Big Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

  Barbara nodded. “After I saw Christina in the supermarket, I got her number from a friend of a friend. I called her up, and I said who I was. Turns out, she already knew about me. ‘You’re the new girl,’ she said. Not like she was angry, or even sad. More just… resigned. And maybe a little glad to have someone she could talk about it with. Someone who’d understand.” Barbara closed her eyes and shook her head. “I was very young when it all happened, but, being a single mom, you grow up fast. I told Robert it was over. He acted brokenhearted, but I’m sure he was relieved, with two babies already on the Cape and a new one at home. He said he’d help me as much as he could, and that he’d always be there for Emma. The next week, I had coffee with Christina. We met in Wellfleet, at the Flying Fish, and we talked for a long time. After that, we’d get together every once in a while.” She smiled at Nick, her face brightening. “We’d take you kiddos to Corn Hill Beach, and let you splash around. Christina would bring a cooler, with juice and cut-up fruit and wine.” She touched her hair. “I felt so unsophisticated next to your mother. Like a little gray wren next to a peacock.” She smiled a little, looking off in the distance. “Christina was so glamorous. She’d lived in New York City—that was where she’d met Robert—and she’d been all over the world. Her hair was almost down to her waist,” she said, gesturing with her hands to indicate where Christina’s hair had fallen, “and she wore these long, colorful skirts, with fringes, or with bits of mirrors sewn on the hems.” Barbara’s hands fluttered to the earlobes beneath her own neatly cut gray hair, then down to her neck. “Big, dangling earrings, bracelets and beads, amber and opal and turquoise, all the way from her wrists to her elbows. She looked like that gal from Fleetwood Mac.”

  “Stevie Nicks,” said Nick. His voice was hoarse. “How did she meet…” He stumbled over what to say next and finally landed on “Robert Cavanaugh.”

  “At a coffee shop in New York City. She was waiting in line to pick up her latte. He asked if he could buy her a coffee, and she said she’d already paid, and that she was on her way to an interview. Robert asked for her card, and the next day he had some fancy cappuccino maker sent to her apartment, with a note that said ‘So you’ll never have to wait in line again.’ ” She smiled. “He knew how to sweep a girl off her feet, that’s for sure.”

  “I remember that machine. Big brass thing. It took up half the counter space in the kitchen.” Nick still looked dazed, but at least he was talking.

  Barbara gave him a smile. “Your mother told me that after she turned thirty-five, she stopped looking for Mister Right and started trying to find a sperm donor, more or less. A man with good genes and some money in the bank.” Looking at her lap, she murmured, “I guess Robert fit the bill. He was handsome and successful. He couldn’t marry her, but he could at least help support her while she was home with you. And to his credit, he tried to be a father. He’d see the babies when he could.” She gave a wry smile and nodded at Nick. “Tuesdays were Emma’s night. Wednesdays were yours.”

  “So he would see me? He spent time with me?” Nick shook his head, sounding almost angry when he said, “I don’t remember any of this.”

  “Well, you were a little guy. But it happened. I promise you, it did.”

  Barbara told us about how she and Christina would take their children to the beach. How they’d take turns, one of them watching the babies and the other one napping in the sun (“being single moms, working, then up in the night with a baby who was teething, we wanted sleep more than we wanted sex,” Barb said, then put her hand over her mouth, blushing). She told us how they’d babysit for each other when Barbara got called in to cover a waitressing shift, or if Christina had to meet a deadline for an article, or some project she’d undertaken. “But I know that’s not what you’re here to talk about.” She rocked forward, clasping her hands at her heart. “His daughter… my God, what a mess.” Looking at Nick, she said, “I think your mom had the right idea. She never wanted to tell you anything about your dad.”

  “She didn’t exactly live long enough for us to discuss it,” Nick said.

  “No, but she talked to me. I remember telling her that I wanted Emmie to know her father, and Christina saying that she thought Robert would lose interest in you in a year or two, and that she’d never tell you his name. ‘No good can come of it,’ she said. And she was right.” Barbara’s face sagged, and her blocky body drooped. “Emma grew up knowing exactly who her father was, and that didn’t get her anything, except a broken heart.” Barbara pressed her lips together. “And Christina was right. When Emma was ten or eleven, he stopped coming around.”

