Page 19 of Saltwater Secrets
“Many years too late,” Sam said.
“I see what you mean,” Estelle offered finally, tracing a line down the hem of her dress. “We Colemans have our own skeletons in the closet. Maybe it’s better not to throw stones?”
“We’re not throwing stones,” Hilary said. “I just want to understand Dorothy better. To me, she was a magical and vivacious woman.”
Hilary didn’t know how to ask why Dorothy locked herself away for so long. What happened to her?
“There were children,” Estelle said after a dramatic pause. “Two, I think. Girls. They were born when Dorothy was a littlebit older. She must have been almost thirty when she had Renée. The other one came a little bit later. Rachel.”
Hilary was surprised she’d never heard about Dorothy’s children before. “She didn’t talk about them.” She blinked. “And as far as I can remember, there aren’t any photographs hanging anywhere. There’s no proof that she has anyone.”
“And no visitors?” Sam asked.
Hilary shook her head. “It was really like the woman was all alone. When Aria and I went over, I felt like we were the daughter and granddaughter she’d never had. It was like she craved that kind of relationship. I thought that was why she wanted to save Aria, in a sense. Like she saw Aria’s heartbreak and wanted to fix it.”
“She spent much of her life heartbroken,” Estelle confirmed. “Probably she saw in Aria the same sorrow she carried for so many years of her marriage to Philip.”
“She must have felt like she wasted so much of her life,” Sam breathed.
Hilary thought Sam was maybe projecting. After all, Sam had married a heinous man who’d treated her terribly, so much so that she and her daughters no longer had any connection with him.
“But why lock yourself away like that after his death, if you felt like you’d wasted your life with him?” Hilary asked.
“Did you ever have Philip over to the house?” Sam asked their mother.
Estelle nodded. “Your father was pretty amazed by him, I regret to say. Although back then, everyone was, including myself. He was a celebrity, a moneyed celebrity, and he had a real way about him, always with a cigar in his mouth, always with that thick head of hair. He often wasn’t in Nantucket, frequently running off to Manhattan to be with his actressgirlfriends and so on. We didn’t talk about what went on in the city. It felt like a lifetime away, especially back then.
“I think he came over to the house four or five times with Dorothy on his arm. It was the eighties. I can picture what we were all wearing, and it wasn’t pretty.” Estelle cackled. “You kids were probably upstairs with a babysitter, none the wiser about what was going on down here. Dorothy was always with me and the other wives, drinking wine on the porch. I remember that she always gushed about Philip as though he were the greatest genius in the world. I wanted to ask her,Why do you put up with it? Why do you let yourself love him so much?But it didn’t feel appropriate. Besides, who was I to ask a wife why she still loved her husband? It wasn’t like I wanted to break up anyone’s marriage.”
Hilary’s heart sank. She so wished she could go back in time and take Dorothy’s hand and tell her it was okay to want something more than your cheating husband, it was okay to want something more for yourself.
“Did their daughters ever come over?” Sam asked.
Estelle shook her head. “Not that I can remember. Probably by then, they were in boarding school. I seem to remember Dorothy not wanting them to leave the island but saying that Philip had insisted on it, insisted on them joining whatever world that boarding school offered rather than ‘lazing around in Nantucket.’ If I remember correctly, he’d gotten a boarding school education that had set him up perfectly for his undergraduate and later, his graduate career at Yale, or Harvard, or one of those. I can’t recall, and it doesn’t matter to me. Those Ivy Leagues are all the same.”
Sam’s voice wavered. “What were they like when they were together? Like at your parties, when the wives joined the husbands for dinner?”
Estelle was quiet for a moment. “You know, he put on a brilliant act. He really seemed like he loved her, somehow. I didn’t know what to make of it.”
Overhead, a seagull swooped and cawed. Hilary flinched and looked up at it, surprised to be back in the year 2025 and not decades before, waiting for the Wagners to come over.
“When did he die?” Hilary asked suddenly.
Estelle’s face grew shadowed. “That topic has been widely discussed. He died here in Nantucket, in fact. But nobody really understands how.”
Sam raised her eyebrows. “You don’t think that Dorothy had anything to do with it, do you?” She chuckled, as though that was a wild thing to say.
But Estelle’s color drained from her face. “There were whispers.”
Hilary was stricken, watching her mother’s face, waiting for her to adjust what she’d just said, to say that it was a joke. But Estelle sipped her tea and remained quiet.
Dorothy? A murderer? It was impossible. She’d been a little old lady with a big heart, who’d wanted so desperately to pick Aria up and dust her off and send her back into the world.
“I can’t wrap my mind around that,” Hilary said finally, trying to laugh. She couldn’t.
Estelle raised her shoulders. “People are capable of all kinds of things.”
At that moment, Roland interrupted their pow-wow with an admittance and a big smile. He was starving! Was there anything to eat? Hilary wondered why her dad couldn’t make his own lunch. Why did he need her mother?
