Beautiful Day

MARGOT

All she had left to survive was the brunch. Then, at three o’clock, she would drive the Land Rover up the ramp of the ferry, the wedding weekend would be over, and she could get down to the business of putting her life back together.

Edge gone.

Griff gone.

Jenna married.

Her mother still dead.

Margot wouldn’t even be able to cry about these things in peace during the two-hour boat ride as she had planned, because now her father was driving home with them.

Pauline had thrown the Notebook into the bonfire, and it had gone up in flames. Margot had just accepted this as the final devastation of the weekend-until Jenna told them that Stuart really was the Intelligent, Sensitive Groom Beth had predicted. Stuart had scanned the Notebook, page by page, into his computer-so Beth’s words in Beth’s handwriting would be preserved digitally forever. Doug would finally be able to read the last page of the Notebook.

Pauline had spent the night in the guest room with Rhonda, and at the crack of dawn, she drove Doug’s Jaguar onto the early morning ferry. She was going home alone. Doug was planning to stay at the Marriott in Stamford until he found a place in the city.

Splitsville.

Rhonda, however, had remained at the Carmichael house. She had gotten up early to run, she’d made a pot of coffee, and by the time Margot and her twice-broken heart stumbled downstairs, Rhonda was home, sweaty and breathless.

She had seemed sheepish. “I’m sorry about my mother,” she said.

Margot poured herself a cup of coffee, hot and black; the more bitter it tasted this morning, the better. “It’s nobody’s fault,” Margot said. This had long been Doug’s party line in regard to 95 percent of the divorces he saw. “Things happen, people change, there’s no point placing blame.”

Rhonda nodded but looked unconvinced.

Margot said, “We should go out together sometime. Drinks or dinner or something. I’d love to meet Raymond.”

“Would you?” Rhonda said, brightening. “How about Thursday night? Are you free Thursday night? You could meet Raymond and me at Swine.”

Margot had been thinking of some vague future date, but she was charmed by Rhonda’s enthusiasm. “I am free Thursday,” she said. “And I’ve been dying to go to Swine.”

It was a date, then. Margot hoped that by Thursday the excruciating pain she felt about Edge and Rosalie, and, oddly, the even worse pain she felt from watching Griff walk away, would have subsided to a point where she could be halfway decent company. It seemed an awful irony that she and Rhonda would become friends now that their parents were separating. And yet Margot was happy to have gotten at least one positive thing from the weekend.

She grabbed a glass of champagne from the tray and stood in the buffet line with Ryan and Jethro, who both looked beyond haggard. Waves of alcohol fumes emanated off of Ryan that even the heady scent of Aventus couldn’t disguise.

Aventus. Damn Edge.

Ryan and Jethro told Margot they had stayed up until four in the morning doing Patrón shots with the bandleader, whose name was Ernie Sands. They had gotten into a long, discursive conversation about Moby-Dick, and Ryan had started calling Jethro “Daggoo.”

“Daggoo and I might come back to Nantucket next summer,” Ryan said.

Jethro said, “Yeah, we might get married ourselves.”

Margot clapped her hands and mustered what she hoped passed for enthusiasm, but the thought of anyone else getting married-even people as ideally suited for each other as Ryan and Jethro-depressed her.

Ryan said, “You look worse than I feel. We brought copies of the Times and the News and Observer so everyone could see the wedding announcements. You want to be the first one? We’re sitting over there.”

“I would,” Margot said. “But I have to talk to my mother’s cousins. I’ve been putting it off all weekend.”

Margot fixed a plate of things she didn’t normally allow herself to eat-fried chicken, hash browns, and a big scoop of cheesy grits topped with barbecue. What did it matter if she weighed five hundred pounds? No one had loved her when she was thin.

She sought out Everett and Kay Bailey, her mother’s favorite cousins. It was a sign of devotion to her mother that Margot did this. She had always loved Ev and Kay, but the whole “catching up” thing was the last way Margot wanted to spend her time at this brunch.

They were, of course, delighted when Margot sat with them.

“Oh, what a wonderful surprise,” Kay said. “Here’s Margot! Where are the kids?”

“Back at the house,” Margot said. “With their cousins and a babysitter.” Playing their iDevices, she thought. Eating cake for breakfast.

Margot hadn’t seen Ev and Kay since her mother’s funeral seven years earlier, so there was a lot to discuss. Like her divorce from Drum Sr.

“He’s getting married again,” Margot said. “To a Pilates instructor named Lily.” A woman I had never heard of until three days ago. She ate a few huge forkfuls of barbecue and grits.

Was Margot dating anyone? “No, nobody special.” Unless you count the fifteen months I spent in a nebulous haze of sex and unrequited texting with my father’s law partner.

And how about work? It sounded as though she’d had quite the meteoric rise up through the ranks at Miller-Sawtooth. “Work is good,” Margot said. “I love my job.” Work had always been Margot’s ace in the hole. The rest of her life might be falling apart, but work-promotion, esteem, salary-had always been gangbusters. Or at least it had been until Griff. The first event of Griff was bad enough, but the reappearance of Griff had been exponentially worse. She had liked Griff months ago and regretted her actions, but over the course of the weekend, he had revealed himself to be even kinder, funnier, cooler, and more genuine than he had seemed previously. And he had liked her! He thought she was pretty! And smart! And tough and discerning! (The ultimate compliments, in her line of work.) And she had picked him off like a sniper. She had been ruthless and unethical; she had blown, blown, blown it!