  “Why?” Darshi asked. Barbara shrugged.

  “Got bored, I guess. Or maybe he had another baby by then.”

  “So how did Emma end up catering Drue’s wedding?” I asked.

  Barbara Vincent got very interested in the cords of her hoodie, first tugging the left one out to its full length, then tugging at the right. “She works for Angel Foods. She’s been part of their summer crew for years. They call her when there’re big parties.”

  “Did she have any idea who the bride was when she got called for this wedding?” I asked.

  Barbara gave a nod that looked reluctant.

  “Did she talk to you about it? Like, ‘Here’s my big chance to finally meet my half sister’?”

  Barbara’s neck flushed pink. She pressed her lips together as one of the terriers by her foot gave a low, warning growl. “She didn’t go there to hurt anyone,” she said. “As to whether she’d planned on trying to meet Drue, I couldn’t say.”

  “The police found pictures of Drue in Emma’s car,” Darshi said. “And a gun.”

  Barbara lifted her chin, settling her eyes on the wall just over Darshi’s head. “When Emma was thirteen, after she found out that she had a sister almost exactly her age, she was wild to meet Drue. I told her that wouldn’t be happening. I’d given Robert my word. I promised him that we’d never bother him, or embarrass him. But, with the Internet, I couldn’t keep Em from finding out about him, and his real family. She knew where Drue went to school, what she did on vacation, the kinds of clothes she wore…” Barbara shook her head. “It would have been better if Robert’s real family wasn’t so public. If there hadn’t been so much out there for Emma to learn.” She shook her head again, picking up her mug and setting it down. “Robert gave us money. Enough for me to put a down payment on this house and go from full-time to part-time so that I could be home with Emma. But there wasn’t going to be any la-di-da Lathrop Academy for her.” I jumped, a little startled at the sound of my school’s name coming out of this stranger’s mouth. “No house in the Hamptons, no debut at the Whatever Club. No Harvard. Just public schools and Cape Cod Community College. Robert told us money was tight ever since the markets crashed in 2008. By then, we hadn’t seen him in years.” She smiled, very faintly. “Christina and I used to say that he loved the babies more than the moms. He’d keep coming around to see them, even after he stopped being… you know… interested in us that way. He’d bring Emmie toys, or dolls, or dresses from the fancy places in P-town. For her birthday, he’d take her to high tea at the Chatham Bars Inn. But by the time she got to be ten or eleven, he’d moved on, I guess.” She pressed her hands against her thighs, smoothing the denim. “Emma felt like she’d been cheated. Like she should have been the one who lived with him, and worked with him, and got to be in the newspapers and travel the world.” Another sigh. “She kept track of Drue. Her social media, her pictures. She bought yearbooks from the schools that Drue went to, from eBay. Magazines she’d been in. Everything.”

  “So Emma never even met Drue,” I said.

  “No. Or, not that I know of, I should say. I know she went to New York once—just as a trip, with friends, she told me. They were going to get tickets to see something on Broadway, hold up signs in front of the Today show. At least, that’s what Emma said.” Barbara’s shoulders slumped. “Did she try to find Drue? Did she go to Robert’s off
ice, or his home? I can’t imagine they’d have let her in. And if she’d actually managed to meet Drue, would Drue even have believed Emma when she told her who she was?”

  I tried to imagine Drue being confronted by a stranger, a stranger with dark hair and her father’s eyes, claiming to be her half sister. I couldn’t picture such a meeting ending well.

  “Would Emma try to hurt Drue?” Darshi asked.

