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When Olive emerges again with the dress on, she makes a beeline for the full-length mirror. Sunday steps up behind her and zips the dress carefully, watching her daughter’s face in the mirror from over Olive’s shoulder.
“You look gorgeous, Ollie. I love it.”
Olive is rapt; she’s admiring her own image and the way the dress hugs her thin body, pushing her breasts up and elongating her ribcage. “Is it really okay if I borrow it?” she asks in a whisper.
“Darling, you can keep it. I don’t mind if I never see that dress again, because honestly, after seeing how stunning you are in it, am I ever going to be able to zip my old lady bod into it again?” She swats Olive’s firm bottom and walks away to find the star-shaped diamond earrings in her jewelry box to loan her daughter.
“Thank you, Mom. It’s perfect,” Olive says, sounding pleased. “And you would still look amazing in this dress, so knock it off.”
Sunday chuckles. Sure, she might still be able to pull off wearing the dress, but to what end? And what for? Life on Shipwreck Key has proven to be a blissfully casual affair: gray t-shirts, running shorts, flip-flops, and maybe the occasional sundress have been Sunday’s wardrobe staples. She’s completely stopped wearing foundation, she doesn’t bother to blow dry or flat-iron her hair, and she never wears anything that doesn’t make her feel comfortable.
“Thanks, babe,” Sunday says to Olive as she hands her the earrings. “These I want back, but the dress is yours. If I ever need something formal again, I’ll just buy something new.”
Sunday picks up the box of Wheat Thins and her empty La Croix can and heads downstairs, leaving her daughter in front of the mirror, turning this way and that. Unlike Ruby’s gigantic, five-bedroom house on the water, Sunday has chosen something far more sedate. It’s a cute two-story, three-bedroom house on the beach, and the thing Sunday loves about it the most—other than its coziness—is the long wooden boardwalk that leads across the sand and up to her front porch. She’d never imagined having a place of her own with a view of the ocean, and the sense of freedom that the house gives her is beyond measure.
The sink in her kitchen looks directly onto the beach, and Sunday stands there now, rinsing the few dishes that she’s left there from breakfast. Even this small task is something she won’t take for granted, because there have been years and years of living in posh townhouses with housekeepers on hand to pick up after her, and many more years where her days were filled with getting ready for events, delegating tasks, and making sure that her daughters were being picked up and ferried to dance lessons, piano recitals, and soccer matches. This chance to bumble around her own house, doing what she wants to do at her leisure is a novelty that hasn’t yet worn off for Sunday.
She shakes the water off a coffee mug that she’s just rinsed and sets it in the top rack of her dishwasher, keeping an eye on the way the ocean moves rhythmically before her. It’s hypnotic, really, and she can foresee spending hours and hours at the sink, washing and re-washing things as she daydreams and looks at the waves.
Peter never loved the beach like she does. If some people are beach people, and some people are mountains people, then Peter would be best categorized as a city person. Getting him to vacation for the girls’ sake wasn’t impossible, and over the years they’d been to nearly every Disney park on the planet, to London and Paris when the girls were teenagers, and to tropical resorts that boasted privacy and relaxation, but in truth never truly brought either. Life with Peter was always about optics, strategy, and politics, and while Sunday had (fairly) willingly signed on for all that, there had been many, many moments that she’d regretted doing so. But what had her options been? She can chastise herself all she wants now, but she knows that while her life as Second Lady came with some steep costs, it also saved her from a totally different fate.
She picks up a towel and wipes her wet counter, then leans over the sink to look at the flowers she has sitting in neat little pots on her windowsill. Even having the time and patience to nurture tiny sprigs of nasturtiums and African violets is a wonder to Sunday, and she smiles as she touches the damp soil. She’s about to start her dishwasher and run a load when a figure out on the beach catches her eye: it’s Banks, Ruby’s Secret Service agent, jogging along the hard-packed sand next to the water. Unlike the former First Lady, a former Second Lady isn’t assured Secret Service protection after her husband’s time in office is up, but Sunday certainly enjoys the sight of this particular member of Ruby’s security detail, and she always has.
Sunday drops the dishtowel onto the counter and leans her hips against the sink, craning her neck to watch Banks’s firm, toned body as he jogs—shirtless, mind you—along the deserted beach. She stands up straight once Banks is out of her view and glances around to make sure that Olive hasn’t tiptoed into the kitchen and caught her mother ogling a half-dressed man, but she’s still alone, so Sunday goes back to poking her flower pots and wiping her already clean counters.
