Elin Hilderbrand - Silver Girl

Meredith said, “Ashlyn, are you hungry? Would you like some summer-squash soup? It’s homemade.”

Ashlyn looked at Meredith, then at Toby, then at Connie, and she burst into tears.

Connie said, “Honey, what’s wrong?” She realized then that something horrible must have happened. Ashlyn wouldn’t have shown up here out of the blue for Connie’s sake.

“Bridget and I…” She tried to get air in. “Bridget and I…”

“Split up?” Connie said.

Ashlyn nodded. “For good this time!” she wailed and dropped her head to the table.

Oh, no. Oh, dear. Connie wasn’t sure what to do. She touched the top of Ashlyn’s head, the pale hair. “Oh, honey. I’m sorry.”

Eventually, Ashlyn raised her head. Her nose was red and running. “We split earlier this summer…”

“When you called me before?” Connie said.

“When I called you before,” Ashlyn said.

“But…?”

“But then we got back together, and I didn’t feel like I could talk to you about it. Because of what happened at the funeral.”

“Ashlyn,” Connie said. “I’m sorry about what happened at the funeral.”

“I love Bridget so much,” Ashlyn said. “And she was my best friend besides.” They all waited, watching Ashlyn cry, and Connie thought, I’d do anything to make her feel better. But there was nothing. Of course, there was nothing any of them could do.

“What happened?” Connie asked.

“I wanted a baby,” Ashlyn said.

Instinctively, Connie made a noise. She pressed her lips together.

“And Bridget didn’t,” Ashlyn said. “I really did and she really didn’t. And two months ago when she found out that I’d been to a donation center and had put myself on the list for insemination, she told me she was leaving. She moved out. Our separation lasted two and a half days, then I went to her and said I couldn’t stand to be away from her, and I said I would give up the idea of having children.”

“She doesn’t want children right now?” Connie asked. “Or not ever?”

“Not ever,” Ashlyn said. “She’s on track to be the best female pediatric heart surgeon in the state of Florida. She wants to be the best pediatric heart surgeon, man or woman, in the country someday. She said she was around children enough to know that she wasn’t capable of raising her own. She thinks she’s too selfish, too driven.”

“But lots of men are like that,” Connie said. “If you agreed to stay at home…”

“She still wouldn’t do it,” Ashlyn said. She started crying again.

Connie squeezed Ashlyn’s hand, thinking, This is my daughter’s hand. This is all I’ve been wishing for.

Meredith set down a bowl of warm soup and a hunk of baguette and a glass of water. Toby cleared his throat. He said, “So then why did you break up?”

Ashlyn wiped at her red eyes. Her hair was in a messy bun. It didn’t look like she’d seen the sun all summer. But she was, absolutely, the most beautiful creature Connie had ever laid eyes on.

Ashlyn said, “I’m pregnant. Due in April.”

Toby jumped in surprise. Meredith said, “Oh, Ashlyn, that’s wonderful.”

Connie thought, Wolf! Wolf! Did you hear that?

Ashlyn was still crying. “And I thought news of a baby, a real live baby, would change Bridget’s mind.” She sniffled. Meredith brought a box of Kleenex. Ashlyn blew her nose. “But it didn’t.”

“So here you are,” Toby said.

She crumpled the Kleenex in her hand. “So here I am.” She looked at Connie with bleary eyes. “I’ve been a terrible daughter, and I know I don’t deserve a second chance, but I came here because I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“That sounds familiar,” Meredith said. She rested her hands on Toby’s shoulders.

Connie thought, What is the most important lesson of all? Perseverance? Honesty? Forgiveness? Love?

Wolf, Ashlyn, Toby, Meredith, Dan. Ashlyn, Ashlyn, Ashlyn-Connie and Wolf’s daughter, their only child, conceived so many years ago in the back of a pickup truck a few miles away, beneath a sky filled with stars. Ashlyn was going to have a baby. Ashlyn had been so angry-she had been silent and seething-but she had come back to Connie because Connie hadn’t stopped loving Ashlyn even for a second. Ashlyn would soon know it herself: parents didn’t stop loving their children for any reason.

