Ted slammed the gun down on the counter, and she startled. He yanked the drawer harder, fishing his hand around in the back, cursing when he poked his finger on a metal corkscrew. He tossed it out, leaning down to look inside the drawer, and in his haste, he pulled it out all the way, causing the entire tray of silverware to fall with a deafening clatter at his feet.
“Fuck,” he hollered, reaching for the gun, but Heddy already had her hand on top of it, sliding the cool metal nose toward her, secured under her palm. She and Ted locked eyes, and she could tell she’d surprised him. He could have tackled her for it—she would have handed it to him if he’d demanded—but Ash was already on top of him, pulling his arms behind his back and holding him there.
Ted’s face contorted and he snarled: “Don’t send those photos to anyone.”
“I’m not putting them in the paper—I don’t give a shit that you’ve got a thing for the boys.” Sullivan, acting like a cocky teenager, folded his arms, his smile curt and dismissive. “But if you ever threaten me again, I’ll do it. I swear I will.”
Heddy tried to imagine how Jean-Rose would save face if the compromising photos of Ted were released, if someone had the gall to print them. Rather than avoid social situations or cry alligator tears, Jean-Rose would simply deny it was him altogether. She could see her already: Surrounded by a group of fashionable women, Jean-Rose’s eyes gleaming with confidence, telling the story about how the guy in the picture looked so much like Ted—it was uncanny, really—but she could guarantee that it wasn’t Ted. She’d wink, reassuring them that when it came to the bedroom, Ted was nothing short of a tiger. She’d explain that someone created the photos for blackmail, and that part would be true.
Ted struggled to get out of Ash’s grip, a sweaty lock of hair stuck to his forehead. “You don’t even have proof. Those photos could be anybody.”
At that, Sullivan walked to the fridge, pulled out the envelope and fished through a stack of pictures until he found a damning photograph of Ted engaging in an act that made Heddy blush.
Ash rolled his eyes. “Sully, there’s dock rope in the shed. Grab it. We’ll tie him up.”
Her boss, the very man whose shoes she’d shined, whose cigar smoke she’d inhaled, she was going to stand in this room and watch him be tied up. And then what? She licked her lips.
Heddy held the gun higher, aimed right at Ted’s cheek, which was pressed against the wall, Ash’s arms so tight that Ted couldn’t move.
With the rope in hand, Ash pinned him down on the couch, Ted’s collared shirt twisted around his waist, his frame collapsed on the soft cushions, his breath quick and heavy.
“You probably don’t remember me,” Ash said, shoving him in the back with his knee and tying his hands together. “But I know you remember my father—Edward Green—and you definitely remember how you stole his company out from under him, you son of a bitch.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure, you don’t,” Ash barked.
“But my children. If those photos get out, it will destroy them.”
“You don’t care about your children,” Heddy snapped. Still holding the gun, feeling power in the grip, she bent down on one knee so she was in front of Ted. How tall he seemed to her when she stepped off the boat, when he carried her suitcase to the car and told her to call him Ted. How his hair blew back from his temples on the car ride home, how Jean-Rose snuggled into him, batting her long, curled lashes at his profile. How he swung his golf clubs over his shoulder, a boyish grin on his face.
Heddy pressed the gun between Ted’s angled eyebrows, and she felt her teeth grinding, her finger pulsing on the trigger. Ted squeezed his eyes tight, and in his place, she saw the face of the man who was her father, the man whose Long Island house she’d stood outside a year before. She pressed the gun harder against Ted’s forehead, just as he’d done to her, and spoke in a hush.
“You can pull on pressed slacks and sip a martini and tell yourself you’re fancy because you swing with a golf club. But you’re a coward and you’re weak, and if we find out that you hit Jean-Rose ever again or lay a hand on those children, those photos are going straight to the papers.”
Ash grabbed the gun out of her hand, zipping his duffel bag closed over the manila envelope. “Let’s go, kitty kit,” he said.
