The House on Mermaid Point

by Wendy Wax

  “She looks good.” Avery got out of the passenger seat and went around to open the cargo door.

  Maddie looked closely at her daughter’s face, unable to read her mood or her expression. The outing had been Kyra’s idea. “I don’t like being here without permission.”

  “It’s okay, Mom. We’re just going to be on the back deck for an hour or so. No one will know we were ever here.” She gave Maddie that wide-eyed innocent look that meant something was up. “Come on. We don’t have that long until sunset.”

  They carried a small cooler with chilled white wine and hors d’oeuvres around to the loggia. A grocery bag held crusty French bread and an industrial-sized bag of Cheez Doodles. Nicole had brought four wine goblets.

  “Everything’s just like we left it.” Maddie took in the outdoor furniture, flipped on the fans over the table and chairs on the loggia, and watched them turn lazily. Even Dustin’s playhouse sat in the corner with its back to the brief strip of no-man’s-land between the house and the jetty.

  “Do you remember how awful she looked and smelled the first time we saw her?” Nicole shuddered.

  Bella Flora had come complete with birds’ nests, holes in the roof, and a gag-worthy rolled-up bathing suit smell. They fell silent as they remembered what it had taken to bring back Bella Flora to her former elegance.

  “Do you remember when Deirdre first showed up and we thought she was an intruder?” Kyra asked.

  “Yeah, an intruder with matching designer luggage who’d taken over the master suite before she’d even said hello.” Maddie smiled at the memory.

  They settled around the wrought-iron table, spreading their food and drink across its top.

  “I brought the caviar and fixings in Deirdre’s honor,” Nicole said. She passed out plastic plates and poured them each a glass of Chardonnay.

  Avery opened the Cheez Doodles. “I’ll never be able to eat one of these again without remembering how much they annoyed her.” Her smile was crooked. “That was half the fun.”

  Sea oats swayed slightly and a parasailer floated in the air down the stretch of white sand beach.

  “To Deirdre Morgan. Who transformed every house we touched into something uniquely beautiful.” Avery toasted.

  “To Deirdre. Who always looked ready for her close-up.” Kyra raised her glass.

  “To Deirdre,” Maddie added. “Who loved her daughter and who finally managed to let that daughter know just how much she meant to her.”

  They tipped their glasses to Avery.

  “To my mother.” Avery smiled, but her voice broke on the word.

  “To Deirdre, who told the network to shove Do Over up its ass.” Nicole touched her glass to theirs.

  “She did go out in style, didn’t she?” Kyra mused. “I got a text today from Troy that Lisa Hogan has been fired.”

  “I’ll drink to that!” Nicole sipped on her wine and the others followed suit. “What happened?”

  “Apparently her bosses were not impressed with her vulgarity or her demands that their crew shoot Deirdre’s collapse.” Kyra reached for a Cheez Doodle.

  “How did her bosses know?” Maddie asked.

  “Troy refused to film Deirdre, but he did shoot every ugly minute of Lisa Hogan’s tirade. Then he sent the footage to her boss at the network.” Kyra’s voice was filled with pleasure.

  They fell quiet as they sipped and ate and watched the sun begin to turn from gold to red as it hovered over the Gulf, its reflected brilliance shimmering beneath it. Maddie knew they could all feel Deirdre’s absence. But they could feel her presence, too.

  There was comfort here in Bella Flora’s warm plaster walls and the way she seemed to hunker almost protectively behind them. “I thought the Millicent was a fabulous house and Mermaid Point was pretty spectacular—”

  “We all know what you liked most about Mermaid Point, Maddie,” Nicole teased.

  Maddie blushed but continued. “But, I was going to say before I was so rudely interrupted, there’s only one Bella Flora.”

  They raised their glasses as the puddle of red sun oozed into the Gulf. “To Bella Flora.”

  “No matter who she belongs to, she’ll always be ours. Because we’re the ones who brought her back and we know she did the same for us. We’re the ones who know and love her best.” Maddie put down her glass, afraid she was going to cry.

