Chapter 11
Chef Russ’s brownies are, as advertised, delicious, and after eating too many to count, I return to my room to rinse off the thick, white sunscreen that makes me look like the ghost of Stella Olsen.
With the amount of Latina blood in my veins, I should be a little more burn resistant.
But my mosquito bites are only just starting to fade.
I don’t need to add sunburn to my list of ailments.
Arthur and Patricia are arriving soon, and in a pitiful effort to blend in, I throw on one of the tired outfits I’ve brought on board—a faded blue sundress that hasn’t seen the light of day in years.
Honestly, it’s a miracle I still own any summer clothes at all.
I don’t remember the last time I wore anything other than wool sweaters or jeans and a blazer.
After a quick attempt to tame my curly mop of hair that ends up, as it usually does, being relegated to a ponytail, I head to the salon to wait for Harry’s parents.
When my head emerges from the stairwell, the stress is immediately palpable.
Gia and Allie are running around like headless chickens, folding blankets and wreaking havoc with dusters that probably get more action than Matthew.
Remi is outside on the deck, furiously polishing the handrails that were already sparklier than Jules’s blueberry-sized engagement ring.
Matthew and Harry perch at the bar, the latter violently scrolling on his iPad so quickly he can’t possibly be reading anything.
The message is clear—vacation time is over. The wolves are about to descend.
“Don’t mention her brow lift,” Harry instructs Matthew without looking at him. “It’s swollen and it’s still a little lopsided. And whatever you do, do not bring up the Wolf News fiasco.”
“You think I want to lose an eye?” Matthew asks. “Since when have I ever brought up business in like… any situation?”
“Fair point,” Harry concedes, and I make a mental note to google whatever they’re talking about later. When Harry sees me, he practically leaps out of his chair.
“Oh, Stella! Good. Can you go check on your sister? She’s supposed to be up here in five minutes, but time management isn’t really her strong suit.”
“You’re telling me,” I smile. “I’ll make sure she’s coming.”
I’m all too happy to get as far from this tornado of tension as possible. I head back downstairs and knock softly on Jules’s cabin door, but when she doesn’t answer, I shove it open.
“Jules? Harry is—“
“This is a disaster!” She interrupts, sprinting past me from her bathroom to the walk-in closet.
“Ok,” I say calmly as she she shuffles through a drawer full of neatly organized jewelry, her hair still pinned back with two oversized curlers. “What can I help with?”
She turns on me suddenly, a silver hairclip clutched in her hand like a weapon.
“Stella, why aren’t you dressed?”
I look down at my fully-clothed body.
“I… am?”
She sighs, pulling out a pair of emerald chandelier earrings.
“Your dress is so wrinkly!” she says. “You didn’t ask Gia to steam it for you?”
“Uh… no? Should I?”
“No time!” she gasps. “Arthur and Patricia will be here in ten minutes, and my makeup looks like shit, and my hair is a wreck—“
She holds up a handful of her lovely dark hair like she means to rip it out.
“Jules.” I grab her shoulders. “Deep breaths.”
A look of annoyance crosses her face before she reluctantly takes the aforementioned breaths.
“Relax,” I tell her. “It’s Harry’s mom, not Oprah. You’ve already met her a dozen times.”
“I know. But not as a fiancée. I just want to make sure I make a good impression. She’s always so polite, but...”
So polite. So are vipers when they’re not hungry.
I’ve almost never heard Jules say a bad word about anyone, and if she’s afraid of Patricia, there must be a reason.
She’s too trusting, too willing to overlook red flags.
It’s a miracle she ended up with someone as kind as Harry and not some jerk like, well, Caleb.
“Jules, you can say it! I’m not going to tell her.”
“Sometimes… sometimes I swear she looks at me like I’m some uncultured farm girl who’s come to steal her first-born son.”
Go, Jules!
“Well, you’re not uncultured,” I tell her. “You’re a brilliant, badass woman with a successful business of your own. And you look beautiful. As always.”
I take the earrings from her hand and slide them through her ears.
“You don’t need to stress. Harry adores you. Honestly, there’s not a person in this world who wouldn’t. I’m sure Patricia’s just… slow to warm.”
I hope my assurance sounds genuine enough to calm her down. The first part I believe wholeheartedly: Jules is the furthest thing from a gold digger I could imagine. But the second?
I did my research on Patricia the second I found out Jules was engaged.
While Arthur Warren Senior started as a small-time attorney before building his company from scratch, Patricia comes from a line of steel moguls so long, it could probably reach outer space.
My sister’s future mother-in-law is as blue blood as they come.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s plotting to have my sister and I both thrown to the sharks.
“Thanks, Stelly,” she says. “You’re right! As usual. I’m sure it’s all in my head.”
She looks down at the wrinkled hem of my dress.
“Could you at least try and steam the bottom—“
“Jules.”
“Sorry. It’s fine.”
When she’s finally ready, Harry calls for each of us to assemble.
The whole crew is already waiting silently in their crisp uniforms—Jim even looks like he’s oiled his mustache.
But why are we waiting for the tender on the foredeck?
I notice that the lounge chairs have been cleared away to create a large open space.
“Are Arthur and Patricia arriving by parachute?” I joke quietly to Steven, but he just nods his head upwards towards the island to our right.
Before I see the elder Warrens descending towards the Vela Bianca, I hear them.
A steady whir from the south draws my eye to a black dot on the horizon that’s racing towards us.
You’ve got to be kidding me. Because it’s not enough to take a private jet across the world, Arthur and Patricia are aiming for the trifecta of ridiculous transportation by touching down on their yacht with a helicopter.
