Elin Hilderbrand - Here’s to Us

But Hayes was also looking for something else. He was looking for information.

“So, Pirate,” Hayes said, his voice pitched low so as to be calming. “Dude, I have to ask. Do you remember any details about my dad? Do you remember anything he said or did, or what he was like?”

“Yeah, man,” Pirate said. “I do.”

Hayes waited for him to say more. A few moments of silence passed, and Hayes figured Pirate-there was no way this was his real name; Hayes should have asked-was collecting his thoughts, but then, when it seemed no answer was forthcoming, Hayes said, “What? What do you remember?”

“Oh,” Pirate said. He shook his head as if awakening from a dream. “He was just really cool. I mean, it was Deacon Thorpe, man. I’ve been watching his show since I was… I don’t know, a kid. And then, all of a sudden, he’s climbing into my taxi.”

“Right,” Hayes said. He was used to fan dribble. Deacon was recognized everywhere, and he had married a woman even more famous than he was. Hayes had seen statements on Twitter from Mario Batali and Bobby Flay and Eric Ripert, and incessant use of the term “cultural icon.” While all of that was gratifying, it wasn’t what Hayes was after. He wanted something more personal. “How did he seem? When he climbed into your taxi, I mean? Was he upbeat? Was he quiet? Did he make any jokes?”

“He was cool,” Pirate said. “He asked me to take him to Thirty-Three Hoicks Hollow Road. He said, ‘Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.’ It’s from Monopoly. A board game.”

“Well, yeah,” Hayes said. Deacon had been a fiend about playing Monopoly. He had a tattoo of Rich Uncle Pennybags on the inside of his right forearm.

Pirate leaned forward against the steering wheel as if to see better, and Hayes thought, If you want to see better, take off that stupid eye patch. “He told me about the first time he ever came to Nantucket. The day trip, with his old man.”

“He told you that?” Hayes asked. “Did he say anything about the house?” Hayes became transfixed by the glowing circles on the dashboard. They were only going forty miles an hour, but because the top was down on the Lincoln and it was dark and the road was winding, it felt as though they were about to hyperspace into another reality. “Did he say he was going to lose it?”

“Lose it?” Pirate said. “No, man. He was all excited when we turned onto Hoicks Hollow Road. He said it was his…”

“Home away from home,” Hayes finished. “Right.”

Pirate pulled over on the Polpis Road. He got out of the car, walked down the bike path, and made a phone call. Hayes rested his head against the seat. He should go home right now: Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. American Paradise was going to be repossessed just like one of the little green houses in Monopoly, plucked off the board and placed back into the coffers of the bank. Hayes had to find a way to save it. But first, he needed drugs. At the rate he was going, he would run dry by tomorrow. Just thinking about it nearly brought Hayes to tears. How had he gotten this way? He had meant to be careful. He had meant to stay ahead of it.

He should get out of the car and call Angie to come get him. He could tell Angie the truth, and she would know what to do. She would be pissed, but she would come up with a plan.

Get out! Hayes thought. Go now! But he didn’t budge.

Pirate climbed back into the car without a word.

“We good, man?” Hayes asked.

“Yeah,” Pirate said. “We’re good.”

Pirate cut his speed as they approached the rotary. They took Hooper Farm Road, and then Pirate made a series of turns that Hayes tried to keep track of, but he closed his eyes for one or two seconds, and when he opened them, they were on a dirt road. The road to Hell, Hayes thought.

“Where we going, man?” Hayes asked.

“Party,” Pirate said. “Private party.”

He drove all the way out to the end of the road, past where the houses ended. All Hayes could see in front of him were skinny scrub pines.

Pirate pulled over and got out of the car. Was Hayes supposed to go with him? Yes. Pirate windmilled his arm.

They walked down a sandy path that led into the woods. Hayes took deep breaths, trying to calm his slamming heart. They were on Nantucket. It was a fairy-tale summerland where nothing bad ever happened.

Hayes strained his ears for the sound of a party. He had been thinking of a large, finely appointed beach house with a young, polished crowd and pyramids of very fine cocaine. Or possibly a bonfire where a bunch of overprivileged kids in $300 jeans and Rip Curl T-shirts would be smoking Nepalese hash. But the woods were quiet.

Suddenly, a man stepped out of the shadows. He was huge, a Goliath. Hayes thought briefly of the guy he’d bought heroin from in Venice Beach. This guy made that guy look like the Little Mermaid.

Pirate put a hand on Hayes’s shoulder. “Hayes Thorpe, I’d like you to meet…”

But Hayes didn’t hear the Goliath’s name, because at that second, the Goliath’s fist, which was the size of a brick, met with Hayes’s face. Hayes’s head snapped back, and he thought, Broken jaw. Pirate pinned Hayes’s arms behind his back with one hand and emptied Hayes’s pockets with his other hand. Three hundred and fifty bucks, Hayes knew.

