“But the hairdresser,” I say, trying to direct the conversation back to her. “What on earth did you do?”
“First . . .” She claps her hands together. “I made an appointment at the girl’s salon on Madison Avenue. Just for a blowout, and not with her, of course. Even if she was the owner of the salon, with a line of products in her name that they sell at every high-end department store in America, I wasn’t stupid enough to let her within five feet of me. I arrived at my appointment a little early and asked to use the ladies’. Once in the loo, I locked the door and did a little investigating. I had to make sure my plan would work.”
“Your plan?”
She nods. “I got the blowout, which was just okay, but I made a big deal about how much I loved it. I went on and on, oohing and aahing at myself in the mirror. I made another appointment, and when I returned a week later, I again asked to use the restroom first.”
“What did you do?” I put my hands to my face. “I’m almost too scared to know,” I say into my palms.
Her eyes widen. “Oh, it’s awful, Bess. I almost can’t tell you.”
“What?” I say, dropping my hands into my lap and clenching them together. “You can’t hold back on me now!”
She bites her lip. “It was a trick I’d heard about years earlier, in a smutty paperback mystery I’d read on vacation.” She takes a deep breath. “I went to Citarella before my appointment and asked the fishmonger to wrap up a couple of beautiful, bright-eyed whole fish. I think they were branzino.”
“Fish?” I say.
She laughs with excitement, her eyes wide. “Once I was in the ladies’ room at the salon, I retrieved the screwdriver that I’d put in my purse the night before. It was one of those tiny ones, the kind you might use for tightening the hinges on your glasses? I wasn’t sure it would work, but . . . oh, Bess, it did! It worked perfectly!” She sucks in her lips before she continues, making a face like she’s about to plunge into a freezing pool of water. “Well, I unscrewed the air vent from the wall next to the sink, unwrapped those two beautiful fish, dropped them just inside the wall, and reattached the air vent!” She widens her eyes at me. “As one does.”
“No!” I say, starting to laugh, though I’m thinking that she’s actually crazy. I’ve heard a lot of outrageous things over the course of my life, but this . . .
“Oh, I did! I really did. And when I went back out to my stylist, I made sure to complain a couple of times about the temperature and asked if they could turn the heat up.”
“Oh!” I clutch my hand to my chest. “That’s so . . . It’s awful! It’s so . . .”
“Brilliant?” she says, laughing so hard that tears are rolling down her face.
“What do you think happened?”
“Well, I don’t know when they started to notice the stench of a couple of whole fish rotting behind the wall, but I can’t imagine that it was good. A few weeks later, there was an item in my column, called in ‘anonymously,’ of course, about the unfortunate, mysterious rotting odor at the venerable salon.”
“You are . . . ,” I begin, my face hot with alarm. “Susannah, I am both horrified and amazed. Did Teddy ever find out?”
“If he did, he never let on, but the item in the column certainly tipped her off, because Teddy came home and complained to me that she’d called to say she was shrinking her client base to make more time for other business opportunities.” She laughs.
“Wow!” I say, shaking my head slowly from side to side. “Now I know never to cross you.” She’s even more off-balance than I had thought.
“Bess, you’re too smart to cross me,” she says, winking. The words hang in the air between us, and I clear my throat.
“I’m sure I’d never have a reason to even consider it,” I say, and she smiles at me, pleased, like she believes the words I’ve just said. I’m not lying—not exactly—maybe hoping is the right word. . . .
“Listen, not everything I did was so theatrical. I did smaller things. We had some couples over for cocktails once and I put a few drops of Visine in one of the women’s vodka tonics after I saw her grab Teddy’s knee under the table. Do you know what Visine does to the digestive system?”
“No.”
“She called two days later, saying in a roundabout way that she’d been in the bathroom for the past forty-eight hours. She wanted to know who my caterer was, and whether anyone else had fallen ill.”
“Susannah, that’s terrible!”
“No,” she says. “Just proactive. Those women deserved it for making a move on a married man. Eva deserves it. Just think, if you’d Visine-d her drink on Friday night, you’d feel better now, trust me.”
“Oh, no,” I say. “I don’t have that in me.”
“Well, maybe you should,” she says. “Don’t come crying to me when something happens.”
“Oh, Cole would never,” I say. “Trust me, I know my husband.”
“Yeah, and I knew your father-in-law, too.” She grins.
“What?” I say, not sure at first that I’ve heard her right.
She shakes her head, stopping herself, like she’s finally gone too far.
“What do you mean, Susannah?”
“I shouldn’t have . . .” She waves her hands at me. “It was so long ago! It doesn’t even matter.”
“What?”
She takes a deep breath. “Just keep it between us?” she asks.
“Of course.”
“He and Henrietta . . .”
“Your best friend?” I say. “No, not Bradley! I can’t believe that!”
She purses her lips, dismayed. “Well, I never knew for sure, but they got very close. It got very uncomfortable. Bradley always denied it, but listen, Bess, I knew what was going on. You know, women’s intuition.”
