Winter Solstice

by Elin Hilderbrand

  JENNIFER

  To meet Norah for coffee, Jennifer had to lie to Patrick. Meaning she has to continue to lie to Patrick.

  She said, “I need to go to the Nantucket Sewing Center when it opens tomorrow. They carry a fabric I want to use…” She nearly said in Grayson Coker’s penthouse, but she stopped short of that treachery. Patrick will assume it’s for the penthouse, however, because what else would it be for?

  “Cool,” Patrick said. “What time does it open?”

  Jennifer swallowed. “Eight thirty. I should be back in an hour.”

  “Great,” Patrick said. “That’ll give me time to visit with Dad before we leave.”

  He’s not suspicious at all, Jennifer thinks. Somehow, the fact that he wholeheartedly believes her makes her feel worse. He thinks her addiction is a thing of the past. He believes she’s honest, forthcoming, transparent. His faith in her is almost more than Jennifer can bear.

  Norah is at the Hub waiting for Jennifer, which is a relief, but what is not a relief is that Norah isn’t alone. There’s a man with her, a man about Jennifer’s age with tattoos on his neck and his forearms. He has jet-black hair, longish though not unkempt, and he’s wearing jeans, a gray cashmere sweater pushed up on his arms to display the aforementioned tattoos, and a pair of white Converse high-tops. Is he a hipster or a drug lord? Jennifer can’t tell.

  Jennifer checks his wrist for a watch. He’s not wearing a watch, but he sports some fairly nice bracelets—John Hardy silver bangles, if Jennifer had to guess, and one black cord bracelet with a silver and rhinestone skull. He looks at Jennifer and smiles. His teeth are straight and white. He looks friendly. There’s something about his face that’s familiar. Does she know this guy?

  “Jennifer, hey!” Norah says. Norah, too, looks hip and stylish. She’s in a black turtleneck, skinny jeans, and Black Watch plaid ballet flats, and she’s wearing a fabulous pair of shoulder dusters that are a cascade of intertwining gold circles. Norah’s hair is cut in an asymmetrical bob, and her makeup is subtle. Norah Vale has never looked so good.

  “Norah, hi,” Jennifer says. She isn’t sure how to greet her former sister-in-law–slash–drug dealer. A handshake seems too formal, a hug too intimate. Jennifer settles on an air kiss.

  “Can I get you a latte?” Norah asks.

  “I’m drinking a matcha,” the man with the bracelets says.

  Latte? Matcha? Jennifer gets the distinct feeling that this meeting is not what she expected, and she feels a piercing disappointment. Ativan, she needs Ativan!

  “Uh… just coffee,” Jennifer says, feeling suddenly middle aged and fuddy-duddy. “Regular American coffee.”

  Norah orders while Jennifer sneaks another look at the man who’s with Norah. Maybe this is Norah’s boyfriend?

  The man catches Jennifer’s eye and offers his hand. “You might not remember me? I’m Danko Vale, Norah’s brother. We met… oh, I don’t know… at one of the Quinn family functions years ago.”

  “Okay, wait,” Jennifer says, because now that she is looking at the guy full-on, she nearly has it, a memory with him attached. Norah’s brother Danko. Norah, Jennifer recalls, grew up in a bizarre family situation. Lots of brothers, only one of them her full biological brother, and not the one everyone expected. Jennifer tugs at the memory like it’s a stubborn knot. Danko Vale. He’s the tattoo artist, the one who talked Norah into the godforsaken python on her neck. Yes! And… he’s the oldest brother, Norah’s full brother, because the mother reunited with Danko’s father after having three boys by other men, and she got pregnant with Norah.

  And… wait! Yes! Jennifer has met Danko before, but not at a Quinn family function. Jennifer and Patrick were up at Great Point in the Land Rover they owned before they bought the BMW, and Patrick got the Rover stuck in the sand. Danko Vale rolled up in a black Jeep. He was brown from the sun, wearing black swim trunks and a red bandana over his head, and with all the tattoos, he resembled nothing so much as a pirate. Patrick was wary at his approach, but then Danko introduced himself and there was an aha moment as Patrick realized he was Norah’s brother, the one who had given Norah away when Norah and Kevin got married. It was a tad awkward, since Norah and Kevin were at that point in a period of split-up-but-still-kind-of-together—however, Danko was a perfect gentleman, not to mention a lifesaver, as he produced a towrope and freed the Land Rover from the soft sand. Patrick, Jennifer remembers, offered Danko forty bucks, but Danko waved the money away, saying, “Nah, man, anything for family.”

