Later that night, she had crawled into her large, soft bed at the St. Regis, and she had castigated herself. She was a moron! She had acted like a teenage girl with a crush! She had behaved like a wanton floozy! What if Deacon Thorpe called up Liz Smith and said, Belinda Rowe walked into my kitchen to proposition me?

He wouldn’t do that, she was certain. He was too cool for that. He was way cooler than anyone else Belinda knew. Or so she had somehow convinced herself. But what, really, did she know about him?

I’m married.

There had been something in his eyes, she thought, that made her think he had wanted her. She recalled the tender way he’d wiped the corner of her mouth; it had felt like a kiss. But maybe she had misinterpreted that gesture. Maybe he didn’t want her and that was the attraction. Belinda had dated three men since moving to Hollywood-an actor (Stew Knightley, needy and narcissistic), a producer (David Gordman, rich and controlling), and, predictably, her director from Between the Pipes, James Brinegar (Jaime had been the most pompous, self-important ass she had ever met, and he was of course the one she had fallen in love with and was trying to get over). Deacon Thorpe was nothing like Stew, David, or Jaime. Deacon Thorpe might actually have known how to make proper love to a woman.

Belinda wondered about the wife. Leif thought she was hot, but she reminded Belinda of a low-rent Cheryl Tiegs, minus the boobs. Maybe Belinda had missed something.

Finally deciding that she had made a grave error in judgment but, she hoped, not one that would come back to haunt her, she closed her eyes.

And then her eyes popped open. Someone was knocking on her hotel-room door.


Belinda drank some more wine. “I know you hate me, Laurel,” she said. “I know you think I stole him from you.”

“You did steal him from me,” Laurel said. “But ‘hate’ is a strong word. I hate men who beat their wives and children. I hate drug dealers and pimps and people who walk into a movie theater and shoot innocent citizens. You could even say I hate lima beans. But I don’t hate you, Belinda. I don’t care enough about you to hate you. You fall beneath my consideration.”

Wow, Belinda thought. That was nicely done. Swiftly, cleanly, Laurel had sliced Belinda’s self-esteem off at the head. You fall beneath my consideration.

“Besides,” Laurel said. “I got back at you.”

“You did?” Belinda said.

Laurel gave her a long, level look. Laurel’s eyes were a clear gray-blue, like river stones. “Would you like to walk to the beach?” she asked.

“To the beach?” Belinda said. She wondered if this was part of some grand murder plot on Laurel’s part. Possibly she planned on drowning Belinda in the ocean as payback for her treachery. Revenge was a dish best served cold-and this would be really cold. Nearly thirty years had passed, and the husband Belinda had stolen was now dead. What did Laurel mean when she said she’d gotten back at Belinda? Was there a rattlesnake nesting in the bottom of Clara’s bed?

“Buck isn’t much of a beach person,” Laurel said, “and I’ve been wanting to go.”

“I’m sure I make Buck look like Aquaman,” Belinda said. “I grew up on the prairie.”

“Just come with me,” Laurel said. It seemed an order rather than a request.

Reluctantly, Belinda got to her feet, but first she poured herself more wine. There was no way she was walking to the beach with Laurel without wine.

Laurel eyed her wedge heels. “You’re wearing those?”

Laurel is turning out to be quite the control freak this weekend, Belinda thought. “I have sandals, but they’re buried in my suitcase,” Belinda said. “These’ll be fine.”

Again, the level gaze. Laurel’s face was lightly tanned and pretty much unlined. Did she have work done? Belinda wondered. She didn’t think there was a social worker alive who went in for plastic surgery, so probably not. Laurel was wearing a pair of turquoise rubber flip-flops, the kind you bought at the five-and-dime.

Belinda said, “I came here straight from L.A.”

“What about sneakers?”

“No sneakers.”

“Do you not work out?”

Belinda shrugged. “Yoga.”

“Do you wear your wedge heels to yoga?” Laurel asked.

