She Regrets Nothing

by Andrea Dunlop

  Laila didn’t argue. She was too defeated. She barely heard him as Simon told her that he’d booked her a flight back to New York for the following day.

  “And until then?” she said, looking again to her bags. He clearly meant not to spend another minute with her, which was fine by Laila.

  He shrugged. “Why don’t you stay with your new friends?” And with that he turned and went back to where the rest of the group had convened on the patio.

  “Come on, miss,” the butler said gently, “I can take you wherever you need to go.”

  Laila let him lead her out of the house, bewildered.

  “Is there a hotel or . . . ?”

  “I will take you to the Firefly; my friend Phillipe, he will look after you.”

  Upon arriving at the B&B that was nestled in the lush hillside above Britannia Bay, Laila was momentarily distracted from her plight by the sheer beauty of the place. The bar, which also functioned as the reception, opened out onto the sparkling bay. The series of infinity pools built into the hillside gave the place the look of an organic island paradise.

  To Laila’s relief, the Firefly did have a room for the night. To her horror, the price was $1,500. By the time she’d made this alarming discovery, Alumbrera’s butler was long gone, and the bartender, Phillipe, though kind, was not in a position to give her a free room. He offered to call down to Cotton House, the only other hotel on the island, to see if they had a room available. All they had was something called the Residence, which was over $3,000 a night.

  Laila spent the night in the most beautiful hotel room she’d ever seen, weeping.

  The next morning she left the island on a tiny plane to Barbados, where she waited for several hours in the hot, dingy airport until her flight for New York departed. Even with her small size, she felt claustrophobic in the middle seat in coach. She felt certain that Simon had purposefully gotten her a middle seat. At least he had paid for the ticket back. She had gone on this trip to start anew; to break with Tom and make some powerful new friends. Instead, she had burned bridges, humiliated herself, and drained a good chunk of the last of her savings. Fifteen hundred dollars. It was far more than most people’s rent in the rest of the country. Enough money for an entire vacation to someplace else. Or it was a shopping trip of Nora’s at Bergdorf’s—on a light day. Or it was a night in a hotel room on one of the most exclusive islands in the world. Dinner for two at Per Se. Money was meaningless without context. Laila was meant to be in a position where this amount was a frippery, a night on the town. Her determination steeled: she would confront Frederick Lawrence, who would have returned at last from Europe. She would appeal to him as his granddaughter first, but if necessary, she would threaten to expose him; she knew he must care that his past with her mother remain hidden. No one would have gone to all this trouble to keep a secret if it didn’t matter. She’d be reasonable, so long as she was given what her cousins had been—the trusts, the property—she wouldn’t even broach the question of paternity.

  When at last her plane touched down in New York, she started her phone up again. As it returned to life, Laila was flooded with messages from her cousins. Something had happened. Her heart racing, she played one of the five voice mails Nora had left her.

  There was urgent news of Frederick Lawrence.

  18

  * * *

  NORA HEARD the woman who’d stayed over with Leo murmur a good-bye to him and creep out the front door, not noticing that Nora was burning a hole in her from behind where she stood in the kitchen with a French press.

  “Nora?” Leo called out, his voice sounding small, hopeful but uncertain it would find his sister.

  “Yes, my love?”

  “Can you bring me one of my kombuchas?”

  “Be right there.”

  She carried the French press and two mugs, tucking the chilly bottle of kombucha carefully under her arm. She found her brother in bed and crawled over to him, curling herself in the decorative chenille throw on top of the duvet, not wanting to get under the covers, thinking about what was probably lurking there after his night with the woman, who even from behind Nora could tell was too old for him. The room still had the faint odor of sex; her brother’s familiar smell mixed up with some overtly feminine one. Nora’s nostrils curled from the assault of a stranger’s scent.

  Leo put a lackluster arm around her and stroked her hair.

  “I take it that wasn’t Amanda who just left.” Amanda was a gorgeous, prominent fashion editor Leo had met a month ago and fixated on ever since. She was in her midthirties, married with two children.

  Leo shook his head, staring wistfully at the ceiling. “The woman who left wasn’t half of an Amanda.”

