Elin Hilderbrand - The Rumor

It had tasted like lemon-flavored lighter fluid. Hope nearly spat it out, but she didn’t want to call attention to herself, and so she swallowed it.

Alcohol was disgusting.

The ringing of the phone stopped. Hope’s stomach gurgled. She really hoped she didn’t puke; she tried not to think about the martini. It had been so clear and innocuous looking that Hope had thought it would taste like water.

Suddenly, she heard her parents’ voices in the hallway. Her mother was hitting what Hope thought of as her hysterical register. She heard them open the door to Allegra’s bedroom, which elicited more hysteria from Grace. So Allegra was still out. Hope checked her phone. It was ten after three.

Wow, Hope thought. Their curfew was eleven thirty. Allegra had shattered her previous broken curfew record of one forty-five.

Grace started to cry, and Eddie was trying to comfort her, but he started sounding a little shaky himself, and suddenly Hope wondered if maybe there was something really wrong-like maybe Allegra was hurt.

Or…?

Hope made it to her trash can in the nick of time. Oh God, she thought. The damned martini, never again, and never again clam chowder or Caesar salad, which was too bad, because they were her favorites, but, ugh, ick, vomiting ruined everything. She heaved and spat, and then, trembling, she collapsed on her bed until she had a rush of that thank-God-I-got-it-out feeling. Then she managed to stand and open her door.

“Dad?” she said. “Mom? What’s going on?”

“Your sister is in trouble,” Eddie said. “I’m headed to the police station. You go back to bed, please.”

“What kind of trouble?” Hope asked. The police station wasn’t good, but it was better than the hospital. “Is she hurt?”

“Not yet,” Eddie said. “At least not until I get a hold of her.”

Oh boy, Hope thought.

Grace said, “You’re such a good girl, sweetheart. But your sister…”

Hope didn’t want to hear it. She retreated to the safety of her bedroom and closed the door before Grace could finish her sentence.

Hope was such a good girl, but Allegra was… not. Nope, not at all. She and Ian Coburn had been caught out in Ram’s Pasture, sitting on the hood of Ian’s Camaro in just their underwear, drinking Wild Turkey and smoking weed. Further search of the car by police turned up a quarter ounce of cocaine, enough to arrest Ian, who was nineteen.

The police officer who found them was Curren Brancato, although it had been the chief of police who had called the house, as a courtesy to Eddie.

More interesting than what happened to Allegra was how Hope found out about it. At five thirty in the morning, she was awoken (with a funky mouth and the stench of vomit in her room) by a text from Brick Llewellyn.

It said: I saw the photo. Your sister was cheating and you knew and you didn’t tell me.

And Hope thought: What photo?

Hope responded: ??????????

Brick texted: Hollis sent me a photo of Allegra and Ian in their underwear sitting on Ian’s Camaro. They got caught smoking dope and drinking by our friend Officer Brancato. Ian = cocaine dealer = going to jail.

As Hope was processing this, there was a knock on her door.

“Come in,” Hope croaked.

Allegra tiptoed in, closing and locking the door behind her. She slipped into bed next to Hope.

“Whoa,” Hope said. This kind of physical proximity to her sister was extremely unexpected. Allegra and Hope used to do things like snuggle in bed together and flip each other over in cheerleading moves, but it had been years and years since Allegra had voluntarily touched Hope. Hope thought she might welcome Allegra’s return to the bubble of their twinhood, but she merely felt disgusted.

A second text came into Hope’s phone, and as Allegra shook and wept into Hope’s pillow, Hope checked it. There was the picture of Allegra and Ian. Ian was in just a pair of navy-blue boxer briefs, with a bottle of Wild Turkey between his legs. Allegra was in her pale-pink bra and panties-for a second Hope thought she was nude-and she was pinching a joint at her lips. Her eyes were closed on the inhale. This photographic evidence was so damning that Hope immediately deleted it, even while realizing that this didn’t make the picture go away. Who had taken it? Hope wondered. Then, she realized, it must have been Officer Brancato. With his own personal phone. And he texted it to Hollis. This must have been some kind of professional breach of ethics, right? It hardly mattered, because, as the old adage went, a picture was worth a thousand words, and all thousand of these words said that Allegra was doing drugs, drinking, and cheating.

For the first time in years and years, Hope felt bad for her sister. She patted Allegra’s hair and rubbed her back in circles.

“Sorry I don’t smell that good,” Hope said. “I puked.”

“I don’t care,” Allegra said. “I probably don’t smell like flowers either.”

True, Hope thought. Marijuana, booze, cigarettes-or, as Mrs. Aguiar in the rectory office would say, the odors of hell and damnation.

“What are you the most upset about?” Hope asked.

This question was met with an extended bout of tears. Hope continued to rub her sister’s bony back. Allegra barely ate; possibly, she was still holding out for that modeling contract. Or she was so thin because she snorted cocaine with Ian Coburn off the dashboard of the red Camaro. Nothing, at this point, was beyond the realm of possibility.

“Ian going to jail?” Allegra said. “Brick hating my guts? Hollis telling everyone I’m a slut? Curren Brancato busted us. He took a picture. I thought he would be cool about it. I thought he would just let us go. But he was out to prove himself, or whatever. Big man on the Nantucket police force. As soon as he got back to his squad car, he texted the picture to Hollis. And Hollis, my own best friend, my soul sister, texted it to the rest of the universe.”

Hope tried to think up some words of comfort. Hollis had sent the picture out. She and the rest of Allegra’s friends were a gang of backstabbing opportunists.

“Mom and Dad are pissed,” Allegra said. “Dad grounded me.”

“Wow,” Hope said. Eddie never grounded Allegra, but apparently being called in the middle of the night by the chief of police had done the trick.

