Elin Hilderbrand - Here’s to Us

But then, suddenly, a less pleasant thought cut in. “Oh God,” she said to JP. “You’re the one who found him.” She closed her eyes, and the dark world spun.

“Yes,” JP said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry,” Angie whispered.

JP nodded at the seat next to him. “I was just going up to the house to see if your family needed anything. And I brought some strawberries that my mother picked up at Bartlett’s Farm.” He nodded to a cooler in the back. “Let me give you a ride up to the house?”

“I’m not sure I want to go back there,” Angie said.

“Things are that bad already?”

Angie nodded.

“Is Laurel your mother?” he asked. “Because she sounded really cool.”

“She is really cool,” Angie said. “But she’s not my mother. My mother is… Belinda. Belinda Rowe.”

“Ah,” JP said. “Well, I liked her in Brilliant Disguise.”

“You and every other man in America,” Angie said.

“I’m not as typical as you might think,” JP said. “I’m the ranger out at Coatue all summer. You could always come stay in my shack.”

Angie smiled. This guy was terrific. She thought about spending all summer in a one-room shack out on the wild, deserted arm of beach that was Coatue. There was nothing out there but sand, water, and seabirds. “You’d be surprised how much I’d like that,” she said.

“The offer stands,” JP said. “You can help me protect the plover eggs and tow tourist Jeeps out of the sand.”

Angie blushed.

“Maybe we shouldn’t move in together right away,” JP said. “Maybe you should just hop in. I’ll drive you home, and you can surprise everyone with hand-picked strawberries.”

“Deal,” she said.

He couldn’t feel anything and so he had to pretend, or he would be discovered. His mother, in her job, dealt with junkies every hour of every day; she knew the signs. He couldn’t scratch, and he couldn’t lose his focus, or he would nod off.

He said to Laurel, “I’d love to get unpacked and maybe go for a swim before dinner. Or…? I don’t know… is that bad? I mean, we don’t have to sit shiva, right?”

Laurel studied him for a second, and he thought, She knows.

She started to cry soundlessly, and Hayes hugged her tight. His mom. She was still so pretty, still so young, only fifty-four. And still so cool, the coolest person Hayes had ever known. Hayes had loved his father, but he and Deacon had been more like casual, easygoing friends, and really, that was only later in life.

Hayes had carried around a fair amount of anger after his father left. He could remember Deacon flying home from L.A. one weekend a month to “spend time” with Hayes, which meant a Yankees game or kite flying in the park or checking out the dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History. All of this was fine except that Hayes, even at age eight or nine, could sense that his father was trying too hard. At least forty times over the weekend, Deacon would ask Hayes if he was having fun, and then would come the litany about his own father.

He didn’t want me, Deacon would say.

But I want you, Deacon would say.

Kiss on the forehead, no matter who was watching.

The weekends in New York were better when Buck joined them. Buck had no children, and so he treated Hayes like an adult and Hayes flourished-they talked about the Knicks and the stock market; plus, it alleviated the father-son pressure. So things were sometimes okay, sometimes not, but every visit ended the same way: Hayes would have dinner at the Manchester Diner, down the street from Laurel’s apartment, with both of his parents. His mother and father would hold hands, and Hayes could see the air shimmering with electricity between them. Usually his father would start crying first, then his mother, but sometimes it was the other way around. It was guaranteed that both of them would cry and run through a stack of paper napkins, blowing their noses and wiping their eyes, and, since no child wants to see either of his parents cry, Hayes hated the weekends with his father, purely for the way they always ended.

Things got better once Deacon and Belinda adopted Angie, because then Deacon got more on board with the family program, but even so, what Hayes remembered was spending time with Angie and Angie’s nanny, who had been Scarlett, whom Deacon had eventually married.

Was it any wonder Hayes was addicted to drugs?

He squeezed his mother. He loved his mother; she had been his rock, his guiding light, his true north, his best friend for all his life. Hayes was in agony about his father’s death, not to mention really scared. His father had had a bad heart, and so what did that mean for Hayes? Nothing good, he was sure. But if Hayes had lost his mother… well, that would have been a different story altogether. Hayes couldn’t imagine a world without his mother in it. His last serious girlfriend, Whitney Jo, had told Hayes that he was too attached to his mother and that was why he was thirty-four and unmarried. Because no woman could ever measure up.

Laurel wiped her eyes on the collar of her shirt. “I’ve been trying very hard to be civil to Belinda.”

“Oh,” Hayes said. “Right.” His mother and Belinda were not cool with each other-nope, not at all. It had made for some awkward family gatherings in the past. When Hayes was growing up, he wasn’t allowed to watch any of Belinda’s movies or play with the toys Belinda had bought him or even say her name-otherwise, his mother got this sad, spooky expression on her face. It was okay for him to talk about Angie, thank God; his mother had always liked Angie. Even Scarlett was okay in Laurel’s book. Not great, Hayes thought-his mother had been “disappointed” that Deacon had done the “predictable thing” and fallen for the nanny. But, Laurel had said, I’m sure she paid attention to him, and Belinda didn’t.

Was that what had happened? Probably. By the time Deacon had married Scarlett, Hayes had acknowledged to himself that Deacon was hopeless when it came to women. One reason Hayes hadn’t married Whitney Jo was because he feared he would fail, just as his father had.

“Right,” Hayes said. “Good for you, Mom.”

“There’s no point holding on to old anger,” Laurel said. “Deacon is dead.”