  “You pulled my husband and me out of the sand!” Jennifer says now. “In our Land Rover, I mean. Up at Great Point.”

  Danko snaps his fingers. “That’s right! I told Norah I’d met you, but I thought it was only at the wedding.”

  Norah turns around and hands Jennifer her coffee. “I’m glad you guys are hitting it off. Shall we go sit on the bench outside so we can talk?”

  Bench outside? Jennifer thinks. So we can talk? The “bench outside” that Norah means is a bench that faces Main Street. It’s the most public place on the entire island. Jennifer does not want to sit on the bench with Norah and Danko, but what choice does she have?

  It’s a beautiful morning on Main Street, however, unseasonably mild for the first of November, and so Jennifer takes a seat and raises her face to the sunshine. Just a few Ativan, she thinks. A few meaning twenty. Or thirty. Danko and Norah must be in business together, which is weird, and awful, but who is Jennifer to judge? They are both well dressed; they exude success. They are dealing pharmaceuticals to the top 1 percent; they have an image to uphold now, Jennifer supposes.

  “So,” Norah says. “We have a proposition for you. An exciting proposition.”

  They want her to sell, Jennifer thinks. It only makes sense; she lives in an elite neighborhood populated by unhappy housewives. The pathetic thing—the truly pathetic thing—is that she will consider it. She has to consider it—she needs the money!

  But the terms will have to be favorable. In fact, they will have to be her terms. She will keep a percentage of sales, and there needs to be safeguards in place. She can’t get caught. The kids managed to survive their father being imprisoned for financial shenanigans, but they won’t survive their mother being imprisoned for drug dealing.

  “Oh really?” Jennifer says with cheerful naiveté. “What is it?”

  “Danko is a TV producer,” Norah says. “With SinTV.”

  “Really?” Jennifer says. She feels a bit starstruck. She would never in a million years know what SinTV is except that Leanne, Jennifer’s beloved client, is addicted to not one but two shows on SinTV. The first is called Swing Set, a reality show about six couples living in Fishers, Indiana, who start swinging, as in sleeping with one another’s spouses. It sounds awful to Jennifer, but Leanne can’t get enough of it; she’s greatly anticipating the spin-offs set in Traverse City, Michigan, and Sebastopol, California. Soon, Jennifer supposes, every small town in America will be swinging. Leanne also watches a cooking show called Fatso, where every recipe starts with two sticks of butter and ends with an extra side of mayonnaise. Again, it sounds repugnant to Jennifer, and yet this is where Leanne got the insanely delicious recipe for her fried chicken club sandwiches with lime pickle relish and bacon aioli, which Derek affectionately refers to as a Heart Attack on Brioche.

  “I worked at Vice for three years and for TMZ before that,” Danko says. “SinTV was the natural next step.”

  “They’ve put him in charge of developing a home-improvement show,” Norah says. “They want something that will be competitive with Rehab Addict,” Danko says. “And Flip or Flop.”

  “I always thought Flip or Flop was a flop,” Jennifer says, though that’s likely her envy talking.

  “The divorce was the best thing that ever happened to that show,” Danko says. “Their ratings are through the roof now.”

  “Viewers love to know the real-life stories behind a show’s host,” Norah says. “Which brings us to our idea.”
<
br />   “Your idea?” Jennifer says.

  “We want you to host a show on SinTV,” Danko says.

  “Me?” Jennifer says. She would be lying if she said the thought had never crossed her mind. She tries not to watch HGTV, just like she’s sure novelists try not to pore over the New York Times Book Review. Jennifer suffers from professional envy, for certain, but she also doesn’t want to inadvertently copy what other decorators are doing.

  “You’re beautiful, you’re smart, you’re poised,” Norah says.

  “The network wants a show set in Boston,” Danko says. “They feel the demographic up there is underexploited.”

  “The show Danko has created is called Real-Life Rehab,” Norah says. “They have a couple of townhouses they’re looking at in Dorchester.”

  “Dorchester?” Jennifer says.

