Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
I t should have been a typical day. In fact, it had all the makings of one.
Hilary had woken up, said goodbye to her daughter before her big departure (a departure Hilary was already starting to regret agreeing to, although it wasn’t up to her to agree to anything in her twenty-three-year-old daughter’s life and she knew that), gone to Pilates, and then showered and driven immediately to Dorothy Wagner’s to get started on the next stage of her home’s big design.
When Hilary had arrived, Dorothy was in brilliant spirits, wearing bright red lipstick and gossiping lightly to Hilary about things both current and past. More than that, she had all kinds of opinions on Hilary’s ideas for the parlor, kitchen, and exterior veranda.
Most of them were good opinions, joyous ones.
“It’s like you peered into my mind and saw exactly what I wanted! ” Dorothy cried.
Hilary worked dutifully, pausing only briefly for a salad lunch she’d packed from home and to call both Marc over in San Francisco and Aria, who’d reached Greenwich Village safely. Aria only said, “This place needs a lot of work.”
After she’d described more of what the brownstone was like, Hilary had laughed and said, “It sounds like it’s a museum.” She wouldn’t let Dorothy hear her say that, though.
At around five thirty, Dorothy went upstairs to take a brief nap before dinner.
She’d insisted that Hilary stay later than normal, saying that Hilary had an empty nest this week anyway.
Hilary had the sense that Dorothy was terribly pleased to have her around, as though Dorothy imagined she was a daughter of hers or a niece.
It struck Hilary as odd that she couldn’t remember if Dorothy Wagner had children of her own. Hilary couldn’t recall her mother talking about them. She couldn’t remember any of them in any of the photographs she’d spotted hanging in the house.
At seven, the typical time Dorothy descended the staircase to meet Hilary for dinner, Hilary washed her hands and put away her work things and sat in the parlor.
Because Dorothy had told her to make herself comfortable, when the clock hit five minutes after seven, she poured herself a drink and went out on the patio attached to the parlor to watch the sunlight play across the cap of the waves.
She itched to call Aria again, just to hear her voice and be reassured that everything was going all right.
Aria had mentioned she might reach out to a friend from college tonight, someone she knew in the city.
Hilary prayed she would. She didn’t like the idea of Aria being alone in the Big Apple like that.
By seven thirty, Dorothy still hadn’t made an appearance.
Although this wasn’t like her, Hilary assumed she’d slept a little bit later than usual.
Slightly jittery and wondering if she should just go home and make popcorn and watch a film, Hilary finished her drink and went inside, hoping to find one of Dorothy’s maids.
When she couldn’t, she went upstairs herself, calling Dorothy’s name.
“Dorothy? Are you feeling all right?” Her voice echoed down the hall.
It was only when she reached Dorothy’s bedroom door that she had a horrible thought.
What if Dorothy were no longer alive? Hilary tried to brush off the idea and tell herself that Dorothy was just in the bathroom or changing her clothes.
But when she knocked on Dorothy’s bedroom door several times, it struck her that this was not normal. Fear shot through her.
What if something terrible had happened?
Hilary was not exactly squeamish. She knew that life was a complicated thing, and bodies were temporary vessels that inhabited the soul.
But she also had grown really fond of Dorothy over the past week or so.
The thought of opening the door to find Dorothy dead suddenly terrified her. Tears spiked her eyes.
Hilary hurried back downstairs and out into the driveway, searching for the valet who’d taken her car. She found him soon after, watering a stretch of lush lawn, his hands on his hips and his chin tilted toward the sky. He looked so pleasant that Hilary almost didn’t want to interrupt him.
“You have to come inside,” she said, her words fumbling too quickly so that he didn’t understand her. “Please,” she begged, repeating herself. Finally, he got the hint and followed her inside, up the stairs, and all the way to the bedroom door, which remained closed.
What they found behind it was exactly what Hilary had feared.
Dorothy Wagner had died in her sleep. She was peaceful, as though she’d just drifted off, her eyes closed and her lips parted slightly.
Hilary’s chest heaved, but she made no sound.
The valet driver knew immediately as well and backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.
