The House On Willow Street (21 page)

Mara looked at the big old gates of Avalon House as she turned into Danae’s gravel drive, and was immediately greeted by a flutter of red-and-white wings to her right.

A congregation of hens had gathered, beaks pressed against the wire of their run in anticipation of a visitor, squawking at the tops of their voices.

Only Danae would have a posse of attack hens, thought Mara fondly.

She got out of the car and Lady uncurled herself from the mat at the front door, silver-gray fur shaking with delight at this long-absent visitor.

The hens, outraged at someone else being greeted and not them, began to ruffle up their feathers to twice their normal size, clucking loudly.

Mara let herself into the run and was instantly surrounded by the gang of fluffy-bloomered girls, some angling inquisitive heads at her, others content to peck happily at her boots.

“Come in,” said Danae from the back door, “or they’ll peck higher up. They are dreadfully nosy and subject to none of the boundaries of normal hens. They want to come into the house these days.”

“Which one is my hen? Which one is Mara?”

“The little red one pulling at your skirt,” said Danae.

“Hello, henny pennie,” said Mara, picking her namesake up and holding her firmly under her arm.

The two Maras regarded each other solemnly.

The avian Mara did not look as if she’d been publicly dumped by a man anytime recently. She looked as if she’d had breakfast, an insect or two, and a few tiny stones. All was right in her world.

“If you had any advice for me, Mara, what would it be?” the human Mara asked.

The hen reached out and had an exploratory peck at Mara’s jacket. Then another, a sharper peck this time, which hurt.

“Ouch. Go for what you want in life and don’t take shit
from anybody, is that it?” Mara set her namesake down. “I think your hens have the secret of life all figured out, Danae,” she said, leaving the run to hug her aunt.

“Who needs a Zen Guide when you could have a Hen Guide,” Danae laughed.

Even though she’d barely arrived, already it felt comforting and relaxing simply being in Danae’s place. Mara’s possessions were out in the car, but there was no frantic rush to put everything away, no hurry to get the bag unpacked or to work out what everyone wanted for tea. That was how things would have been in Furlong Hill, and it was very restful to be away from the hustle and bustle of her home.

Danae didn’t even mention Mara’s bags. If Mara had turned up without spare knickers or a toothbrush, Danae wouldn’t blink an eyelid. She’d simply have produced something that would do.

She’d made an eggplant and goat’s cheese pie earlier and it was heating in the big cream oven, filling the cottage with lovely aromas, while she and Mara sat on iron chairs outside the kitchen window, with the menagerie at their feet, pecking happily. Danae had brought out a couple of rugs to wrap around themselves to ward off the breeze roaring up from the coast, while a pot of tea sat in a hand-knitted tea cozy on a matching iron table. Mara would have quite liked a glass of wine, but Danae didn’t seem to drink. Mara had never questioned this state of affairs, and she wasn’t about to start now. Tea in mismatched hand-thrown pottery mugs was exactly the right thing to drink as they watched the tide sweep inexorably into the horseshoe curve of Avalon Bay and discussed the world.

“Would you have been happy with him, Mara, do you think?” Danae said tentatively.

“I was happy . . . I
thought
I was happy,” Mara amended.
“But he didn’t know I wanted to marry him—which is an excuse, really, isn’t it?” She looked down where a hen was sitting on one of her boot-clad feet. It was strangely comforting, and nicely warm into the bargain. She hoped hens didn’t poop sitting down. “I thought he’d know what I wanted,” she said. “I knew all the things he wanted. I knew he wanted to go to Monaco to a Grand Prix more than anything. I’d thought we could do that on our honeymoon. I was thinking ahead,” said Mara sadly. She’d told nobody else about the Grand Prix. It was such an admission of futile love and she felt diminished even by saying it.

“Love turns the wisest of us into complete idiots,” Danae said. “We think we need love to complete us. And we don’t. Trust me, we don’t.”