  “I don’t know why you do this,” Nora said, and they both knew what she meant. He would fall in love with women he could never have—mostly married but sometimes otherwise unattainable; once it was a lesbian cellist from the Metropolitan Opera—and then proceed to sleep with other women who were not them, ones he could have and therefore did not want; all of it a masochistic cycle. “You think it will make you feel better, but it always makes you feel worse. Who was she?”

  He shrugged. “I met her at Gold Bar last night. It was awful when she left this morning,” he said. “She looked so hopeful, and she was lingering, so I asked for her number.” His voice sounded strained and wretched. “But I know that I’ll never call her. I’m always letting people down.”

  “No, Leo,” she said, reaching out a hand and placing it on his chest. “What can she really expect? She came home with you from a nightclub. It’s not a commitment; if she has expectations, it’s her own stupid fault.”

  “How can I judge anyone? I’m in love with a married woman!” Though Leo’s description of his inappropriate and fleeting infatuations as love might appear frivolous, he felt them deeply. We all need our agonies in order to be happy, and how else was someone as privileged, as beautiful, and as beloved as Leo to find them except where he could manufacture an unrequited passion? The heart doesn’t only want what it wants, it wants to want, craves desire itself, a state that can only exist in the moments before it’s fulfilled. Leo reached over and pulled his glass pipe from the drawer of his bedside table, packed it with weed, and lit it in one fluid, practiced motion.

  “It’s different,” Nora said, taking a toke and lying back.

  “She could be a wonderful girl; what if she’s right for me? What if she would actually make me happy?”

  “Who?”

  “Gold Bar girl.”

  “You don’t remember her name?” Nora asked gently. It was bleak, this kind of coupling.

  “Not just now, but she wrote it down . . . I think.”

  “So call her.”

  “I could,” he said, his voice brightening for a moment, then fading. “But I won’t. I want to. I want to want to.”

  Nora sighed; she understood. The twins wanted for nothing and therefore wanted everything.

  “Do you ever think it would be better?” Nora asked. They often did this to each other: expected the one to pick up a thought the other was having without saying it aloud. Many times it worked, but Leo was too distracted this morning to hear his sister’s thoughts.

  “Hmm?” He passed her the pipe, and she took a deep inhale.

  “If we could just live normal lives? No fortune, no famous parents, no famous us,” she said, her words chasing the fragrant smoke.

  Leo flipped on his side and looked at her, grinning, the weed settling in on both of them.

  “Tell me about this other life.”

  “I live in Westchester, in one of those big houses with the stone foyers, with a fountain in the back, maybe even a little swimming pool. I have a husband named . . .” She bit her lip and thought about it. “Brad. He’s a doctor!”

  “What does he specialize in?” Leo asked, smiling.

  “He’s a pediatrician! He works hard but still makes plenty of time for us. And he adores you, and me, of course, and our
children, and our dog, Gunner.”

  “What kind of dog is Gunner?”

  “A golden retriever,” she said, “and we have two children, a boy and a girl.”

  “Sounds idyllic. And what am I up to?”

  “You still live in New York, but you gave up all the money, so you live way out in Brooklyn with a painter. And you love her, and you write your books, and they’re the toast of the town. And everyone recognizes that you’re brilliant, and no one ever says it’s because you had this or that help from Mom and Dad, because we aren’t us, and everything we have is ours.”

  “Brooklyn and Westchester are too far apart,” he said, “I don’t know if I like that part of the story.”

  “We have lots of room for guests; you and Shelby spend most of your weekends with Brad and me.”

  They went on like this for a while, getting more and more inventive with the details, talking about Shelby’s vegetarian cooking and Brad’s cashmere sweaters. They had only the faintest idea of how people without their means lived in New York—and they couldn’t bring themselves to conjure lives of anything approaching actual struggle—so what emerged was a rather more cinematic version than a realistic one, with Leo living in a vast loft space with fascinating, artsy, ethnic neighbors, and Nora baking cookies in a kitchen from the set of a Nancy Meyers film. Eventually a silence settled over both of them, and Nora thought her brother might have drifted off to sleep until he said, “You know it’s never going to be like that, though, don’t you?”

