Trust Fund Babies

by Jean Stone

  Sam nodded, then stood up. “Well, Ms. Atkinson, you’ve got my Molly and now it looks like you’ve got me, too. Detective Sam Oliver, at your humble service.”

  She’d gone back to bed, but could no longer sleep. Gabrielle sat in the lighthouse guest room, a patchwork quilt around her, and wondered why she simply didn’t leave.

  Did it matter to her if they ever found Lester?

  No. She had more money now than she would ever need. And Mary Beth apparently didn’t know that she was there; Nikki did not seem to know enough about her to blackmail her with her past. If Gabrielle said “Don’t be in touch,” she thought Nikki would respect that.

  She could return to Italy, tell another half-truth, and life could go on as before.

  So why was she still there?

  Staring out the small window at the sand and sea and the rock jetty, her answer finally came: This was her chance for closure, to clear the clouded memories, if she had the courage.

  “It’s better this way,” Aunt Margaret had said when she’d sent her off to England. “You’ll make new friends.”

  Friends? Yes, but Gabrielle could not, did not, make a new mother. Instead, at seven years old, she quickly blended in at school so no one would know that she was different. She made no time for self-pity; she made no time for loneliness. She made herself go on as if nothing special had happened, because nothing had, had it?

  Gabrielle had not let herself remember the image of her mother lying on the rocks. But five years later, on a school trip to Dover, she saw the surf and cliffs and a lighthouse and suddenly there was the memory, crashing toward her like a runaway tidal wave.

  She had screamed. She had trembled so hard she thought for sure she’d shake the ground. And just before she passed out, she remembered feeling overcome by pain and fear and overwhelming shame.

  At first, Gabrielle had tried to make herself believe her mother was a tragic heroine, who had to die in order to keep a dark family secret, to protect the ones she loved, especially her daughter, especially Gabrielle.

  It wasn’t long before she knew it had been her father’s fault.

  “He should not have let her go off alone,” Aunt Margaret said. “He was irresponsible. Your mother was fragile. He might as well have killed her.”

  After the incident at Dover, she had written to Aunt Margaret and asked if she could go home for the summer, go back to the Vineyard. But Aunt Margaret said England was her home now: Her cousins were married and too busy for her; her father had disappeared as well.

  For a while Gabrielle tried to find out where he’d gone, but her letters to Nikki and Mary Beth were never answered.

  Each year, however, on Gabrielle’s birthday, a secret visitor arrived in a Bentley and took her away for a week. The visitor—her Aunt Dorothy—was usually tipsy, but always brought a bounty of sweets, and they went into London to the ballet and the theater and Harrods because it was such fun. They stayed out late at Piccadilly and Covent Gardens, bought silly paintings and hats and souvenirs, and Gabrielle had to promise never to tell a soul, that this was their secret, between Aunt Dorothy and her.

  Once she tried to ask her about Daddy, but her aunt said to let sleeping dogs lie.

  When Gabrielle turned eighteen, it was not Aunt Dorothy who came; it was him. Even from a distance, she’d known it was him as he walked up the stone walk toward the dormitory that had been her home for eleven years. The closer he came, the colder she got, and by the time he reached the stairs, she stared into his eyes without saying a word, then went inside before her heart broke in two right there on the steps.

  Seeing him in person came as such a shock that all she could hear was Aunt Margaret saying that it was his fault.

  Two days later, Gabrielle moved to London to elude him. Six years later he turned up in Paris to say Aunt Margaret was dead. That’s when she told him to leave her alone once and for all.

  A powerboat sped by now, a parasail riding on its wind, watercolors against the sky, evidence that life went on, a reminder that the ache of tragedy was not meant to last forever.

  She dropped her gaze to her small gray suitcase that sat open on the floor. She had not planned to stay, but if she did, she’d need to go to town and buy a few more clothes.

  But before that, she must call home. She must hear the voices of Stefano and of Rosa; she must reassure herself that somewhere she was loved.