“I don’t know, Susannah.” I think back to what William said in the coffee shop that morning, about her sudden departure after Henrietta’s death. Everyone in town thinks . . .
“Believe what you want to believe.” She shrugs. “And forgive me for saying anything about your marriage. I’m sure you’re right about Cole, Bess,” she says. “I never should have been so forward. I didn’t mean—”
“No, I know,” I say, still fixated on Bradley and Henrietta. “But it’s just . . .”
“What?”
“I guess I don’t understand. If what you’re saying is true, it must have made things difficult between you and Henrietta? Not to mention you and Bradley, of course.”
“Oh, I never let on that I knew,” she says.
“Really?” I say. “But why? You just told me about all those other women and Teddy . . . I can hardly believe you wouldn’t confront her.”
She laughs, but it’s not convincing this time. “I didn’t have the nerve back when I was younger, Bess. And I couldn’t do anything to Henrietta. She was my best friend! Although, well . . . she wasn’t always such a good one.”
“I guess not, if you thought she—”
“As much as I loved her, Henrietta was one of those friends who, when you parted company, didn’t leave you feeling better about yourself. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do,” I say, thinking of Anna from work. “But, Susannah, I just don’t get it . . . If you and Bradley were so close, planning to get married and all . . . why didn’t you confront him?”
“Did Bradley tell you we were planning to get married?” she says, her eyes brightening in a way that, honestly, frightens me a bit.
“Well, no, Susannah,” I say. “You did.”
“Of course.” She laughs. “Of course. So why didn’t I confront him?” She shrugs demurely. “Well, I can’t really explain it . . . First loves, you know. You forgive so much. And it was a different time back then. Men got away with that stuff. Women turned a blind eye. Look at JFK and Jackie.”
“How exactly did things end with you and Bradley?” I ask, daring to tread a little deeper than I maybe should.
“Oh!” she says. A stunned expression ap
pears on her face, almost like I’ve just slapped her.
It surprises me, how the question seems to upset her. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have—”
“No, no,” she says, a tautness in her tone. “It’s a legitimate question. There wasn’t a specific moment it ended, to be honest.”
“What do you mean? Surely you had a conversation . . .”
“Bess, when Henrietta died, it should have brought us closer together. You know,” she explains. “Because we shared the horrific loss.”
“Well, of course,” I say, wondering what else she could possibly mean. Surely not because Henrietta was now out of the picture . . .
“But instead, I just sort of disappeared into myself. I didn’t want to be around anyone. The day we graduated from Draper, I was like a zombie. I hardly remember it. Bradley’s parents threw a party. My parents came, pretended to care about me . . .” She shakes her head. “Bradley tried to get me to talk to him, to tell him what I was feeling, but it was all just too painful, Bess. I couldn’t handle being in Greyhill without her. As complicated as our friendship was, we were always together, always, and after she died, I felt her loss in a physical way, like her ghost was hovering just beside me, wherever I went.”
I suddenly feel guilty for bringing it up. “It must have been so difficult,” I say, reaching out and placing my hand over hers. She turns her hand over underneath mine and wraps her fingers around my palm.
“It didn’t help that when people in town looked at me, they saw her. Or her absence, I guess. I had to get out of here. A few days after our graduation, I left. It wasn’t this grand plan. I just woke up one morning, packed a bag, and left. Henrietta had talked about joining the airlines, so I decided that’s what I would do. In her honor, I guess.”
“What did your parents think?”
“They didn’t know until after I’d gone. I’d bribed one of the maids to take me to the train station in Charlottesville.”
“And Bradley just accepted it?”
“He had no choice but to. I called him from a pay phone that first night. I was terrified. I’d read about the Barbizon, and they took me right in—I had the money, I’d taken some from my father’s office—but I felt like I was in another country. Honestly, when I told him I didn’t know how long I’d be gone and to move on with his life, to forget about me, I think he was relieved.” She wipes a tear from her cheek. “I’d burdened him enough.”
“I’m sure he didn’t feel that way.”
“Well . . . like I said . . . he’d already moved on from me, in a way. . . .”
Despite what she’s just accused Bradley of, I ache for her. She sounds so bereft, like the things she’s talking about happened just recently, not years and years ago. The pain has obviously never subsided. “You really miss her,” I say.
“I always think of what we might be doing if she’d lived,” she says, her voice vibrating with pain. “The places we might have gone together, the things we might have done.” She looks at me, her blue eyes rimmed with red. “Everyone thinks I’ve had this extravagant life, but Henrietta was the far more adventurous spirit of the two of us. If things hadn’t turned out the way they did, I would have just stayed here. Henrietta would have done something big with her life,” she says. “I’m sure of it.
“Now,” she says, pulling her hand from mine and wiping her eyes. “That’s enough. We should really move on from all these sad stories. Why don’t we get to your questions?”
“Okay.” I open my bag and take out my notebook, trying to ignore the somber energy that’s fallen over the room. There is, of course, one question I’d love to ask her now, before we move on. It’s the perfect moment. What does she think about the fact that people in town say she had something to do with Henrietta’s death? But I can’t do it. Not now. Not after everything she’s just revealed to me.
