Page 10 of Wildwood

Topher looks at me and takes my hand. “Yes. It’s still on the table. I just want to make sure that if we do this, we do it with eyes wide open.”

I smile at him and squeeze his hand. “Absolutely.”

* * *

Topher goes to bed as soon as we get home, but I’m dying to research the Brooks. I feel a little starstruck about this legendary family with their grand houses atop the hill. And they must have known my grandmother and possibly even my mother. It hadn’t even occurred to me that moving to Wildwood might also bring a connection to people who knew my family. But now that I know about the Brooks, I’m just dying to meet them, to ask them if they remember Mathilde Bishop.

So, I sit at the kitchen island with a mug of chamomile and honey, clicking and scrolling for over an hour, poring over the Cold Brook Wool and Cashmere website and clicking through various related articles.

The company website is sleek. The home page image alternates between a gorgeous shot of a mist-covered hillside, trees in the golden hues of autumn, and a moodier image of a flock of sheep, huddled together against a gray sky. The words American Made & Vermont Grown run along the bottom. Cold Brook Wool and Cashmere seems to boast about and advertise itself as an American tradition, at the forefront of eco-friendly operations and luxury.

The current CEO of Cold Brook Wool and Cashmere is Madeline Brook. She appears to be in her fifties and is undeniably beautiful, gazelle-like in stature with long, red hair and green eyes. Google image photos show her luminous at fundraisers, laughing freely with fellow attendees, clearly the focal point of whatever conversation had been happening, or posing with her sheep, wearing impeccably clean clothing while standing in the mud.

I also stumble across a Vogue article from last fall, titled “An Afternoon with the Queen of Cashmere.” The Queen of Cashmere? The article includes a spread of gorgeous photos taken at Madeline’s home. There’s one of her, her husband—a younger-looking man named John who is apparently the head of Green Mountain Medical—and two children, Genevieve and Lucas, who appear to be college aged. They are all wearing crimson sweaters and sit on a gold, brocade couch, knees pointed in toward one another. Another photo shows Madeline stark naked except for the apparent signature scarf, the ends of which strategically cover her breasts and crotch, the hood artfully covering her head, one green eye peeking out. She’s standing among a herd of goats, looking half supermodel, half witch queen.

I devour the article. Apparently Cold Brook Wool hit a rough patch in the eighties, as synthetic fibers gained in popularity. The company was still profitable but viewed as increasingly irrelevant. But when Madeline took the helm in the early 2000s, she foresaw the return to natural fibers and turned the struggling, archaic business into the cutting-edge brand it is today.

INTERVIEWER: What brought about the expansion into cashmere?

MADELINE: I knew we had an opportunity, an obligation, with Cold Brook Wool to bring people back to natural fibers. Synthetics are bad for the environment, and they are bad for us. I really think establishing Cold Brook Cashmere was a critical part of getting people’s attention. Showing them that natural fibers are gorgeous, timeless, and sustainable.

INTERVIEWER: Why should people buy your products? How do you justify the high price tag?

MADELINE: Our products stand the test of time, that’s why we’ve been around for two hundred years. You won’t find a more honest company or more pure products than you will at Cold Brook Wool and Cashmere.

INTERVIEWER: What do you think of your nickname, the Queen of Cashmere?

MADELINE: Next question. (She says with a wink.)

Her achievements make my head spin. How can someone that beautiful have also achieved so much professionally?

Through more internet sleuthing, I think I’ve identified the other two families who reside on Cold Brook Drive. Stuart Brook and his wife, Isabelle, are both in their eighties. Stuart was the Cold Brook Wool CEO before Madeline took over, and he still holds several board positions, for various consulting agencies. Christ, I think, feeling a stab of inadequacy. Isabelle had raised three children, now of course long grown and with families of their own, and looks like how I imagine every woman on Nantucket to look, groomed hair, pearl earrings, pastel clothing.

