Elin Hilderbrand - The Rumor

Petticoat Row wasn’t a bad title, but Angie was allergic to historical novels. They didn’t sell unless your name was Philippa Gregory.

The streetscape wasn’t as inspiring as Madeline had hoped.

A favor as cherished as a diamond had been cashed in on her behalf. Redd Dreyfus was an old-fashioned New York literary agent. He was rotund, he drank Scotch, he smoked cigars and took editors to lunch at the Grill Room at the Four Seasons, where he ordered the sirloin bloody rare. For some reason, Angie owed him. Angie Turner was whippet thin; she wore pencil skirts and slingbacks. She drank chardonnay and picked at salads. Madeline wondered about the favor. She imagined it involved another author, someone deeply respected and badly behaved. She imagined it involved sex, drugs, or money, though more likely it had to do with foreign rights or a publicity gaffe.

She would have liked to have parsed the particulars of her emotions with Trevor, but Trevor would be in the air. People thought that being a pilot was hard, but once one knew how to fly, it was actually pretty much the same as driving a bus, but with more sex appeal. Because of the sunglasses, Madeline liked to say.

She picked up the display box of bird eggs. They were all delicate and perfect in their eggness, each nestled in a cushy bed of straw in its compartment. Alternately speckled, smooth, and cobbled, with the subtlest variance of colors: white, cream, ivory, porcelain, tint of blue, tint of green. Was the woman who had moved to the Virgin Islands an ornithologist? Madeline had once given a magazine interview in which she said Every life contains a novel. Could she reasonably write a novel about a female ornithologist who moves from Nantucket to the Virgin Islands?

She knew nothing about the Virgin Islands.

A knock at the door startled Madeline so badly that she nearly tossed the box of eggs into the air.

Who…?

Madeline was terrified, despite the fact that it was broad daylight and she was smack dab in the middle of town. She still suffered from a lingering case of PTSD, even now, more than twenty years after her kidnapping. She was terrified of sudden noises, and she would never have been able to write an S &M novel like Fifty Shades. Ropes and blindfolds and gags made her hyperventilate to the point of passing out.

Who was at the door?

Madeline waited, holding her breath, hoping whoever it was would retreat.

Another knock. Steady, insistent. Madeline’s car was in the driveway. Any one of a thousand people would have recognized her car.

Madeline tiptoed over to the door, not wanting her footsteps to be heard.

A familiar male voice said, “Madeline, I know you’re in there. Open up, it’s me.”

Me? Madeline thought. The voice was so familiar, and yet in her panic, she couldn’t identify it.

She unlocked the door and cracked it open.

Eddie.

Madeline exhaled. “Jesus,” she said. “You scared me.”

He was wearing a white linen shirt and khaki linen pants and a Panama hat and the tan Versace loafers he loved so much. This was his summer uniform, and Madeline thought he was pushing the season a little bit. It was “warm” today, at sixty-two degrees, but it was still far from summer, and here was Eddie, dressed like a pimp in Havana circa 1955. And yet, the look worked for him. Fast Eddie. He could list a house at ten a.m., show it twice, and have it sold at ten percent above the asking price by afternoon. People loved the Panama hat, which came not from Panama, as people would likely think, but from someplace in Peru or Ecuador.

Every year, someone on Nantucket went as Fast Eddie for Halloween.

“Can I come in?” he said. “Please?”

Madeline ushered him inside. Her pride at having her own place was pretty much quashed once Eddie dragged his assessing eye around the digs.

“How did you know I was here?” Madeline asked. “I haven’t even told Grace about this yet.”

“How do I know anything?” Eddie said. “I heard it on the street. So, what are you paying?”

“Um…” Madeline thought about lying, but he would find out the truth. He probably already knew the truth; asking was just a pretense. “Two thousand a month.”

“Ha!” One short, derisory laugh.

Madeline waited for the follow-up.

He said, “I could have gotten it for you for fifteen hundred, maybe twelve.”

He’s bluffing, Madeline thought.

“Oh?” she said.

“But you went with Rachel.”

“I did,” Madeline said. “She was sort of pushy when I mentioned it. And I didn’t want to bother you with it.”

“You wouldn’t have bothered me,” Eddie said. “This is a quiet time of year for me. I could have gotten you this place, and I would have done you better on the rent. Frankly, I’m surprised you decided to use Rachel. After what Calgary did to Hope…”

Madeline thought, Calgary didn’t do anything to Hope except for break up with her a week before the Christmas formal. And, supposedly, he gave the sea-glass pendant necklace-which probably cost all of thirty dollars-to another girl, Kylie Eckers. But hadn’t teenagers been doing this kind of thing since the beginning of time? Why should Rachel be punished?

“What are you doing here, Eddie?” Madeline asked.

“Once I heard you got a ‘writing studio,’” Eddie said, “I had to come see it for myself.”

She didn’t like the way he said writing studio. It made this decision sound fanciful and absurd, like she had bought a unicorn.

“I’m working,” Madeline said, nodding at her blank legal pad.

“Are you?”

“Trying.”

“I still haven’t read your last book,” Eddie said. “But everyone else loved it.”

Madeline knew that Eddie had never and would never read any of her work. The last book Eddie had even bothered to crack open was Dune, in the tenth grade.

Eddie gave himself a tour of the apartment, his interest in her writing evaporating like a bad smell. In the kitchen, he opened the cabinets, then the creaky door to the outdated dishwasher. In the bathroom, he turned on the water in the sink. And in the bedroom, he emitted a dissatisfied hmmmpf.

