Beautiful Day (41 page)

And then, Rosalie.

Doug had already believed that Edge bringing Rosalie to the wedding was ill-advised,
but now it seemed downright cruel. Other couples danced around Margot and Doug—Kevin
and Beanie, H.W. and Autumn, Finn and Nick, Ryan and Rhonda, and at least a dozen
couples Doug didn’t know, although they all seemed to be having fun. Pauline was sitting
at their table, where Ann and Jim Graham had joined her. Doug was grateful; he couldn’t
think about Pauline right now. He scanned the tent for Edge. He and Rosalie were admiring
the cake in the corner.

Shit, the cake.

Doug passed Margot off to Ryan, and Rhonda went to sit with her mother and the Grahams.
Doug strode over to Roger. “How long until they cut the cake?”

Roger checked his watch. “Eighteen minutes,” he said.

“Perfect,” Doug said.

Edge saw him coming, and for a second Doug thought he might try to run. He ought to
run, Doug thought. He couldn’t ever remember being this angry.

Edge held his palms up. “Doug,” he said. “Wait.”

Doug grabbed Edge’s forearm. “Rosalie,” he said. “Will you please excuse us?”

Rosalie nodded once sharply, and for an instant the three of them resumed their in-office
personae: two partners and a paralegal. “Yes,” she said, ducking deferentially out
of the way. “Of course.”

Doug pulled Edge out a flap in the back of the tent into the driveway, where they
stood between Margot’s Land Rover and Doug’s Jaguar. It was dark and fairly quiet,
although the caterers hustled in and out of the house, letting the back screen door
slam each time. The noise seemed to startle Edge.

“You’re jumpy,” Doug said.

“Are you going to shoot me?” Edge said. “Throw me in the Jag, fill my pockets with
stones, dump me in the harbor?”

“It’s not funny, Edge,” Doug said.

“I know it’s not, Doug,” Edge said.

“It’s my daughter.”

“What did she tell you?” Edge said.

“Everything,” Doug said. “She told me everything.”

“I’m sure she blew things out of proportion,” Edge said. “If there’s one thing we’ve
learned in this business, it’s that there are three sides to every story, right? You’ll
hear me out?”

“She didn’t blow anything out of proportion,” Doug said. “She didn’t exaggerate, she
didn’t lie. Margot is as quality a human being as exists on this planet. She is smart
and capable and strong. But—and you’ll appreciate this because you have Audrey—she
is my daughter. She is my
daughter,
Edge.”

“I realize that,” Edge said. He ran his fingers through his clipped silver hair, then
rattled his watch on his wrist. “I never meant for you to find out.”

“You put your disgusting hands on her,” Doug said. Edge had been married three times,
and there had been dozens of women
on the in-between. He was a player. Doug had always secretly admired this about him,
if only because it was novel to Doug. It had been fun to sit down after a round of
golf and a couple of beers and maybe a shot or two of good tequila and listen to Edge
tell stories about the stewardess in first class on his flight to London or the gorgeous
Filipino sisters who worked at the dry cleaners. There had been relationships with
clients, too—Nathalie the most notable—but others as well. There had been that delivery
girl from FedEx; there had been a first-year associate from a rival firm. There was
Rosalie.

“Doug, you have to listen to me. I know you think I was some kind of predator. But
believe me when I say, Margot came after
me.
She pursued
me.
There were texts from her day and night, sometimes so many texts I couldn’t answer
them all. I tried to keep it casual, but Margot constantly pressed for more.”

“Yes, I know,” Doug said. “She got sucked in, she said. She fell for you, Edge, and
you took advantage of that.”

“I never promised her anything,” Edge said.

“What about the favor you asked of her?”

Edge tilted his head. “Which favor?”

“You know damn well which favor. The favor you asked her to do at work,” Doug said.

“I wanted to see if she could help Seth out,” Edge said. “He was having a god-awful
time, and she was in a position to save him. All I did was ask. She could have refused.”

