22. Charlotte Armor
Charlotte Armor
Alice had been right about one thing: this dress was a little like armor. Spanxed and corseted into my gown, cleavage high, hair higher, and feathers adorning my head, I felt like I was someone else, like I was play-acting at being a Juniper Shores housewife. And that was 100 percent exactly what I needed to get through what was sure to be a difficult night.
Belle Epoque on the Beach was Bill’s favorite event of the year. Well, to be fair, it was most people’s favorite event. If you loved a good party, you were pretty much guaranteed to have a great time. If you couldn’t be happy here, you couldn’t be happy, I remembered as we walked up to the check-in table. Every year when I came to this event, I felt confident, sparkling, alive. But that was because no one could make me feel that way quite like Bill, who would have told me how beautiful I looked, how no costume would be able to match mine. I would feel so loved, so special, that I couldn’t help but walk taller.
Tonight was a different story. I didn’t want to walk tall; I wanted to duck.
As usual, a large parquet dance floor had been set up on the sand, just a few yards from the ocean. A single tentpole stood in the middle, and from it ran hundreds of strands of bubble lights, creating the feeling that the stars had come down from the sky. Scattered around the perimeter were ten-top round tables and tall cocktail tables overflowing with ranunculus and peonies, alongside crushed-velvet antique couches. Dozens of teenagers—my daughter among them—milled about in period dress, passing hors d’oeuvres, handing out paper fans, and, the most coveted job, wearing shucking belts so that guests could shuck their own fresh oysters. Each of the four sides of the outdoor area held a gilded bar alight with champagne and signature cocktails for easy grabbing, and bartenders waited to serve a full selection of anything else one’s heart desired. During this early part of the evening, a massive buffet lined the center of the dance floor, filled with every delicious, delectable offering Juniper Shores could provide, from lobster and fresh sushi to Wagyu beef and caviar, the most beautiful fruit and perfectly roasted vegetables, desserts almost too beautiful to eat, and on and on. At nine on the dot, it would all be swept away and dancing would begin; at midnight, servers would return with trays of tiny sliders and french fries.
I wouldn’t make it until midnight. I could already tell. The appraising stares of the crowd would break me before then, because there was no doubt about it: all eyes were on the four of us as we approached the check-in table. “Are you sure you want to be seen with me?” I asked Grace quietly.
“I would never not be proud to be seen with you,” she said. My eyes pooled because I knew she meant it, because I would have meant it too, and the mere idea of that stunned me. Being without Bill had felt like torture most days. But I had made friendships here that I never thought I’d get to have. It wasn’t even close to an even trade, but it was a very glittery silver lining.
“Okay, ladies,” Julie said. “Remember: if you can drop Bill’s innocence into a conversation, do it. But don’t make it obvious.” She fanned herself with her vintage fan. That sweet Elliott had gotten each of us one for the occasion. Even so, Alice had begged off coming here with him on a proper date, and opted to be with us instead. As she’d said, “I’m not going to make my first big night out in years be all about my next victim. I’d rather everyone talk about our cult.”
Poor Alice. I was experiencing a little of what it was like to live under a microscope like she had, and it wasn’t pleasant. Beside the check-in table—an ornate, gilded Black French antique—sat what I was most excited about: a beautifully constructed eight-foot-tall section of living boxwood hedge that held a single brass bell. When one rang the bell, as Julie did now, a gloved hand appeared with a glass of champagne. But what was woefully missing from the top of the boxwood hedge? The Sitterly Capital logo that was supposed to adorn it, marking my husband’s company as the lead sponsor for this event.
I had a moment, one of those we all do inevitably in our lives, where I had to make a decision: Did I confront the chair of the event, Laura Lucas, or did I keep my mouth shut? There had been times when I had been a mouth-shut kind of gal. And then there were ones like tonight, where I was out for vengeance, for blood, and I wasn’t going to take one more second of this treatment.
Laura was swathed in green silk and lace that really brought out her eyes, a choker of pearls around her neck that I wanted to snatch off and watch them fall, one by one, to the sand. Which I did not, obviously. Instead, I said casually, offhandedly, “Laura, I thought part of the lead sponsor package for this event was signage on the champagne boxwoods. Was I incorrect?”
