Chapter 21
Katie
By the time Meredith Bradford opened the front door to her zillion-dollar home around three that afternoon, I had forgotten
pretty much every reason I’d wanted to stay in Manhattan and, instead, replaced all my thoughts with one long and audible
gasp.
“Come on in,” she said, waving me through the foyer and into a sweeping and sun-swirled great room. Pinot, as usual, was in
her arms. “Maurice will handle your bags. I’ve just put out tea.”
I nodded, taking a few more steps inside. My mouth, agape. French doors and colonial-style windows were flung open everywhere,
and a warm sea breeze flooded the space, blowing past crisp linen sofas, thick oak coffee tables, and bright white walls adorned
with the kind of art that belonged in museums. A set of stairs—deep-stained hardwood with matching handrails—disappeared into
two separate wings. Orbs of glass and oil-rubbed bronze gave hints of soft yellow light and hung from impossibly high ceilings,
whose beams had been left perfectly exposed.
“Was the drive not too bad?” Meredith asked as she led me into the kitchen, all stainless steel, marble, and cream. Hand-painted
plates posed on floating shelves, and on the island’s gleaming countertops, a three-tiered tray teemed with miniature sandwiches,
cookies, and cakes. Iced tea steeped. The dishwasher hummed. “Do you like dill? We’ve had so much in the garden lately.”
“Oh, it—The drive was great. Dill is great.”
Meredith chuckled, shifting the tea tower a fraction of an inch.
Beyond the breakfast nook, through a glossy white arch, was a sliver of a dining room: glistening mahogany, black spindle chairs, and soft blue hydrangeas spilling out of a simple, centered vase.
The arches, I realized, were everywhere.
A dozen cutouts into smaller, cozier spaces, each its own perfect shade of ivory or beige or taupe, and with fireplaces, pin-striped armchairs, and rugs that made the room without you having noticed them at all.
“I set you up in the west wing,” Meredith said, filling a beveled glass with ice, then pouring tea nearly to its brim. She
clanked a silver spoon into a crystal sugar bowl and offered me a scoop. “It’s the last door upstairs, all the way to the
right. Why don’t you have a bite to eat, get settled, and then I’ll show you around. I have a little plotting to do, but it
shouldn’t take more than an hour.”
I nodded, taking a sip of my tea. It was perfect: bright and slightly sweet. “That sounds great. Thank you. I can’t believe
this.”
“It’s my pleasure, Katie,” she said as Pinot, who’d been off somewhere, swooshed back into view and into Meredith’s arms.
She petted him, top of his head to the tip of his tail, and he purred blissfully. “We are both so glad you’re here.”
My room was outrageous. A king-size upholstered bed, blown-glass lamps on mirrored nightstands, and a ceiling that accentuated the sharp lines of the gabled roof.
Two glass doors with matching windows on either side led to a private deck featuring unobstructed views of the pool, its nearby cottage, the surrounding gardens, and the ocean that roared behind it.
Attached to my room, through another one of those high-gloss archways, was a sitting area with an ivory chaise, a writing desk, and a wall lined with black-and-white photos of horses midair.
I had a feeling they were very expensive. The horses, and the art.
My bags—all sixteen of them—had been placed in the closet, a walk-in off the bathroom suite: marble and chrome, but softened
by rattan accents, plush towels, and dangling eucalyptus. I took a screaming hot, twenty-minute shower, slathered myself in
a thousand dollars’ worth of French skincare products, slipped into a blue-and-white-pin-striped robe, then collapsed face
down onto my very fluffy bed and squealed.
I didn’t even bother to open my laptop. The edits, I decided, could wait. Instead, after thirty more minutes of lying around,
I tossed on a sundress and padded downstairs into the great room. Meredith was perched on one side of a linen sectional, flipping
through a Horchow catalog while Pinot napped at her feet. She glanced up.
“Did you find everything you needed?”
“Yes,” I said. “This is really so nice. Thank you.”
Meredith tipped her head toward the opposite end of the couch. I sat down, taking it all in. The coffee table books. The vases,
the woodwork, the way the summer air swept through the room. How the sparkling afternoon sun flooded the gleaming hardwood
in bright, shimmering streaks. Meredith put down her reading, then lowered her glasses onto the bridge of her nose. Above
her, I swear, hung a Rothko.
