Chapter 13 #2
Hannah had only ever seen photographs of Natalie’s enormous beachside “cottage” online.
What Natalie called a cottage was, of course, more of a mansion, with enormous, glowing bay windows, three different wings (one of which they seemed only to use for special occasions), two kitchens, and a veranda that stretched extravagantly across one of the most beautiful white beaches Hannah had ever seen.
On the veranda was a long, ornate table, at which sat beautiful Nantucketers, wearing linen and silk and fine fabrics.
Natalie, who was wearing a white dress and a shade of lipstick that suited her perfectly, handed Hannah a glass of orange wine and gushed, “I’m so glad you reached out!
I was wondering when I should introduce you to the gang. ”
The “gang” looked to be twelve people from the area of Siasconset, one of the wealthier areas of Nantucket Island.
Natalie dropped her lips to Hannah’s ear to whisper, “See that guy off to the right? The one in the sweater? He’s single.
And not newly single. Like he’s a single father, and his ex-wife moved to the city four years ago. ”
Hannah knew this meant Natalie wanted to play cupid. She wanted to be the hero, to match one of her friends up with a woman she thought she still knew. Hannah knew, too, that Natalie had thought even further ahead to engagement parties and wedding speeches.
“Go on! Sit by him!” Natalie urged.
“Isn’t that too obvious?” Hannah asked.
“You have to make things happen in this life.” Natalie narrowed her eyes. “I thought that’s why you came to Nantucket in the first place.” There was something sour at the edge of her words.
Hannah decided not to press things. She smiled, raised her glass, and walked over to the table, where she grabbed a seat directly beside the only single man.
He smelled of expensive cologne and hair gel, and he introduced himself as Jim.
Hannah shook his hand. “Hi, Jim,” she said.
“I’m Hannah Moore. I went to college with Natalie. ”
“She was saying!” Jim smiled in a way that made Hannah think he could be really, really mean. Something in his smile reminded her of Kendall. “Tell us. What was Natalie like back in college?”
Natalie laughed on the other side of the table. “Don’t tell him any of my secrets, Hannah!”
Hannah continued to smile. She felt lobotomized. But she knew better than to tell Natalie’s new friends about who Natalie had once been, far more fun, far more intellectual, with a rapid streak that had made her want to party deep into the night.
“She was a wild one!” Hannah teased emptily.
Everyone at the table erupted with laughter.
Hannah felt insane. She sipped her orange wine and watched as all the couples turned to one another to converse, leaving Hannah and Jim to their own devices.
Jim seemed to understand that he was meant to flirt with her.
This touched her heart, if only a little bit. Maybe he was lonely, too.
For a little while, Jim told her about his consulting company, about growing up in Nantucket, about his friendship with Natalie and her handsome husband.
He talked about what it was like to be a single father in a world of single mothers, and said, “Most people give me way too much credit. But single mothers don’t get any of the same credit I do, despite doing the same job as me. ”
This touched Hannah’s heart, too. It was an enormous surprise to find out that Jim was not a bad guy, that he wasn’t even a boring guy. Maybe she wasn’t attracted to him, and maybe she’d come to Natalie’s place with a plan that had nothing to do with falling in love, but that wasn’t Jim’s fault.
Eventually, as stars began to pepper the dark skies above, the party broke up.
Jim had finished his glass of wine long ago, and he looked a little bit cold but too frightened to show it.
There was something blue about his lips.
Hannah fought her urge to put a blanket on his lap.
She cursed herself for letting time pass and not having asked him about the Legacy Club.
“I enjoyed our conversation,” Jim said, sliding his fingers through his hair. The others around them were getting up, buttoning their jackets. “I wonder if you’d like to do this again sometime?”
Hannah bit down on her lower lip and told herself to be brave. Natalie was in deep conversation with a woman who looked almost identical to her, down to the center part in her hair. She knew, in her gut, that Natalie wouldn’t be receptive to questions about the Legacy Club.
So she forced herself to ask Jim, “Do you know anything about a sort of secret club from Nantucket?”
Jim laughed. “Like the sailing club? The country club?”
Hannah shook her head. “I don’t think so. They call themselves the Legacy Club?”
Jim’s face grew shadowed and drawn. Slowly, he got to his feet, as though she repulsed him. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said.
Hannah could tell that he was lying. He had no interest in delving into the truth. “Are you sure? Because I have a feeling…”
“Natalie mentioned that you used to be an investigative journalist,” Jim said. “Maybe I can hook you up with a few of my contacts in the city? They’re always looking for fresh angles.”
“Are they looking for fresh angles on the Legacy Club?” Hannah asked, feeling like a cat playing with a mouse.
“No! Like I said, that doesn’t exist,” he said.
