The Weekenders (40 page)

“I thought you didn't care about Nate Milas. Didn't you tell me you told him to stay away from you and your family?”

“That doesn't mean I don't want to know what kind of skullduggery he's up to now,” Riley said. “If it affects this island, it affects me. Now spill it, because I know that's why you came over here.”

“Since you insist,” Parrish said impishly. “I had a fascinating conversation with Annie Milas at the Mercantile just now.”

“Do tell.”

“She told me Nate's been in meetings in Chapel Hill and Morehead City all week.”

“Yippee. Probably lining up his dredging and demo permits.”

“Actually, he's putting together plans to turn the Holtzclaw place into some kind of marine fisheries research facility. Annie said he's donating the land to UNC and building it out with docks for their boats and stuff, and that old house will be turned into classrooms and dorms.…”

“He's giving it away?” Riley asked. “You're sure he's not selling it?”

“That's what Annie said. She said Nate turned into a hippy-dippy conservationist while he was living in California. She was all worked up because she said she's sick of people insinuating he wants to turn Belle Isle into Myrtle Beach.”

“Of course she'd defend him and put a positive spin on it. She's his mom. What else would you expect?” Riley said.

“You've really got it bad for Nate, don't you?”

“You're nuts,” Riley said. “He's an arrogant ass.”

“I like him. I've always thought he was a decent guy, and this seals the deal as far as I'm concerned. I don't understand why you're so suspicious of his motives. As far as I can tell, he wants what you want.”

“I'm suspicious of him because I know him better than you do,” Riley said. “And, unless he wants to keep the island the way it's always been, he definitely does not want what I want. I guarantee when he bought up all this land Wendell assembled, he had an agenda, the same as Wendell. He may have figured a way to put a happy, shiny spin on it for his mom and people like you, but it's there.”

“You're hopeless,” Parrish said. “Seriously, Riles. All this anger and bitterness is warping you. It's a holiday weekend. I'm trying not to be sad about missing David and Amanda. Come to the party with us tonight, okay? Forget all this drama. Let it go for one night and try to enjoy yourself. Will you? For me? Please?”

Riley got up and stared out the kitchen window at the bluff and the water below. Sailboats skimmed across the surface of the bay and the sky was an amazing blue. Carolina blue. She'd been so busy trying to salvage what was left of her life, she'd forgotten to savor the beauty right outside this window. Maybe Parrish was right.

“Okay, I'll go,” she said, turning around to face her friend. “But I refuse to have fun.”

“Deal,” Parrish said. “We'll pick you up at seven. Try to look cute, would you?”

 

48

Nate collapsed into the armchair in front of the television. He had an ice-cold bottle of Corona in one hand and the remote control in the other. He heard the sound of tires crunching on the crushed-shell driveway outside his cabin, then light footsteps on the cabin's front porch. He didn't move. He didn't need to because he already knew who the visitor was.

Annie walked in without knocking. “What are you doing? It's time to go.”

“Go? I'm not going anywhere,” Nate informed her. “I'm beat. I've been in meetings or on the road all week. I just want to sit here, by myself, drink a beer, and watch a ball game.”

His mother didn't move. She tried staring him down.

“Did I mention the ‘by myself' part?” he repeated.

“Yeah, I'd like that, too,” Annie retorted. “I've been up chopping vegetables and making salads since five a.m. because the café's prep chef didn't show up for work. And we've been slammed all day.”

“So go home. You're the boss. You've earned a night off. And so have I.”

“I can't, remember? We're catering the big party tonight. Wine and appetizers for a hundred and fifty people. Somebody has to take all of it out to the south beach and set up and serve.”

“Nooooo,” Nate groaned.

“I had a couple of the deckhands from the ferry take the tent out to the beach and put it up earlier. Now I need tables delivered and set up, the grills carried down there, and the big coolers with the food and wine and ice dragged down from the parking lot to the tent.”

“I thought that's why you have staff at the café,” Nate protested. But he knew it was a lost cause. Resistance was always futile where Annie Milas was concerned.

