The Perfect Couple

by Elin Hilderbrand

  The Chief raises his cup of coffee. “To the deceased,” he says.

  Nick touches his cup to the Chief’s. “May she rest in peace.”

  Saturday, July 7, 2018, 6:55 p.m.

  NANTUCKET

  The Nantucket Standard—www.ackstandard.net—Saturday, July 7, 2018

  Nantucket Police Department Rules Drowning Death Accidental

  8:12 p.m.

  The Nantucket Police Department, in conjunction with the Massachusetts State Police, has ruled the death of Merritt Alison Monaco, 29, of New York, New York, early this morning, an accident. Ms. Monaco was on Nantucket to serve as an attendant at a wedding on Saturday. She is survived by her parents, Gary and Katherine Monaco, of Commack, New York, as well as a brother, Douglas Monaco, of Garden City, New York. Ms. Monaco was employed by the New York Wildlife Conservation Society and has served as their director of public relations since 2016.

  Chief Edward Kapenash of the Nantucket Police Department said, “We have investigated the case and determined Ms. Monaco’s death was an accident. We thank the entire Nantucket community for their cooperation and encourage locals and visitors to the island alike to exercise extreme caution in and around the water.”

  Marty Szczerba gets an alert from the Inky on his phone: The maid of honor out in Monomoy apparently drowned accidentally. It sounds suspicious to Marty, and it also feels a bit anticlimactic—after the person of interest trying to escape on the Hy-Line and the dramatic removal of Featherleigh Dale from the Crosswinds restaurant, it turns out the death was accidental?

  Huh, Marty thinks.

  Then Marty realizes this means Featherleigh Dale isn’t a murder suspect and thus might be interested in a little romance. Marty can’t see himself pursuing anything like a one-night stand, but a drink might be nice.

  He decides to call the police station to ask Keira if she knows if Featherleigh was brought back to the airport or taken to stay at an inn overnight.

  “Hey, Keira,” Marty says when she answers. “This is Marty Szczerba. I have a question for you.”

  “Hey, Marty,” Keira says. Just the sound of her voice reminds Marty that he still harbors a terrific crush on Keira. “I have a question for you. When are you ever going to ask me out?”

  Marty blinks. The phone grows warm in his hand. Featherleigh who? he thinks. “How about tonight?” he says.

  Celeste texts Benji to let him know she’s taking a taxi back from the hospital.

  I’ll just come get you! Benji says.

  Please don’t, Celeste responds. Three dots appear and then a second text comes through. We can talk when I get back.

  Benji feels suddenly hot and prickly, uncomfortable in his own skin for the first time in his life. How he longs to shed his identity at this moment. He no longer wants to be a Winbury. Celeste has obviously learned about Merritt and Tag. They were having some kind of affair, some kind of something—Benji couldn’t bear to press for details—but he has a feeling his father is to blame for Merritt’s death.

  His own father.

  You think your family is beyond reproach, Celeste had said. But you’re wrong.

  Benji meets Celeste out in the driveway but she gives him a hollow look and says, “I need a minute, please, Benji. I have to talk to my parents.”

  He says, “Your parents aren’t the priority right now, Celeste. I’m your fiancé. We were supposed to get married today.”

  She walks right past him and into the house, and it’s all Benji can do not to follow behind her like a puppy dog.

  Instead, he heads to the kitchen and watches Thomas pile a plate high with sandwiches and potato salad and summer fruit that the caterer had dropped off earlier that afternoon as scheduled—it was supposed to be the pre-wedding lunch—and when Thomas notices Benji staring at him, he says, “What? I’m hungry, and my wife is pregnant and needs food.”

  Benji says in the calmest voice he can manage, “Is this Dad’s fault? Was he screwing her?”

  “Sounds like it,” Thomas says matter-of-factly. He notices the look of disgust that crosses Benji’s face. “Oh, don’t be such an altar boy, Benny.”

  Altar boy? Benji thinks. Does it make him an altar boy to expect his father to be a man of character and integrity, to not cheat on their mother with someone Benji’s age, someone who also happened to be Celeste’s best friend? “Did you know about this?” Benji asks.