People have always been curious about Sunday’s romantic life, and for damn good reason. It’s an open secret in Washington that Peter Bond is gay, and throughout the course of their marriage he’d made almost no concessions to the fact that he had a wife and two young daughters at home, dating openly among the pool of handsome, young, social-climbing gay men in the city—and around the world, for that matter. Sunday had first caught him in bed with another man in their own home, and the sheer shock that had rocked her world at that moment was something she’d never truly experienced again. Once you’ve seen your husband canoodling with another man for the first time, even the worst horror movie imaginable kind of pales in comparison.
After catching Peter and young William, a clean-cut Congressional aide who was half Peter’s age, she’d regularly stumbled into rooms and caught Peter having phone or text conversations with other men, and the jokes that people made when they thought she wasn’t listening were enough to humiliate even the toughest broad. But Sunday wasn’t tough—at least not then—though she is now. She’s learned over the years to distance herself from Peter, from his actions, and from anything that doesn’t directly pertain to her own survival and that of her daughters.
And her daughters…what joy they’ve brought to Sunday’s life! She wanders over to the glass-fronted cabinets in her kitchen, running her fingers over the bubbled surface that reminds her of sea glass. She stares at the cups and glasses in varying shades of blue and green as she thinks of Olive and Cameron. Olive, with her long, almost waist-length dark hair and knowing eyes. She’s defied the odds over the years, coming to Sunday and Peter as a newborn with a small hole in her heart that required surgery and many sleepless nights. Sunday is afraid that she babied Olive too much over the years, never forcing her to really push herself, but now that she’s twenty-seven, Olive is a lovely, gentle soul with her own cute little bakery in the small Connecticut town where she’s living with her boyfriend, James.
It’s Cameron who gives Sunday heartburn. At thirty, Cameron is angry. She doesn’t understand why Sunday put up with Peter’s shenanigans for as many years as she did, and as a strong feminist, she thinks that her mother’s actions are directly responsible for sending a negative message to other women. They’d argued about it the Thanksgiving before Sunday caught Peter and Adam together in the pantry of the White House kitchen, but even Sunday finally serving Peter with divorce papers hadn’t thawed Cameron’s heart toward her mother.
“Cammy,” Sunday whispers to herself now, looking out at the September sky. She’d always loved Cameron’s strong sense of womanhood, but sometimes she wished that her daughter would set it aside for one minute and understand that life is full of gray areas; not everything is black or white.
“Hey, Mom?” Olive calls out as she descends the wooden staircase, which creaks slightly beneath her bare feet. “Are you hungry?”
A smile spreads across Sunday’s face. She’s just eaten her weight in Wheat Thins, but she no longer cares how many carbs she’s snacking on, or whether she’s gotten up on time to meet her trainer for five-thirty weight training sessions every weekday morning followed by an hour of yoga.
“I could eat,” Sunday says, turning her back to the kitchen window and looking at Olive, who has switched out the midnight blue dress for a pair of white shorts and a yellow t-shirt. “You want me to make something?”
Olive laughs out loud. “Mom. I love you, but you don’t cook. In fact, I have no idea how you’re going to survive down here without having every restaurant you’re used to ordering from within a few miles from your house.”
Sunday sticks out her tongue and makes a face. “The Frog’s Grog does takeout. And so does The Black Pearl.”
“Oooh, let’s go there,” Olive says, pulling her long hair back and fastening it with a claw clip. “Can we wear shorts and flip-flops?”
Sunday glances down at her own casual attire. “On Shipwreck Key,” she says, “you can wear anything you want.”
* * *
The Black Pearl is situated at the end of Seadog Lane, Shipwreck Key’s main street. There’s a sandy lot carved out in front of the restaurant, and it’s filled with golf carts parked haphazardly in unmarked spots. The restaurant itself juts out over the water, its wooden deck high enough that it makes outdoor diners feel like they’re floating on the edge of a cruise ship as they dine on lobster rolls, grouper and chips, cracked conch, and island curried shrimp.
Sunday walks up to the hostess stand with her Birkenstocks slapping against the wooden slats of the deck. She hasn’t bothered to change out of her shorts and t-shirt, and instead of combing her hair and putting on mascara, she’s hidden her hair under a hat and shielded her makeup-free eyes behind sunglasses.
“Table for two, Mrs. Bond?” the young girl with the menus smiles at her. Under different circumstances it might annoy Sunday to be recognized while out of the house looking like she just woke up, but in her new life, she couldn’t possibly care less.
“Yes, just us two,” Sunday says with a huge smile. She hangs onto the strap of her purse over one shoulder as she follows the girl to their table right at the edge of the deck. A nice breeze is blowing in off the water, ruffling Olive’s fine, black hair as she pulls out a chair and sits down. “Thank you,” Sunday says, taking her menu and flipping it open.
