Splendor (2 page)

Dad looked a little embarrassed. “Yeah, that’s the hardest part for me,” he admitted. “Changing the beds, vacuuming, no problem. But those little quiches and mini loaves of banana bread…can’t say I’ve figured out all those recipes just yet.”

“It’s simple chemistry,” I said as I walked over to them. I was irritated by Dad’s helplessness in the kitchen. I wasn’t much of a cook, either, but come on. We could handle things at the B&B on our own.

“Easy for you to say.” Dad rumpled my hair in that dad way of his. “Coming from the science whiz.”

I groaned. Ever since the results of my AP Chemistry test came in, my dad had been calling me “Professor” and “Doc,” only half jokingly. The idea of pursuing a medical degree had always been in my mind, but as senior year came around and the college application process became a reality, I grew more serious about considering it.

“Can we go? Will and I are going out later.”

“Sure, sure.” Dad tossed me the keys to the Volvo. “Why don’t you drive?”

“See you, Alice,” I called, slipping into the worn driver’s seat. “Keep an eye on Delilah, will you?”

“Of course.” Alice stood in the stable yard and watched us drive away, waving.

I didn’t feel like talking with my dad, so I focused really hard on the road, as if it took all my concentration to safely navigate the turns. Maybe my dad didn’t feel like talking, either, because he didn’t even make his usual comments about my driving—cracking jokes, pretending to hold on for dear life. He just gazed out the window, the warm breeze lifting and moving his hair.

It was thinning. A couple of years ago, maybe even last year, it hadn’t been so noticeable. But now it was clear that my dad was going bald.

One of the things I loved about him was that he wasn’t trying to hide it. In spite of the slowly spreading bald spot on the back of his head, Dad went on with the same short hairstyle he’d had my whole life—maybe
his
whole life. He didn’t attempt a comb-over, didn’t grow his hair longer to try to hide his dome.

And he didn’t go the other route, either, that lots of guys went for—he didn’t shave it all off and pretend he liked it that way. Maybe he didn’t even notice that his hair was disappearing. He probably had bigger things to think about.

It had been nearly two months since my mother had left the island. At first, she said that she
had
to do it—had to return to Los Angeles and resume her former career as a lawyer to supplement the paltry income we earned from the B&B. But it became obvious pretty fast that Mom was not coming back. The first few weekends she claimed to be “too busy” to get away…and then she started inviting me to come to the mainland for the weekends.

“My apartment has two bedrooms,” she offered, as if to sweeten the deal.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise. She’d been mostly gone since Ronny’s death, anyway.

“Your mother just needs her space right now” was the best my father could do to explain it.

Her space, my ass.

But Mom did send money. She’d managed to get hired at a firm that handled real estate law, helping homeowners who were facing foreclosure delay the inevitable. Lots of that going around, so our money problems on the island were eased some.

And then there were two,
I mused, remembering an old Agatha Christie book I had read. Come to think of it, that story was set on an island…a deadly island, where a group of vacationers, strangers to one another, were picked off, one at a time, until just two were left, Philip Lombard and Vera Claythorne, each certain that the other was the murderer.

First my brother Ronny, then my mother…

Glancing at my father as I drove, I wondered two things: First, was it
his
fault my mother had left? Had he driven her away somehow, by being too nice, too kind, too weak? Second, as his gaze slipped sideways to meet mine, I wondered if he was like Agatha Christie’s Philip Lombard, suspecting me just as I suspected him.

L
ily and her family came back from vacation earlier than expected, in the first week of August. I went to their house the day they coptered back to the island. Jack and Laura were in the kitchen furiously chopping vegetables. I don’t know why, but the air seemed spiked. There was energy, as always, only not the good kind.

All the elements added up to trouble: the way their backs were turned to each other’s, Laura working at the oversized butcher block in the kitchen’s center island, Jack over near the sink. Laura’s shoulders were pulled up practically to her ears and Jack’s whole back seemed laced with tension. Plus, they weren’t listening to music.

Lily’s parents
always
listened to music. Something quiet and classical, no words, during family game time. Classic rock when they did the dishes. And jazz when they cooked.

“Makes the food better,” Jack often said of the music. “Adds flavor.”

The kitchen was eerily quiet and the sounds of their dueling knives slicing through the vegetables clanked, over and over again, like tiny guillotines.

It wasn’t enough that my own parents were split apart? Now the Adamses, my favorite parental unit, were unhappy, too?

“Welcome home.” I stood awkwardly in the doorway, half in, half out, wondering if I should have knocked even though I’d been letting myself into Lily’s house unannounced since middle school.

“It’s Scarlett!” Laura’s face warmed in a smile, and she set aside her knife and came around the butcher block to embrace me.