The whir gets louder as it hovers above us, and I try to hold my hair as the chopper touches down, creating a vibration across the ship that I’m sure can be felt by even the sea cucumbers wriggling on the ocean floor.
The blades come to a stop and Jim rushes up to open the door for a white- haired fossil of a man.
“Ahoy!” Arthur Warren shouts as he steps onto the deck.
I’ve never met the patriarch of the Warren dynasty, but Mer and I have spent enough time googling Harry’s father to know exactly what he looks like.
Although he’s traded in the suits I’ve seen him photographed in for a pineapple-themed Hawaiian shirt and a pair of Maui Jims, Arthur Warren is unmistakable.
He has the same thick brows and sturdy jaw as both his sons, albeit with more than a few extra wrinkles.
But despite his hunched soldiers and visibly knobby knees, he disembarks from the chopper so effortlessly you’d think he was Fred Astaire.
“Good to see you, Dad,” Harry shakes his father’s hand in a mechanical gesture—the kind that has me wondering if these two have ever exchanged a compliment in their lives, let alone “I love you”s.
“Harry.”
Arthur Warren looks so old he may or may not have his own exhibit in the Smithsonian.
From what I can tell, he must not have had his boys until his early fifties.
Immediately he strikes me as the kind of man who calls flight attendants “sweetheart,” (or would, if he ever had the misfortune of taking a commercial flight), and plasters his name on museum wings and university buildings like a six-year-old with a sharpie. But it’s not Arthur I’m worried about.
It’s his wife.
Everyone falls quiet as Patricia Warren appears in the chopper doorframe like an incognito movie star.
In all the photos I’ve scrolled in morbid fascination prior to this trip, I’ve yet to see her miss an opportunity to dress in black from head to toe: Chanel, Versace, Balenciaga.
I think it’s her way of reminding the world that she’s always prepared for a funeral, and if you’re not careful, it could be yours.
She shakes out her silver bob and pushes her sunglasses onto her head. As soon as she sets her Ferragamo pump on the deck, she’s swarmed by green-clad crew members.
I guess the outdoor shoes rule doesn’t apply to the owners.
“Great to see you, Mom!” Harry pushes through, planting a kiss on her cheek. Patricia waves her hands to the side as if swatting flies.
“Yes, yes—we’ve arrived, no thanks to your father. Please, Harry, try not to cut off all my air flow.”
Everyone steps back except Matthew, who never bothered to get out of his chair in the first place.
“My, my Matthew,” she says, holding out her hand for him to kiss like some HBO princess. “How tan you’ve gotten. Must have been all that time wasting your father’s money in St. Barths.”
“You’re looking well, Mom. Is that formaldehyde I smell?”
I look on in horror until both of them burst out laughing: tense, pitchy cackles that might just as easily be battle cries as signs of amusement.
I may not be an expert on mother/son dynamics, but this seems… unusual.
“Hi Patricia!” Jules summons her most excited octave. Patricia gives Jules and me both air kisses through a cloud of Chanel perfume, but I can tell she’s sizing us up beneath her dark glasses.
“Jules. You’re looking very… colorful,” she offers, taking in Jules’s tropical teal wrap dress. I watch the way Jules’s expression falls, just a little, as she hears it.
“And you must be Stella. What a lovely surprise. Jules told us you were going to be stuck working.”
She says working the way one might say pole dancing or committing arson.
“She managed to get some time off,” Jules smiles. “It’s about time, with all that work she’s been putting in on her dissertation.”
My stomach shrivels. Please don’t ask about my disaster of a dissertation. But in my second stroke of luck today, Patricia is completely uninterested.
“It’s lovely to—"
“God, it’s hot here,” she interrupts me as she pulls out a hand-painted fan from her pocket. “I told you we should have started in Monaco. Whose idea was it to come to the Pacific?”
“Maybe you wouldn’t be so hot if you wore anything but black,” Arthur mutters as he joins us.
She’s got to be a good fifteen years younger than her husband, but it’s hard to tell considering how little her face moves when she speaks.
She glares at him, daring him to say another word. He, sensibly, abstains.
“Welcome aboard, Sir,” Caleb says, clasping Arthur’s hand in his. “How was your trip?”
“I bet the helicopter ride was beautiful!” Jules chimes in.
“Not really,” Patricia says. “All these islands start to look the same after a while.”
She holds her purse out at arm’s length, dangling it by the strap as if to toss it overboard. Within seconds Gia is behind her, scooping it up and clutching it to her chest.
“Can I get you anything to drink, Patricia?”
“Actually—“ Arthur pipes in. Patricia puts up her hand.
“Arthur will have a soda water. He has a call before lunch that he’ll be taking in the office.”
I watch in horrified fascination as Jim unloads several tons of matching leather luggage from the helicopter before we’re ushered back down to the salon.
Once inside, Patricia fixes her harpy eyes on me and drags them from my mosquito-bitten legs to my sunburnt shoulders.
She grabs a piece of my frizzy brown hair and examines it like a biologist with an exotic insect.
“Oh dear, did they lose your suitcase?” she gasps with unwarranted concern. “You simply can’t fly commercial these days. You know, there are hairbrushes in the medicine cabinet. And the boys will happily go ashore and fetch you anything you want from the resort boutiques—all you have to do is ask.”
My cheeks redden as my hair flops back down to my shoulder. Before I can open my mouth, Jules grabs my hand ever so subtly.
I take the hint and zip my mouth shut.
I was right about keeping things buttoned up once Harry’s parents arrived—this is no relaxed family vacation. It’s a trial for Jules and, by proxy, me. From now on, I’m going to have to keep my head down, my mouth closed, and my eyes on anything but Caleb’s forearms.
Nine more days.
I can do anything for nine days.