Beautiful Day (2 page)

“Well, congratulations,” Margot said. “That’s wonderful.” She sounded genuine to her
own ears; she
was
genuine. Drum was a good guy, just not the guy for her. She had been the one to end
the marriage. Drum’s laid-back approach to the world—which Margot had found so charming
when she met him surfing on Nantucket—had come to drive her insane. He was unambitious
at best, a slacker at worst. That being said, Margot was astonished to find she felt
a twinge of—what? jealousy? anger? resentment?—at his announcement. It seemed unfair
that news of Drum’s nuptials should arrive less than forty-eight hours before Jenna’s
wedding.

Everyone is getting married,
she thought.
Everyone but me
.

Jenna and Finn were as young and blond and pretty as a couple of milkmaids on a farm
in Sweden. Finn looked more like Jenna than Margot did. Margot had straight black
hair, the hair of a silk weaver in Beijing—and she had six inches on her sister, the
height of a tribeswoman on the banks of the Amazon. She had blue eyes like Jenna,
but Jenna’s were the same color as the sapphires in her engagement ring, whereas Margot’s
were ice blue, the eyes of a sled dog in northern Russia.

Jenna looked exactly like their mother. And so, bizarrely, did Finn, who had grown
up three houses away.

“We need to get a picture of the three of us now,” Jenna said. She took the camera
from Margot and handed it to a man reading the newspaper in one of the plastic molded
chairs.

“Do you mind?” Jenna asked sweetly.

The man rose. He was tall, about Margot’s age, maybe a little
older; he had a day or two of scruff on his face, and he was wearing a white visor
and sunglasses. He looked like he was going to Nantucket to sail in a regatta. Margot
checked his left hand—no ring. No girlfriend in the vicinity, no children in his custody,
just a folded copy of the
Wall Street Journal
now resting on his seat as he rose to take the picture. “Sure,” he said. “I’d love
to.”

Margot assumed that Jenna had picked the guy on purpose; Jenna was on a mission to
find Margot a boyfriend. She had no idea that Margot had allowed herself to fall in
love—idiotically—with Edge Desvesnes, their father’s law partner. Edge was thrice
married, thrice divorced, nineteen years Margot’s senior, and wildly inappropriate
in half a dozen other ways. If Jenna
had
known about Margot and Edge, she would only be more eager to introduce Margot to
someone else.

Margot found herself assigned to the middle, pegged between the two blond bookends.

“I can’t see your face,” Regatta Man said, nodding at Margot. “Your hat is casting
a shadow.”

“Sorry,” Margot said. “I have to leave it on.”

“Oh, come on,” Jenna said. “Just for one second while he takes the picture?”

“No,” Margot said. If her skin saw the sun for even one second, she would detonate
into a hundred thousand freckles. Jenna and Finn could be cavalier with their skin,
they were young, but Margot would stand vigilant guard, despite the fact that she
must now seem rigid and difficult to Regatta Man. She said in her most conciliatory
voice, “Sorry.”

“No worries,” Regatta Man said. “Smile!” He took the picture.

There was something familiar about the guy, Margot thought. She knew him. Or maybe
it was the Dramamine messing with her brain.

“Should I take one more, Margot?” he said. “Just to be safe?”

Regatta Man removed his sunglasses, and Margot felt as though she’d been slapped.
She lost her footing on the deck and tipped a little. She looked into Regatta Man’s
eyes to be sure. Sure enough,
heterochromia iridum
—dark blue perimeters with green centers. Or, as Margot had thought when she first
saw him, he was a man with kaleidoscope eyes.

Before her stood Griffin Wheatley, Homecoming King. Otherwise just known as Griff.
Who was, out of all the people in the world, among the top five Margot didn’t want
to bump into without warning. Didn’t want to bump into at all. Maybe the top three.

“Griff!” she exclaimed. “How
are
you?”

“I’m good, I’m good,” he said. He cleared his throat and nervously shoved the camera
back at Margot; the question of the second photo seemed to have drifted off on the
breeze. Margot figured Griff was about half as uncomfortable as she was. He would
be thinking of her only as the bearer of disappointing news. She was thinking of him
as the worst judgment call she had made in years. Oh, God.

