Silver Girl (35 page)

“I called your bluff!” he said. “I’m here!”

“Hey, brother,” Connie said. He set her down and they kissed. He tasted clean, he smelled clean—not too minty the way he used to when he was drinking.

“This weather is amazing!” he said. He hoisted the canvas duffel bag he had owned literally his entire adult life over his shoulder. It was sky-blue with his monogram; it had traveled with Toby all over the world. “Maryland is brutally hot. We haven’t had a lick of wind all summer. So I took that as a sign. This guy Roy Weedon has been asking me about my boat for years, and when the offer came from the Naval Academy, I thought, Now’s the time to sell her.”

“I can’t believe she’s gone,” Connie said. Toby had saved for
Bird’s Nest
for nearly ten years, and she was the most exquisite sailboat Connie had ever seen. A classic. The Jackie O of sailboats, the Audrey Hepburn of sailboats. Toby had run the number one sailing charter in the state of Maryland, which gave him the freedom and the cash to island-hop in the Caribbean all winter long. “I can’t believe you sold her. You know you’ll never be able to get her back, right? You know you’ll never find another boat like her?”

“I do know that,” Toby said. “But I can’t be at the mercy of the wind or the economy, anymore, Con. And the gig at the Naval Academy was too choice to turn down. The premier collegiate sailors in the country will soon be under my tutelage.”

Right. When they’d talked on the phone the day before, Toby had confessed that the charter business had suited him because it left him free to do other things—primarily drink and chase after other men’s wives. He needed something more stable, more serious. He had to think of his son, Michael. He needed health insurance, retirement benefits. He needed to grow up, finally.

“Want to take one last look at her?” Toby asked.

“Won’t that be sad for you?” Connie asked.

“I’ve made my peace with it,” Toby said. “Come on, she’s down here.”

Connie was grateful for anything that delayed their arrival back at home. She followed Toby down the dock. And there she was—
Bird’s Nest—
thirty-three feet of polished wood, rope, canvas, and nickel. There was a guy on her, tying up the sails. He looked too young to be the new owner.

“Is that the man from Nantucket?” Connie asked.

Toby laughed. “You’re funny, Con.”

They ambled back to the car. He was going to think she was funny for another second or two. “So how are you doing?” Connie asked. The ride to Tom Nevers would only take twelve or thirteen minutes, so she had to work fast. “Are you sober?”

“Sure,” Toby said.

“Sure?” Connie said. “What kind of answer is that?”

“Geez, Con,” Toby said. “Are you riding me already? Can’t we just ease into it?”

“No,” Connie said. “We can’t just ease into it.” She wouldn’t be lulled by his boyish, gee-whiz charm, though this seemed to work on everyone else. Wolf, despite the fact that he had seen Toby at his very drunkest and most pathetic, had absolutely adored his brother-in-law. The two of them could tell sailing stories for hours, and when Toby visited Nantucket, they used to race each other in Indians. It was the highlight of Wolf’s summer—chasing Toby up the harbor and back again—and then settling with a cold beer at the Rope Walk so they could talk about the sail, tack by tack, afterward.

“Okay,” Toby said. “I’ve been sober for twenty-two months. But I don’t take it for granted. I fell off the wagon once, early on.” He squinted out the side window. “The evil combination of Marlowe Jones and the Treaty of Paris.”

“Ah,” Connie said. The Treaty of Paris was Toby’s former watering hole. Marlowe Jones was the lonely wife of the Annapolis district attorney. Evil combination indeed.

“But like I said, that was nearly two years ago. I’ve come to terms with my relationship with alcohol. I inherited the disease. You’re lucky you didn’t.”

Connie felt a complicated mix of emotions. She was ashamed, thinking of how drunk she’d gotten the day of the boat ride with Dan. But what that had taught her was that she
wasn’t
immune; she had to watch herself. A part of Connie stupidly mourned the old Toby, the Toby who had been Connie’s boozy, fun-loving comrade. Two years earlier, when Toby had come for Wolf’s memorial service, he’d hit every bar downtown and had been dropped off at Connie’s house in a cab, a sloppy-if-happy drunken mess. Then he and Connie had stayed up drinking wine on the deck until sunrise. Jake and Iris had found them passed out on the outdoor furniture in a dead-on reprise of their own parents.

