Elin Hilderbrand - The Rumor

“Shut up, Hollis!” Kenzie said.

Hollis rolled lazily onto her back. “Watch who you’re speaking to like that.”

Bluto said, “Leave it to Allegra to stir things up.” He mugged up at them. “Just so you know, I’m not mad at you for screwing Ian Coburn. I think he’s cute. I’m only mad because you didn’t tell me.”

“Well, I’m mad because you screwed him,” Hollis said.

“Because you wanted to screw him yourself,” Bluto said. “Admit it.”

Hollis gave Bluto a withering look. “You’re fat.”

“And you’re a bitch,” Bluto said. “I’m sorry we’re not friends with Allegra anymore, because I liked her better than I like you.”

“I can’t believe you just said that,” Hollis said.

“And, you know, it was a really evil thing, you forwarding that photo,” Bluto said. “You’re a backstabber, Hollis Brancato. I’m sure you’ll do it to me someday.”

Allegra gently took Hope’s arm and led her away from the squabble she’d created. No one had mentioned Eddie. Maybe they hadn’t heard about what had happened. Or maybe they didn’t care. Nobody their age noticed their own parents, much less other people’s parents.

Allegra and Hope passed the towels of Brick and Hannah.

“Hi, Hannah. Hi, Brick,” Allegra said. She smiled at them in a warm and genuine way but didn’t break stride.

They looked up.

“Hi, Allegra,” Hannah said. “Hi, Hope.”

“Hey, Hope,” Brick said. He paused. “Hey, Allegra.”

Hope was too stunned to respond. Stunned at what, however, she wasn’t quite sure. Maybe at the ability of people to be their normal selves, no matter what the circumstances. To keep calm and carry on, as the popular sentiment went.

When they were out of earshot, Allegra said, “They make a pretty cute couple.” She linked her free arm through Hope’s, and, despite every instinct that told Hope not to trust the friendly advances of her sister, she filled with a feeling of warm friendship and more-sisterhood, twinship. Her and Allegra, against the world, from birth until death.

“You think?” Hope said.

“Well,” Allegra said. “Not as cute as us.”

At ten o’clock in the morning, there was a knock on her apartment door. Madeline had just written the first page of her new novel, The Before, on her legal pad. Angie liked the new title and was encouraged by the premise of a prequel to Islandia. She wasn’t quite as frantic as she had been about the popped bubble of B/G. If anything, she seemed almost exhilarated by having something to hold over Redd Dreyfus’s head. “I’ve been indebted to him for so long,” Angie said, “it was time for the tables to turn.”

“Do you mind me asking?” Madeline said. “What happened between you two?”

“I’ll tell you sometime,” Angie had said.

Madeline didn’t want to stand to open the door. The whole point of taking the apartment was to avoid random interruptions. But the knocking was insistent.

Who? Madeline thought.

If it was Rachel McMann “stopping by” to invite Madeline out for coffee, Madeline would lose her temper.

It might be Trevor. He was off today, working around the house and yard. He had threatened to come by and kidnap Madeline for a summertime adventure-a drive up to Great Point, lunch on the deck at Cru, a harbor sail on the Endeavor. “Chim-chiminey, chim-chiminey, chim-chim-cheroo!” Madeline would have a hard time turning her handsome husband down.

It might be Brick, with Hannah Dromanian. Brick and Hannah had started hanging out together in the aftermath of Allegra’s deception. Madeline was worried Brick would fall right into another all-consuming relationship, but it did seem like the two were primarily friends. Hannah was one of those kids whom Madeline thought of as a natural-born achiever. She wanted to succeed, go places, see things, do things, and Madeline thought she might be a good influence on Brick.

Madeline was relieved to know it would not be Eddie Pancik at the door.

The knocking continued. Madeline’s Mini Cooper was in the bricked spot. Whoever this was knew she was here, probably knew she was writing, and didn’t care.

Grace?

The thought occurred to Madeline only as she pulled open the door. Madeline called Grace every day and had invited her ten or twenty times to come into town and see the apartment. But Grace said she felt safer at home. She didn’t want to come into town and bump into anyone-and Madeline couldn’t blame her.

Madeline would have expected that, with all Grace had been through, she would have looked haggard or wrung out, much as she used to after a three-day migraine. But Grace looked radiant. She was wearing white shorts and a blue gingham halter top; she was the picture of summertime. Her eyes were shining, her skin glowed, her smile was warm and peaceful.

Peaceful? Madeline thought. How was that possible?

“Hi?” Madeline said.

“You did it,” Grace said.

“Did what?” Madeline said.

“You wrote this book about me and Benton!” Grace said. “It’s all in there-the mint tea, the pistachio macarons, the Rolling Stones singing ‘Loving Cup.’”

“I know, Grace. I’m so sorry,” Madeline said. “I told you, I’m not going to publish it…”

Grace started shaking and crying, and Madeline thought, She’s going to sue me anyway. Defamation of character. Libel. But then Grace took a step forward and wrapped her arms around Madeline.

“That was the ending I wanted,” Grace said.

“Living in the Virgin Islands?” Madeline said. “Bird-watching?”

“Happiness,” Grace said. “Peace.”

He thought about feeling sorry for himself. He thought about falling into despair. He thought about crying. He thought about listing all the things he would miss about being free.

But what Eddie ended up thinking about on the drive to MCI-Plymouth, a drive that couldn’t last long enough, as far as he was concerned, was the day the twins were born.

Allegra had popped out easily, as if from an ATM spitting out money. Here you go, everything you asked for!

