Family Pictures (35 page)

“You’re not what I expected.” He gazes at me as my heart does a tiny flip. “It’s funny. I remember getting hold of a newspaper when I was in Cape Town, and reading about you. When Ma told me your name and I put two and two together, you sounded nothing like the description in the paper.”

I freeze. My face goes hot red as I stare at him, my eyes wide with shock. He is talking as if it is nothing, as if everyone knows, but no one here knows, and a wave of nausea washes over me as I stammer, trying to figure out what to say next.

“I’ve said something to upset you.” He stops, his face falling. “I’m so sorry. I should never have brought it up. It was insensitive.”

“No, no,” I murmur, moving to the sofa, desperately hoping the flush will fade, desperately trying to think of how to move through this.

“Maggie?” Mrs. W says quietly, moving to sit next to me, laying a finger softly under my chin to turn my head so I’m looking directly into her eyes. “Maggie, dear. Did you think we didn’t know? Of course we knew. We googled your name as soon as you applied to lease the guesthouse, but we don’t care a whit about what happened in your past. Not least because none of it was your fault.

“We just wanted to look after you,” she continues, smiling, “and now you’re part of our family. You’re all part of our family.” She places a hand on my knee and gives it a reassuring squeeze.

“We like a bit of scandal in the family,” Mr. W adds heartily from across the room. “It spices things up.”

“And your story has nothing on some of the Wellesley scandals,” Mrs. W says. “We have a cousin long suspected of murdering the gamekeeper, who was murdered himself after he got involved with the mob.”

“What about Althea?” Mr. W says. “She was sent to live in Bermuda so she wouldn’t have to testify in the case about the missing—” He lowers his voice to a whisper to say the family name, a name instantly recognizable in every household in the country. “She was the only witness, and Aunt Evelyn flew her out so she couldn’t be subpoenaed.”

“
Did
she know what happened?” My curiosity is piqued, my flush faded, and I would love to know.

“Oh
yes,
” Mrs. W says before being shushed by her husband.

“Let’s just say he won’t be turning up at the Nantucket compound anytime soon,” Cole says. “And no, Althea didn’t do it. I really am sorry,” he says again, turning to me. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. As you can see, no one here gives a damn.”

I exhale with relief. “You’ve made me feel much better,” I say, and then, to my horror, I burst into tears.

Now, this is embarrassing. I have no idea why I’m crying, but as I gratefully take the cotton handkerchief Mr. W draws from his pocket and hands quietly over, I realize I’ve spent my whole life not feeling accepted, terrified that if people knew the real me—my real family—they’d want nothing to do with me.

When Mark betrayed me, it brought my worst fears—my hidden shame—to reality as the house of cards I spent years constructing came crashing down around me. I hadn’t, as I’d so stupidly thought, finally been accepted by the kind of people that matter, the hedge fund owners, their trophy wives. I was dropped like a dirty shirt, proving what I knew all along to be true:

I wasn’t good enough.

Despite all the changes I’ve made in the last two years—moving here, working, leaving my old life behind—the weight of my past, the weight of that huge secret, has been hanging round my neck like a huge, heavy stone.

I may have found the real me, but what if they discover who the old me was? What if they realize the waitress at the restaurant is not just Maggie, but the woman from the famous bigamy case?

Here, today, in this wonderful room, with these wonderful people who have looked after me so well, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that for the first time in my life, I am truly accepted. They have known all along, and have not judged me for it.

They don’t think the real Maggie isn’t good enough, nor do they judge who I was, who they might have presumed me to be after I was described so horribly in the newspapers.

“How about a drink?” Mr. W, clearing his throat, uncomfortable with this display of emotion, stands up and moves to the bar. “Brandy, I think,” he says as Cole and I catch eyes and start to laugh.

“She’s not overwrought, Dad!” Cole says. “Brandy’s a little much, no?”

“I
know
!” Mrs. W says. “How about a glass of prosecco?”

*   *   *

During the roast beef, Cole announces he’d like to go for a walk after dinner.

“I miss the beach,” Cole says. “Can we go down to the beach? There’s nothing so beautiful as the beach at night.”

“Missed the beach?” Mr. W laughs. “We’ve had postcards from Thailand, Fiji, Bora-Bora. You’ve had plenty of beach!”

