20. Juliette
— ? —
Juliette
The yacht club benefit is exactly as pretentious as I expected.
Waiters in white jackets glide between clusters of guests. Champagne sparkles in crystal flutes. Women in designer dresses air-kiss each other while mentally cataloging everyone else’s jewelry.
I’m here for the shop. That’s what I tell myself as I navigate through the crowd in a dress I bought at a consignment store on the mainland. The island’s business owners were invited as a show of community support, and Rosie insisted that networking is how small businesses survive.
“Mingle,” she said. “Charm people. Make them want to buy books from you.”
So I’m mingling.
I never answered Eleanor’s proposition. The text sat on my phone for days like a coiled thing, and I deleted it unanswered. Apparently she found another way to get me in a room.
“The new bookstore!” A woman in head-to-toe Chanel blocks my path, her smile sharp as broken glass. Margaret Whitfield. Wife of the bonfire heckler, and the last woman I watched my husband take apart on a public sidewalk. “I’ve heard such interesting things.”
“Have you?” I accept a champagne flute from a passing waiter, giving myself something to do with my hands.
“My daughter says you’re organizing by mood instead of genre.” Margaret’s eyebrow arches. “How… unconventional.”
“I prefer intuitive.”
“I’m sure you do.” She sips her champagne, examining me over the rim like something she found on the bottom of her shoe. “Tell me, what possessed you to open a bookstore here? The island has always managed perfectly well without one.”
“The island managed without a lot of things until someone decided to provide them.” I match her smile, bright and sharp.
“I hear you’re on the historical society board.
That building on Main Street - the one with the gorgeous Victorian fa?ade - didn’t it start as a general store that the locals said was unnecessary? ”
Margaret’s smile freezes.
“My great-grandmother ran one just like it, back home,” I continue pleasantly. “Against the advice of everyone who told her the town didn’t need her. It lasted three generations before the chains made it impossible. But by then, she’d already proved them wrong.”
Margaret sets down her champagne glass with a clink. “How charming. A family legacy of stubbornness.”
“We prefer to call it persistence.” I toast her with my glass. “It’s a Holland family trait.”
“You know,” Margaret says, recovering, “some of us simply wonder whether the island needs a bookstore at all. People order online now.”
“People order online until the ferry’s out and the power’s down and their kid needs something to read that isn’t a phone.” I smile at her. “Then they need a light in a window on Bishop Street. I plan to be the light. You’re welcome to keep being the draft.”
She sweeps away without another word, her Chanel trailing behind her like offended dignity. I drain my champagne and hand the empty glass to a passing waiter, feeling vaguely triumphant and desperately in need of a bathroom break.
The powder room is at the end of a long hallway, as far as possible from the main event. I push through the door into a stall and I’m just about to emerge when I hear them.
“ - the Christmas Stroll.” Nicole’s voice, sugar-sweet. “Everyone on the island will be there. It’s perfect.”
I freeze with my hand on the lock.
“Perfect for what, exactly?” Eleanor’s voice, sharp and measured. “We’ve been patient, Nicole. Zachary has had time to exhaust this little phase.”
“The tree lighting ceremony.” Nicole’s voice drops, conspiratorial. “The mayor does her speech at seven, then the tree lights up, and everyone’s watching. That’s when we make the announcement.”
“Announcement?”
“Our engagement.” Nicole laughs, a sound like shattering crystal. “I’ve already spoken to the society editor at the Globe. She’s holding column space for a December feature. ‘Dean Heir Returns to Roots.’ Very romantic.”
“You’re not engaged.” Eleanor’s voice is flat. “My son hasn’t proposed.”
“He doesn’t need to propose.” Nicole’s tone turns patient, explaining something obvious.
“That’s the beauty of it. I make the announcement.
You handle the family’s response. By the time Zachary realizes what’s happening, the story’s already running.
He’ll have to go along with it or look like a fool. ”
Silence. My heart is pounding so hard I’m afraid they’ll hear it.
“Walk me through it.” Eleanor’s voice shifts from skeptical to calculating. “Specifically.”
“Seven o’clock. The mayor finishes her speech. I’m standing next to Zachary - you’ll make sure he’s there, in the right position. The tree lights up, everyone’s taking photos, and I lean into him. I say something like ‘I can’t believe we’re finally doing this.’ Then I hold up my hand.”
“Your hand?”
“The mayor introduces the Dean family - Eleanor arranged that when she underwrote the new lights. Zachary will be on the platform. I’ll be beside him.