Maybe the expression on her face gave away that work was a sore subject.

“Your dad seems good,” Ev said.

“Good?” Margot said. “Yep, he’s good.” As long as he doesn’t end up as a permanent denizen on my pull-out couch. More than anything, Margot hoped he didn’t default and go back to Pauline just because he couldn’t face life as a singleton.

“And your brothers?” Kay asked.

“Kevin is Kevin,” Margot said. “Out slaying dragons, making the world a safer place for humanity.” She and Ev and Kay all pivoted in their seats to observe Kevin and Beanie, arm in arm at the bar-where, Margot knew, Kevin would order a light beer and Beanie would get a V8 with nothing in it.

“And Nick,” Margot said. What the hell could she say about Nick that wouldn’t make Ev and Kay’s hair stand on end? At that moment, he was dancing with Finn to “Am I Blue?” The two of them looked like they had been welded together; Nick’s chin was on Finn’s head, her face smushed into his chest, her eyes closed. Their feet were barely shuffling. Margot watched them for a moment with awe and horror. They had spent the night together in Jenna’s room-Autumn had once again repaired to the groomsmen’s house with H.W., and Jenna and Stuart had spent their wedding night in the cottage at the Cliffside Beach Club. No one had said a word about Nick and Finn cohabiting in the family home-not her father, not Kevin, and not Margot herself. She wasn’t the moral police, they were both consenting adults, infidelity wasn’t against the law. But come on!

Jenna and Finn still weren’t speaking. They might never speak again, even if Nick and Finn ended up getting married someday.

Married! Margot barked out an unhappy laugh. Ev and Kay smiled at her as if to ask what was funny, and Margot rummaged for a neutral statement to make about Nick.

But at that moment, something happened. Margot saw a man enter the tent. Handsome guy, broad shoulders, bowlegged walk. Margot’s mouth dropped open.

No way, she thought. Oh, my God, no way.

“Excuse me a second,” she said to Ev and Kay.

She bumbled with her chair and her drink, which she had wisely decided to bring with her. She needed to get a better look.

Oh, my God, yes.

The man who had entered the tent was Scott Walker.

Inwardly, Margot squealed. She watched Scott Walker approach Nick and Finn on the dance floor. The band continued to play, but Nick and Finn stopped dead and separated, although Nick still had a hold of one of Finn’s sunburned arms.

Margot thought, Jesus, Nick, let go!

She thought, Scott is going to punch him.

Finn’s face was the face of someone who saw dead people. She looked petrified.

There were words, spoken by Scott, but Margot couldn’t hear them over the strains of “Everybody Loves My Baby.” Then Nick said something, and Margot hoped he was pulling out the charms that had, heretofore in his life, kept him alive and out of prison. Finn said nothing; she barely blinked.

Scott took Finn by the other arm. For a second, both Nick and Scott had a hold of Finn like they were engaged in a tug-of-war, and Margot thought, Everybody loves my baby, indeed! She wanted to know why Finn had men fighting over her wimpy, lying, cheating ass. It was neither fair nor just. Then Nick let go, and Scott led Finn out of the tent and down by the dock, where they stood and talked. They were fifty yards away, but still in full view of everyone.

Jenna appeared at Margot’s side.

Margot said, “I cannot believe this is happening. Can you believe this is happening?”

Jenna said, “I called him.”

The foghorn sounded. The ferry pushed forward off the dock. Margot and Doug sat in the front seat of the Land Rover, and the three kids with their iDevices were in the back. Ellie was wearing her flower girl dress; she had spilled Hawaiian Punch down the front, and the back was covered with grass stains, but that hardly mattered now.

The wedding was over.

“Forget the Marriott in Stamford,” Doug said. “I’m going to pack up my things, deal with some issues at the office, and come back up here next weekend. In fact, I’m going to stay all summer.”

“All summer?” Margot said. “You’re kidding me.”

“Not kidding,” he said. “I’ll go to the beach. I’ll golf at Sankaty. Why not? Edge can take care of things at the office.”

Margot nodded once sharply, in a way that she hoped conveyed that she did not want to talk about Edge. She was, however, insanely jealous at the thought of her father spending the entire summer on Nantucket. Because despite how weird and difficult the weekend had been, she didn’t want to leave the island. It physically pained her. As the ferry lumbered toward Hyannis, her heart broke a third time.

Which reminded her.

“I’m going up,” Margot said. “Who’s coming with me? Ellie?”

Ellie shook her head.

“Come on, you said you would.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Boys?” Margot said.

“No!” In chorus.

She sighed and felt impending tears. Her mother had never had a problem getting Margot and her siblings to do her bidding when they were this age. Margot and Kevin and Nick hadn’t been allowed to rebel until they were teenagers.