I could see Laura having her own moment of debate. She cleared her throat, looking embarrassed, and said, “I’m sorry, Charlotte. I didn’t, um, know if…”
“You didn’t know if her husband would like to recoup his twenty-thousand-dollar investment in your event?” Julie asked snappily.
I shot her a look.
“I didn’t know the current status of the company, and to be very frank, I feared that putting out signage might look like a calculated low blow on my behalf.”
Julie rolled her eyes and was about to speak, but I touched her arm, very lightly, and she stood down. Because Laura was right. It would have looked like she was relishing our fall from grace.
I nodded. “I appreciate that, Laura. I’m not sure if you read today’s Sun , but Bill is innocent, and all this is being cleared up as we speak. So, yes, the company is very much going to be back in action.”
The certainty with which I said that shocked even me. And Laura must have bought it because she turned to her friend and said, “Greta, let’s please make sure the Sitterlys’ agreed-upon signage gets hung immediately.”
Greta nodded, proving that, to her immense credit, Laura had told the truth. There had been a lot of talk about what to do with this sticky situation. The signs had obviously been made. I didn’t exactly feel sorry for her, but I did know what it was like to be put in a morally ambiguous position. And, as much as Laura hadn’t made things particularly easy for me lately, I knew she appreciated Bill’s big fat check. And she would want another one. So she would swallow her pride and fix this. Because what was better than publicly humiliating someone? Being the hero who beat the fundraising goal.
“Thank you so much, Laura.” She slipped rhinestone tennis bracelets—quite good ones, in fact—that served as the “tickets” for the evening onto our wrists and said, “I apologize again for the oversight. I will make up for the lost time with an extra mention in the Arts Council newsletter.”
“That would be just great.” I was going for a charitable tone, but I think it bordered on patronizing, which, honestly, was fine.
“I loathe that woman,” Grace said into my ear as we walked toward the bar.
“So do I. But, on the bright side, Laura will rehash that exact conversation—Bill’s innocence and all—to everyone at this party.”
I grabbed a glass of champagne and looked around. I was so caught up in my own mini-drama, I had forgotten to look for my daughter. Her friend Dabney walked by, holding a tray of sweet potato ham biscuits. “You look fabulous,” I said. She did. Predictably. Dabney was one of those beautiful, lithe, shiny people that you wanted to hate, but she was just too sweet. And she wasn’t just teenager shiny. She was forever shiny, would grow from a lovely girl into a bombshell of a woman. You just knew it. She, Chloe, and Iris had picked out matching dresses in pink, yellow, and blue. Dabney was yellow, Chloe blue, Iris pink. They were the cutest little things. I was so happy for my daughter’s supportive friendships. I knew that it was a gift to have a shield from high school girl drama. But I hadn’t known until now how very sustaining female friendships could be. I’d never had any quite this good.
“Not as fabulous as you, Mrs. Sitterly. You’re the talk of the party.”
I laughed, and she put her free hand to her mouth. “I didn’t mean it like that!”
I put my hand to her shoulder. “It’s fine, sweetheart. Thank you. If you see Iris, tell her to embarrass herself for just a moment and come say hello to her humiliating mother.”
Dabney laughed. “Yes, ma’am.” She looked at Grace. “You look beautiful too, Mrs. McDonald.”
Mrs. McDonald did, indeed, look beautiful.
“Would you like me to tell Merit to come find you?”
“I wouldn’t put that on you, Dabney.”
She brightened. “Could you please? Any excuse to talk to Merit.”
Grace pointed at Dabney. “His head is big enough already, thank you very much. I don’t need pretty little things like you fawning over him.”
She smiled and turned as a group of partygoers approached for ham biscuits.
“Is that weird?” I asked. “Having girls love your son like that?”
She nodded. “Yeah, like he was all mine and now I have to share him. But I just want him to be happy.”
“Don’t we all,” I said.
At that moment, there was a visible shift in the energy of the party as a very debonaire Elliott Palmer entered the room. Maybe it’s dramatic to say a hush fell over the crowd, but, well, it did. Juniper Shores’ leading bachelor was back.
“God, I’d forgotten how much I love Belle Epoque,” Grace said.
Despite my discomfort, despite my run-in with Laura, I couldn’t have agreed more.