Ellie folded her arms across her chest. She was still in her bathing suit, still salt-and-sand encrusted from yesterday’s trip to the beach. The Department of Social Services was sure to arrive at any moment.
“I want to stay and listen,” Ellie said.
“It’s adult stuff,” Margot said. There was a part of her that believed Ellie should stay and listen. After all, Ellie would one day grow up to be a woman. It might not be a bad idea for her to learn now, at the tender age of six, that the world was a complicated place, that other people’s minds could not be read, their emotions could not be predicted, that love was fleeting and capricious, that once you thought you’d figured everything out, something would happen to prove you wrong. Life was a mystery, and nobody knew what happened when we died.
“I don’t care,” Ellie said. “I want to listen.”
“Downstairs,” Margot said.
“No,” Ellie said.
Margot closed her eyes. She was feeling the drinks from the night before, which brought around thoughts of kissing Griff and her treachery and Edge’s impending arrival. Margot’s hands trembled. She set her coffee down on the dresser and sighed. “Okay, go upstairs with the boys, then.”
Ellie let out a whoop, then did a pirouette across the floor. Thank God for Mme Willette’s ballet class; it was the only thing keeping Ellie from turning into a wild Indian.
Margot said, “Where did Auntie Jenna go?”
Ellie said, “Bathroom.”
Margot grabbed her coffee and lay back on the bed, propping herself up against the pillows. The sheets were filled with sand.
What am I going to say? she wondered.
When she’d sat next to Jenna on the front stairs the night before and asked why she was crying, Jenna had told her she was calling the wedding off.
“What?”
“I’m not getting married,” Jenna said.
“Why not?” Margot said.
“Stuart lied to me,” Jenna said.
“He lied to you?” Margot said. That didn’t sound like Stuart. Stuart was as square a peg as had ever lived. He hadn’t even wanted a bachelor party. What man didn’t want a bachelor party? Drum Sr.’s bachelor party in Cabo had included more people than had attended their wedding and had lasted longer than their honeymoon.
Jenna’s lower lip trembled, and she sucked it in the way she used to when she was a little girl. “He was engaged before,” she said.
“What?” Margot said.
“To Crissy Pine,” Jenna said. “His girlfriend from college. He was engaged to her for five weeks! Helen told me, Helen who used to be his stepmother. The woman in the yellow dress tonight.”
Margot’s brain felt like it was going to short-circuit. She didn’t know how to process this information. “Five weeks isn’t very long, Jenna. Five weeks is nothing. It’s negligible.”
“He lied to me!” Jenna said. “He was engaged before! He never told me!”
“You found this out from Helen?” Margot said. “Chance’s mother?”
“It was the first time I ever met her,” Jenna said. “She and Stuart aren’t close; he was shocked his mother invited her. But nearly the first thing Helen said to me was that she was glad things worked out for Stuart this time. And I must have made a confused face because then she said, ‘Well, you know about his broken engagement to Crissy Pine?’ And I said no, and she leaned in conspiratorially, like we were girlfriends, and she said, ‘Stuart was engaged to Crissy Pine for five weeks, and after he broke it off, she refused to return his great-grandmother’s diamond ring.’ ” Jenna was in full-blown tears now. “He gave her his great-grandmother’s ring!”
Margot blinked. Why couldn’t people keep their mouths shut? What did Helen think would be gained by breaking this news to Jenna the evening before her wedding? Did it give her some awful sense of accomplishment?
Margot said, “Helen is an iffy source. She might be lying. Or exaggerating.”
“I confronted Stuart!” Jenna said. “He admitted it was true. He proposed to Crissy, he gave her his great-grandmother’s ring, he broke it off five weeks later, and she was so mad that she never gave the ring back. She still has it!”
She sold it on eBay, Margot thought.
She said, “Why didn’t he ever tell you?”
“He wanted to protect me, he said! He didn’t think I needed to know, he said! He knew it was a mistake the second he asked Crissy, he said! He only proposed because she was nagging him, and so he asked her to get her to stop.”
Oh, dear, thought Margot.
“I’m sure he did want to protect you,” Margot said. “As someone who knows you nearly better than anyone else, I can say that you are a hard person to give bad news. You’re an idealist; you believe in the goodness of your fellow man beyond the point where the rest of us would have given up. Of course he didn’t want to tell you. Stuart has done nothing over the course of your entire relationship except try to make you happy. He bought a hybrid for you! He registered Democrat for you! Honey, trust me, this isn’t a deal breaker.”
Jenna sniffed.
“Jenna,” Margot said. “This isn’t a deal breaker.”
“The rest of Stuart’s family has always been so weird about Crissy,” Jenna said. “No one ever talks about her. There are family pictures in the Graham house with Crissy in them, but Ann cut out black ovals and pasted them over Crissy’s face!”
Margot couldn’t keep from smiling at this. She wondered if Drum’s mother, Greta, had covered her face with black ovals-say, in the photos of Drum Jr.’s christening.
“It’s not funny!” Jenna said. “We bumped into her once, at Newark airport. She was going one way on the moving sidewalk, and we were going the other way, and she called out Stuart’s name and he turned and I turned, and she flipped Stuart off. She gave him the finger! She was pretty-dark hair, pale skin, sort of Spanish looking-and I was like, Who was that and what was THAT all about? Who on earth would flip Stuart the bird? My wonderful, kind Stuart, the man everyone adores and admires? I said, ‘Um. Do you KNOW that girl? ’ He clearly didn’t want to tell me, but then he admitted it was Crissy. And I dragged him to the airport bar and we ordered margaritas and I demanded that he tell me what exactly had happened with Crissy. And all he would say was that in his mind he liked to pretend she had never existed.”
Margot nodded. If everyone told their stories about ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends, ex-fiancés, ex-fiancées, ex-husbands, or ex-wives-or those they had to cross paths with either physically or emotionally-there would be millions and millions of chapters. It was a fraught topic, put mildly.
“You’ve had serious relationships before,” Margot said. “What about Jason? You loved Jason. You basically gave yourself an eating disorder and put yourself in the student infirmary because of Jason. Have you ever admitted that to Stuart?”
“I didn’t have an eating disorder,” Jenna said.
“When he broke up with you the first time, you went on a hunger strike!” Margot said. “Do I have to wake up Autumn to corroborate? You lived on toast and vodka.”
“Ever since Stuart proposed, you’ve been urging me to reconsider,” Jenna said. “You told me everyone gets divorced. You told me that love dies.” Jenna blinked, tears fell. Her makeup was a mess; there were black smudges on the skirt of her peach dress. She had been using her dress as a Kleenex. “And you’re right! Love does die, people do change, everyone is unfaithful, vows do get broken, betrayal is real. Stuart Graham, who I thought was beyond reproach, lied to me about being engaged to someone else.”