“And he took my phone,” Allegra said.

“Oh boy,” Hope said.

“Can I use yours, please?” Allegra asked. “I need to text Brick.”

“Just call him from the landline,” Hope said.

“Let me use your phone.”

“No,” Hope said. “I’m not comfortable with that.”

“Not comfortable?” Allegra said.

“Sorry,” Hope said.

Allegra’s face took on an expression that Hope thought of as Standard Operating Bitch, but then, perhaps realizing that wouldn’t get her what she wanted, she dissolved into tears. “What should I do, Hope?”

“Probably,” Hope said, feeling a surge of tenderness for her sister, “you should try and sleep.”

Later, when Allegra was in fact asleep and snoring softly in Hope’s bed, Hope texted Brick.

She said: You should probably forgive her.

No way, he texted back. Never.

Eddie was still half-asleep when he arrived at the police station to pick up Allegra. The Chief had been the one to call Eddie, and when Eddie heard the Chief’s voice, he turned into quivering jelly. He thought, Barbie was right. He thought, The girls have been caught with Kasper Snacks out at Ten Low Beach Road. Eddie wasn’t going to lie. When the Chief said he was calling because Allegra had been caught drinking in Ram’s Pasture, Eddie had felt nearly giddy with relief. Then the appropriate emotions caught up with him, and he said, “For God’s sake, Ed, you’re kidding.”

“I wish I were,” the Chief said. “I’m sorry, Eddie. She’s at the station. You’ll have to go get her.”

Eddie said, “I guess I took the wrong daughter out for dinner.”

The Chief said, “They’re teenagers, Eddie. What can you do?”

The Coburn kid’s parents were at the station, the father a hothead all up in arms, yelling at the staff officer, the mother blond and silently uptight. Eddie didn’t know either of them well enough to say hello. He would have liked to have told them what a bad influence and corrupting reprobate their son was, but Eddie focused on collecting Allegra and getting her home.

Once in the car, Eddie grounded Allegra for the rest of her life. Then he took her phone. He said, Do you know what it feels like to have the chief of police call in the middle of the night? Your mother and I thought you were dead! But no, you’re just a druggie boozehound sitting out in public in your underwear with some guy who isn’t even your boyfriend! They have names for people like that, Allegra, and they aren’t very flattering!

Allegra cried. And then she bawled and hiccupped and sounded as if she were having an epileptic seizure. Eddie nearly handed the phone over and told her that everything was going to be okay and that he was just glad she was safe. After all, nobody was perfect, least of all him. But he recognized that one of the reasons Allegra had acted this way was because Eddie and Grace indulged her. It had to stop!

When Eddie woke up the next morning, it felt like his heart had been braised in a stew pot overnight. He couldn’t move, could not rise or get dressed or brush his teeth or face down a cup of coffee or imagine himself upright behind the wheel of his Cayenne. Even the name of his car inflamed his heart. Why had he ever bought it? Because it was a Porsche, because he wanted to impress his clients, because he wanted to give the impression of being hot.

He couldn’t move from his supine position under the covers. He couldn’t rise to relieve his bladder.

“Grace,” he moaned. There was no answer.

Eddie closed his eyes and prayed for sleep. For the first time in forever, Eddie wasn’t going to work.

When he awoke at noon, the house was quiet. Where was Grace? Had she come to check on him? There was no note, no glass of ice water, no new bottle of cherry Tums placed thoughtfully on his nightstand. Did she not find it unusual that Eddie had slept until noon? Was she not worried?

Miraculously, Eddie found he could stand, although he was shaky. He put on his oldest, softest khaki shorts and his T-shirt from Santos Rubbish Removal, and he crept out into the hallway. It had been so long since he’d been home in the middle of a weekday that he felt like a prowler. The doors to the twins’ rooms were closed. Were they still sleeping? Hope had a job at the church rectory-she would most likely be there-but what about Allegra? Had she gotten up to go to her SAT prep course, or was that over? Eddie couldn’t remember. He was a lazy-ass parent. He paid for Allegra’s class, but when he remembered to ask her how it was going, he barely listened to her answer. And when the class was over, how did Allegra spend her days? Eddie had a vague idea that she went to the beach with her friends. Where, he now suspected, she smoked weed and drank Wild Turkey. But that lifestyle was coming to a screaming halt. Eddie should bring Allegra into the office and make her file-but he was afraid she might develop a taste for the business, and he didn’t want that. Real estate crapped upon the soul.

Allegra was probably asleep, he decided. He should wake her up and make her help Grace with the hens. He stared at her closed bedroom door, considering this-but he was in too much pain for a confrontation.

Eddie shuffled down the stairs to the kitchen. Grace had been to the henhouse already, probably twice. Seven dozen eggs waited in cartons on the counter. And there were fixings out for lunch; it looked as if Grace were making turkey club sandwiches. Eddie was starving, but he feared eating.

He poured himself a cold glass of milk. Through the open kitchen window, he heard Grace crying. Naturally, she would be upset about Allegra; she would be blaming herself. He heard her say, “I’m afraid of her. Isn’t that the worst thing you’ve ever heard? I’m afraid of my own daughter.”

It wasn’t the worst thing Eddie had ever heard. He was a bit afraid of Allegra himself. She was so confident, so in charge of her world, that he sometimes forgot she had been alive for only sixteen years. Of course, Eddie wielded slightly more influence over their daughter because he controlled her spending power, but he agreed that Allegra was intimidating.

Whoever Grace was talking to murmured a response that Eddie didn’t hear. Who was she with? But no sooner did he ask himself this than he realized Grace was confiding in the gardener. Benton Coe.