Silver Girl (4 page)

“Yes,” Connie said. “It is. It was. It’s hard, you know.” She smiled wistfully. She was happy not to be alone, but it was excruciating to hear Meredith repeating the things that Connie found it impossible to say. “Shall we go down to the water?”

It was particularly hard to be on the beach, because that was where she’d scattered Wolf’s ashes two summers earlier in the presence of Wolf’s brother, Jake, and his wife, Iris, and Toby, who had used the memorial on Nantucket as an opportunity for his last ridiculous bender. As Connie and Meredith left footprints in the wet sand—the tide was low—Connie wondered where the remains of Wolfgang Charles Flute were now. He had been a whole, warm, loving man with impressive height—Wolf was nearly six foot seven—and a baritone voice, a keen intellect, a crackerjack eye. He had been the owner of an architectural firm that built civic office buildings in Washington that were considered innovative, yet traditional enough to hold their own against the monuments. He had been a busy man, an important man, if not particularly powerful by Washington standards or wealthy by Wall Street standards. The best thing about Wolf had been the balanced attention he gave to every aspect of his life. He’d helped Ashlyn make the most dazzling school projects; he had mixed a shockingly cold and delicious martini; he had been a fanatic about the unicycle (which he learned to ride as an undergraduate at Brown) as well as paddleball, tennis, and sailing. He had collected antique sextants and barometers. He had studied astronomy and believed the placement of the stars in the sky could teach man about terrestrial design. Wolf had always been emotionally present in Connie’s life, even when he was working on deadline. On days he had to work late—and there had been two or three a month—he sent flowers, or he invited Connie to come to his office for a candlelight dinner of Indian take-out. When Connie went out with her women friends, he always sent wine to the table and the other women cooed about how lucky Connie was.

But where was he now? He had died of brain cancer, and Connie had followed his wish to be cremated and have his ashes scattered off the beach in Tom Nevers. The ashes had broken down, disintegrated; they had become molecules suspended in seawater. The body that Wolf had inhabited, therefore, was gone; it had been absorbed back into the earth. But Connie thought of him as here somewhere, here in this water swirling around her ankles.

Meredith waded to midshin. The water was still too cold for Connie, but Meredith seemed to be enjoying it. The expression on her face fell somewhere between rapture and devastation. She spoke in a voice full of tears, though as the
New York Post
promised, her eyes remained dry.

“I never thought I’d put my feet in the ocean again.”

Connie nodded once.

Meredith said, “How do I thank you for this? I have nothing.”

Connie hugged Meredith. She was tiny, like a doll. Once, in high school, they had gotten drunk at a party at Villanova, and Connie had carried Meredith home on her back. “I want nothing,” Connie said.

That was a lovely little
Beaches
moment down by the water, Connie thought, and it did feel good to have company and it did feel good to have Meredith indebted to her for life, but the magnitude of what Connie had done was now sinking in. Her best friend from childhood was married to the biggest crook the world had ever known. Meredith was
persona non grata
everywhere. She had millions of disapprovers and thousands of enemies. She was “still under investigation.” The “still” made it seem like being under investigation was a temporary condition that would be cleared up, but what if it wasn’t? What if Meredith was found guilty? What if Meredith
was
guilty?

What have I done?
Connie thought.
What have I done?

Meredith settled into her room—a simple guest room with white wainscoting and a small private bath. Both bedroom and bath were done in pinks, decorated by Connie herself with help from Wolf and the woman at Marine Home Center. The bedroom had French doors that opened onto a tight, Romeo-and-Juliet-type balcony. Meredith said she loved the room.

“My room is down the hall,” Connie said. The “room” she was speaking of was the master suite, which comprised the western half of the second floor. There was the bedroom with its California king bed that faced the ocean; there was a bathroom with a deep Jacuzzi tub, glassed-in rainfall shower, dual sinks, water closet, heated tiles in the floor, a wall of mirrors, and a scale that generously dropped a pound or two. There were two enormous closets. (Last summer, Connie had finally taken Wolf’s summer clothes to the hospital thrift shop.) And there was Wolf’s study, complete with drafting table, framed oceanographic maps, and a telescope that had been positioned to view the most interesting summer constellations. Connie didn’t have the emotional strength to show Meredith the master suite, and the fact of the matter was, she hadn’t spent a single night in her own bed since Wolf died. Every night she had been on Nantucket, she had fallen asleep, with the aid of two or three chardonnays, on the sofa downstairs—or, when she had houseguests, on the bottom bunk of the third-floor bedroom, which she was pointlessly preserving for future grandchildren.