Love, then, Connie decided. The most important lesson is love.

Meredith felt like they were all graduating from college, and everyone knew what the next step was but her.

In the span of sixteen or seventeen hours, Connie’s life had transformed as dramatically (almost) as Meredith’s life had the previous December-only for the better. Connie would return to Bethesda the Tuesday after Labor Day. That was as planned. What was different now was that Ashlyn was putting her house in Tallahassee on the market and moving back up to Bethesda, into Connie’s house. Ashlyn would live with Connie indefinitely. She would have the baby, and Connie would care for it while Ashlyn went back to work. Ashlyn had applied for a job in the ped onc department at WHC, and if she didn’t get that job, she would look elsewhere.

“Lots of good hospitals in Washington,” Connie said to Meredith and Toby. “And just think, next summer when we’re all here, we’ll have a baby!”

Next summer when we’re all here: These words were a balm to Meredith. She had been invited back. It took some of the sting out of leaving, although it did nothing to help her sense of floundering, about where to go or what to do in the next ten months.

Toby was going back to Annapolis. A brand-new freshman class of cadets awaited.

“Now I wish I hadn’t sold my boat,” Toby said. “Now I wish I could just sail with you around the world.”

Sailing with Toby around the world: it was appealing, Meredith had to admit.

“I know you,” Meredith said. “You have to have your freedom.”

“I’d like to share that freedom with you,” he said. “Give you a little sip of it. It’s the most intoxicating thing on earth.”

But Meredith’s freedom was still in the firm grip of federal investigators.

They all sat on the back deck, enjoying the sun: Connie, Ashlyn, Toby, Meredith. They had a pitcher of iced tea (decaf, for Ashlyn) and a bowl of Bing cherries, which they passed around. Ashlyn was nauseous; every half hour or so, she’d go into the house to throw up.

“I can’t believe how lousy I feel,” she said.

“I could tell you stories,” Connie said. “About you.”

Meredith squinted at the ocean. She decided to speak the words that were on everyone’s mind. “I never want to leave here.”

“You don’t have to,” Connie said. “You know you don’t have to go anywhere.”

The phone rang inside. The phone, the phone. Meredith’s shoulders tensed. “Maybe that’s Dan,” she said.

“Not for another thirty-two hours,” Connie said.

“I’ll get it,” Toby said. He heaved himself up and out of his chaise. A second later, he poked his head out and said, “Meredith, it’s for you.”

“Of course,” Connie said.

“Is it Dev?” Meredith asked.

“I don’t believe so,” Toby said.

Leo, Carver, Freddy? Freddy, Freddy, Freddy? It was official: Meredith hated the telephone. The phone terrified her.

It was Ed Kapenash, chief of police. He wanted Meredith to come down to the station.

“I think we’ve found our man,” he said. “And our woman.”

Meredith and Connie went to the police station together. Although it was Meredith who was being terrorized, the property belonged to Connie. She was the only one who could press charges.

“Who do you think it is?” Connie said. “Do you think it’s someone you know? Do you think it’s your friend from Palm Beach?”

“I don’t know,” Meredith said. She was in a hazy daze. It was hot outside. She wanted to be on the deck. She wanted to go for a swim. She wanted to whip up more vinaigrette. She wanted Freddy to call. Most of all, that was what she wanted. She didn’t want to be going into the police station to meet her own personal terrorist.

“Right down the hall,” the secretary said. She stared grimly at Meredith for an extra second, and Meredith guessed that this was the kind of person who would dress up as “Meredith Delinn” for Halloween. “First door on the left.”

Connie led, Meredith followed. The first door on the left was unmarked.

“This one?” Connie said.

“That’s what the lovely woman said.”

Connie knocked, and Ed Kapenash opened the door.