“It isn’t the same as the beach in Old Saybrook,” laughs Cole. “There’s only so much white sand and turquoise water a man can take.”

“That’s a hard life,” I tease, trying to catch Buck’s eye, gesturing he should help clear the plates.

“What?” Buck frowns at me, looking down at his plate, confused. “Is there something on my plate?”

“No, honey. I was trying, very subtly, to get you to help clear the plates.”

Buck jumps up, embarrassed, as he reaches for Mrs. W.’s plate.

“It’s all right, dear.” Mrs. W waves him to sit down as Buck, unsure what to do, looks to me for direction. “Elsa will do it,” she continues.

“I know Elsa could do it,” I say, “but I’m raising him to be somebody’s husband. Think how his wife will thank me for all the training I’m doing now.”

“You’re quite right,” Mrs. W says. “Young people today have to be taught. You’re doing a lovely job, Maggie. Buck is just a delightful young man. You have trained him well, isn’t that right, Wells?” She turns to Mr. W. “Children and dogs. Much the same, at least according to that man we like,” she asks. “What is his name? Small. Mexican. Come on. Who am I thinking of?”

“I have absolutely no idea.” Mr. W stares at her, bemused.

“Oh yes, you do, Wells. We watch him all the time. You do that thing he says. You know:
tssst.
” She makes a hissing noise that causes both dogs, lying by Mr. W’s feet at the table, look up. “See?
Tssst.
” She does it again, looking at the dogs. “Dog … Whisperer! The Dog Whisperer! Now, what’s his name? Oh, Lord. My memory is so bad these days.” She looks helplessly at her husband again.

“Cesar Millan?” Buck offers.

“That’s the one!” she shouts triumphantly. “He’s always talking about the pack leader, and it’s just the same with children. They need to know who their pack leader is, who to respect.”

“Does that make me pack leader?” I grimace. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“It does, and it’s good. The pups need to know who’s in charge. What’s that other thing he says? That it’s never the dogs who are crazy, or bad, but their owners. Once the owners change their energy, the dogs are fine. Calm, assertive energy. All the problems stem from the dogs not knowing where they stand, and not being able to trust the person who ought to be pack leader.”

“Just so you know—” Buck sits back down at the table, leaning in to Mr. and Mrs. W conspiratorially, lowering his voice to a whisper. “I only let her think she’s the pack leader. It keeps everybody happy,” and he winks as they all start to laugh.

*   *   *

I stand on a rock as the wind picks up, messing up my hair, until eventually I just unclip it and let it blow back, free-form, closing my eyes and breathing in the night air.

The others have begged off. Wimps. Buck was invited to hang out with friends; Mr. and Mrs. W declared that after such a huge meal, the only thing they’d be good for was bed.

Which left just Cole and me. Something tells me they might have all done this on purpose.

I breathe in, closing my eyes, almost tasting the salt and sea, flinging my arms out to the side as I tip my head back, admittedly a little tipsy from all the wine at dinner.

“This is wonderful!” I shout over to Cole, who’s standing at the water’s edge, leaning down to examine a shell. “This makes me feel young. I don’t know why I never come here.”

“You’re not exactly old.” Cole walks over, putting the shell in my hand.

I can barely see it in the dim moonlight, but I run my thumb over the ridges and place it safely in my pocket.

“I used to come here all the time,” Cole says, settling down on the rock. I join him, pulling my knees up and wrapping my arms around them. “Usually when you live somewhere, you never take advantage of all it has to offer. I had a girlfriend once who was from London. She had lived in London for thirty years, and she had never been to the Tower of London, or seen the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. She’d never been to the Houses of Parliament or Westminster Abbey. I was stunned. She’d taken it all for granted, saw them as tourist attractions for visiting Americans.”

“Were you her visiting American?” I am curious, forgetting I had wondered, albeit briefly, whether he might have been gay.

“I was,” he laughs. “I dragged her to every tourist attraction I could think of, including the Edinburgh Festival, and she loved it. She kept saying she couldn’t believe there were so many amazing things right on her doorstep.”

“Edinburgh’s not exactly on her doorstep.”

“No, but you get the point.”

“So what happened?”

“At Edinburgh?”

“No!” I push him playfully. “To the girlfriend?”