All Mara’s life, Danae had had the knack for saying the right thing at the right time. She’d been the one who told Mara that the beauty inside a person could shine brightly out of them; that mean girls at school might never suffer for their meanness, and wishing for them to suffer was not only pointless but personally painful. All good advice, delivered in a distant and somewhat reserved manner, as if she was making a special effort to say these things to Mara.

It had never occurred to Mara to wonder
how
her aunt knew all this stuff; that was simply part of who she was: thoughtful and wise, yet somewhat removed from it all. Choosing to keep her distance. Mara had always assumed that Danae enjoyed her almost monastic life.

Until that moment.

Trust me, we don’t.
Nobody said
that
without having learned it the hard way, through personal experience. Suddenly, Mara wanted to know how Danae had come by her wisdom.

She poured another cup of tea to give herself time. Despite
their closeness and fondness for each other, she knew so little about Danae’s life. Her dad’s older sister, the calm, kind postmistress who loved her chickens: that was all Mara knew of her aunt.

“Oh, listen to me—Madam Know-It-All,” Danae said with a light laugh, as if she could read Mara’s thoughts. “Don’t take my advice, Mara, love. Do what you want.”

She was changing the subject, but it was easier that way.

“I am going to recover from my broken heart, walk along the beach and write poetry,” Mara said dramatically. “Really bad poetry that I’ll send to Jack. I may throw myself into the sea a few times with misery . . . but it’s a bit cold right now, isn’t it?”

“Bitterly cold,” agreed Danae. “If you want Jack’s attention, throw yourself into the sea nearer his house, perhaps?”

Mara sniffed. “Hell will freeze over. I wasted enough time on him. I’m not going to get hypothermia over him.”

“Good girl,” said her aunt. “At the risk of sounding like a walking cliché, you’re young and there are more fish in the sea.”

“I am off fish for good. No fish.”

“I bet your father told you to find a lovely man who’ll adore you,” Danae said, tilting her head to one side as she studied her. Mara burst into laughter.

“Those were almost his exact words. How come he’s such an innocent and—”

“—and I’m so bitter and twisted?” asked Danae wryly.

“No. Well, Dad is innocent,” Mara pointed out. She’d often marveled at the difference between her father and his sister. Morris Wilson was a gentle man who thought well of the world and was assured of his happy place in it. Danae was wise, kind and gentle too, but she lived an almost hermit-like existence in Avalon. This place had always been Mara’s
sanctuary when she needed peace and tranquility. Nice for a few days, but not necessarily somewhere you’d want to live. Yet this was how Danae spent her days: alone but for her animals.

Maybe that was why Mara had felt the urge to flee to Avalon, she mused. Everything happened for a reason and this was the reason.

S
uki sat in the Petersens’ great room in their holiday mansion on the Cape, a glass of Krug in one hand, and wondered why she’d come to the party in the first place. It had been a long time since she’d bothered with these sort of events: parties in huge mansions with waiting staff, the finest champagne on tap and exquisite canapés cooked by the finest chefs.

At least she’d found somewhere to sit—there were rarely enough seats at these affairs and there was nothing worse than standing for hours. Here, in her corner seat, she was signaling taking a break from the party. Here, she could simply watch.

After the divorce from Kyle, people had continued to invite her to parties because she remained a part of the great Richardson clan, and so far as hosts and hostesses were concerned, even a tenuous connection with Kyle Senior was worthy of a place on the guest list. For their part, the Richardsons hadn’t cast Suki out, because they knew better than to alienate her; the last thing they wanted was a bitter divorcée who’d been privy to life on the inside telling the world all their secrets.

Back then, Suki had also enjoyed the status of a minor celebrity; a feted author appearing on chat shows and in the press.

But since she’d hit skid row, there had been no embossed, gilt-edged cards on her mantelpiece inviting her to dinners or elegant parties in the moneyed enclaves in Massachusetts.