She didn’t want to sleep in the bed without Wolf. The same held true at home. She couldn’t explain it. She had read somewhere that the death of a spouse was number one on a list of things that caused stress—and what had she done that morning but invited more stress into her life?

“I have to go to the grocery store,” Connie said.

Meredith said, “Would it be all right if I came along?”

Connie watched Meredith bouncing on her toes, as she used to on the end of a diving board.

“Okay,” Connie said. “But you have to wear your hat and glasses.” Connie was terrified of getting caught. What would happen if someone discovered that Meredith Delinn was
here,
living with
Connie?

“Hat and glasses,” Meredith said.

Connie drove the six miles to Stop & Shop while Meredith made a list on a pad of paper braced against her thigh. Connie’s fear subsided and a sense of well-being sneaked up on her, which she normally only experienced after a very good massage and three glasses of chardonnay. She opened the sunroof, and fresh air rushed in as she turned up the radio—Queen, singing “We Are the Champions,” the victory song of the Merion Mercy field-hockey team, which she and Meredith had both played on for four years. Connie grinned and Meredith turned her face toward the sun, and the car was a happy place for a moment.

In the store, Connie sent Meredith for whole-wheat tortillas and Greek yogurt while she waited at the deli counter. She sent Meredith for laundry detergent, rubber gloves, and sponges, but then Meredith was gone for so long that Connie panicked. She raced through the store with her cart, dodging the other shoppers and their small children, everyone moving at a snail’s pace, drugged by the effects of the sea air and sun. Where was Meredith? Connie was hesitant to call out her name. It was unlikely that she’d left the store, so what was Connie afraid of? She was afraid that Meredith had been handcuffed by
FBI
agents. Meredith should rightly be in the aisle with the Windex and the paper towels, but she wasn’t there, nor was she in the next aisle, nor the next. Connie had only had her old friend back for a matter of hours, and now she was missing. And Connie wasn’t even sure that she wanted Meredith to stay—so why was she now panicking that Meredith was gone?

Connie found Meredith standing in the bread aisle, holding a bag of kaiser rolls.

Connie flooded with relief, then thought,
This is ridiculous. I have to get a grip.
“Oh, good,” she said. “I thought I’d lost you.”

Meredith said, “There was a
USA
Today
photographer who staked out the Gristedes by my house, and there was a guy from the
National Enquirer
who frequented the D’Agostino down the street. I couldn’t go shopping for eggs. Or toothpaste.”

Connie took the rolls from Meredith’s hands and dropped them in the cart. “Well, no one’s following you here.”

“Yet,” Meredith said, adjusting her sunglasses.

“Right. Let’s not press our luck.” Connie headed for the checkout. She was grateful not to know anyone in the store. She and Wolf had made a conscious decision not to engage in Nantucket’s social scene. They attended parties and benefits and dinners at home in Washington all year long, and Nantucket was a break from that, although Wolf still had a few friends on Nantucket from summers growing up. His parents and grandparents had belonged to the Nantucket Yacht Club, and once or twice a summer Wolf was called on to sail, or he and Connie were invited to a cocktail party or barbecue in the garden of a friend’s ancestral summer cottage. But for the most part, Connie and Wolf kept to themselves. Although she had been coming to Nantucket for over twenty years, Connie often felt anonymous. She knew no one and no one knew her.

As they stood in line, Meredith handed Connie three twenty-dollar bills. “I’d like to chip in for expenses.”

Connie considered waving the money away. The television reporters had made it clear that—unless there was a cache of funds at some offshore bank—Meredith Delinn had been left penniless. “Do what you can,” Connie said. “But there’s no pressure.”

“Okay,” Meredith whispered.