Madeline rolled her eyes. Really, what did Eddie Pancik care about a piddly one-bedroom apartment that rented for two thousand dollars a month? The only rental he handled was the famous fifty-thousand-dollar-a-week house on Low Beach Road, from which he took a whopping weekly commission.

Eddie popped out of the bedroom and readjusted his Panama hat in that way he had, giving Madeline a glimpse of his shaved head. Madeline had known him so long, she remembered his curls.

“What does Trevor think of this place?” he asked.

“He was very supportive,” Madeline said.

“Of course he was,” Eddie said. “You deserve your own time and your own space, Maddie. There’s no reason to feel guilty about it.”

“I don’t feel guilty,” Madeline said.

“Except you’re paying too much,” Eddie said.

“Speaking of money…,” Madeline said. She couldn’t believe she was going to bring this up, but there were so few times when she and Eddie were alone together that she felt compelled to at least ask. “Is there any way Trevor and I might see our investment back from you sooner rather than later? I’m not going to lie to you, Eddie. Taking this apartment was kind of a stretch. And Brick wants a car. I would honestly be okay with not making a dime in profit if you could just return the fifty grand to us.”

“I’m confused,” Eddie said. “Why did you invest with me if you didn’t care about profit?”

Why had she invested? Greed, she supposed, and hubris. Eddie had come to her and Trevor with the opportunity to double their money, and Madeline had been tantalized by the prospect. She and Trevor had been struggling financially for so long-while Grace and Eddie bought a huge house on three acres, bought a brand-new Range Rover and a Porsche Cayenne; while they let the twins shop online at Saks and Neiman Marcus-that Madeline had been determined to invest with Eddie because she finally could.

However, she didn’t want to admit this to Eddie. She had outkicked her coverage.

“Is there any way we could get it back, say, next month?” she asked.

“Next month?” Eddie said. He raised his eyebrows and gave her a devilish smile, one of his facial expressions that Madeline found attractive. “You do understand what I’m in the middle of, right? I’m building spec houses. I’m going to build them and then sell them, and we will all see our profit when I sell them. Right now, I’m just trying to get them finished.”

“Are you close?” Madeline said.

There was a long silence, long enough that Madeline thought perhaps Eddie hadn’t heard her, and she was about to ask again when he said, “No, Maddie, not really. I’m not really close at all.”

“But we’re still thinking June for a return, right?” she said. “June, or at the latest August. That’s what you told us back in January, Eddie.”

“Yes, Maddie, I know that’s what I told you, but things have changed since January. You have to take into account market variations.”

Madeline tried not to panic. Eddie was such a canny businessman that she hadn’t worried about investing with him for one second. Trevor had warned Madeline that financial deals-loans, investments, what have you-were exactly the kind of thing that ruined friendships. But Madeline had insisted.

“Market variations,” she said. She didn’t know what that meant, exactly, but she figured it meant her money was tied up for the time being.

“Yes,” Eddie said.

He was giving her his sensitive expression now, which she also liked. Eddie did have a sweetness to him, although it appeared only rarely, and mostly when he was dealing with his daughters.

“I should go,” he said. “Leave you to work your magic. We’ll see you tomorrow night for dinner. Grace is making shrimp tacos.”

Madeline exhaled. One small blessing, dinner at the Pancik house. Trevor and Brick wouldn’t have to eat pizza again. Grace was a phenomenal cook.

“Don’t tell her about this place,” Madeline said. “I want to surprise her.”

“Will do,” Eddie said. He suddenly looked keen to leave, pronto.

Madeline saw Eddie to the door. “See ya, Eddie,” she said. “Thanks for stopping by.”

After Eddie was gone, she flopped onto the sofa. Market variations? They would get their money back, though, right? There was a signed paper somewhere. But Madeline was worried. If she wanted money, she would have to get to work, write this book, make it something special. The mere thought was overwhelming.

She needed a nap.

Sultan Nash, who had been hired to repaint the outside trim on Black-Eyed Susan’s, watched Madeline King park her car in one of the three spots of the blue Victorian across the street.

Sultan knew Madeline because he had grown up on the island with her husband, Trevor, playing football at the Boys & Girls Club. He noticed Madeline’s turquoise Mini Cooper in the parking spot because he’d tried to park his pickup truck in that same spot the week before, and he’d narrowly escaped being towed. Sultan Nash had been irate about this. He knew it was private property, but he also held tight to the belief that anyone who had been born and raised on the island should be able to park wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted. He had appeared at town meeting for a string of ten years running and aired this opinion.

He waved at Madeline and said, “I wouldn’t park there if I were you.”

She grinned. “I’m renting one of the apartments in this building.”

Renting one of the apartments? Sultan thought. Had the unimaginable happened? Had Trevor and Madeline split? Sultan had seen them both at a wedding the previous fall, and he had noted how deliriously in love they seemed, like newlyweds themselves. At the end of the night, Trevor had done a soft-shoe dance for Madeline-he was actually pretty good-and when he was done, Madeline had laid a kiss on him that made Sultan blush. He would have given his right arm for a marriage like that.

About half an hour after Sultan saw Madeline enter the Victorian, he noticed Eddie Pancik knocking on the door. Madeline opened the door, and Eddie disappeared inside.

Sultan mentioned this to Darlene Lanta, a waitress at the Downyflake, which was where Sultan ate lunch every day in an as-yet-unsuccessful attempt to date Darlene Lanta.

Darlene said, “So let me get this straight: Madeline King got an apartment in town and Eddie Pancik stopped by to visit?”