Elin Hilderbrand - The Rumor

Clara Teasdale was smitten with the yard and probably also with Benton, who was taking enormous pride in showing off his favorite features-the rocks of the streambed, the perennials, the roses, which were luscious enough to eat. The entire property was showing off. Benton lingered by the bench that held the potted ferns, and he described how he’d found the only Parisian antiques dealer wise enough to salvage the old benches from the Jardin des Tuileries.

Grace took over with Clara when it was time to talk about the hens. She even let Clara harvest half a dozen pale-blue eggs from the nesting boxes, despite the ladies’ clucking disapproval at a stranger performing this task. Grace then threw open the door to the garden shed and listened to Clara oooh and ahhh over Grace’s collection of watering cans and the high polish of the copper sink and the practicality yet allure of the soapstone countertop.

Big George snapped photos in a constant, clicking stream.

Grace showed off the riding mower in its alcove, then Big George asked Grace if she wouldn’t mind bringing it out to the middle of the emerald-green grass and perching upon it in her pink linen sheath.

Clickclickclick.

As the hour wore on, there were suggestions of other fanciful photos-one of Benton amid the roses, brandishing the largest set of clippers, one of Grace standing ankle deep in the shallow end of her pool, and one of both Benton and Grace hanging from their arms from the branch of the big elm.

Then it was time for lunch. They hadn’t discussed lunch as part of the shoot, but, nevertheless, Grace had gone all out. She’d made six kinds of tea sandwich-egg salad, naturally; cucumber and herbed cream cheese; radish and sweet butter; curried chicken salad; roast beef with horseradish mayo; and ham and baby Swiss. She had also bought three cartons of big, fat strawberries, and she’d made meringues and fresh lime curd.

Big George snapped photos of the food, and Grace was tickled.

She pulled a bottle of Schramsberg rosé sparkling wine from Eddie’s wine cellar, and, using Grace’s ten-inch chef’s knife, Benton sabered off the top. The cork landed in the daylily bed, and everyone cheered. Grace, Benton, and Clara sat for the lunch, and they posed for Big George. Grace fed Benton a strawberry. Clara overfilled her champagne flute and drowned her ham and Swiss. Grace made Big George a plate piled high with sandwiches, and when he stopped to eat, Grace stole his camera and took pictures of him stuffing his face.

Benton said to George, “Are you a Stones fan, man?”

George said, “Isn’t everybody?”

Benton plugged his phone into the outdoor speaker and played “Loving Cup.” He poured the last of the sparkling wine between Grace’s and Clara’s glasses.

Benton said, “This has sort of been the theme song of our summer.”

Clara said, “I can honestly say I’ve never had this much fun at a shoot before.”

Grace agreed. It was fun. She envisioned life with Benton being this playful, this sensuous and carefree, every single day.

As Clara finished her wine, she ran through the notes she’d taken, aloud: Benton, Ohio State grounds-crew work-study job; Surrey, England; passion for roses; Savannah, Oxford, the Nantucket Historical Association.

Clara looked up and narrowed her eyes. “How did you find Grace?”

Benton gave Grace a look that could only be described as filled with love. “She found me,” he said.

Clickclickclick.

Many of us knew the Pancik property would be featured in Sunday’s Boston Globe, but others were taken by surprise as we stirred cream and sugar into our freshly brewed coffee and opened our newspapers. However, even those of us who knew to expect the article were astonished by what we saw. For starters, the article was entitled Nantucket’s Private Eden. And the first photo-BAM! larger than life and in full color-was of Grace Pancik feeding Benton Coe a fat, delectable strawberry.

Whoa!

The caption read: Homeowner Grace Pancik enjoys an alfresco luncheon with landscape architect Benton Coe, owner of Coe Designs.

The article read: Some matches are made in heaven, such as the one between Nantucket resident Grace Pancik and Benton Coe, the man she hired to design and execute the landscaping of her three-acre property in Wauwinet.

Whoa!

Followed by a few paragraphs of background on Benton: impressive, but nothing we didn’t already know.

Followed by a few paragraphs of background on Grace: Mrs. Pancik was a French-literature major at Mount Holyoke College, which explains her fondness for the garden bench salvaged from the Jardin des Tuileries that is said to date back to the age of Louis XIV, Colbert, and the renowned Parisian landscape architect André Le Nôtre. This exact bench used to grace a long terrace, overlooking the Seine, called the Terrasse du Bord-de-l’Eau and most likely provided respite for the likes of Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet after a tiring visit to the nearby Louvre. Such vivid historical details thrill Mrs. Pancik and fuel her romantic imagination.

Mrs. Pancik is also passionate about her daylily bed, which she planted as a tribute to her beloved, now-deceased grandmother, Sabine Roddin-Baste, who kept an estate in Wayland with an apple orchard and a croquet lawn.

“My grandmother Sabine adored daylilies,” Mrs. Pancik said. “She was the one who fostered my deep appreciation for green spaces.”

Followed by a photo collage: Grace aboard a riding mower, looking not unlike a queen upon a throne; Grace and Benton hanging side by side from a branch like children on a playground; Grace drinking from a flute of champagne as Benton gazed upon her; Grace wading in the shallow end of her pool; Benton standing in the rose bed with a gargantuan pair of clippers; one of the hens-Martha or Dolly-strutting in the yard; and the inside of the garden shed, copper farmer’s sink gleaming like a new penny. The sign above the sink read: A garden is not a matter of life or death. It is far more important than that.