  * * *

  It was nine o’clock in Tuscany, time enough for Stefano to have finished work for the day. Gabrielle held her breath and placed the call, not knowing where to begin, but hoping the right words would come, that Stefano would not be angry or ask her too many questions.

  The phone rang quickly on the other end, as if she’d called Vineyard Haven, across the island, not across the sea.

  She was not prepared for that, nor was she prepared to hear a woman answer.

  For half a second Gabrielle thought she’d dialed incorrectly.

  “Pronto,” the woman repeated.

  “I’m looking for Stefano,” she said in case something was wrong, in case this really was the villa and someone else was there.

  “He is on the hillside,” the woman said in fluid, smooth Italian, a pure, native tongue.

  The sensation that rolled through Gabrielle was like being on an ocean liner in a brewing storm. “This is the Countess Bonelli,” she said. “Who is this?”

  There was a pause, which could have been a transatlantic thing, though Gabrielle doubted it.

  “It is Angelina, Gabrielle. I am making supper for the children. Rosa and Cesare. While the men are on the hillside.”

  She did not want to picture the woman—that woman—in her kitchen, standing at her counter, using her utensils and her plates. She closed her eyes. “It is late,” she said. “They are still working?”

  “They are covering the new vines. It has been raining for two days.”

  The ship inside her pitched and swayed. Rain? For two days?

  “I shall tell your husband that you called. Is there any other message?”

  She leaned against the small stove inside the lighthouse, trying to regain the balance that she’d lost, the composure she’d once felt before she’d realized that the woman who once loved her husband might have moved into her house. “Rosa,” she said. “May I speak to Rosa?” She braced herself as if the answer would be, “No. I will not let you speak with your daughter. You left her, now you must suffer.”

  Instead, Angelina said, “She isn’t here. She and Cesare are helping Enzio in the barn.”

  “She’s only five!” Gabrielle blurted out. “How can she help?”

  Silence came again.

  “You know that when it rains, we all must do our part,” Angelina replied.

  Without a word, without a hint, huge tears spilled down Gabrielle’s cheeks. She did not say she’d call back later. She did not want to call at midnight and hear Angelina’s voice again. She did not want to know if the woman had gone home or if she’d stayed there at the villa. There was only so much sickness she could feel in just one day.

  13

  Mary Beth had never thought she would venture to the underbelly of downtown, no matter that it was broad daylight and there were cops on every corner.

  Then again, she hadn’t had to sell her jewelry every day.

  It was easier than she’d expected, to pick out which things she could do without, which would not be missed by the wedding guests. She could not, of course, go back to Van Cleef or Tiffany’s or the other places where her trinkets had come from; she could not even visit a prominent estate jeweler: Word would spread too quickly that Mary Beth was broke.

  Broke!

  What a dreadful, startling word that she’d never thought would be associated with an Atkinson, let alone her.

  She tried to shake off the feared whispers of her many friends:

  Mary Beth sold her diamonds?

  Hmm.

  Nod.

  Tut-tut.

 
No, there would be no tut-tutting about her. Not as long as she could keep up appearances.

  The cab finally arrived at the address Carla had given her. Mary Beth quickly got out and tried not to look left or right but simply moved straight ahead toward the shop.

  It was, of course, locked with a heavy iron gate. So much for retailing on the poor side of town.

  A buzzer sounded.

  “I need to sell some things,” she said into a small speaker on the wall. “Jewelry,” she added.

  There was nothing for a moment, then the sound of several locks being unbolted, followed by the creak of a door as it slowly opened.

  She tipped her regal head back. Act as if it’s Tiffany’s, she decided. Act as if you belong here because here you are respected.

  On stiletto heels she marched past the man and went into the shop as if indeed, she belonged there, which of course, she did not, at least, she had not, not until Lester Markham had up and flown the coop.

  “I have jewelry,” she repeated. “Good jewelry.”

  The man moved behind a counter of dusty glass cases filled with gaudy costume jewelry and worthless watches and a variety of knives, kitchen and otherwise. Yet he was well groomed, with sandy blond hair and a Ralph Lauren shirt. He did not look like her expectation of a seedy pawnshop owner; perhaps this was not pulp fiction after all.

