Page 9 of Saltwater Secrets
When eight p.m. hit, Dorothy invited them to stay for dinner. Hilary looked so surprised that Aria understood that this wasn’t something she’d expected.
“We’d love to,” Hilary said, although all Aria wanted in the world after this trying day was to go home and crawl under the covers and cry.
She imagined that Thaddeus was already up in the sky, zipping to his future. She imagined he was drinking wine and watching a movie on the back of someone else’s chair. She imagined that whoever was sitting next to him was painfully attractive and good at stuff.
Every person he met, in the future, was someone he hadn’t fought with recently in their home in Nantucket, which made them better than she was.
So immersed in her thoughts, Aria didn’t realize that Dorothy was talking to her. She cleared her throat and forced her eyes to the woman. “I’m sorry?”
“I asked if you’d like a cocktail, dear,” Dorothy said with a soft smile.
“Oh. That would be nice,” Aria said, although she was worried that a cocktail might make her sob and sob.
Dorothy continued to stare at her as though she were trying to figure something out. And then she said it. “You’ve lost something recently, haven’t you, honey?”
Aria was startled. She glanced at her mother, unsure of what to say.
And then she thought,whatever.
“My boyfriend and I broke up,” she said, delivering her heart on a platter to Mrs. Wagner. “He left Nantucket and moved to London for four months. I don’t really know what to do with myself.” She sniffed. “But this project will be incredible. I can’t wait to dive in.”
Dorothy’s eyes sparkled with blue. “Every ending is a beginning,” she said. “I know it’s hard to believe that in the moment.”
Aria let out an ironic laugh, although she didn’t want to make Dorothy Wagner angry or annoyed. Hilary put on a big smile, perhaps hoping to lessen Aria’s angst.
But Dorothy let out a laugh to match Aria’s, and she said, “Listen to me? I’m not a woman of wisdom. I got old, yes, but I don’t know anything better than you, Aria. Now, let’s get you that cocktail and put on some music. If you want to talk badly about your ex-boyfriend, I have a great ear for gossip. Let ’er rip!”
Chapter Five
After the soul-affirming evening with Dorothy, Marc was waiting up for Aria and Hilary back at the house, wearing a loose black T-shirt and a pair of pajama pants and watching a television show. He popped up to kiss Hilary and smile at Aria, offering them bowls of pistachio-flavored ice cream, a brand he’d bought special on his way home from dinner with a guy friend. Aria, who’d grown more and more reticent on the drive home, declined and went upstairs, closing her bedroom door behind her. Hilary’s heart shook with sorrow.
“More for us then,” Marc said sadly. “I was hoping ice cream might cheer her up.”
“I don’t know if anything will,” Hilary said, kissing the back of his shoulder. “But thanks for trying.” She took a breath. “You’re a good dad.”
It was something she said often these days, a reminder that their parenting days weren’t exactly over even though Aria was twenty-three years old.
Hilary watched as Marc spooned two bowls of ice cream and recounted what Dorothy Wagner had said, in loose terms. She was starting to get a sense of what Dorothy wanted her newhome to look like, and was beginning to understand the strategy that such a big job required.
“But it’s remarkable,” she said to Marc, sliding a spoon over the first mound of ice cream. “She doesn’t really talk like she’s been hiding herself away. She’s with it in almost every sense. Like, she’s been watching everything about the world from the privacy of her home. She probably knows more about politics and the social sphere than I do. But she’s been learning everything from that house.”
“Do you think she’ll tell you why she stopped going out in public?” Marc asked, his own spoon frozen above his dessert.
“Maybe.” Hilary’s heart pounded with a mix of excitement and fear. “You know how these jobs always go. I always get too close to the people behind them. They always tell me things.” Sometimes it felt like too much, like Hilary had to carry tremendous secrets because her clients relied on her.
Marc touched her shoulder lovingly. “It’s the reason you’re so good at what you do. You dig into the heart of what your clients really want, and you always break your own heart when you have to leave them.”
“But maybe this time I won’t have to leave Dorothy,” Hilary suggested, brightening. “Not really. She lives down the road. I mean, maybe she’d agree to having my mother over? Perhaps we can pull her out of her shell a little bit?” Hilary imagined a year from now, Dorothy Wagner at the Coleman House, those twenty-five years of solitude just a memory.
Maybe she could save her.
Marc kissed her forehead. “Don’t rush into anything. Maybe Dorothy’s more nervous about this than she’s letting on.”
Hilary knew that Marc was right. As she ate the ice cream slowly, she asked him about his day, wondering how this new formation of living on the East Coast but working on the Westwas shaking out for Marc. It was then that his face shifted, offering shades of gray.
“I might have to go out to San Francisco for a week or so,” he said, groaning. “There’s an issue with Calvin. I need to get in a room with him. Figure out what’s really wrong.”
As of several months ago after the retirement of the previous CEO, Calvin had been named the brand-new CEO, set to stage the best and brightest path for the company. Marc was the CFO. Because Calvin’s vision for the future of the company didn’t align with the previous CEO’s, Marc was struggling, trying to dodge and weave to make Calvin happy.
