Elin Hilderbrand - The Matchmaker

The problem was that Elizabeth Jennings had followed Box out.

Dabney casually extracted herself from Clendenin’s arms, then she faced Box and Elizabeth head-on and said, “Everything is okay, everything’s fine. I just wasn’t feeling well is all.”

Box glared at Clendenin, and Dabney thought there might be another fistfight. She wanted to vaporize. Her mind was racing with the scandal of it all. Tomorrow, everyone would be talking about Dabney Kimball Beech; the island’s most beloved citizen, and its fiercest champion, would be revealed as a liar and a cheat.

And yet, she realized that this was her chance; all the other chances had been practice, trial runs. She wasn’t sure if she believed in Fate, but she was pretty sure that Clendenin Hughes had lost his arm and returned to Nantucket for a reason. He had been meant to reconcile with Dabney before it was too late. Take things a moment at a time.

Dabney cleared her throat and aimed her words at her impossibly dignified husband. She didn’t care one bit about Elizabeth. “You told me today that you thought I might have residual feelings for Clendenin, but that you didn’t know what those feelings were. The answer is that…I’m in love with him.” She paused, wondering if she’d really just said those words. “I’ve been in love with him my whole life. I’m so sorry.”

Box nodded, but it looked like the lightbulb was slow to come on. Was there a way that Dabney could have been clearer, or kinder? Finally, he said, “Thank you. Thank you for telling me. I thought I was going crazy. It’s nice to know that my instincts were correct and that my sanity, at least, is intact.” With that, Dabney watched him go, her brilliant and esteemed professor, the man who had saved her, the man who had loved her and allowed her to be herself, the man who had raised Agnes as his own, a good, principled man. Dabney decided to do him the favor of not chasing after him and exhibiting more histrionics.

Elizabeth made a noise-a sniff or a soft cry-then said, “I had no idea.”

Clen said, “Really, Elizabeth, this is none of your business.”

“I knew something was going on, too,” Elizabeth said. “On the Fourth of July I knew.” She shook her head as if to clear it, and then gave Dabney a wobbly smile. “You’ve got yourself a regular love triangle.”

Dabney thought, Was there ever anything regular about a love triangle? Maybe there was. Maybe years ago, while “overseas,” Elizabeth herself had been involved in a love triangle with Clen, or had wanted to be. What did Dabney know? Regret overwhelmed her at that moment. She had made a spectacular mess of things. As she gazed at the tent, its pearly, incandescent walls containing light and music and food and conversation, she realized that among her regrets was that she wouldn’t dance tonight.

Elizabeth said, “I’m going back in. See you two later, I guess.”

Clen said, “Have a good night.”

Elizabeth strolled back into the party with purpose, and Dabney shuddered. Her good name was about to be destroyed.

Clen said, “Well.”

Dabney said, “Well, what?”

Clen said, “You’ll have to ride home on my handlebars.”

There was a bottle of Grey Goose dangling from CJ’s left hand, two-thirds gone. Agnes noticed this, then his rumpled suit, which looked like he’d slept in it three days straight. His hair was standing on end, and he bared his glinting teeth. He was absolutely terrifying.

He said, “Hey, baby.”

“Hey,” she said. Her emotions surged at the sound of his voice, and at the raw physicality of him. He was here-he had skipped out on precious Bantam Killjoy and come to Nantucket to see her. There was something desperate and romantic about that, and she felt herself rethinking her decision.

He handed the bottle of vodka to Agnes and said, “You want?”

She accepted the bottle; it was icy cold. She brought it to her lips and threw back a little more than a shot, grateful for the cold burn down her throat and into her chest. Deep breath. She set the bottle down on the hood of the Prius.

What to say?

She wasn’t sure. She waited.

CJ took her face in his hands and kissed her hard, his teeth tearing at her lips. He grabbed her by the hair-it had grown past the nape of her neck over the summer-and yanked her head back like she was a doll he intended to decapitate.

“You sent back the ring,” he said.

“I…” She couldn’t talk; her neck was so stretched that the skin was taut, he was hurting her, and she was having a hard time getting air. “Let…go,” she said.

He lunged at her with his mouth, biting and sucking on her clavicle, chewing on her like a rabid dog. He was hurting her.

“Get off me!” she said.

CJ held her by the back of the head and grabbed her left wrist, right below her Cartier love bracelet. His grip was ironclad, a different kind of bracelet, a bracelet of fury. He shoved her up against the side of the Prius. She felt him hard against her leg, but she didn’t find it arousing. She wasn’t about to have sex with CJ here in Clendenin’s driveway.

She tried to push him away, but he only tightened his grip on her wrist.

Bruises, she thought. He’s going to leave bruises.

“Let go of me,” she said. He had a fistful of her hair. “You’re hurting me, CJ.”

“Hurting you?” he said. “Hurting you?” he screamed.“Let’s talk about who’s hurting who here. You sent back my ring! After all I’ve done for you!”

“Yes,” Agnes said, trying to placate him. “You have done a lot for me-”

“You don’t know the half of it!” he shouted. “Your little favorites, the ones you worry so much about? Quincy and…?”

“Dahlia,” Agnes bleated.

“I bought their mother an apartment!” CJ screamed. “A fucking apartment, so that they would have a home. I wanted to surprise you.”

“Oh my God,” Agnes said. CJ had bought Quincy and Dahlia’s mother an apartment? Agnes couldn’t believe it. And yet, it was exactly the kind of thing CJ did. He was insanely generous with material things, because there was some kind of deficiency in his heart.

“Thank you,” Agnes said. “That was very kind…”

“Kind? You think I did it to be kind? I did it because I love you!”

