Page 38 of Saltwater Secrets
“You must know Jefferson Everett,” Renée said after a dramatic pause.
Hilary had to admit that the name rang a bell. She filled her mouth with the tangy lemonade and squinted at Renée. “I think so?”
“He’s the CEO of Starlight, which you probably know was named by Forbes as one of the top ten apps of the 2020s,” Renée informed her. Hilary had never heard of any such app because she liked to spend as much time off her phone as she could.
Renée continued. “He’s been my partner for years. Off and on, of course. When Mom died…” She glanced down at her nails.“Well, that was when we went through another rough patch. I regret that you and your daughter had to see me like that. You know, my mother never liked Jefferson, and when I heard the news about her passing…” Renée stopped again, as though she couldn’t bear her own thoughts.
“Dorothy met Jefferson?” Hilary asked, surprised.
“She had, in the past,” Renée said. “Before we ever got together. Before I last saw Mom. He’s a bit older than me and ran in some of the same circles with my parents. Jefferson and I got together in the mid-2000s. After the tabloids posted some photos of us on vacation in Tahiti, Mom didn’t waste any time. She wrote to me immediately, asking me to think twice about dating a man like Jefferson. She wrote that he was so much like my father, and she always wanted someone better for me. It made me understand what she was up to in her self-created prison. She was here, reading everything she could find about every person she’d ever met, letting her life go by and driving herself crazy. I didn’t write her back.”
Hilary’s heart burned with intrigue. Why had Dorothy hated Jefferson so much? It didn’t feel correct that she’d thought that he was simply “too much like Philip Wagner.”
Hilary considered the wreckage Renée had been back in Greenwich, limping through the brownstone, weeping about her mother and her failed relationship.
Hilary pressed her lips together.
“What?” Renée demanded, leaning forward in her chair. “You want to say something. Tell me.”
Why does Renée care so much about what I think?Hilary wondered, and then she knew. It was because Hilary had been the last person to see Dorothy Wagner alive. It meant she was a sort of stand-in mother, as strange as that sounded. She was much younger than Renée, after all. (But she often felt lifetimes more mature.)
She had to choose her words delicately.
“I just can’t help but think that your mother wanted the best for you,” Hilary said, her eyes to the ocean because she couldn’t bear to look directly at Renée. “I guess that’s why she wrote to you like that?”
Renée flared her nostrils. Here was her rage. “My mother never wanted the best for me. It was always about her and what she wanted.” She stood, puffing her chest like a chicken about to fight. “You have a romantic view of that old woman, but it’s all wrong. If you knew what happened! If you knew…”
“What happened to your sister?” Hilary asked quietly, then snapped her hand over her mouth. She couldn’t believe she’d asked that. She couldn’t believe she’d touched that nerve of all nerves. What if Renée took her off the project now? What if she destroyed her magnum opus before she’d fully finished it?
But the truth was, Hilary hadn’t been able to get images of those photographs out of her mind, glossy and sunshiny afternoons in Nantucket, Renée, Rachel, and Dorothy, all together.
The effect the question had on Renée was startling. Her face crumpled, and she stared into the lemonade in her glass. When she didn’t start screaming out of anger, Hilary stood and said, “Wait here, Renée. Please.” She hurried off the veranda and over to the little shed, where she’d been storing important items in big plastic totes. Inside the second tote she tried, she found the photo album. Since her discovery of it in the library, she’d scoured the photographs, searching for clues about what had happened and what had gone wrong. But the pictures were only joyful, with no hint at what came next.
Now, she decided, it was finally time to give the photo album back to its rightful owner: the only person still alive.
When Renée saw the photo album for the first time, she stood and remained stock-still, as though she was sure thealbum was a bomb about to go off. Hilary set it down on the coffee table beside her, saying, “I found this the other day. I wanted to call you and ask you about it.”
Renée tried to make her voice hard. “I suppose you looked at the photos.”
Hilary didn’t say she hadn’t. She continued to watch Renée’s face as Renée flipped through the first pages. It was clear that Renée had been through remarkable trauma. Would seeing the photos make it worse? What on earth had happened to her?
Renée’s breathing was ragged. After a few minutes, she closed the album softly and pressed it to her chest. But the moment she parted her lips, there was a harsh horn out front—a car announcing itself. She stood. “That’s Jefferson,” she said.
Hilary was intrigued. “Can I meet him?”
“Later,” Renée said. “He doesn’t like it when I make him wait.”
Hilary followed Renée off the veranda and around the side of the estate, past an old fountain that she hadn’t fully committed to keeping or tossing yet. In the driveway was a red Lamborghini that made Hilary think its driver’s ego was a tad overblown. The driver, a man in his late sixties, maybe, honked the horn again before Renée got in and bent his head to hiss something to her. Hilary’s heart lurched. It was clear he hadn’t seen Hilary and didn’t know he was being watched. It was clear, too, that he was accustomed to talking to Renée like this.
What had drawn Renée back into his universe? What had forced her to return to such a cruel man? Was it something that had been said at the Coleman family party?
Hilary watched until the Lamborghini was out of sight, her hands on her hips. She knew that Renée had been about to tell her something about her sister before they’d been interrupted. But what?
A moment later, her phone rang. It was Aria.
“Hey!” Hilary was sweating in the hot sun and escaped under an awning the construction guys had put up for their breaks. “How’s the trip?”
“We just got here!” Aria said. “Grandma says to get over here as soon as you can. She’s making your favorite dip.”