Hope, however, had her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, and before Eddie could process the arrival of his first baby, Grace was being raced to the emergency room for a cesarean section. Eddie left Allegra with the nurses and followed, pulling on scrubs as he was directed, hurrying to keep up.

He couldn’t watch the surgery-he didn’t have the stomach for that, his head was down between his knees so he didn’t faint-but he did remember seeing Hope’s tiny light-blue body, covered in blood, and he remembered his terror, his naked screaming fear.

She’s dead, he thought.

Grace called out in a voice he could barely stand to summon, She’s dead, Eddie, she’s dead!

She had a grip on his fingers-she was going to break them all cleanly in half-and he didn’t care.

He wouldn’t, he realized, care about his own self, his own person, ever again.

It turned out the baby wasn’t dead. Somehow the doctors, the nurses, the wizards and angels, got Hope breathing-but she couldn’t stay on Nantucket. She had to be MedFlighted to Boston, and Eddie was going with her. Eddie was in charge. Eddie was her father.

There was a lot of procedure that happened very quickly. Paramedics in blue jumpsuits, who struck Eddie as ridiculously calm and competent, strapped Hope onto a tiny stretcher. They applied heart monitors the size of dimes and an oxygen mask the size of an egg. Eddie went into the back of the helicopter with a human being small enough to nestle comfortably inside his Panama hat.

One of the paramedics was a woman with copper-colored corkscrew curls. Her name was Kristin, and she was stationed in the back to monitor Hope’s vital signals. She handed Eddie a pair of large over-the-ear headphones to muffle the noise of the chopper, and she put a miniature set of headphones, headphones for a doll, over Hope’s delicate ears.

Before the world went at once loud and silent, Eddie said to Kristin, “Do people ever die in this helicopter?”

“Oh, sure,” she said. “All the time.” She smiled at him. “But your daughter is going to be fine.”

The helicopter had lifted seconds later, and so had Eddie’s spirit.

Kristin the MedFlight paramedic had been right: Hope was fine, better than fine. Occasionally over the years, Eddie would look at his slightly younger twin-when she licked her finger and turned the page of one of the books she was always reading (she was like Grace in this way), when she played the flute (how did she do it? Eddie had picked up the instrument once and had blown into the mouthpiece but had heard nothing but his own hot air)-and he would marvel at just how fine she had turned out to be, that small, pale-blue baby.

The last time Eddie had felt this way had been when he took Hope to the Summer House for dinner, just the two of them. He had been returning from the men’s room to the table when he saw Hope lean over to taste his martini. His first instinct was to call out, Hey, there, what are you doing, Hope? Come on. But he stopped himself. He recognized Hope’s natural curiosity about the adult world, beyond the edges of her own, and applauded her courage to explore it in a safe way. What he’d thought was, Good for you, Hope. Good for you.

These memories sustained Eddie all the way to exit 6 off Route 3 south, which was, unfortunately, Eddie’s exit.

Eddie Pancik had never been much for self-reflection, but as the van pulled up in front of MCI-Plymouth, and as the uniformed guards stopped them at the gate to check Eddie’s name off their list, Eddie tried to identify exactly how he was feeling.

The word that came to his mind was blessed.

There was so much chatter on Nantucket that we were surprised they couldn’t hear us on Martha’s Vineyard.

Russian prostitution ring, Low Beach Road, Edward Pancik arrested: this made the papers in Boston and beyond. We all had to suffer through people from off island asking us: How could this happen on Nantucket?

Nantucket was a place of men and women, of business and commerce, just like everywhere else. The more hard hearted and seasoned of us asked: Do you not think there were prostitutes on Nantucket back in the whaling heyday? It was the world’s oldest profession. Eddie Pancik had hardly invented it.

Certain people benefited from the scandal. One was Eloise Coffin, Eddie’s secretary. She had quit her job at Island Fog Realty-obviously-and was secretly hoping for a call from the local news station. One “investigative reporter” from an Internet blog named Jared’s Apartment called and asked to hear Eloise’s story. And so Eloise told this reporter, Jared, about how she’d been placing her cartons of organic Greek yogurt in the office fridge when she overheard Barbara Pancik on the phone, proposing the unthinkable for their five Russian housecleaners. Eloise had been completely aghast-and then she caught wind of how much money Eddie, Barbie, and the girls would be making.

Eloise did not tell this Jared fellow that there had been a week or two when she had tried to get in on the action. She had been sweet and accommodating, she had bought Eddie a potted snapdragon with her own money, she had complimented Barbie on her green-and-white-print wrap dress, even though Eloise felt that kind of dress had gone out in the 1970s. She had tried to be one of the team, hoping that either Eddie or Barbie might confide in her and cut her into the profits.

But they had chosen to be selfish-the selfish, greedy Panciks-and Eloise had had no choice but to call her son-in-law at the Nantucket Police Department and tell him what she’d heard.

The “investigative reporter,” Jared, never published the story anywhere that Eloise could find. She had her daughter-in-law, Patrice, check the Internet, but Patrice couldn’t find a blog called Jared’s Apartment. Eloise craved public acknowledgment of her do-gooding, and, falling short of that, she simply told her tale to anyone who would listen-friends, neighbors, her children and grandchildren, and her husband, Clarence.

But Clarence was six years older than Eloise, and he wore hearing aids that seemed to pick up sounds coming only from the television. Clarence had spent most of his retirement watching television-the Red Sox in summer and the Patriots and Bruins in winter, and, if not sports, then the Food Network. Eloise knew that Clarence was secretly in love with Giada De Laurentiis.