Beautiful Day (31 page)

“She went for a bike ride,” Margot said. “And I need to find her. Roger has a pressing
question.”

All true. She congratulated herself.

“She hasn’t been here,” Ryan said.

Chance pulled aside one of the truly horrendous brocade drapes and said, “Thank God
my mother is gone.”

Now Ann Graham looked worried. “When was the last time you saw Jenna?”

“A little while ago,” Margot said. She didn’t want to disclose anything more. “I should
go.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Stuart asked.

Margot regarded Stuart. He was pale and sick with love. If he came with her, this
would become the story of Margot and the soon-to-be-jilted groom as they hunted down
the runaway bride.

Margot said, “Come outside with me?”

Stuart followed Margot outside, and she could sense that Ann
Graham was antsy to join them. Margot and Stuart stood in the overgrown crabgrass
of the front yard. It was warm in the sun, and Margot worried momentarily about freckles,
then told herself to forget it.

“Jenna was really upset last night,” Margot said. “She called Roger and canceled the
wedding.”

Stuart dropped his head to his chest. “Fuck,” he whispered.

That was the first time Margot had ever heard the man swear. He was such a good guy.
“She’s upset about Crissy.”

Stuart held out a hand. “Stop,” he said. “I can’t even stand to hear her name.”

“You probably should have told her about the engagement,” Margot said.

“It wasn’t a big deal,” Stuart said. “It only lasted a month. As soon as Crissy booked
the Angus Barn for the engagement party, I broke up with her. And two weeks later,
I moved to New York. I was done with her—done done done.”

“It feels like a big deal to Jenna,” Margot said. “She’s… well, you know how she is.”

“Sensitive,” he said.

“Yes,” Margot said. “And in this case, she’s also jealous. She was raised differently
from the rest of us. You know, Kevin and Nick and I were always fighting for our parents’
attention. Always jockeying for first place. But not Jenna. She had their undivided
attention.”

“Are you saying she’s spoiled?” Stuart said. “She’s never seemed spoiled to me.”

“She’s not spoiled,” Margot said. “But she’s probably not as experienced with this
kind of jealousy as another person might be.”

“I didn’t tell her because I didn’t
want
to tell her,” Stuart said.
“I just didn’t want her to know. It meant nothing, it was a big fat mistake, and I
wanted to pretend like it never happened.”

“She feels like you lied to her,” Margot said. “I understand it was a lie of omission—”

“I apologized fifty times, a hundred times. If she ever checks her phone again, she’ll
see I called her seventeen times last night between the hours of midnight and five.
I don’t know what else to do.” He put his face to his hands. “If she leaves me, I’ll
die, Margot.”

“I have to go find her,” Margot said. “Let me talk to her.”

“I want to go with you,” Stuart said. “But I’m afraid I might mess it up even worse.”

“You might,” Margot said. She smiled to let him know she was kidding. “But I might,
too.”

Margot drove out to Surfside, searching the road for Jenna. She turned down Nonantum
Avenue and headed toward Fisherman’s Beach. From Rhonda’s cell phone, she called Jenna’s
number. Jenna wouldn’t answer if it was Margot, or the number of the house, but would
she answer if she saw a call coming in from Rhonda? Maybe.

But no. The call was shuttled right to voice mail.

Margot paused in the parking lot at Fisherman’s and walked to the landing at the top
of the beach stairs. She scanned the coast to the left, then the coast to the right.
No Jenna. There were only a couple of men, surfcasting at the waterline.

Margot remembered herself as a malcontented teenager, pacing this very beach with
her Walkman playing “I Wanna Be Free,” by the Monkees, and “Against All Odds,” by
Phil Collins. The beach was often shrouded in fog, which made it an even better place
for soulful reflection for Margot and her adolescent
woes: she hated her braces, her parents didn’t understand her, and she missed Grady
McLean, who was back in Connecticut working the register at Stew Leonard’s.

Margot had also surfed this beach, too many times to count, with Drum Sr. He had been
a bronzed surfing god back then, king of these waves. Margot had been awed by his
grace and agility on the board.
Of course
she’d fallen in love with him! Every single person—man and woman, boy and girl—who
had watched Drum surf had fallen in love with him. Margot had believed that the magic
he demonstrated in the water, and on the ski slopes, would translate to real life.
But as a landlubber, Drum Sr. had floundered. He had never been able to display the
same kind of confidence or authority.