  “Part of the hook is that we’ll be renovating homes in transitioning neighborhoods,” Danko says. “Buying teardowns, essentially, and then affordably and sustainably remodeling them in an attempt to jump-start gentrification.”

  “That’s what happened in the South End,” Norah says.

  “Yes, well, Dorchester is hardly the South End,” Jennifer says. She thinks of her clients Peter and Ken and their divine home on Washington Street. But didn’t Ken tell Jennifer that they’d bought the property in 1992, when the neighborhood was a wasteland? There’s no reason why Dorchester can’t rise up. And Jennifer could be a part of it. “But I like the concept. It’s design as altruism, in a way.”

  “Exactly,” Danko says. “SinTV has a reputation for being a little bit of a bad-boy network. This would be our way of showing we have a heart.”

  “And there’s another hook,” Norah says. “You. You, Jennifer Quinn, as a recovering addict. You are your own real-life rehab story.”

  “I pitched it to the network executives,” Danko says. “They went crazy. They are giving this show an enormous budget. So if you agree, you’ll be very well compensated.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jennifer says. She hears the phrase very well compensated and a cheer goes up in the back of her mind, but she has gotten snagged on what Norah said. “So people will know I had…” She can’t even find words to express what she’s thinking. “A problem with pills? We’ll tell them?”

  “We’ll tell them,” Norah says. “I think seeing you and learning what you’ve overcome will help a lot of people who are going through the same thing.”

  “Okay, but…” The only word Jennifer can come up with is no. No, she is not going on television and admitting she was addicted to pills! Her family knows—her mother, Kelley and Mitzi, Margaret, even the boys know a little bit—but that’s a very small circle compared with… well, the entire country. Or the portion of the country who watch shelter programs on SinTV.

  Leanne will find out. And Grayson Coker. And all the mothers from the kids’ school. And Mandy Pell. And the women who organize the Beacon Hill Holiday House Tour. And all the people Jennifer went to high school with and her classmates from Stanford. It’s not random strangers—Megan Hoffman from wherever—that concern Jennifer; it’s the people she knows, the people who thought they knew her.

  “We know it seems scary,” Danko says. “It takes a really brave, really strong person to admit she has fallen prey like that. Believe me, I know. I’ve been in AA for fifteen years.”

  Why don’t you do the show then? Jennifer nearly asks. When she looks at Danko, she sees kindness in his eyes. Empathy. He gets it—maybe.

  “I can’t,” Jennifer says. “I just… can’t.”

  “Why don’t you take some time and think about it?” Norah says. She puts a hand on Jennifer’s leg and leans in. “You would be so great. A role model, a real role model, someone who has been through a rough patch and then come out the other side.”

  But I’m still in the rough patch! Jennifer thinks. She came here this morning hoping to score some Ativan!

  “Just so you know, the show will pay you thirty-five thousand dollars an episode for the first twelve episodes, with the option to negotiate for the second season,” Danko says. “And I’ll point out that there are also endorsement opportunities, and that any host who broadcasts nationally sees a spike in her own personal design business.”

  “Meaning you’ll be the most sought-after designer in Boston,” Norah says. “Tom and Gisele will be hunting you down to redo their kids’ playroom.”

  Jennifer smiles—she does have a file at home filled with creative playroom ideas—and at the same time, she’s trying to calculate: thirty-five thousand times twelve. It’s four hundred twenty grand, which is nearly what she lost by giving up Grayson Coker. Plus endorsements. Plus business rolling in, more business than she can handle.

  But she has to tell the world she was addicted to pills. The struggle is real, she imagines herself saying into the camera. And it is constant. Could she bring herself to be that honest?

  “I need to think about it,” Jennifer says.

  “We have some time,” Danko says. “Can you give us an answer before Thanksgiving?”

  “Yes,” Jennifer says. “I’ll let you know by the Friday before Thanksgiving. The seventeenth.”

  They all stand up, and Norah gives Jennifer a sisterly squeeze. “Just so you know, I don’t get a finder’s fee or anything. When Danko told me about this project, I automatically thought of you. You would be so great on TV.”

  “Real-life rehab,” Jennifer says wryly. “That’s me.”

  She shakes hands with Danko, who gives her an encouraging smile. “You’d be perfect,” he says. He holds up his hands. “But no pressure. Stay in touch.”