She’s quiet, waiting for me as I flip through the pages.
“So,” I say, running my pen down my list of questions.
“Ask away, honey,” she says, the ease in her voice obviously trying to compensate for the dark turn our conversation has taken. “Really, go on.”
I stop and look at her, slumping a little into the needlepoint pillow behind me as I do. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’d prepared some trickier questions this time, and it feels a little strange, asking them now.”
“Just ask already,” she says. “Go for it.” She reaches out and pats my leg again.
“All right,” I say. “Well . . . You said . . . a little while ago . . . that you and Bradley talk occasionally.”
She nods.
“And that you’d like Bradley to help you with your reputation around town, so let’s talk about that.”
“Shoot,” she says.
“The land,” I say. “We need to talk about the land, since that was the initial focus when my editor assigned the story. They want to know how you hope that selling it might change Greyhill. Do you really want the town to become like another Middleburg? I heard your Realtor brought someone to the inn last week. An exec from Silicon Valley.”
“So you heard about that, then!” she says, seeming pleased.
“I did.”
“I do have some interested buyers from out of town. Several buyers. But as far as my hopes go . . .” She pauses. “You know, people seem to think I don’t care what happens with the land. They think that because I haven’t been here, that I don’t have Greyhill in my blood, but I do. I don’t want this place to change any more than anyone else does. What people don’t give me credit for, you know, is that I could have just sold the land to one of those builders—that’s what my agent advised me to do, by the way—but I wasn’t about to have it all subdivided into a bunch of little tacky houses. I am being particular about who I sell to, based on what they want to do with it.”
“That’s good to know,” I say, writing it down. “Because people in town, I hear, are worried that you’re just going to sell to whomever . . .”
“Oh, please!” She rolls her eyes. “You know, I never anticipated that this would become such a thing. I should’ve known better. People around here need something to have an opinion about, and I’m an easy target.”
“You have a point there, too,” I say. “But you could clear it up easily enough, couldn’t you? If you want so badly to be accepted here—”
“Bess,” she says, putting her hand out to stop me. “I don’t want anything so badly.”
“No, you’re right,” I say. “I stand corrected. But what I’m getting at is, if you want your life to be easier here, if you’re settled here, then why sell the land at all?”
“Because I don’t have any use for it,” she says, like it’s as simple as that.
“That’s all?” I say.
She nods, her lips in a tight line.
“Susannah,” I say, noticing how her expression has changed. She looks like she’s hiding something. “What is it?”
“Well, I’ve told you enough today,” she finally says, and I notice how her voice is shaking. “I may as well tell you the rest.”
She sighs and presses her fingers to the corners of her eyes. There’s a box of tissues on the old trunk in front of us, and I reach to hand it to her. She takes one, pats it in dainty taps under her eyes, and continues. “I’m going to tell you a real secret now, Bess,” she says. “But I have to know I can trust you. I don’t want you to say anything to anyone about the things I’m telling you today. This is strictly off-the-record.”
“Of course,” I say, wondering what on earth this could be about. “You can trust me with anything.”
“I know that I’ve alluded a bit to the kind of man my husband was,” she says. “You know, like when I told you that story at William’s, about how I used to go to the museum? How things weren’t what they seemed?”
I nod.
“The truth is . . .” She sniffs. “I thought that when I left Greyhill, I was escaping for a better life. The life I was meant to have. B
ut my life with Teddy was awful. A nightmare.”
“Susannah . . . ,” I start, my heart sinking.
“No, no,” she says, her voice suddenly stern. “I’ll tell you all of it, but I don’t want your pity.”
“Of course,” I say.
“Teddy controlled me. It was his belief that if you didn’t earn the money yourself, then you didn’t get any of it. He had me on an allowance, like a child. He picked the clothes I wore, the parties we went to . . . He expected me to be a certain kind of wife.”
“Why didn’t you leave?” I ask. “You’re such a strong woman. You had all those friends . . .”
“I know,” she says. “I know. And I ask myself that same question all the time, especially now. But, you know, as much as I suffered, my life was . . . it was a gilded cage, really. I’ll tell you one thing: it’s a blessing that I couldn’t have children.”
“I’m sorry, Susannah. I didn’t know that,” I say, though the truth is, I was curious about why they’d never started a family.
“Don’t be sorry,” she says. “He would have been a horrible father, and I know a thing or two about bad parenting.”
“Susannah . . .”
“It would have been a good distraction for me, though. The only thing I did for myself during the course of our entire marriage was writing that silly newspaper column. Is it any wonder to you, now that you know, that I was so focused on other people’s lives?”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“Well, I think I thought that if I could just keep myself busy, everything would be fine. But then Teddy died, and . . .” She starts to cry.
“What is it, Susannah?”
She’s silent for a moment, wringing her tissue in her hands. “You know how, in his will, he gave all that money to charity?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Oh, the media!” she moans. “How generous of Teddy Lane! How saintly! To give away his millions and millions!” She rolls her eyes. “Well, what those articles didn’t say, because they didn’t know, is that Teddy left me with nothing.”
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