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“We’re glad to be here.”
She smiles, wondering how long she has to stand here— before she can move on. He will be Thomas’s friend now. And as far as Gwyn is concerned, Thomas can more than have him.
Maxwell is still smiling at her, though, making eye contact, and tipping his glass of champagne her way—leaving Gwyn no graceful exit.
“I was just telling Thomas before that a friend of mine once said to me that marriage isn’t a success if it lasts, it’s a success based on how it lasts,” he offers. “Ten or twenty or thirty-five good years together is sometimes a stronger statement to make than fifty okay ones together. I believe that.”
She nods as though they were in agreement, though of course she knows that he doesn’t believe what he is saying—that he has generated this anecdote solely for whenever a friend is in this situation. Gwyn knows him well enough to know that whatever his marriage is really like—and how can anyone outside of it know?—he will never leave it. He believes that staying is the only success. Why shouldn’t he? We only believe something else when we have no other choice.
A waiter comes by with a tray of champagne flutes, Gwyn grabbing one as he passes.
“And, of course,” Max says, “this is not the best time, but just so you know, Nicole and I would like to buy it. We’d be open to making a generous offer if you’d consider our interest before putting it on the market. As generous as is necessary.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The house.”
“This house? My house?”
She turns around to look at it across the dooryard, lit up and glowing, against the rain.
“Yes,” he says, “your house. Huntington Hall.”
They’ve agreed to table the discussion about the house, she and Thomas, until after tonight. Somehow, figuring out what is to become of the house—letting it go in some way—would make everything final, if it isn’t already. It would make it all done.
“It’s complicated . . .” Gwyn says.
He interrupts her. “No, I’m sure. I’m just saying that when you two are ready, we are more than ready. My daughter Meredith just had twin boys. And we’d like to get them all out here in the summers. It will be easier if they have their own place because her husband is such an SOB who doesn’t even try to hide anymore that he hates us.” He smiles. “The price we pay.”
Gwyn feels her face reddening. She has considered that Thomas would leave, that he would go to Eve, wherever that is. And that she would leave too, not wanting to stay here without him. But she hasn’t actually considered the house not being . . . theirs. Only having Hunt Hall be empty? Isn’t that wrong too? And while she could leave it to her children, she knows—as soon as the thought runs through her head—that she doesn’t want to do that. Thomas won’t want that either. At one point, this house might have seemed like a place for new beginnings. Now it feels more like a place for letting go of old ones.
“We can probably work something out,” she says.
“Really?” He laughs nervously. “Just like that?”
She turns and looks at her house again. Thirty-five years. Thirty-five Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve dinners and Christmas mornings here. Thirty-five Fourth of July parties and 36 children’s birthday parties, 78 overly long visits from her family. One hundred times that she decided January was too terrible here and 250 times that she knew there was nothing more perfect than Montauk at the very end of March. Five hundred times that she went up to the lighthouse for picnics, 709 times that she brought home fresh flowers from the farm stand in East Hampton, 840 times that they walked down the bluffs to the beach. Eleven hundred times they read the Sunday paper by the fireplace, 1,300 times that she watched the sunset from the porch, 1,900 times that they spent an evening on the swing by the edge of the cliff.
One time, now, that they are standing before everyone they know, everyone they love, and having a party that is supposed to end with them telling each other good-bye.
She looks in the direction of Thomas, who isn’t looking back at her.
“I don’t know,” she says to Maxwell. “Maybe.”
Maggie
She doesn’t go upstairs and change. She doesn’t fix herself, really. She pulls her hair back in a loose ponytail and walks into the party in her faded jean skirt and pink tank top—her purple bra a little too obvious beneath it. She left her backpack at the Buckleys’, with Eve, who was trying to get ready for the wine toast, the cutting of the cake. Still. If she wants to be putting on her best face for this, she certainly isn’t. She just wants to get to Nate while she can still remember that part of her does want that, before it feels too late.
The rain is coming down now, unapologetically, the wind whipping into low currents, fighting the outside of the barn, pushing on it. Maggie is wet by the time she enters—water droplets on her arms, her neck?
??and there is dirt and blades of grass on her feet, where her flip-flops left her exposed.
From the doorway, the barn looks incredible: a shiny, warm refuge from the storm, lit up and bright, the party full of that energy that the best parties have, that intangible quality that means a night has the chance to be memorable, magical. Looking around, it’s easy to forget what these people came for. It’s easy to wonder if they’ve all decided to forget too.
Maggie sees Nate in the corner of the barn, Nate in a tan suit, orange Converse sneakers on his feet. He looks great. He looks like himself. And she forgets about the rest of it, for a second. She feels so relieved to see him—that she has chosen to see him—that it takes her a second to realize he is standing next to Murph, in her deep skin-colored dress, looking, from here, like one long leg.
She cracks her knuckles and starts to head toward him, toward both of them. Only someone stops her. Thomas stops her. He is talking to a young couple whom he looks less than happy to be talking to. They could be Maggie’s age, maybe a little older.
“Maggie,” he says, shifting his hand from her arm to the small of her back. “I was just looking for you. This is Belinda and Carl Fisher, who just moved into a house down the road. This is Nate’s fiancée, Maggie Mackenzie.”
