Beautiful Days

BEAUTIFUL DAYS

A BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS NOVEL

ANNA GODBERSEN

Dedication

For Katy

Contents

Chapter 1

IT WAS A MIDSUMMER AFTERNOON ON LONG ISLAND, and the mosquitoes, like the girls who get dolled up at evening time, would not be seen flitting about for hours yet. A lot of noise was made last night in the mansions that lined White Cove, and plenty would be made tonight, but for now the sky was just a wide arc of blue, and three such girls—some of them already much discussed by newspaper columnists and women in hair salons—were browning poolside. One lay facedown, one sprawled on her back, and one curled up on her side, the better to turn the pages of her fashion magazine.

“Darling.” The voice of the first cut through the listless atmosphere, ending the peaceful silence.

Cordelia Grey took a breath of sweet, still air as she returned to consciousness. The sun had warmed the skin of her long legs, and the chaise she was lying upon comfortably accommodated her languid pose. June, with its occasionally gloomy weather and mourning clothes, was behind her. She moved her arm so that her eyes were no longer covered; it was another beautiful day.

“Darling?” the voice repeated. It belonged to Astrid Donal, who over the course of a month and a half had become one of Cordelia's closest friends.

Cordelia blinked so as not to be blinded. The sky was very bright and the pool was very turquoise. Even the leaves on the trees at Dogwood seemed to have embraced the indolent spirit of summer; they were thick and mysterious and green, hardly moving even on their high branches.

“I'm sorry.” Cordelia smiled. “I guess I must have drifted off.”

“It's nearly four o'clock, you know,” Astrid replied from the chaise on Cordelia's left. She rolled over and pushed her cartwheel hat, which she wore to protect her creamy skin, back on her head.

“It can't be!” Cordelia laughed, drawing her heaps of sun-streaked dirty-blond hair into a bun at the nape of her neck. “You shouldn't have let me sleep that long.”

“We thought of waking you, but you looked so happy,” said Letty Larkspur, who had been Cordelia's best friend in that other life she'd left behind in Ohio.

Letty occupied the chaise to Cordelia's right, her legs tucked up close to her chest. Both girls wore new navy blue tank swimsuits, although Letty had mostly covered her petite frame in a gauzy robe. Her dark hair was cropped short and she had pushed her bangs to the side so that they revealed a pale triangle of forehead. Even this far into summer, her skin was almost white.

They had all three bought the same suit on a shopping trip into Manhattan the week before—that had been Astrid's idea, she'd insisted it would be great fun if they had a kind of uniform when they went sea bathing—although Astrid had somehow already ruined hers on a trip to the beach and was now wearing an old black one, which was frayed and worn thin in places but nonetheless flattered her girlish frame. Astrid had been born wealthy, and anything she threw on seemed, as if by some magic, deliberate and expensive.

“You were smiling to yourself,” Letty went on, in that small, crystalline voice that belied the deep, rich sound her throat produced when she sang, “and whispering something.”

“Then you definitely should have woken me!”

“Nonsense.” Astrid drained her lemonade glass and put it on the little wood table that separated their chairs. “I know how you like to keep secrets, Cordelia Grey, and I am not above listening to you talk in your sleep to find them out.”

“Me? I got nothing to hide,” Cordelia replied, with a rakish and somewhat disingenuous innocence, and swung her legs over the side of the chaise.

She stood and walked quickly across the hot pool deck. For a moment she paused at the water's edge, gazing up at the main house with its flights of stone steps zigzagging to its back entry. There was a time when that facade only made her think of her father and his sad end and the terrible way she'd betrayed him. But as the days passed, she'd begun to see that he'd died with dignity, happy to have his daughter home, and that the house was a legacy of the fantastical life he had imagined for himself and then made real. It was as shimmering and solid now as on the nights he had thrown his famous parties there, and it remained a safe haven to his two children—Cordelia, who had only been reunited with him in May, and Charlie, who was now running the bootlegging business that had made Darius Grey rich and famous.

A ripple of gratitude passed over Cordelia, and she even smiled a little to think how satisfied Darius would be to know his offspring were still sheltered under that fine roof. Then she sprang forward, arms overhead so that her body went like an arrow into the cool water. Beneath the surface there was true silence, and she sailed forward on the momentum of her dive as long as she could. It was serene and quiet, and she remembered that in her dream she had been flying.