They left Ted there, tossing the suitcases and duffels into Ash’s truck, not caring how he found his way home. Ash peeled out of the driveway, but with the cottage still in view, he slammed on the brakes. “We need to find a boat.”
“The ferries are too risky now,” Sullivan said. “If Ted gets out before we leave, he could have us stopped.”
“But the envelope,” she said. “I thought he couldn’t.”
Ash tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “We’d be found with suitcases full of money, and the cops could be paid off for the pictures. Ted’s a local hero. No cops.”
Heddy thought about the whaler she and Ash took out that night, but if it were that easy, Ash would have suggested it.
“Gigi,” she said. “Gigi has a boat.”
Sullivan shook his head. “No movie star is going to tangle with this.”
“I—I—I need to use the phone.” She dug through her wallet, finding the slip of paper with Gigi’s number. “Let me try her.”
She refused to go into the cottage alone, so they all returned, Ash and Sullivan sitting on either side of Ted, who was spitting out empty threats.
Heddy cradled the kitchen phone with her chin, listening to the ringing on the line, a series of tinny bells sounding into an echoing valley. Each time the line went through, a recorded voice—was it Gigi’s? the connection was too warbled to tell—prompted her to leave a message. Heddy had heard of these contraptions that took messages like secretaries—answering machines, they were called—but she’d never actually encountered one.
She dialed the number for the fourth time, willing Gigi to pick up. After a minute, she heard a mumbled hello. Heddy glanced at her watch: seven thirty in the morning. That meant that in Los Angeles, it was four thirty.
“Sorry, it’s early, but it’s me.” The line went dead. Gigi had hung up on her. She dialed Gigi’s number one more time. The line clicked after one ring.
Heddy stretched the cord and stepped outside so Ted couldn’t hear. “Don’t hang up. It’s me. Heddy.”
“Jesus, girlie, it’s the middle of the night here.” Gigi coughed.
Heddy couldn’t talk fast enough. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, but remember the happy ending? It’s going to happen. It can happen. But I need your boat. I need to take it right now. But you can’t report it missing.”
Heddy heard something fall, the sound of Gigi picking it up. “Hold on, hold on for a minute. Let me sit up.” She heard Gigi yawn. The snap of a lighter, the deep inhale of a cigarette. “You need my boat?”
She was beginning to think it was a long shot. “Yes, but don’t report it missing. We’ll leave it on the other side of the sound. I can explain more later. As soon as I get home.” She paused. “We got Ted. He’s a terrible person, Gigi. There’s things you don’t know.”
She heard Gigi chuckle, and Heddy imagined her friend, her long legs crossed, sitting at the center of a pile of satin sheets, her hair tousled, grinning at the phone. “You are bad, bad, bad, Hibernia Winsome.” Of course, Gigi would enjoy this, and it embarrassed Heddy a little but also pushed a proud grin onto her face.
“I’m serious. Your boat. Can I take it?”
“The keys are under the passenger seat,” Gigi said. “But you know that. Why did you call?”
“What if your housekeeper called the cops? And, well, I called because I’m going to write this. A screenplay. About all of this. I wanted to tell you that.”
“Heddy?” Ash poked his head out the screen door; he motioned for her to hurry.
Gigi hadn’t said anything, and the quiet hung between them.
“I have to go,” Heddy said.
“I’d be happy to read it. I love you, little girl.” Gigi said.
Heddy bit her lip. “I love you, too.” She hung up the phone and grinned at Ash. “Let’s go.”
They’d have to walk to the boat, so they carried suitcases along the sandy path to Gigi’s enormous lawn, Ash always looking behind them. Heddy kept her eye on Gigi’s long private dock on the horizon, pulling and tugging her suitcase, until the dock creaked underfoot, a lone seagull flying off, leaving a splatter of white excrement in its wake.
