“Did Gavin do that?” Olivia asked.
“Of course not.”
Olivia remembered the sounds coming from the bedroom in the middle of the night. Maybe they weren’t sounds of rapture. Maybe he beat up her daughter and fled in the morning. “Nell, what did he do?”
Nell dropped into a chair at the table, sighing. “It’s not a big deal.”
“What’s not a big deal?” Olivia could hear her heart pounding in her temples.
“He likes rough sex.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Nell said. “A lot of guys like that sort of thing.”
“Nell,” Olivia said, lowering her voice.
Nell looked away and her mouth dropped open. Olivia followed her glance and saw Jake standing at the opposite end of the table.
“Please go away,” Olivia said, trying to keep her voice even.
“I’d like to help if I can,” Jake said. Was he smiling? Olivia felt her stomach clench with anger.
“The table is set.” She glared at him until he walked away, heading around the side of the house.
“Mom,” Nell said quietly. “Drop it. Please.”
“I can’t drop it.”
“Guys think girls like that sort of thing,” Nell said.
“Do you?” Olivia asked.
“No.” Nell toyed with a bracelet on her wrist, some kind of woven band with brightly colored beads. “I mean, he was sexy. Do we have to talk about this?”
“No. Yes.” Olivia wanted to flee to the kitchen but she forced herself to stand there.
“He was sweet, too,” Nell said. “He was rough and then he was really gentle. I told him I liked him better when he was gentle.”
“Good,” Olivia said. She felt as if she were talking to a ten-year-old version of her daughter, not this sex kitten perched on a chair.
“I need a shower,” Olivia said. “And food. I’d also like it if your sister joined us this weekend.” She walked away, her body radiating anger. Was she angry at Gavin? No. She was furious at her daughter.
As she stepped into the kitchen she looked back. Nell’s face was lifted to the sun. One hand leisurely stroked the bruise on her wrist. Olivia watched for a moment, transfixed. Does my daughter choose pain? she thought as she closed the door.
“You are bride,” a voice said.
She spun around. Paolo stood next to the center island, holding a quiche in his mitted hands. He looked young and sweet and fresh from the oven.
“I am bride,” Olivia said, smiling.
“I am happy for you,” he told her.
“Thank you. Shall I take that to the table?”
“No, you are bride,” he said.
“I’m an old bride,” she told him. “I can do kitchen duty and get married all in the same weekend.”
“It is very good weekend. Wedding. Family. You are, how you say …”
“Lucky,” Olivia said. “Happy. Grateful. Yes. Thank you.”
“Why do you thank me?”
“For reminding me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Do you have a wife? A girlfriend?”
He shook his head. “Soon,” he said.
“I hope so,” she told him.
Emily walked into the kitchen, carrying bottles of wine. “Oh, that’s gorgeous, Paolo.” She took in a deep breath of quiche and then glanced at Olivia. “Go take your shower. Lunch will be served in ten minutes.”
Olivia saluted. “I’m lucky,” she said. “I’m lucky and happy and grateful.”
“And a little crazy,” Emily said. “Go. Now. Or we’ll eat without you.”
“Grazie,”
she whispered to Paolo on her way out of the kitchen.
Olivia heard the shower running when she walked into her room. She pulled off her bathing suit, grabbed a bathrobe from the chair and wrapped it around her. Holding her cellphone, she dropped onto the bed, suddenly exhausted.
She tapped onto Carly’s name. It went right to voice mail. She tossed the phone onto the pillow.
“Nap time?” Brody asked.
She lifted her head. He was standing in the middle of their room, a towel wrapped around his waist. Steam poured in from the open door of the bathroom. His hair was wet, his body still damp.
“Why do people have rough sex?” Olivia asked.
“Who has rough sex?”
“No one,” Olivia said. “I’m just curious.”
“I’m not really into that kind of thing,” Brody said gently, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Is it a control thing? One person has to have the power?”
“Is this the big conversation before we get married? This is when you bring out your whips and chains?”
“Are you scared?”
“Very.”
Olivia rolled toward him and put her hand on his bare back. “I’m worried about my girls. I don’t understand them. Nell comes prancing in with some brute. Who knows, maybe Carly’s out looking for sex right now.”
