Author: Kristan Higgins

“Did you also read my essay on the significance of language in The Sound and the Fury?”

“Passed on that one. Too many big words.”

She went back to her toad. “Mickey was my first manuscript,” she said. “Couldn’t sell it to save my life. That copy is the last one. I burned all the others along with the rejection letters.”

“I thought it was great,” he said.

“Did you?” Her voice was wry.

“Mmm-hmm. Even got choked up a little.”

“Really.”

James grinned. “Well, there were fire trucks involved. Doesn’t every boy love fire trucks?”

“Not if you work in publishing, apparently.”

“How’s the writing coming along?” he asked.

She sighed. “I haven’t hit on the right idea yet. Guess the Holy Rollers burned me out a little bit.”

They were quiet for a few minutes. The sky was completely clear, and the stars so brilliant they looked almost like a thin veil of clouds. Taking care not to move too quickly, or to look at her, James reached down and stroked Beauty’s head. The dog allowed it. Taking that as a sign, he decided to go for it.

“Can I ask you a personal question, Parker?”

“How is it that a Harvard grad can’t recognize marijuana?” she said, offering the last bite of toad in the hole to her dog, who took it delicately.

“Why don’t you and Harry get along?”

She didn’t move for a second, just let Beauty lick her fingers. Then she poured herself a little more wine and looked up at the sky. Sighed. He could smell her soap from here.

“I don’t know, Thing One,” she said quietly. “Maybe he wanted a son.”

“Do you think that’s it?”

Another pause. “No.” She cleared her throat. “So I guess I owe you a real answer, huh? Since you bailed me out and chose to spend your summer up here, working like an ox.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“No, I do. I do.” She shifted in her seat and looked at him, then back out at the water. A loon called from past Douglas Point. “Okay, here’s the deal. When I was little, I worshipped Harry. I mean, what little girl doesn’t love her dad?”

“I guess they all do.”

Parker took a sip of wine and petted her dog, her hand very close to James’s, though she didn’t appear to notice. “It was hard not to. He had the whole package—looks, charm, brilliance. If Harry had you in his sights, you felt like the most amazing, interesting person in the world.”

James grunted. True enough.

“And I don’t know, it was a long time ago, but he seemed to adore me, too. I used to—” She broke off for a second, not choked up as much as lost in a memory. “I used to go running into Welles Financial and his whole staff would treat me like a princess. And it didn’t matter if he was on the phone or in a meeting, he’d tell whoever it was that his daughter was here and kick them out, or he’d introduce me, pull me onto his lap and then keep talking, like I was smart enough to understand.”

“So what changed?” he asked.

“The summer I was ten, I caught him in bed with my babysitter.”

James flinched. “Ah, shit.”

“Indeed.” She stroked Beauty’s ear, not looking at him.

“I’m sorry, Parker.”

She didn’t say anything for a minute. “Keep that to yourself, okay? Nobody else knows. Well, my mother. And the babysitter, but she was paid off.” She finished her wine. “It’s been a long day. Thank you for everything, James.” She stood up, and he lurched to his feet, blocking her path.

“Is that it?” he asked.

She tilted her head. “What more should there be?”

“I don’t know, Parker. You drop an announcement like that and then hike off to bed?”

She didn’t answer, just looked at him, her brows drawn together.

“I’ve known you for years,” he heard himself say with a sinking sense of dread. Shut up, idiot. “We slept together once. You could talk to me, Parker. You could…we could be friends.”

Yeah. Chicks loved when you begged. How about if he went ahead and handed her his balls and said, Do what you will. Any second, she was going to smother a laugh or roll her eyes or call him Thing One, and—

She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, her lips a soft, sweet press, her summery dress swishing against his arm. “Thank you, James,” she said, her voice softer now.

Then she stepped around him, Beauty scuttling past, as well, and went up the stairs to the house.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

PARKER LAY AWAKE for a long, long time, Beauty a silky ball of warmth at her side. James didn’t come in for a good hour, and she was glad.

She couldn’t figure him out. He’d spent years attached to her father like a remora attaches to a shark. She knew he was here under Harry’s command and on Harry’s payroll, because while her father might not love her, she was his only child, and he’d damn well keep tabs on her. She didn’t appreciate James’s little digs about Ethan, and she didn’t appreciate that sleepy, hot, knowing look he sometimes got around her. The I slept with you look. He’d ingratiated himself to Harry so that Harry couldn’t even visit his grandson without his sycophant tagalong.

That’s what she used to think, anyway.

But for the past ten days, James had been a prince. No getting over that. When she’d seen him there outside her cell, her heart had leaped. And not only because he was getting her away from the Excrement King, either. It was because she felt something for him. Something beyond garden-variety cougar lust.

Maybe.

As for his offer of friendship, well, hell. She thought for one second that she was going to cry. Because though she was pretty good at sounding cavalier and worldly, the fact remained that one doesn’t tell another person about the day one’s childhood died an abrupt death without feeling it.

She hadn’t thought about Lila for a long, long time.