  “Not really,” Thomas says. “But I saw Dad in the bar at the Four Seasons downtown a few weeks ago and he hid from me. I figured something was going on.” Thomas blinks. “Now I know what that something was.”

  Benji shudders. The Four Seasons downtown? It was like that, like an affair from a novel or a movie? Thomas disappears down the hall with his plate before Benji can ask what Thomas had been doing at the Four Seasons downtown.

  He doesn’t want to know.

  Benji loiters at the mail table at the bottom of the stairs until he hears Celeste leaving her parents’ room, then he races to the second floor and catches her right before she enters her/his/their bedroom. His bedroom that she was using as a bridal suite that will become their bedroom in this house.

  “Celeste.”

  She turns. “I need to lie down,” she says.

  “I understand you’re tired,” he says. He lets her enter the room, follows her, then closes the door behind them.

  “Benji,” she says.

  Her wedding dress is hanging on the closet door; it’s as unsettling to him as a headless ghost. “You’re not going to marry me,” he says. “Are you? Like at all, ever?”

  “No,” she says. “I’m sorry, Benji, I’m not.”

  Benji’s entire body goes numb. He nods but he feels like his head is being pulled by a string. Celeste! He wants to talk her out of it. He wants to explain that she shouldn’t judge him by his family’s actions. He’s not his father. He’s not his brother. He’s a good, true person and he will love her forever.

  But he stops himself. Every single thing that Benji has comes from his parents—the money, the apartment, the education, the advantages. To denounce his family, to deny his unconditional love for them, would be disingenuous, and Celeste would recognize it as such. He has taken the privilege for granted for twenty-eight years, and now he has to accept the shame.

  “What are you going to do?” he asks.

  “I’m not sure,” she says. “Maybe take a trip. Maybe not.”

  “I know it seems inconceivable right now,” Benji says, “but you will get past this. I don’t mean to say you’ll ever stop missing Merritt…”

  “Benji,” Celeste says, and Benji clamps his mouth shut. He sounds like an ass. “My decision doesn’t have anything to do with Merritt.”

  “It doesn’t?” he says.

  She shakes her head. “It has to do with me.”

  She doesn’t want to marry him.

  He would like to say this comes as a complete shock, a wrecking ball out of nowhere—but it doesn’t.

  “Your stutter is gone,” he says.

  She smiles, sadly at first, but then with a touch of relief—or triumph. “Yes,” she says. “I know.”

  As Benji is walking back to the first cottage—he needs to hide; he can’t bear to see either of his parents—he spies Shooter walking down the driveway.

  Shooter. Benji has completely lost track of him, of time, of everything. Shooter looks like he’s just survived a shipwreck. He’s unshaven, his blue oxford is rumpled and untucked, he has his navy blazer crushed under one arm, and his mouth is hanging open as he stares at his phone.

  “You look even worse than I feel,” Benji says, trying for the jocular tone they normally use with each other. “Where have you been?”

  “Police station,” Shooter says. He follows Benji into the first cottage, then goes straight to the fridge and flips the top off a bottle of beer. “Want one?”

  “Sure,” Benji says.

  “Listen, there are some things you need to know,” Shooter says.

&nb
sp; “Spare me, please,” Benji says. “I’ve heard too much already.”

  Spare me, please. I’ve heard too much already.

  Shooter lets that comment sink in. He was finally released from the police station; in the end, they had nothing to hold him on except impeding an active investigation. They issued him a ticket for three hundred dollars, which he paid in cash. Val Gluckstern had offered him a ride back to Summerland, but he said he wanted to walk. He needed to clear his head.

  He hadn’t been sure how much he would need to explain. Maybe everything. Maybe nothing. He wanted very badly to talk to Celeste but he was afraid. He had spilled the beans to the police, which already felt like a betrayal. He was afraid Celeste would be angry, but he was more afraid she would deny that she had ever intended to run away with him.

  As he was walking down the Winburys’ white-shell driveway between the rows of hydrangeas and under the boxwood arch, his phone pinged. It was a text from an unfamiliar 212 number. Shooter had clicked on the text more out of habit than anything else.

