Elin Hilderbrand - The Rumor

“Mom, I’m fine.”

Trevor entered the living room, wearing his green striped good-luck party shirt. His golden hair glinted, and it looked like he had gotten sun on his face-the start of his summer tan. By August, he would be deep brown and his hair three shades lighter. He looked just as Californian as Madeline, if not more so.

“What’s going on?” Trevor asked.

“Brick wants to stay home,” Madeline said. “Maybe we should all cancel. Maybe we should stay home and order pizza instead.”

“Nonsense,” Trevor said. “Grace went to a lot of trouble-you know she did, she always does-and we’re going.” He offered Brick a hand. “All of us.”

“I brought that Malbec you like,” Madeline said, setting the wine down on Grace’s gorgeous blue Bahia granite-or, as Eddie liked to call it, the sexiest countertop in the world.

Grace was busy pushing onions and peppers around in the skillet; her head was engulfed in fragrant steam. “You’re the best friend evah,” she said, imitating what they both called her “Barbie New Bedfahd” accent. “Let’s have us some.”

Outside the glass doors, Madeline watched Eddie hand Trevor a beer and Brick a Coke. Brick settled into one of the rattan deck chairs with canvas-covered cushions. One of the twins came into sight, all long brown hair and long legs in jeans. Madeline hoped it was Allegra; she hoped Allegra would give Brick a kiss from the old days and make Trevor and Eddie blush and cringe respectfully. But it wasn’t Allegra; it was Hope. She wore her hair parted down the middle and tucked behind her ears. Her face was a tick off the glorious beauty of her sister’s; her eyes were squintier, her cheeks fuller. But what Hope lacked in glamour, she made up for in grace. She had a quiet, serious soul and an easy elegance, the likes of which Madeline had witnessed before only in women like Jacqueline Onassis and Audrey Hepburn.

Of the two girls, Madeline preferred Hope. She rarely let herself admit this.

“The garden is looking good,” Madeline said. This was an understatement: the yard and garden dazzled, as always. The rest of Nantucket was still gloomy gray, the grass brown, the trees bare, and the daffodils that lined Milestone Road drooped from weeks of punishing wind and rain. But Grace’s yard was green and lush, as though these three acres had received sunshine by special order. The flower beds had sharp, precise edges; it looked like elves had trimmed the grass with manicure scissors. Everything was sprouted and ready to burst. There was an oval bed of tulips that would have made a Dutchman cry. It contained seven hundred bulbs in flame orange, snow white, cherry red, amethyst, and three luscious shades of pink-powder, shell, and deep fuchsia. The tulip bed alone was enough to make Madeline believe in God. All of the stonework had been scrubbed, as had Grace’s antique cast-iron planters and her five-foot statue of the angel Gabriel, bought from a church in Lourdes, which was where Grace had done a semester abroad when she was at Mount Holyoke. There was a park bench salvaged from the Tuileries said to date back to the era of Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir. Voluptuous ferns lined the bench in the exact places where Claude and Auguste would have set their butts. At the edge of the property sat the garden shed and the henhouse. The doors to the henhouse were closed tight; the chickens were asleep.

Madeline let her eyes linger on the wooden footbridge that spanned the brook, then the handcrafted birdhouses, then the Adirondack chairs, artfully arranged to overlook Polpis Harbor. The swimming pool, a dark-tiled rectangle surrounded by old paving stones and the same cobblestones they used on Main Street downtown, was still covered, as was the hot tub. Everything about the Pancik property was paradisaical. Madeline had been to the house thousands of times, and every time the sumptuous beauty of the place stole her breath away. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live with this yard, to see it every second of every day.

Madeline’s “yard” was patches of brown dirt, sand, and crabgrass and, at the border of the property, a mess of scrubby trees, pricker bushes, and weeds. She had one hydrangea, which grew sickly purple flowers. Grace’s hydrangeas-numbering twenty-two-were all pageant winners. They bloomed in blue, purple, pink, white, and green. Madeline hadn’t even known green hydrangeas existed, but yes, they were called ‘Limelight’ hydrangeas, and Grace’s were divine.

“Benton has been here,” Grace said.

“Yes, I can tell,” Madeline said. “Because I only hear from you once every three days.”

Grace’s expression was hard to read. It was half apologetic smile, half something else. “Wine, please,” she sang out. “I’d love some wine.”

Madeline pulled two of Grace’s Baccarat goblets out of the cabinet. Grace liked to use the goblets on Wednesday nights, even though they were fragile and each one cost as much as a night’s stay in the penthouse at the Four Seasons. Madeline had broken one goblet, Grace had broken one, and Eddie had broken two in consecutive weeks. Madeline poured two lavish glasses of the plummy Malbec and brought one to Grace at the stove. “I have some news,” she said.

“You and me both,” Grace said. She took a swill of her wine, then set the goblet down on the sexy granite. “But mine is going to have to wait until later. What’s yours?”

Madeline sucked in a preparatory breath. She worried that Grace would be mad that she had rented the apartment from Rachel McMann, and possibly also that she’d taken the apartment without showing Grace first.

She said, “I rented an apartment in town.”

“What?” Grace yelped.

“It’s not what it sounds like,” Madeline said. “I’m going to use it as a writing studio.”

Grace’s face lit up, and she imitated the patrician accent of her grandmother Sabine. “Splendid, my darling! Where in town?”

“In the blue Victorian on the corner of India and Centre.”

“I’ve always loved that building,” Grace said. She turned down the heat under the onions and peppers and came over to give Madeline a hug. “So you’re a real working girl now, with office space of your own. I’m so jealous! But you deserve it.”

Madeline said, “That’s what everyone keeps saying, but I’m not sure it’s true. It was pretty expensive.”

“How much?” Grace asked.

