2 Suzy
Suzy
“I just don’t understand why you can’t make them put me in a bottom bunk,” Kasie said, looking away from the screen with her signature pout. “Can’t you just tell them I’m allergic to dust? It’s so disgusting, Mom!”
“Kasie. Sweetheart. You need to explain to Mommy why being in the top bunk is so objectionable,” Suzy said, holding the phone out in the front seat of Sean’s massive SUV.
Outside, the scrub brush and pine trees of the Hamptons sped past, and she felt a touch dizzy as she tried to focus on her twelve-year-old’s face.
Or, more accurately, the side of her face.
Beside Suzy, Sean let out a mighty sigh and gripped the steering wheel tighter.
It felt like he was gripping her intestines.
He’d barely said two words to her this entire drive.
There was definitely something stressing him out that had nothing to do with the kids and their new camp, and he wasn’t sharing.
At least Kasie’s call was filling the silence.
“Because! Mom! I just told you! There are, like, a zillion cobwebs up there. God! Couldn’t you have sent me to a clean camp?”
In the back seat, Suzy’s chihuahua, Wintour, barked twice, as if agreeing with her human sister.
From the corner of her eye, Suzy saw Sean’s knuckles whiten. He was frustrated. Clearly. But was he about to volunteer to take over? Negotiate the situation? Of course not. And as such, he and his knuckles could kiss her ass.
Sean was always going off about how spoiled their kids were, never quite saying it was her fault but always implying it.
As if she was the one making high-seven figures and insisting on private school and biannual vacations at only the hottest of-the-moment resorts.
As chief executive counsel at Lincoln’s company, Home Team Hotels, Sean felt it was important to his career that they do everything five diamond, four star, white glove, luxe—ironic since the company’s themed hotels were anything but.
He had a certain image to uphold, and there were always CEOs to entertain, hoteliers and hospitality gurus to impress.
Suzy certainly wasn’t complaining, but she was not about to shoulder all the blame here.
Besides, her kids weren’t spoiled. They just knew when things were not up to standard.
That was a good thing. She glanced at her husband, and he rolled his brown eyes at her.
She rolled hers right back. Suzy was still irritated that Sean had refused to tell her what was eating him when she’d asked.
Clearly it had something to do with work.
If it was anything else—his golf score, his poker buddies, the biopsy results on that mole he’d had removed—he would have told her.
Work he often kept close to the vest, especially when things were going awry. Which was, of course, what worried her.
That and the fact that they were driving all the way out to the easternmost point of Long Island when there was a deadly hurricane bearing down on them.
At least the kids were up in Vermont, far away from any wind shear or flood risks.
And for the first time in her life, she was glad the Villa wasn’t directly on the beach.
A few blocks from the water, at least they’d be less likely to flood.
But if the shit went down, she was saving herself and Wintour first, especially if Sean was giving her the silent treatment.
Outside the window, the driveways had started to come fewer and farther between as more modest homes gave way to the grander estates of the North Shore.
When the ornate gates in front of the Willingham compound flew past, Suzy knew they were getting close.
She shifted in her seat, a nervous flutter in her gut.
“Mom!” Kasie snapped.
Ugh. Suzy wished she had never picked up this call.
But when your two kids are off at sleepaway camp for the first time and the camp calls, you pick up.
The campers at Pine Mountain were not allowed to have their cell phones in their bunks—a key selling point of the camp—so Suzy was talking to Kasie on the camp director’s cell phone.
And as it was outside of scheduled family-communication time, she knew her daughter must have worn the woman down with at least an hour of whining and cajoling.
“Okay, okay, Kasie. Put the director back on the phone.”
Kasie performed an epic eye roll, and then Director Zucker was there, her wrinkled face filling the screen.
“As I told Kasie, she can switch bunks at half term when we always switch bunks,” the director said without preamble.
Wintour growled at the sound of the woman’s voice.
“Look, there has to be someone in that cabin who’s upset they got the bottom bunk. Can’t you just ask the girls and see if someone is willing to switch?”
“Mrs. McTeague, have you ever heard the phrase ‘You get what you get, and you don’t get upset’?” the camp director asked.
“What? No! Who would ever say that?” Suzy asked, appalled. “I teach my kids to never settle, thank you very much. If you don’t like what you get, you find a way to rectify it.”