He said, “Did you hear I ended up taking the marketing job at Blankstar?”

Margot couldn’t decide if she should pretend to be surprised by this, or if she should
admit that she had been Googling his name every single day until she was able to reassure
herself that he’d landed safely. The job at Blankstar was a good one.

She changed the subject. “So why are
you
headed to Nantucket?” She tried to recall: Had Griff mentioned Nantucket in any of
his interviews? No, she would have remembered if he had. He was from Maryland somewhere,
which meant he had probably grown up going to Rehoboth or Dewey.

“I’m meeting buddies for golf,” he said.

Ah, yes, golf—of course golf, not sailing. Griff had spent two
years on the lower rungs of the PGA Tour. He’d made just enough money, he said, to
buy a case of beer each week and have enough left over for the Laundromat. He had
lived out of the back of his Jeep Wrangler and, when he played well, at the Motel
6.

These details all came back unbidden. Margot couldn’t stand here another second. She
turned to Jenna, sending a telepathic message:
Get me out of here!
But Jenna was checking her phone. She was texting her beloved Stuart, perhaps, or
any other of the 150 guests who would gather on Saturday to drink in the sight of
Jenna wearing their mother’s wedding gown.

“I’m here for my sister’s wedding,” Margot said. She chewed her bottom lip. “I’m the
maid of honor.”

He lit up with amused delight, as though Margot had just told him she had been selected
to rumba with Antonio Banderas on
Dancing with the Stars
. “That’s great!” he said.

He sounded far more enthusiastic than she felt.

She said, “Yes, Jenna is getting married on Saturday.” Margot indicated Jenna with
a Vanna White flourish of her hands, but Jenna’s attention was glued to her phone.
Margot was afraid to engage Jenna anyway, because what if Jenna asked how Margot and
Griff knew each other?

Thankfully, Finn stepped forward. “I’m Finn Sullivan-Walker,” she said. “I’m just
a lowly bridesmaid.”

Griff shook hands with Finn and laughed. “Not lowly, I’m sure.”

“Not lowly at all,” Margot said. This was the third time that Finn had made reference
to the fact that she
wasn’t
Jenna’s maid of honor. She had been miffed when Jenna first announced her decision
to Margot and Finn, over dinner at Dos Caminos. Finn had ordered three margaritas
in rapid succession, then gone silent. And then she had gotten her nose out of joint
about it
again at the bridal shower. Finn was upset that she had been stuck writing down the
list of gifts while Margot the maid of honor fashioned the bows from the gifts into
a goofy hat made from a paper plate. (Jenna was supposed to wear that hat tonight,
to her bachelorette party. Margot had rescued it from the overly interested paws of
Ellie, her six-year-old daughter, and had transported it here, more or less intact,
in a white cardboard box from E.A.T. bakery.)

Margot had told Jenna that it would be fine if Jenna wanted to ask Finn to be the
matron of honor. Margot was eleven years older than Jenna; Finn had always been more
like Jenna’s sister. Now Jenna and Finn were both in the throes of the nuptial era;
everyone they knew was getting married. For the two of them, being the maid of honor
was an actual
honor
—whereas Margot had been married and divorced and, quite frankly, couldn’t care less.

But Margot knew the reason why Jenna would never ask Finn to be matron of honor. It
was because of the Notebook. It had been assumed by their mother that Margot would
serve as Jenna’s maid of honor.

Margot said, “Finn just got married last October.”

“Oh, really?” Griff said.

Finn gazed out at the water. “Yeah.”

“Her husband is a golfer, too,” Margot said. “Scratch!”

Finn’s husband, Scott Walker, had been on the golf team at Stanford, where Tiger Woods
had played. Now Scott was a hedge fund manager making a bajillion dollars a quarter.

