6. Blair
— ? —
Blair
The Bellcliff Cup was Newport’s annual opportunity to watch grown men revert to teenage boys with expensive toys.
I usually loved it. The pageantry, the picnics spread across the manicured lawn, the way the whole town turned out in their nautical best to pretend they understood sailing terminology they’d googled that morning.
The wives gathered on the club terrace with champagne and binoculars, cheering for boats they couldn’t tell apart while the men shouted about wind direction and tacking angles.
Henry had been talking about it for weeks.
He’d been practicing his binocular technique in the garden, scanning the hydrangea hedge for imaginary boats.
He’d made a list of snacks he intended to demand from the refreshment tent, complete with rankings and backup options.
He was seven years old and already approaching life with the strategic planning of a military commander.
But standing on the yacht club terrace that morning, watching Will prep Second Wind with a focus that bordered on manic, I had a bad feeling I couldn’t shake.
The harbor was busy with activity. Crews scrambled across decks, adjusting rigging and checking lines.
Sails snapped in the breeze, bright white against the blue sky.
The smell of salt and sunscreen hung in the air, mixing with the coffee and pastries being served at the refreshment station behind me.
Will was on his boat, directing his crew with clipped commands. His movements were too sharp. His shoulders too rigid. He hadn’t looked at me once since we’d arrived, had barely spoken to me on the drive over, and I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong.
Or maybe I could. Maybe I knew exactly what I’d done wrong, and I just didn’t want to admit it.
“Mommy.” Henry tugged my hand. “Can I have a flag?”
“What kind of flag?”
“A Daddy flag. For when he wins. So he can see us cheering.”
“We’ll find you a flag.”
“With his name on it?”
“We’ll see what they have.”
I spotted one of the other mothers near the merchandise tent, a woman whose name I vaguely remembered from school pickup. She waved, and I waved back, grateful for the excuse to step away from the terrace and the view of my husband’s tense shoulders.
“Can you keep an eye on Henry for a few minutes?” I asked her. “I need to check on something.”
“Of course. He can help my boys pick out flags.”
Henry was already racing toward the tent, his earlier request forgotten in the excitement of joining forces with his friends. I watched him go, this small person who had no idea that his parents’ marriage was cracking apart around him.
I didn’t make it far.
Near the club veranda, half hidden by a topiary and the crush of guests in their regatta whites, Charles Vanderford II had his son cornered.
I stopped where I was. Charles wasn’t touching him.
He never needed to. He simply stood too close, his voice pitched low and pleasant, and Trip had gone rigid the way a man goes rigid when a blade is resting somewhere he can’t see.
“Seven years in Europe,” Charles was saying, swirling his drink. “And you come home with no wife, no prospects, and a great deal you seem reluctant to discuss. People are beginning to ask what my son was doing over there. I would hate to have to find out from someone other than you.”
“There’s nothing to find out.”
“There’s always something to find out, Trip. The only question is who does the finding.” Charles smiled at a passing couple, all warmth, then let it drop the instant they were gone. “Whatever it is, end it. Quietly. Before it ends you.”
He walked off before Trip could answer, and I watched my best friend stand very still and breathe like breathing was a skill he’d had to relearn.
I started toward him. Then I saw where Charles had gone.
He crossed the terrace to a cluster of women near the champagne table and bent to kiss Catherine Beaumont on the cheek.
My mother-in-law. She laughed at whatever he murmured, laid a manicured hand on his arm, tipped her head close the way people do when they’re trading a confidence they don’t want overheard.
The two of them had known each other for forty years.
Same clubs, same boards, same appetite for other people’s business.
Whatever Catherine knew by Sunday, Charles knew by Monday, and whatever Charles wanted known, Catherine carried through Newport like a collection plate.
And I understood, cold and complete, exactly why I could never let this secret near my husband.
Not because Will would betray Trip on purpose.
Because Will told his mother things. Because his mother told Charles everything.
One slip, one careless word over a lunch I wasn’t in the room for, and the man who had just threatened his own son on a sunlit veranda would have everything he needed.
Then I turned back to the dock.
