Page 39 of Saltwater Secrets
“Tzatziki?” Hilary asked, a smile in her voice.
“The very one,” Aria said. After a pause, she said, “Do you need any help getting out of there today? I can swing over now.”
“No. The guys are about to wrap up, and I’m going to head out with them.” Hilary bit her lower lip. “I gave Renée the photo album, by the way.”
“Oh. Wow. She's back, huh? How did that go?”
“Weirdly. But we didn’t have much time to talk about the pictures before her boyfriend picked her up,” Hilary said. “It’s the same guy as before we met her. The one she was going through the breakup with. Apparently, they’ve been having an on-again, off-again thing for years. Jefferson Everett? Have you heard that name?”
“No,” Aria admitted. “Maybe Logan has?”
There was a moment of silence. Aria’s and Hilary’s thoughts were concentrated but without real direction. What they’d discovered about Dorothy and Renée could fill just a single page in a book: something had happened to Rachel, something they couldn’t figure out no matter how much they researched; Dorothy had probably been having an affair with Philip Wagner’s ex-business partner William; Renée hated her mother and had refused to see her after her father’s death. Nothing beyond that was clear.
Hilary had thought that digging through both this estate and the Greenwich Village brownstone would reveal decades of secrets. But she’d been wrong.
Still, it made her heart ache to think that Renée’s life would go on as it had before. She’d spend it with that monsterJefferson. She’d inherit her mother’s money and probably share it with him. She’d never know how great Dorothy was, or how great Dorothy had ultimately become in the years she’d spent here, in her so-called self-made prison. Renée would never know how much Dorothy loved her.
As a mother, Hilary knew that Dorothy’s love for Renée was enormous—if misunderstood.
Not wanting to waste another moment without Aria, Hilary packed up her things and headed for the Coleman House for the classic family Fourth of July party. It was Aria’s first time back in the city in a couple of weeks, and it felt remarkable that she was already bringing a guy home. But Hilary couldn’t wait to meet him.
Hilary found Aria and Logan on the back porch of her parents’ place, sipping iced tea and regaling Estelle and Roland with the hilarious story of how they’d met. Logan was handsome and had a hand balanced gently on Aria’s knee. He never spoke over her and looked at her with a glow in his eyes that made Hilary think of Marc, when she’d first met him.
“But then she gave me one of William France’s shirts,” Logan told the story, “and I ran off to my meeting.”
“Wait just a second.” Roland’s face was stricken. He glanced at Estelle, mystified.
Hilary’s heart sank. Logan looked as though he’d just stepped in something. He turned his head to Aria, who shook hers, whispering, “Don’t worry about it.”
But Logan had set off an alarm in Roland’s head.
“Why would William France’s shirt be in the Wagners’ brownstone?” Roland asked, pointing his question at Estelle. “Do you think…”
Estelle waved her hand, trying to brush it aside. “Let’s not bother the kids with old gossip, Roland. If that happened, it happened forty years ago!”
“But that brownstone,” Roland continued, unable to drop it. “It was mostly Philip’s, wasn’t it? I mean, famously, that was where he had all his…” Here, he whispered it, “Affairs?”
“Which means that William probably came over, lent Philip his shirt, and forgot about it,” Estelle said simply.
“Estelle, you’re a storyteller!” Roland cried. “Can’t you see the mystery here?”
And Hilary knew that her mother could see the mystery, that she understood it in her bones. It was clear that Dorothy and William France had been in love, that within the rooms of that beautiful brownstone, they’d shared something spectacular. But what did old love matter in the modern age? What did any of it change?
Hilary and Aria had discussed reaching out to William’s children. They were all still alive, two in New York and one in California, in their late fifties and early sixties. They had social media presences, none of which advertised anything about their father and what had happened to him. Aria had pointed out that if they reached out to them, they might be putting even more people through more pain than necessary. Was that moral or right?
Eventually, Estelle convinced Roland to speak of something else: the grill, which needed to be prepped if they were going to have their Fourth of July barbecue. When Roland disappeared to find the charcoal, Logan turned to Hilary and Aria and winced. “I’m sorry! I really caused a scene there.” He palmed the back of his neck.
Aria squeezed Logan’s hand. “Don’t worry about it.”
“We’re sort of backing away from all that,” Hilary confessed.
Logan nodded. “It’s the right thing, probably.”
Hilary steadied her smile and turned her attention fully on Logan. “Logan! It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Her tone was all citrus and joy.
Logan got up to give her a hug. “It’s a pleasure to be here,” he said, echoing her.
Aria looked smitten. For a few minutes, they recounted the story of their trip home, the strange guy who’d worked at the gas station who’d tried to sell them five Mountain Dews for the price of three. They were already finishing one another’s sentences.