  Nora let out a long sigh and felt it all slip away: Brad in his sweaters and the green-eyed children, Gunner and the pancakes on Sunday mornings. She felt a great hole suddenly. She turned and scooted backward into her brother’s arms, the little spoon.

  “I know,” she said. “As long as we’re together, I guess I don’t care what happens.”

  “We will be,” he said. And then he did fall asleep.

  They were woken later by their sister calling their names from Leo’s foyer. They came down the stairs to find her looking frantic, her green eyes red-rimmed.

  “Why are the two of you not answering your phones?”

  “We were taking a nap,” Nora said, coming closer to her sister, tentatively, alarmed by the urgent tone of her voice.

  “What happened?” Leo asked.

  Liberty took a deep, steely breath. “Opa. He’s had an aneurysm.”

  “What? When?” Nora said.

  “On the plane on his way back from Europe.”

  “Is he dead?” Leo and Nora asked practically in stereo.

  “No,” Liberty said, “the doctors are taking him in for surgery. But . . .” Her voice faltered, and tears streamed down her cheeks. Her siblings closed around her, and the three of them held fast to each other.

  “What do we do now?” Leo asked.

  “We have to tell Laila,” Nora said.

  “She doesn’t even know him,” Leo scoffed.

  “And now she might never!” Nora howled. “Oh, it’s too awful.”

  “Laila is still on Mustique,” Liberty said.

  They looked at the itinerary she’d sent them and called Alumbrera, only to be told that Ms. Lawrence had left them. They at last were able to get Simon on the line; he curtly passed them along to his personal assistant, who had arranged Laila’s flight details and whom, fortunately, they were able to reach right away. Meanwhile, Nora left frantic voice mails on Laila’s cell, as though calling again and again would get her through.

  A plan was hatched that they should all gather at the Lawrence penthouse uptown. They left Laila a message telling her they’d send a car to the airport to bring her straight there.

  Their father’s face was ashen when they arrived at the penthouse, and Birdie was pacing, dramatically ringing her hands. By the time Laila at last arrived, she’d worn a path in circles around the apartment and was sitting drinking a martini and being comforted by Petra. Nora flew to her cousin and wrapped her arms around her. “We’re so glad you’re home.”

  Laila felt shaky, unable to make sense of the events of the past several days of her life. Her skin was painted with a fierce sunburn in the patches her sunscreen had missed.

  “How was your trip?” Liberty’s voice was neutral; did she not know about Tom yet?

  “It was kind of a disaster,” she said softly.

  “Oh no!” Nora said. “Darling, tell us everything!” In her grief, Nora seemed to have forgotten that she was mad at Laila. All the better; Laila didn’t have many options other than to move back in with her at this point.

  “It doesn’t matter right now. I’m just glad I was able to get home to be with you guys.” Nora ate this up. But Birdie had barely heard her.

  “All these months he’s been gone to Europe doing God knows what. Doesn’t even bother to come home for the holidays. Off with God knows who, who we’ll now have to deal with.” In all of the drama, they’d forgotten the new girlfriend, whom they now feared would emerge like a vulture at his bedside. She never did come, but the way they discussed her that night made plain to Laila the numerous women Frederick had courted in the decades since his wife’s death; had her mother not been his own son’s wife, she would have simply been another unremarkable one of many.

  A half hour later, Cameron and Reece showed up, brandishing large bags from Citarella.

  “You’re too sweet,” Liberty said, her relief at the sight of the siblings palpable. “You didn’t need to do that.”

  “You have to eat,” Reece said. “I’m so sorry about your opa,” she added softly, “I guess I’d always thought of him as invincible.”

  Liberty smiled wanly. “Me too.”

  Laila watched as Cameron put his arm around her cousin, enfolding her as though beneath a massive wing. Flashes of the dreadful Simon grunting behind her, his gnarled hand in her hair, came back and sent a wave of repulsion through her. She was certain no one would ever treat her treasured cousin the way Simon had treated her, or the way their own grandfather had treated her. Disposable.

