Nantucket Gala (A Nantucket Sunset #12)

Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

June 1985

Nantucket Island

S ophia Bianchi returned to the dance floor of the Nantucket Gala with fresh knowledge that her husband was having an affair with the beautiful actress Natalie Masterson. There was nothing she could do about it. Her heart burned with fury, but she grinned at everyone she met, grabbed fresh flutes of champagne, and got drunk very quickly. Who cared? She was no longer pregnant. She was no longer wanted. Her days in Hollywood were running out.

When Francis approached her again for a dance, she agreed, nearly stumbling into him.

“You’ve really gone off the rails, haven’t you, honey?” Francis breathed into her ear. But he was drunk, too. He smelled of whiskey and cigars. He smelled of the money he’d earned long ago—money she’d fight for in the divorce.

“You’re one to talk, baby,” she cooed into his ear.

Francis walloped with laughter and searched her face for understanding. Sophia stuck out her tongue like a child, then told him, “You know, none of these people know the truth about you. None of them know you can’t put more than three words together without getting a headache.”

Francis’s smile melted. “You’re out of your mind, Sophia. I’m going to call you a car.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Sophia said, maintaining her grin and her grip on Francis’s shoulder. She could see from his expression that her nails were hurting him. “You’ll let me party all night long, and then you’ll take me to France and Italy, and you’ll take me to fancy restaurants, and you won’t spend a single night with that Natalie girl, not one, or else I won’t give you another script. Do you hear me?”

She let the words drop between them. She searched Francis’s face for fear.

But then, he began to bellow with laughter again. Sophia’s stomach twisted.

“You’re fiery, Sophia. It’s what I always loved about you.”

Sophia hated to be diminished to something loveable. She tore her hands away from him and put them in fists at her sides. Around them spun the Hollywood elite, people with fat checkbooks eager to throw their money at the next Francis Bianchi production. They would be terribly disappointed when they figured out that The Brutal Horizon was his final good film.

What was keeping her from coming forward with the truth? She knew nobody would believe her. She knew that she lived in a man’s world, a world of sexism and belittling wives, and she wasn’t sure how to undo thousands of years of that kind of mentality, so she shook with the horror of it.

Of course, she could always send her scripts to agents and try to make it on her own. But nearly every female writer or director she’d known in the business had given up. Even Cindy Saucer, that sensational film director who’d made the World War II flick back in ’77, had given up. And Sophia and Natalie had both been sure that Cindy would make it one day.

Who decided who got to make it? Who decided who sneaked through?

“You can’t dictate who I see and when I see them,” Francis growled, turning menacing. “You don’t know what I’m capable of. You don’t know what I’ve already done.”

Sophia was taken aback.

Suddenly, she was reminded of that night a year and a half ago. It was the same night Dean Chatterly had been reported as missing.

Francis had been out all day. And when he’d come home, his face was streaked with blood, and his shirt was torn. It looked as though he’d been in a major fight. When she doted on him, asking him what had happened, he said he’d been jumped in Hollywood, that they’d tried to take his wallet, but he’d outrun them. Sophia had believed him.

But then she’d seen the news. She’d seen that Dean Chatterly had gone missing. She’d seen that he’d been found—murdered.

And of course, she’d thought of Francis. She’d thought of his bloody state.

But the minute she’d wondered if her husband was a murderer, the minute she’d shoved the thought into the back alleys of her mind. Francis was my greatest love. He would never do that , she’d thought.

And now, now that she was fully aware of Natalie, of their relationship, of the power Natalie had over her life, Sophia understood. All the pieces were falling into place.

“I never had to convince you to let Natalie audition,” she whispered. “You’ve been having an affair for years.”

Francis’s smile opened into a hollow laugh. “There she is,” he taunted her. “The brilliant writer Sophia Bianchi. Nothing gets past her!” He grabbed a flute of champagne from a passing server and brought it to his lips. Sophia tried to knock it from his grasp, but he evaded her.

“I’m calling you a car,” he barked over his shoulder, disappearing into the crowd.

Sophia wavered. Her stomach spasmed with cramps. Her thoughts swarmed.