“Same as with all of the others,” he says simply. “I wasn’t able to stay in one place for any length of time. I had a penchant for choosing women who wanted the very opposite of what I wanted. I think perhaps they saw me as a challenge, thought they could change me, that I would fall so deeply in love with them, I would give it all up to become a husband.”

“Did you not love any of them enough?” I’m quiet.

“I loved Imogen very much.” He turns to me then, just a sliver of his face visible in the moonlight. “She was the London girl. But the timing wasn’t right. I knew that if I had stayed in London, as she wanted, and married her, a part of me would have died, and I would always regret it. And at some point, I would doubtless end up blaming her, and she would wake up one morning and find a note on her pillow and a missing backpack, and that wouldn’t be fair to anyone.”

“You loved her enough to leave her,” I murmur.

“I suppose I did. The story does, however, have a happy ending. Imogen is married to Stephen, who is a barrister, and they have three beautiful girls. I am godfather to the eldest, and get on with Stephen like a house on fire. The only traveling he is interested in involves luxury hotels with staff that wait on you hand and foot, and a children’s club.”

“Was it a lucky escape?”

“I would never have been able to offer her stability. Not back then, for sure. Or, let’s face it, a Georgian house in Islington.” He smiles. “But I do sometimes think about what might have been.”

“So what is it with the traveling?” I press. “Aren’t you a little old to still be chasing the dream?”

“I’ll remind you I’m the same age as you,” he laughs. “And yes, I am a little old to be doing what I have done for so long.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“Paint, mostly,” he says.

“Houses?”

Cole smiles at me. “No. Portraits. Some landscapes.”

“On beaches in Thailand?”

“Those are the perks that come with the job. Sometimes I arrive someplace new with a show already set up, and sometimes I just show up, set up an easel, and by the end of the day, I invariably have new friends, a commission or two, and often a show. You’d be amazed how fascinated people are. When I show them my portfolio, you can see the flicker in their eyes. They’d love to be painted, or have their children, or a family portrait, but art is beyond their means, or so they’ve always thought. I keep my prices incredibly low. The pleasure I get from knowing they’re being given something that they will get pleasure from forever is worth every penny.”

“How low is low?”

“It varies. I’ve even been known to do it for free. Not the paintings, though—that’s too time consuming—but the sketches.”

“How can you do it for free?” I ask, knowing how every penny counts in life. Particularly mine. Particularly now. “How can you possibly afford to do that?”

“Look at my life.” Cole shrugs. “There’s so little I actually need. I have no mortgage, no children to support, no bills to pay. I rent apartments short term, or find rooms in people’s homes and stay for however long feels right. It has been as little as a couple of days and as long as a year. When I get a show, I can ask far more for the paintings, which supplements the other work I do.”

“Where did you go that you stayed a year?”

“Siena. It was the least lucrative year of my life, but I loved living there.”

“Yet you didn’t want to stay?”

“I did. Until I didn’t. And then it was time to go.”

“And you’ve never thought of settling down? Of finding one place to call home and, what’s the expression, laying your hat? Isn’t it tiring, taking off all the time?”

“This is home.” Cole smiles, gesturing all around them. “Old Saybrook. My school was home. Middlesex. And Yale.”

“Yale.” I raise an eyebrow, impressed.

“It’s not as impressive as it sounds,” he laughs. “I only got in because every member of my father’s family has gone there since year one. There are Wellesley halls and libraries. It was all rather embarrassing. But these places are home for me, although I never felt myself bound to them until … well. More recently I’ve found myself beginning to change.

“It’s not a longing, exactly, but I have found myself thinking more and more about this place, and of course my parents not getting any younger. And then today, being surrounded by everything familiar and good makes me wonder if it might be time to come back.” He sighs. “But then I read an article about Costa Rica, and all I want to do is grab my stuff and go.”

“You could,” I say. “Why not? Being here doesn’t necessarily have to tie you down. It might be lovely to spend proper time with your parents, and you could leave whenever you got the urge, just don’t stay away as long. They miss you enormously, and you don’t need me to tell you they’re not getting any young—” I stop suddenly, embarrassed. “Oh, God! I’m so sorry. I’m doing it again. I’m telling you what you should be doing. I’m controlling. I am so sorry. It’s none of my business. Ignore me.”