Elin Hilderbrand - The Rumor

And yet, the words good faith gnawed at him. He couldn’t default on this. He had to keep up his end of the bargain. And he certainly didn’t want Layton Gray to think that he, Eddie, had taken his friends’ money and sunk it into a losing proposition. Layton did eight to ten real-estate closings a week; he dealt with every agency on Nantucket. If word about this got out… no, Eddie couldn’t allow that to happen. He was livid that Madeline had called Layton; frankly, a part of him couldn’t believe she’d actually done it. Lawyers cost money. If she had called, she was serious.

He tried to calculate a way to get Madeline and Trevor at least a portion of their investment back. Once he closed the deal with Glenn Daley (even thinking the man’s name gave Eddie heartburn), he might be able to put aside ten thousand dollars for the Llewellyns.

Maybe?

Yes, he would do that.

Then, Philip Meier had called and told Eddie that he was ninety days behind on the mortgage for his house.

“Wait a minute,” Eddie said. “That’s not right…?”

“Ninety-two days, actually,” Philip said. “You’re in arrears twenty-seven thousand, eight hundred and ten dollars.”

Eddie heart went up in flames, a sudden bonfire. “That can’t be right!”

“It is right,” Philip said. “We sent several notices to your office address.”

Eddie eyed the pile of unopened envelopes on his desk-some new, some older, probably as old as three months.

“Am I going to lose the house?” he asked. He pictured Grace and the girls standing out on the front lawn in their pajamas while bank officials barred the front door.

“I need a check by Monday,” Philip said.

Monday? Eddie thought. Where was he going to get twenty-seven large by Monday? Then he remembered that Nightbill was checking in on Monday and that Bugsy Greer had agreed to pay in full, in cash-eighty-four thousand dollars. Thirty-five of that would go to the girls, forty-nine of that would be split between him and Barbie. But Barbie didn’t know that Eddie had upped the price, so he would have to cash her out at only seventeen-five, leaving him thirty-one-five!

Brilliant.

He said to Philip, “I can have it to you first thing Tuesday morning. In cash.”

“Cash?” Philip said. “What are you planning on doing? Robbing a bank?”

They both laughed.

Philip said, “Tuesday morning is fine. Thanks, Eddie.”

Eddie was buoyed by his victory, but he knew it was only a quick fix. He needed something big. He needed something real. Where were all the buyers? Nadia had brought in the man she’d been sleeping with from Kasper Snacks, saying he was interested in buying a house. Eddie had nearly fainted with relief. Here was a benefit to the side business he hadn’t anticipated-the girls would encourage buyers. But, as it had turned out, Nadia’s special friend had been too midwestern, with no clue what investing in the Nantucket real-estate market would cost him. He’d taken one gander at the prices and decided to buy Nadia an ice cream instead.

Eddie spent Saturday in the office. There was nothing going on, and so he finished the paperwork for the deal with Glenn Daley. He stopped for a drink at Lola on the way home, despite the fact that martinis cost twenty bucks. He probably needed to be out more so he could meet people and hand out his business card, but being out cost money that he just didn’t have. On the way home from Lola, he drove past the houses on Eagle Wing Lane. He could practically see himself, crushed like the Wicked Witch of the East, under the foundation of number 9. He couldn’t bear to think of how happy and excited he’d been the day he’d closed on those three lots.

On Sunday morning, Grace was up and out of bed at six o’clock-off to the Hub to grab the Sunday Boston Globe. She was so excited to see the article that Eddie thought she might spontaneously combust. He tried to feel excited as well, but he was too consumed with worry that the beautiful property she loved so much might be repossessed.

He slept until nine thirty, a sure sign that he was depressed. When he woke up, the twins were out by the pool, reading.

“Where’s Mommy?” Eddie said.

“Upstairs in her office,” Hope said. “On the phone.”

Eddie set about making scrambled eggs with dollops of cream cheese stirred in, the one breakfast dish that actually seemed to help his heartburn. He used nine fresh eggs, which was probably too many, but what the hell, the eggs were free.

Grace came down from her study, beaming. “Do you want to see the article?” she asked. “It’s magnificent.”

“Sure,” Eddie said. “Since I paid for it.”

“Okay,” Grace said. “I tried to show it to the girls, but they weren’t interested.”

“Shocker,” Eddie said.

Grace said, “The photographs were all staged, so don’t get jealous.”

“Jealous?” Eddie said.

“Of Benton, silly!” Grace said. She opened the newspaper flat across the sexiest countertop in the world to show the front-page photo of Grace feeding Benton a strawberry. NANTUCKET’S PRIVATE EDEN, the headline read.

“Nice,” Eddie said. The photo was a tad suggestive of… well, exactly what, Eddie wasn’t sure. Maybe he should feel jealous? He looked at the other photos-Grace on the mower, Grace in the pool, Grace and Benton hanging from the elm tree like a couple of capuchin monkeys.

“Go ahead and read it,” she said.

“I’ll read it later,” Eddie said. “I promise.” The article was long, and Eddie didn’t really have the attention span to delve into such an endeavor right then. His brain hurt. He was hungry for his eggs. He was happy that Grace was happy. She’d gotten what she’d wanted. The article was some kind of quest that she’d successfully completed. Eddie wished his life were like that. Instead, it felt as if he were standing nuts deep in icy water, panning for nuggets of gold that he would either spend or lose, necessitating more panning. Endless panning.

He looked at the photograph of Grace feeding Benton again, but instead of feeling jealous, he merely felt intrigued. Benton Coe was a successful businessman. Did he have any money he would like to invest in number 13?

