Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
T o Sylvie’s surprise, she ran into Hilary Salt on the boardwalk the following morning.
They were out in spandex and sports bras and tennis shoes, cranking out long and arduous miles before the sun got too high and the day got away from them.
Ordinarily, Sylvie ignored other runners, eager to fall into her own runner’s high, but Hilary refused to be ignored.
(After all, she was the mother and daughter of two of the most famous people alive.) She waved both arms and stopped short.
“This is a surprise!” Hilary said. “I love to meet a fellow runner.”
Caught off guard, Sylvie said, “Oh, hi!” She put her hands on her hips, nervous under the spell of Hilary’s smile. “How was the rest of your night?”
“Your father knew how to throw a party,” Hilary said. “The entire island ended up coming out. Even my fiancé came, and he hates crowds.”
My father threw the party of a lifetime. Did he do it to spite me? Sylvie wondered.
“I saw you with some of your girlfriends,” Sylvie remembered.
“Ah! My Salt Sisters,” Hilary said. “It’s what we call ourselves.”
Sylvie couldn’t imagine having as many friends as that, keeping track of their stories, their opinions, and their heartaches. Was Sylvie capable of loving that many people at once? How was Hilary so capable? Was she a superhuman?
“Actually, I was thinking of inviting you out with us tonight,” Hilary said.
“Oh. Um.” Sylvie turned to look at the ocean, her head spinning.
“We’re just going to that little wine bar by the harbor,” Hilary said.
“Tiff’s? It’s so cute. We’re only going out for one or two, and we always share the most divine cheese plate while we’re there.
” Hilary shifted her weight and continued to look at Sylvie.
“The thing about the Salt Sisters is, we’ve all lost someone.
We’ve all encountered incredible sorrow.
We’re there to support each other. We’re there to lift each other up. ”
Sylvie was quiet for a moment. The wind ruffled her hair. “I don’t know if I can support anyone right now.”
“Of course not. You’re in the thick of it. You’re grieving,” Hilary said, touching her shoulder.
Sylvie wanted to protest. She wanted to say that she wasn’t grieving, per se, because she and her father hadn’t been close.
But everything in her life felt upside down.
Maybe she was grieving the life with Graham she hadn’t been allowed to have.
Perhaps she was grieving Mike. Maybe she was grieving her beautiful life in Manhattan.
Her sorrows spun with possibilities.
“Let me pick you up tonight,” Hilary said. “I promise you won’t regret it.”
Sylvie couldn’t believe it, but she said, “Okay.”
At seven thirty that evening, Hilary pulled up in front of the hotel in a baby-blue Mustang.
Sylvie hurried out of the foyer, feeling like a loser high schooler getting attention from the most popular girl at school.
But Hilary didn’t treat her like that. It was almost as though they’d known one another a lot longer than twenty-four hours, almost as though Hilary was eager to make space for Sylvie, no matter what. It boggled Sylvie’s mind.
But when they reached the wine bar, things began to make sense.
“Girls, this is Sylvie Bruckson. I’ve been talking about her nonstop,” Hilary said.
“Oh! The famous journalist!” one of the girls said, standing up to shake her hand.
“I’m so sorry for your loss, Sylvie,” another said.
Sylvie hated all this attention. Her cheeks steamed. Hilary thinks I’m worth something because of my articles, she thought as she sat down, crossing her ankles. She’ll realize I’m boring and ditch me soon.
“Sylvie, these are my dearest friends, a few of the Salt Sisters,” Hilary said, introducing a blond-haired beauty named Stella, a whip-smart woman named Robby, an event planner named Tina, and a chatty and hilarious woman named Rose.
Sylvie remembered that each of the Salt Sisters had lost someone. But each of the women before her glowed with money and goodwill and humor and life. It was hard to imagine they’d ever encountered a single bad hair day, let alone a heavy depression.
Hilary ordered for the table: plenty of bottles of wine and platters of cheese. The women were still fixated on Sylvie, probably because she was the one they didn’t yet know, and they wanted to be polite. That, or they wanted to dig. Maybe it was a bit of both.
“How is it to be back on the island after so long?” Rose asked, furrowing her brow.
“It’s strange,” Sylvie answered.
“Tell us,” Hilary said, the tip of her finger against her forehead, “when was the last time you saw Graham Ellis?”
The woman’s eyes widened. Sylvie looked down. Never in her life had she talked to anyone about Graham Ellis. Never had she had girlfriends with whom she could share such things.
“Oh, I mean. I haven’t seen him since I left Nantucket,” she said.
Rose whistled low and long.
“We saw you together last night at the wake,” Stella said. “I was like, something happened between them.”
“That chemistry between you!” Tina cried. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Sylvie’s cheeks burned. The server arrived with glasses of wine, and Sylvie took a longer sip than necessary. Maybe if she finished her glass, she could get out of there sooner rather than later. Perhaps she could make up some excuse.