“Two thousand a month.”

“Eh,” Grace said, shrugging. She returned to the stove and picked up her wine. “That seems reasonable for town in summer.”

Right, Madeline thought. It would seem reasonable to Grace because Grace had never worried about money a day in her life. Grace had been raised in an old Puritan family, the Harpers of Salem, Massachusetts; Grace’s ninth-great grandfather had been the attorney who defended Bridget Bishop, one of the women accused of being a witch. (I am no witch. I am innocent. I know nothing of it. Hanged June 10, 1692.) Grace had three older brothers, the Harper boys, all of them now civil rights attorneys in Boston. Grace and her brothers had been forced to dress for dinner every night growing up in their majestic brick mansion on Essex Street. On the maternal side of the family was Grandmother Sabine, who owned a three-hundred-acre estate in Wayland that Grace used to visit every Sunday. These afternoons included games of croquet in the summer and sleigh rides in the winter. Madeline had always loved hearing details of Grace’s upbringing; she savored them like petit fours. But she couldn’t expect Grace to understand what feeling financially strapped was like.

“And, listen,” Madeline said, wanting to be truthful, because that was her nature. “I heard about the apartment through Rachel McMann.”

“Ugh,” Grace said.

“Eddie is all bent out of shape about it, I think. He stopped by to see the place, and he seemed unhappy I’d gone through Rachel. But it happened by accident. I opened my big mouth, and you know Rachel…”

“Pushy,” Grace said.

“She seized the moment,” Madeline said. “If I’d taken time to collect my wits… if I’d been, you know, hunting for a place, I would have called Eddie. You know I would have.”

Grace waved her hand dismissively. “Eddie will get over it,” she said.

Madeline felt nearly dizzy with relief. She hadn’t expected Grace to take the news on such an even keel. Grace was wound pretty tightly most days, and news like this could catapult her into unreasonable territory. But tonight, Grace was in an exceptional mood. Madeline couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her friend so… playful… so relaxed. She was practically glowing.

“Go outside with the boys,” Grace said. “I’m almost finished up here.”

“Madeline!” Eddie said. He kissed her cheek. “Long time, no see!”

“Eddie,” she said. Air kiss, and the expected waft of Eternity by Calvin Klein, which he had started wearing right out of high school. He smiled at Madeline crookedly, then hovered a hand above the grill to see if it was ready.

Eddie said to Trevor, “So… what do you think about your girl’s new digs?”

“I think it’s great,” Trevor said. He swatted Madeline on the butt. “No more excuses about not getting anything done. Now, she should be writing a book a year, or two books a year, like that other Nantucket novelist.”

“Two books a year!” Eddie said. “Then you could not only invest in my spec houses, you could buy one.”

Madeline tightened her fingers around the delicate stem of the Baccarat wineglass. Hearing Eddie bring up the spec houses made her tense enough to snap it.

Madeline took Trevor’s arm. “Let’s walk to the bridge.”

They strolled across the wide swath of soft, emerald lawn, toward the footbridge that crossed the brook. The sound the water made when it ran over the rocks was musical, like chimes. Madeline closed her eyes briefly and tried to savor the sound. It was the type of rocks Benton Coe had used, or the way he’d positioned them.

“Listen,” she said. “I asked Eddie for our fifty grand back.”

“You did?” Trevor said. “When?”

“Yesterday,” she said. “He stopped by the apartment.”

“He did?” Trevor said. “I don’t know how I feel about you entertaining strange men in that place. After all, I haven’t even seen it yet.” His tone was jokey, but Madeline sensed he was a little miffed.

“He came by to tell me how mad he was that I’d rented from Rachel,” Madeline said.

“Oh,” Trevor said, and she felt him ease up. “That sounds like our friend Fast Eddie.”

“Just tell me it’s going to be okay,” Madeline said. “I’m going to write another book, and we’re going to get our money back.”

Trevor kissed her, then took both of her hands in his. “It’s going to be okay.”

Madeline turned around. Eddie, Hope, and Brick were all unabashedly staring at them. And Grace, too, from inside the kitchen.

Eddie called out, “Whaddya doin’ over there? Proposing marriage?”

They walked back to the patio, where Grace had laid out her standard appetizer spread: smoked bluefish pâté, rosemary flat breads, farmhouse cheddar, fig jam, roasted peppers, Marcona almonds, Armenian string cheese, and a stick of herbed salami with two kinds of mustard. There were Bremner wafers and soft unsalted butter for Eddie, which he ate for his heartburn, and there were Triscuits and Cheez Whiz for Brick, because it was his favorite snack and Grace always kept it on hand for him. Brick didn’t seemed cheered by the fresh can of Cheez Whiz, however.

There was still no sign of Allegra.

Eddie raised his glass of wine. “Here’s to Madeline’s new apartment,” he said. “Congratulations.”

Allegra didn’t come down to dinner until the very last minute. Their mother had called up to her three times, and then Eddie called up to her. Eddie was the only person who held sway over Allegra because he was the one who paid her credit card bill.

Allegra came out onto the deck, her eyes glued to her phone, her thumbs flying.

Hope said, “Who are you texting?”

Everyone else grew quiet-not because anyone else (except for Brick) cared whom Allegra was texting, but because Hope rarely spoke, and so when she did, everyone made a point to listen.

“Nobody,” Allegra said. She finished up and slid the phone into the front pocket of her sleek leather jacket. She was wearing her skinny Citizens, black ballet flats, a black lace blouse from Dolce Vita, and the soft caramel leather jacket. She looked like she’d just climbed off the back of some guy’s Ducati on the Italian Riviera.

She beamed at the assembled families, as if shocked and delighted to find them all there, as if she hadn’t heard them from upstairs in her bedroom for the past half hour.