And then, out of the corner of her eye, Sophia spotted Natalie. She was hovering near the bar, wringing her hands and watching Sophia. Her eyes were lined with red. From her expression, she now understood that Sophia had figured it all out. Sophia cut through the crowd, storming up to her, ready to make a scene. But as she approached, she was swarmed with images of 1977—when she and Natalie had met. In her mind’s eye, she watched them sharing a beer at a local bar because they hadn’t had enough money to buy two. They walked along Santa Monica Pier, chatting about the divine futures they so wanted, futures that had still seemed possible at the time. Her heart ached at the memories. Her heart ached at the horror and hatred she now felt for Francis.

Now, Sophia stood a few inches from Natalie and swallowed, swallowed, as her gut roiled with anger.

“How could you?” she rasped.

Natalie put her face in her hands. “Sophia,” she whispered. “I—”

But Sophia didn’t want to wait around for a limp apology. Raising her skirt, she tore past the bar and out toward the beach, where a boardwalk stretched over the bluffs. Out here, the wind was ominous, and thick black clouds rushed toward the dark horizon. Not a single star was out. Sophia’s hair whipped back and forth and filled her mouth. Still, she wept. She wanted to throw herself in the ocean. She didn’t want to wake up tomorrow.

It was the worst she’d ever felt.

“Sophia!” It was Natalie, struggling through the wind to get to her. “Sophia, let me explain!”

At the top of a massive stairway that led down to the beach below, Sophia staggered to a halt. With her right hand, she gripped the railing and let the wind bring her dangerously close to where the staircase dropped. She imagined her heels giving out on her. She imagined planting face-first on the cement block at the bottom.

Suddenly, Natalie was there at the top of the stairs. But whoever had designed the staircase had only allowed for one railing. Sophia had that railing. She wasn’t giving it up. Natalie didn’t seem to notice. She put her hands on her hips and then let them fall as tears drifted down her cheeks. If Sophia wasn’t mistaken, she thought it was about to rain.

“You aren’t going to win, Natalie,” Sophia called over the howling wind.

“I got carried away. I did. It won’t happen again,” Natalie cried.

“You’re right. It won’t happen again.” Sophia flared her nostrils. She felt murderous.

“He told me he could save my career, Sophia. You know how important that is to me. You know I was completely washed up a few years ago,” Natalie said.

“Are you really trying to reason with me?” Sophia demanded. “I’m going to ruin you! Everyone will know what you did!”

Natalie looked flustered. “Didn’t you steal Francis from his second wife? Didn’t his second wife steal him from his first?”

Sophia couldn’t breathe. The world spun around her.

“Maybe ‘steal’ isn’t the right word here,” Natalie shot back. “Maybe we’ve all fallen for a horrible man. Maybe—”

But Sophia cut her off. “He killed Dean? You let him kill Dean? Or did you ask him to?”

Natalie’s face drained of color. “What are you talking about?”

Sophia stuttered. “Don’t play dumb. You know what he did. I remember that night. He came home slathered in blood. Dean’s blood.”

Natalie put both hands over her mouth. She looked on the verge of screaming.

But no one will hear you , Sophia thought darkly. Just like nobody heard Dean .

But then, out of nowhere, a massive gust of wind—the sort of wind that had once drawn whalers away from Nantucket and into the mysteries of the ocean—slammed into them both. Sophia clutched the railing. But like a rag doll, Natalie whipped down the stairs, falling on her shoulder, flipping over to her hips, crashing to her elbow. The fall was nearly four stories, and it took forever; it felt as though she moved in slow motion. But she couldn’t stop herself. The inertia was too great. Then there was the final snap of her head on the cement block at the bottom.

It was just as Sophia had imagined her own fall.

It all felt so unreal that Sophia was initially unsure if it was she who’d fallen or Natalie.

Sophia gaped at Natalie. She waited for her to pick herself up. She waited for her to twitch. But even from up here, she could see a gush of blood coming out of Natalie’s head and pooling around her.

“Oh. Oh. Oh.” Sophia stuttered, backing away from the staircase.

Everything felt sped up.

What have I done?

Sophia felt suddenly sober. Whipping back to the Nantucket Gala, she thought, I have to find help. We have to call someone. Her first idea was Francis. But he was nowhere to be found. Neither was Bernard. She staggered around the party, probably looking insane, until she cornered a server, telling him, “My friend, she, there’s something wrong, she…”

The server looked at her as though she was just another problem he had to handle at the party. In his eyes, she was infantile. He sat her down and got her a glass of water. By then, she was sobbing. She couldn’t get her thoughts together. Maybe she’d imagined the accident. Perhaps it hadn’t really happened. Everyone had always told her she was too creative, too privy to fantasy. Maybe this was just another.

