Elin Hilderbrand - Winter Street

“Kelley,” she says.

He looks up and blinks.

“Are you real?” he says.

“I’m real,” she says.

Where to start? Where to start? They hug, long and hard. Kelley smells like himself, which is Irish on Irish-Irish Spring soap and Irish whiskey.

She pulls away first, as she always does-that much intimacy crosses some kind of line with Margaret, which in some ways caused the downfall of their marriage. Kelley always wanted more, closer, tighter-and Margaret wanted space and boundaries. She was afraid of intimacy, Kelley said. Margaret called it Retaining a Sense of Self. She never believed in two people melding to become one. She believed in self-sufficiency. After all, everyone dies alone.

“How’s Bart?” she asks gently. “Have you heard from him?”

“He texted when he left Germany,” Kelley says. “But I haven’t heard from him since.”

“When was that?” Margaret asks.

“The night of the nineteeth,” Kelley says. “I’m sure he’s either too busy, or the reception is nonexistent. I’m surprised I heard from him at all.”

Margaret’s heart feels like a vessel filled to the brim with some potentially toxic liquid. Is she going to spill it? She knows nothing for certain, and until the military gets in touch, there is no cause for alarm.

Her gut tells her otherwise.

But it’s Christmas morning, so she will ignore her gut.

“Is there coffee?” she asks.

“Yes! Of course!” Kelley jumps right into innkeeper mode, the consummate host. He fetches a cup of cinnamon-flavored coffee in a thick ceramic mug decorated with a raised set of crisscrossed candy canes, and then he presents her with a plate of dark-brown muffins.

“Pumpkin ginger,” he says. “I baked them myself.”

Margaret sips her cinnamon-flavored coffee, trying not to wince-she drinks espresso only, the more hot and bitter, the better-but it’s actually pretty good. She abandons her ribbon candy-it looks a lot better than it tastes-and takes a muffin, despite the fact that she never eats breakfast, and Kelley gives her a ramekin of honey butter. This is life at a bed-and-breakfast: the homey atmosphere, the fresh-baked muffins, the colonial decor of the kitchen. If she were being cynical, she would say it’s sort of like being suspended in a Thomas Kinkade painting, but she appreciates how cozy and rustic the room and the inn in general feel; it appeals to her childhood fantasy of Christmas. Margaret’s taste is generally sleeker and more sophisticated; her apartment in New York is spacious, and it has forever views across Central Park-but cozy it is not.

“So,” she says between bites of fragrant, moist, buttery muffin, “what’s up with our eldest?”

“Insider trading,” Kelley says. “He invested over twenty-five million in a leukemia drug he knew was going to score. He got word from one of his fraternity brothers and invested that guy’s money and everyone else’s… and it looks like he got caught. The SEC has been watching him, apparently, because of some other stuff.”

Margaret says, “Insider trading.”

Kelley nods, and they lock eyes.

“With the dissemination of information these days, I can’t believe that term even still exists,” Margaret says. “Isn’t it sort of like smoking pot? Too prevalent to effectively prosecute?”

“Apparently not.”

“Twenty-five million isn’t so much money,” Margaret says. She realizes her maternal instincts are overriding her moral compass. She, after all, has reported on Kenneth Lay and Enron, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and the big winner… Bernie Madoff. Until this second, she had liked nothing better than a good financial scandal. “I mean, it could have been much worse. I’m surprised the SEC even noticed.”

“They noticed.”

“It’s not our fault,” Margaret says. “So stop thinking that.”

“I’m not thinking that,” Kelley says. “Are you thinking that?”

“No,” Margaret says. But yes, she is. It’s the curse of any parent, isn’t it? When your child has a crack in his character, you feel responsible. Patrick was always such a straight arrow, an ardent follower of the rules. He loved rules.

“He’s thirty-eight years old,” Kelley says. “That’s when men get greedy. His kids are getting older, he starts thinking about how much boarding school is going to cost, then college. He wants a Jaguar; Jen wants a summer house on Cliff Road so they don’t have to keep staying here at the inn. Here’s an easy way for him to pocket five or six million himself, plus make a boatload of profit for his clients, who will then invest even more money with him. I can see where it would have been tempting.”

“He’s here?”

“Here,” Kelley confirms. “Jen took the kids to San Francisco.”

“Ouch.”

“And in other, happier news,” Kelley says, “Kevin is getting married. He proposed last night to Isabelle, my girl Friday. None of us even knew they were seeing each other. And she’s pregnant.”

“I know,” Margaret says. “I gave him five thousand dollars so he could buy the ring.”

Kelley gets a look on his face, and Margaret says, “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t make that face, ” Margaret says. “Like I trumped you again, or like I’m always giving the kids handouts to make up for the fact that I almost never see them.”

“I wasn’t thinking that,” Kelley says.

“What were you thinking, then?”

“I was thinking, can you lend me four million dollars so I don’t lose the inn?”

“Are you going to lose the inn?” Margaret asks.

“I have to sell it,” Kelley says. “You’ll notice there’s nobody here? Not one paying guest at the Winter Street Inn on Christmas. The bed-and-breakfast market is all dried up on Nantucket. People can stay at the White Elephant or down the street at the Castle for about the same price, and I can’t compete. And this place has gobbled up all my savings. Now I’m nearly broke, and Mitzi left anyway, so I have no desire to prostrate myself at the foot of some loan officer to borrow against the equity. I’m sixty-two years old, and I’m all alone.”

“Stop the pity party,” Margaret says. “You’re not alone. You have the kids. And today, you have me.”

Kelley beams. “Today I have you! Would you like to come back to my bedroom and see my etchings?”

Margaret laughs. “The pathetic thing is that, yes, I would.”

“Really?” Kelley says, raising his eyebrows.

“I’m pretty lonely,” Margaret says. “And I blew off the man I was meeting in Hawaii so I could show up here and save the day.”

“Well, then!” Kelley says. He takes Margaret by the hand, but she breaks free.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” she says. She wants to use Ava’s bathroom to freshen up.

“Be quick,” Kelley says. “The kids are going to wake up eventually.”

The kids, Margaret thinks.

Is she really going to do this? Sleep with Kelley?

She brushes her teeth, applies the moisturizer that Roger claims can fix anything, smiles at her reflection in the mirror. She looks a decade older than she does on TV-no surprise there-makeup, lighting, television magic. Should she put on mascara or concealer? No. Kelley won’t care if she’s wearing makeup or not. He’s seen her after giving birth, for God’s sake-three times. And he always said that was the most beautiful she ever looked.

Sweet man.

So… she’s fifty-nine years old, and she’s about to have sex with her ex-husband.

Really?

Really. She’s old enough to have learned that sex is just sex, and at fifty-nine and sixty-two, desire should be treated like a rare and precious commodity. She’s also grateful that forgiveness and the passing of time have brought them to this moment.