“She said you took her to Picholine,” Doug said. “Plied her with good champagne and
an expensive bottle of wine, and then you asked her to stay over at your apartment
for the first time ever. It was intoxicating for her, she thought the two of you were
finally getting serious. Of course after a night like that, she would have done anything
you asked. You knew exactly how to play it.” Doug cracked his knuckles; he wanted
to sock Edge right in the
mouth. This kind of violent urge was foreign to Doug. Despite the thrill he got from
beating someone verbally in the courtroom, he had never wanted to hurt anyone physically,
much less his own partner, his closest friend. “You’re no better than the creeps we
see in the office.”

“Come on, Doug.”

“I’m not even angry about the relationship,” Doug said. “If it had worked out, if
the two of you made each other happy, I mean, I might have been a little uneasy at
first, but I would have gotten over it. But the fact that you disrespected my daughter,
that you used her, that you two-timed her with Rosalie, that you brought Rosalie
here
without telling Margot about it, that you
hurt
her, Edge, you hurt my daughter: that I cannot excuse.”

“Doug,” Edge said. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re not sorry,” Doug said. “You have preyed on women for the thirty years that
I’ve known you, and I didn’t judge you. I let you go about your business. I watched
you divorce Mary Lee and marry Nathalie and divorce Nathalie and marry Suki, and divorce
Suki. I stood by your side, I gave you good counsel, I was your friend. But today
your victim is my child, and you’re lucky I don’t beat the crap out of you right here
and now.”

“So are you telling me you’ve never hurt a woman before?” Edge asked. “You’ve never
broken anyone’s heart? What’s up with you and Pauline, anyway? That was a pretty dramatic
exit from the church. Want to tell me what that was about?”

Doug narrowed his eyes at Edge. He was one of the finest lawyers Doug knew, so a cross-examination
shouldn’t surprise him. And yet Doug was taken aback. Obviously everyone at the ceremony
had seen Pauline leave in tears, but Doug had assumed they would let it remain a private
matter. He knew why Pauline had run from the church. He was as transparent to her
as a piece
of glass; she realized he didn’t love her anymore and that, possibly, he had never
loved her.

Doug took a deep breath.
Beth,
he thought. She had died and left him to flounder through the rest of his life.

How to answer Edge? How to differentiate himself? Yes, he had hurt Pauline a little
already, and he was about to hurt her a lot more. His affection for her, his desire
to be with her, his stockpile of patience and goodwill, his
like
of her—intense as it was at times—was depleted. His emotional reservoir, where Pauline
was concerned, was empty. This happened between husbands and wives every single day
in every country in the world. How many hundreds of times had Doug heard a husband
or wife say, “I don’t have a reason. I am just done.” And Doug, and Edge, and every
divorce attorney worth his or her salt, would accept that answer without judgment.
After all, human beings couldn’t control how they felt. If they could, everyone would
most certainly decide to stay madly in love their whole lives.

“I don’t want to talk about Pauline,” Doug said. “This isn’t about Pauline.”

“I never said it was about Pauline,” Edge said. “I just wondered if you had ever hurt
anyone.”

“Well, I never lied to anyone,” Doug said. “I never cheated on anyone. I never led
a woman on.”

“I wonder about that,” Edge said.

Doug ground his molars together. “I want you off this property in five minutes. No.
Less than five minutes.”

“What?” Edge said. “You’re throwing me out?”

“I want you and Rosalie to leave immediately.”

“I can’t believe this,” Edge said. “I can’t believe you’re throwing me out.”

“She’s my daughter, Edge,” Doug said. “And you hurt her.”

“What if the roles were reversed?” Edge said. “Margot is young and beautiful. What
if she had hurt me? She might have, you know, and I would have had to live with it.
Every relationship comes with risks.”

“You would have been fine,” Doug said. “You always are. Now get out.”

“Thirty years of friendship,” Edge said.

“Only family matters,” Doug said, and he headed back into the tent.