Why couldn’t she get the image of Natalie tumbling down the staircase out of her mind?

But suddenly, a man she didn’t recognize, one dressed in a tux, came flailing into the party to announce, “A woman! There’s a woman on the beach, and she’s dead!”

Sophia’s gasp joined the others. Together with the crowd of Nantucket revelers, she shot out to the boardwalk. Francis wasn’t among them. Where was he? From where she stood, she could barely see three men in tuxes, checking Natalie’s pulse and waving their arms, trying to figure out what had happened. Did they think she’d fallen? Did they think she’d jumped?

Did they think she’d been pushed?

Was it possible I pushed her without meaning to? Sophia suddenly couldn’t remember. Was she going insane?

That was when Sophia realized another man was on the beach.

He was pulling his hair and screaming and crying. She would have recognized him anywhere in the world. It was Francis. He was suddenly on his knees, touching Natalie’s face, trying and failing to make her come to life again.

Sophia had the strangest feeling that she was watching one of Francis’s films. It can’t be real , she told herself.

And then she heard what Francis was screaming. “She was pregnant! She was pregnant! I loved her, and she was pregnant! Natalie!”

Sophia thought she was going to collapse. The fact that she didn’t was a small miracle.

In her womb, she felt the ache of what had been her baby. The baby had been only a few cells, stitched together, but they’d been proof of something that was now completely gone.

Gossip and whispers traced the crowd.

Paparazzi flashed with photographs. Darkly, Sophia thought, The press is going to have a field day.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime story.

From the onlookers, someone said, “He was having an affair.”

“Oh, but of course he was. He always cheated on his wives.”

“But he never got them pregnant.”

“Never.”

“He must have really liked this one. Or been especially careless.”

“Do you think he pushed her?”

“Maybe he pushed her when he found out she was pregnant.”

“But why wouldn’t he just leave that other one? The meek one? The wife? What’s her name?”

“Sandra. Or Suki.”

“Sophia.”

“Whatever. Why did he have to kill her?”

Suddenly, the police were there. Suddenly, someone was interviewing Sophia, asking her when she’d last seen her husband, asking her if it was likely that he’d killed Natalie, asking her if she’d known he was having an affair.

Sophia didn’t know what to do. She felt pathetic. She alternated between weeping, drinking water, and saying, “I don’t know anything. I don’t know anything.” But toward the end of the night, she heard herself say a final, “But he was capable of violence. I know he was.”

For whatever reason, she didn’t tell them about Dean Chatterly. Maybe it was guilt for what had happened to Natalie, she thought later. After all, if she hadn’t run out to the boardwalk, Natalie never would have fallen. If Sophia hadn’t been holding the only railing, Natalie would have kept herself safe. If only Sophia had reached out to grab her. Maybe I could have. Perhaps I could have grabbed her shoulder or her dress or her hand. Maybe I could have stopped this horrible tragedy.

But it was too late for what-ifs.

At two in the morning, Sophia returned to the hotel to find that all of Francis’s belongings were gone. For whatever reason, this felt fitting. She didn’t want to see him again anyway. She didn’t want to hear him crying about Natalie and how much he’d loved her and how much he’d wanted their baby. It wasn’t till two days later that she learned Francis had fled the country. Already, his name was besmirched. Already, there was discussion about trying him for murder. She heard the rumors everywhere. Never did she declare them untrue. Never did she say anything on the subject at all.

She was the only witness to Natalie’s death, and nobody ever knew. Nobody would ever know.

Without saying anything to Greta or Bernard, she returned to Los Angeles and hibernated till winter.

She hibernated for years, in fact.

But always there was money in her account. Always there was a roof over her head.

And once, in the late eighties, Francis sent her a letter. It just said I didn’t do it, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve done so many terrible things.

Sometimes, Sophia speculated that Francis quit making films because he’d genuinely loved Natalie, and his grief at her death had put him in such a pit of despair that he felt he could never make anything again. But then she remembered. He no longer had her scripts. He no longer had her creative drive. He couldn’t do it on his own.

This pleased her even though she found she couldn’t make anything anymore, either.

Many years later, when Bernard was arrested for stealing millions of dollars along with his accomplice, his so-called mistress Marcia Conrad, Sophia muttered to herself, “Men are all the same.”

Of that, she was wrong. But she didn’t know it yet. She wouldn’t know it till she met Henry Crawford many years later—and was forced to face the truth.