But maybe that was revisionist history. Maybe Margot just liked to believe that she had been an obedient daughter now because her mother was dead and Margot couldn’t bear to imagine that she’d given her mother a moment of trouble. Any which way, she wasn’t going to fight with her children; she wasn’t going to force them upstairs.

She said, “Fine, then, I’ll go alone.”

Doug leaned back in his seat. “I’d go with you, honey, but I’m beat.”

Margot got out of the car and climbed to the upper deck. She felt better with the air and the horizon, although Nantucket Sound was as flat as a mirror and the ferry wasn’t rocking at all. Margot stood out in the sun, without SPF 90, without a hat. What did it matter if she weighed five hundred pounds, what did it matter if she detonated into five million freckles?

She pulled two pennies out of her wallet, and as the ferry passed Brant Point Lighthouse, she tossed them into the sea. Her throw was lame; the pennies barely cleared the bottom deck. If either of her brothers had been present, they would have told her she threw like a girl. Margot checked to make sure no one had seen her. She heard footsteps. Someone was coming up behind her.

Margot thought it was her father, who would forgive her a bad throw and a whole lot more.

He sidled up next to her and rested his arms on the railing. Margot turned.

White visor.

Not her father.

Griff said, “Do you happen to have two pennies I could borrow?”

Margot felt like her heart was dropping off the side of the boat. She fished two more pennies out of her wallet and handed them to Griffin Wheatley, Homecoming King.

Griff grinned. He said, “I figure you owe me at least that.” He took the pennies and threw them so far they nearly landed on shore.

Margot said, “Very impressive.”

Griff said, “So they gave the job to Nanette Kim. I met her, you know, at the Starbucks on the first floor of Tricom’s building. She approached me, actually. She went to college with the woman that Jasper ditched when he married my wife. Anyway, Nanette Kim was extremely cool and smart as hell. She deserved that job.”

As badly as Margot wanted to be let off the hook, she couldn’t let him do it. “You deserved that job,” she said. “They liked you.”

“Nanette Kim left after six weeks because it was a hostile environment for women and minorities,” Griff said.

“I’ll point out,” Margot said, “that you’re neither a woman nor a minority.”

“But do you really think I would want to work at a place that is hostile toward women and minorities?” Griff said. He ran his hand over what was now his very, very appealing four-day scruff. “I wasn’t voted homecoming king for no reason. I’m a good guy, Margot. And I think you did me a favor by signing me off.”

Margot shook her head. “I wasn’t a good guy, though, Griff. I mean, I am a good person, in my heart. But what I did was… despicable.”

“I’m happy at Blankstar,” Griff said. “Really happy. It’s the right place for me.”

“Good,” Margot said. “I kept checking on you, you know. I Googled you first thing every morning until I found out you’d gotten a job.”

“Did you?” he said.

“I did.”

“You didn’t have to tell me the truth,” Griff said. “I never would have known. Never.”

“Yes,” Margot said. “I realize that.”

“So why did you?” Griff asked.

Why did she? Well, because she was her mother’s daughter and her father’s daughter, and because she was the mother of three young and growing souls. She could feed them takeout every night, she could leave them for hours with Kitty, the afternoon babysitter, but ultimately the person who was responsible for installing their moral compass was her. It was okay to mess up-to set a scorching-hot pan directly on a soft pine table and mar it forever, to file for divorce when she was no longer in love and had exhausted every hope, to become utterly infatuated with the wrong person and then commit what was essentially a crime of passion-but she had to own it.

How to explain this to Griff? She couldn’t possibly.

“I don’t know why I told you,” she said.

Griff took her chin and turned her face toward him. “But I do know,” he said.

Margot thought he was going to kiss her. He was going to kiss her, and this painful, difficult wedding weekend was going to get the kind of movie star ending that Margot could never have dreamed of. But instead Griff let his hand drop to the railing, and he stared out at the water.

“I don’t believe in love,” he said.

“Me either,” Margot said.

“And I’m never getting married again.”

“Me either,” Margot said.

Griff stood up straight and adjusted his visor. He looked at Margot, and she became transfixed by his blue-and-green kaleidoscope eyes. It was a genetic anomaly, and Margot wondered if heterochromia iridum came with any benefits. Did he see things differently? Did it lend him a sixth sense that enabled him to guess people’s favorite lyrics? Did it allow him to be generous of spirit even when he’d been wronged?

“I want you to call me,” Griff said. “Tonight, after you get home and settled, when you’re climbing into bed, as late as you want. Okay? I’ll answer, I promise.”

Margot nodded. “I’ll tell you the stupid stuff,” she said.

“All of it,” he said.

“Okay,” Margot agreed.

As Griff walked away, he spun around. “Thanks for the pennies,” he said. He squinted off the side of the boat. “You know, I can’t wait to come back here.”

Margot followed his gaze to the coastline of the island, the place where she had wandered the beach as a soulful teenager, where she had partied with her brothers and sneaked in the back doors of bars, where she had met Drum Sr., where she had discovered she was pregnant, where her mother’s spirit shone like the sun on every surface. It was the island where Margot wanted to rest her weary bones when this exquisite, tremendous, and endlessly confounding life was through. It was home.

“Me either,” Margot said.