Elin Hilderbrand - A Summer Affair  

Copyright 2008 by Elin Hilderbrand

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group USA

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com

First eBook Edition: July 2008

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons,living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

ISBN: 978-0-316-03267-4

ALSO BY ELIN HILDERBRAND

The Beach Club

Nantucket Nights

Summer People

The Blue Bistro

The Love Season

Barefoot

For the brightest star in my sky.

Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind.The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.

Henry James

The Invisible Thread That Binds Her To Him

March 2003

T he guilt was like a clump of tar in her hair, warm and sticky, impossible to remove. The more she fingered it, the worse things got. Tar gummed her hands; she tried water but it formed a slick, milky film. She needed scissors, turpentine.

The tar had been real, back when Claire was four or five, back when she and her parents lived in the first house in Wildwood Crest, a shoe box that Claire didnt remember living in, but that her mother was fond of pointing out when they drove through that part of town. Claire had been playing at the edge of the road, which was newly paved; she had been unsupervised (things had been different then with child raising), and when she came inside with the tar weighing down one side of her head, an ooey, gooey, licorice mess, her mother had said with bald matter-of-factness, It will never come out.

Just like the guilt!

On that morning in March, the phone rang early. Claire was exhausted and parched, and the kids were everywhere. Shea had been the baby then, and she was eating the scrambled eggs that had fallen from J.D.s and Ottilies plates to the floor. Claire scooped the baby up and grabbed the phone. Siobhan, of course. No one else would call before eight on a Sunday except for Siobhan, who was Claires best friend and sister-in-law, the wife of Jasons brother, Carter. Siobhan was Claires soul mate, her darling, her defender, her reality checkand, the night before, her partner in crime. They had been out on the town together, drinking, which happened so rarely that it qualified as a big deal. Siobhan would be calling to talk about it, remember it, relive it, parse it, deconstruct it, moment by moment. A lot had happened.

Have you heard? Siobhan said.

Heard what?

Oh, God, Siobhan said. Sit down.

Claire carried the baby into the front sitting room, which was never used. It was, however, the perfect place to accept bad news. What is it? she said. In their bedroom, Jason was sawing logs; she could hear him through the wall. It was a strictly enforced rule that he be allowed to sleep in on Sunday. Day of rest and all that. Would she have to wake him?

Fidelma called, from the police station, Siobhan said. There was an accident. Daphne Dixon hit a deer and flipped her car. They flew her to Boston.

Is she... ? Claire didnt know how to ask.

Alive? Yes. But just barely, I think.

Messy, gooey, insoluble. It will never come out.

She was drunk, Claire said.

Smashed, Siobhan said.

There had been seven women: Claire, Siobhan, Julie Jackson, Delaney Kitt, Amie Trimble, Phoebe Caldwell, and Daphne Dixon. One of these things is not like the other. Daphne was a summer residentwhich is to say, very wealthywho had recently decided to move to Nantucket year-round. Claire knew her slightly. They had met at a pool party, and Daphne and her husband had taken an interest in Claires glassblowing. They might want to commission a piece somedaywho knew? Claire liked Daphne. Or she was flattered that Daphne seemed to like her. She had bumped into Daphne at the dry cleaners (Daphne picking up what looked to be fifty cashmere sweaters). Claire had said, Come out with us on Saturday night!

They went to the spacious walnut bar at the Brant Point Grill, where there was live cabaret music. Daphne had been wearing a diaphanous top and a red silk scarf around her neck. It was clear from the beginning of the night that Daphne was letting loose, she was relaxing with the local crowd, she was allowing herself to go a little crazy. This wasnt like the buttoned-up scene in Boston, she said boozily in Claires ear.

There had been a lot of drinking: countless glasses of chardonnay and a few rosy cosmopolitans for the other womenand margaritas, no salt, for Daphne. At the end of the evening, Claire went to the bar to order herself a Diet Coke before the room began to spin, and Daphne said, And a margarita, no salt, for me, please, Claire.

One Diet Coke, one margarita, no salt, please, Claire told the bartender.

Now, in the sitting room that no one ever used, Claire picked stray yellow flecks of dried egg out of the babys duck-fuzz hair, her mind racing. Daphne had already had a lot to drink when Claire bought her the margarita. How many drinks had she had, exactly? Claire hadnt been keeping track. Was one more the difference? Claire had wanted Daphne to be happy; she had wanted Daphne to have fun. Claire was the one who invited her along. Daphne had already bought a round of drinks, several rounds; it seemed, in retrospect, that Daphne had been pulling out money all night, leaving lavish tips for the bartender, throwing sixty dollars into the fishbowl on top of the piano for the cabaret singer. Claire had been relieved to reciprocate, to order Daphne a margarita, no salt, and pay for it.

Smashed, Siobhan said.

The margarita wasnt the problem; the margarita itself hadnt done any damage. The problem was that when the night ended, when the bar closed and the seven mothers spilled out onto Easton Street, Daphne had climbed into her car, a Lincoln Navigator. Claire and Siobhan and Julie Jackson got into a cab, and they had encouraged Daphne to join them in the cab. Come on, Daphne, theres plenty of room! Let us take you home! In Claires mind, the details were smudged; what she remembered was that they had encouraged Daphne to get into the cab, but they had not demanded it. They had not said, You shouldnt be driving, or Were not willing to let you get behind the wheel of a car, though that was what they should have said. The woman had consumed any number of margaritas and then strolled across the street and into the darkness, jangling her keys, her red scarf trailing elegantly down her back. Claire had been too intimidated to stop her. Claire had thought, She is rich enough to know what she is doing.

Claire sat by the phone, waiting for Siobhan to call back with details from Fidelma, her Irish connection at the police station, who was getting information from her cousin Niamh, who worked as an intensive care nurse at Massachusetts General: Daphnes going into surgery. Its touch and go. They dont know what theyre going to find. Daphne was going sixty miles an hour down the ridged dirt road that led to her house. Sixty miles an hourthe car must have been rocking like a washing machine. And then the deer, from out of nowhere. She cut the deer in half; the car flipped onto its side. No one saw or heard the accidentthe road was lined with summer homes and it was the middle of March. No one was around. Daphne was pinned in the car, unconscious. The person who found her, finally, was her husband, Lock Dixon. After calling her cell phone forty times and getting no answer, he left their ten-year-old daughter, Heather, asleep in the house and set out to find his wife. She was two hundred yards shy of the driveway.