Chapter 14. Cait
CAIT
From behind the yellowed linen drapes, Cait watched the circular driveway.
Her bedroom was the only one facing the front of the house rather than the bay on the back side.
She’d traded rooms with Alice when they were teenagers to get a walk-in closet, and though she hadn’t lived at the Folly in more than two decades, she still regretted giving up the water view.
She pulled closed the drapes. She was supposed to be getting dressed, but instead, still in her robe, she sipped the cranberry Moscow mule she’d snuck from the bar on her walk upstairs.
Outside her door, the kids laughed as they ran down the hallway, and she held her breath, waiting for one of the twins, likely both, to barge into the room with some sort of demand.
But then they were off again. She was confident Alice must be somewhere condemning her for not monitoring their every move.
What did her nanny, Ruthie, call Cait? A free-range parent.
Cait pictured a hen surrounded by dozens of baby chicks. She shuddered.
Opening her closet door, she resumed her debate between the black silk blouse and pencil skirt she’d bought last week at her favorite vintage boutique on Brompton Road, and the blush Chanel suit she’d treated herself to last year when the stress from the divorce helped return her to her prepregnancy weight. Flirty or sophisticated?
She heard a car door slam outside and checked for Luke again, only to find a random Honda parked at the top of the driveway. Probably a caterer.
All the longing from the last few weeks settled in her stomach.
Standing in her childhood bedroom, she didn’t feel like a woman with a Chanel suit, a mother of two, an associate at one of London’s top legal firms (well, she wasn’t that anymore, was she?).
She felt like a horny, angsty, heartsick teenager.
She heard more tires on the pebbled driveway and looked outside.
Father Kelly. He was nearly as diminutive as her mother, and Topher used to call him Father Leprechaun behind his back.
Years ago, when Maggie enlightened her about Father Kelly most definitely being gay himself, Cait couldn’t believe she’d missed all the signs.
Back in front of the mirror, she let her robe drop and studied herself.
Now she felt like a mother. Or looked like one, at any rate.
She may have been back to her prepregnancy weight, but she still wore the battle scars of carrying two six-pound babies to thirty-six weeks.
Cupping her breasts and stretching her abs taut, she imagined Luke’s hands on her and—
Where was he?
She heard James in the hallway and slipped on her robe, opening the door a crack.
“Hey,” she whispered. “What are you guys up to?”
“They’re teaching me how to say words in Dutch,” James said.
Though at the beginning of their relationship, Bram had been sweet about Cait’s spectacular inability to learn Dutch, he’d wielded the language difference like a weapon toward the end of their marriage and would refuse to talk to the kids in English when angry at her.
“ Dat is geweldig ,” she said, one of the few things she’d managed to absorb.
“I haven’t learned that yet,” James said seriously.
Cait looked down the hallway and then back to James. “Do me a favor and go tell Auntie Maggie to come to my room for a quick second to help me pick out something to wear, okay?”
He nodded and ran off.
Back in her room, Cait returned to the window.
An elegant man dressed in a wool blazer and wingtips, who she assumed was Kyle’s friend Mukesh, exited the Honda and walked up the driveway holding orange chrysanthemums and a bottle of wine.
She watched him stop and regard the house for a long moment, and without knowing exactly why, she opened the drapes and dropped her robe.
She stood naked, shivering from the draft, waiting for him to notice.
After some time, his eyes locked onto hers, and she jumped away from the window, laughing as she grabbed her robe.
She was slightly horrified by herself, but there was a certain thrill in knowing that all night, this handsome stranger would be picturing her naked body.
By the time she finished her drink, Maggie still hadn’t come, but at least the vodka was finally doing the trick to dull her anxiety over seeing Luke.
She felt lighter, more optimistic. Flirty it was.
She threw on the La Perla bra and lace undies she’d worn briefly the night before, stepped into the skirt, applied her makeup, and pulled on her boots.
Behind her neck and under her knees, she dabbed the white musk perfume she hadn’t worn since high school but had serendipitously discovered at Heathrow departure duty-free yesterday.
She checked her breath and peeked out the window to see if Luke’s car was there yet.
It wasn’t, and now she worried he might have canceled because of the snow or gone into the city after all.
She decided to sneak past the guests to her father’s office to call him again.
The smells of turkey roasting and pies baking filled the house. A child’s yell emerged from somewhere, and Cait listened to make sure it wasn’t one of the twins. James nearly ran her down as she reached the bottom step. He skidded to a stop and turned to her with a look of alarm.