  “Good afternoon,” he said.

  She resisted saying “Carla sent me,” and instead placed her large bag on the glass. “I have a few things. I was told you can help me.”

  He nodded. “What kind of things?”

  “Nice pieces. Originals.”

  He elevated his eyebrows and motioned to the bag. “In there?”

  “Yes,” she replied, but did not yet open the bag, as if she were waiting for another solution to drop from the sky, like Lester Markham, who would suddenly walk through the door.

  When Lester didn’t show, Mary Beth cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said. “Well, I suppose you’d like to see them.”

  He folded his arms across his Ralph Lauren chest.

  She opened the bag. She reached inside and felt the soft touch of velvet, the warmth of a case that was long and narrow. She drew in a breath and slowly removed the case, trying not to think that this contained the diamond necklace she’d worn to the Kennedy Center four years ago when they’d been guests of the President—the President!—as a thank-you for her generous check to the national campaign against homelessness, a favorite charity of the first lady’s. It was one of the few times Mary Beth had been quite so “generous,” but she’d been dying to go to the Kennedy Center as a coveted, much-photographed guest.

  The necklace had been divine with her black crepe de chine gown, Versace or Armani, she couldn’t remember which. As she opened the case and her eyes fell on the glitter, she took solace in the fact that diamonds alone were rather passé now, having bowed to subservience as mere accents for rubies, sapphires, even for pearls. Surely by the time they came back into style Lester would return and this nightmare would be over.

  Mr. Whatever-his-name-was (he’d not introduced himself) picked up an eyepiece and began to examine the goods, her goods. He uttered no uh-huhs or uh-uhs, just examined with great patience each nook and each cranny as if he were studying the Shroud of Turin.

  After what seemed like an hour but maybe was a minute, he raised his head and announced, “Eighteen hundred.”

  She tried to keep her chin from dropping to the floor, or at least to her chest, where a strange, tightening sensation was in progress. “That’s absurd.” She wished she could remember how much the necklace had cost, but money had never mattered so she’d not paid attention. It must have at least been five figures, or she would not have bought it in the first place.

  He handed her back the loot. “Sorry,” he replied. “But diamonds are passé.”

  He was so smart.

  He started toward his back room, in a well-practiced business tactic, as if he knew about her mother’s needs and her daughter’s wedding and her husband’s distress.

  She bit her tongue and took the bait because right now she had no choice. “I have other pieces,” she said. “Gold. Silver.”

  He turned back. “Let’s have a look.”

  For the next thirty minutes, he had “a look.” Then he offered twenty-one thousand, total.

  “Twenty-five,” she argued against her better judgment, which knew the true value was well over two hundred thousand.

  “Split the difference. Twenty-three.”

  Twenty-three was better than nothing. It would pay one month for her mother and give Mary Beth some cash to take to the Vineyard and please the harpists and the tent people and God only knew who else. And it wasn’t as if she’d sold everything, or even anything she really liked.

  Besides, this debacle couldn’t go on forever. Maybe it was just as well that Nikki had hired help.

  * * *

  It was hard to remember how long it took to get from the estate to the center of Edgartown. Gabrielle had walked it many times with Nikki or Mary Beth and remembered stopping often, but she didn’t think it was from being tired. They’d stop to feed the seagulls, to sneak through people’s gardens, to upset the croquet wickets that had flourished in the seventies when summer people struggled to reinstate propriety amid the hippies who were trying to claim their land.

  Hippies. She’d loved that word, Gabrielle remembered as she ambled out the driveway and went up toward the road. She’d first heard Aunt Margaret use it, the woman who’d had little patience with anyone, let alone those who did not seem to want to work for a damn living, as she’d proclaimed.

  At Edgartown Bay Road Gabrielle turned right.

  Just then a red pickup truck came up behind her and clamored out the drive. She quickly stepped into the shoulder to avoid getting hit. The truck slowed as if to check that she was all right, then revved off down the street, moving away as quickly as it had come upon her.