“Our favorite blonde,” Jack boomed, and he joined Laura. “How’s summer treating you?”

They stood side by side, smiling at me, and though their faces looked tired, they seemed perfectly happy to be standing close together. So maybe I had been wrong…maybe everything in the Adams house was okay after all.

“Good,” I answered. “It’s nice to have you back.”

“Stay for dinner?” Laura offered, returning to her chopping.

“Sure.” I grabbed a tomato slice from the pile. “What are we having?”

“Just simple summer veggies over pasta. It’s easy to make on short notice.”

And then I noticed something. Laura’s roots were showing. Her lovely caramel curls looked a bit less perfect than usual, and at the crown of her head, there was an undeniable quarter inch of gray.

In all the years I’d known Laura, I’d never—not once—known her to have roots. Something was wrong.

“Um…where’s Lily?” It was only one of the many questions I wanted to ask, but it seemed the safest.

“Isn’t that what we all want to know.” Jack’s tone was wry.

“She’s by the pool.” Laura looked like she wanted to say something else. But she just followed up with, “She’ll be happy to see you.”

Even though Lily’s family was one of the island’s wealthiest, they didn’t really live like it in their everyday life. Comfortable, sure, but not overdone or obnoxious. Still, they liked their luxuries…and their pool was nicer than anything the local hotels had to offer.

I found Lily in the Jacuzzi. Her head was lolled back against the side, her eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. Even like this, at rest, there was something about her face that seemed different.

I knelt next to the Jacuzzi. She didn’t move. I scooped a handful of water and splashed it at her.

She sputtered awake. “What the hell…” Then she saw it was me, and her trademark Lily smile made everything else fade by comparison. “Thank
god,
” she squealed. Jumping up, she hugged me around the neck.

“Whoa, watch it!”

But Lily doesn’t do things halfway. She yanked me off-balance, pulling me into the water with her.

I knew it was useless to fight. What Lily wants, Lily gets. And right then she wanted company in the Jacuzzi. At least I’d worn flip-flops. They were easy enough to fish out of the hot water, and then I shimmied out of my shorts. “You’ll hand me a towel when I get out, right?”

“Absolutely. We don’t want the twins to get an eyeful. Might send them into early puberty.”

“Where are the boys, anyway?”

Lily shrugged. “In their room, probably. The whole family is furious with me. They’re avoiding me like I’m a pair of acid-washed jeans.”

Leave it to Lily to find a fashion metaphor. “What did you do?”

She grinned again and pushed her sunglasses on top of her head. “The question is…what
didn’t
I do?”

So I settled in to listen.

Honestly, I don’t know what Jack and Laura were thinking, taking Lily to Amsterdam. I’d never been there myself—I’d never been much of
anywhere
—but I knew the basics. Legalized drugs, superliberal population, and of course, the red-light district. Basically about a million ways for Lily to find trouble.

And she had. “His name’s Adrian,” she began. “He’s twenty-two.”

“Lily,” I groaned.

“Oh my god, Scarlett, he’s not like anyone you’ve ever met. He’s tall, for one thing.
Really
tall, like basketball player tall. Only he’s not a basketball player.” She paused, as if for effect. “He’s a poet.”

I groaned again.

“Shut up! His poetry is beautiful. It makes me cry. Really, it does. I mean, it’s in Dutch, of course, but he translated some of it for me. It’s even better when he reads it in his own language.” She leaned in across the bubbles and said, wide-eyed, “He even wrote some poems about
me.
”

“So what did Jack and Laura think?”

She shrugged. “Hated him. Of course. They wouldn’t even give him a chance! But, Scarlett, you would have
loved
him!”

Her eyes were pleading. She wanted, desperately, to share. I felt my resistance beginning to crack. At last I said, “I’m sure he must be pretty great, Lil, if you like him. Tell me
everything.
”

And then the floodgates opened. Lily must have talked for close to an hour, telling me about how they’d met on a tour boat, because, of course, poets are undervalued, so to earn money, Adrian gave canal tours.

“And the whole time he was talking, Scar, you know, pointing out the Anne Frank House, rattling off statistics about people and employment and all that, he never took his eyes off me. Not once. Of course, Jack was seething, but I think my mom thought it was kind of cute. And when I was getting off the boat at the end of the tour, Adrian gave me his hand to help me out. And he slipped me a note with his phone number on it! That night when my folks took the boys out to dinner and a movie, I told them I had a headache and stayed behind at the hotel. I called him. Scarlett, I totally get it now about you and Will. The way you look at each other…like you share something magical…that’s how it felt with Adrian.”

