The Love Season (35 page)

“So how…?”

“I branded my tongue.” She had been very scientific about maiming herself; she had been meticulous. She made a fire of hickory, which burns hotter than other woods, and she set one of her prized French utensils among the embers until it glowed pinkish white. “I burned my taste buds so profoundly that I knew I would never taste a thing again.”

“Didn’t it hurt?” Renata asked.

Hurt?
Marguerite hadn’t been concerned about the pain; nothing could hurt more than… But there had been nights in the past fourteen years when she’d awoken, terrified of glowing metal, of the hiss, the stink.

“When it happened, my tongue swelled up. I can remember it filling my mouth, suffocating me. I nearly lost consciousness, and if I had, I probably would have died. But I got to a phone, dialed the police. I couldn’t speak, but they found me anyway, took me to the hospital.” Insidious pain, yes, she remembered it now, but also a kind of numbness, the numbness of something newly dead. “A day later, stories were everywhere. Some people said I’d cut my tongue out with a knife; others said I went into convulsions and swallowed my tongue. Everyone said I had lost my mind. Some believed Candace and I were lovers; others thought I’d done it because of Porter. Self-mortification, they called it at the hospital. They weren’t willing to release me. They said I was a danger to myself. I spent three months in a psychiatric hospital in Boston. Posttraumatic stress disorder—that’s what they would call it now. Eventually, the doctors realized I was sane. My lawyer helped a lot; he fought to get me released. But even once I returned home, I couldn’t go back out into the world. I sold the restaurant and made a fortune, but I knew I was destined to spend my days alone and dreadfully misunderstood. And I was right.
My life”—here Marguerite lifted a hand—“is very small. And very quiet. But that is my choice. I am not insane. Some days, believe me, I wish I were.”

Renata didn’t know how to respond, but like everything with Marguerite, this seemed to be okay. Silence seemed preferable; it seemed correct. And so, they sat—for a few minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty; Renata wasn’t sure. Renata was tired, but her mind wouldn’t rest. She had heard the whole story for the first time and yet what she found was that she knew it already. Inside, she’d known it all along.

The clock struck midnight. Marguerite snapped to attention; Renata realized that for a second or two she’d drifted off to sleep.

“We should go to bed,” Renata said. She stood up and collected the dessert dishes.

“Leave them in the sink,” Marguerite said. “I’ll do them in the morning.” Marguerite blew the candles out and inhaled the smell of them, extinguished.
Dinner over
, she thought. But before Marguerite could feel anything resembling relief or sadness or peace, there was a knock at the door. This time there was no mistaking it for something else; there was no wondering if it was a figment of her imagination. The knock was strong, authoritative. Renata heard it, too. Her eyes grew round; the dishes wobbled in her hands.

“We should hardly be surprised,” Marguerite whispered, ushering Renata into the kitchen. “We knew someone would come looking for you.”

Right
, Renata thought. Still, she felt hunted down. “What should we do?” she said.

“What would you like to do?” Marguerite asked. “We can answer, or we can pretend to be asleep and hope whoever it is gives up and comes back in the morning.”

“Pretend to be asleep,” Renata said.

“All right.” Marguerite flipped off the kitchen light. There was no way anyone could see in the kitchen windows unless he scaled a solid eight-foot fence onto the garden patio. Marguerite reached out for Renata’s hand. “Let’s wait for a minute. Then we’ll sneak you upstairs.”

Renata could barely nod. She squeezed Marguerite’s bony fingers. There was a second barrage of knocks.

“Is there any way we could check…?” Renata said.

“And see who it is?” Marguerite said. “Certainly. I’ll go.” Marguerite crept into the dark hallway, telling herself she was not afraid. This was her house; Renata was her guest. She tiptoed down the hall and into the sitting room. She peered out the window, terrified that when she did so another face would be staring back at hers. But what she saw was Daniel Knox, sitting on the top step, his head in his hands. He had a small travel suitcase on the step next to him.