  It was a picture of Shooter and Celeste standing outside Steamboat Pizza. They weren’t touching, though they were very close together—too close, probably. Shooter clicked on the photo and zoomed in. Celeste was looking in the vague direction of the camera and Shooter was looking at Celeste, his expression one of naked desire, longing, covetousness.

  The photo is chilling, a threat. Did someone else know their plans? Who took it? Who sent it?

  Shooter stopped dead in his tracks. He texted back: Who is this?

  To which there was no response. Shooter ran through the possibilities. The 212 area code was Manhattan. And whoever this was either had been across the street or knew someone who was.

  The implications were obvious, right? Someone was trying to scare him. If the photo was being sent to Shooter, it had probably also been sent to Benji. But Benji knew that Shooter and Celeste had gone to get pizza. It wasn’t as if someone had sent a picture of Shooter and Celeste a few minutes later, sitting on the bench by the Steamship terminal. That would have been harder to explain.

  Okay, fine. Honestly, Shooter was too tired for games. He proceeded under the boxwood arch and bumped right into Benji.

  Spare me, please. I’ve heard too much already.

  “I ran away from the police this morning,” Shooter says. “They wanted to question me and I told them I had to use the john and then I slipped out the bathroom window.”

  “Shut up,” Benji says.

  “I’m serious.”

  Benji says, “I hope you told them you didn’t want to talk to the police because of what happened to your mother.”

  Shooter takes a long pull off his beer. Benji is the only person who knows about Shooter’s mother, Cassandra. She became addicted to heroin after Shooter’s father died, but she had happened to OD during one of Shooter’s rare visits home. He was twenty-one years old, working as a bartender in Georgetown, and he gave Cassandra a fifty-dollar bill. She had spent it on smack. Shooter had woken up in the morning to find his mother dead. And, yes, he had blamed himself. He had basically begged the Dade County police to arrest him, but they had far too much experience with overdoses to blame anyone but the user herself.

  “I hopped on the Hy-Line and they caught me, cuffed me, brought me to the police station. I hired a lawyer. She sat with me while I gave my account of last night.”

  Benji barely reacts. It’s as if he expects these kinds of theatrics from Shooter. Either that or he’s not really listening. “They found something in Merritt’s bloodstream,” Benji says. “Pills.”

  “Really,” Shooter says. “How is Celeste taking it?”

  Benji shoots up off the sofa. “How is Celeste taking it?” he says. “Well, let’s see, she was so hysterical that she spent half the day in the emergency room. And yet she seems to have gained a certain clarity. She doesn’t want to marry me. At all. Ever.”

  Shooter is suddenly very alert, despite his profound exhaustion. What is Benji going to say next?

  “She says it has nothing to do with what happened to Merritt. It has to do with her. She doesn’t want to marry me—not next month, not next year, not on a beach in Aruba, not at city hall in Easton, Pennsylvania. She doesn’t want to marry me. When was she going to tell me this? Was she going to stand me up at the altar? Oh, and guess what else. Guess what else. Just guess.”

  Shooter doesn’t want to guess, which is okay because Benji isn’t waiting for an answer.

  “Her stutter is gone! Completely gone! She decides she’s not going to marry me and her speech impediment disappears.”

  Her stutter was gone last night, Shooter thinks. If Benji had paid attention, he would have realized that. When Celeste and Shooter left the bench next to the Steamship terminal, they had gone back to get pizza, and when Shooter asked Celeste what she wanted, she said, “Slice of pepperoni and a root beer, please.” Her words had been as clear as the peal of church bells on a summer morning.

  “Did she say anything else?” Shooter asks. His plan of running away with Celeste was incredibly cowardly, he sees now. Because this—Benji’s reckoning—wasn’t anything Shooter wanted to witness.

  “Anything else?” Benji says. “She didn’t need to say anything else. She destroyed me.” He winds up and throws his beer bottle across the room, where it hits the wall and shatters. Benji puts his hands over his face. He makes a choking noise and Shooter realizes he’s crying.

