The Weekenders (6 page)

“I'll go see about her,” Billy said quietly, following behind.

In the midst of the commotion from Riley's outburst, Nate Milas beat a swift retreat to the pilothouse on the upper deck. The ferry captain gave him a quizzical glance as he stepped inside.

“Everything okay?” Wayne Gates asked.

“All good,” Nate assured him. “I just felt like getting away from the crowd down there.”

Wayne nodded his understanding. “Lots of folks still want to talk about the old man passing.”

Nate didn't bother to tell him the real reason he'd needed to escape.

He stared moodily out at the approaching shoreline. Just like the old days, his timing with Riley Nolan was impeccable in its flat-footedness. What a jerk he'd been. Then and now.

From his perch in the second-floor manager's office he'd spotted Riley and her daughter as soon as they'd arrived at the ferry dock. He'd known they'd be on the boat, because he'd made it a habit, since arriving back at Southpoint for the old man's funeral, to check each day's manifest.

Zero chance he'd overlook the name Riley Nolan. Or Riley Griggs, her married name. He'd noticed Wendell's name too, of course. Interesting that Wendell had been a no-show. He wondered whether Riley had any idea of the financial hole her husband had dug—for himself and their family. Not really his business, except, of course, he'd already started to make it his business. And why had Riley assumed the sheriff's deputy was serving her with divorce papers? Obviously, all was not well.

What the hell made him think he could ever make things right with Riley? And of all the stupid times to attempt an apology, this had to be the worst.

How many years had he been brooding over that goddamned debutante ball?

According to Cassie, he'd never stopped brooding about it, never stopped thinking about his first disastrous romance. But then, according to Cassie, he was a world-class brooder. It was on her top-ten list of Nate Milas's fatal personality flaws.

Belle Isle locals assumed he'd stayed on after his father's funeral to help his mother settle Joe's estate, but the truth was that Annie Milas was more than competent to take care of her own affairs. His mother had always been a full partner in all her husband's business dealings. All those years she'd taught school at the tiny elementary school on the mainland, she'd also kept the books for the ferry as well as running the Mercantile.

The ugly truth of the matter was that he had no compelling reason to return to California. He'd lost the battle for control of Cribb, lost Cassie, his longtime girlfriend, and lost his best friend and former fraternity brother, Matt, who, it turned out, had been carrying on a long-term clandestine affair with Cassie.

With all that, who could blame him for brooding?

His mother, for one.

The week after the funeral, she'd rousted him out of a sound sleep in his old bedroom in their wood-frame family home that overlooked the marina.

“You do know it's after eleven, right?” she'd said, staring down at him.

“So?”

“So I think it's time you quit moping around my house and get on with your life.”

He leaned on one elbow and stared at her in surprise. His mother's round, unlined face was etched now with concern.

“What makes you think I'm moping?”

“You're my son. I know how you do. You hardly eat anything, stay up half the night on that computer of yours, and then sleep past noon. You look like a hobo with that long hair and beard. And you haven't called any of your old friends since you've been home. In fact, you've hardly left the house.”

“Maybe I don't have any old friends left around here.”

“What about Michael and Andrew and Kevin—all those guys who came to the funeral. Kevin brought his mother's kolache back to the house afterward.”

“They were just being polite. Doing the right thing.”

“No,” Annie shot back. “They were doing what friends do. And if you could stop wallowing in your own self-pity for more than five minutes, you'd realize how lucky you are to still have friends here. Or family.”

“Ow.” Nate blinked and rubbed a hand through the week's worth of stubble on his cheeks.

She gave him an exasperated smile. “This is for your own good, Nate. I'm sorry about what happened with Cassie and Matt. They did you all kinds of dirty, that's for sure. And God knows, I'm sorry about your dad. He was my best friend too, you know. For more than forty years. But what's done is done. You need to get on with your life now, son.”

“Are you kicking me out of the house?”

She picked up the pair of jeans he'd left on the floor and tossed them onto the bed. “That's one way to look at it.”

He got up and headed for the bathroom.