A few minutes later, Stuart and Jenna cut the cake, they fed each other nicely (as
Beth had suggested in the Notebook; Beth strongly disapproved of shenanigans with
the cake), and then it was time for Jenna to throw the bouquet. Doug watched Margot
gather up the single women—Autumn and Rhonda and all of Jenna’s schoolteacher friends.
Doug wanted Margot to catch the bouquet. He wanted to see Margot meet someone worthy
of her in a way that neither Drum Sr. nor Edge was worthy.

When she had come to the end of her story about Edge, she had said,
I don’t believe in love, Daddy. I just don’t believe in it.

And Doug had said,
What about your mother and me? We were in love until the day she died. I’m in love
with her still.

I guess what I mean is that I don’t believe in love for me,
Margot said.
Some people are lucky that way—you and Mom, Kevin and Beanie, Stuart and Jenna—but
I’m not.

Oh, honey,
Doug had said. He wanted to refute what she said, but he knew the truth. He had seen
families broken and children caught in the crossfire. He had facilitated the dissolution
of households and corporations and dynasties. He had brought about thousands of endings.
Some of those stories continued on in a happier way—every Christmas he received dozens
of cards
from clients who had remarried. But not everyone ended up this way, of course. Doug
had a client who had married and divorced five times. Some people tried and tried
but could not succeed at love. Was Margot one of those people? God, he hoped not.

Catch the bouquet,
he thought.

The bandleader had some kind of corny procedure to follow as the girls assumed the
ready position. They looked like the offensive line for the New York Giants. Jenna
turned her back and raised her arms over her head and flung the flowers through the
air.

There was a great burst of animated laughter. It seemed that, out of nowhere, Stuart’s
brother, Ryan, the best man, had appeared and caught the bouquet. He held it up in
a triumphant fist, and everyone cheered. Then Ryan pulled his boyfriend up from his
chair and kissed him on the lips and the band launched into “Celebrate,” by Kool &
the Gang.

And Doug thought,
Unexpected twist there. But okay, why not?

He found Margot a few minutes later, licking thick white buttercream off her forefinger.

“That was so great,” she said. “Ryan.”

Doug said, “I had a talk with Edge. I asked him to leave.”

Margot pressed her pretty lips together, and her ice-blue eyes filled with tears.
“Thank you, Daddy.”

“I know you’re forty years old,” he said. “But as long as I’m alive, I’m here to take
care of you.”

Margot set down her cake plate and gave him a hug. When they separated, she wiped
her eyes and said, “And now there’s someone I need to apologize to.”

“Yes,” Doug said, as he scanned the tent for Pauline. “Me, too.”

B
ack up in her bedroom, Margot riffled through the cocktail purse she had taken to
the Galley on Thursday night. Ellie was passed out cold on the bed, still in her dress
and the silly paper plate hat, although she had shed her sandals, so that Margot could
see the black bottoms of her daughter’s feet. As badly as Margot needed to find what
she was looking for, she could not
resist any of her children when they were sleeping. She hovered over Ellie, marveling
at the perfect features of her face and the flawlessness of her skin. When she bent
down to kiss Ellie’s lips, she smelled frosting. Probably, Ellie had had nothing to
eat tonight
but
frosting. Margot carefully removed the hat so that the paper plate would not be crushed
by Ellie’s nighttime thrashings. She pulled the bedsheets up to Ellie’s chin.

She thought,
Go to hell, Edge Desvesnes. This is the real thing right here.

Griff’s card was exactly where she thought it would be, tucked in her cocktail purse
next to her dead phone. Unable to help herself, Margot pressed the phone’s buttons,
hoping it would spring back to life, the way certain human beings had been known to
do, even after being declared dead.

But no. The phone was torched, fried, useless. Somewhere in its now-silent plastic-and-metal
depths lurked the two unread messages from Edge. Which would have said something like
Please call me. I need to speak to you about this weekend.