  “Maybe Do Over’s not over.” Kyra took a sip of her drink and stared at the sky. “Lisa Hogan kept downplaying the size of our audience, but Do Over must have some kind of following. With her gone maybe they’ll assign someone a little less . . .”

  “. . . crass and mean-spirited?” Nicole prompted.

  “Exactly. Maybe her replacement will be open to what we had in mind in the first place—more renovation, less reality.” Kyra smiled. “Troy gave me the name of the new production head. I left a message for him this morning.”

  “And if they’re not interested we could approach another network,” Maddie said, realizing just how freeing Lisa Hogan’s removal could be. “Or if it came down to it and we wanted to, we could probably shoot and produce it ourselves and then sell it to another network. That would allow us to maintain control.”

  “We could,” Nicole enthused. “I could handle the sales. I still know people in the movie and television business.”

  “I love working with Chase in the business our fathers founded, but I’d really like to continue with Do Over, too.” Avery seemed to have shrugged off her sadness at least temporarily. “If we produced it ourselves we could control what projects we undertook and where.”

  There was a buzz of excitement around the table. Maddie watched their faces; all of them reflected the same sense of possibility that simmered inside her. She, Madeline Singer, was fifty-one and single. The rest of her life, however long it might be, lay spread before her, infinite in possibility.

  Because of all they’d been through she was a far different person than she’d ever imagined: stronger, more competent, definitely more resilient. She could do things she’d never even dreamed about; her life could be anything she wanted it to be. And if Deirdre’s unexpected death had taught her anything it was not to squander time or feelings.

  She looked down at her phone. Her thumbs moved of their own volition. When the message was finished she didn’t hesitate or reread it; she just pressed “send.”

  “Who are you texting, Mom?” Kyra asked. “You know your thumbs tend to get you in trouble.”

  “No one special.” She could feel herself grinning like a goon.

  They laughed at her knowingly and she took a long sip of her drink. Before she could swallow it there was the ding of an incoming text. She looked down at the screen and blushed with pleasure, which faded only slightly when she read the message from William. Not sure whose “dick” you’re watching sunset on right now, but wish you’d come back and do that here.

  She snorted wine and laughter. His next text left her glowing in an entirely different way. Miss you, Maddie-fan. Took your advice. Wrote you a gong.

  “I wouldn’t mind staying in Florida. Especially if Avery’s in Tampa with Chase and Nikki’s down in Miami.” Maddie didn’t add that William Hightower’s presence gave the state of Florida an additional glow.

  “Oh, we’re definitely staying in Florida,” Kyra said.

  “What do you mean?” Maddie looked at Kyra, trying to assess the tone of her voice, the odd look on her face. Nicole and Avery were watching her, too.

  Kyra stood. She stuck a hand in her pants pocket and brought out a key then strode to the French door that led inside from the loggia.

  “What are you doing?” Maddie asked as she, Nicole, and Avery got up and followed her.

  “I have to go to the bathroom.” Kyra stuck the key into the lock and gave it a turn. An alarm system beeped.

  “Are you crazy?”
Avery asked. “The police are going to be here any minute. They’ll . . .”

  Kyra punched a number into the keypad and the alarm beeped off. “Come on. I think we need to get something stronger from the Casbah Lounge.” She led them into the house, past the salon and kitchen and into the Moorish tiled bar.

  “Okay, what’s going on here?” Maddie demanded as Kyra laid out shot glasses on the bar and began to pour them all shots of tequila.

  “We can’t start drinking tequila before we drive back to Tampa. We’re going to have to go home. And I suggest we do it before someone notices my car in the drive and sends someone to see what’s going on.”

  All eyes were now on Kyra, who finished with her generous pours and then pushed a glass toward each of them. “We are home.”

  Kyra, Nicole, and Avery downed their shots and slammed their empty glasses down on the bar. But Maddie was the one who’d be driving. “You’re going to have to explain yourself, Kyra Singer. Because I’m not going to jail tonight for breaking and entering or driving under the influence.”

