For example, from Kevin we got one of the precious cards Beanie had ordered, and across it, in nearly illegible penmanship, he wrote THANKS FOR THE CASH! Love, Kev.
I thought then that marriage must have lightened our Kevin up. But his frivolity was short-lived.
I kept the card, however, as proof. I have it still.
MARGOT
Back up in her bedroom, Margot riffled through the cocktail purse she had taken to the Galley on Thursday night. Ellie was passed out cold on the bed, still in her dress and the silly paper plate hat, although she had shed her sandals, so that Margot could see the black bottoms of her daughter’s feet. As badly as Margot needed to find what she was looking for, she could not resist any of her children when they were sleeping. She hovered over Ellie, marveling at the perfect features of her face and the flawlessness of her skin. When she bent down to kiss Ellie’s lips, she smelled frosting. Probably, Ellie had had nothing to eat tonight but frosting. Margot carefully removed the hat so that the paper plate would not be crushed by Ellie’s nighttime thrashings. She pulled the bedsheets up to Ellie’s chin.
She thought, Go to hell, Edge Desvesnes. This is the real thing right here.
Griff’s card was exactly where she thought it would be, tucked in her cocktail purse next to her dead phone. Unable to help herself, Margot pressed the phone’s buttons, hoping it would spring back to life, the way certain human beings had been known to do, even after being declared dead.
But no. The phone was torched, fried, useless. Somewhere in its now-silent plastic-and-metal depths lurked the two unread messages from Edge. Which would have said something like Please call me. I need to speak to you about this weekend.
Margot was caught in a wave of sadness that nearly pulled her under. Fifteen months of her life, wasted, all that energy squandered on someone who was never in the game to begin with. A part of her yearned to lie down next to Ellie and cry herself to sleep. Rosalie is a better match for me. The New Year’s Eve party. While Edge and Rosalie were kissing at that party, Margot was picking popcorn kernels out of her teeth, watching the ball drop on TV. All those nights when Margot had waited for Edge to respond to her texts, moving from room to room in her apartment, thinking that maybe it was her phone’s cell reception that was the problem, Rosalie and Edge were at the office “working together” on the shitshow Cranbrook case. Twenty-eight years old. Sexy gravelly voice.
Margot pinched Griff’s business card between two fingers. She had to do this.
There were two phones in the house. One was hanging on the wall in the kitchen. One was on the nightstand in the master bedroom. This was a holdover from Margot’s teen years. When Margot and Kevin and Nick were teenagers, they were forced to make all plans on the phone in the kitchen, right smack in the middle of the action, where everyone could hear. Margot had preferred talking to her friends or boyfriends in the privacy of her parents’ bedroom, though this was frowned upon. The phone in her parents’ bedroom was basically only there to serve as a late-night hotline. The police called to say that they had broken up a party at Dionis and had a Carmichael child in custody (Nick). A daughter called to say she’d be late for curfew (Margot). A son’s girlfriend called to see if he was home because it was late and she hadn’t heard from him (Beanie).
Now that the master bedroom was occupied by Doug and Pauline, that phone was really off-limits, so Margot had no choice but to call Griff from the phone in the kitchen. It was as mortifying as it had been as a teenager. The kitchen was filled with catering staff, who were all trying to clean up while simultaneously preparing the late-night offerings for the after-party: potato chips and dip, pretzels with honey mustard, pigs in a blanket, White Castle burgers, and the fixings for s’mores, which would be cooked over the bonfire in the backyard, which Roger and his crew were now setting up beyond the proposal bench, at the edge of the bluff. Under the tent, the band played “Two Tickets to Paradise” and “Buttercup.” Margot was sure most guests were still lighting up the dance floor-but for her, this wedding was over.
She dialed Griff’s number and plugged her ear. She could barely hear the phone ringing. She thought she heard Griff answer, but after a second or two, she realized she’d gotten his voice mail. His recording was talking to her.
She hung up the phone. She had bumped into Griff so many times by accident that she hadn’t anticipated having a problem finding him.
When she dialed again, he picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Griff?” she said. “It’s Margot.”
“Who?” he said.
“Margot,” she said, feeling like an imbecile. “Margot Carmichael.”
“Oh,” he said. “Hold on.” Margot could hear bar noises-music, and people laughing. He was probably sitting at the Boarding House, talking to some sexy blond advertising executive, telling her he missed having someone to talk to at night, someone to tell the stupid stuff. Since he didn’t believe in love anymore, anyone would do.
Suddenly Griff’s voice was clear and strong. “Hey?” he said. “Margot?”
“Hi,” she said.
“Sorry, I just had to step out. What’s up?”
Margot said, “Where are you? Are you someplace I could meet you?”
“I’m at the Boarding House,” he said.
Margot and her perfect instincts. She was probably right about the blonde, as well. “Are you busy? I don’t want to interrupt.”
“Not busy,” Griff said. “Nothing to interrupt.”
Margot felt a surge of relief and something sort of like happiness, even though what she was about to do was going to suck eggs.
“I’m coming down there,” Margot said. “I’m at my house, I’m leaving now.”
“No,” Griff said. “I’ll come to you.”
“I’ll come to you,” Margot said. “I’m leaving right this second.” She heard the oven timer beep, and one of the caterers moved her gently aside so he could slide out a hotel pan of fragrant sweet-and-spicy pecans. When Margot and Jenna had pored over the after-party menu selection, Margot had imagined herself sitting around the fire pit with her sister and her brothers, munching on those yummy pecans and washing them back with an ice cold Cisco brew from the keg. She had imagined the guitar player singing “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” She had imagined a peaceful ending to a drama-free wedding. She had not imagined anything like what was now happening, but oh, well. Margot hung up the phone and took a handful of warm pecans for the road.
She bumped into Griff on Main Street. Margot thought, Men never listen! I said I would come to him! But it was nice to have someone meet her halfway for a change.
He grinned. “Nice dress,” he said.
She was still wearing the grasshopper green. She should have changed, she realized-but after she told him what she had to tell him, it wasn’t going to matter what she was wearing.
He touched her arm. “What’s wrong?” he said.
“Can we sit?” she said.
“Sure,” he said. He led her to the bench in front of Mitchell’s Book Corner. The shopwindows up and down the street were lit, but there were only a few pedestrians out, and the occasional taxi rumbling up the cobblestones, taking people home to their beds, Margot supposed, or to the Chicken Box to dance.
She said, “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Okay,” he said.
When Griff had first come into Miller-Sawtooth as a candidate for the head of product development at Tricom, the applicant pool had been unparalleled by anything Margot could remember seeing in her whole career. The slate she had compiled was all Princeton undergrad and Harvard Business School; everyone was a potential superstar. Margot had overseen all the interviews; she had been the one, along with the associate principal, Bev Callahan, and with occasional consult from Harry Fry, the firm’s managing partner, to winnow the group down to five, and then to three candidates, which she sent to Tricom.