Nancy
Confide: to disclose secret or personal matters
in confidence
The night before she moved out of The Captain’s House, Nancy held her last meeting of the book group.
Whether or not it continued would be up to other people, she thought, as she set up in the garden room. She always loved the garden in May, and this room offered the best view.
From next week the house would be the summer retreat for the Brown family who lived in Manhattan on the Upper East Side. They’d taken it for the whole summer, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, at a cost that had made Nancy gasp aloud. She never would have believed it had the money not already been in her account.
Lauren had handled the negotiation. If it had been up to Nancy she would have asked a lower price, but Lauren had studied the market carefully.
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Jenna had said when Nancy had mentioned Lauren’s sales skills. “You should have seen how persuasive she was whenever she wanted me to do something we weren’t supposed to do.”
So the deal was done, and this would be her last night in the house until the winter.
Nancy poked at her emotions carefully, searching for tender places. Sadness? No. She felt nothing. No regret. No guilt for letting her ancestors down.
Instead she felt pride at what they’d achieved, and not only because they’d done it on a shoestring budget. What really made her proud was the teamwork. They’d combined their skills. Who would have thought that at her age she’d be going into business with her daughter? That was something she hadn’t anticipated.
Lauren Stewart. Nancy Stewart.
Coastal Chic.
The garden room was a perfect example of the design style they hoped would become their trademark and now it was all ready for her group. Three bottles of white wine were chilling in the fridge and Jenna was in the kitchen making canapés while Mack worked on her laptop at the kitchen table.
Nancy plumped a couple of cushions and decided not to admit that she’d abandoned tonight’s book halfway through. It hadn’t been her selection, and she’d known immediately that she was going to hate it. The book had hit all the bestseller lists, but she’d chosen to avoid it because of the subject matter. As she was going to be forced to endure a discussion about it, she decided she should at least read a few chapters, and reading it had made her feel every bit as uncomfortable and unhappy as she’d anticipated. It was about the decline of a marriage, and she’d empathized closely with the heroine. The book had felt too much like real life for the reading experience to be described as enjoyable, not that she was about to admit that to anyone in her group because none of these women knew anything about the reality of her life with Tom.
Tonight, she’d let others do the talking.
Mary-Beth arrived first, armed with a bottle of wine and a notepad covered in her sprawling handwriting. “Wasn’t sure about this book—” She dropped her bag on the floor, put her notepad on the table and handed Nancy the wine.
Nancy was about to agree when the rest of her friends walked into the room.
“Your daughter let us in. Lauren.” Sophie kissed Nancy and then Mary-Beth. “She hasn’t changed since she was eighteen.”
Nancy suspected her daughter had changed a great deal. Being a widow tended to do that, particularly when there were unresolved issues.
One of the reasons she’d been so angry that Tom had died in that car was that she’d been deprived of the opportunity to tell him what she thought of his lying, cheating ways.
She’d visited his grave a few times recently and told him what she thought of him, although she had at least checked no one was within earshot. She’d found the experience therapeutic. Maybe it was because he no longer responded with lies and excuses. She had her say and he was forced to lie there and listen.
“I confess I didn’t love the book.” Margie selected a chair by the window. “The heroine was a doormat.”
She’d been a doormat, Nancy realized. She’d allowed Tom to behave the way he had. She’d enabled him.
“I agree.” Sophie took the glass of wine Nancy handed her. “She should have kicked him out and changed the locks.”
Yes, that would have been a good plan.
Nancy imagined herself doing it, maybe swinging one of his precious golf clubs instead of her foot.
Goodbye, Tom. Have a nice life.
Jenna walked in, carrying the canapés. The bruise on her head was still visible if you looked closely, but other than that she seemed back to her old self.
She put the plates down on the low table to a chorus of appreciative gasps.
“Well look at that—” Mary-Beth leaned forward to examine the contents of the plates more closely “—it’s art on a plate. How did you make the pastry look like a seashell?”
“Trade secret.” Jenna handed out napkins and Nancy helped herself to a canapé, agreeing that the food was indeed art on a plate.
She’d always thought Jenna was 100 percent Tom’s child, but now she realized she’d been wrong about that. She’d inherited his warmth, that was true, but she also had Nancy’s creativity and appreciation of the visual.
Why had it taken her this long to truly know her daughter? The acid burn of regret over the past was soothed by the balm of the present and the future.
It was never too late to move forward.
She thought about Ben, and smiled. It definitely wasn’t too late.
“I don’t agree with you about the heroine.” Angela helped herself to a pastry seashell. “She did it to protect her daughter. And kicking someone out isn’t the only valid response to infidelity. She loved him, so she forgave. You need forgiveness in a marriage. Being able to forgive doesn’t make her a doormat.”
Mary-Beth pulled a face. “You also need respect. Where was that? It was missing. And speaking of things that are missing, where’s Alice?”
“She couldn’t make it.” Nancy studied the plate of canapés. Bacon or shrimp?
“Alice has never missed a book group. Is she ill?”
Nancy settled for shrimp. “I don’t think so.”
Mary-Beth reached into her bag for her reading glasses. “Maybe she felt bad because she hadn’t read the book.”
Margie shook her head. “What’s that got to do with anything? Alice comes for the gossip and the company.”
Nancy was fairly sure the reason Alice hadn’t joined them was because she had read the book.
She caught Lauren’s puzzled glance but nothing more was said on the subject until everyone had left and the four Stewart women were clearing up.
Mack’s approach to clearing up was to eat the rest of the canapés. “They won’t keep,” she mumbled, brushing crumbs of buttery pastry from the corner of her mouth.
Jenna took the plate from her. “They won’t keep with you in the house, that’s for sure.”
“I’m a starving teenager.” Mack grabbed the last one and Nancy carried the empty plates into the kitchen.
“What’s going on with Alice, Mom?” Lauren took the plates from her and stacked the dishwasher. “Should we call? Go over there and check on her?”
“No. Don’t do that.”
“Do you know what’s wrong?”
How was she supposed to answer that?
The simplest thing was not to.
“I need to finish clearing up—” She turned to walk out of the kitchen but Lauren caught her arm.
“Are you upset? Has something happened?”
“No. Not in the way you mean. I can’t—” Nancy paused, torn by loyalty to an old friendship and concern for her girls. “It’s something I’m not able to discuss with you. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Fair?” Jenna blocked the doorway. “Fair on you or fair on us?”
Lauren frowned. “Or fair on Alice?”
Nancy foundered. “It’s complicated.”
“So you do know the reason Alice wasn’t here tonight?”
“Yes, I think I do.” Nancy picked up a cloth and started wiping down surfaces.
“Leave the cleaning.” Lauren took the cloth from her and put it on the countertop.
“We said no more secrets,” Jenna said. “Whatever it is that’s bothering you, we’ll handle it. And we won’t mention it to Alice, if that’s what’s worrying you. Why didn’t she come tonight? Is it something to do with your leaving The Captain’s House?”
“No. I’m sure it was because she didn’t like the book.”
“How do you know she didn’t like it?”
Oh, Alice, Alice. “Because the book was about infidelity.”
Jenna opened the fridge and stowed a half-empty bottle of wine. “What does that have to do with Alice?”
Everything.
And it felt overwhelming. The emotion, the indecision, the heartache, it all felt like too much to contain.
“I’m guessing she found the subject matter uncomfortable.”
“Alice has a thing about infidelity?”
“Not exactly.” Nancy picked up the cloth again and twisted it in her hands. “Alice was having an affair with Tom. I suspect she was the one you saw him with in the Sail Loft that night.”