Then there are Julian Brook and his wife, Joan, both in their midthirties. They seem to be the odd ones out, at least in terms of career. Julian appears to be the head of Brook Designs, an architecture firm. Photos on the Brook Designs website show Julian, rugged and leaning against a barn door with Joan, a tall and lithe woman, with black hair and striking gray eyes. Though it was at a distance, I am nearly certain that it was Julian we saw earlier today. Julian looks like a younger version of Stuart. Sure, his hair is dark and curly, whereas Stuart’s is white and neatly combed, and Julian’s probably got fifty pounds on Stuart. But there is something in the eyes, some sense of amusement in both Julian and Stuart, that is palpable even through a computer screen.

Stuart, Julian, and Madeline aren’t siblings, clearly. Nor father and children. They must be cousins or some degree of cousins, of varying generations. They all seemed to have had lives and careers in Northeast cities before ultimately returning to the apparent ancestral homes in Newfield. I would never voice this out loud, but part of me is jealous of the Brooks. Not just their wealth, which is extravagant, but their legacy and the sheer number of them. I have so little family left, yet they essentially have a compound full of extended family. But then the other part of me wonders how on earth it works. Surely there must be drama?

The clock now reads midnight, and with a yawn, I close my laptop. Hugo’s head pops up and I realize he’s been waiting for me to go to bed before he does. Sweet boy. I scratch behind his ears.

After collapsing into the soft sheets, my brain rehashes what I’ve learned. At first blush, I feel myself judging these people. They clearly have a degree of wealth, privilege, and legacy that I could never dream of. I assume that as hard as they might work, they have not earned nor deserve the lifestyle they’ve inherited. They remind me of some of my classmates at Brown. Sons and daughters of the elite, who spent summers at the family country club, who had articles of clothing at age eighteen that cost more than my entire wardrobe now. My freshman year, I remember a girl named Jade Devereaux who lived on my hall. One night I complimented her outfit, before heading to a party. I was wearing a simple cotton dress from the Gap. Jade was in a short, silky slip that was both understated and risqué and was beautiful on her perfect figure that seemed beyond her eighteen years. “Thank you,” she replied in a husky voice. “It’s Gucci.” She might as well have told me her boyfriend was a Kennedy, which he very well may have been.

But as much as I want to judge the Brooks, instead I feel as I did in college and find myself, annoyingly, already hoping they like me, worrying they will see me as an outsider, an accidental interloper on their world.

That night I dream of playing hide-and-seek at Wildwood, but not with Tom and Anna, but instead with Julian Brook and Jade Devereaux. She’s naked, wearing nothing but a hooded scarf. I am searching for them, following muffled laughter, and each time I’m certain I know which door they are behind, I open it to find nothing but an empty closet.

Chapter 7

When I enter Garden Vistas, I am met with the familiar smell of antiseptic and canned food. As always, I try to swallow down the guilt I feel whenever I come here. I moved Mathilde to the nursing home in Quincy shortly after my mother died, so she could be closer to me. But I wish we had enough space to have moved her in with us. Or for a better nursing home. One with an actual garden on the property, not just in the name, and nice furniture.

Bev, the stern-faced receptionist, waves me over to sign in.

“Morning,” I say, smiling brightly. “Just here to visit Mathilde.”

I scribble my name, feeling sweat on the back of my neck. I’m nervous about seeing my grandmother. I can’t get her blessing to move to Wildwood. But even if it’s purely going through the steps, I need to tell her. And yes, maybe there is a small part of me that hopes this news, that her brother is dead, and he’s left me Wildwood, maybe that might possibly be the thing that brings her some moment of lucidity.

“You’re all set,” Bev says, as I hand her back the clipboard. “Mathilde’s in the game room.”

I head down the hallway, past rooms of residents. Mostly the doors are closed, but sometimes a few are open, revealing one of the occupants lying placidly in bed, or sitting in a chair, staring out the window. There is little movement.