Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Present Day
A few hours before Graham’s dinner with Hilary Salt and Sylvie Bruckson, he got a call from his lawyer. “Open some champagne! Apparently, all the charges against you have been dropped,” he said.
Graham was in the kitchen of his mother’s house, drinking a cup of coffee that he nearly let go of with surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
“I don’t understand it either,” his lawyer said. “I think someone pulled some strings for you. Maybe somebody you know has power with Next Generation Nantucket Designers?”
It had been only a few days since Graham’s arrest at the construction site of the brand-new luxury resort.
Graham hadn’t even fully wrapped his mind around the subsequent litigation he knew he’d have to go through.
And now, it had mysteriously disappeared from his life as though someone had magicked it away.
“Wow,” Graham said. “Do you need a raise?”
His lawyer chuckled. “Promise me you’ll give me a heads-up before you perform another stunt like this? I know it’s sort of your thing, but it’s good for me to get a handle on the monster you’re up against. The Next Generation Nantucket Designers aren’t easy folks to deal with.”
Graham laughed, remembering his early days of protests with Sylvie, how they’d thrown themselves into everything so messily and completely that giving anyone a heads-up would never have occurred to them. “Sure, I guess,” Graham said finally. “Thanks.”
Graham got off the phone and sat at the kitchen island, watching the birds twitter and play in their bath outside the window. Valerie came down the hall, humming to herself.
“I got a call about the charges,” Graham said. “They’ve been dropped.”
Valerie raised her hands in excitement. “This has been quite the week!”
Graham laughed and sipped his coffee. “I don’t understand it.”
Valerie looked conspiratorial. “Do you think Sylvie had something to do with it?”
Graham considered this. “I guess she’s higher on the food chain than I am, in some respects.”
“You’ve been in the messy thick of it,” Valerie agreed. “And she’s been writing from the safety of a desk. Making contacts. Gaining power.” Valerie put the kettle on the stovetop and her hands on her hips. “What do you think about that?”
“About Sylvie stepping away from the action?”
Valerie nodded.
“I think we’re not teenagers anymore,” Graham said. “Maybe I should stop acting like one.”
Valerie’s eyes were wounded. “Your idealism is inspiring for me, honey. It’s weird to say, but I don’t want you to stop.”
Graham was quiet, thinking about that day so many years ago when he’d realized that Sylvie was gone.
Exhausted, brokenhearted, and confused, he’d finished painting the sad fabric for the Fourth of July Festival and hung it over the top of the sailboats.
He’d watched partiers and drunken millionaires milling about underneath the sign for hours.
Graham had tried to get their attention, but it was no use. Posters didn’t do anything.
“Have you asked her why she left yet?” Valerie asked tentatively as though she could read Graham’s mind.
Graham shook his head. “I don’t know if that’s my business. And we were seventeen years old, you know? Maybe she doesn’t even remember.”
“She remembers,” Valerie said. “A woman never forgets her origin story.”
Graham ached to hear this, knowing that Sylvie’s origin story involved abandoning him.
Five minutes later, Graham got a text from Sylvie that read:
I don’t need a ride tonight. But looking forward to seeing you later!
This was a surprise for Graham, who’d stirred with longing at the idea of picking Sylvie up in his car. But he had to respect Sylvie’s wishes. He wrote back:
can’t wait till later!
Graham said goodbye to his mother and went home to change into a pair of slacks and a button-down linen shirt.
With his aviator sunglasses and his wild hair, he looked the part of a handsome environmentalist, a man on the brink of doing something radical.
It wasn’t really the truth. In reality, he was a widower with a broken heart and a million ideas that hadn’t come to fruition.
Hilary Salt’s mansion had a gate that opened for him immediately. He drove his electric vehicle down the long driveway lined with stately trees and parked next to his surprise: a charging station! As he hooked up his car, Hilary stepped into the soft light of the early evening and smiled at him.
“I don’t know if I told you, my new car is a hybrid,” she explained. “I don’t need gas on an island as small as this one.”
Graham grinned wildly. “That’s what I like to hear.”
It was just as he and Sylvie had once thought. Convince the world to do better, one person at a time.
That was when he noticed Sylvie’s car in the driveway. No surprise, it was also an electric vehicle, navy blue.
“Sylvie’s on the veranda,” Hilary said. “Come on in!”
Graham followed Hilary into the most glorious and overwhelming home he’d ever entered, reminding himself that Hilary’s mother had organized the decor, the Swedish actress who thought “more” was better.