“I put a new razor in there for you,” Annie called after him. “I know I'm biased since I'm your mom, but that face is much too handsome to hide behind some scruffy beard.”

 

6

Maggy sat alone on a bench at the Belle Isle ferry landing, cradling a squirming Banks in her arms, while Riley, operating on autopilot, supervised the deckhands unloading the Rubbermaid tubs containing all the supplies and luggage she'd brought down for the summer. She glanced over at the shuttle, which was a series of connected carts for passengers and baggage, pulled by a tractor-type conveyance.

The only motorized vehicles allowed on Belle Isle were emergency or service conveyances. Everybody else got around on golf carts.

Since the family's golf cart was still in the garage at the house on the south end of the island, she'd booked a shuttle ticket, but now Riley dreaded the thought of crowding into the tram car with the prying eyes of weekenders who'd just seen her at her very worst.

“Come on,” Parrish said, nodding at the six-seater golf cart that had just pulled up to the passenger loading area. “Ed brought over most of our stuff earlier. We'll give you guys a lift.”

Riley watched while Parrish gave Ed Godchaux a hushed, condensed version of the events that had just occurred. Ed jumped out of the cart and, within five minutes, he and Billy managed to load everything into the golf cart.

Billy hugged Riley tightly and whispered in her ear. “Now I really will kill him for you. But first I'll get Mama's groceries and crap unloaded over at Shutters, and then I'll come over and help you get settled in at your place. Okay?”

“Thanks,” Riley said wearily. “Don't tell Mama, okay?”

“Never!”

Maggy sat, stone-faced and teary-eyed on the rear-facing last seat on the cart, as far away from her mother as she could get. Banks sat on the seat beside her, tethered by his leash. Maggy still hadn't uttered a single word.

Billy approached the golf cart and tapped his niece on the arm. “Be nice to your mom, okay? Remember, she's on your side.” He ruffled the girl's hair and sighed. “Hell of a way to start the summer.”

*   *   *

As the golf cart bumped over the crushed-shell path leading away from the landing, Riley held on to the back of her seat and watched the passing landscape with mild disinterest. She'd been here a month earlier, but for less than twenty-four hours. It was as though the entire island was exploding with lush, green, summer growth. Confederate jasmine with creamy, star-shaped blossoms climbed the trunks of the bent and gnarled pin oaks, dwarf myrtle scented the air, and tiny yellow wildflowers bloomed along the road's shoulder.

The temperature had dropped just in the half hour since they'd docked, and shafts of dark golden sunshine pierced the tree canopy.

Parrish turned around in the seat to face Riley. “I can't believe Wendell would pull a stunt like that. Having you served with papers in front of Maggy and everybody.” She tapped Ed's shoulder. “As soon as we get back to the house, Ed's going to call Sue Simpson. Doesn't she have a house down here somewhere, honey?”

“At Wrightsville Beach.” He turned halfway around in the seat, and his craggy face signaled his concern. “She's the best at what she does, Riley. That's who I'd hire if I were you.”

“Okay,” Riley said. She glanced at the back of Maggy's head. “Let's talk about it later, okay? I don't want her any more upset than she needs to be.”

Other golf carts passed them on the road. Ed and Parrish waved and nodded; Riley kept her eyes downcast. By now, the whole island would know what had happened. Andrea Payne would see to that.

The ride to Sand Dollar Lane and their dream house took fifteen minutes.

For the first few years of their marriage, when her father was still grooming Wendell to take over Belle Isle Enterprises, they'd always stayed at the Shutters during vacations and summers on the island.

But as big and gracious-looking as her parents' home seemed, the old house had only three bathrooms, all of them fitted out with charming but undersize claw-foot bathtubs, and the only shower was the outside cold-water shower. Her parents saw no need to modernize, a fact that infuriated Wendell Griggs.

“Jesus! It's not like they don't have the money,” he'd griped to Riley. “I bet they could completely redo all those bathrooms plus the kitchen for around fifty thousand dollars.”

“But you know Mama. She wants everything at the Shutters left just like it was when her grandfather built the place.”