“Who cares if she is?” Brody said. “She’s an adult. She can do what she wants. Maybe she ran off with Gavin this morning.”
“What?” Olivia heard the screech in her voice. “What are you talking about?”
“Maybe she went for a hayride with the guy. This is our wedding weekend. Can we forget about your girls for one minute and think about us?”
Olivia stood up. Too many words jumbled in her brain. She spun around, opened the door, and walked out. She slammed the door behind her.
Jake stood in the hallway, a crooked smile on his face.
“Fuck you,” she said and she stormed past him.
N
ell’s cellphone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out.
Wesley Keller
. Carly’s boyfriend. She was surprised she had his number logged in her phone. Then she remembered that she had called Wes once, when she was planning a surprise for Carly. She’d arranged for an actor friend to show up at Carly’s office on her birthday. He sang a jazzy version of “Happy Birthday” while performing a striptease—Carly kicked him out before he had his pants off. She never even called Nell to thank her.
She calculated the time—two in the afternoon in France meant five in the morning, a Saturday morning, in California. What the hell?
She walked to one end of the pool and dropped into a lounge chair.
“Hello?”
“Nell, it’s Wes.”
“Yeah, I know. Early out there.”
“I’ve been trying to reach Carly. She’s not answering her phone.” He sounded alert and clear. Who are these people who can function at five in the morning?
“She disappeared. Poof. Gone.”
“What?”
Nell enjoyed his confusion. When she first met him, at a birthday party for her mother in San Francisco, he asked her what her goals were in life. To drink well, she said. To eat well. To have great sex. He watched her for the rest of the evening as if through the bars of a cage. Species from another planet. Don’t get too close.
“She took off by herself this morning,” she told Mr. Clean now. “Walk on the beach, that kind of thing.”
“Without her phone?” he asked.
“Maybe. That so weird?”
“She doesn’t go anywhere without her phone. It’s going right to voice mail. She never turns off her damn phone.”
“It probably died. Mine always dies.”
“Carly’s phone never dies,” he said impatiently.
“Right. She probably charges it all the time.” Nell laughed nervously. “Can’t help you, Wes. I’m not my sister’s keeper.”
“I thought you might—”
“You broke your leg,” Nell said, suddenly remembering.
“What?”
“Carly told me that you broke your leg. At dinner last night. It was one of the first things she told me.”
“I didn’t break my leg.”
“Skydiving.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Carly doesn’t lie.”
“I do not skydive.”
“So why would she say that?”
“Maybe she was trying to get your attention.”
Nell stood up and walked into the grove of trees at the edge of the meadow. The wind had picked up and the trees rustled above her. Hansel-and-Gretel land. Where was the witch? Where was the cottage with the cage and the oven?
“She thinks I don’t pay attention to her?” Nell asked, her voice quiet.
“Maybe you should talk to
her
about it,” Wes said.
Nell walked toward an opening in the trees and found a vegetable garden filled with a bounty of plants. Green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, kale, lettuces of every color. She reached for a cherry tomato and popped it into her mouth. The juices exploded on her tongue. Carly wanted her attention? I’d give her anything she wants, she thought.
“I talked to her yesterday,” Wes said, his voice soft in her ear. “It was the middle of the night there.”
“Where was she?”
“In her hotel room. Listening to you have sex with some guy.”
“Oh. Awkward, huh.”
“She was in a strange mood,” Wes told her.
“How so?”
“She was mad at me for not coming.”
“That doesn’t sound so strange.”
“She was sad. Lonely.”
Nell imagined her little sister at a cocktail party in Silicon Valley, hordes of people gathered around her, all of them wanting to get close to the whiz kid. How could Carly be lonely?
“She seemed okay at dinner.”
“Yeah, well, she’s good at hiding that sort of thing,” Wes said.
Nell felt something well up in her chest and she pressed her hand there, willing it to subside.
A couple of birds flew from the branches ahead, creating a flurry of noise and motion. Something dropped in front of her—a bird’s egg!
She stared at it, broken at her feet. It was vivid blue, impossibly small. Something oozed from the side of the broken shell.