“Please,” Hayes managed to say. He wished he had considered his present circumstances as a possibility; he would have brought a weapon. In his duffel bag was a kris knife, presented to him by Sula before he left Nusa Lembongan. It had once belonged to her grandfather and was invested with some kind of mystical energy, which was the reason Sula’s family had become so wealthy and powerful, she said. Hayes would have loved to have pulled out the kris knife, with its wavy blade, and stuck it in Pirate’s good eye.

“Junkie,” the Goliath said. He drew his fist back and delivered the knockout punch square in the face, shattering Hayes’s nose. His face was warm and wet with blood. Hayes hit the ground, taking in a mouthful of sandy dirt. Someone was kicking Hayes in the leg, but honestly, he could barely feel it. He was just going to lie here and drown in his own blood.

“How much?” Hayes heard the Goliath ask.

“Few hundred,” Pirate said.

“I thought you said he was rich,” the Goliath said.

“I figured he’d have more,” Pirate said. “I told you who his father is, right? His father is Deacon Thorpe, the chef.”

Was, Hayes thought, before he lost consciousness. Was.

Sunday, June 19

He woke up in the middle of the night and, again, didn’t know where he was. Then he remembered: he was living the life on Nantucket, in Deacon’s house, but Deacon was dead.

Pain like a stab to the heart. Buck had awakened to this same pain every day for the past six weeks. He had hoped that coming to Nantucket would make him feel better, but the opposite was true. Being on the island Deacon loved so much, in the house that was so dear to him, surrounded by his wives and his children, only made Buck believe that Deacon might walk through the door any second. It was easy to imagine that Deacon had gone to run an errand and was very, very late in getting home.

Buck’s bed was two feet too short for him and had an unforgiving footboard.

Buck rose to use the bathroom. The house was old and creaky; the plumbing was loud. He was probably waking everybody up just by taking a leak.

He noticed a light on under the door of Laurel’s room. Was she awake? He didn’t think twice about it; he knocked.

“Come in,” she said.

Buck slipped in and shut the door behind him. Laurel was sitting up in bed. Her covers were white, smooth, and as neatly folded as origami paper; he loved Laurel’s calm, orderly perfection. Buck’s second wife, Mae, had never once made their bed. Every night it had been like sleeping in a pile of dirty laundry, and that, Buck supposed, had been their undoing-his desire for shipshape, hers for chaos.

Laurel was wearing a dove-gray scoop-necked pajama top and a pair of narrow, black-framed glasses. She was reading a book called… Buck strained his neck, trying to see, hoping it was one of the two novels he’d had time to read in the past three years… but no, it was Euphoria, by someone named Lily King. Buck had never heard of it, but the title seemed promising.

Euphoria.

“Am I interrupting?” Buck asked.

Laurel looked up and smiled. The glasses were incredibly sexy. “Not at all,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither,” Buck said. He looked around the room for a place to sit. The only chair in the room was a cane-bottomed rocker that would most definitely collapse under his weight.

Laurel patted the side of the bed. “It’s okay,” she said.

Buck perched on the edge of the bed next to her. She set the book down on the nightstand. “I’m devastated about the house,” she said. “I wasn’t even expecting a part of it to go to me. I just hate that the family is losing it. The kids…”

“I’m sorry I brought it up at dinner,” Buck said. “I didn’t know when I would have everyone all together.”

“I wasn’t angry at you,” Laurel said. “I was angry at Belinda. I don’t want her to pay for the house. I will not spend my life indebted to her.”

“I’ll state the obvious,” Buck said. “She’s the only one of us with that kind of money. You don’t have a spare hundred and fifty grand, do you? And then five grand per month after that?”

“No,” Laurel said. She peered at Buck over the tops of her glasses. “What did Belinda mean when she said the two of you had a run-in?”

His breath caught. Belinda. News of their awful interlude had nearly leaked before dinner, like a noxious gas. He considered lying. But Buck had gone to Catholic school and been educated by nuns; even now, his conscience spoke to him in the voice of Sister Mary Agatha. He heard her saying, The truth always comes out. She had been referring to Richard Nixon and Watergate, but it applied across the board. The truth always came out.

“I’ve been half in love with you since the first second I saw you,” Buck said. “You realize this, right? Since way back-when you and Hayes came to that first meeting with me at the restaurant.”

He thought back to those earliest days: Buck had been interning at William Morris during the day, and to pay the bills, he worked as the maître d’ at Solo, in the Flatiron District, where Deacon Thorpe had just been named chef de cuisine. Buck was desperate for a client to call his own. As the maître d’, he had handed out his card to every pretty potential-model face, thinking maybe he could transform beauty into talent, but it had yet to work out that way.

Buck’s direct boss at work, an agent named Gus, suggested Buck break out of the usual mold. “Find an ice skater,” he said. “Or a tennis player.”

Or a chef, Buck thought. Deacon.

He thought of the potential fortune he could earn by turning shaggy-haired, foul-mouthed, twenty-two-times-tattooed, brilliantly named Deacon Thorpe into a star. Celebrity chefs weren’t a phenomenon yet-but Buck sensed that they could be.

He’d set up a “meeting” in the hour before staff meal. Both Laurel and Hayes always came to staff meal-it was a deal that Deacon had set up with the restaurant owners-and so they also came to the meeting.