,” she said with a shrug.

  “Yes, Dani, we are.”

  “So why do you want my blessing?” She looked at me and then at her father, back and forth, trying to knit us together in some logical way in her mind, her chin quivering. I almost felt sorry for her, standing there barefoot, holding a squirming kitten.

  “Well, may I be the first to say congratulations, to both of you,” Claire said, smiling and nudging Dani.

  “Yes. Congratulations,” Dani said, her voice flat, her eyes dead. She handed the kitten to Claire, took a breath, and walked over to me, opening her thin arms wide.

  “Oh, well, thank you,” I said, and entered her awkward embrace.

  Then she walked over to Max and searched his face before giving him another stiff hug.

  “I hope you’ll both be very happy,” she said, returning to stand next to her friend. “Can we go now?”

  “Of course,” Max said, unable to hide how pleased he seemed by her rough attempt at sweetness. “Thank you so much, Dani.”

  “Sure, Daddy. Let me know if I can help you in any way.”

  When the door shut behind them, Max and I looked at each other with astonishment, mouthing Oh my God! Then we threw up our arms in silent victory.

  I was reeling. In twenty-four hours we’d gone from the disastrous boathouse interruption to the greenhouse confrontation to my near abandonment to a quickie wedding. Dani had not flung herself onto the carpet in paroxysms. She had not lit herself on fire.

  We both collapsed onto the couch.

  “Maybe she didn’t want to make a scene in front of Claire,” I whispered.

  “I don’t care why. Let’s just be grateful.”

  He took my hand and kissed it, closing his eyes. Perhaps Max was willing to see any progress through rosy lenses, but nothing in me trusted her yet. Arm’s length was as close as I wanted Dani Winter to get to me or my wedding plans.

  SIXTEEN

  I suppose it shouldn’t have been surprising that wedding planning came easily to me. I had always been organized and frugal, but I became uncharacteristically decisive by employing one simple rule: anything that Rebekah had done for her wedding, I would not. Louisa became my best resource, because there were, to my disappointment, no pictures of Max and Rebekah’s wedding to reference. Louisa told me Rebekah hadn’t allowed cameras that day. She had thoroughly documented their courtship (and subsequent honeymoon in Venice), but had wanted her wedding to pay homage to Asherley’s bygone era. She even asked guests to drop their phones in a basket when they entered the house. I envied that directive, privacy being my natural inclination. Louisa told me when Rebekah had caught Jonah furtively monitoring the score of a baseball game on Max’s laptop in the den, she poured her drink on the keyboard.

  “They didn’t speak for weeks, which killed him. He was in love with Rebekah, though to this day he’ll never admit it,” Louisa said, rolling her eyes.

  As for the menu, Louisa told me they had only served food sourced on or around the island: venison and pheasant stuffed with ramps, wild garlic, and mushrooms, and strawberries and cream for dessert. No wedding cake. Rebekah found cake gauche.

  What would we serve? For such a small affair, and it being informal, I decided we’d have a catered barbecue: corn on the cob, potato salad, a roasted pig, lobster rolls, cake, and ice cream.

  Max gave me his guest list over breakfast one day, family, friends, neighbors, and a few close political associates from Albany, fewer than forty people in all. I insisted we invite Katya—I didn’t want her to work—but Max drew the line at Gus. He was strictly an employee.

  “Besides,” he said, “I think Dani’s got a little crush on him, and I don’t like it.”

  This took me aback. She certainly ordered him around and gave him odd directives, like keeping an eye on me. But if anything, he often seemed reluctant to be around her. When she crossed the lawn to visit Isabel, he’d often leave the barn. Same if I found him in the kitchen eating something. The minute Dani came in, especially if she was in pajamas, he’d bolt.

  When I didn’t reply, Max asked outright. “You’ve never noticed any flirtation between them?”

  “No. Never. Not on his part anyway,” I said, remembering the trouble Laureen told me she’d once gotten up to in the Caymans.