It was during what would be her last childhood summer at Grayhurst, though she didn’t know that yet. Lila wasn’t a real nanny—Parker was ten, after all. No, Lila was a Mackerly girl who’d just finished college and came every day to keep Parker company, take her to tennis lessons or swimming in the ocean. Parker liked her a lot…Lila didn’t read magazines or talk to her friends on the phone or pump Parker for details on how much money her family had, like most of Parker’s babysitters. She was twenty-two but treated Parker like an equal. Even when they were drawing fairies and unicorns, Lila seemed to think Parker was cool. She was always up for a swim, no matter how cold the water was. And she’d make fun snacks, too, the kind that Althea would’ve never allowed: s’mores and raw cookie dough and orange macaroni and cheese that, fascinatingly, came from a box.

Sometimes, Lila would complain about her college boyfriend to Parker, and Parker would be almost breathless with the coolness, the adultness of the conversation. No one talked to her like that. Her cousins had become a closed circle, and her mom was prickly this summer. And Daddy…things were different with him these days, too. Lately, he’d been distracted, less interested in hearing about school trips and grades. Her parents had been arguing a lot lately, so Parker had tried to be at her best—smart, charming, cheerful—then find something else to do. Ten going on thirty, her father liked to say, and she knew it was a compliment.

At any rate, that particular day was hot and clear, the best of a New England summer, a hearty breeze off the water and the sun baking the air. Althea had gone into Boston for the day to do some shopping; Harry was working in the house. Parker and Lila had been making sand castles on the beach, with moats and tunnels and turrets and everything, and Lila had seemed just as interested as Parker. But after an hour or so, Lila had to go to the bathroom. As long as she was in the house, she said she’d make them a snack, too. Root-beer floats, maybe. Parker would be okay on her own, right? She wouldn’t go in the water.

“Of course not,” Parker said. “I’m not an idiot. Plus, I can swim better than you.”

“I know, I know,” Lila answered fondly. “But I had to say it. Back in ten.”

Parker added some seaweed to a turret. Daddy would appreciate how much time they’d spent on this little fiefdom—she’d only recently learned that word, and she was going to use it, because he always loved when she used words that most grown-ups didn’t know. Yes. This fiefdom would win back his approval, most def. Which would be nice after yesterday.

Harry had come to her swimming lesson the day before, and they were teaching diving off the high platform. All the other kids had done it, but when it was Parker’s turn, she froze, quite unexpectedly. The water looked so far away, so shallow. How long would it take to hit the water? What if she flubbed the dive? Her legs began to shake.

“Come on, Parker,” her dad called, his voice already tinged with irritation. Even so, she couldn’t move, picturing the crack of her back as she slammed the water, sinking to the bottom, paralyzed, dying, blood floating in a cloud. Just do it, she whispered to herself. Go. Jump.

She couldn’t. She couldn’t even climb down the ladder herself. One of the teachers had to come up and go down first, his arms gripping the bars around her, his voice kind and reassuring, telling her it happened to him, too, his first time.

Didn’t matter. Her father was peeved. She’d stared out the window all the way home so he couldn’t see her tears, listening to a heated lecture on being brave, taking chances, how his valuable time had been wasted.

Well. Today was a new day. She’d make him forget her cowardice with a few smart words. He always loved that kind of thing. She sat back in the sand. Maybe, if he wasn’t irritated anymore, they might watch a movie or take a sail. Not to be disloyal to her mom, but it was always fun when Althea was away on a shopping trip. Harry traveled a lot, so time alone with him was precious.

“Fiefdom,” she said, so she wouldn’t forget.

The seaweed flag looked great. She stuck a few more seashells on the side. Perfect. A fiddler crab for the moat, and the thing was really a work of art.

However, Parker had sand in her bathing suit, and that did not feel very good. Though she wasn’t supposed to go in the water alone, she wasn’t going to sit there with a lump in her suit, either. She glanced up at the house—no sign of Lila—and went to the water’s edge. It was high tide, but the water was calm and flat. No big waves today.

She went in up to her waist and pulled out the edge of her suit. Much better. Then she went back to shore and waited a little more. The crab wasn’t happy. Would it die if she left it there? She didn’t want to kill anything. She might become a vegetarian, in fact, having recently learned where veal came from.

Where was Lila? She’d been gone so long that Parker had to pee now, too.

With a sigh—grown-ups, so irresponsible—she went up the forty-two stairs that led from the beach to Grayhurst’s backyard. Across the thick, lush carpet of grass, onto the hot slate patio, into the kitchen.

No sign of Lila.

Parker used the loo—she’d come across that word in an Agatha Christie novel, and it sounded vastly superior to bathroom or, as Althea said, little girls’ room. Another word to drop in front of her father.

Grayhurst was huge, but to Parker, it was an old friend. Her grandfather had died three years ago, but Parker would try to summon his ghost once in a while, feeling equal parts melancholy for Granddad and terror in case she succeeded. Right now, the house was quiet. Dead quiet, like in that movie Demon Seed that Lila had let her watch, where it got really quiet right before all the killing.

Feeling the abrupt need to find someone, Parker went to her father’s study. Empty. She headed upstairs. Maybe Lila was sick. Or maybe she wanted to use one of the fancier bathrooms. Besides, Parker wanted to change. Having a soggy bottom was getting yucky.