On their way back to Tom Nevers, Connie noticed a commotion at the rotary. News vans were clustered in the parking lot of the
Inquirer and Mirror,
the island newspaper. Connie did a double take.
Were
those news vans?

“Get down,” Connie said. “Those are reporters.” She checked the rearview mirror. “
CNN
,
ABC
.”

Meredith bent in half; she was as low as the seatbelt would allow. “You’re kidding,” she said.

“I kid you not.”

“I can’t believe this,” Meredith said. “I can’t believe they care where I am. Well, of course they care where I am. Of course the whole world needs to know that I am now summering on Nantucket. So they can make me look bad. So they can make it seem like I’m still living a life of luxury.”

“Which you are,” Connie said, trying to smile.

“Why couldn’t you live someplace awful?” Meredith said. “Why couldn’t you live in East Saint Louis? Why couldn’t they be reporting that Mrs. Delinn was spending the summer in hot and dangerous East Saint Louis?”

“This isn’t funny,” Connie said. She checked her rearview mirror. The road behind them was clear. Connie checked again. “Well, guess what. They’re not following us.”

“They’re not?”

Connie motored on. She felt the teensiest bit disappointed. “False alarm, I guess.” She tried to think why there would have been TV vans at the rotary, and then she remembered a third-or fourth-tier news story, buried way beneath the sentencing of Freddy Delinn. “Oh, that’s right!” she said. “The president is here this weekend!”

Meredith sat up. “You scared me.” She was doing some audible Lamaze breathing to calm herself down, and Connie remembered when Meredith was in the hospital after giving birth to Leo. Connie had taken two-year-old Ashlyn to the hospital to see Meredith and the baby. Freddy had been as proud as a goddamned rooster, handing out expensive (not to mention illegal) Cuban cigars; he’d pushed one on Connie, saying, “Go home and give it to Wolf. He’s going to love it.” Connie remembered feeling jealous that giving birth had come so easily for Meredith (Connie had slogged through twenty-three hours of labor with Ashlyn and she’d suffered a uterine rupture, which precluded her from having any more children). Meredith had said, “Thank God, Freddy got his boy and the hallowed Delinn name will live on.” This had upset Connie; she had felt defensive that Ashlyn was a girl and that there would be no more children to carry on the hallowed Flute name. Feeling bad about this led to resentment that, while Connie had made the trip from Bethesda to New York to see Meredith in the hospital, Meredith hadn’t made the reverse trip two years earlier when Ashlyn was born. It was amazing how memories intruded like that. It was amazing how Connie’s mind held the good and the bad of every interaction, swirled together like children’s paints. Meredith might only remember happiness that Connie had come, or recall the cute outfit that Connie had brought. When Meredith thought of Leo being born, she might only think,
Leo is under investigation.

Connie turned into her driveway and parked in front of the house. Meredith scrambled to get the groceries out of the car.

“You go in and relax,” Meredith said. “I’ll get these.”

Connie laughed. “You’re not an indentured servant,” she said. “But thank you for the help.”

She flashed back to that day at the hospital. Meredith had allowed Ashlyn to hold her hours-old infant, even though the head nurse strongly advised against it.
It’ll be fine!
Meredith had said.
Connie and I will be right here.
Meredith had snapped the pictures herself. She’d had one framed and sent it to Connie. And then, of course, she’d asked Connie to be Leo’s godmother.

“It’s nice to have someone else around,” Connie said.

“Even me?” Meredith said.

“Even you,” Connie said.

At ten minutes to five, Meredith couldn’t put it off any longer: she had to call her attorneys and give them her coordinates. She was still under investigation. She wasn’t allowed to leave the country; the Feds had her passport. Burt and Dev needed to know where she was.

She sat on her bed and turned on her cell phone. This had become a suspenseful moment in Meredith’s daily routine: Had anyone called her? Had anyone texted her? Would Carver and Leo break the rules and text her the
I love you
that she so desperately needed? Had any of Meredith’s former friends found enough compassion in their hearts to reach out? Would she hear from Samantha? Had Burt or Dev called? Did they have good news or bad news? How bad was the bad news? Would this be the moment when Meredith received the worst news? Indeed, the reason Meredith kept her phone turned off was to limit the torture to this one moment, instead of living with it all day long.