  “Anyway, she needs more friends her age,” he said, and looked down at the list. “Is there anyone you’d like to invite?”

  This was a gentle question, a necessary one, too, though Max already seemed to know the answer.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, trying to keep the sadness from leaching into my voice.

  He took my hand and kissed it, then pressed it to his heart. “You are very much loved here. You know that, right?”

  I nodded.

  The most significant person in my life, other than Max, had been Laureen, and I couldn’t imagine her wide, sunburned face among the intimate crowd. Still, after he left for work, I wrote her an email, to let her know that a wedding was in the offing, counting on her prediction that there was still time for my affair with Max to blow up in my face.

  Her reply was terse.

  Honestly, I didn’t think I’d hear from you again. But you’ve always been a surprising person. Am just back from St. Barts. Found someone to run the marina, and two new captains for the smaller boats I’m still running from there. Sadly, I have to ground the Singularis until the lawsuit is settled. Sucks because she was my big moneymaker. God I hate the British more than the Americans if you can believe it. Well, congratulations then. I’m glad it wasn’t a total disaster and I do hope you’ll be happy in America. John-John will soon retire due to his heart. My health is mostly good.

  I could hear her Australian twang in those blunt sentences and see her stomping through the streets of Gustavia trying to rustle up marina help, decent boat captains, and fishing guides. That would have been one of my jobs, had I gotten on the plane that day. My alternative life haunted me sometimes. I saw myself jotting down the day’s tasks while sitting on the balcony of my small company condo, the outside painted lemon yellow probably, the inside decorated with a tacky shell motif. I’d check the time, then race to the airport, waiting in the overly air-conditioned arrivals lounge for the next clients to deplane. But that was not my life. Instead, after a breakfast that someone else prepared for me, and seeing my fiancé off to work, I entered Asherley’s formal dining room to plan my wedding, parting the heavy damask curtains so the sun could hit my shoulders. If Laureen could see me holding court at the end of this polished table, so shiny the whites of my eyes reflected on its surface, what would she say? Would she note how comfortable I looked, surrounded by clippings from bridal magazines, a cup of coffee cooling on a place mat? Or would she say I looked like a fraudulent wannabe, a sorry substitute for the s
tylish Rebekah? She’s nothing but a scrubby beach urchin, she’d say. Not one person of her own to invite to her wedding. That says something about a person, doesn’t it? That she has nobody but Max. When a woman only has a man to count on, she’s taken a very wrong turn in her life.

  When Max called just then to tell me a reporter from The New York Times wanted to cover our little ceremony in the Hamptons, I remembered that Laureen often picked up the Sunday Times at the airport.

  “It’d be for the Vows column,” he explained. “I’d normally scoff at this sort of thing except Elias thinks we could plug the election. And a lot of people out here read that silly column, apparently.”

  “If you don’t mind, then I don’t,” I said.

  Then came another surprise. Dani began to make regular appearances in the dining room. At first she’d wander around bored, dropping the increasingly chubby Maggie on the floor while she poked through the magazines piling up on the table. I’d play with Maggie, answer any questions Dani had, then she’d scoop up the kitten and be off.

  A few days later, she stood behind me to look at an assortment of dresses cued up on the laptop, evening gowns mostly. I still felt intimidated by the idea of a flouncy white wedding dress, kept trying to find one in which I could picture myself. We said nothing to each other at first, our demeanor like a couple of doctors silently contemplating a medical slide.

  Finally Dani pointed to the most prominent dress on my screen, a shimmery velvet tube dress, in pale coral, with a boat neck and dolman sleeves. “You’re thinking that?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, it’s your dad’s second wedding.”

  “Yeah, but it’s your first. This shit’s for the mother of the bride.”

  In the reflection on the screen, she tilted her head thoughtfully. “And velvet will age you.”

  I wanted to say I wouldn’t really mind looking older, but she was already out the door, Maggie trailing behind her.