Eddie plated his pillowy, soft eggs and carried them out to the deck. With the first bite, he closed his eyes, and there he envisioned Benton Coe as some kind of prince who might save them all.

When Madeline saw the article in the Boston Globe, she thought to herself, almost involuntarily, Grace and Benton look so happy.

She wasn’t sure if it was the article that inspired her, but for the first time in her writing career, Madeline didn’t have a single hesitation when it came to ending her book. She felt like Gretchen Green, girl hero, swooping in to set things right. First, there was heightened drama and conflict: G’s husband, Renfrew, discovers G’s affair by checking her cell phone records. (As Madeline understood it, this was how most adulterers got caught, but she knew Grace would never get caught this way, because Grace barely used her cell phone.) When the affair is uncovered, G leaves her husband and runs away with B. They move to St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, where B has been commissioned to build an enormous compound of villas overlooking Honeymoon Beach. G takes up bird-watching, which aligns with her newfound sense of freedom. She feels like she has wings.

Madeline set down her pen and took a deep, cleansing breath. The book was done. Not only did Madeline know that Angie would love it-she knew that it was good.

When he walked into the office Monday morning, Barbie was already at her desk, with two coffees from the Handlebar Café and the newspaper open in front of her.

“Sit,” she said.

He didn’t like her telling him what to do, but something about her tone made him obey.

Maybe she was going to confess to her relationship with Glenn Daley.

She handed him his coffee, loaded with milk.

She nodded at the newspaper. “You see this?”

It was the article about the garden, open to the picture of Grace feeding Benton the strawberry.

“Yeah,” Eddie said, shrugging. “Grace said the photographs were all staged.”

“That’s what Grace says,” Barbie said. “But everyone else on this island says that you’re paying this guy to screw your wife.”

“Speaking of screwing,” Eddie said, “how is Glenn?”

“Don’t change the subject,” Barbie said. “You need to get your house in order. I’m serious, Ed. You need to deal with this.”

Eddie eyed his sister and saw the same girl with the bad perm and too much eyeliner fighting with Teresa Maniscalco outside the high school library because Teresa told everyone in school that the girls’ locker room reeked like Barbie’s vagina. Eddie could remember hearing the phrase reeked like Barbie’s vagina and feeling mortified. He wanted to defend his sister’s honor, but he’d never been good at facing up to his problems-he was too scrawny. He’d only ever been good at running away from them.

Barbie, afraid of no one, fought it out with Teresa Maniscalco, busted Teresa’s lip open with one punch, and promptly took a three-day suspension. Eddie had walked past the main office, and he saw Barbie through the Plexiglas window, slumped in a chair, her arms crossed over her chest, glowering with pure steel resolve. He thought, My sister is the toughest person in the world. Way tougher than Eddie himself.

After that, nobody messed with Barbie. She worked her ass off and was accepted to Boston University, where she favored peasant blouses and learned to read tarot. After she graduated, she followed Eddie to Nantucket. Her first job was working as a personal assistant to a very wealthy woman with a summer estate on Abrams Point-and Barbie absorbed the lifestyle like a sponge. Which wine, which fork, which flowers. She learned about crystal and art dealers and the neighborhoods of Manhattan and Paris. Eddie could not believe her transformation. Maybe he didn’t know shit from Shinola, but Barbie presented herself to the world as an elegant and refined woman. And then, of course, she’d always had the sixth sense. That was the thing.

“Okay,” he said. “Fine.”

He reasoned with himself the whole way home. Grace was not having an affair with Benton Coe. It might have been a schoolgirl crush-Grace enjoyed having someone to talk to about her hens and her flowers-but Grace didn’t have it in her to have an affair, Eddie didn’t think. She was too programmed to be good-instilled in her from childhood by her grandmother, her parents, her older brothers. Rebellion for her, Eddie knew, had been drinking tequila and smoking cigarettes-on the same night, on a Tuesday!-during her sophomore year at Holyoke. An affair in adulthood would be unthinkable.

Right?

Eddie’s heartburn ratcheted up from the mellow 3 it had been that morning to a 7 and then an 8. And then, when he pulled into the driveway and saw Benton’s big black pickup truck, it became a 9.

Eddie busted into the house. “Grace!” he called. He raced up the stairs two at a time-Fast Eddie-and barged into the master bedroom. Empty. Then he swung open the door of Grace’s study without knocking-something he was forbidden to do, because that study was her sanctuary, she said-but the study, too, was empty.

Eddie calmed down a bit. He had let Barbie poison his thoughts. Grace and Benton would be out in the garden, weeding and mulching and making plans to build an outdoor shower with doors fashioned out of shutters salvaged from a French farmhouse. And climbing roses. Grace had forever wanted roses in her outdoor shower.

See? He did listen!

Eddie went through the kitchen and out onto the deck.

“Grace!” he called.

The backyard was uninhabited except by butterflies, bees, birds on the feeders. The garden was shimmering as if in some feverish utopian dream. Eddie walked out to the far edge of the property and plunked down in an Adirondack chair. The views across Polpis Harbor at this time of year were dazzling. He was a lucky man. Just like Barbie, he had come a long way since the days of Purchase Street in New Bedford.

He stood up. Where was Grace?

He wandered back over the rolling green lawn, past the hammock and the rose bed, past the swimming pool, past the perennials. He stopped at the five-foot angel statue and said, “Where’s Grace?”

The statue didn’t answer. It just stood there with the same inane, placid half-smile it always offered. Eddie had paid five figures for the statue. For that much money, it should respond when spoken to. He laughed at himself. Barbie was such a pill. She put thoughts into his head, and now he was losing his mind, talking to stone figures.