Cait inspected her skirt. “What?” she asked.
He pinched his bottom lip nervously. “I forgot to tell you that Aunt Maggie’s too busy to help you get dressed.”
Cait tousled his red hair. “And yet,” she said, “somehow I managed all by my lonesome.”
“Come on,” Poppy yelled, and grabbed James’s hand. Her hair was already loose from the braids she’d fought against from the beginning, and her Mary Janes were nowhere to be found.
“Look who it is!”
Cait turned.
“Father Kelly,” she said.
He kissed both of her cheeks. “Aren’t you a lovely sight.”
She squeezed his hands and smiled. She hadn’t seen him in more than five years, but he looked the same—as compact as a jockey, with gentle blue eyes and hair far blonder than his seventy-plus years should allow, which made her wonder, with a certain kind of glee, whether he dyed it.
Before he launched into one of his stories, she gestured toward the office and said, “I just need to make a quick call!”
“Right-o,” Father Kelly said.
Cait dialed Luke’s number, but no one picked up, and the answering machine was now disconnected. She tried once more, then slammed the phone onto the receiver.
Despite the roiling in her stomach, she glided through the crowd as if Luke were there watching her: her smile slight, her eyes warm, and her posture like a ballerina’s at the barre.
She paused in the slant of good lighting by the bay window, and as Kyle introduced her to Mukesh—was he blushing?
—she caught a glimpse of Luke’s head disappearing into the living room from the kitchen.
Relief flooded her until she caught him again, approaching her mother.
Across the room, she observed their interaction while Kyle made Mukesh laugh with a story about one of their buddies from the National Guard.
Luke hugged her mother— a good sign —and then, thank God, Father Kelly appeared, and a server walked by to offer a plate of stuffed mushrooms. Cait excused herself from Kyle and Mukesh to join their circle, but as she was walking over, someone yanked her arm.
She spun around. “What the—”
“I need your help,” Maggie said. She pulled Cait into the hallway and away from the party.
Cait eyed her sister. “You certainly do,” she said. Maggie was a mess. Dressed in the same clothes as yesterday, her hair was wet—greasy?—and streaks of black mascara circled both her eyes. “What happened?”
Maggie hurried Cait into their father’s office and closed the door behind her. She turned around.
“Isabel wants to leave,” Maggie said, biting her nails and staring at the floor.
“Why?”
Maggie wiped tears away with the corner of her sleeve. “I saw Sarah in Boston last weekend,” she said.
“And…?”
“And she kissed me,” Maggie said. “I mean, kind of. For like a second . It wasn’t even what I wanted, and then Frank showed up—”
“Oh, man.”
“Isabel found texts from Sarah on my phone, and now she wants to leave. I don’t blame her, but I’m so sorry, and I don’t even know why I did it.”
Cait leaned against the desk. “Jesus, Maggie. What were you thinking?”
“That doesn’t help me!”
“I know, but Isabel is so perfect for you. And Sarah? Really?”
“Here’s the thing,” Maggie said. “I’d gone there hoping to have, I don’t know, an actual face-to-face conversation about how our relationship ended, but when she went to kiss me, I was like, Holy shit, what am I doing here?
But it was too late. Part of me wanted to explain it all to Isabel right when it happened, but I didn’t, and that’s just made it worse. ”
Cait felt terrible for her sister. She knew it was a big deal for her to bring Isabel home, and now this. But she was also worried about Luke and her mother talking and was eager to get back to the party and check on them.
Maggie slid down the wall. “This is all my fault,” she said, burying her face in her knees.
“Where’s she going?” Cait asked.
“Her cousin’s in Brooklyn.”
Cait nodded. “I was looking forward to seeing her at the table with Father Kelly,” she said, and nudged Maggie’s shoulder.
Maggie frowned. “You and nobody else.”
“Maybe she just needs some time,” Cait said.
Maggie looked up. “What do I tell Mom?”
“I don’t know. The truth?”
Though Maggie wiped more tears from her face, they both laughed at that one.
“I’ll tell everyone for you,” Cait said.
“No,” Maggie said, standing. “I can do it.”
As Maggie trudged upstairs to deal with Isabel, Cait returned to the living room, where her excitement at seeing Luke turned into confusion when she spotted him standing beside a petite brunette who looked vaguely familiar.