  “I guess that’s what the police thought,” Barbara said bitterly. “When they found the gun. But I swear, Emma only got it because she used to close up at Blackfish—that’s the restaurant where she worked for a while in Truro. She’d lock up and drop money off at the bank, all by herself in the middle of the night. She didn’t feel safe, and so her boss told her to get a gun. She took lessons and went to the shooting range, and she had a license to carry it, but I think she just kept it locked in her glove box. I’ll bet she didn’t give it a thought when she went to work at the wedding. I’ll bet she didn’t even remember it was there.” Barbara twisted her hands in her lap. She paused, then, looking me in the eye, she said, “Emma would have known that Drue was engaged, and that she was getting married on the Cape. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to find out the details. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to get close.” She sighed, shoulders slumping, leaning back into her chair like she wanted to disappear. “For all I know, she did have something planned. Maybe she’d been in touch with Robert. Maybe she was going to confront him. Demand that he acknowledge that she was his daughter, in front of his wife and all those people. I don’t know.”

  I remembered the conversation that Nick had overheard, a young woman’s voice saying that she’d waited long enough, that she was tired of waiting. Barbara Vincent looked at me as though she could read my thoughts. She lifted her head, her cheeks flushing pink, and looked first at Darshi, then at me. “I don’t know if Emma had anything planned, but I do know my daughter. I know what she wanted. If she was angry, she was angry at her father, but she would never have hurt Drue.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” said Barbara. “If she wanted anything from Drue, it would have been acknowledgment. Maybe she wanted to be included in Drue’s life, but I know that she didn’t want to end it.” Her cheeks were tinged red, but her eyes were steady. “I know my daughter. I know this for sure.”

  * * *

  We adjourned to the kitchen for refills on tea, and for Barbara to check her messages. The dogs followed after us, the terriers scampering and darting, close on their mistress’s heels, the basset hound trailing behind at a magisterial pace. “May I use your bathroom?” Darshi asked, and was directed to the first left down the hall. Nick shuffled his feet, cleared his throat. Finally, he asked Barbara if she had any pictures of his mother.

  Barbara looked thoughtful. “You know, I think I might. When you were babies, not every phone had a camera, so picture-taking wasn’t as common, but let’s go have a look.” She was leading us back to the living room when my phone vibrated. I looked at the screen and saw a text from Darshi: Walk down the hall like you’re going to the bathroom and check out the bedroom on the right.

  I excused myself and followed Darshi’s directions, past the neat pale-blue powder room, and into a small bedroom. A twin-size bed was pushed up against one wall; a bookcase stood against the other; a desk was underneath a window. Instead of posters, the walls were papered with maps—a detailed one of Cape Cod; a larger one of the United States above the bed, a map of the world over the desk, with cities and countries marked with gold stars and red circles—Manhattan, Miami, El Paso, Albuquerque. Perth, Peru, Iceland, Copenhagen.

  I’d been holding my breath, thinking that maybe I’d find a serial-killer wall, featuring dozens of pictures of Drue with red lines and arrows and her face in crosshairs. I was relieved to only see the maps and a bulletin board filled with thumbtacked pictures from photo booths or from parties—Emma holding a bottle of champagne, wearing a giant pair of novelty New Year’s Eve sunglasses that read “2016”; Emma in a hoodie with her arms around the neck of a grinning boy with short red hair at a bowling alley; Emma and her friends in their prom-night finery, lined up in pairs on the front lawn of her house. On the desk were neat stacks of college textbooks. Introduction to Principles of Economics, Magruder’s American Government, World Literature, a dogeared copy of Portrait of a Lady. On the bottom shelf of the bookcase were clues about her interest in Drue: a pile of Lathrop School yearbooks, and one from the Croft School; a glossy Cavanaugh Corporation prospectus (“Building the Future” read the headline on the cover, with a picture of Robert and Drue on the rooftop, smiling). In a frame, in the center of the desk, I found what Darshi must have wanted me to see. It was a framed snapshot of a little girl, her dark hair in pigtails, perched on a bare-chested man’s shoulders as he stood in the water, in the instant a wave broke around them. The man had broad, sloping shoulders and curly black hair on his chest. He wore a Red Sox cap, blue swim trunks, and an eat-the-world grin. It took me a moment to add some pounds, subtract some hair, and recognize Drue’s father, younger, and tanned, and happy. I lifted the picture, studying it. He and the little girl on his shoulders both looked so vivid, so vital, in the blue-green water with the blue sky stretched out behind them. I could smell the sunscreen Barbara Vincent would have rubbed on her daughter’s back and shoulders; I could imagine the shouts and laughter of the kids tossing a Frisbee or building sandcastles for the waves to devour. Emma’s eyes were squinting in the sunshine; her mouth was open, laughing, as her little hands gripped her father’s head.

