Elin Hilderbrand - The Love Season

Renata could barely nod. She squeezed Marguerite’s bony fingers. There was a second barrage of knocks.

“Is there any way we could check…?” Renata said.

“And see who it is?” Marguerite said. “Certainly. I’ll go.” Marguerite crept into the dark hallway, telling herself she was not afraid. This was her house; Renata was her guest. She tiptoed down the hall and into the sitting room. She peered out the window, terrified that when she did so another face would be staring back at hers. But what she saw was Daniel Knox, sitting on the top step, his head in his hands. He had a small travel suitcase on the step next to him.

Marguerite hurried back to the kitchen. “It’s your father.”

“He’s alone?”

“He’s alone. He’s brought a suitcase. Perhaps you should come take a look.”

Renata followed Marguerite to the window. They pulled the curtain back, and both gazed upon Daniel sitting there. Marguerite’s heart lurched. She tried to forget that the last time he stood on the step it was to take his daughter away; it was to pass his terrible judgment. She pitied you, Margo . The words she would never forget. He had meant them-and worse still, they were true. But Marguerite found it hard to conjure the old pain. So much time had passed. So much time.

Renata bit her bottom lip. She tried to erase the sight of her father on a different front step, crying because someone in the world had been cruel or thoughtless enough to steal his little girl’s bicycle. All he’d ever wanted to do was protect her. He’d come to Nantucket tonight because of her phone call. He had heard it as a cry for help-and now Renata could see that’s exactly what it was.

“Shall we let him in?” Renata said. “Would it be okay with you?”

“Of course,” Marguerite said.

Together, they opened the door.

August 20, 2006 • 12:22 A.M.

Cade Driscoll pulled up in front of the house on Quince Street in his family’s Range Rover. Once he was parked and settled, however, he just sat in his car like a spy, Renata’s engagement ring clenched in his hand. On the first floor, the shutters had been pulled, though Cade could see thin strips of light around the edges of the windows. A light went on upstairs. Through the curtains, Cade discerned shadowy figures. Renata? Daniel? The godmother? He waited, watching, hoping that Renata would peer out and see him. Come down , he thought. Come down and talk to me . But eventually the light upstairs went off. A light came on downstairs, on the right side of the house, and Cade watched with renewed interest, but then that light went out and Cade sensed that was it for the night. They were all going to sleep. He would be well advised to do the same.

Cade opened his palm and studied the engagement ring. He hadn’t told Renata this, but he had bought the ring at an estate sale at Christie’s; the ring, initially, had belonged to someone else. What kind of woman, Cade had no idea; what kind of marriage it represented, he couldn’t begin to guess. He placed the ring in the car’s ashtray. Monday, when he was back in Manhattan, he would sell it on consignment.

He resumed his stakeout of the dark house. Like the ring, Number Five Quince Street contained a story, a secret history. The same could be said, no doubt, for every house on Quince Street and for every bright apartment window in Manhattan, for every igloo, Quonset hut, cottage, split-level, bungalow, and grass shack across the world. They all held stories and secrets, just as the Driscoll house on Hulbert Avenue held the story of today. Or part of the story.

The rest, Cade feared, he would never know.

1:05 A.M.

Marguerite lay in bed, used up, spent, as tired as she’d ever been in her life, and yet she couldn’t sleep. There was excitement and, yes, anxiety, about not one but two of her upstairs guest rooms occupied, about Renata and Daniel asleep above her head. In a hundred years she never could have predicted that she would have them both in her house again. To have them show up unannounced and know they would be welcome to stay the night, like they were family.

Marguerite had expected Daniel to be officious, gruff, angry, annoyed, impatient, disgruntled, demanding-but if she and Porter were playing their old game and she had only one word to describe Daniel, it would be “contrite.” He was as contrite as a little boy who had put a baseball through her window.

“I’m sorry,” he said when Marguerite and Renata opened the door. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The apologies came in a stream and Marguerite couldn’t tell if he was sorry for showing up on her doorstep at midnight with his overnight bag, or sorry for coming to Nantucket to meddle in his daughter’s affairs, or sorry for keeping Marguerite and Renata away from each other for fourteen years, or sorry for his punishing words so long ago or sorry for feeling threatened by Marguerite since the day he showed up at Les Parapluies without a reservation, when he pulled out a chair and took a seat in their lives, uninvited. Possibly all of those things. Marguerite allowed Dan to embrace her and kiss her cheek, and then she stood aside and watched as father and daughter confronted each other. Renata crossed her arms over her chest and gave Daniel a withering look.

“Oh, Daddy!” she said. Then she grimaced. “Don’t tell me what happened over there. Please don’t tell me. I really don’t want to know.”

“I’d rather not think about it myself,” Daniel said. He sighed. “I’m not trying to control your life, honey.”

Renata hugged him; Marguerite saw her tug on his earlobe. “Yes, you are,” she said. “Of course you are.”

“Would you like a drink, Daniel?” Marguerite asked. “I have scotch.”

“No, thanks, Margo,” he said. “I’ve had plenty to drink already tonight.” He sniffed the air. “Smells like I missed quite a meal.”

“You did,” Renata said. She shifted her feet. “Can we talk about everything in the morning? I’m too tired to do it now. I’m just too tired.”

“Yes,” Daniel said. Marguerite noticed him peer into the sitting room. In the morning he would want to see the house; he would want to see what was the same, what was different. He would look for signs of Candace. It was fruitless to hope he might bestow a kind of forgiveness, but she would hope anyway.

“Yes,” Marguerite agreed. “You, my dear, have had quite a day. Let me show you upstairs.”

Marguerite led the way with Renata at her heels. Daniel, who had been left to carry the bags, loitered at the bottom of the stairs. He was snooping around already, reading something that he found on one of the bottom steps, something Marguerite hadn’t even realized she’d left there-her columns from the Calgary newspaper.

“Dad?” Renata said impatiently.

He raised his face and sought out Marguerite’s eyes. “Do you enjoy working with Joanie?” he said.

Marguerite raised one eyebrow, a trick she hadn’t used in years and years. “You know Joanie Sparks?” she said. “You know the food editor of The Calgary Daily Press? ”

“Do you remember my best man, Gregory?”

Marguerite nodded. How would she ever explain that she’d been thinking of Gregory just today, and the relentless way he’d pursued poor Francesca?

“Joanie is his sister,” Dan said. “I dated her a million years ago. In high school.”

“ You gave her my name then?” Marguerite said. “You suggested I write the column?”

He shrugged, returned his attention to the clippings for a second, then set them down. He picked up his overnight case and Renata’s lumpy bag and ascended the stairs with a benign, noncommittal smile on his face. “I did,” he said. “And not only that but I read the column every week. Online.”