Page 20 of Saltwater Secrets
As ever filled with goodwill, Estelle suggested that the four of them go out for sandwiches and a round of golf, a sport that Hilary was not entirely terrible at. There was nothing to do but wait around for Dorothy’s lawyer to contact her, so Hilary andSam agreed. It would be a worthy distraction, a way to spend the surprisingly beautiful afternoon outdoors.
Privately, Hilary wanted to pester her father for more details about Philip Wagner, Dorothy’s mysterious life, and the circumstances surrounding Philip’s death.
She got the chance halfway through the eighteen-hole course, when she slid into the golf cart alongside Roland as Estelle and Sam finished their putting. Sam wasn’t very good, a fact that she liked to laugh about and one that, she knew, contributed to Sam’s belief that she was never fully a Coleman. Estelle wasn’t very good either, but she liked to say,I’m an artist, remember? They had all the time in the world and nobody behind them to push them along.
It was a gorgeous, seventy-three-degree day.
“Do you think Dorothy Wagner had anything to do with Philip Wagner’s death?” Hilary asked her father before she got too frightened.
Roland let out an ironic laugh. “Wow. I haven’t heard anything like that in ages. Did your mother tell you that?”
“She said there were whispers,” Hilary said.
Roland adjusted his hands on the steering wheel of the golf cart, watching as Estelle bent down to attempt another putt. She missed it again.
“I’ve never been keen on that story,” Roland said. “Dorothy really loved Philip despite everything. You know, he wasn’t always very kind to her. He wasn’t always a family man.”
Hilary hadn’t had a chance to look up Philip’s death online and decided to pester her father about it, to see how the stories lined up later. “How do people say he died?”
Roland hesitated and touched the back of his neck. “Well, what’s your guess?”
“How should I know?”
“We’re surrounded by one of the most dangerous things of all,” Roland pointed out, his eyes widening.
“Okay. He drowned, I guess?” Hilary suggested.
“Yes. It was a sailing accident,” Roland said. “A beautiful summer day in Nantucket. Late nineties. Dorothy was with him when they left, and she had to pilot the boat back to shore by herself. They pulled his body out of the Sound later that week. It was a tragedy, and Dorothy disappeared sometime after the funeral. I think she wanted to get away from the press.”
“Was that when she locked herself in her estate?” Hilary said, trying to put the pieces together.
“Maybe,” Roland said. “That sounds right, doesn’t it? She was obviously broken up with grief. And so many people said she’d shoved him in the Sound for having yet another affair.”
But something about it rang false to Hilary. If she were to trust what so many had told her, Dorothy had been locked away for twenty to twenty-five years and no longer. If Philip had died in the nineties, that would have left a gap of time that wasn’t fully accounted for in Dorothy’s story.
“Do you know anything about Rachel or Renée?” She asked her father about Dorothy's daughters. “She never mentioned them.”
Roland shook his head. “I can’t recall ever meeting either of them. Philip and Dorothy didn’t mention them either. It was strange, given the fact that all your mother and I could ever talk about was our children. But I think a part of Philip never really wanted to be that ‘family man,’ you know. So he pretended to be someone else as long as he could.”
Suddenly, Estelle managed to get the little white ball into the hole on the green. Sam erupted with cheers, and Hilary and Roland got out of the golf cart to hug Estelle.
“Don’t tease me!” Estelle said with a big grin.
“We would never, Mom.” Hilary closed her eyes as she hugged her mother, taking in the soft lavender smell of her hair.
The Wagners’ broken family made her all the more grateful for her own. Very recently, they’d been split, arguing, unable to see one another, let alone look one another in the eye. It was a tragedy that Dorothy’s family had never been able to forgive, before it was too late.
Chapter Ten
When the woman with the dark hair and sensual dark lips stormed into the brownstone, demanding what on earth Aria was doing in her mother’s house, Aria had a minor blackout. Shock was too small a word for what this was. When she came to, she could feel Logan’s eyes on her and the rage emanating from the woman’s voice. Aria fell against the foyer wall and pressed her palms against the cool plaster.
Logan swept past her, eyeing her nervously. Aria knew what this looked like. To Logan, it was as though she’d broken into Dorothy’s brownstone, pretended to have a gig she didn’t have, and stolen a shirt for him. It was almost too perfect, too hilarious, save for the fact that it was single-handedly ruining the first romantic feelings she’d had since Thaddeus left.
That, and she was worried the woman would call the cops.
“Well, that’s my cue. I’m late anyway.” Logan threw up his hands as he moved through the foyer. His eyes danced back to Aria momentarily, searching her face for understanding. But he couldn’t dally, not for the important producers who had his life in their hands.
“Good luck!” Aria called out to him, privately cursing herself for not getting his number when she had the chance.