Cordelia came up for air and took three strong strokes to the end of the pool. She breathed in and pushed the strands of her hair away from her face. Then she realized that someone—not one of the girls, for it was a man's voice—was calling her name. As she pushed herself onto the edge and twisted around, she caught sight of him. One of Charlie's men was standing on the other side of the low, white-washed wall that surrounded the pool. He was wearing an undershirt, darkened in places by sweat, and he was trying not to look at the girls in their revealing suits. Astrid was Charlie Grey's fiancée; no one would want to be accused of staring at his girl when she wasn't wearing much clothing.

“Sorry to interrupt, Miss Grey.”

“That's all right . . .” She smiled at him, trying to remember his name.

“Victor.”

He smiled back, and she realized that he wasn't truly afraid, and that he was taking as much pleasure in the long July day as she was. Charlie's gang had the run of the place—there were always men who worked for her brother in one capacity or another walking the lawns, guarding the gate, smoking around the card table, or sleeping in the attic—but she didn't mind. It was part of the life, and anyway, these men in sweat-stained undershirts had much better stories than the ones where she came from.

“That's all right, Victor.”

“Charlie'd like to see you.”

Cordelia's eyes drifted to the lush greenery stretching out beyond the pool, the rolling hills and the shadows of trees growing long across the grass. The afternoon had been so tranquil and perfect; there had been no hurry about anything, and she had swum and joked with her best friends since just after breakfast. To go in so abruptly struck her as sad. “Tell him I'll be up in a minute.” She sighed and turned toward the chaises.

“What did he want?” Astrid asked, pushing herself up on slender arms when Cordelia returned to their little encampment.

“It's Charlie—I've got to go back to the house now.” Cordelia pulled a linen tunic over her head and reached for a towel to wring out her hair.

“I suppose I ought to get out of the sun, too,” Astrid said, her tone careless. “I told my wretched mother I'd dine with them, you know, and I'll be late if I spend any more time baking. Let's meet up later though, shouldn't we? Maybe put on something new and shiny and go into the city and dance till dawn. Letty, don't you move, the maid will come down and collect all this.” She gestured at the tray of sandwiches and the lemonade pitcher and piles of magazines that lay around their chairs. “You should stay and enjoy the rest of the day.”

Then Astrid put her arm around Cordelia's waist, tipped her hat forward, and the two began to climb the hill toward the house arm in arm.

Letty paused awkwardly—she had half raised herself to go into the house with the other two, but had frozen when Astrid casually instructed her not to move. She watched her oldest friend glide toward the house in tandem with Miss Donal, who always seemed to mean kindly, but whose manner was so detached that it was difficult for Letty not to feel like a simple girl from Ohio in her presence. Even on a day like today when she wore no jewelry, Astrid had a shimmering quality as though she were covered in diamond dust.

Back in Union—the small Ohio town that they'd left at the beginning of the season, only a couple of months before (although it seemed longer ago than that), and where Letty's siblings and widower father still lived—Cordelia had been the one person who made Letty believe that her dreams of singing onstage in New York City were not ridiculous. But in the month since she had come to live at Dogwood, Letty had done little to pursue those dreams, and she couldn't help but worry, every now and then, that the string of gorgeous afternoons spent like this—lazy and happy and well-fed—were ticking by while other girls worked their way up from the chorus line to solo roles not far away on Broadway. These kinds of thoughts agitated Letty, and whenever they arose she buried them quickly, then tried to smile at whoever was nearby and do something delightful, or else help with any household chore that needed doing.

But that agitation was harder to bury when she was alone, and as the figures of Astrid and Cordelia grew small approaching the great house, she couldn't help but notice how much more natural her old friend was in this setting. She had those high cheekbones and long limbs, and that impressive way of carrying herself that had earned her the disdain of many of the small-town folks in Union (“uppity,” they called her) but had caused her close friends to hang on her every word. Even next to Astrid, who had grown up around thoroughbreds and china tea services and yachts and couture, Cordelia did not look a tiny bit out of place.

