Chapter 40
Then
amy
‘Showtime,’ Iris said.
Amy watched Ashley Lincoln and her best friend, Darcey Fraser, pick their way across the waterlogged marina, lifting their long dresses clear of the mud to reveal sensible hiking boots: Vermont girls knew to be prepared for all four seasons, which often occurred in the same day, and the two teenagers carried their sparkly, high-heeled prom shoes in their hands.
Behind them, Ashley’s mother, Jenna, and Kate Walker reached into the back of the Range Rover and carefully lifted out two foil-covered trays. Food was being catered by the Maple Sweet Brewery, but some mothers always had to be seen to go over and above: Jenna Lincoln was one of them.
They waved as they approached, bearing their trays and shoes aloft.
‘I want to kill her,’ Amy said.
Iris squeezed her arm. ‘Beware the fury of a patient man.’
Only Iris would quote a metaphysical poet like Dryden at a time like this.
Amy’s stomach churned. It was one thing for the rational, practical, left-brain side of her to make a plan, to remind her that her best chance of saving her marriage was to be cool and considered, to focus on Mac and take her revenge at her leisure.
Beware the fury of a patient man. She knew that, as the Chinese proverb had it, if she waited by the river long enough, the bodies of her enemies would float by.
But the right-brain, emotional, Biblical eye-for-an-eye side of her wanted to fly at the bitch who’d kissed her husband and thrust a stake through her heart like an avenging Valkyrie.
She wanted to shake her till her pretty white teeth rattled; to push her into that proverbial river and hold her head beneath the water until her eyes bulged and her lungs filled and the life bubbled out of her.
Amy turned away.
The lake was too close, and too tempting.
The marina was suddenly getting busy as more students and parents arrived; the caterers had finished loading their boxes, and Mary Lou was chivvying them to get out of the way and move their refrigerated truck so people could park.
Several seniors on the football team, tuxedos stretched to breaking point over broad shoulders, tried to board the Lady as the caterers cleared the gangplank, and objected loudly when Mary Lou told them they had to wait.
‘It’s going to be a long night,’ Mac said.
Amy jumped; she hadn’t realised he’d come up behind her. ‘They’re just a bit overexcited,’ she said.
‘They’ve been pre-gaming over at Raylan Adams’s. You might want to check them for bottles of water when they come on board.’
‘Water?’
‘It won’t be.’
She wanted to ask him a question about something, about nothing; to detain him for just a few moments, to publicly demonstrate they were together, that she had special rights, ownership, because he was her husband and they had a son together, because they’d been married for twenty years and she knew he loved country music and hated jazz, that he loathed tomatoes and chicken together and was phobic about department stores and loved snakes.
But Mac was already jumping down from the pier onto the deck of the Lady to talk to the captain, and more students were arriving every minute, and Mary Lou was bearing down on her with her clipboard.
So Amy pushed the jealousy and hurt and fury back down inside her. She fixed her professional, competent smile back in place, and gave Mary Lou her full attention, because what was more important, really, than dealing with the mix-up between apple cider and apple vinegar?
Iris rejoined her just as Finn’s car pulled into the marina.
‘We’ve got about five or six parents who’ve changed their minds and want to come on board,’ she said. ‘Including Kate.’
‘No,’ Amy said.
‘It wouldn’t kill us to have a few extra pairs of eyes on—’
‘We told Mac there’d be seventy-two people on board, including kids and parents. I’m not messing him about now. He’s got to allow for the crew. And if we let some parents come with us, there’ll be more demanding to go, too.’
Iris held up her hands. ‘Fine. I’ll let them know.’
Nicky and Finn joined them on the dock with Maggie and Rose.
It was the first time either she or Iris had seen the girls in their prom dresses, and she bit her tongue, suppressing the urge to make too much fuss.
Amy knew it didn’t matter what was on the outside, it was what was inside that counted, and that even though you thought you were building a girl’s confidence by telling her she was beautiful, focusing on her appearance was almost as damaging as saying she was fat.
But Maggie and Rose looked so lovely in their dresses, so pretty and innocent, with their borrowed jewellery and fresh corsages on their wrists, and she really didn’t get why she couldn’t say so.
Rose had piled her brilliant red hair – the exact same shade her mother’s had been at her age – loosely on top of her head, but Maggie had left her dark hair down, and it tumbled around her creamy shoulders as if she’d just stepped out of a pre-Raphaelite painting.
‘Go on, Mom,’ Finn said. ‘Ask. You know you want to.’
‘You’ll thank me one day,’ Iris said, whipping out her phone.
‘There’s an official photographer on board,’ Amy said.
‘Don’t worry,’ Maggie said nicely. ‘We’ll do the fancy sunset ones, too, Ms Gray.’
To Amy’s surprise, Nicky smiled and looped his arm around Maggie’s waist as Iris beckoned them into position.
He seemed more relaxed and happy than she’d seen him in weeks.
Maybe Iris was right, Amy thought: it’d just been the stress and uncertainty of what came after graduation that’d been unsettling him.
Now that it was finally here, he looked as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
Mac bounded back onto the dock. ‘It’s time,’ he said, pulling his baseball cap down over his forehead. ‘We want to get everyone on board now, so we can be out in the centre of the lake for sunset. Don’t want to miss that.’
A buzz of excitement rippled around the crowd gathered by the dock. Final photographs were taken, collars straightened, hair smoothed. Mary Lou and Chad Givens, the fire marshal, checked the kids for contraband.
‘That’s my Christmas liquor taken care of,’ Chad said, as he added a fifth bottle of vodka “Evian” to the side of the dock.
Amy and Iris took up positions on either side of the gangplank as the students finally boarded, the girls giggly, slightly unsteady in unfamiliar heels, the boys digging a finger into too-tight collars or wiping the front of dirty shoes on the backs of their trousers.
She watched her husband as he moved around the boat, pulling on ropes, checking cleats, stopping to chat to the captain, exchanging an easy joke with one of the school’s trustees.
So much depended on what happened tonight.
‘It’s going to be fine,’ Iris said, following her gaze.
‘I know,’ Amy said.
‘You do realise you’re too good for him, don’t you?’
Amy returned her sister’s smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
She wasn’t too good for Mac, or for anyone. Iris would understand that if she knew why Finn’s biological father, Sean, had really left town.
Amy had warned him.
She’d do anything to protect her family.