“Those skinny little college girls can't lift those heavy coolers,” his mother said. “I can trust 'em to pour wine and serve, but somebody has to do the heavy lifting and man the grills.”

“And you think that somebody should be me?”

“Who else?”

*   *   *

They could hear the steel-drum band warming up when they arrived at the south beach parking lot shortly after eight. Golf carts were lined up nose to nose, with more parked on the sandy shoulder of the road.

Men in colorful tropical-hued shirts and shorts, and women in their finest beach-casual cocktail wear strolled toward the boardwalk over the dunes, coolers and beach chairs in hand. Riley, Ed, and Parrish joined the parade.

Riley paused at the top of the dune and looked out at the spectacle below. Festive white party lights were strung from the corners of a large blue-and-white tent, attached to tall poles planted on the beach. The sky was already turning amethyst, and a breeze stirred the sea oats. Plumes of pork-scented smoke billowed up from a huge grill set at the edge of the tent. A hundred or more people were scattered around the bar and buffet tables. She heard laughter and froze for a moment.

She was already feeling panicky, having second thoughts. She'd promised Parrish she'd come, but that was a mistake. She wasn't ready yet. As if she could read her thoughts, her best friend tugged at her hand. “Come on. It'll be fun.”

Riley stepped out of her gold sandals, leaving her shoes with all the footwear left by other partygoers. Her toes sank into the soft sand, still holding on to the last traces of the sun's warmth.

*   *   *

He saw her standing alone, at the edge of the dunes, frowning. She wore a long dress of some kind of pale pink gauzy fabric with a hem that fluttered in the breeze. The dress tied around her neck and showed a surprising amount of bare shoulders and cleavage—for Riley Nolan, anyway. Her dark hair was twisted into a braid that hung down her bare back. She looked like the same teenaged girl he'd spotted on this same beach so many years ago—ethereal and unattainable. Then and now.

That first time, she'd been with a group of her girlfriends from Raleigh. Nate knew she was a Nolan, and that her family were the original developers of Belle Isle, where he'd lived his whole life. He'd never noticed her before, but then, up until he'd turned fifteen, he'd never paid any attention to girls.

It was the summer of 1988, and she and her three friends had set up camp not far from this same stretch of sand, their lounge chairs arranged in a circle. They were giggling and drinking Diet Cokes from cans, and they all wore tantalizingly miniscule bikinis, except Riley, who wore a comparatively modest one-piece suit. Even now he could picture those summertime girls, their bodies shimmering with coconut-scented lotion. They had a suitcase-size boom box and they were listening to the huge hit of the summer, Robert Palmer's “Simply Irresistible,” doing their best to copy the dance moves from the MTV video. He hadn't worked up the nerve to ask her out until the next summer, and had been astonished when she'd said yes.

After that summer, whenever he heard “Simply Irresistible,” he thought of Riley Nolan.

She used to look good to me,
Nate thought,
but now I find her simply irresistible.

He held his breath for a moment. He was sure that if Riley spotted him at the party she'd turn around and leave. But she followed her friends onto the beach, stopping occasionally to speak to people, but never lingering. He remembered what she'd said on the ferry, right after Wendell's death, about not wanting people's pity. He watched her unfold a beach chair before heading over to the table where the bar was set up.

“Excuse me. Can I get one of those pork sliders?” A balding man with a sunburnt nose pointed toward the grill, and Nate went back to slicing and serving.

*   *   *

Riley drifted around the party, sipping her wine, making pleasant chitchat. Why was this so hard? Most of the people here she'd known for years. They were her neighbors. She knew their families, and they knew hers. She wasn't actually mourning Wendell. In fact, her rage at the predicament he'd left her in frightened her at times, it was so intense. So why did she feel so emotionally exposed tonight, her wounds still so raw?

“Are we having fun yet?” Billy approached, sipping a pale green concoction with a paper parasol and a hot-pink hibiscus blossom sticking out of the top of his cup.

“It seems weird, being at a party,” she admitted. “I feel sort of guilty for even thinking about getting on with my life.”

“You shouldn't feel guilty,” Billy said. “Wendell never did, that sorry son of a bitch.” His words slurred together, and his eyes were slightly glassy.