And then he repeated himself yet again. “Nothing like that exists. Really. I wouldn’t lie to you.
But maybe you could cover, I don’t know.
Corruption and fraud in the city. Elections.
Political uprisings? I don’t know. Whatever it is you journalists like to write about.
” He tried to laugh. “To be honest, I haven’t picked up a newspaper in ten years. Haven’t needed to.”
“The money keeps coming in regardless of what’s happening in the rest of the world, huh?
” Hannah said icily, crossing her arms over her chest. If she were a woman who made bets, she would have put down a lot of cash on Jim making money in a Kendall-adjacent way.
Meaning he probably didn’t earn everything he had and took whatever he could and expected not to get caught.
But Hannah had no interest in cornering him. Not today.
“I mean, like I said, I’m a single dad,” he said.
Hannah wanted to roll her eyes. She wanted to ask him how many nannies he had working for him. She wanted to ask who cleaned his house.
All at once, Natalie appeared over the table, her brow furrowed. “Everything okay over here?”
Hannah got up abruptly. “We were talking about the Legacy Club,” she said.
Natalie blinked and blinked, as though trying to decide how to acknowledge this. “As far as I understand it,” she said, “they’re a sinister group of people who don’t have the best interests of this island in mind.”
Jim let his jaw hang.
“Isn’t that right, Jim?” Natalie asked.
Jim seemed unsure what to say. He threw his hands up. “That’s my cue,” he said, before kissing Natalie’s cheek and telling her he had a wonderful time. He was away from the table and off the veranda in less than five seconds, leaving Hannah and Natalie in a face-off.
Hannah’s stomach thrashed. Natalie looked more confused than ever, but her confusion was tinged with anger. Hannah knew she felt that Hannah had messed up her party. But she couldn’t say how or why.
“So you and Jim?” Natalie began.
“He seems great,” Hannah lied. “Give him my number, maybe?”
Natalie nodded in a way that suggested she wouldn’t. “Thanks for coming by, Hannah,” she said. Her voice was like a string.
Hannah hurried out of there, jumped in her car, and drove in no direction in particular, her heart in her throat.
She smashed her hand against the steering wheel, letting out a yelp.
Natalie had done it: she’d confirmed the existence of the Legacy Club.
Beautiful, wonderful Natalie. She’d messed up Jim’s commitment not to say a thing.
But why was Jim so cagey about the club? Why didn’t anyone want to talk about it?
Eventually, Hannah wound her way to the harbor, where she parked not far from the burger restaurant she knew that Minnie and Viggo had gone to earlier.
She was hungry but too fidgety to sit down anywhere, so she roamed the boardwalk, her hands in her pockets, people-watching.
The temperature had dropped to the low sixties, which felt refreshing and cleared her mind.
All she could think about was the Legacy Club. Was it possible that she’d stepped right into one of the more interesting stories of her career, all by chance?
Did she deserve that kind of luck?
She imagined cracking the code of the Legacy Club (something that felt like a given, as she knew how to follow stories and make people talk).
She imagined writing the article and selling it to the highest bidder.
The New York Times? The Washington Post?
The Times? She’d be interviewed on major news channels.
Maybe she’d get a prestigious position at a newspaper somewhere.
They’d sell the crummy beach house and be done with this place.
Minnie would hate her for taking her away from Viggo, that was true. Hannah’s heart sank at that.
But before she could fall deeper into that narrative, she heard her name. “Hannah?”
She turned to find the harbor master, dressed in his Carhartt coat, his hair mussed from a long day in full blast of the winds off the Nantucket Sound.
She hadn’t seen Julien since the funeral all those weeks ago, although of course her mind had returned to him over and over.
There had been something so solitary about him.
Lonely, maybe. But poetic and intriguing, too.
“Julien!” She surprised herself with how happy she sounded.
“How is everything?” Julien asked.
Hannah laughed again. “Fine. I mean, sort of fine. Still settling in.”
Julien nodded knowingly. He looked like he had to head off somewhere. She hoped she wasn’t making him uncomfortable.
“Listen,” Hannah said, taking yet another chance, “can I ask you a question?”
“Sure thing. I can answer anything about the harbor and boats. I know some stuff about whales, too,” Julien said. He smiled.
Hannah laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind. But actually, I wanted to know if you have any information about something called the Legacy Club?”
Julien wasn’t an actor. He wasn’t like Jim in that he could fix his face and manipulate whoever he spoke with. He turned a strange shade of gray, then green, and muttered, “You know what? The name rings a bell, but I really don’t think I can help you.”
With that, Julien said he had to run, that he had tasks to tend to, and he turned and basically ran away from her, escaping to the opposite side of the harbor. Hannah smiled to herself.
It wasn’t every day a man as large as Julien ran away in fright.