A Summer Affair
Copyright © 2008 by Elin Hilderbrand
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at
www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com
First eBook Edition: July 2008
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons,living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-03267-4
Contents
Prologue: The Invisible Thread That Binds Her To Him
CHAPTER THREE: He Asks Her (Again)
CHAPTER FOUR: He Surprises Her
CHAPTER FIVE: She Surprises Herself
CHAPTER ELEVEN: She Hides It Away
ALSO BY ELIN HILDERBRAND
The Beach Club
Nantucket Nights
Summer People
The Blue Bistro
The Love Season
Barefoot
For the brightest star in my sky.
Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind.The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
—Henry James
The Invisible Thread That Binds Her To Him
March 2003
T
he guilt was like a clump of tar in her hair, warm and sticky, impossible to remove. The more she fingered it, the worse things got. Tar gummed her hands; she tried water but it formed a slick, milky film. She needed scissors, turpentine.
The tar had been real, back when Claire was four or five, back when she and her parents lived in the first house in Wildwood Crest, a shoe box that Claire didn’t remember living in, but that her mother was fond of pointing out when they drove through that part of town. Claire had been playing at the edge of the road, which was newly paved; she had been unsupervised (things had been different then with child raising), and when she came inside with the tar weighing down one side of her head, an ooey, gooey, licorice mess, her mother had said with bald matter-of-factness, “It will never come out.”
Just like the guilt!
On that morning in March, the phone rang early. Claire was exhausted and parched, and the kids were everywhere. Shea had been the baby then, and she was eating the scrambled eggs that had fallen from J.D.’s and Ottilie’s plates to the floor. Claire scooped the baby up and grabbed the phone. Siobhan, of course. No one else would call before eight on a Sunday except for Siobhan, who was Claire’s best friend and sister-in-law, the wife of Jason’s brother, Carter. Siobhan was Claire’s soul mate, her darling, her defender, her reality check—and, the night before, her partner in crime. They had been out on the town together, drinking, which happened so rarely that it qualified as a big deal. Siobhan would be calling to talk about it, remember it, relive it, parse it, deconstruct it, moment by moment. A lot had happened.
“Have you heard?” Siobhan said.
“Heard what?”
“Oh, God,” Siobhan said. “Sit down.”
Claire carried the baby into the front sitting room, which was never used. It was, however, the perfect place to accept bad news. “What is it?” she said. In their bedroom, Jason was sawing logs; she could hear him through the wall. It was a strictly enforced rule that he be allowed to sleep in on Sunday. Day of rest and all that. Would she have to wake him?
“Fidelma called, from the police station,” Siobhan said. “There was an accident. Daphne Dixon hit a deer and flipped her car. They flew her to Boston.”
“Is she . . . ?” Claire didn’t know how to ask.
“Alive? Yes. But just barely, I think.”
Messy, gooey, insoluble.
It will never come out.
“She was drunk,” Claire said.
“Smashed,” Siobhan said.
There had been seven women: Claire, Siobhan, Julie Jackson, Delaney Kitt, Amie Trimble, Phoebe Caldwell, and Daphne Dixon.
One of these things is not like the other
. Daphne was a summer resident—which is to say, very wealthy—who had recently decided to move to Nantucket year-round. Claire knew her slightly. They had met at a pool party, and Daphne and her husband had taken an interest in Claire’s glassblowing. They might want to commission a piece someday—who knew? Claire liked Daphne. Or she was flattered that Daphne seemed to like her. She had bumped into Daphne at the dry cleaners (Daphne picking up what looked to be fifty cashmere sweaters). Claire had said,
Come out with us on Saturday night!
They went to the spacious walnut bar at the Brant Point Grill, where there was live cabaret music. Daphne had been wearing a diaphanous top and a red silk scarf around her neck. It was clear from the beginning of the night that Daphne was letting loose, she was relaxing with the local crowd, she was allowing herself to go a little crazy. This wasn’t like the buttoned-up scene in Boston, she said boozily in Claire’s ear.
