Elin Hilderbrand - Beautiful Day

“Well, congratulations,” Margot said. “That’s wonderful.” She sounded genuine to her own ears; she was genuine. Drum was a good guy, just not the guy for her. She had been the one to end the marriage. Drum’s laid-back approach to the world-which Margot had found so charming when she met him surfing on Nantucket-had come to drive her insane. He was unambitious at best, a slacker at worst. That being said, Margot was astonished to find she felt a twinge of-what? jealousy? anger? resentment?-at his announcement. It seemed unfair that news of Drum’s nuptials should arrive less than forty-eight hours before Jenna’s wedding.

Everyone is getting married, she thought. Everyone but me.

Jenna and Finn were as young and blond and pretty as a couple of milkmaids on a farm in Sweden. Finn looked more like Jenna than Margot did. Margot had straight black hair, the hair of a silk weaver in Beijing-and she had six inches on her sister, the height of a tribeswoman on the banks of the Amazon. She had blue eyes like Jenna, but Jenna’s were the same color as the sapphires in her engagement ring, whereas Margot’s were ice blue, the eyes of a sled dog in northern Russia.

Jenna looked exactly like their mother. And so, bizarrely, did Finn, who had grown up three houses away.

“We need to get a picture of the three of us now,” Jenna said. She took the camera from Margot and handed it to a man reading the newspaper in one of the plastic molded chairs.

“Do you mind?” Jenna asked sweetly.

The man rose. He was tall, about Margot’s age, maybe a little older; he had a day or two of scruff on his face, and he was wearing a white visor and sunglasses. He looked like he was going to Nantucket to sail in a regatta. Margot checked his left hand-no ring. No girlfriend in the vicinity, no children in his custody, just a folded copy of the Wall Street Journal now resting on his seat as he rose to take the picture. “Sure,” he said. “I’d love to.”

Margot assumed that Jenna had picked the guy on purpose; Jenna was on a mission to find Margot a boyfriend. She had no idea that Margot had allowed herself to fall in love-idiotically-with Edge Desvesnes, their father’s law partner. Edge was thrice married, thrice divorced, nineteen years Margot’s senior, and wildly inappropriate in half a dozen other ways. If Jenna had known about Margot and Edge, she would only be more eager to introduce Margot to someone else.

Margot found herself assigned to the middle, pegged between the two blond bookends.

“I can’t see your face,” Regatta Man said, nodding at Margot. “Your hat is casting a shadow.”

“Sorry,” Margot said. “I have to leave it on.”

“Oh, come on,” Jenna said. “Just for one second while he takes the picture?”

“No,” Margot said. If her skin saw the sun for even one second, she would detonate into a hundred thousand freckles. Jenna and Finn could be cavalier with their skin, they were young, but Margot would stand vigilant guard, despite the fact that she must now seem rigid and difficult to Regatta Man. She said in her most conciliatory voice, “Sorry.”

“No worries,” Regatta Man said. “Smile!” He took the picture.

There was something familiar about the guy, Margot thought. She knew him. Or maybe it was the Dramamine messing with her brain.

“Should I take one more, Margot?” he said. “Just to be safe?”

Regatta Man removed his sunglasses, and Margot felt as though she’d been slapped. She lost her footing on the deck and tipped a little. She looked into Regatta Man’s eyes to be sure. Sure enough, heterochromia iridum-dark blue perimeters with green centers. Or, as Margot had thought when she first saw him, he was a man with kaleidoscope eyes.

Before her stood Griffin Wheatley, Homecoming King. Otherwise just known as Griff. Who was, out of all the people in the world, among the top five Margot didn’t want to bump into without warning. Didn’t want to bump into at all. Maybe the top three.

“Griff!” she exclaimed. “How are you?”

“I’m good, I’m good,” he said. He cleared his throat and nervously shoved the camera back at Margot; the question of the second photo seemed to have drifted off on the breeze. Margot figured Griff was about half as uncomfortable as she was. He would be thinking of her only as the bearer of disappointing news. She was thinking of him as the worst judgment call she had made in years. Oh, God.

He said, “Did you hear I ended up taking the marketing job at Blankstar?”

Margot couldn’t decide if she should pretend to be surprised by this, or if she should admit that she had been Googling his name every single day until she was able to reassure herself that he’d landed safely. The job at Blankstar was a good one.

She changed the subject. “So why are you headed to Nantucket?” She tried to recall: Had Griff mentioned Nantucket in any of his interviews? No, she would have remembered if he had. He was from Maryland somewhere, which meant he had probably grown up going to Rehoboth or Dewey.

“I’m meeting buddies for golf,” he said.

Ah, yes, golf-of course golf, not sailing. Griff had spent two years on the lower rungs of the PGA Tour. He’d made just enough money, he said, to buy a case of beer each week and have enough left over for the Laundromat. He had lived out of the back of his Jeep Wrangler and, when he played well, at the Motel 6.

These details all came back unbidden. Margot couldn’t stand here another second. She turned to Jenna, sending a telepathic message: Get me out of here! But Jenna was checking her phone. She was texting her beloved Stuart, perhaps, or any other of the 150 guests who would gather on Saturday to drink in the sight of Jenna wearing their mother’s wedding gown.

“I’m here for my sister’s wedding,” Margot said. She chewed her bottom lip. “I’m the maid of honor.”

He lit up with amused delight, as though Margot had just told him she had been selected to rumba with Antonio Banderas on Dancing with the Stars. “That’s great!” he said.

He sounded far more enthusiastic than she felt.

She said, “Yes, Jenna is getting married on Saturday.” Margot indicated Jenna with a Vanna White flourish of her hands, but Jenna’s attention was glued to her phone. Margot was afraid to engage Jenna anyway, because what if Jenna asked how Margot and Griff knew each other?