“It's like living in the Dark Ages here,” Wendell complained.

When they were ready for a house of their own, Riley wanted to buy one of the original houses on the bluff that her great-grandfather had built, one that was half a mile away from Shutters, which had been the first house built on the island.

Like the other homes of that 1920s era, the house she'd lusted after had been built in the twenties with weather-beaten gray cedar shingle siding, wide, gracious porches, sweeping views of the sound, and yes, miniscule bathrooms and a kitchen a quarter the size of the one in their house back in the Hayes-Barton neighborhood in Raleigh.

Wendell was having none of it. “I can build us a house on one of the new oceanfront lots that'll be ten times better than those old dumps,” he'd said. “It would take at least a hundred thousand dollars in improvements to make one of those places comparable to a new house. Anyway, how's it going to look if the CEO of Belle Isle Enterprises doesn't buy into our new development?”

He'd had a point, of course. The old houses on the bluff were beautiful but wildly impractical. The one Riley liked best had no insulation, windows that rattled in the wind, a sagging roof, outdated plumbing, and original knob-and-tube wiring. The cedar-shake siding needed replacing and leaked in places. And Maggy had been only two years old, and a fussy toddler, and Riley hadn't had the energy to fight him on the issue.

Which was how Wendell came to build a contemporary six-thousand-square-foot, five-bedroom, four-bathroom home for a family of three.

He'd seen a house like it on the cover of a magazine in an airport newsstand in L.A. and, by the time Riley picked him up at RDU, he'd sketched out the entire house on the back of the paper place mat they used for first-class meal service.

“This is going to be a statement house,” he'd told Riley excitedly. “The cantilevered roofline, the skylights, the masses of poured concrete and the urban silo observation tower? Crazy good, right? Steel-frame windows that can withstand hurricane-force winds, and the concrete will never need paint. You'll have the best kitchen on the island—a master bath with all Carrara marble and a soaker tub like the ones in your decorating magazines. And I'll have a man cave in the silo with a flat-screen television.”

He'd picked the best lot in the new development for their house, and when it turned out that a large sand dune obscured the view of the ocean from the open-plan living room with one whole wall of windows and doors, he'd waited until January, when Belle Isle was largely deserted, and simply bulldozed the dune, and the sea oats and beach rosemary, along with Riley's protestations, into oblivion.

*   *   *

As the sun retreated, Riley felt chilled. “You okay back there, Mags?” Riley asked, tapping her daughter's arm. “Warm enough? I've got a windbreaker in my bag if you need it.”

“I'm fine,” Maggy said. She clutched Banks so tightly the dog yipped in protest.

“Almost there,” Riley said, trying to sound cheerful. Ed whipped the golf cart off Sand Dollar Lane and onto the narrow drive that led to the house. Palmetto fronds and wax myrtle branches slapped against the sides of the cart.

Riley dug in her tote for her phone. Wendell loved gadgets, and he'd had everything in the house wired so it could be remotely controlled with a tap on their smartphones.

Normally she would have turned down the air-conditioning from the ferry, but due to circumstances beyond her control, the thought hadn't occurred to her.

All the lights were on timers, and as the drive curved around, the gleaming white mass of house emerged from the dusk. Tree-mounted spotlights threw washes of yellow light on the monolithic entryway, and pale blue light shone through the tall, narrow front windows.

“Here we are,” Riley said, trying for cheery and failing.

Ed pulled the cart up in front of the garage. “I'll go ahead and get your golf cart charged if you'll open the doors,” he offered.

“That would be great,” Riley said. She tapped the Unlock icon on the phone, and then the icon for the garage and front door. She tapped the Open icon and waited for the garage doors to slide noiselessly upward.

“Banks needs to pee, and so do I,” Maggy announced as she climbed out of the cart. The dog scampered over to a clump of oleanders, and Maggy held on to the leash. “Hurry up, Banks,” she ordered. “I gotta go, too.”

The garage doors didn't move. Riley tapped again.

“What's wrong?” Parrish asked, as she climbed out and grabbed one of the suitcases.