Family friend, longtime companion, whatever they need to print.
” Nicole’s voice is silk over steel. “And when the tree lights, everyone looks at the platform, and I look at him, and I raise my hand.”
“I have my grandmother’s ring. The sapphire.
” Nicole’s voice turns smug. “No one will question whether it’s real.
And by the time Zachary processes what’s happening, the photographers will have their shot.
His mother beaming at her future daughter-in-law.
The tree lit up behind us. Very photogenic. ”
“And if he contradicts you publicly?”
“He won’t.” Nicole sounds certain. “He never makes scenes. He manages things privately, quietly, diplomatically. By the time he’s done managing this, the engagement will be fact.
The papers will run it. Society will accept it.
And Zachary will do what Zachary always does - he’ll take the path of least resistance. ”
I press myself against the stall door, barely breathing.
My heartbeat is so loud it should be disqualifying. I have one hand flat over my own mouth - old library instinct, terrible new context - and my heel is a half inch from the stall’s metal leg, which will ring like a church bell if I so much as sway.
Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Fuck. Don’t think fuck so loudly.
“The librarian.” Eleanor’s voice is cold. “What about her?”
“That’s the best part.” Nicole’s voice turns vicious. “She’ll be standing right there. In front of everyone she’s been trying to impress for months. Watching her husband’s family announce his engagement to someone else.”
“Former husband.”
“Not yet. The divorce isn’t final.” Nicole laughs again.
“Which makes it even better. She’ll be standing there as his wife, watching him get handed to someone else.
In front of the whole island. Every person she’s been trying to charm, every business owner she’s been networking with - they’ll all see that she was never really one of us. ”
“You want to humiliate her.”
“I want her to understand her place.” Nicole’s voice drops. “She thought she could keep him. Thought she could play in our world. The hardware store owner’s daughter. The librarian. As if marrying above your station actually makes you something.”
Silence again. Then Eleanor’s laugh, low and approving.
“Very well. The Christmas Stroll. I’ll position the photographer - Marcus Hale, from the Globe’s society page. He owes me a favor.”
“And Zachary?”
“Leave Zachary to me.” Eleanor’s voice is final. “I’ll have him standing in the right place at the right time. He’ll think he’s doing his family duty. By the time the tree lights up, he’ll be exactly where we need him.”
Footsteps. Water running. The click of compacts.
“She really thought she belonged here.” Nicole’s satisfaction drips from every syllable.
“Some people never learn their place.”
“She’s about to.”
The door opens. Closes.
I wait. Let their perfume fade. Let the silence settle.
Then I step out of the stall and walk to the mirror.
The woman looking back at me is not the woman who hid on a terrace six months ago, mouthing an email she’d read too many times. This woman’s jaw is set. Her eyes are clear. She’s furious in a way that doesn’t show on her face but burns somewhere deep in her chest.
I smooth my hair. Check my lipstick.
Then I walk out of the powder room to find my husband.
He’s standing by the water.
The terrace overlooks the harbor, boats bobbing in the darkness, their mast lights swaying. Zachary has a drink in his hand that he doesn’t appear to be drinking. His posture is rigid, shoulders tight, the stance of a man trying to survive a party he didn’t want to attend.
He’s got his jacket off despite the cold, sleeves rolled, forearms on the railing, staring at the water like it owes him a decision.
There’s an untouched drink at his elbow.
Inside, his mother’s benefit glitters on without him, and he’s out here alone in December - a man taking a meeting with the harbor.
“Zachary.”
He turns, and his face rearranges itself when he sees me. Relief, maybe. Or surprise. Or the particular expression he gets when two parts of his life are colliding.
“Juliette.” He sets down his drink on the railing. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Business networking.” I step closer, lowering my voice. “I need to tell you something.”
The harbor breathes behind him. Somewhere down the dock a line clinks its slow one-note song against a mast, and the party’s brightness ends in a clean line at the terrace door, and out here it’s just the two of us and the cold and the thing I’m carrying out of a powder room like a live coal in both hands.
“Okay.” His attention sharpens, focusing entirely on me. “I’m listening.”
“Your mother and Nicole are planning something. For the Christmas Stroll.”
His jaw tightens. “Planning what?”
“An engagement announcement.” I hold his gaze. “Nicole’s going to stand next to you during the tree lighting, hold up a ring, and tell everyone you’re engaged. The Globe’s society page is holding column space.”
“I’m not engaged to Nicole.”