Finn made a face like she had just eaten snail and vinegar stew, and Margot wondered
if something was awry in her seemingly perfect marriage. Scott, Margot knew, wasn’t
coming to the wedding because of one of the inevitable conflicts for those mired in
the nuptial era:
his
best friend, his roommate from Stanford, was
having
his
bachelor party this very same weekend. Scott was in Las Vegas.

Probably Finn just missed him, the way that Margot missed Edge. The way that Margot
lived in a perpetual state of missing Edge. She had sex with Edge, she had conversations
with Edge, some more meaningful than others, she occasionally had dinner with Edge—but
never the movies, never theater, never ever any kind of benefit or dance or party
where other people they knew would be in attendance. Those kinds of events Margot
attended alone or with her brother, Nick, who was always sure to leave with someone
else.

“Well!” Margot said. She was dying to put the small talk with Griffin Wheatley, Homecoming
King, to bed. She would have excused herself to check on the children below, but she
wasn’t feeling well enough to even step inside the cabin in the name of such a bluff.
“Have fun playing golf! Birdie, birdie, eagle!”

“Thanks,” Griff said. He took a step toward the chair where his
Wall Street Journal
awaited, and Margot thought,
Okay, that’s over. Good-bye, Griffin Wheatley, Homecoming King!
Jenna could have asked Idi Amin to take their picture and Margot might have been
less flustered.

“See ya,” Margot said.

“Have a great wedding,” Griff said. And then to Finn, “Nice meeting you, lowly bridesmaid.”

Finn scowled at him, but undeterred, Griff called out to Jenna, “Congratulations!”

Jenna raised her eyes from her iPhone long enough to offer the quick, impersonal wave
of an Oscar winner.

Finn said, “I’m going down below.”

Margot nodded, and with a glance at Griff and another awkward, unnecessary “See ya!”
she took Jenna by the arm and led her to the railing on the side of the boat opposite
from Griff.

“Look,” Margot said. She pointed past the hovering seagulls and the scattered sailboats.
They could both see clearly now: the north and south steeples of the churches, the
column of Brant Point Lighthouse.

Nantucket Island, their summer home.

Jenna squeezed the heck out of Margot’s hand. Just as Jenna had helped Margot with
her seasickness by remembering to bring the Dramamine, so now Margot would forget
about the unnerving interaction with Griffin Wheatley, Homecoming King, and focus
on helping Jenna with her surfeit of overwhelming emotion.

“I miss her,” Jenna said.

Margot’s eyes stung. The longest, most excruciating weekend of her life had officially
begun.

“I know, honey,” she said, hugging her sister close. “I miss her, too.”

S
omehow, he had ended up with the Notebook.

It was Thursday afternoon. Doug had left the office early and had taken the 3:52 to
Norwalk, Connecticut, where he lived with Pauline, in a house across the street from
the Silvermine Tavern. But when the conductor announced the stop for Darien, Doug
grabbed his briefcase and stood halfway up before remembering.

Remembering that the life he had lived for thirty-five years—married to Beth, father
of four, in a center-entrance colonial on the Post Road—was over. Beth was dead, she’d
been dead seven years, the kids had all moved out, they had lives of their own, some
of which they’d already managed to screw up, and Doug was now married to Pauline Tonelli,
who had, once upon a time, been his client.

This wasn’t the first time he’d nearly stood up at the Darien stop. But it seemed
more meaningful today because today wasn’t
just any Thursday. Today was the Thursday before his youngest child got married.

The girls, as far as Doug knew, were already on Nantucket. They had a reservation
for Margot’s car on the afternoon ferry, which meant they would be arriving right
about now, driving up Main Street to their home on Orange Street. They would pull
the key from under the stone turtle in the garden, where the key had always been kept,
despite the caretaker. They would walk into the house, they would throw open the windows
and unstick the back screen door, they would turn on the water heater, they would
make a shopping list. They would hasten to get all the suitcases inside, but they
would be arrested by the view of the sparkling harbor below. Margot’s kids would head
out to the backyard to see Alfie, the two-hundred-year-old oak tree, and sit in the
swing. Or at least Ellie would; the boys might be beyond that now.