“Come in,” he said. He ushered them in to what looked like a classroom. There was a long particleboard table, ten folding chairs, a green blackboard coated with yellow chalk dust. Two people sat at the table already, two people whom Meredith could only describe as hungry-looking. The man was beefy with a thick neck, a buzz cut of dirt brown hair, a gold hoop earring, and a T-shirt that appeared to be advertising Russian beer. He looked familiar to Meredith. She felt like she had seen that T-shirt before. Meredith-got a hot, leaky feeling of fear. The woman, probably in her midthirties, had very short hair dyed jet black. She wore jeans shorts and a sleeveless yellow blouse. She had a bruise on one cheek. Meredith couldn’t believe these two were just sitting at the table, as though they had arrived early for dinner.

“Mikhail Vetsilyn and Dmitria Sorchev,” the chief said. “They were stopped on Milestone Road for speeding at two o’clock this morning. They said they were headed to Tom Nevers to see ‘an old friend.’ The van reeked of marijuana smoke. The officer on duty, Sergeant Dickson, asked them to step out of the van. He then proceeded to check the back of the van. He found three five-gallon jugs of gasoline and fourteen empty cans of electric-green spray paint. He called in reinforcements and did a full check of the van, and they found this.” The chief held up a plastic bag containing a medieval-looking curved dagger, covered with blood and hair. Meredith looked down into her lap.

“Have they confessed?” Connie asked.

“They’ve confessed,” the chief said. “Two acts of vandalism for her. That, plus the unlawful slaying of a sea mammal for him. God only knows what they were going to do with the gasoline.”

“Burn the house down,” the man said.

“Hey!” The chief’s voice was like a whip. Meredith looked up in alarm. There was the chief, being chieflike. “I’m happy to book you with attempted arson,” he said. He turned to Connie and Meredith. “I assume you want to press charges.”

“Burn my house down?” Connie said. “My husband designed that house. God, yes, I want to press charges.”

“But wait,” Meredith said. “Who are they?” She lowered her voice, trying to convince herself they wouldn’t hear her, and if they did hear her that they wouldn’t understand. “Are they Russian?” Were these the assassins the Russian mob had sent? Two people who looked like they’d escaped from the gulag?

“They’re from Belarus,” the chief said. “Minsk.”

Minsk. Meredith looked at the woman. Like me, also from Minsk. “Are you a housekeeper?” she said. “Do you clean houses?”

The young woman nodded.

Yes, okay. Meredith said, “Did you give your life savings to your employer to invest with Delinn Enterprises? A hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars?”

The girl twitched her head. “Yes,” she said. “How you know?”

“I met a friend of yours,” Meredith said.

Connie eyed her quizzically.

“At the salon.”

“Ahhh,” Connie said.

Meredith studied the man. She had seen him before. Burn the house down. She had heard his voice before. And then she remembered: She had seen him on the ferry. He had been in line with her when she went to get coffee for her and Connie. He must have recognized her then. He must have followed Connie’s Escalade out to Tom Nevers.

“We can drop the two vandalism charges on her,” the chief said, “but the unlawful slaying of a sea mammal will stick with him regardless, as well as a marijuana-possession charge.”

“Drop the vandalism charges,” Meredith whispered.

“What?” Connie said.

“She lost her life savings.”

“So?” Connie said. “It’s my house. My car.”

“Would you ladies like to talk about this out in the hallway?” the chief asked.

“No,” Meredith said. She smiled at Connie, then whispered, “She lost a lot of money, Con. She lost everything.”

Connie shook her head, unconvinced.

“And here’s the other thing,” Meredith said. “If they hadn’t spray painted the house, you wouldn’t have met Dan.”

“Oh, come on,” Connie said.

“You should be thanking them,” Meredith said.

Connie rolled her eyes. She turned to the chief. “Okay, we’re out of it. You’ll punish him for killing Harold? And you’ll make sure neither one of them does anything like this again?”