Beautiful Day(87)

Me, Margot thought. The Rolling Stones, the summer between junior and senior year.

“Nick crashed the car and then he got caught growing those pot plants in the attic, and Mom was certain Kevin was going to get Beanie pregnant. Mom and Dad were so consumed with keeping track of the three of you that they forgot about me.”

“That’s not true…”

“It is true. Kevin broke his leg playing lacrosse, remember, and they left me at Finn’s house for three whole days.”

“Well,” Margot said. “We were older.”

“And when you all moved out and moved on, we were like a family again. But a different family. A family with me and Mom and Dad. We would sit down to dinner and we might talk about you, but it was like talking about relatives in Africa or China, you were so far away. Which was fine by me.”

Margot made a face. What was this? Decades-old resentment about birth order?

“At the end of Mom’s life, it was just the three of us again. I had a front-row seat for her death and what it did to Dad.” Now her tears were flowing freely. “It was horrible, Margot. He loved her so much, he wanted to go with her. Hell, I wanted to go with her.” Jenna yanked at her blond hair, which was still in some semblance of a bun. “Love dies. I watched love die with my own eyes. She left, we all stayed. And that, that, Margot, was the worst of all.”

“You’re right,” Margot said. “Of course, you’re right.”

“And so now we have Finn and Nick, and Daddy and Pauline, and Jim and Ann Graham and horrible Helen, and you and Drum Sr. And as if all of that didn’t make me skeptical enough, Stuart lies to me about an enormous event in his life. Enormous!”

“But it’s not a deal breaker, Jenna,” Margot said. “When you said that he revealed himself to be just like everyone else, you were right. He’s a human being. He was scared to tell you about Crissy Pine. He wanted to pretend like it never happened. I’m not saying he wasn’t in the wrong. He was. You deserved to know. But do not cancel the wedding over this. It isn’t worth it.”

“He gave her his great-grandmother’s ring!” Jenna said.

“Since when do you care about things like rings?” Margot asked. “I promise you there are hundreds of thousands of diamond rings in this world that have been kept or stolen or thrown out of car windows in anger.”

“I care because he gave it to her—something precious, a family heirloom. He loved her enough to give her that ring.” Jenna sniffled. “I want him to love me that much.”

“He does love you that much!” Margot said. “He loves you more than that! He loves you enough to have gone out and found a ring with ethically mined diamonds! He didn’t recycle some fusty ring that belonged to his dead ancestor. He found a ring for you, one that you could love and be proud of.”

Margot thought this was a point well made, and she let her words hang in the air for a moment. Then she said, “I saw him this morning. He’s a mess.”

“I hope he is,” Jenna said.

“He is,” Margot said. “He looks god-awful. He said if you leave him, he will die—and I don’t think that was hyperbole.”

Jenna started to cry again. “I love him so much! I’ve just spent the past twelve hours trying to make myself stop loving him. And I can’t stop, I’ll never be able to stop, I’m going to love him for the rest of my life! But he lied to me! It’s like he’s suddenly become a completely different person—a person who was engaged and chose to hide it from me.”

Margot knew enough not to speak. They both stood at the window, the same one Kevin had pried open so that they could all toss handfuls of their mother’s ashes out over the island she adored. The breeze coming in the window was the only thing that was keeping Margot from fainting.

She pulled Rhonda’s cell phone out of her pocket and handed it to Jenna. “Call Roger,” she said. “Call Roger and tell him it’s definitely off.”

“Okay,” Jenna said. She accepted the phone and stared at the face of it for a second, and Margot thought, She won’t be able to do it. She loves Stuart, and they will end up having a marriage like Beth and Doug’s—a marriage that will be a fortress for all of them. Margot’s perfect instincts told her so.

But this time, it seemed, Margot’s instincts were wrong. Jenna dialed the number and held the phone to her ear. Margot had the urge to grab the phone from her sister’s hand and talk to Roger herself. The wedding is on, Margot would say. Jenna is just scared. She’s just scared is all.