Marguerite hurried back to the kitchen. “It’s your father.”

“He’s alone?”

“He’s alone. He’s brought a suitcase. Perhaps you should come take a look.”

Renata followed Marguerite to the window. They pulled the curtain back, and both gazed upon Daniel sitting there. Marguerite’s heart lurched. She tried to forget that the last time he stood on the step it was to take his daughter away; it was to pass his terrible judgment.
She pitied you, Margo
. The words she would never forget. He had meant them—and worse still, they were true. But Marguerite found it hard to conjure the old pain. So much time had passed. So much time.

Renata bit her bottom lip. She tried to erase the sight of her father on a different front step, crying because someone in the world had been cruel or thoughtless enough to steal his little girl’s bicycle. All he’d ever wanted to do was protect her. He’d come to Nantucket tonight because of her
phone call. He had heard it as a cry for help—and now Renata could see that’s exactly what it was.

“Shall we let him in?” Renata said. “Would it be okay with you?”

“Of course,” Marguerite said.

Together, they opened the door.

August 20, 2006 • 12:22 A.M.

Cade Driscoll pulled up in front of the house on Quince Street in his family’s Range Rover. Once he was parked and settled, however, he just sat in his car like a spy, Renata’s engagement ring clenched in his hand. On the first floor, the shutters had been pulled, though Cade could see thin strips of light around the edges of the windows. A light went on upstairs. Through the curtains, Cade discerned shadowy figures. Renata? Daniel? The godmother? He waited, watching, hoping that Renata would peer out and see him.
Come down
, he thought.
Come down and talk to me
. But eventually the light upstairs went off. A light came on downstairs, on the right side of the house, and Cade watched with renewed interest, but then that light went out and Cade sensed that was it for the night. They were all going to sleep. He would be well advised to do the same.

Cade opened his palm and studied the engagement ring. He hadn’t told Renata this, but he had bought the ring at an estate sale at Christie’s; the ring, initially, had belonged to someone else. What kind of woman, Cade had no idea; what kind of marriage it represented, he couldn’t begin to guess. He placed the ring in the car’s ashtray. Monday, when he was back in Manhattan, he would sell it on consignment.

He resumed his stakeout of the dark house. Like the ring, Number
Five Quince Street contained a story, a secret history. The same could be said, no doubt, for every house on Quince Street and for every bright apartment window in Manhattan, for every igloo, Quonset hut, cottage, split-level, bungalow, and grass shack across the world. They all held stories and secrets, just as the Driscoll house on Hulbert Avenue held the story of today. Or part of the story.

The rest, Cade feared, he would never know.

1:05 A.M.

Marguerite lay in bed, used up, spent, as tired as she’d ever been in her life, and yet she couldn’t sleep. There was excitement and, yes, anxiety, about not one but two of her upstairs guest rooms occupied, about Renata and Daniel asleep above her head. In a hundred years she never could have predicted that she would have them both in her house again. To have them show up unannounced and know they would be welcome to stay the night, like they were family.

Marguerite had expected Daniel to be officious, gruff, angry, annoyed, impatient, disgruntled, demanding—but if she and Porter were playing their old game and she had only one word to describe Daniel, it would be “contrite.” He was as contrite as a little boy who had put a baseball through her window.

“I’m sorry,” he said when Marguerite and Renata opened the door. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The apologies came in a stream and Marguerite couldn’t tell if he was sorry for showing up on her doorstep at midnight with his overnight bag, or sorry for coming to Nantucket to meddle in his daughter’s affairs, or sorry for keeping Marguerite and
Renata away from each other for fourteen years, or sorry for his punishing words so long ago or sorry for feeling threatened by Marguerite since the day he showed up at Les Parapluies without a reservation, when he pulled out a chair and took a seat in their lives, uninvited. Possibly all of those things. Marguerite allowed Dan to embrace her and kiss her cheek, and then she stood aside and watched as father and daughter confronted each other. Renata crossed her arms over her chest and gave Daniel a withering look.