“Give me your mother’s number,” Wes said. “I’ll call her.”
“No,” Nell said, her voice suddenly loud. “I’ll take care of this. My mother is crazed. Don’t call her.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Really, Wes,” Nell said, trying to make her voice calm and contained. “I’ll tell Carly to call you as soon as she gets back.”
“Tell her—” Wes started. Then he went silent. Nell shivered as the sun moved behind a cloud.
“Listen,” she said. “I’m losing service. I’m in the woods near the inn and I can’t hear you very well.” It wasn’t true. She felt some kind of panic coming on. She needed to do something and she didn’t have any idea what that would be.
“I can hear you just fine,” Wes said.
“What? I can’t hear you. Listen. I’ll keep you posted. I’m sure she’ll be back soon. Don’t worry. And I’m glad you didn’t break your leg.”
She hung up before he could say anything else.
She sat on the ground, resting her back against a tree.
What happened to Little Red Riding Hood when she walked through the woods? Nell tried to recall the story. Little Red saw a wolf dressed up as her grandma. He tried to eat her.
She closed her eyes and listened to the roar of the wind in the trees.
Later, Nell set jugs of water on the outdoor table. Emily had already carried out platters of cheese and salami and olives. There was a tomato and mozzarella salad and a spinach quiche, both artfully presented on beautiful Provençal plates.
“I hear we’ve got a mistral headed our way,” Emily said, emerging from the kitchen with a large ceramic bowl in her hands. She placed sautéed haricots verts, sprinkled with salt and garlic, in the center of the table. Jake stood at one end, opening bottles of rosé.
“What’s that?” Nell asked.
“That’s our regional windstorm. They say it brings out the crazy in everyone.”
“Just what we need,” Nell said.
“What happens if it rains tomorrow?” Jake asked. “On the wedding day.”
“Let’s not talk about it,” Olivia said, walking toward them with a basket of bread.
“The rain or the wedding?” Jake asked, raising an eyebrow.
Olivia slammed the breadbasket onto the table.
“Can I pour you a glass of wine?” he offered into the silence.
“I’d love one,” Nell said, but he poured Olivia a glass. Olivia took it and turned her back on all of them.
“Can I have some wine?” Nell asked, feeling like the invisible child. Carly used to complain about Olivia when they were teenagers. Don’t you hate it? she’d say after a dinner party when the sisters would lie in their twin beds. “Everyone loves her,” Nell would say, feeling pride about her mother’s magnetic power. “She takes up all the space in the room,” Carly would snipe.
Nell liked living far away from her sister and her start-up in Silicon Valley, her mother and her theater company in San Francisco, her father and his very-big-deal law firm. Nell strived for her own small life. Unlike many of the struggling actors she knew, she didn’t dream of stardom. She dreamt of small roles in films. Now she dreamt of getting a gig teaching yoga at Om Studios in Santa Monica. She couldn’t fail if she kept her ambition pint-sized.
Jake filled her wineglass. When she looked up at him he winked.
She grimaced. Leave me alone, old man.
She walked away from all of them, heading back toward the house, wine in hand. When she pushed open the kitchen door, she saw Paolo at the center island, whipping something in a large white bowl.
“Dessert?” she asked.
“Sì,”
he said. He looked at her and then looked out the windows toward the arbor. “Your sister. She is, how you say …” His brow furrowed in concentration.
“Flew the coop,” Nell said. “Runaway child.”
He looked confused.
“You know what I’m going to do?” she asked, and he shook
his head. She needed to learn to speak more slowly. She needed to learn new languages. “I’m going to go find her.”
His eyes brightened.
“Good idea, huh,” she said. “What’s a wedding party without a sister or two?”
He put the bowl down on the counter. “You are different sister.”
“I am different sister. You got that right, my friend.”
She walked over to him. He looked a little scared. She reached her finger into the bowl and dipped it into a mound of whipped chocolate. Then she slipped her finger into her mouth.
“Save me some,” she said. “I’ll be dreaming about this chocolate all day.”
He nodded though she was sure he had no idea what she was saying.
She dipped her finger into the bowl again. This time she used the chocolate to write a message on the center island.
A la plage!