Belinda didn’t want to tell Laurel that Belinda’s yoga instructor, Skyler, came to her suite at the Beverly Wilshire. In Los Angeles, Belinda was very conscious of her status, her lifestyle, and her perks. But Laurel was such a do-gooder-she was a social worker in the Bronx-that Belinda would have felt embarrassed admitting that she had a personal yoga instructor who paid house calls.

She said, “I have sneakers in Kentucky. Obviously.” Then she wondered if this was even true. Belinda wasn’t athletic. On the rare occasions that she went out to the horse track (unfortunately, a picture of Bob banging Carrie in the tack room presented itself), she wore Wellies.

“Maybe you should go barefoot,” Laurel suggested.

“No,” Belinda said. She would also be embarrassed to admit how much money she spent each week on spa pedicures, and she was not going to ruin her toe polish or invite rough patches on her heels by going barefoot. “I’ll just wear these.”

“Okay,” Laurel said with a shrug.

Belinda put on her sunglasses and her wide-brimmed straw hat. They tiptoed past the front room, where Buck was snoring on the couch, and they headed out the door.

Belinda did better than she thought she would going down the driveway; she didn’t spill a drop of wine. They crossed the road, and Laurel headed up the white sand path that led through tall beach grass. Belinda stopped and slugged back some of her wine for fortification. Laurel took off her cheapie flip-flops and kicked through the sand barefoot. From the back, Belinda thought resentfully, Laurel still looked like a girl. She wore her sandy blond hair long and straight, and her arms were nicely toned. She was wearing jean shorts and a white sleeveless blouse.

Belinda had to admit that she was jealous. Not of how Laurel looked, exactly, but of how little effort her beauty seemed to require. Did she go to the hairdresser to get the gray taken out of her part? Did she work out at a gym with a personal trainer to get those arms?

Belinda stopped again: more wine. The sand was white, deep, and very soft. Her left wedge wobbled and threatened to turn. She sighed. She would have to sacrifice the softness of her feet.

“Hold up,” she called out. “I have to take my shoes off.”

Laurel gave her a look.

“Never mind, go on ahead if you want,” Belinda said. “I’m way out of my comfort zone here.”

Laurel waited for Belinda-which was decent of her, Belinda thought-and together they trudged up the hill until they came to the battered wooden snow fence that funneled them straight down to the beach. The ocean was in front of them: dark blue, loud, and majestic-and, to Belinda, totally terrifying. She had accompanied Deacon-and then Deacon and Hayes, and then Deacon and Hayes and Angie and Scarlett, the nanny-to this beach a handful of times each summer. She would sit on a chair underneath an enormous umbrella and read scripts while everyone else swam and splashed and loudly announced how delicious the water felt. That had been Scarlett, Belinda remembered now, cavorting around in her teensy red bikini-because of her name, she always wore harlot red-calling the water delicious.

Laurel stripped off her shorts and blouse; she was wearing a floral bikini underneath. Her body looked amazing. Her stomach was flat and smooth. How was this possible? It was as if she had never had children! Well, only one child, almost thirty-five years earlier. When you had a baby at nineteen, Belinda supposed, your body snapped back like tight elastic instead of bagging out. Belinda had given birth to Mary at forty-two and to Laura at forty-three, and she had been doing battle with her tummy ever since.

Laurel gave a rollicking whoop and went racing into the water-high-stepping first, shouting, “It’s cold! It’s cold!” until finally diving in. Belinda sat in the sand with her wine.

“Come on in!” Laurel shouted.

“No, thanks,” Belinda said. “I’m good.”

As Laurel swam, Belinda’s mind returned to the fateful night almost thirty years earlier: She had given Deacon her room number at the St. Regis, and against all odds, he had shown up. He had thrown her onto the bed; he’d torn her paper-thin T-shirt right off her. When he kissed her, he had tasted like tequila.

After it was over, Belinda had offered him a glass of ice water, which he gratefully guzzled down. She said, “Why did you come?” She figured he was just drunk, or maybe the ginger-haired maître d’ had talked him into it because she was Belinda Rowe.