He said, “I don’t know what we’re supposed to do? ”
Hilary imagined watching the scene from above. She wondered if Dorothy Wagner herself could see them, wondered if how frightened and nervous they were made her laugh. Life isn’t so serious , she imagined Dorothy whispering down at them. Why do the living have to make it all so complicated?
“I’ll take care of it,” Hilary told the valet driver slash gardener, touching his shoulder.
He looked relieved and more like a teenage boy than an adult.
After that, Hilary and the entire estate were filled with activity.
She called the ambulance and the morgue and sat in the parlor, her heart thudding as she waited.
The valet driver remained at a loss and went back outside to finish watering the lawn.
“It’s what she hired me to do,” he said.
“She likes the garden to look a certain way.”
Hilary wondered how much the valet driver slash gardener knew about Dorothy Wagner and how much she’d known about him before she passed.
Had they been friendly? Had they shared intimate conversations?
For years, it was likely that the people who worked here were the only people she saw.
Did that make them similar to family? Or had they remained employees?
As Hilary waited for the ambulance to arrive, she tried not to think about death, about her parents aging, about all the things she loved about a world that was so impermanent.
It reminded her of her time both pre- and post-glaucoma surgery, when she’d been not entirely sure she would wake up.
Now, she thought she was going to start sobbing.
When she couldn’t take it anymore, she called Marc, who didn’t answer because, as she already knew, he was in a meeting.
An important business meeting that now seemed so silly compared to the density of what had just happened.
Hilary didn’t want to call her mother, didn’t want to consider that Estelle might be next.
She considered her friends, her other loved ones.
And then she remembered her older sister, Sam, who worked as a social worker and knew best how to handle a crisis like this.
It was odd to think of Sam first, she knew.
Theirs had always been a tenuous relationship, with Sam never believing that she was really accepted into the Coleman family.
This was their father’s fault, something they’d all tried to rectify in the years previous.
But Hilary knew that you couldn’t wipe away years of pain and neglect in an instant.
Sam answered on the second ring and came over right away. As the ambulance took Dorothy down the driveway and pulled out of sight, Sam sat with Hilary, mixing her a fancy cocktail and listening as Hilary sobbed.
“I know it’s ridiculous,” Hilary said. “This isn’t my grief. I barely knew her.”
“You wanted to know her better,” Sam offered, stitching her eyebrows together. “You were building something together. And this abrupt ending is terrible.”
Hilary sniffed. “It caught me off guard.”
Sam nodded and went on. “But remember, she was an old woman who’d lived quite a life. She’d loved and lost. And Hilary, she locked herself away for twenty-five years!”
“I think she was done with all that,” Hilary offered. A part of her had imagined that, through the redecoration of Dorothy’s place, Hilary herself would draw Dorothy out of her shell and make her see how beautiful life was, how it was worth it to leave your comfort zone.
“I’m worried,” Hilary said, surprising herself. “I’m worried that one day, I’ll lose my will to live, like Dorothy. I’m worried I’ll lose Marc and Aria and lock myself away. Like Dorothy.”
Sam squeezed Hilary’s hands. Hilary knew she wasn’t being rational, that Dorothy’s death had surprised her so much that it led her to face her deepest fears about her future, about aging, about loneliness.
“Let’s go back to the Jessabelle House,” Sam urged, offering a soft smile. “You shouldn’t be alone tonight.”
Back at Sam’s place, the gorgeous home on the bluffs of Siasconset that she’d inherited from their great-aunt Jessabelle, Sam buttered sourdough bread and made them grilled sandwiches with three types of cheese.
The sky had become overcast, clouds swirling with rain, and Sam decided on tomato soup as well, which served as a reminder of their favorite comfort meals as kids.
Sam fetched Hilary some pajamas, and they sat under the overhang on the lower floor of the house, wrapped in blankets, eating and watching the rain.
It took ages for Hilary to get up the nerve to call Aria and tell her what had happened.
They were still on the covered porch, their plates clean and stacked in the kitchen, their glasses filled with wine. Night had fallen, but the rain continued, patting out a comfortable rhythm on the roof.
Aria had a thousand questions. “What happened?
“Were you there?
“What’s going to happen now?
“Are you all right?
“Are you alone?”