Maybe now, with his fish taco stand and Lily the Pilates instructor. Who knew.

But these were Margot’s ruminations, which she had to set aside. She needed to start
thinking like Jenna.

Margot checked Rhonda’s phone for the time. It was nearly ten o’clock. She wondered
what Roger looked like when he lost his cool. She had to move quickly.

As she turned away from the beach, she noticed someone waving at her. It was one of
the surfcasters. Waving at
her?
Was there someone drowning offshore, or a shark? Margot squinted. The man was wearing
a white visor.

It was Griff.

Not possible. But yes, of course.
Of course
Griff was fishing here. Had he mentioned fishing the night before? She couldn’t remember.
Maybe he had, and now it would look like Margot was stalking him. Maybe this would
become the story where Margot and the man who had kissed her like no other
man before but whom she could never kiss again because of the awful way she had wronged
him would hunt down the runaway bride.

Margot waved back, but the wave was halfhearted, despite the way her whole heart felt
like it was dangling from the end of Griff’s line.

She hurried to her car.

Beth Carmichael had requested that her ashes be scattered in three places on Nantucket.
And so, seven years earlier, Margot and her father and her siblings had taken the
box of Beth’s remains to the locations she’d specified. The first place Margot and
her family had scattered Beth’s ashes was the Brant Point Lighthouse. Brant Point
was just a knuckle of land that jutted out into the harbor. The lighthouse was a white
brick column with a black cap and a red beacon. It was prettiest at night or in the
fog when the crimson light seemed to glow with warm promise. The lighthouse also charmed
at Christmastime when the Coast Guard hung a giant evergreen wreath on it.

An old Nantucket legend said that when a visitor left the island on the ferry, she
should toss two pennies overboard as the boat passed Brant Point Lighthouse. This
would ensure the visitor would return one day. Beth Carmichael had been fanatical
about the penny throwing. On the day that the Carmichaels departed each summer, Beth
would herd all four kids to the top deck, where they would throw their pennies. Margot
even remembered throwing pennies in rainstorms with punishing winds. When Margot,
Kevin, and Nick were teenagers and refused to participate in the penny throwing, deeming
it “lame,” Beth had taken Jenna up with her to throw the pennies. Jenna had believed
in the penny throwing, just as she believed in Santa Claus and
the Tooth Fairy. It was Nick who said, “You know it’s a bunch of baloney, right? Throw
the penny, don’t throw the penny, you can still come back to Nantucket. It’s a free
country.”

But their mother would not back down from this particular superstition. She could
risk certain things, but she could not risk a life without Nantucket.

Now a part of her was here forever. As Margot walked to the lighthouse, she spied
bike tracks in the sand, ones that her Nancy Drew instincts told her belonged to Jenna’s
Schwinn. But when Margot reached the small beach in front of the lighthouse, the exact
place they’d all stood when they’d scattered Beth’s ashes, it was deserted. There
was gravelly sand, pebbles, the overturned shell of a horseshoe crab, and one of the
most arresting views on the island: the sweeping harbor, sailboats, the shore of the
first point of Coatue visible a few hundred yards away across sparkling blue water.

Breathtaking.

But no Jenna.

Margot got back in the car. She checked Rhonda’s phone in case Jenna had called. Nothing.
It was 10:18.

Madaket was the settlement on the west coast of the island, the somewhat poor relation
to Siasconset in the east. Sconset was fashionable and popular; it was home to the
Sconset Market and the Sconset Café, it had the Summer House and Sankaty Head Golf
Club, it had rose-covered cottages that had once been owned by the silent film stars
of the 1920s.

Madaket was low-key by Nantucket standards. There was one restaurant that had changed
hands a few times—in Margot’s memory it had been called 27 Curves, and then the Westender,
which had served a popular drink called the Madaket Mystery.
Now it was a popular Tex-Mex place called Millie’s, named after an iconic but scary-looking
woman who had worked for the Coast Guard named Madaket Millie.