Letty reached under her chair and felt for the head of Good Egg, her greyhound, who was hiding from the heat. The dog whimpered and lifted her head for more scratching. For another minute, Letty obliged. Then she sank back against the cushioned chaise, pulled her soft robe close around her neck, and turned the page of her fashion magazine, which contained any number of handsome things that, remarkably, it might actually be possible for her to acquire. If any of the people back in Union could see her now—the very picture of sophistication, lounging in rich environs with her sleek, long-legged pet—they would be struck dumb by the miracle of it all.

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. After all, tomorrow would be just as lovely as today, and there was lots of summer left, and plenty of time yet for her to go about making a name for herself down in Manhattan.

“Letty's really become one of us,” Astrid said as they went up the stone steps to the south-facing terrace. Once, not long ago, Cordelia had stood on that spot with her father while he taught her how to shoot grapefruit out of the sky.

“I know how to pick 'em, don't I?” Cordelia's skin had by then almost dried from the heat.

“She's awfully bright.”

They stepped into the ballroom, with its gleaming, rarely used dance floor and white grand piano, and continued on toward the main hallway. The girls let go of each other and Cordelia passed into the unlit hall, where she had to pause so that her eyes could adjust. Although the ceiling soared three stories above and some natural light filtered from the third-floor windows, the dark wood of the stairs and walls could sometimes create a gloomy effect even on the sunniest days.

“Charlie's up in the billiard room.” Victor's voice surprised her, and her breath caught in her throat as the outline of his shoulders emerged from the shadow.

“Thank you.”

“I had better go,” Astrid said. “If I see Charlie he'll be all over me, and then I'll be late, and Mummy will be angry, and before you know it, we
won't
be able to go into the city tonight.”

“But your dress is still upstairs in my room,” Cordelia said.

“Oh, so what? I have plenty more, you know.”

They both laughed, and then Astrid presented her cheek for a good-bye kiss.

“Don't forget there's a party at Cass Beaumont's tomorrow afternoon for the Fourth of July—I want there to be a whole gang of us.”

“All right.” As the girls parted, Cordelia turned to Victor. “Will you drive Miss Donal home?”

Once he had nodded in agreement, she turned and hurried up the stairs to the billiard room, which Charlie had begun to use as a sort of unofficial headquarters since their father's death. In Dogwood's previous life—when it had belonged to a family that made their money in some respectable way and presumably took tea in the afternoon and no doubt practiced impeccable manners—this room had been used as a parlor. But now it was furnished with three wide, green felt–topped tables and a few Victorian settees. These had been pushed to the walls and were looking a little worse for wear after being handled so often by rough young men.

The door onto the second-floor hall was cracked, so she slipped in without anyone noticing her.

“Oh ho, there's no getting out of this one alive,” her brother was saying to Danny, one of the guards, as he bent forward over the table to take his shot. Charlie's broad shoulders flared like a cobra's hood as he pulled the cue back.

Cordelia rested her shoulder against the wall by the door. An open pack of cigarettes sat on a small antique-looking table, and she reached down and drew one out along with a match from the matchbox that lay beside it. Smoking would never have been allowed in her aunt Ida's house, where she grew up, and probably would have earned her a slap across the face and a sermon about the grim ends that awaited girls who indulged such a filthy habit. But here no one cared and Cordelia had developed a taste for it. Especially when she was nervous, which she sometimes was around Charlie. There was a camaraderie between them, and he was brotherly and protective of her—but there were also times when she reminded him of the way their father had died, and her foolish involvement in the tragedy, and then she saw the anger in his fierce brown eyes.

At the same instant that she struck the match her brother took his shot, and the smack of the cue ball hitting its mark rung out to the high picture moldings. There was crowing from around the room, and Charlie moved busily to the other side of the table. Cordelia inhaled and let her eyes drift up, and then she noticed that Elias Jones, who had been her father's right-hand man, was watching her. He was about the same age as her father, and he had that long, horse face with features that never moved much. He didn't blink, and she became self-conscious of her appearance. Her hair was wavy from the water, her legs naked under the tunic, and her feet were bare. The skin on the bridge of her nose was surely redder than the rest of her face, and her brown eyes probably had that washed-out quality they took on after too many hours in the sun.