  Shooter Uxley has envied Benjamin Winbury since the day they met at the St. George’s School freshman year, and although Shooter has always longed to have something, anything, that Benji couldn’t have, all that comes to mind now are the infinite kindnesses that Benji has shown him: The day after Shooter’s mother died, Benji skipped his economics midterm at Hobart and flew down to Miami. During their senior year at St. George’s, when Shooter was so destitute that he organized an illegal dice game, it was Benji who had encouraged people to come and gamble. Benji had been a prefect, he could have gotten in trouble, lost his position, faced suspension, but none of that had been as important to him as giving Shooter the opportunity to make enough money to stay at school.

  Benji had picked Shooter over his own brother to be his best man.

  Benji had always believed in Shooter and continues to believe in him, even as Shooter came this close to stealing his bride away.

  Celeste has done her part. She has broken things off. This is how things should go. Let Benji deal with the breakup and let Celeste deal with losing Merritt. After some time passes, Shooter and Celeste can be together. How much time will that be? he wonders. He is, by nature, a very impatient person. He wants to start his life with Celeste today.

  He decides he will keep the picture of himself with Celeste. It arrived like an anonymous gift from the universe; when Shooter looks at it, he will remember that he finally has something in his life worth waiting for. He will remember that she said yes.

  Shooter stands up. He reaches out for Benji, hugs him tight; he absorbs the shudders of Benji’s sobs.

  He says nothing.

  Saturday, July 7, 2018, 8:00 p.m.

  GREER

  There’s a knock on Greer’s bedroom door and she stands.

  “Yes?”

  Elida, the housekeeper, enters the room. It’s way past time for Elida to leave. Even with the wedding, she was supposed to be gone by three so she could attend the ceremony at four. But here she is, quietly and steadfastly doing her job.

  “Elida,” Greer says, and tears rise in her eyes. What does it say that in her household she can only trust two people: her younger son and her housekeeper?

  From behind her back, Elida produces Greer’s pillbox.

  “What?” Greer says. Her novelist mind immediately wonders if Elida had anything to do with Merritt’s death. Perhaps Elida learned about the affair and the baby and poisoned the girl out of fealty to Greer. That would be an unexpected upstairs-downstairs twist. “Where did you find this?”

  El
ida says, “In Mr. Thomas’s room. In the trash.”

  In Thomas’s room, in the trash. In the trash? Thomas knows how much Greer cherishes this pillbox. She can’t believe he would throw it away. Greer takes the box from Elida. There are still pills inside; she can hear them.

  “Thank you, Elida,” Greer says. “You can go home.”

  Elida slips out of the room. Greer returns the pillbox to its rightful place in the medicine cabinet. Then she marches upstairs.

  As Greer approaches Thomas’s bedroom door, she hears yelling. This is hardly surprising; Greer would very much like to yell herself. She quickly realizes the voices she’s hearing belong to Thomas and Abby.

  Greer’s first thought is that yelling can’t be good for the baby, but then she recalls that her greatest rows with Tag were when she was pregnant. Her hormones had turned her into a lunatic with pendulum swings between elation and despair. The worst row—when Greer was bored out of her mind, pregnant with Thomas, and Tag was at work every night until ten and on business trips across Europe every weekend—had actually resulted in Greer picking up a pen and writing her first novel, Prey in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

  Greer sighs. Thoughts of her first novel lead her to thoughts of her twenty-first novel, due in thirteen days. Well, it won’t get done now, and no one will blame her. Her husband’s pregnant mistress was found dead outside her house on the morning of her son’s wedding. Greer gets a pass.

  Greer stands just outside the bedroom door, where she can hear distinct words and phrases. She loathes eavesdropping; she’s going to insist they pipe down. The last thing anyone else in this house needs to hear is Thomas and Abby’s marital squabbling.

  But then Greer hears Abby say, “I’ve known about you and Featherleigh for years, since Virgin Gorda, since Tony Berkus’s graduation party at the Carlyle Hotel! Amy Lackey told me she saw you with a trashy-looking woman at L’Entrecôte in Paris on a weekend you told me you were visiting your parents in London. I’ve read all your texts and e-mails and picked through your credit card bills, including the British Airways Visa Signature card you think I know nothing about!”