Beth had loved Madaket; she found its simplicity pleasing. There was no flash, no
cachet, very little to see except for the natural beauty of the sun setting each night
and the quiet splendor of Madaket Harbor, which was small and picturesque and surrounded
by eelgrass.

Margot traveled the road to Madaket slowly, searching the bike path for Jenna. There
were, in fact, twenty-seven curves in the road that took one past the dump, then the
trails of Ram’s Pasture, then the pond where Beth used to take Margot and her siblings
turtling—four sturdy sticks, a ball of string, and a pound of raw chicken equaled
an afternoon of hilarity. Both Kevin and Nick had always ended up in the pond with
the turtles.

Margot didn’t see Jenna on the bike path. This was impossible, right? Margot tried
to calculate time. If Jenna had left the house when Margot suspected she had, and
if she’d stopped at Brant Point Lighthouse, then Margot would have seen Jenna on the
bike path, either coming or going. There was only one way out and one way in. There
were a few stands of trees and a couple of grassy knolls, but otherwise nowhere to
hide.

Margot reached the parking lot of Madaket Beach. She climbed out of the car and wandered
over to the wooden bridge that looked out on both Madaket Harbor and the ocean.

Madaket Mystery, Margot thought. Where is my sister?

It occurred to Margot then that maybe she was wrong. Maybe Jenna
hadn’t
gone on a quest for their mother. Maybe Jenna had ridden her bike to the airport
and flown back to New York.

Margot pulled out Rhonda’s phone and dialed the number of the house. Five rings, six
rings… there was no answering
machine. The phone would just ring forever until someone picked it up. There were
a dozen people in residence;
someone
had to be home. But answering the phone was one of the things the rest of the family
left to Margot. How long would it take someone to realize she wasn’t there?

Finally the ringing stopped. There were some muffled sounds, then a froggy “Hello?”

Margot paused. It sounded like Jenna. Had Jenna made it back? Had she possibly never
left? Had she found a quiet corner of the house to hide and fallen back to sleep?

Margot said, “Jenna?”

“Um,” the voice said. “No. This is Finn.”

“Oh,” Margot said. “This is Margot.”

“Uh-huh,” Finn said. “I know.”

Margot said, “Is Jenna there? Is she at the house?”

“No,” Finn said.

“Have you heard from her since I saw you last?” Margot asked.

“I’ve sent six texts and left her three voice mails,” Finn said. “And I’ve gotten
nothing back. She hates me, I think, because…”

Margot understood why Jenna might hate Finn right now. “Stop. I can’t get in the middle
of this,” Margot said. “I’m just trying to find Jenna.”

“
Find
Jenna?” Finn said. “What does that mean?”

Margot closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose. Madaket Harbor had its own smell,
ripe and marshy. Margot could go back to the house and pick up Finn, and this would
become the story of the sister and the shameless, irresponsible best friend hunting
down the runaway bride.

That’s
my
decision,
Jenna had said.
And I’ve made it. I am not marrying Stuart tomorrow.

“I have to go,” Margot said, and she hung up.

She had a hard time finding a parking spot near the church. It was July; the streets
were lined with Hummers and Jeeps and Land Rovers like Margot’s. Margot felt a sense
of indignation at all the summer visitors, even though she was one herself. She drove
around and around—Centre Street, Gay Street, Quince Street, Hussey Street. She needed
a spot. It was five minutes to eleven, which was the time they were due at the salon.
Margot couldn’t bear to think about Roger. Would he be attending to the 168 details
of this wedding that needed his attention, or was he throwing darts in his garage,
or was he out surfcasting?

Surfcasting, Griff, the kissing. Margot needed a parking space. She had waved back
at Griff, but lamely. What would he make of that? What would he be thinking?
The one thing I miss about being married is having someone to talk to late at night,
someone to tell the stupid stuff.
Did Roger have a picture of Jenna’s face plastered to his dartboard? Was he trying
to stick her between the eyes? He would get paid regardless; their father would lose
a lot of money if Jenna canceled, but of course that was no reason to go through with
the wedding. Edge was coming today, or so Doug had said, but Margot was trying not
to care. Of course she did care, but that caring was buried under her concern for
Jenna and her urgent desire to salvage the wedding, and her pressing need for a parking
space.