Her eyes were shining as she remembered him. “He’s got the most beautiful blond hair, Scar. Almost the same shade as yours except, you know, on a guy. He wears it kind of long, tucked behind his ears.…” She reached up to her own head to show me how his hair looked. “And his eyes were icy blue, and his smile was amazing, and the way he kissed…” She whistled and gazed off into the distance. “He’s no island boy, that’s for sure.”

“What did you do together?”

“That first night, he took me all over. You know, to places that only locals go. Not the silly tourist bars.”

“He took you to bars?”

She snorted. “Don’t be such a baby, Scarlett. Of course we went to bars. We drank
jenever,
this Dutch gin. At first it tasted just awful, but after a while I liked it. It was sort of sweet. And it’s so cute how you drink it—they serve it in a shot glass, full to the brim, and you take the first sip without using your hands, just bending down to the glass. Adrian could drink the whole shot like that, tipping it up into his mouth without his hands. He has very talented lips,” she said, smiling wickedly.

“So of course your parents found out.” I tried to hurry the story along a little. “How’d they catch you?”

Lily’s expression turned stormy. “It was just a couple of days ago. I guess they were getting suspicious of all my headaches, because about an hour after they left with the twins to see a play, my mom came back. Good thing she was alone. Jack would have gone ballistic. I still don’t know if Mom told him what we were doing.”

“What
were
you doing?”

Lily raised her terribly expressive eyebrows. “What do you think we were doing?”

I gasped. I couldn’t help it. “Lily…did you have
sex
with him?”

“Uh…of
course
I did!”

I didn’t know what to say. My mouth opened and closed like a fish’s.

“Don’t look so shocked, Scar. I mean, I know you’re private and everything, but it’s common knowledge that you and Will have been going at it since last spring.”

I barked out a laugh. “Common knowledge, huh? You’d think
I’d
know about it, then.”

Lily narrowed her eyes. “Do you mean that you and Will…”

“No, Lily, we’re not having sex. Don’t you think I would have told you if we were?”

“Maybe you would have told me
before,
Scar.…”

She didn’t have to tell me before what. I knew what she meant. Before Ronny Died. Back then, Lily and I had shared everything. She was like the other half of me. But losing someone close to you can cut your ties, even those you thought were the tightest. You can string them back together again. But not everything fits just the same anymore.

Our silence was uncomfortable, and we sat listening to the jets pump out their streams of hot water. Finally I asked, “Well? How was it?”

For a minute Lily looked like maybe she wouldn’t tell me. Like she’d punish me by keeping it a secret. But I knew she wouldn’t be able to contain herself.

“Pretty terrible, actually,” she burst out. “I mean, it hurt. More than I thought it would. We only did it twice—once at his place, this little tiny apartment. It was
one room
! It didn’t even have a separate kitchen. And I don’t know the last time he washed his sheets. The second time was at the hotel, the night Mom caught us. I mean, I think maybe I could have grown to like it…if we’d done it a few more times…but honestly, Scar, the kissing was better.
Way
better.”

She looked glum now, and I wanted to cheer her up. “Well, at least you beat me to it.”

“I guess. I can’t believe it, though. What’s up? Why aren’t you and Will…”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. We just haven’t.”

“Are you going to? He’s leaving in, like, less than a month.”

I shrugged again. “We haven’t really talked about it.”

And it was true—Will and I hadn’t talked about it. It was one of several things we’d avoided discussing this summer—that, and Will’s departure for Yale. We didn’t even talk about his almost unbelievable ability to sense impending violence in the world, accompanied by a pull to intercede and stop it from happening.

When we were together, I didn’t much feel like talking. I felt like touching. I wanted to put my body as close as possible to Will’s; I wanted to twine fingers, and legs, and tongues. I wanted the press of him against me. I wanted his hands in my hair. I wanted to run my hands up underneath his shirt, across the flat panel of his stomach, across the line of downy hair that began at his belly button and extended down into the mystery beneath his pants.

And he didn’t argue. But though we wound our bodies together in the hidden cove near my house, or on the trail while our horses munched grass, neither of us had begun to unfasten the buttons and zippers that kept us safely separated.

“So your mom came in?” I nudged Lily back to her story.

“Boy, did she. I heard the sound the hotel door makes after someone’s stuck a key card in the slot and the little electric mechanism is unfastening the lock. And Adrian froze—absolutely
froze
—on top of me. I remember thinking, ‘Please, God, anyone but Dad,’ so when it was my mom, for a second I felt
relieved,
you know? And then she said, ‘I will give you two minutes to disappear, young man.’ She actually called him
young man.
At least she waited in the next room while he got dressed.”

“What did he say?”

“He was mumbling something in Dutch, and he fell over as he pulled up his jeans.” Lily laughed, remembering. “He did wear them pretty tight.” Her face grew somber. “But then he left, and that was the last I saw of him. Mom didn’t let me out of her sight again until we were back on the island.”