“That’s good luck,” Heddy said, although both men were too busy heaving the duffel bags and suitcases onto the polished mahogany speedboat to notice.
Heddy faced Gigi’s house, remembering how it had twinkled the night of Gigi’s party. The island looked so different to her than when she first arrived. Those first few days, she’d been in awe, filled with a sense of wonder at what the summer held for her. But then she’d sat on this very dock and learned that life isn’t always as it is in the movies. And that didn’t matter, as long as life was what you wanted it to be.
A tickle of salt filled her nostrils. She shielded her eyes from the blazing sun and maneuvered herself onto the boat, fishing the key out from under the seat. Ash put his hand out for it, but she inserted the key into the ignition and started the engine, positioning herself at the steering wheel, her butt on the edge of the white leather seat.
“I’ll drive,” she said, feeling for her purse, the money, at her feet. Cocking her head and pausing at the sight of Ash beside her, she realized that she wanted him with all her heart, but she didn’t need him. She didn’t need any man. Because she was in charge of her life now, and no one would tell her what to do ever again. No one would stop her from going to school or writing a script. No one would trap her in the outdated notion that you had to be who men told you to be. Maybe Jean-Rose was right all along when she said that Heddy was capable of so much more. Because she was. She’d surprised all of them, most of all herself.
Ash leaned down to kiss her shoulder, while Sullivan settled into the cushioned bench upfront, his arm draped around the empty seat. “I’ll find my way from the other side,” he said.
She could see the mainland already, the sandy beaches and green hills waiting for them across Vineyard Sound.
“I’ll call Ruth from a payphone at the dock,” she told Ash. “I put an envelope for her in your kitchen drawer.” When they’d gone back inside, she’d stuffed in a wad of cash. It was enough to get Ruth to Boston.
Heddy revved the engine. There was warmth in the salt air, and she pushed the boat into drive, her hair blowing back as she zipped the vessel across the water. She put her arm around Ash’s waist, and he pulled her close to him.
This was it. She’d known it when she’d arrived this summer, hadn’t she? This would be the summer to change everything.
Ash leaned in to say something, but she couldn’t hear him. She stared out at the rippling blue sea, a couple of drag fishing boats crisscrossing the horizon, a ferry sounding its departure. There it was in front of her: The whole wide world.
She was going on adrenaline, and if Sullivan hadn’t been with them, she might have pulled her yellow tank over her head and straddled Ash right then and there. Still, she warned herself, she’d never go overboard in her loyalty, in how she rearranged her life for him. She mumbled something back in his ear, and when he yelled “What?” over the roar of the boat’s engine, she yelled back, taking in the green of his eyes, and feeling a ping somewhere she couldn’t locate, noting how the tingling spread into her head. “I’ll only take so many risks for you. I won’t…”
And then he kissed her deeply, square on the lips. She thought it was to silence her, until he pulled away, grinning. “I’ll never ask,” he said.
She knew then that he was hers, and together, life would be wonderful and all her own.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing historical fiction is an overwhelming endeavor not only because you are trying to tell a great story but you’re hoping to do so while set in a time period you didn’t live through. Even if I’ve spent two weeks of every summer on Martha’s Vineyard, I didn’t live there in the summer of 1962; and even if I love the island like a local, I wouldn’t dare call myself an islander. But that’s the fun of fiction. I could dream up 1960s Martha’s Vineyard and send my WASPY characters to some of my favorite places, spending my days on the island even while I wrote at home in the dead of winter.
Some details in the novel are inspired by fact: The beach club is very loosely based on the East Chop Beach Club. The Katama Airfield was around in the ’60s, even if the hipster restaurant where Sullivan plays sax is not. The towns, lighthouses, and beaches are real places you can still visit today. Other elements of the story are products of my imagination, like the restaurants and shops that my characters frequent, what their houses look like, how fancy their clothes. I took creative freedoms featuring famous island residents Carly Simon and James Taylor, who were very young seasonal residents on the island back then, just getting their feet wet in music. Much of my research came from articles culled from the detailed archives of the MVTimes and the Vineyard Gazette; both papers have published numerous stories about the island’s history and provided endless fodder as I was writing.