  “We’re not going anywhere because we are home, Mom. Daniel bought Bella Flora for Dustin and me. Which means it belongs to any of us who want to live in her.”

  “Seriously?” Maddie’s breath stuttered in surprise. Nicole and Avery whooped with pleasure and passed their shot glasses back to Kyra.

  “Seriously. And I spoke to Chase and Jeff—they’re keeping Dustin tonight so that we can have a sleepover. I brought some spare toothbrushes and a few other supplies, but I think I might be too excited to sleep tonight. I may just sit up and commune with Bella Flora.”

  Maddie and the women who meant so much to her stood in the heart of the incredible house that had brought them together and that once again belonged to them. With smiles on their faces they raised their glasses to toast what lay ahead: a future so bright that Maddie was pretty sure it was going to require sunglasses.

  READERS GUIDE

  THE HOUSE ON MERMAID POINT

  by Wendy Wax

  Discussion Questions

  We see William Hightower’s house transform in the hands of the Do Over crew, from cleaning the floor-to-ceiling windows to making the house amenable to guests. How does William’s transformation mirror the changes to his house? How much of this is a result of the crew?

  The book’s setting almost functions like the layers of an onion: the American South, the Florida Keys, Mermaid Point, and Hightower’s home. How does the mood change and tension increase as the team travels through these “layers”?

  On the houseboat one night, Avery is ruminating on the nature of the team’s trials: “Success wasn’t necessarily about crossing the finish line first. Sometimes success was about managing to stay afloat.” At what points in the story is the team trying to “stay afloat”? What challenges threaten this ability?

  As Maddie’s romance with William Hightower develops, we often hear her inwardly worrying about her physical appearance. How are romance and physicality different for middle-aged women than they are for men of the same age? How have society, and other influences, affected Maddie’s body image?

  Hightower’s song about a “mermaid who’d left him to return to sea” is referenced several times in the story. What female characters are most like Hightower’s mermaid who “left” him?

  When Maddie runs the boat aground on the way home from dinner, the women spend the night in the boat. They later realize that the men knew and chose to remain uninvolved. Hightower calls it an “important rite of passage.” What emotions did that episode evoke? Did you think it was all right to leave the women stranded? Were there other “rites of passage” on the island?

  The cyclical nature of sunrise and sunset offers a natural, rhythmic structure for the novel. What might the importance of sunrise and sunset indicate about the characters’ lives?

  Consider how William and Tommy’s relationship has similarities to the parent-child dynamic between Deirdre and Avery. What is the arc of these parent-child relationships, and how does redemption factor into their stories?

  The characters in the book have a fraught relationship with exposure and celebrity because of their jobs on Do Over. How do we all, in the age of the Internet, have a changing relationship with exposure and celebrity? How does the possibility of “being exposed” affect the characters’ behaviors—Kyra and Nicole in particular—and our own?

  During her time alone with William, Maddie observes the beauty of her surroundings and comments, “I can understand why you wouldn’t want to give this up or share it with strangers.” How is he able to eventually find peace with the new plan for his home?

  Do Over is the show at the core of the story. Full of absurdities and frustrations, it also is a source of a great sense of accomplishment and bonding for the crew. What characters are experiencing a “do over” of their own in The House on Mermaid Point?

  Read on for a special preview of

  WHILE WE WERE WATCHING DOWNTON ABBEY

  by Wendy Wax

  Available now from Berkley Books

  Chapter One

  As a child Samantha Jackson Davis loved fairy tales as much as the next girl. She just hadn’t expected to end up in one.

  Every morning when her eyes fluttered open and every night before she closed them to go to sleep, Samantha marveled at her good fortune. In a Disney version of the airline passenger held up in security just long enough to miss the plane that goes down, or the driver who runs back for a forgotten cell phone and barely avoids a deadly ten-car pileup, Samantha averted disaster in the once-upon-a-time way: she married the prince.

  Over the past twenty-five years Samantha had sometimes wished she’d spent a little more time and energy considering alternatives. But when your world comes crashing down around you at the age of twenty-one, deep thinking and soul-searching are rarely your first response.