“How many of those umbrella drinks have you had tonight?” she asked.

“Too many, apparently,” Billy said. “Scotty and I had words about it. And then he left. Now I don't even have a ride home.”

“Scott worries about your drinking,” Riley said. “I wish you'd cut back a little.”

“Pfffft,” he replied. “Hey, you look really pretty tonight, Riles.” He plucked the hibiscus from his drink and tucked it behind her left ear. “I like your hair this way.”

She touched the braid self-consciously. “Maggy taught me how. She'd seen a picture in one of her magazines.”

“Where is the Magpie tonight?” he asked, looking around. “Is she over at Roo's, watching Animal Planet?”

“She's spending the night with her friend Annabelle. Against my better judgement. I left a voice mail message with her mom, just to check in, but the woman still hasn't called me back.”

“Helicopter mom,” Parrish said, walking up with Ed and handing Riley a glass of wine.

“She'll be fine,” Billy said. “They're twelve-year-old girls. What kind of trouble could they get into?”

“Lots. When I think back to the kind of stunts we pulled at that age, I realize now why Mama went gray-haired while she was in her thirties,” Riley said.

“Yeah. Remember that time we wanted to go to town to the movies, but we didn't have enough money for the movie and the ferry ticket?” Parrish asked. “So we rode our bikes over to the marina, then climbed inside one of those big empty Rubbermaid luggage totes and got ourselves loaded onto the boat without paying? What movie was it that we were so desperate to see?”

“It was
The Goonies
. And I still have nightmares about being locked up in small places like that,” Riley said. “Remember how Captain Joe caught us trying to sneak onto the boat on the way back to the island?”

“And he threatened to call your daddy and tell on us, but instead he made us sweep out the snack bar for a whole week,” Parrish said.

Ed looked from his wife to Parrish. “You were stowaways?”

“We were small for our age,” Riley explained. She examined the plate of appetizers Ed was balancing on top of his plastic wineglass. “That looks amazing. I think I'll go get something to eat. Anybody want anything?”

Billy jiggled the ice cubes in his now-empty cup at his sister.

“Don't make me call Scott and rat you out,” Riley said. “Go get some food and try to sober up, okay?”

*   *   *

She was walking toward the buffet table when one of the musicians stepped a little ways apart from the rest of the band. He raised a trumpet to his lips and played a slow rendition of “Taps.” Riley turned and walked, as though in a trance, toward the ocean. The sky was an ombre patchwork ranging from palest purple to deep, midnight blue, and hanging low on the horizon was a staggeringly beautiful silvery moon.

Applause rippled through the crowd. She stood very still, gazing up at it. The day's worries and troubles slowly receded, and she was only aware of the sound of her own breathing and the sensation of waves lapping at her ankles and that luminescent moon, spilling liquid beauty.

*   *   *

The line for food had temporarily slowed. At the sound of the trumpet solo, Nate turned away from the grill for what seemed like the first time that night. He automatically scanned the crowd, wondering if she'd already left. And then he spotted her. She was silhouetted in the moonlight, standing in ankle-deep water, her face tilted up to the sky. He must have been staring at her for a good five minutes until a voice broke in and brought him back to reality.

“Hey, man, are there any of those shrimp-skewer things left?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. He reached for his tongs and placed two kabobs on an outstretched plate.

“And could I get some of that grilled pineapple salsa on the side?”

Nate scooped a spoonful from the cast-iron skillet he'd shoved to the side of the massive grill and dumped it on the customer's plate. He heard coins clinking in the tip jar one of the college girls had placed prominently on the buffet table to his right, but still he watched Riley Nolan until she reluctantly turned her back on the moon and started to walk toward the food tent.

*   *   *

She was starving. The line at the buffet table had dwindled to less than a dozen people. Riley took a plastic plate and helped herself from trays of appetizers lined up on the long table: cheese and crackers, crab dip, bacon-wrapped blue cheese–stuffed dates, and fruit skewers. But it was the pork-scented aroma emanating from the grill that drew her like a magnet.