So when she’d bumped into Missy Petersen in the health-food shop in Provincetown, the best one by far in the area, she’d been surprised when Missy had hugged her and said it had been too long.

“What have you been up to?” Missy said, tucking a strand of glossy, recently blow-dried blonde hair back with a perfectly manicured hand. Her engagement ring, a pink diamond the size of a conker, caught the light.

“Working on a new book,” Suki said pleasantly.

She’d always liked Missy: she was genuinely nice, not like some of the rich men’s wives, who viewed all other women as competition.

“Oh, I don’t know how you do it,” said Missy. “You career women. I can’t imagine what I’d do if I had to have a career. Charlie says I’d make a good interior designer, though. I have thought of it, you know.”

Rich women always wanted to be designers. Making a house look pretty was easy when you had a million-dollar budget to play with.

Suki smiled and prepared to move on. “Lovely to see you, Missy,” she said truthfully.

“Do you know, I clean forgot to invite you to Charlie’s birthday party,” Missy said. “He’s fifty-nine, can you believe it? He’s planning something wild for his sixtieth, but you know men, they like a party, anyway. What’s your address now?”

Suki dutifully gave it, thinking that it was a nice gesture on Missy’s part but not expecting it to come to anything.
Charlie, a money-mad alpha male, would nix her from the guest list if he saw her name on it. Charlie only wanted players at his parties.

To Suki’s amazement, true to her word, Missy sent an invitation:
Charlie’s fifty-ninth, the run-up to the Big One. Come dressed up or come as you are.

Suki didn’t know what made her do it, but she accepted. However, she didn’t tell Mick. He wouldn’t like that sort of party, she reasoned: Chopin playing on the Bang & Olufsen, or maybe an actual string quartet. No, he wouldn’t like it.

It wasn’t that he wouldn’t fit in, she told herself. It wasn’t that at all.

She went to the salon and had her hair done; something she rarely did these days.

“A file and paint,” she told the manicurist. She couldn’t afford the extra ten dollars for proper cuticle work.

Money—why did it always come back to money?

There was plenty of money in the Petersens’ house, a timber-framed mansion on the Hyannis side of the Cape with more rooms than the Louvre.

Because this wasn’t a “big” party, Missy explained as she greeted Suki, they didn’t have a marquee or anything. “It’s only us at home.”

“Home” was filled with modern art and enough odd sculptures to convince people that Charlie and Missy had artistic sense. In reality, Suki knew they’d have an art expert on the payroll, looking out for nice “pieces” that would ensure they kept their place in the art fashion loop.

That was the trick when you had new money. Old money people could have paintings of the family home and deranged great-grand-uncles who’d had four wives and twenty-six children and had owned half of East Manhattan when horse-drawn carriages drove the streets.

New money people had up-and-coming artists and a selection of hideously expensive pieces to show how rich they were.

The Petersens at home turned out to consist of a collection of rich men scattered around the place, comparing their assets—or wives.

I should never have come, Suki thought again, accepting a glass from a waiter.

Sitting in her armchair, champagne glass in hand, she surveyed the room. It was a world she thought she’d left behind. Everyone here was rich or married to someone rich. The result was a roomful of people all hell-bent on outdoing each other while trying not to be too obvious about it.

During her years on the ultrarich social circuit, Suki had noticed that the women generally fell into one of two tribes: the more ordinary women, who got by with a little regular maintenance, and the trophy second wives, for whom maintenance was a way of life. First wives tended to avoid standing beside second ones. The sole exception was one exquisite first wife, Delilah Verne, who managed to look younger than her forty-eight years, having been rejuvenated so many times that a second wife could no doubt have been assembled from the bits she’d had surgically sucked out of her.

It was Delilah who descended upon her quiet corner now, teetering on her platforms. Not quite Prada witch but not far off it, she was dressed in something designerish (Balmain?) that Suki knew had commanded a sum that would have paid her own household bills for three months.