Elin Hilderbrand - The Island

“Barrett, you did it! You wore a jacket! God, are you gorgeous! ” She hugged Barrett and kissed him, leaving a coral smudge on his cheek. Her eyes were very dark, rimmed by electric blue liner. She was probably forty-five, Tate guessed, but she had the va-va-voom factor of a twenty-one-year-old supermodel. She beamed at Tate. “And you-you’re the girl from Tuckernuck?”

Tate smiled. She felt dowdy and tongue-tied; she felt like her teeth were coated with moss. “Tate Cousins,” she said.

“So, ladies,” Mrs. Fullin said to her entourage, “Tate lives on Tuckernuck.”

“Where’s Tuckernuck?” one of the women asked.

“Is that the place with the seals?” another asked.

“No,” Tate said before she realized she had even spoken. “That’s Muskeget. Tuckernuck is closer in. It’s half a mile off Eel Point.” The women stared at her blankly, and Tate realized that although they all probably owned humongous summer homes, they might not know the island well enough to know where Eel Point was.

Mrs. Fullin said, “I am very jealous of you, having Barrett come over there twice a day. In fact, I can hardly stand it. If I could, I would have him live here with us.” She winked. “Of course, Roman would begin to wonder.”

“For good reason,” one of the women said.

Mrs. Fullin said, “Isn’t Barrett the most gorgeous creature you have ever laid eyes on?”

Barrett said, “Anita, please.”

Mrs. Fullin looked at Tate. “I hate you for stealing him away from me. I hate you, your sister, your mother, and your aunt.”

Tate was thunderstruck. She could survive the attack-it was delivered tongue in cheek, meant to be a joke. But Tate felt violated. The only way this woman could have known about Tate’s mother and sister and aunt was if Barrett had talked about them. Did he talk about them with Anita Fullin? What did he say? They didn’t make him change the paper towel roll! Tate tried to smile, though she was sure she looked like she was in pain. What she wanted to say was, I heard you ruined Barrett’s fishing trip the other night. When Barrett told her that story, Tate had pictured someone older, perhaps even elderly, fragile, helpless. The reality was that Anita Fullin was a bombshell and it sounded like she had a crush on Barrett.

Barrett intervened, to change the subject. “This is a great party,” he said.

“It is great, isn’t it?” Mrs. Fullin said. She reached for his hand. “I am so glad you’re here. Last year wasn’t the same without you.”

They looked at each other, and something passed between them. Tate guzzled the rest of her champagne. She checked the faces of the other women, all of whom were watching Barrett and Mrs. Fullin like it was something being shown on TV.

Barrett said, “I just couldn’t do it last year.” He took a sip of his drink.

“Of course not,” Mrs. Fullin said. She beamed at him and then at Tate. “But look, life goes on!”

The interaction with Anita Fullin left Tate feeling threatened and uncomfortable. She had half a mind to sneak into the house, find the computer, and lose herself in the electronic world. (This temptation was very real. It was, Tate imagined, the same urge her father felt when he passed a golf course.) But Barrett hung on to Tate, and sensing that her shoes were driving her insane (they weren’t called killer heels for nothing), he directed her to the seawall, where they sat side by side and admired the harbor. Tate was happier. She drank her champagne and Barrett flagged down servers and they ate mini crab cakes and sticky Chinese ribs and cheddar tartlets.

Tate said, “Mrs. Fullin loves you.”

“Yeah,” Barrett said. “It’s a problem.”

“She’s beautiful,” Tate said.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

Dinner was served in the side yard under a tent. There were ten round tables of ten and a rectangular head table of sixteen, which was where Barrett and Tate were seated. Barrett was placed at one end of the table, to Anita Fullin’s left, and Tate was all the way at the opposite end, to Mr. Fullin’s left. This was, in Tate’s mind, the worst possible scenario, and she thought that Barrett might do something about it-switch the place cards?-but he just licked his bottom lip.

“Are you going to be okay down here by yourself?” he asked.

No, she thought. But she said, “Yes. Absolutely.”

It was an honor to be seated at the head table, Tate recognized, even as she wished that they’d been stuck in Siberia with the middle-aged AuClaires. Barrett and Tate moved through the buffet line together. The food was amazing and Tate didn’t hold back. She piled her plate with grilled lamb, green beans, a beautiful potato salad, and sautéed cherry tomatoes, as well as a lobster tail, six jumbo shrimp, and four raw oysters, which she drowned with mignonette. She plucked another glass of champagne off a passing tray. Then she sat in her assigned seat and watched as Barrett journeyed to the other side of the world.

Roman Fullin was bald and wore square glasses. He had the distracted manner of a very important man who made lots of money. He sat down, flagged a server, and asked for a glass of red wine from one of the bottles he had set aside. For this table only, he said. He inspected his plate of food as though he didn’t recognize anything on it; then he shifted his eyes to Tate’s loaded plate; then his eyes swept up to Tate’s face. Who was this woman sitting next to him at the head table? Tate felt like she was encroaching on his personal territory; she felt like he had just discovered her in his master bedroom.

“Hi,” he said, offering a hand. “Roman Fullin.”

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Tate Cousins.”

“Tate Cousins,” he said, repeating it loudly, perhaps to see if it rang a bell.

She said, “I’m Barrett Lee’s date.”

“Ah,” Roman said, though he still seemed nonplussed. He considered the people to his right and Tate’s left, whom he clearly knew a lot better. “Betsy, Bernie, Joyce, Whitney, Monk-this is Tate Cousins.”

“Cousins?” one of the men said. All of the men at the table looked alike, and Tate hadn’t been able to pin down any names. “You aren’t by any chance related to Grant Cousins?”

Tate was sucking down an oyster, which gave her a second to think. People either loved her father or they hated him. She was feeling too vulnerable to lie. “He’s my father,” she said.

“Whoa!” the man said. “What are the chances? He’s my lawyer.”

Roman Fullin’s eyebrows shot up. “What are the chances, indeed! He’s not the guy who…”

And the other man said, “Yep, the very same one.” To Tate, he said, “Your father is a genius. He really saved my tail. Does he ever mention the name Whit Vargas? I send him Yankees tickets every time they cross my desk.”

Tate sucked down another oyster, and some of the mignonette dripped onto her silk sheath. She forgot her manners when she was nervous, and she was very nervous now, though things had taken a turn for the better. At least she had an agreeable pedigree. She checked on Barrett at the other end of the table; he was locked into conversation with Anita Fullin.

She shook her head at Whit Vargas. “He rarely talks about his clients,” she said. “He likes to respect their privacy.”

Whit Vargas held a dripping piece of tenderloin in front of his mouth. “I should be grateful for that!” he said.

Roman Fullin was filled with new interest where Tate was concerned. “So wait,” he said. “Who did you say you came with?”

“Barrett,” she said. “Barrett Lee.”

“And how do you know Barrett?”

“He caretakes our house on Tuckernuck.”

“Ahhhhh,” Roman said, as though it were all so clear to him now. “You’re part of the Tuckernuck family. The bane of my wife’s existence.”