  She brushed the dust from her left arm. A workman, she assumed. Probably the gardener. A hired hand at the estate, maybe someone making ready for the grand, gala wedding. She wondered if he would have guessed that she was one of them.

  Turning the corner, Gabrielle was greeted by the un-shaded brilliance of the sun. She squinted and wished she’d worn sunglasses. Then again, she realized she hadn’t packed them: In Tuscany she rarely had need for such accoutrements.

  Tuscany.

  With every step toward Edgartown, the hurt resounded.

  If she had never gone to Zurich, Angelina would not be in her house, tending to her daughter, and doing God-knew-what with or to her husband.

  If she had never had a secret, she would not have had to go to Zurich.

  If Stefano had not married her, the crop of grapes would be abundant, the vineyard would be successful.

  She walked and wondered which of these things were her responsibility and which were not. Yet one image that would not leave her mind was the face of little Rosa, her beautiful, small daughter.

  She was thinking these things as a VW pulled alongside her. “Gabrielle!” shouted Nikki. “Where on earth are you going?”

  Gabrielle shrugged. “Into town. To shop for clothes.”

  Nikki laughed. “That’s almost five miles. Get in the car.”

  “Five miles?” Gabrielle asked and climbed in. “I didn’t remember it was that far.”

  “We were younger. Even me,” she said, and pulled back onto the road.

  “Why aren’t you at camp?”

  Nikki cast her a glance. “I was worried about you. I was going to say that I forgot something, but I try to avoid lying. I’m not good at it.”

  “Not like Mary Beth,” Gabrielle said suddenly, then wondered why. “Good grief, why did I say that?”

  “Because Mary Beth always stretched the truth to her advantage. Remember when my mother was furious over the hydrangea bushes? Mary Beth refused to admit she’d cut them down. Chopped them, was more like it.” />
  Gabrielle shook her head. “No, I don’t remember.” She wished she could remember more.

  Settling onto the seat, she realized it was nice that Nikki had worried about her; it was nice to be the recipient of a maternal gesture. Gabrielle smiled. “Speaking of hydrangea,” she said, “a gardener was at the house today. They’ll probably be preparing for the wedding soon.”

  Turning onto Katama Road, Nikki shrugged. “Who knows. I’m just going to try and stay out of our dear cousin’s way.” She squinted a bit and pulled down the visor. “That’s odd, though. The gardeners were just here yesterday. She’s probably spending the fortune she no longer has.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t a gardener. But whoever it was almost ran me over in his red pickup truck.”

  Nikki adjusted the air-conditioning. “A red pickup?”

  “Yes. Do you know who it was?”

  Nikki fiddled with the visor, though the sun had drifted behind a cloud. “Nope,” she replied. “I have no idea.”

  If Nikki hadn’t said she tried to avoid lying, Gabrielle would have bet she’d done just that.

  The five miles into Edgartown seemed like fifty after Gabrielle had said she’d seen the truck. Nikki had not known what to say or how.

  She could have told her.

  She should have told her.

  She should have simply said that Mack lived on the estate, that he stayed in the caretaker’s cottage as he’d done for years.

  She could have told her everything.

  Instead, she groped for words, hoping to smooth the rough edge off her lie. “Are you going to buy something to wear to the wedding?”

  “I won’t be here that long.”

  Nikki merely nodded.

  “What’s Mary Beth’s daughter like?” Gabrielle asked. “Is she like her? Is she like your daughter?”

  Nikki laughed. “Shauna has a heart. I’m not sure about my daughter. Or Mary Beth.”

  “What happened to Mary Beth, Nikki? I remember she was always, well, more nervous than you. But did something happen? Something bad?”

  “Life happened, kiddo. And other people’s expectations. Mary Beth always felt she had to live up to the Atkinson name. I don’t suppose that was her fault. Her mother was so easily influenced by everyone and everything.” And then she told her about Aunt Dorothy and the Alzheimer’s.