There is a storied house on the island that inspired the novel. On a small stretch of beach just outside Vineyard Haven, there’s a house that you can still rent called “The Swindle.” At one point in the 1950s, there were three houses there: the first owned by a famous stage actress Katherine Cornell, the second by Helen Pratt Philbin—granddaughter of Charles Pratt, one of the founders of Standard Oil. In between them in the third house lived a bachelor who fell on hard times in 1953 and approached his wealthy neighbors to buy his place. They declined, and everyone returned home for winter. But the following summer, the two women arrived at their grand estates to find that the bachelor had painted his house an offensive blue. The women found it so garish that they paid him $20,000 to take the cabin off his hands. As the story goes, they were “swindled” into buying the cottage. After reading about the Swindle rental in a glossy real estate magazine, the idea for the novel took root. Immediately, the characters of Jean-Rose and Gigi McCabe came to mind. They would live in the enormous houses on either side of the fishing camp, with a handsome young swindler—Ash Porter—in between.
Summer Darlings would not exist without my extraordinary teachers at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, Jimin Han and Pat Dunn, who were my earliest readers and champions. You too, Eileen Palma! It takes a village to write a novel, and this one would not be what it is today without the careful reads of those who read early drafts and offered critical feedback. Thank you to Diane Foster, Chelsea Foster, Jean Huff, Carolyn Lyall, Kim Leibowitz, Laura Bower, Molly Pease, Sara Farnsworth, and Meredith Mialkowski, in particular, who read the book too many times to count.
From the moment I sat down with my agent, Rebecca Scherer, at a publishing conference, I knew I’d found someone special. Rebecca read a very early draft of this book and she believed in it from the start, even when my characters didn’t yet feel like real people. And then she read another draft and another, each time pushing me to fine tune the story. And as such, she’s felt like an editor, an agent, and a friend.
To my fantastic and whip-smart editor at Gallery Books, Kate Dresser: Thank you for helping me write my best book. I am grateful for your energy, insight, and wise counsel because without it we wouldn’t have been able to elevate the manuscript into the novel it is today. Most editors tell a writer how to fix their work, but Kate’s provocative questions encouraged me to take the manuscript in new directions while hardly changing the backbone of the story itself.
When I started writing this book a few summers ago, my little girl, Emerson, was a baby, and my son, Harper, was six. And as every writer knows, the act of putting down words on a page can be isolating. You disappear into your head as often as you disappear into the
next room to write. Thank you to my kids for their patience, and for encouraging me in that sweet way that children do, regurgitating some of which I’ve instilled in them: You can do it, Mama.
Thank you to Fiorella Calvo, my longtime babysitter. Your love for my children isn’t lost on me, and I appreciate all that you do for us, just to give me dedicated time to focus and write.
Thank you to my mom, who showed me from a young age that women can be strong writers; and my sisters, Erin and Chelsea, for making me laugh and cheering me on; and my father, who encouraged me to come to his house to chop wood whenever I was feeling stressed. I declined.
My grandmother, Marie Foster, a former dancer, had an air of glamour that captured my heart as a child. I heard her voice many times while writing.
To my best friend and husband, John Vargas. I owe this entire grand adventure we call a life to meeting you in college all those years ago. Coming of age with you has been my greatest joy. Remember all of those early morning talks in the kitchen where you reassured me that we would see this thing through? You were right. You always are. I love you.
More in Historical Fiction
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The Kitchen House
Gone with the Wind
The Accidental Empress
The German Girl
The Dovekeepers
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BROOKE LEA FOSTER is an award-winning journalist whose articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and Huffington Post, among others, and is the author of three nonfiction books. Foster is also an alumna of The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. Summer Darlings is her first novel.
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