Thankfully, Finn stepped forward. “I’m Finn Sullivan-Walker,” she said. “I’m just a lowly bridesmaid.”

Griff shook hands with Finn and laughed. “Not lowly, I’m sure.”

“Not lowly at all,” Margot said. This was the third time that Finn had made reference to the fact that she wasn’t Jenna’s maid of honor. She had been miffed when Jenna first announced her decision to Margot and Finn, over dinner at Dos Caminos. Finn had ordered three margaritas in rapid succession, then gone silent. And then she had gotten her nose out of joint about it again at the bridal shower. Finn was upset that she had been stuck writing down the list of gifts while Margot the maid of honor fashioned the bows from the gifts into a goofy hat made from a paper plate. (Jenna was supposed to wear that hat tonight, to her bachelorette party. Margot had rescued it from the overly interested paws of Ellie, her six-year-old daughter, and had transported it here, more or less intact, in a white cardboard box from E.A.T. bakery.)

Margot had told Jenna that it would be fine if Jenna wanted to ask Finn to be the matron of honor. Margot was eleven years older than Jenna; Finn had always been more like Jenna’s sister. Now Jenna and Finn were both in the throes of the nuptial era; everyone they knew was getting married. For the two of them, being the maid of honor was an actual honor-whereas Margot had been married and divorced and, quite frankly, couldn’t care less.

But Margot knew the reason why Jenna would never ask Finn to be matron of honor. It was because of the Notebook. It had been assumed by their mother that Margot would serve as Jenna’s maid of honor.

Margot said, “Finn just got married last October.”

“Oh, really?” Griff said.

Finn gazed out at the water. “Yeah.”

“Her husband is a golfer, too,” Margot said. “Scratch!”

Finn’s husband, Scott Walker, had been on the golf team at Stanford, where Tiger Woods had played. Now Scott was a hedge fund manager making a bajillion dollars a quarter.

Finn made a face like she had just eaten snail and vinegar stew, and Margot wondered if something was awry in her seemingly perfect marriage. Scott, Margot knew, wasn’t coming to the wedding because of one of the inevitable conflicts for those mired in the nuptial era: his best friend, his roommate from Stanford, was having his bachelor party this very same weekend. Scott was in Las Vegas.

Probably Finn just missed him, the way that Margot missed Edge. The way that Margot lived in a perpetual state of missing Edge. She had sex with Edge, she had conversations with Edge, some more meaningful than others, she occasionally had dinner with Edge-but never the movies, never theater, never ever any kind of benefit or dance or party where other people they knew would be in attendance. Those kinds of events Margot attended alone or with her brother, Nick, who was always sure to leave with someone else.

“Well!” Margot said. She was dying to put the small talk with Griffin Wheatley, Homecoming King, to bed. She would have excused herself to check on the children below, but she wasn’t feeling well enough to even step inside the cabin in the name of such a bluff. “Have fun playing golf! Birdie, birdie, eagle!”

“Thanks,” Griff said. He took a step toward the chair where his Wall Street Journal awaited, and Margot thought, Okay, that’s over. Good-bye, Griffin Wheatley, Homecoming King! Jenna could have asked Idi Amin to take their picture and Margot might have been less flustered.

“See ya,” Margot said.

“Have a great wedding,” Griff said. And then to Finn, “Nice meeting you, lowly bridesmaid.”

Finn scowled at him, but undeterred, Griff called out to Jenna, “Congratulations!”

Jenna raised her eyes from her iPhone long enough to offer the quick, impersonal wave of an Oscar winner.

Finn said, “I’m going down below.”

Margot nodded, and with a glance at Griff and another awkward, unnecessary “See ya!” she took Jenna by the arm and led her to the railing on the side of the boat opposite from Griff.

“Look,” Margot said. She pointed past the hovering seagulls and the scattered sailboats. They could both see clearly now: the north and south steeples of the churches, the column of Brant Point Lighthouse.

Nantucket Island, their summer home.

Jenna squeezed the heck out of Margot’s hand. Just as Jenna had helped Margot with her seasickness by remembering to bring the Dramamine, so now Margot would forget about the unnerving interaction with Griffin Wheatley, Homecoming King, and focus on helping Jenna with her surfeit of overwhelming emotion.

“I miss her,” Jenna said.

Margot’s eyes stung. The longest, most excruciating weekend of her life had officially begun.

“I know, honey,” she said, hugging her sister close. “I miss her, too.”

The Reception

The reception can be held under a tent in the backyard. Call Sperry Tents and ask for Ande. I worked with him on the benefit for the Nantucket Preservation Trust and he was a dream. I do here want to insert a warning and I hope you won’t find it trivial: I would be heartbroken if anything happened to my perennial bed. By “perennial bed,” I mean the narrow garden that runs along the eastern edge of the property from the white gate all the way to Alfie’s trunk. The blue hardy geraniums, the moonbeam coreopsis, the black-eyed Susans, the plum pudding Heuchera, the coneflowers-all of these I planted in 1972, when I was pregnant with Margot. That bed has bloomed reliably for decades because I have taken good care of it. None of you children seem to have inherited my love of gardening (unless you count Nick, and the pot plants in the attic), but trust me, you will notice if one summer those flowers don’t bloom. Please, Jenna, make sure the perennial bed remains unmolested. Do not let the tent guys, or anyone else, trample my blue hardy geraniums.

Somehow, he had ended up with the Notebook.

It was Thursday afternoon. Doug had left the office early and had taken the 3:52 to Norwalk, Connecticut, where he lived with Pauline, in a house across the street from the Silvermine Tavern. But when the conductor announced the stop for Darien, Doug grabbed his briefcase and stood halfway up before remembering.