“Oh, Daddy!” she said. Then she grimaced. “Don’t tell me what happened over there. Please don’t tell me. I really don’t want to know.”

“I’d rather not think about it myself,” Daniel said. He sighed. “I’m not trying to control your life, honey.”

Renata hugged him; Marguerite saw her tug on his earlobe. “Yes, you are,” she said. “Of course you are.”

“Would you like a drink, Daniel?” Marguerite asked. “I have scotch.”

“No, thanks, Margo,” he said. “I’ve had plenty to drink already tonight.” He sniffed the air. “Smells like I missed quite a meal.”

“You did,” Renata said. She shifted her feet. “Can we talk about everything in the morning? I’m too tired to do it now. I’m just too tired.”

“Yes,” Daniel said. Marguerite noticed him peer into the sitting room. In the morning he would want to see the house; he would want to see what was the same, what was different. He would look for signs of Candace. It was fruitless to hope he might bestow a kind of forgiveness, but she would hope anyway.

“Yes,” Marguerite agreed. “You, my dear, have had quite a day. Let me show you upstairs.”

Marguerite led the way with Renata at her heels. Daniel, who had been left to carry the bags, loitered at the bottom of the stairs. He was snooping around already, reading something that he found on one of the
bottom steps, something Marguerite hadn’t even realized she’d left there—her columns from the Calgary newspaper.

“Dad?” Renata said impatiently.

He raised his face and sought out Marguerite’s eyes. “Do you enjoy working with Joanie?” he said.

Marguerite raised one eyebrow, a trick she hadn’t used in years and years. “You know Joanie Sparks?” she said. “You know the food editor of
The Calgary Daily Press?
”

“Do you remember my best man, Gregory?”

Marguerite nodded. How would she ever explain that she’d been thinking of Gregory just today, and the relentless way he’d pursued poor Francesca?

“Joanie is his sister,” Dan said. “I dated her a million years ago. In high school.”

“
You
gave her my name then?” Marguerite said. “You suggested I write the column?”

He shrugged, returned his attention to the clippings for a second, then set them down. He picked up his overnight case and Renata’s lumpy bag and ascended the stairs with a benign, noncommittal smile on his face. “I did,” he said. “And not only that but I read the column every week. Online.”

“You do?” Marguerite said.

“You
do
?” Renata said.

“It’s a wonderful column,” Daniel said.

Forgiveness, Marguerite thought. It had been there all along.

“Well,” she said, trying not to smile. “Thank you.”

The grandfather clock eked out another hour. The announcement was mercifully short: two o’clock.

Sleep!
Marguerite commanded herself.
Now!

She closed her eyes. In the morning, she would make a second meal, breakfast. She and Daniel and Renata would drink coffee on the patio, read the Sunday
New York Times
, which Marguerite had had delivered every week since the year she met Porter. They would say things and leave many things unsaid. And then—either together or separately—Renata and Daniel would leave to go back to New York. They would resume their lives, and Marguerite would resume hers.

She was not optimistic enough to believe that, from this day on, she would see them often, or soon, though she hoped her status improved from a mere name on the Christmas card list. She hoped Renata would write—or e-mail! She hoped both Renata and Daniel would think of Nantucket on a bright, hot summer day and know they were welcome there anytime, without warning. For them, her door was open.

If nothing else, Marguerite told herself, she would be left with the memory of this day. It would be a comfort and a blessing to think back on it.

There was, after all, nothing like living in the past.

THE LOVE SEASON

By Elin Hilderbrand

In Her Own Words

• A Conversation with Elin Hilderbrand

Food for Thought

• “The Dinner Party”

© 2006
Cape Cod Times

Keep on Reading

• Reading Group Questions

For more reading group suggestions
visit
www.readinggroupgold.com

ST. MARTIN’S GRIFFIN