  There was plenty of precedent for prince-marrying in the fairy-tale world. Sleeping Beauty had not ignored the prince’s kiss in favor of a few more years of shut-eye. Cinderella never considered refusing to try on the glass slipper. And Snow White didn’t bat an eyelash at moving in with those seven little men.

  It wasn’t as if Samantha had gone out searching for a man to rescue her and her siblings when their world fell apart. She hadn’t feigned a poisoned apple–induced sleep or gotten herself locked in a tower with only her hair as a means of escape. She hadn’t attempted to hide how desperate her situation was. But the fact remained that when the handsome prince (in the form of an old family friend who had even older family money) rode up on his white horse (which had been cleverly disguised as a Mercedes convertible), she had not turned down the ride.

  The fact that she hadn’t loved the prince at the time he carried her over the threshold of their starter castle was something she tried not to think about. She’d been trying not to think about it pretty much every day for the last twenty-five years.

  • • •

  Samantha smiled sleepily that early September morning when her husband’s lips brushed her forehead before he left for the office, but she didn’t get up. Instead she lay in bed watching beams of sunlight dance across the wooden floors of the master bedroom, breathing in the scent of freshly brewed coffee that wafted from the kitchen, and listening to the muted sound of traffic twelve floors below on Peachtree Street as she pushed aside all traces of regret and guilt and renewed her vow to make Jonathan Davis happy, his life smooth, and his confidence in his choice of her unshaken.

  This, of course, required a great deal of organization and focus, many hours of volunteer work, and now that she was on the downhill slide toward fifty, ever greater amounts of “maintenance.” Today’s efforts would begin with an hour of targeted torture courtesy of her trainer Michael and would be followed by laser, nail, and hair appointments. Since it was Wednesday, her morning maintenance and afternoon committee
meetings would be punctuated by a much-dreaded-but-never-complained-about weekly lunch with her mother-in-law. Which would last exactly one hour but would feel more like three.

  Samantha padded into the kitchen of their current “castle,” which took up the entire top floor of the Alexander, a beautifully renovated Beaux Arts and Renaissance Revival–styled apartment building in the center of Midtown Atlanta.

  When it opened in 1913, the Alexander, with its hot and cold running water, steam heat, elevators, and electric lights, had been billed as one of the South’s most luxurious apartments. Like much of mid- and downtown Atlanta it had fallen on hard times but had been “saved” in the eighties when a bottom-fishing developer bought it, converted it to condos, and began the first of an ongoing round of renovations.

  A little over ten years ago Samantha and her prince spent a year turning the high-ceilinged, light-filled, and architecturally detailed twelfth-floor units into a four-bedroom, five-bath, amenity-filled home with three-hundred-sixty-degree views and north- and south-facing terraces.

  For Samantha its most prized feature was its location in the midst of trendy shops, galleries, and restaurants as well as its comfortable, but not offensive, distance from Bellewood, Jonathan’s ancestral home in Buckhead, one of Atlanta’s toniest and oldest suburbs, where both of them had grown up and where his often-outspoken mother still reigned.

  The doorbell rang. As Samantha went to answer it she pushed thoughts of Cynthia Davis aside and gave herself a silent but spirited pep talk. She’d married into Atlanta royalty. Her prince was attractive and generous. A difficult mother-in-law and a life built around pleasing others was a small price to pay for the fairy-tale life she led. As Sheryl Crow so aptly put it, the secret wasn’t having what you wanted but wanting what you got.

  • • •

  Shortly after the morning’s training session ended Samantha rode a mahogany-paneled elevator down to the Alexander’s marbled lobby. The gurgle of the atrium fountain muffled the click of her heels on the polished surface as she took in the surprisingly contemporary high-backed banquette that encircled the deliciously carved fountain. Conversation groups of club chairs and sofas, separated by large potted palms, softened the elegant space. A burled walnut security desk, manned twenty-four-seven, sat just inside the entrance. The concierge desk sat in the opposite corner and commanded a view of the lobby as well as the short hall that accessed the parking garage and the elevators.