Sometimes it was gaudy, but often, it was magnificent.
Graham couldn’t fathom what it was like to live in a place like this.
“It’s like a museum,” he said finally, thinking of the Art Museum of Chicago.
Hilary laughed. “It’s a bit much, I know. But my fiancé and I have many plans to make this place more environmentally friendly. We want to pester you for more info.”
Hilary led Graham out onto an ornate veranda overlooking the Siasconset bluffs.
The light was orange and made everything blurry and soft, like an old photograph.
Sylvie was already at the table with a glass of white wine, wearing a sage-green dress made of silk.
When she got up, Graham couldn’t help but take in the full breadth of her body, long and lean, maybe from years of yoga and long hikes.
“Hi,” Graham said, feeling foolish.
“Hey there.” Sylvie reached out to touch his arm.
Electricity zipped from his bicep to his hand.
“It’s good to see you,” Graham said, stumbling over his words. “I mean, both of you.”
Hilary sat across from them and poured Graham a glass of wine. This left Graham to sit next to Sylvie, his heart pounding.
“Sylvie was just telling me about her days of being a pink-haired punk on Nantucket Island,” Hilary said with a curious smile.
Sylvie doubled over with laughter. “I don’t think I mentioned that Graham dyed my hair pink. We used only ‘natural’ ingredients, so I’m sure it looked like garbage.”
“It looked great,” Graham insisted, remembering how proud he’d been when they’d first dyed Sylvie’s hair together, watching it dry into its coloring in the sunshine at the beach.
“I’m so curious about your early days of protesting together,” Hilary said, shaking her head. “It must have been invigorating to take on the world like that.”
Sylvie and Graham hesitated and gave one another side-eyed glances. Graham didn’t know what to say.
Hilary waved her hand as though to push away the awkwardness. “Oh, but you’ve both done so much since then. It’s rare to know what you want to do as a teenager and keep doing it. My mother and my daughter were like that, but I struggled.”
“Hilary was telling me about her work in the film industry,” Sylvie said, her voice quieter. “Costuming! It sounds incredible.”
“But Sylvie has been giving me incredible ideas to make the costuming world more environmentally friendly,” Hilary said. “You wouldn’t believe the waste involved in the film industry.”
Actually, Graham could believe that because he’d spent four years in his twenties handcuffing himself to various film equipment and trying to stop major motion pictures from ever being made.
Hollywood called him a killjoy. That was before he’d ever teamed up with Hilary to save that national park in California.
Did Hilary know about his anti-Hollywood past? Graham guessed she did. She had power and money and could get the dirt on anyone she worked with. He guessed she’d either decided what he’d done hadn’t mattered or she respected it.
Hilary got up to check on dinner, leaving Sylvie and Graham at the table by themselves. Sylvie seemed unable to look Graham in the eye, so Graham kept his sights on the horizon, watching oranges shift to pinks and reds.
“You and Hilary seem to be getting along?”
“Yeah. Um. We ran into each other yesterday,” Sylvie said. “She invited me out with a few of her friends, if you can believe it. I needed an excuse not to go back to the inn or my father’s house, and it sounded nice to sit around with some strangers and talk.”
Graham caught himself speculating what Sylvie had told Hilary about Graham. He wondered if Sylvie had told Hilary about how she’d run away from him. He questioned if she’d told Hilary how she broke his heart.
“She invited me to stay with her,” Sylvie said under her breath, gesturing toward the massive house at their backs. “So I said I’d stay tonight and tomorrow just to get my bearings before I take on Dad’s place and the inn.”
Graham was speechless. “Wow.”
“I know. It’s crazy.” Sylvie traced her fingers across the wood of the outdoor table. “I just haven’t had anyone to talk to in a long time, I guess. It’s been nice to let myself relax around Hilary and her friends. It’s been nice to open up or try to.” She shrugged.
Graham felt as though it was easier to breathe, knowing that Sylvie was finding solid ground again. He realized that all these years, a part of him had worried about her, hoping she was all right.
“Do you have close friends, Graham?” Sylvie asked, narrowing her eyes.
Before Graham could answer, Hilary came outside with a report on dinner and news from her fiancé. “He’ll be home soon,” she said. “And he’s looking so forward to meeting you both!”
Graham’s throat closed. He told himself not to think of this as a double date. But he had to fight every instinct in his heart not to reach under the table and touch Sylvie’s hand.
He wondered if she was thinking about it, too.