Toby’s not good for you,
Iris, with her degree in psychology, had said.
You’re not good for each other.

“Are you dating anyone?” Connie asked him. “Other than Marlowe Jones?”

“I’m not dating Marlowe,” he said.

“She’s still married to Bart?”

“Still married to Bart. It’s one of the worst marriages I’ve ever seen, but it just won’t die.”

“Like mom and dad,” Connie murmured.

“Exactly,” Toby said.

“And there’s no one else?” Connie asked.

“No,” he said. “Nobody special.”

It might have been better if he’d been dating someone, Connie thought. But Toby’s romantic life was impossible to keep track of. There were always women, but rarely anyone who lasted more than a few weeks. Toby had been married twice. He’d met his first wife, Shelden, crewing on the boat
Cascade,
which was the boat he captained before
Excelsior.
Shelden had family money, much of which she spent financing Toby’s lifestyle—the drinking and carousing in places like Portofino and Ios and Monaco. It wasn’t hard to see why Shelden left—at that time, Toby was at his most uncontrollable and irresponsible, and Shelden was bankrolling all of his bad behavior. He would go to the most popular waterfront bar, buy a round for everyone in the place, and then arrive back at
Excelsior
with fifteen people ready to party until three in the morning.

Several years later while working in Norfolk, Virginia, Toby met Rosalie, who was a shore-bound single mother of two small children. Toby was like some kind of romantic hero who sailed in to save her—though “saving” her turned into getting her pregnant, marrying her, then making her so miserable and doing such a piss-poor job as a father and stepfather that Rosalie fled back to her family in New Orleans. Toby’s son, Michael, was now ten. Rosalie had remarried a coach with the New Orleans Saints, a guy who Toby liked and admired. “The guy is so responsible,” Toby said, “I want him to be
my
dad.” There had been trips to New Orleans where the whole blended family—Rosalie and the coach had children of their own now—went to JazzFest and took river cruises.

“How’s Michael?” Connie asked.

“He’s great,” Toby said. He flipped open his phone to show Connie a picture. She glanced at it quickly: Michael in a baseball hat. “He’s a U-eleven all-star in Little League, and he’s doing Pop Warner again in the fall. Starting QB. Kid’s a natural athlete. Quick hands.”

“Takes after his aunt,” Connie said. She saw Toby staring at the picture. “Do you wish you saw more of him?”

“Huh?” Toby said. He flipped the phone closed. “Yeah, of course. I lobbied for him to come to Annapolis for two weeks, but he had camp.”

“He still could have come for a little while,” Connie said. “Did you ask Rosalie?”

“Of course I asked Rosalie,” Toby said. “She said he had camp.”

Connie shook her head, thinking,
Did you not fight to see your son?

Toby said, “Michael’s fine; he’s happy, I’m happy he’s happy. We Skype each other.”

“Skype?” Connie said.

“Connie, it’s fine,” Toby said. And he did, indeed, sound fine.

Growing up, Toby had always been the better kid, at least in Connie’s mind; possibly, this was a notion she’d gotten from her parents. Toby was the golden-haired son, the gifted athlete. He’d shown promise as a sailor during their summers at Cape May, but there was also football, basketball, and lacrosse. At Radnor, he’d been captain of all three varsity teams. He had always been kind and generous to Connie, perhaps because he understood that Connie wasn’t as lucky as he was. She was smart, but he was smarter and better liked by his teachers. Connie was beautiful, but because she was a girl, this beauty was seen as a problem and not as a positive as it was for Toby. Connie’s beauty required that she go to Merion Mercy, an all-girls Catholic school, instead of the super fun, incredibly social, less stringent public school that Toby attended. Connie’s beauty led to boys sniffing around the house, none of whom her parents approved of.

When, in high school, Toby started drinking—going to keg parties out in the fields or stealing fifths of gin from their parents’ liquor cabinet and drinking in the car on the way to South Street—it was treated as a rite of passage. When Connie started drinking, she was grounded for weeks, and she heard incessantly about the damage to her “reputation” from, of all people, her mother.

In general, growing up, Connie had resented Toby and worshipped him, hated him and wanted, more than anything, to
be
him.

Connie thought,
I have to tell him. Now.
But then Toby said, “How are you, Con? Are things any better?”