  That night, while they waited to hear from the doctors, the family sat with one another in disquieting limbo, as though they themselves hovered between life and death. It felt blasphemous to stray too far from the subject of Frederick himself, and so his son and daughter started telling stories about him from their childhood. Laila noticed how carefully they avoided mention of her own father, and she wondered if Ben and Petra had not just known about her mother and Frederick but perhaps had even helped orchestrate Betsy’s removal from New York. Still, Laila knew to stay quiet for the moment. To bring the letters up directly to Frederick—the culpable party—that was one thing, but to bring it up to anyone else in the family would make her seem like a threat. It would appear as though she had come here intending to blackmail them, when she’d only ever considered it as a last resort. Mentioning it now would get her shut out, make her a person to be dealt with rather than a person to be welcomed into the fold. Laila was, as ever, on her own with no protector. But her aunt, she reminded herself, and Liberty would help. And perhaps it would even be easier with Frederick gone.

  After steadily consuming scotch for an hour or so, Cameron at last got up to relieve himself. Of course he loved Liberty and wanted to be there for her in her time of need, but the quiet waiting and consoling of this vigil were deeply uncomfortable for him. He wanted to do something, to fix things for her and be adored in return. He relished the feeling of being needed by her, but she so often seemed utterly independent. And there were still walls he had yet to breach, he knew. He had complained to his sister about this, and she’d told him to be patient. Now at last her walls were lowered, but what could he do? Wait with her, Reece had said. Simply wait, as he had waited to kiss her, as he waited longer yet to seduce her, as he would wait longer still to begin to push her boundaries in the way that would truly satisfy him. He’d casually mentioned the idea of bondage once, but she’d thought he was kidding. The guest bathroom of the Lawrences’ penthouse was down a lon
g hallway, and he felt his head swim a bit as he made his way toward it. He could only hope the waiting would soften Liberty around her hard, controlled edges.

  He washed his hands and regarded himself in the mirror. A good man, he thought, I will be a good man for her. Cameron wanted to believe that underneath it all, he was the best of men, the man his parents seemed to believe he was. Liberty too, now.

  When he opened the bathroom door, Laila seemed to materialize whole from the gloom of the hallway, aglow in her unseasonably light dress; her aunt had given her a cashmere wrap, but she had left that behind on the couch. Her nose and the tops of her shoulders were freckled and peeled from the sun, making her look girlish and vulnerable.

  “Cameron, I need to talk to you,” she said.

  “About what?” Cameron asked in a hissed whisper. He towered over her, long arms crossed over his broad chest.

  “I . . .” She paused and made a step toward him. “Ever since we were together, I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  “We cannot talk about this here. Especially not tonight.”

  “Cameron,” she said, reaching out and placing her hand on his chest, “please.”

  He pulled her into the bathroom, knowing it would at least be soundproof.

  “What, Laila? You have five minutes to say what you need to say. I thought we had agreed that we’d never mention it to anyone?”

  “I haven’t! I won’t. I don’t even really want to talk. I just want you.”

  And then Cameron felt it, the thing unfurling deep in his belly, clawing its way toward the surface, and before he knew what he was doing, his hand was around Laila’s delicate throat and he had slammed her head up against the wall, between two vintage Viennese prints that decorated the interior wall of the bathroom.

  With his free hand he reached between her legs, felt the wetness there.

  “Oh, you like this?” He pressed hard against her throat with one hand, pushed his fingers into her with the other. She let out a thick, strangled gasp that he recognized as one of enjoyment. Her eyes were flashing but not with fear. Or indeed with fear, but with something else too: bliss. The ecstasy of fear. He felt suddenly as though she saw him in a way he was unused to being seen. He maneuvered his thumb, still moving his fingers inside her, still gripping her throat—suddenly as intent on bringing her pleasure as he was on bringing her pain. He felt her yielding to him, pliant as a rag doll, until she came hard on his hand, and he was forced to release her throat in order to cover her mouth. He turned to wash the slickness from his hands. She crumpled to the floor and stayed there. He found he was afraid to look at her, and when he at last did, he saw why. Her hair was rumpled, her limbs loosened like an abandoned marionette’s, but her eyes were victorious.