The woman narrowed her eyes to near slits. There was a hunk of dried mascara staring Suzy in the face along with some garish and imperfectly applied purple eyeshadow.
“Okay, fine.” Suzy closed her eyes as Sean’s car bumped over the edge of the driveway to the Villa and jostled both her and the phone.
She was kind of shocked Lincoln hadn’t had that fixed after all these years.
“But can’t you just have someone go in there and, like, Swiffer the eaves?
My daughter does have a documented dust allergy. It’s in her file.”
“You know what? That’s a great idea. In fact, you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna make it an activity for the girls. A bonding moment.” She turned her face and shouted. “Butterfly cabin! Guess what!? Thanks to Miss Kasie here, you’re all gonna spend this fine afternoon cleaning house!”
Sean cracked up laughing as half a dozen preteen voices wailed in the background. Wintour started barking like mad. Suzy pursed her lips. If she could wring this woman’s neck through FaceTime, she would.
“You realize she’s going to murder me in my sleep when she gets back,” she said to the director.
“Good luck with that,” the director said and ended the call.
Suzy shoved her phone back into its designated slot in her designer purse—which perfectly matched Wintour’s carrier—and pressed the back of her head into the seat.
“Wintour, hush!” Suzy snapped, turning in her seat.
The dog instantly lay down in the carrier and gave two pathetic whines, looking at Suzy with those big brown eyes.
“Oh, I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to shout.
It’s okay. We’re almost there.” The dog turned her face to one side and rested it on her paws, her version of the cold shoulder. Suzy sighed grandly.
“Holy crap. He’s really going all out.” The SUV had just rounded the last bend in the long driveway, and the Villa loomed up ahead.
What had caught Sean’s eye was a huge circular red-and-white tent that had been erected over the fountain at the center of the round car park.
It tapered to a point, and placed at the top was a tall pole with a series of five colorful triangular flags, flapping in the breeze.
“When Lincoln says carnival theme, he means carnival theme,” Suzy said, ever in awe of Lincoln’s event-planning skills.
It was the rare man who oversaw every detail of a social event, but it had always been Lincoln, not Lily, mulling over musical acts and choosing color schemes and stressing over linen choices.
He always wanted his parties to be epic, and they always were.
One year he’d decided on a Kentucky Derby theme, and there had been an actual horse race out here—only four horses running the “track” of the driveway, but he’d hired professional jockeys and trainers, and the mint juleps had been fantastic.
Suzy had so enjoyed shopping for fascinators with Lily too.
The carnival theme wasn’t quite as enticing. She hoped there would be no clowns.
Sean parked in front of the house and shook his head.
“We should have known Kasie wasn’t going to make it three days at that place,” he said.
“I was the one who wanted to send her to acting camp, remember!?” Suzy snapped. “She could be in a pristine dorm in LA right now!”
He got out of the car when she was mid-sentence and slammed the door before she even finished talking.
Suzy took a deep breath and counted to ten, then took another and counted to twelve.
Her heart was doing that annoying flutter-stop-flutter thing it always did when she got anxious, and she was not having it.
This was their week at the beach. The kids would be fine.
Everything would be fine. Even if Lily wasn’t here and everyone in Butterfly cabin now hated her daughter.
Suzy pulled out her phone again. Rainn was now giving the Hamptons a fifty-fifty shot of surviving the storm.
Her stomach gave an awful swoop. She really hoped Marley and Juliet had beaten them here.
She needed a hug and a drink, stat, and she had a feeling she wasn’t getting either from Sean.
Outside the car, she slipped on her giant sunglasses and yanked open the back door.
Wintour was definitely due for a pee. She lifted the dog out, kissed her head, and clipped her skinny rhinestone leash on before placing her on the ground.
Wintour trotted over to the nearest patch of grass and squatted.
“Good girl!” Suzy cooed. Then she stormed over to the trunk of the SUV, Wintour padding obediently beside her. Sean already had sweat beading around his temples where his hairline was rapidly receding.
“Don’t act like this is somehow my fault,” she said to him. “All Lincoln had to do was mention that stupid camp, and you had a deposit down. He went there thirty years ago, Sean! Things change.”