“You said you used to stage protests together? As teenagers?” Hilary recalled.
Sylvie grimaced and looked out the window, her mind’s eye flooding with precious images of her and Graham’s early days as idealistic protesters. How she loved the planet! How she loved him!
“We did,” Sylvie said finally.
Hilary suddenly looked reticent. “Goodness, we’re overbearing, aren’t we?”
Hilary and the other Salt Sisters looked down at their slices of cheese and bread with regret.
“The last thing I wanted after my husband passed was for people to pester me like this,” Robby said, her hand in a fist. “I hope you’ll accept my apology, Sylvie.”
The other Salt Sisters rushed to apologize, too.
Sylvie was stricken. She didn’t come from a world where apologies were immediate like this.
She put down her glass of wine and looked Hilary in the eye again.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’m not used to talking to people about myself.
Usually, I’m the journalist, interviewing somebody else rather than the other way around. ”
“That makes total sense,” Hilary said.
There was a moment of silence. Sylvie picked up a slab of cheese and put it on her tongue, then closed her eyes immediately, overwhelmed with the nutty and complex flavors.
“Oh my goodness,” she said, surprising herself. “That’s the best cheese I’ve ever had.”
Hilary laughed, and the other Salt Sisters joined in. There was an aura of goodwill. Sylvie relaxed into it.
“Tell me about yourselves,” Sylvie asked as a peace offering.
She needed to feel safe with them.
They went one after another, explaining to Sylvie the devastations they’d gone through and how they’d found themselves on the other side.
Many of their ex-husbands had done horrible things, or were dead, or had both done horrible things and also died, but many of them had met men who’d made them fall back in love again, men who’d repaired the complex wounds in their hearts and helped them move forward.
“But we also have each other to thank for that,” Hilary said.
“I would have been nothing without you guys,” Rose affirmed. “Hilary even let me live with her for a little while. About a million years ago.”
“Most everyone lives at Hilary’s at one time or another,” Stella said.
Hilary tilted her head knowingly. “You’re staying at that little hotel downtown?”
“Uh-oh. Here we go!” Rose teased.
Sylvie laughed and waved her hand. “I can always stay at my dad’s inn or the house next door.”
“Both places are filled with bad memories and dust,” Hilary said. “If you want a place to crash, you better call me. I have plenty of room.”
“It’s like heaven on earth,” Rose said. “Do yourself a favor.”
Sometime midway through Sylvie’s second glass of wine, she found herself telling the Salt Sisters about Mike. It felt funny to bring him up first, rather than her father, but it also felt easier, like something more easily digested.
“We were supposed to go out for drinks to celebrate this silly award I’m getting,” she said.
“He said he’d make reservations, the whole thing.
I went out to meet him and found that he didn’t make reservations like he had said.
So I sit around, waiting like an idiot. That’s when I got the call about my dad, by the way. ”
“No!” Hilary smacked her hands over her mouth.
“Yes.” Sylvie sighed. “I went out to hail a cab, and Mike runs up to me. He’s like, we need to talk.
I can barely think straight. So we go back to my place.
During the entire cab ride, I thought I was going to throw up.
When we get upstairs, he decides to pour me a glass of wine and ask me if I’m all right.
I still don’t know what’s going on! Of course, I’m not all right!
So then, he breaks down. Apparently, while I was in Thailand, working… ”
“Saving the planet, more like!” Rose interjected.
“Ha. Maybe. But apparently, around then, he ran into an old fling from college,” Sylvie said.
“No!” Hilary cried.
“They started hanging out, going for drinks, whatever. He said he didn’t think it was a big deal.
They walked down memory lane. Who doesn’t like to do that?
But when he came out to visit me in Thailand, he apparently couldn’t stop thinking about her.
He started to really think that maybe she was the one he was supposed to be with.
That all that time we were together didn’t mean anything at all.
The weird thing about this is, of course, that during the entire trip to Thailand, we were talking about our future together.
We were talking about moving in together. ”
“That horrible man,” Hilary hissed.
“Why do they feel the need to lie like that?” Tina demanded.
“You’re going to need another glass of wine,” Stella pointed out.
Sylvie felt laughter bubbling through her. “The entire time he was telling me this, all I could think about was my father and how he’d been dying for months and had never bothered to tell me. How angry I was at him! And then Mike gathered up his things and left. I guess I’ll never see him again.”
“Good riddance,” Rose said.
“He showed you who he was, once and for all,” Tina said.
“An idiot,” Stella said.
Suddenly, Sylvie burst into giggles. The other Salt Sisters joined her, throwing their heads back, unable to stop. Nothing they’d said was particularly funny, but Sylvie felt as though something sinister in her heart had just been released. She felt alive.