“Can I ask you a question, Katie?”
“Oh, okay,” I said. “Of course.”
“Selma mentioned your parents live in Westchester, but you did not wish to stay with them. Why is that?”
I fiddled with the fringe of a cashmere throw blanket. “My parents are . . . I was just there last weekend, and . . .”
She was quiet for a moment. I was too.
“Are you not close with your family?” she said.
“No, I am, it’s just . . .” I wrapped my arms around my elbows. “Well, I mean, I don’t know. It just didn’t make sense to
stay there. It’s really a lot for them, and . . .”
Meredith looked at me for a moment, then handed me her catalog. She reached for another and thumbed it open but said nothing.
I studied an eight-thousand-dollar triptych of botanical sketches on the glossy-but-fading page, desperate to fill the silence.
“Does anyone else live here?” I said. “You have a daughter, right? The equestrian? Does she ever come to visit?”
“It has been a very long time,” Meredith said, “since anyone I’ve truly loved has been behind these gates.”
I nodded, trying to keep my gaze down. Trying to pretend I hadn’t heard the crack in her voice—or seen her eyes begin to fill
with tears.
Thirty minutes later, Meredith was giving me a tour of the house. We started downstairs, winding our way through the formal
dining room, the wine room, and the other wine room. Next, we wandered east across the great room, through several smaller
living spaces, and into a screening room, a ballet studio, and a gleaming, if slightly dated, gym. After that, we headed upstairs
to a towering library, a sun-filled parlor, and the succulent-studded, ocean-framing meditation deck just outside it.
“This is incredible,” I said. “I can’t believe you actually live here.”
She smiled, then led me back downstairs and onto the veranda, where a wisteria-drenched pergola spanned the length of the house.
Beneath that dense ceiling of lilac and green, which I’d seen only from afar three weeks back, was a long slab of oak offering seating for at least thirty.
Beside the dining area was an outdoor fireplace, a bar, and several conversation sets, each intimately situated and in perfect condition.
Parallel to all this was a stone-paved deck that played host to a massive, pristine pool: perhaps twenty-five yards of soft, rippling blue.
Chaise longues lined the water on either side, white and teak and fashioned with ridiculously plump, periwinkle-striped towels.
To the pool’s right was a small cottage: dark shingles, white shutters, and violets bursting from window boxes.
And to the left, as far back as I could see, perhaps ten acres away and barely noticeable behind a thousand dense and mature oaks, was a sliver of something.
I had to squint to make it out, but it was there. A few roof tiles, the tip of a chimney.
Meredith followed my line of sight but said nothing. Silently, she led me past the pool and back through the lush, lavender-lined
gardens we’d walked that first day until we were climbing the stairs over the dunes. The Atlantic was glistening.
She turned back toward the estate, whose first story—the gardens and terraces and flung-open windows—had disappeared behind
the hedges. The top level, visible but suddenly nondescript. Just another mansion, scraping the sky.
Meredith’s house, I’d learned from online aerial footage I’d scoured during the drive, was the last of any beachfront property in Southampton.
The easternmost edge of her twenty-five-acre lot blended seamlessly into protected woods, ponds, and marsh for another half mile, while the pristine shoreline that paralleled the land carried on and on until it eventually turned into Watermill Beach, a parking lot, and then Bridgehampton, where another string of hedge-hidden estates began again.
“You’re welcome to make yourself at home here,” Meredith said as we made our way to the water. Both of us, barefoot. The sand
was soft and warm; the beach, empty. “My house is your house. Make coffee, burn popcorn, write in the library, in the kitchen,
on the terrace. Play tennis. Use the spa. Swim. Anything you want or need that you cannot find, just let me know.”
I nodded. “Thank you. This is—”
“That house you saw,” she said. “That’s the carriage house. I write there. It is the only part of the property that is off-limits.
Nobody is to enter at any time. It is only for me. Do you understand?”
I nodded again, swallowing. A cold sweat had crept across the back of my neck, but I wiped it away. Meredith had always been
a notoriously private writer, even in her twenties, before she grew reclusive. Of course she drafted alone. Of course she
kept an office, kept her own space.
Meredith turned to the ocean and stared straight out into the horizon. She was searching for something, it seemed. Squinting.
Straining.
“This is the most beautiful home I’ve ever seen,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “And the loneliest place on earth.”