Elin Hilderbrand - Here’s to Us

Buck fidgeted in his chair while Angie served the berry crumble. He should go upstairs and tell Scarlett the news about the house. He should do it now, get it over with, and give her all night to process the situation.

Buck poised his fork over the deep-red berries, covered with golden dough and topped with vanilla-scented whipped cream. He decided to wait until morning.

Hayes struggled to push himself up in his chair. “I have to go upstairs,” he said.

“You don’t want your dessert?” Buck said.

“You’ve barely uttered a word all night, Hayes,” Belinda said. “Are you all right?”

Laurel leaned forward. “Honey?”

Hayes’s head fell forward on his neck, and he started snoring.

Laurel said, “Poor guy, he’s been through so much. Buck, will you help me get him up to bed?”

Buck reluctantly abandoned his crumble and took Hayes under one arm as Laurel moved the chair and tried to rouse him. “Hayes, honey, upsy-daisy.”

Hayes got to his feet, but it was slow moving into the house, through the kitchen, and up the stairs. Once they got Hayes to his room, he crashed onto the bed like a falling tree. Laurel tucked him in, smoothing his hair and kissing his bruised forehead. Then she and Buck tiptoed out to the hallway and shut the door.

Laurel looked at Buck in the dim light. “Do you think there’s something going on with him?”

Buck didn’t want to offer an opinion. He was no expert with women, and less of an expert with children, even when the child was thirty-four years old. If pressed, he would say, Hell yeah, something is going on with Hayes. Granted, the guy had just lost his father, so nobody expected him to be his best self, but Hayes was exceptionally off. Just off. Even before he’d ventured out on his own and gotten the shit kicked out of him.

“Everyone is grieving,” Buck said.

Laurel stepped into Buck’s arms and raised her face to him. He wondered if that was an invitation to kiss her. He wanted to so badly, but she had been clear about her wishes, so instead he gave her a hug, rubbed her back, and led her back down the stairs, where, he hoped, his crumble still waited.

Tri-Berry Crumble

SERVES 6 TO 8

1 quart fresh strawberries, hulled and halved

1 pint whole unsweetened blueberries, fresh or frozen

1 pint whole unsweetened raspberries, fresh or frozen

¾ cup granulated sugar

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

⅓ cup cassis

TOPPING

1 cup all-purpose flour

½ cup granulated sugar

½ cup light-brown sugar, lightly packed

¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup quick-cooking (not instant) oats (I like to use McCann’s, from Ireland)

12 tablespoons (1½ sticks) chilled, unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, for serving

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

Combine all the berries, sugar, flour, and cassis in a large mixing bowl and toss gently until all the ingredients are evenly combined. Spread the berry mixture evenly over the bottom of an 8 x 11-inch ceramic baking or gratin dish.

To make the topping: Place the flour, granulated sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, salt, and oats in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment. Blend together on low speed. Add the chilled butter, and continue mixing on low to medium-low speed until the dry ingredients have become moistened and crumbly. Sprinkle the topping over the berries, covering them almost completely.

Bake the crumble until the fruit juices are bubbling and the topping is golden brown, 50 to 60 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or dollop of whipped cream.

At least dinner tasted good, Angie thought as she emptied the disgusting, gluey, gray contents of the Skinny4Life can down the drain. The conversation-well, that had been out of her control.

Laurel and Buck offered to clean up. Belinda excused herself with a headache. Angie followed her mother out of the kitchen.

“Are you okay?” Angie asked.

“You know, Laurel Thorpe isn’t the saint you think she is,” Belinda said. “She had a clandestine tryst with your father while you were still a child, while we were still a family. The whole do-gooder thing is a front. She called Bob last night…”

“What?” Angie said. “Who called Bob?”

“Laurel did,” Belinda said.

“What for?”

“To tell on me,” Belinda said. “I had a little run-in with Buck…”

“With Buck?” Angie hissed. Her head was spinning. She could no longer keep track of the treachery. Laurel with Deacon, Scarlett with Bo Tanner, Belinda with… Buck?

“She blew it way out of proportion,” Belinda said. “It was nothing. She called Bob so he would have the upper hand.”

“I don’t want to hear any more,” Angie said. “You baffle me.”

“I baffle you?” Belinda said. “I’m the only one here looking out for you, darling. Do you know where I went today? I went into town to buy you a house.”

“What?” Angie said.

“I tried to buy One Forty-One Main Street,” Belinda said. “The one with the white pillars and the glass porch? I knocked on the door and made them an offer.”

“Oh my God, mother,” Angie said. She tried to imagine what that scene had been like. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

“I was trying to help you, darling,” Belinda said. “I did it for you. I wanted to buy you another house. A better house.”

“I don’t want you to buy me another house!” Angie said. “I want this house; don’t you get it? This house and this house only. This is where I lived with Deacon. That room right there is where we used to play Monopoly when it rained. I was the shoe and Deacon was the wheelbarrow and Hayes was that stupid little Yorkie. This house is where I tasted my first clam, it’s where I used to catch fireflies in the yard, it’s where we sat on the back deck and pointed out the Big Dipper. That sofa is where we fell asleep doing our summer reading for school. Your room, Clara’s room, is where we got punished when we stayed out at bonfires until two in the morning. This house is Deacon. There is no such thing as a ‘better’ house. Please don’t pretend like there is.”

“Okay, okay, calm down,” Belinda said. “I was only trying to help.”

“If you want to help,” Angie said, “then start getting along with everyone else.”