  “I will,” Jennifer says as he and Norah walk away.

  She sits back down on the bench for a second and picks up her cup of coffee, which she has all but ignored. It’s then that she sees the blond woman with the baby carriage across the street staring her down.

  It takes Jennifer a second to realize who the woman is, and another second for her to register the appropriate amount of horror. It’s Isabelle, out for a walk with the baby. Isabelle must have seen Jennifer talking to Norah Vale. Isabelle must have seen Jennifer hugging Norah Vale.

  This is bad. For so many reasons.

  “Isabelle!” Jennifer calls out. “Isabelle!” She waves at her sister-in-law, but Isabelle pretends not to notice. She turns the carriage around and walks away.

  EDDIE

  He tries not to let his hopes deflate when he sees the Christys step off the ferry. Masha—for Eddie can think of Marcia Christy only as Masha—told Eddie to look for a woman with yellow hair and a purple coat. Eddie assumed he would be looking for a blond. But in fact, the very first person off the boat is a woman in a puffy purple parka, and she has yellow hair. Yellow, the color of marshmallow Peeps.

  “Masha?” Eddie says.

  She immediately envelops Eddie in a puffy purple hug. She’s wearing a sharp-smelling perfume, reminiscent of the cheap drugstore brands Eddie’s sister, Barbie, used to wear in high school.

  Eddie will not judge Masha. Masha has won Powerball. Masha has more money than 90 percent of the folks who come to Nantucket looking to buy.

  “Eddie,” Masha says. “Please meet my husband, Raja.”

  “Nice to meet you, Raja,” Eddie says, extending a hand. He doesn’t bother correcting his pronunciation, and neither Masha nor Raja seems to mind or notice. Raja is magnificently ordinary—white, pudgy, balding, bespectacled. He’s wearing a plaid shirt, flat-front Dockers, a red Windbreaker, some comfortable-looking loafers—Hush Puppies, maybe.

  Raja’s handshake is a baggie of warm pudding. No surprises there.

  “Welcome to Nantucket, both of you,” Eddie says. “My car is parked in the lot. We have six properties to look at, so we’d better get cracking.”

  Masha lets out a whoop. “I like you already, Eddie. Ha! I’m a poet and I didn’t know it.”

  “Right this way,” Eddie says.

  Masha is a talker. Between the parking lo
t and the top of Main Street, Eddie learns the following: Masha is a hairdresser, grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts, and attended Empire Beauty School in Malden. Raja is also from Lynn. Both Masha and Raja attended Lynn Classical, but Raja was three years ahead, plus he was one of the smarties in the chess club, and Masha—as you can probably guess, Eddie—was a cheerleader who hung out with the real popular kids. Raja is an engineer with National Grid, and for fun he plays chess online. They have a West Highland terrier named Jack, who is “basically our child,” Masha says. Jack went with Masha to buy the Powerball ticket from Lanzilli’s, and three of the numbers Masha picked were the components of Jack’s birthday. So Jack is really the person responsible for the Christys’ good fortune, Masha says.

  “Jack isn’t a person.” Raja speaks up from the back.

  Masha swats Eddie’s arm. “That’s an engineer for you,” she says. “Hung up on details.”

  Eddie laughs, then hopes that Raja doesn’t think Eddie is laughing at his expense.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Masha says. “I never shut up. It’s true. I’m a chatty Kathy. Raja is a man of few words, so I talk for both of us.”

  Eddie can hold his own with pretty much anyone, but after being in the car with Masha for five minutes, he needs a break. He pulls onto Winter Street.

  “I just have to make a quick stop,” Eddie says. “Drop off a listing sheet for some other clients who are putting their house on the market. Won’t take a minute.” He double-parks in front of the inn and slowly approaches the front door, savoring the moment of quiet. Eddie uses the knocker, and a few seconds later Bart Quinn opens the door. He’s holding a large bouquet of flowers.

  “Hi?” Bart says.

  “Bart, hi. Eddie Pancik,” Eddie says. He holds out the plain white envelope that contains the listing sheet. “Would you give this to your mother, please? Only your mother. It’s something she specifically requested.”

  Bart takes the envelope, but he seems to be studying Eddie. “Eddie Pancik? You’re Allegra’s father, right?”