I needed to see Will. Needed to talk to him, to understand what was happening, to find some way to bridge the distance that had been growing between us for weeks. Maybe if I could just explain, just make him understand that whatever he thought he’d seen wasn’t what it looked like.
But Will was already casting off. The sails were going up on Second Wind, and his crew was moving with practiced efficiency. I was too late.
Across the harbor, Trip was prepping Gilded Lady with considerably more chaos.
His crew was laughing at some joke, and Trip was gesturing dramatically, probably telling some outrageous story about a sailing disaster in the Mediterranean.
He caught my eye and waved, and I waved back, and I saw Will’s head turn to follow the exchange.
His jaw tightened.
Normal, I told myself. This is all normal. They’re competing in a race. That’s all this is.
Except it wasn’t.
I knew it wasn’t the moment the starting horn sounded and both boats surged forward into the harbor.
The race started badly and got worse.
For the first leg, Will and Trip held their positions in the middle of the fleet, nothing remarkable, nothing noteworthy.
The boats spread out across the water, colorful sails catching the wind, the crowd on the terrace murmuring with excitement.
I found my way back to the viewing area, accepting a glass of champagne I had no intention of drinking, trying to look like a woman enjoying a summer sporting event.
The first mark came and went without incident.
The boats rounded it in a cluster, jockeying for position, and I started to think maybe I’d been worried for nothing.
Maybe Will was just tense about the race.
Maybe the distance between us had nothing to do with Trip, nothing to do with the secrets I was keeping.
Then they reached the second mark.
I saw it happen through my binoculars. Trip’s boat angling closer to Will’s than it needed to be, cutting across his line in a way that forced Will to adjust course. A move that was aggressive. Unnecessary. The kind of thing competitors did when they wanted to provoke a reaction.
Will reacted.
He cut inside, too tight, forcing Trip to adjust in turn. The two boats were suddenly much too close, their paths converging, the fleet pulling ahead while they focused entirely on each other.
“What are they doing?” someone murmured behind me.
I didn’t answer. I was too busy watching the disaster unfold.
They stopped racing the course. That was the only way to describe it. They stopped racing toward the finish and started racing against each other. Luffing. Blocking. Forcing each other off the wind, maneuvering for position that had nothing to do with winning and everything to do with dominance.
My stomach dropped.
“Is that the Beaumont boat?” another voice asked. “And the Vanderford? Are they trying to hit each other?”
“It’s a sailing competition, not a demolition derby,” someone else laughed. “Though with those two, who knows.”
I lowered my binoculars because I couldn’t watch through magnification anymore. Couldn’t stand the close-up view of my husband and my best friend turning a sailboat race into a private, dangerous grudge match.
The fleet had pulled well ahead. Neither of them seemed to notice. Neither seemed to care about winning anymore. They were circling each other, cutting and blocking, their crews shouting warnings that went ignored.
“They’re going to hit,” a woman near me said.
I gripped the railing of the terrace, my knuckles going white. The champagne glass was still in my other hand, forgotten, the bubbles going flat.
At the final mark, it happened.
Trip cut too close. Will refused to yield.
For one terrible, suspended moment, both boats seemed to hang in space, sails luffing, hulls on a collision course.
I heard shouts from both crews, saw men scrambling for handholds, saw the exact instant when physics took over and human decision-making became irrelevant.
They went over.
Both of them. At the same time. Sails collapsing into the water, hulls rolling, spray exploding into the air. The crowd on the terrace gasped. Someone screamed. And I was running before I knew I’d moved.
Down the terrace steps. Across the manicured lawn.
Past the refreshment tent where Henry was, thank God, distracted by a balloon vendor and the friend he was playing with.
He didn’t see his father’s boat capsize.
Didn’t see me running toward the dock with my heart trying to escape through my throat.
I pushed through the crowd that was already gathering, the spectators who had rushed down to the waterfront for a better view. The rescue boats were launching, motors roaring to life, heading toward the capsized vessels at full speed.
“Will,” I breathed. “Will, please. Please be okay.”
The water was churning where the boats had gone over. I could see figures in the water, swimming toward the rescue boats, and I scanned desperately for Will’s face, his dark hair, anything that would tell me he was alive.