There had been a lot of drinking: countless glasses of chardonnay and a few rosy cosmopolitans for the other women—and margaritas, no salt, for Daphne. At the end of the evening, Claire went to the bar to order herself a Diet Coke before the room began to spin, and Daphne said, “And a margarita, no salt, for me, please, Claire.”
One Diet Coke, one margarita, no salt, please,
Claire told the bartender.
Now, in the sitting room that no one ever used, Claire picked stray yellow flecks of dried egg out of the baby’s duck-fuzz hair, her mind racing. Daphne had already had a lot to drink when Claire bought her the margarita. How many drinks had she had, exactly? Claire hadn’t been keeping track. Was one more the difference? Claire had wanted Daphne to be happy; she had wanted Daphne to have fun. Claire was the one who invited her along. Daphne had already bought a round of drinks, several rounds; it seemed, in retrospect, that Daphne had been pulling out money all night, leaving lavish tips for the bartender, throwing sixty dollars into the fishbowl on top of the piano for the cabaret singer. Claire had been relieved to reciprocate, to order Daphne a margarita, no salt, and pay for it.
Smashed,
Siobhan said.
The margarita wasn’t the problem; the margarita itself hadn’t done any damage. The problem was that when the night ended, when the bar closed and the seven mothers spilled out onto Easton Street, Daphne had climbed into her car, a Lincoln Navigator. Claire and Siobhan and Julie Jackson got into a cab, and they had encouraged Daphne to join them in the cab.
Come on, Daphne, there’s plenty of room! Let us take you home!
In Claire’s mind, the details were smudged; what she remembered was that they had encouraged Daphne to get into the cab, but they had not demanded it. They had not said,
You shouldn’t be driving,
or
We’re not willing to let you get behind the wheel of a car,
though that was what they should have said. The woman had consumed any number of margaritas and then strolled across the street and into the darkness, jangling her keys, her red scarf trailing elegantly down her back. Claire had been too intimidated to stop her. Claire had thought,
She is rich enough to know what she is doing.
Claire sat by the phone, waiting for Siobhan to call back with details from Fidelma, her Irish connection at the police station, who was getting information from her cousin Niamh, who worked as an intensive care nurse at Massachusetts General:
Daphne’s going into surgery. It’s touch and go. They don’t know what they’re going to find.
Daphne was going sixty miles an hour down the ridged dirt road that led to her house. Sixty miles an hour—the car must have been rocking like a washing machine. And then the deer, from out of nowhere. She cut the deer in half; the car flipped onto its side. No one saw or heard the accident—the road was lined with summer homes and it was the middle of March. No one was around. Daphne was pinned in the car, unconscious. The person who found her, finally, was her husband, Lock Dixon. After calling her cell phone forty times and getting no answer, he left their ten-year-old daughter, Heather, asleep in the house and set out to find his wife. She was two hundred yards shy of the driveway.
Claire cried; she prayed, working her way around the rosary beads while her children watched
Sesame Street.
She went to church with all three children in need of a nap and lit four candles—one for Daphne, one for Lock, one for the daughter, Heather, and one, inexplicably, for herself.
“It’s our fault,” Claire whispered over the phone to Siobhan.
“No, baby, it’s not,” Siobhan said. “Daphne is a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions. We told her to get in the bloody cab, and she refused. Say it with me:
She refused.
”
“She refused.”
“We did what we could,” Siobhan said. “We did our best.”
Tense hours spun into tense days. Claire’s phone rang off the hook. It was Julie Jackson, Amie Trimble, Delaney Kitt, all witnesses.
“I can’t believe it,” Julie Jackson said.
“I know,” Claire said, her heart pounding, the guilt rising in her throat like bile.
“She was so drunk,” Julie said.
“I know.”
“And then she drove,” Julie said.
“I should have made her get in the cab,” Claire said.
“Mmmmmm,” Julie said.
“I feel horrible.”
There was a long pause, during which Claire could feel pity rather than a sense of shared culpability.
“Are you going to . . . I don’t know, set up meals or anything?” Julie asked.
