Will was quiet and shy and extremely concerned about what his older and more established colleagues thought about him, but he excelled at intimacy-at lighting the votive candles and putting on soft music and sharing things about himself. Adrienne knew he was an only child, that his parents lived in a Manhattan brownstone on Seventy-second and Fifth Avenue; she knew he occasionally smoked pot before lecturing because it helped him to relax; she knew the names and complete histories of his six previous girlfriends (one of whom was his second cousin, who sometimes called late at night from her job as night auditor at Donald Trump’s posh resort in Palm Beach); she knew the long and Byzantine road that led Will to his dissertation topic about War and Peace. It bothered Will that Adrienne never talked about herself. “Tell me about your childhood,” he said.
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“What about your parents?”
“What about them?”
“What are they like?”
“Why are you asking me so many questions?”
“Because I want to know you,” he said. “Tell me about your first kiss, your last boyfriend. Tell me something.”
“I can’t,” she said. She was afraid if she opened her mouth, a lie would pop out. That was how it always happened.
“You can,” Will said. “You just don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to,” she admitted.
“You don’t trust me,” Will said. He would usually end up leaving the bedroom and falling asleep on the bare wooden floor in front of his computer. These fights bothered Adrienne only slightly. It was a small price to pay for her privacy.
When the semester ended and Adrienne graduated, Dr. Don flew to Tallahassee for the ceremony. On the way to the airport to pick him up, Will asked, “Why isn’t your mother coming?”
Adrienne could remember staring out the window at the hot, green Florida hills. She yearned to disappear in them. Adrienne’s roommate at Vanderbilt had asked her this very same question when Dr. Don showed up alone for parents’ weekend, and Adrienne had told the roommate that Rosalie stayed home because Adrienne’s brother, Jonathan, was very sick.
“Well,” Adrienne said. “Because she’s dead.”
“Dead? Your mother’s dead?”
“This is your exit,” Adrienne said.
Dr. Don took Adrienne and Will to Michelsen’s Farm House for dinner, and in those three hours, Will mined Dr. Don for every conceivable detail of Adrienne’s childhood-including, after two bottles of wine, the maudlin story of Rosalie’s illness. Will gobbled up every word; Adrienne sat in astounded silence. She could not believe her father was emoting like this with a virtual stranger.
Dr. Don kept slapping Will on the back. “Professor at twenty-nine… really going places.” Later, to Adrienne, he said, “Quiet guy, but he’s got a strong handshake and a nice smile. And he is solely responsible for getting you out of this place before your thirtieth birthday.”
“Funny, Dad.”
“I give him credit. A professor at twenty-nine!”
“Don’t get attached,” Adrienne said.
“Why not?”
“I’m breaking up with him tomorrow.”
“Oh, honey, no. Not because of me? If I said I hated him, would you stay together? I hated him.”
Adrienne called Will the next day to tell him it was over, and she could hear the anguish in his voice reverberating through his near-empty apartment. “I thought after last night that our relationship was heading in a new direction,” he said. “I feel like I know you so much better now.”
“I’m sorry?” Adrienne said.
Ten minutes after she hung up, Adrienne called him back. She wanted his cousin’s phone number.
“Why?” he said.
“Because,” she said. “I want to work with her.”
Once Adrienne crossed the bridge into Palm Beach and was escorted through the gates of Mar-a-Lago, her future became clear. There was a world filled with beautiful places and she wanted to live in them all.
On the twenty-eighth of June there were one hundred and ninety covers on the book, and lobster salad sandwiches for family meal. It was seventy-seven degrees in the dining room at the start of first seating, which was abnormally hot, but Thatcher pointed out that everyone would drink more. Adrienne wore the silk outfit in bottle green that matched her eyes or so she convinced herself in the bathroom while she was brushing her teeth. When she came out to the podium, Thatcher said, “I’m sitting down at table twenty to eat at first seating.”
“What?” Adrienne said, in a voice that gave away too much. Dating only a few weeks and already her interest and fear were showing. Her mind scanned possible reasons why Thatcher would eat during first service at the most visible table in the room, instead of later with Fiona. Adrienne decided it must be Harry Henderson, the Realtor, who had been calling a lot lately with people who were interested in buying the property. Harry, she was pretty sure, was on the books tonight.
“Father Ott,” Thatcher said. “The priest. And here he is now. So you’re going to have to cover.”
“Fine,” Adrienne said.
“Are you Catholic?” Thatcher asked. It seemed like an oddly personal question to be asking fifteen seconds before work started, but among the things they’d agreed upon was that they were going to get to know each other slowly, bit by bit. Adrienne had told Thatcher the story about Will Kovak and he understood. They weren’t going to stay up all night confiding their innermost secrets then wake up and claim they were soul mates.
“Lapsed,” Adrienne said. Had they been alone in the dark, though, she might have added that the last time she set foot in a Catholic church was on the afternoon of her mother’s funeral. As she followed the casket out of Our Lady of Assumption she crossed herself with holy water and left the Catholics behind. It was Rosalie who had been Catholic-and when Rosalie died, so, in some sense for Adrienne, did God. Dr. Don was a Protestant and whenever he and Adrienne moved to a new place they shopped around for a church-sometimes Presbyterian, sometimes Methodist-it hardly mattered to Adrienne’s father as long as they had a place to go on Christmas and Easter. Dr. Don donated twenty hours of free checkups to needy kids and senior citizens in the congregation per year. It was nice, but somehow to Adrienne it never felt like religion. That, maybe, was how the Protestants preferred it.
“Hello, Thatcher Smith!” Father Ott was the tallest priest Adrienne had ever seen-six foot six with a deep, resonant voice and hair the bright silver of a dental filling. He wore khaki pants and a navy blazer. A pair of blue-lensed, titanium-framed sunglasses hung around his neck. Never in eighty-two years would Adrienne have pegged him as a priest; he looked like one of Grayson Parrish’s golf partners. Thatcher and Father Ott embraced and Adrienne smiled down at the podium.
“Father Ott, please meet my assistant manager, Adrienne Dealey,” Thatcher said.
Adrienne was overcome with shyness and guilt-she could feel the words “lapsed Catholic” emblazoned on her forehead.
“It’s lovely to meet you,” she said, offering her hand.
Father Ott smiled. “Likewise, likewise. Adrienne, you say? Like Adrienne Rich?”
“The poet,” Adrienne said.
Thatcher raised his pale eyebrows. “You’re named after a poet?”
“Not after,” she said. “Just like.”
Father Ott rubbed his hands together. “I’m starving,” he said. “But I promised Fiona I would bless the kitchen before the holiday. Shall we get business out of the way?”