  Some small sound made me jump and drop the picture on the desk with a clatter. I turned to see Barbara Vincent standing in the doorway, holding a piece of paper in her hand. “My phone number. Will you take it?” Before I could answer, she said, “Emma loved her father. It broke her heart when he stopped coming around. Even if all she ever got were Drue’s crumbs, it would have been better than nothing.”

  I nodded, even as I wondered if maybe Emma was the one who’d gotten the best that Robert Cavanaugh had to offer; if Drue was the one who’d gotten crumbs. Had Drue’s father ever taken her to the beach? Did Drue even have one happy memory, one recollection of a good day they’d had together, one mental snapshot of making her father smile?

  Barbara Vincent took my arm and squeezed it, and pressed the slip of paper into my hand. “Please,” she said. “Please help find who did this. Don’t let them put my girl in jail.”

  I wanted to say that I wasn’t a detective, that I was just a babysitter and a not-very-influential influencer, that I had no idea how I could solve this crime. Somehow, what came out of my mouth was “I’ll do my best. I promise.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  My father sent my favorite smoked sable and bialys from Russ & Daughters. My mother sent her favorite earrings, clusters of rubies set in twists of gold wire. The Lathrop classmates who’d seen the pictures of Drue and me on the Cape sent condolences, texts and emails and direct messages over Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, offering sympathy and, in some cases, not so discreetly probing for details that hadn’t made the papers. And even though I’d insisted that I was fine, Leela Thakoon messengered over a black jersey jumpsuit. Try it with the wedges you wore with the Amelie dress, read the note she’d attached. I thought that she, along with my other clients, had to see the silver lining in the tragic turn of events. In the days since Drue’s death, the police had announced that she’d been poisoned. Emma Vincent had been released. And I’d added almost thirty thousand new followers across my platforms. Most of them were probably morbid lookie-loos, online vultures scouring my feed for more pictures of or inside information about Drue. But maybe a handful would be inspired to buy yoga mats or doggie treats. Everybody wins, I’d thought, and then I had started to cry.

  On Tuesday morning I’d gotten up early to attend a ninety-minute yoga class, thinking I would need all the Zen I could get. At home, I’d done my hair and applied my makeup, making myself look
at my entire face in the mirror, practicing kindness and positive self-talk. My eyes are a pretty color. I got a little bit of a tan on the Cape. At nine-thirty, I slipped on the jumpsuit and the wedges. At nine-forty-five, I called an Uber and rode in air-conditioned style for the thirty-block trip to the Lathrop School, where my friend’s life was being celebrated.

  “Wedding?” the driver asked as he turned onto East Eighty-Third Street and saw the reporters and photographers on the sidewalk, arrayed on both sides of the marble steps. A pair of police officers kept the press and the gawkers out of the way as mourners proceeded up the staircase and into the school.

  “Funeral,” I said, and slipped on my sunglasses, ducked my head, and walked as fast as I could toward the school’s front door.

  “Is that the friend?” I heard a male voice yell. I didn’t look, but I imagined I could feel the air pressure change as all of that concentrated attention was suddenly focused on me.

  “Daphne, any news?”

  “What can you tell us about the fight the night before the wedding?”

  “Daphne! Did Emma Vincent confess?”

  Ignoring them, I put my hand on the door’s curved handle. The brass was heavy against my palm, warm from the morning sun. The feel of it sent me right back to my school days, and I braced for the sight of the blond wood cubbies and the green-and-white-tiled floors, the warm-chicken-soup smell of the hallway, the squeaky sound that I knew my shoes would make on the floor of the multipurpose room, which had, back in Lathrop’s religious days, been a chapel.

  “Daphne, is it true that Stuart Lowe and Corina Bailey are back together?” a girl called, holding her phone aloft to film me. I kept my head down, my lips pressed together. None of them had asked me if I knew about the newly freed Emma Vincent’s relationship to the Cavanaugh family, so it seemed that the news hadn’t hit the Internet yet.