“Should I?” Claire said. This was what they did when someone was sick or had a baby: one person organized, and everyone signed up to take food. Was Claire the one who should organize? She didn’t know Daphne well enough to send over a parade of unfamiliar faces with covered dishes.
“Let’s wait and see what happens,” Claire said, thinking,
She has to live and be okay. Oh, Lord, please!
“Keep me posted,” Julie said. “And know I’m thinking about you.”
About
me?
This was meant to be comforting, Claire knew, but it gave texture to her shame. People would hear about Daphne’s accident and think of Claire.
“Thanks,” Claire said.
Daphne survived the surgery. She was hospitalized in Boston for weeks, though it wasn’t clear what was wrong with her. There were no broken bones, no spinal cord injuries, thank God, and no significant blood loss. There was a concussion, certainly, and some other problems that fell under the umbrella of “head injuries.” There was amnesia of a sort—and here the stories varied. Did she know her name? Did she know Lock and Heather? Yes. But she didn’t remember anything about the night out, and when Lock told her who she’d been out with—Julie Jackson, Claire Danner Crispin, Siobhan Crispin—Daphne shook her head.
I don’t know those people.
The memory came back, eventually, but certain things were rattled out of place. She wasn’t the same; she wasn’t right. There was some irreparable damage that had no name.
The guilt stayed with Claire.
She
was the one who had invited Daphne to come out in the first place. She had bought the last, godforsaken drink, when Daphne had already overimbibed. She had tried to cajole Daphne into the cab, but she had not dragged her by the arms the way she should have. She had not called the police or enlisted the help of the bouncer. She turned it over and over in her mind. Sometimes she exonerated herself. How could this possibly be construed as her fault? But the truth was brutal: Claire had failed to exercise the common sense needed to keep Daphne safe. A sin of omission, perhaps, but a sin just the same.
It will never come out.
When Daphne came home from the hospital, Claire filled a basket with homemade clam chowder and chicken salad and two novels and a jazz CD and some scented soaps. Something was wrong with Daphne mentally, that was the rumor, but no one knew what exactly. Claire sat in the car outside the Dixons’ monstrous summer home for a long time before she summoned the courage to take the basket of goodies to the front door. She was propelled forward by guilt and held back by fear. If Daphne opened the door, what would Claire say?
She knocked timidly, feeling like Little Red Riding Hood with her basket; then she chastised herself. She was being ridiculous! Siobhan liked to point out how ironic it was that Claire was named Claire, or “clear”—because Claire was blurry.
No boundaries!
Siobhan would shout. All her life, Claire had had a problem figuring out where other people ended and she began. All her life, she’d taken on the world’s hurt; she held herself responsible. But why?
Footsteps approached. Claire stopped breathing. The door opened, and Claire found herself face-to-face with Lock Dixon. He was, as everyone knew, a terrifically wealthy man, a billionaire, though it was now rumored he would sell his superconductor business in Boston. It was rumored that he was going to live here on Nantucket full-time and take care of things until Daphne was herself again.
“Hi,” Claire said, and she felt her cheeks bloom. She thrust the basket at Lock, and they both peered in at its jumble of contents. Soup, soap—Claire didn’t know what Daphne would want or need, but she had to bring something. Claire knew Lock Dixon casually; they had had the conversation about glassblowing, about Claire’s hot shop out behind her house. But would he remember? Claire was sure he would not remember. She was not memorable; she was frequently mistaken for every other redhead on Nantucket. “This is for Daphne.”
“Oh,” he said. His voice was husky, as if he hadn’t used it for days. He looked older to her, balder and heavier. “Thank you.”
“I’m Claire Danner,” she said. “Crispin.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know who you are.” He didn’t smile or say anything further, and Claire realized that this was what she had been afraid of. It hadn’t been Daphne at all, but Lock. He knew about the margarita and the other ways that Claire had failed his wife, and he blamed her. His eyes accused her.
“I’m sorry,” Claire said. There was a funny smell coming from the basket—the clams gone bad, the chicken salad rancid. Claire was mortified. She should say something else—
I hope Daphne feels better. Please give her my best.
But no, she couldn’t. She turned, fled for her car.
