Elin Hilderbrand - The Love Season

Claire coughed into her napkin.

“I’ll go get her,” Cade said.

“I’ll go get her,” Daniel said. “If she’s hiding from anyone, it’s me.”

“Hiding?” Suzanne said. “Don’t be ridiculous. You both sit. Nicole will go up and get Renata, won’t you, Nicole?”

“Certainly,” Nicole said.

“Wonderful,” Suzanne said. “Thank you. The rest of us should start before everything gets cold.” She lifted her wineglass and waited with a pointed gaze until Daniel and Cade took their places. “Cheers, everyone!”

Nicole trudged up the back stairs. She felt cranky and venomous, like a snake ready to strike. She had worked nearly fourteen hours today, she had not had a moment to take her dinner break, and she was pretty certain that, despite all the beautiful promises he had made in order to lure her to Nantucket from South Africa, Miles was leaving her. It would be unfair to say this was all Renata’s fault. Things between Nicole and Miles had been strained all summer-he constantly asked her to take his shifts so he could hang out at the Chicken Box or go to the beach with the lesbian surfer girl. Since one of them was responsible round-the-clock for meeting Suzanne Driscoll’s needs and desires, there was no time to be alone together, no time for sex except the wee hours (when, quite frankly, Nicole was too tired), no time to enjoy each other’s company or even plan their winter escape-a three-month kayaking trip to Irian Jaya. No, it wasn’t Renata’s fault, though Nicole suspected they had slept together. Nicole heard it in Miles’s voice that afternoon when he’d called to say he wasn’t coming back. Miles had wanted Nicole to pack his stuff up and leave it hidden in the bushes at the end of the driveway; he wanted Nicole to tell Suzanne he was quitting. Nicole was incredulous. I am not going to do your dirty work. Come pack your things yourself. Come tell Suzanne to her face, like a man . But he claimed he couldn’t-he told her the whole sob story about the lesbian surfer girl hit in the head with her board, nearly drowned, and then he confessed that the real reason he couldn’t return to Vitamin Sea was because of a bad judgment call he’d made in regard to Renata. He’d kidnapped her for the afternoon; he’d convinced her to skip lunch with the madame. And you know what Suzanne will think , he’d said. Oh yes. It was what Nicole thought herself, it was what Cade thought, it was what everyone thought when they heard that Miles and Renata had slipped away together for the afternoon. Bad judgment indeed. Nicole had hung up on him, midsentence. She would never again trust an American.

Nicole knocked on the guest room door with authority, as though she were a dormitory proctor, or the police. “Renata?” she said. “Please open up, Renata. I’m afraid your absence has been detected downstairs.” She knocked again, with such force the door rattled in its frame. Renata had had…three wine spritzers? She was probably passed out facedown, drooling all over the linens. Nicole knocked once more for propriety’s sake, then opened the door. Simply telling Suzanne that Renata wasn’t answering wouldn’t be good enough; Suzanne liked tasks completed.

Nicole was no detective, but she was able to put two and two together and draw a conclusion in a matter of seconds-the room was empty; the duffel bag that, only that morning, looked as though it had exploded everywhere was gone; the much-celebrated engagement ring sparkled on top of the dresser. On the floor lay Miles’s shirt, his white polo with the small rip in the collar. Nicole picked it up. Sure enough. The little bitch , Nicole thought. Gone with Miles . Nicole hissed with anger. What a day. The worst of her life.

8:50 P.M.

They didn’t sit down to their proper dinner until nearly nine o’clock, and by that time they had emptied both bottles of champagne. Marguerite suggested a trip to the basement for a third bottle, and Renata, because she was younger and more sure-footed, led the way down the stairs. The basement wasn’t as scary as she imagined. There was a washer and dryer, a folded-up card table, a basic box of tools, and a wall rack that must have held five hundred bottles of wine.

“My secret cache,” Marguerite said. “What I took from the restaurant when it closed.”

“Geez,” Renata said. Marguerite slid a bottle of 1990 Pommery off the shelves, and they went back upstairs.

They decided to be brave and eat in the dining room, where the table was set and waiting. Marguerite pulled all the shutters on the front of the house closed and yanked the curtains firmly across.

“No one can see in,” she said.

Renata settled into a chair while Marguerite served pieces of rosy tenderloin ladled with béarnaise, crispy asparagus, and slabs of homemade bread served with the butter from Ethan’s farm. Marguerite filled their flutes to the top and set the bottle of Pommery in the wine cooler. She eased herself down across from Renata and raised her glass. Derek and the Dominos played in the background. Yes: This was what Marguerite had been dreaming of when she woke up this morning.

“Salud,” she said.

Their flutes clinked like a tiny bell. The clock struck nine.

“I feel so at home here,” Renata said. “Nothing at all like I felt on Hulbert Avenue. I feel so peculiarly at home.”

“I’m glad,” Marguerite said.

“Will you tell me about my mother?”

“Yes,” Marguerite said.

“I don’t have anyone else to ask,” Renata said. “Dad won’t talk about it.”

Marguerite cut a small piece of meat. “Have you thought to ask your uncle Porter?” This was something she’d been wondering. Porter had been there for nearly all of it; he could have shed a lot of light.

“Caitlin doesn’t let him see us,” Renata said. “She doesn’t like my dad, I guess, and she doesn’t like Uncle Chase. She has no use for anybody in Porter’s family.”

“That’s too bad,” Marguerite said. She wished she could say she was surprised, but Porter had gone against all good sense when he decided to marry Caitlin. “Surely you see him at school?”

“Never,” Renata said. “He only teaches graduate students now, and every time I stop by they say he’s busy.”

“Right,” Marguerite said. She cleared her throat. “Well, let’s see. Your mother.”

As Marguerite talked, Renata ate slowly. She laid her knife and fork down while she was asking a question; otherwise she savored every bite of the meat, the rich, lemony sauce, the asparagus, the chewy bread, thick with butter. When the clock struck the quarter hour, the half hour, the hour, Renata straightened, arched her back, stretched her legs under the table. Marguerite poured what seemed like an endless stream of champagne into Renata’s glass, which she didn’t need. She was very drunk-and yet, instead of impeding Renata’s concentration, it enhanced it. Renata absorbed every word: Marguerite and Porter meeting at the Musée du Jeu de Paume under Renoir’s Les Parapluies , Marguerite’s first minutes on Nantucket when Porter brought her to the new restaurant, the wormy chestnut floors, the driftwood mantelpiece, the prix-fixe menu, the night Porter first brought in Candace, the kiss, the tin of saffron. The walk with Candace through the moors after Porter’s picture appeared in The New York Times with another woman, the dinners when Candace and Marguerite sat by the fireplace in the very next room talking until well after midnight, the night in July when Daniel Knox first set foot in Les Parapluies and made it clear he wasn’t leaving until Candace agreed to go out with him. Their first meal alone together, Marguerite said, was one that she cooked them: cedar-planked salmon and potatoes Anna.