“Let go of my hair, CJ,” she said. “And let go of my arm.” She heard Manny Partida, clear as day: I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you.

“I sent the ring back because,” Agnes said. “Because-”

“Because why?” he demanded.

“Because I don’t want to marry you, CJ.”

CJ brought her head forward, nearly to his chest, and then he slammed her head back against the Prius. Agnes gasped. In the morning there would be a lump, she thought. An egg.

“Stop,” she said. “Please, CJ.”

“Please, Charlie,” he said. “Please Charlie please Charlie please Charlie please Charlie.” He slammed her head against the car again, and then again. Agnes was confused about what was happening; she felt something warm and wet in her hair. Was she bleeding?

“You bitch!” he screamed. “After all I’ve done for you! You came up here and started screwing somebody else!”

“No,” she said. “I did not! I swear I did not!”

He slammed her head again and this time the pain made Agnes’s knees buckle. CJ lifted her up by one arm; he was going to rip it out of its socket. Hair pulling, arm twisting, some not-so-nice stuff. She was going to faint. Is your fiancé a nice guy? There was a sticky trickle down the back of her neck, and Agnes vomited into the shells of the driveway.

“What the hell is going on here?” Another voice, growling and bearlike. And then a high-pitched cry that Agnes knew belonged to her mother.

Darling!

CJ let Agnes go and she collapsed in a heap. She touched her head. Blood. Her left arm was numb.

She heard a struggle, heavy breathing, fists against flesh. CJ was fighting with Clendenin. Clen, who had only one arm.

Dabney cried out, “Clen, stop, you’re going to get hurt.”

Hurt, Agnes thought. Hurthurthurthurthurt.

The blood running down her neck was half Clendenin’s blood.

Agnes opened her eyes in time to see Dabney climbing the porch stairs and Agnes thought, Call the police, Mom! Go inside and call the police! She couldn’t say the words. CJ was punching Clen the way she used to see him go after the bag at the gym. Relentlessly. And yet Clen was still on his feet, still swinging his right arm.

Agnes thought back to the moment when CJ Pippin was introduced to her, in the Waldorf ballroom, with a full orchestra playing in the background and canapés being served on silver trays. Their gala benefit had been the polar opposite of the cause they were raising money for. Agnes remembered being discomfited by this, even as she knew that throwing glamorous events was how one kept the doors open. CJ had asked Agnes to dance, and afterward he had brought her a glass of champagne. Then, during the Ask, he had raised his hand and donated a hundred thousand dollars. Agnes had gushed at his generosity. He had seemed like such a hero then.

“Leave him alone, you monster!” Dabney said. She was standing on the top step of the porch and she was holding a gun.

Gun? Agnes thought. My mother?

It was Clendenin’s BB gun, she realized then. But in the dark, the gun looked formidable, or at least it must have to CJ because he immediately backed off Clendenin and held his hands up in the air.

“You’re crazy,” CJ said to Dabney. “Crazy insane psycho nuts. You know that?”

“Yes,” Dabney said, walking toward CJ with the BB gun and pointing the muzzle straight into his face. “I’m well aware.”

Agnes closed her eyes. She was suddenly very, very tired. She thought, My mother is pointing a gun at CJ. She thought, My mother is crazy. But I love her. I love her so much.

He packed a bag, nothing unusual in that; his entire life with Dabney he had packed a bag each Monday and unpacked it on Friday, his entire life with Dabney had been two lives, his life here on Nantucket with her, and his life in Cambridge-or Washington, New York, London-without her.

Had that been the problem?

Which had been his “real” life? He had never had occasion to ask himself this question, although in the early days of their marriage, Dabney used to badger him. Did he love Harvard more than he loved her? Did he love economics more than he loved her?

You are my wife, he always answered. I love you in a way that one cannot love a university or a field of study.

She had asked-fifteen or twenty years ago-because she loved something else more than him, someone else, the boy who had left. She had never lied to him about that. The day Box proposed, she said, I will marry you but you must know that I will never recover from my feelings for Clendenin Hughes. He didn’t only break my heart, he stole it.

She had warned him.

Another man might have backed away. After all, who wanted to be number two? But the truth was, the specter of Clendenin Hughes had never bothered Box. Clendenin Hughes lived on the other side of the world. He would never return, but if he did, he would be faced with the ruins of what he’d left behind. He would certainly not be in any position to reclaim Dabney or Agnes.

That was what Box had thought.

Maybe if Box had been a more attentive husband, Dabney would have been able to withstand the temptation of Hughes’s return. Box was guilty of being busy and distant, of taking Dabney for granted, of leaving enough space in their marriage for Dabney to slip back and forth undetected. In better, closer marriages, he knew, there were no such spaces. Or maybe Dabney’s feelings for Hughes had grown stronger and deeper only because she had given him up. Box had never been good at understanding the complexities of other people, or even, sadly, of himself, but he did realize that unattainability was a powerful aphrodisiac, nearly impossible to battle against. It was, he thought with no small amount of irony, the simple law of supply and demand at work. We always want what we can’t have.

Box packed a bag, two bags, three bags. He was taking everything of consequence, even things he had duplicates of in Cambridge. Childishly, perhaps, he wanted Dabney to walk into this room tonight and feel his absence.

I’m in love with Clendenin. I’ve been in love with him my whole life. I’m so sorry.

Sorry, Box thought. Sorry?

He could reason all he wanted, but the truth was, he was in crisis, his bank had defaulted, his personal economy had crumbled. He would leave this house. He would leave the finest woman he had ever known, indeed, the finest human being he had ever known-and yes, he still believed that. He was John Boxmiller Beech, the Harvard professor, the textbook author, the economic consultant to the President of the United States, but none of that mattered without Dabney.