Are things any better?
Connie didn’t love the phrasing of this question, acknowledging as it did that things for Connie had been pretty bad. Well, they
had
been bad. Connie had been depressed about Wolf and about Ashlyn. But she resented the accusation that her life needed improvement—because, as an adult, Connie had been happy. She had the glowing marriage, the gracious home, the prestigious husband, the brilliant child.

“They’re better,” Connie said. The good news was, she could say this honestly.

“Are you seeing anyone?” Toby asked.

“Sort of,” Connie said. She felt that as soon as she came right out and said, yes, she was seeing someone, the bubble would burst and Dan Flynn would vanish into thin air.

Because of the incident with Harold, her date with Dan had been overshadowed. But now she grew warm just thinking about it—Dan at dinner, holding her hand; Dan in bed, bringing her back to life. She felt Toby eyeing her.

“ ‘Sort of?’ ” he said. “What does that mean?”

They climbed into Connie’s car, and Toby threw his duffel bag in the backseat. “It means yes, there’s someone, but I don’t know what’s what yet, okay?”

Toby said, “Okay, sorry. Don’t get all touchy on me.”

“Oh, God,” Connie said. She managed to fit the key in the ignition, but she didn’t turn it. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

Toby raised his eyebrows at her. There was the look, so familiar, so condescending, as though he were sure she was about to make something out of nothing, typical female member of the family, drama queen like their mother.
Well, let’s see then,
Connie thought.
Let’s see how he likes it.

“Meredith’s at the house.”

Yep, she got him. His eyes widened. The whole arrangement of his face changed. But she could tell he didn’t quite believe her.

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Not kidding.”

“Meredith Martin?”

“Meredith Delinn, yes.”

Toby jerked his head, like he was trying to get water out of his ears. “She’s…” He looked out the passenger-side window at the hot, shimmering grid of the town parking lot. “Wow.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Connie said. “I was afraid if I told you, you wouldn’t come.”

“How long has she been staying with you?”

“All summer.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Not kidding.”

“So… I mean, the husband’s in jail. So what is Meredith doing?”

“She’s trying to figure out what to do. She’s under investigation, I guess; she talks to her lawyer all the time. But the thing is… she’s still
Meredith
.”

“So you’re telling me she didn’t know what the husband was up to?”

“I’m telling you that, yes.”

“I never met the guy.”

“I think that was probably by design.”

“But I could tell he was a class-A jerk. Typical Wall Street greedy banker hotshot.”

“He was anything but typical,” Connie said. And then, because it sounded like she was defending Freddy Delinn, she redirected the conversation. “So, are you okay with seeing Meredith?”

“Am I okay with seeing Meredith? Sure, of course.” Toby’s face was coloring. He was flustered.

“The last time you saw her was…?”

“Mom’s funeral,” Toby said. “And that ended badly. Are you sure Meredith is okay with seeing me?”

Connie rested her forehead against the top of the steering wheel. She turned on the car; she needed the air-conditioning. “She doesn’t know you’re coming.”

Toby stared at her. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Not kidding.” Connie backed out of her parking spot, thinking,
This whole situation is a tightrope walk.

“Her head is going to spin,” Toby said. “I hope you’re ready.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Connie said.

“I’m serious.”

“After what we’ve been through this summer, seeing you will come as a very minor shock,” Connie said. God, how she prayed this was true. She pulled out onto the road. “I’m sorry if that’s a blow to your ego.”

Connie spent her minutes on Milestone Road telling Toby about the highlights of the summer. Spray paint, slashed tires, Harold, their beloved seal, dead.

“You should have called me, Con,” Toby said. “I would have come up sooner.”

“We’ve been managing,” Connie said.

“That sounds like a lie,” Toby said.

“Only a partial lie,” Connie said. She pulled into the driveway. “Here we are.” Toby was looking at the front of the house. There was still a faint outline of the word
CROOK
on the shingles, but a few weeks of sun and sand had done its work. And Dan had used his power washer on the front porch to blast away all vestiges of Harold’s blood and bodily fluids. All outward signs of terror had been wiped clean.

Toby adjusted his sunglasses and touched his hair, and with what sounded like a deep breath, he grabbed his old blue duffel bag out of the backseat. How did he feel? Did he have butterflies? Connie thought Toby might mask his nerves with small talk—
the house looks great—
but he was as silent as a monk.