Hayes nodded. It had been six weeks, which was right around the time Hayes expected someone to announce it had all been a joke or a mistake and for Deacon to reappear somehow.

His mother still hadn’t answered his question about swimming. He said, “So… the beach is okay? Not okay?”

Laurel said, “I went swimming yesterday, and it was very therapeutic. We gathered to honor Deacon’s memory, and if I’m sure of one thing, it’s that he doesn’t want us to sit inside and cry.”

Hayes breathed a sigh of relief. He knew they were here to mourn, whatever that meant, and they were going to spread the ashes on Monday-but that was two whole days from now. Two days was a very long time under circumstances such as these.

“We’re not eating until seven thirty or so,” Laurel said. “So you have time to unwind.”

Hayes was down with that. He could refresh his buzz once he was alone. He needed a little bump; his tolerance had grown remarkably while he was in Bali-he and Sula were shooting up four or five times a day. But first he had to get past the land mine in the kitchen.

Belinda.

“Hello, Hayes,” she said in that famous, famous voice. She gave him dual-cheek air-kisses, a greeting Hayes excelled at, thank God.

“Belinda, it’s nice to see you,” he said, not meaning it.

“And you,” Belinda said, not meaning it either, he was sure.

“What happened to Angie?” Hayes asked. He congratulated himself for noticing that his sister was missing. The key to not letting the world know he was high was constantly monitoring his surroundings. Angie had been here; now she was gone. “Did she go upstairs?” This was Hayes’s goal. Go up to his room, shut the door, pull out the precious H, which he was hiding in a secure spot. Shoot up. But just a bump. The mere thought set Hayes’s teeth chattering.

Belinda said, “I heard you ran into Naomi at the Escondite last month.”

Boom, just like that, he was lost. He repeated the sentence in his mind, looking for landmarks. The Escondite rang a distant bell. It was… a hotel? In the past month, Hayes had been to Bali, of course. Before that, he had been in Ecuador and Peru; before that… Vegas, where he had stayed at Aria. Before that… Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica. That was Belinda’s part of the world. He tried to remember something, anything, about his time in California other than the sheer size of the muscles on the dealer he found in Venice Beach. And who was Naomi?

“Naomi Watts?” Belinda prompted. “She bumped into you at the Escondite? The rock club?”

Yes! Hayes thought. He had gone to the Escondite on the recommendation of the Shutters concierge to see a band called Pretty Little Demons. The place had a burger called the Fat Albert, which was a bacon cheeseburger with maple syrup served on a glazed doughnut bun-the concierge said it was so good, it made her want to punch someone in the face-and Hayes had ordered one but not eaten it. Naomi Watts was a blond, he knew, so she must have been the woman who grabbed his arm when he was coming out of the men’s room. He hadn’t been sure if it was her or Kate Beckinsale.

“Yes!” Hayes said. “I did see Naomi at the Escondite. Great burgers there. And we saw a phenomenal band. It was two little girls-they’re in, like, seventh grade, but boy, do they rock!” He made a sloppy hand motion indicating drumsticks. He constantly impressed himself with the way he could pull stuff out of his ass.

Belinda narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you okay, Hayes?” she asked.

She knows, Hayes thought. Or she suspected.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Other than the fact that, you know, my father is dead.”

Belinda continued to study him in an unnerving way.

“Where’s Angie?” Hayes asked. He couldn’t remember if this question had been answered or not.

“Oh, she ran off,” Belinda said, nodding at the front door. “She got a bee in her bonnet.”

Bonnet? Hayes thought.

“Hayes, honey, come with me,” Laurel said, saving the day. She swept Hayes past the ticking time bomb that was Belinda and up the stairs.

His room was the room of the little boy he had been when he first came to Nantucket with his parents. There was still the blue sailboat wallpaper, now dulled by years of sunshine, the blue muted and dusty but so familiar, as though the pattern had been embossed on Hayes’s heart. The wallpaper had not been selected for him but rather for one of the Innsleys’ children, but one of the unwritten rules of this house was that nothing was allowed to change. The porthole mirror encircled by nautical rope still hung over the dresser. Deacon was dead, never coming back, D.E.A.D.-and yet that stupid mirror had endured, unchanged. Was Hayes the only person who understood how patently unfair this was?

Hayes crashed on the bed that had seen him through childhood summers to teenager summers to adult summers, some of them with Whitney Jo-they had nearly broken this bed-to today.

Laurel sat down on the bed next to him and smoothed his hair off his face. “We’re going to get through this,” she said.

His mother needed comfort-Hayes could sense that much-and he knew he should be the one to administer it; he was her son. But he couldn’t go down that long and winding road right now. He was too… tired.

His eyes fell closed. He worried he would never be able to get them back open. He wanted Laurel to step out of the room and close the door behind her with a definite click.

“Mom,” Hayes said, “I’m sorry. The trip from overseas wiped me out. I just need a quick nap…”

“Of course, sweet-” Laurel said, but that was all he heard.

He could barely bring himself to look at Belinda. The memory of earlier that afternoon was too disturbing. Had it even happened? Well, yes, there she was… wearing clothes now, at least, as she poured herself a glass of wine. She gave him a wicked smile.

“Beer?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” he said. He’d gone through nearly a six-pack over the course of the day, and he was starting to feel dizzy. He had blown any chance of asking Belinda for financial help with the house, he realized. He could ask her for one favor but not two, and he needed her to keep quiet about what had happened that afternoon.

“Listen,” he said. “About earlier…”

Belinda waved a hand. “Already forgotten,” she said.