“Or,” Belinda said, “they could start getting along with me.”

“That’s right, I forgot,” Angie said. “The world revolves around you.” With that, Angie stepped out onto the front porch to have a cigarette. She ran her bare foot over the board that JP had replaced. Deacon had come to this island with Laurel first, then Belinda, then Scarlett, but he had certainly never meant for the three of them to be here at the same time-even after he was dead.

As Angie blew out a stream of smoke, a car pulled into the driveway. It was a minivan with a bright-orange top hat: All Point Taxi. A man stepped out onto the driveway.

It was… Joel Tersigni.

Joel! Angie tried to breathe, but she coughed.

Joel.

Angie took the last drag of her cigarette and flicked it into the grass, which was so brittle and brown, Angie feared it might catch fire, but the ember burned softly out.

She raised her eyes to Joel. There were all kinds of panicked emotions stirring in her gut, but she tamped them down.

“Angie,” he said.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

He paid the driver and pulled out the black nylon Nike bag that he usually took to the gym. That was what he had brought for luggage.

“Dory threw me out,” he said. “I went to your apartment first, but then I remembered you were here, so I drove up and took the ferry. I have nowhere else to go.”

“I called your phone, and Dory answered,” Angie said. “She said horrible things to me.”

“Babe, I know,” Joel said. “She stole my phone. She made me tell her everything.”

“Made you how?” Angie said. “I thought the plan if we ever got caught was to deny deny deny.”

“She had access to my cell phone records, detailed records that you can only get if… well, if you’re an attorney or a spy. She knew a lot, but I wasn’t sure how much-and she tricked me into filling in the blanks. Then she threatened to go public with it-to the press, to your mother, to our friends in New Canaan, to my parents.”

Joel’s parents, the owners of the Biblical Dinner Theater in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Adultery wouldn’t be looked kindly upon by them, Angie supposed.

“She said if I left quietly, if I left without taking anything, she would tell everyone I’d gone on vacation, and then, after the summer, when the boys were home from camp, she would say we decided to separate. She would say it was a mutual decision.”

Joel and Angie both turned to watch the cabbie back out of the driveway and take off down Hoicks Hollow Road. When Joel faced Angie again, she could see how rattled he looked. He held out his arms. “Come here.”

She hesitated, thinking about JP nocking an arrow for Angie to shoot. She heard JP say, Line up the pin.

But she wasn’t strong enough to resist Joel. She loved him. Forty-eight hours of silence hadn’t changed that. She stepped forward, and he grabbed her up.

“There’s my girl,” Joel said in her ear. “I missed you. I’ve been trying to find a way to get out of my marriage without blowing my life to bits. Dory is tough, Ange.”

Angie nodded against Joel’s chest. She had missed the way her face rested right against his heart; she had missed the way he smelled. And she understood what he meant. She, Angie, was an island-especially now that Deacon was dead. She wasn’t responsible for anyone; she didn’t own anything. Joel had a wife and kids, a house, a car, a community, friends. On Tuesday nights, when the restaurant was closed, he had a poker group. He was a member of the Lions Club, and he ran the Toys for Tots drive at Christmastime. His life was more than just the restaurant and the city and her. A lot more.

Angie lifted her face to Joel’s, and he kissed her, their first kiss since she was in his car on Seventy-Third Street. She let herself get lost in it. He whispered, “Where can we go?”

“The house,” she said, pulling his hand.

“Is your mother inside?” he asked.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Angie said. “You’ll meet her in the morning.”

Angie led Joel up onto the porch. She stepped over the board that JP had replaced; she couldn’t think about JP right now. The front hallway was empty. Angie led Joel up the stairs, to her room. She put a finger on her lips and shut the door. Joel scooped Angie up in his arms and laid her down on the bed.

Mouth, neck, breasts, tongue, nipples, ribs, belly, the curve inside her hip… ohhhhhh. Joel. Joel! He had to sandwich the side of his hand in her mouth so she wouldn’t scream and set off alarms. Sex sex sex sex sex. It meant nothing, Angie thought. And it meant everything.

A little girl in a sparkly silver dress with double diagonal fishtail braids empties the jar of glass onto the floor and begins to sort it by color: white, brown, green, blue, lavender. The glass is broken but not sharp. It has smooth edges and frosted surfaces. It’s beach glass-shards pulled from the ocean after years and years of tumbling through the sand and salt water. Among the pieces of glass, the girl finds a packet of something that looks like brown sugar. The girl loves brown sugar; she eats it on toast. The girl opens the packet and empties it into her mouth.

Belinda woke up with a start.

No!

She looked around the dark room-Nantucket. Belinda was in Clara’s narrow, uncomfortable nursemaid’s bed, under one thin sheet. She’d had a bad dream about… about… it slipped down the drain. Gone. She couldn’t remember what the dream had been about. It was something bad, something with a hole or a cavern.

Then she had it back. It had been about Ellery. Ellery mistaking the heroin for sugar, Ellery eating the heroin.

Good God, Belinda had just left the heroin downstairs in the powder room. After a glass of wine and the disturbing conversation at dinner, Belinda had forgotten all about it.

She slipped out of bed and crept down the stairs to the powder room. The packet of heroin was exactly where she’d left it, tucked under her special piece of beach glass. She plucked it out and carried it back upstairs.

She sat on her sorry excuse for a bed with the heroin in her lap. What to do?

She tiptoed down the hall to Hayes’s room and tapped on the door. No response. Certainly he was fast asleep. Well, Belinda didn’t care. She opened the door and stepped in.