Deacon said, “When you came into the kitchen, you looked so… I don’t know… lonely, I guess. You looked the way I felt.”

She had traced her index finger along his clavicle. “You’re lonely?”

“Always,” he said.


Later, as they were walking back-Belinda out of wine and Laurel dripping wet, holding her clothes-Laurel said, “So you got married again, and you have two girls?”

Belinda nodded. Those factoids could be found on Wikipedia, but even so, Belinda’s guard went up.

“I married Bob Percil,” Belinda said. “He’s a Thoroughbred trainer. Our daughters are Mary, nine, and Laura, eight.”

“I was pretty surprised when I saw a photo of you in the tabloids, pregnant,” Laurel said. “I thought you weren’t able to have children.”

Belinda blinked. It’s none of your fucking business, she thought. This wasn’t going to be one of those weekends when every secret was confessed and women who previously hated each other forged a new bond due to the death of their mutual ex-husband.

But she didn’t want to start a fight. Not yet, anyway-she had just gotten here.

“No one was more surprised than me,” she said. She needed to turn the tables here. “How about you? Are you dating anyone?”

“No,” Laurel said.

“I find that hard to believe,” Belinda said. “You’re so pretty.”

“Please don’t patronize me,” Laurel said.

“I’m not!” Belinda said. “I was checking you out earlier. You look fantastic.”

Laurel narrowed her eyes.

“Why don’t you date Buck?” Belinda said. “He’s single, right? And you know he’s always had a crush on you.”

“Stop,” Laurel said.

“It’s true,” Belinda said. “Deacon used to tease him about it.”

Laurel smiled down at her feet, and Belinda thought: Advantage, Rowe. She had gotten her enemy to smile. Belinda had noticed Buck and Laurel looking pretty cozy on the deck when she arrived. Something was definitely going to happen there, which would do wonders in lightening up the melancholy atmosphere of the weekend.

Belinda sat down on the big rock that Deacon had long ago painted with a green 33, marking the start of the driveway. “You can go on up. I’m going to put on my shoes.”

“Okay,” Laurel said. “I’m going to take an outdoor shower, then head into town for a bit.”

The outdoor shower! On her first trip to Nantucket, Belinda had bemoaned the sad state of the indoor plumbing. The showers worked in only three of the bathrooms, each of which produced a lukewarm spritz of water-enough to mist one’s face-but Deacon frowned upon using them, anyway. It wasn’t how things were done on Nantucket. It was summertime; one showered outdoors! He had been right: Belinda had grown to love showering with the late-afternoon sun streaming down and the pure-blue sky above her head, the vista of the rolling moors just visible over the top of the shower door.

Belinda stood up, not bothering with her shoes. She had to hurry; otherwise Laurel would use up all the hot water.


Intermezzo: Deacon and Laurel, Part II

He can’t believe he’s doing it. He would like to blame it on the three shots of tequila he did with Buck after service, but he’s never felt sharper. His vision is crystal clear. He wants this. He convinces himself that if Laurel finds out-and he will do everything in his power to make sure she doesn’t-she will understand.

It’s Belinda Rowe.

He enters the lobby of the St. Regis and finds the elevator. He pushes 18.


He falls under her spell. How this happens, he’s not quite sure. Part of it is the fame, the money, the lifestyle, her confidence, her glamour. She has kissed Steve McQueen, Robert De Niro, and Paul Newman on screen. She lives in a room in a five-star hotel and calls up bottles of Dom Pérignon and silver dishes of long-stemmed strawberries as if it’s her cool second job. Deacon sips champagne out of her navel; he feeds her the berries. She buys him a watch that he knows costs north of five thousand dollars. So you’ll know when it’s time to be with me, she says. He lies to Laurel about the watch and about where he is every time he goes to the St. Regis. He tells Laurel he’s with Buck. He hates himself for the lying, but he can’t stop.