Followed by paragraphs about how Grace and Benton collaborated on every aspect of the yard in their attempt to create different “moments.” The pool and hot tub, tiled in bottle green and surrounded by antique pavers and real Nantucket cobblestones, made one feel that one had happened across a swimming hole in the woods. The rolling green lawn encouraged a stroll toward the Adirondack chairs, set where one could simultaneously hear the stream that ran along the back of the Pancik property and see the sailboats on Polpis Harbor. Suspended between two-hundred-year-old elms was a hammock where Mrs. Pancik often relaxed as she read Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas within full view of the glorious rose bed, featuring twenty-two varieties of rose.

“But the essence of what we were trying to accomplish,” Coe says, “is embodied in the garden shed.”

Mrs. Pancik agrees. “That’s really our baby,” she says.

Jody Rouisse called Susan Prendergast. “I, for one, think it’s disgusting,” she said. “I mean, is it not obvious to everyone on earth that those two are lovers? She was feeding him.”

“Like Adam and Eve in the garden,” Susan said. “Do you think the writer had inside information?”

“There was no mention of Eddie,” Jody said. “I mean, they referred to her as Mrs. Pancik, but it was like Eddie and the twins didn’t exist.”

“I have to say, the way Benton is looking at her in that one photo is pretty hot,” Susan said. “I wish someone would look at me like that.”

“I thought the mention of the bench from the Tuileries was pretentious. And Grace reads Victor Hugo in the hammock?” Jody said. “It’s probably more like Cosmo.”

“She was a French-literature major,” Susan said. “I hear her library is stacked with first editions.”

“Well, what about Grace calling the garden shed their ‘baby’?” Jody said. “You know, Jean Burton thought she looked pregnant. I think there’s a good chance that shed isn’t the only baby.”

“Her roses are absolutely incredible,” Susan said. “You have to give her that.”

“Fine,” Jody said. “I’ll give her that.”

Dr. Andy McMann saw the paper first. Normally, he savored the solitude of his Sunday mornings. Calgary slept late, and Rachel slept even later. This allowed Dr. Andy to sit out on his deck, enjoy the sunshine and the breeze, drink his coffee, eat his lightly buttered rye toast and half a ripe avocado, listen to Schubert, and read the Globe. He usually skipped the Home & Garden section, but his eye happened to catch a glimpse of the word Nantucket, and he checked to see what it was all about.

Grace Pancik’s yard. Some hotshot landscaper. Dr. Andy read the article and studied the pictures, and a feeling of distinct discomfort started at the base of his spine and traveled up to his neck. His landlord, Eddie Pancik, was being cuckolded by this Coe fellow-that much was obvious! Dr. Andy was hesitant to awaken Rachel for any reason, but this, he felt, couldn’t wait. He carried the newspaper up to their bedroom.

Alicia Buckler, a title examiner for the Town of Nantucket, was reading the Globe while standing in line, waiting for a table at Black-Eyed Susan’s, along with the rest of the world. She turned to her wife Janice, and pointed at the photo of Grace and Benton hanging from the tree branch.

“I think we’ve both been working too hard,” Alicia said. “We should take a vacation and goof off like these people.”

Janice gasped. “That’s Grace Pancik!” she said. “And Benton Coe.”

Alicia thrust the paper at Janice in frustration. She was sick and tired of the way Janice seemed to know everyone on the island just because she cleaned their teeth. And she was fed up with their Sunday routine of eating at Black-Eyed Susan’s. Every week, an hour of their day was wasted by waiting in line. Alicia pined for the olden days, when one could get breakfast at the Jared Coffin House, but if she brought this up, Janice would call her an old fuddy-duddy, and they would start to fight. Alicia was eight months older than Janice, and she was sensitive about it.

“Enjoy your tofu Benedict,” Alicia said. “I’m going home.”

But Janice didn’t hear. She was too engrossed in the article.

Glenn Daley rolled over and nearly crushed Barbie. They were lying in bed, drinking mimosas and reading the paper. Glenn had been with a lot of women, but never had he enjoyed creature comforts like good champagne and five-hundred-thread-count sheets and fresh flowers by the bed the way he did with Barbie. And she smelled delicious, even when she first woke up. He didn’t like to think that he was falling in love-his wife had ruined love for him forever-but he sure as hell didn’t want to be doing anything else or be with anyone else on this Sunday morning.

“Look at this,” Glenn said, showing Barbie the paper. “Your sister-in-law.”

“Good God,” Barbie said.

As the terrible old cliché goes: When it rains, it pours.

On Friday afternoon, Eddie received not one but two disturbing phone calls. One was from Madeline and Trevor’s attorney, Layton Gray, and one was from Philip Meier, at the bank.

Layton was calling about the investment of fifty thousand dollars. His clients were very upset, Layton said, and they wanted their money back. Eddie and Layton had worked together on countless real-estate deals. Eddie not only considered Layton a good guy; he considered him a sort-of friend, and so what bothered Eddie most about the message was Layton’s tone of voice. It was litigious and smoothly distant, with no hint that Layton even knew Eddie, much less had thrown a few back with him at the bar at the Great Harbor Yacht Club.

“Please call me to discuss,” Layton said, “before I have to take legal action.”

Legal action? Eddie didn’t think there were grounds for legal action. It had been a good-faith investment. Madeline and Trevor had written a check, and Eddie had promised them double back-a hundred grand-once he sold the houses. He had made a photocopy of the check and written across the bottom of the page, Llewellyn investment in Eagle Wing Lane, and then the three of them had signed the paper, which Eddie again copied, giving the original to Madeline and Trevor and keeping the copy for himself.

Nothing legal, nothing binding. A good-faith investment between friends.