“Don’t mind Molly,” she said to Freya. “She’s spoiled selfish.”
“You really think you’re that different from her?” Freya asked.
“Totally!” Mardi shot back. She was caught completely off guard by the question.
Freya frowned thoughtfully. “Ingrid and I might be very different, but we’re the best of friends. One day you’ll be glad you have a sister who has your back.” She grabbed them each a glass of champagne from a passing tray.
Biting her tongue, Mardi accepted the champagne gladly. While she was normally utterly unconcerned with what others thought of her, she found that she really wanted Freya to like her. Freya was so cosmically cool.
They clinked glasses in the moonlight as a band somewhere inside Fair Haven struck up a waltz. The music swayed out through the enormous open windows of what looked like a chandeliered ballroom. Notes poured over the vast front lawn, enticing the crowd to come inside and dance. Freya and Mardi were carried on the tide toward the house.
As they walked up the path, they reached out to one another and clinked glasses again.
“Champagne really isn’t my thing,” said Mardi. “It’s more Molly’s style, as you can probably figure. But this stuff isn’t so bad.”
“Don’t worry,” Freya stage-whispered, “I know where they stash the tequila around here.”
“Awesome,” said Mardi. “You’re a bartender, right?”
“That’s right. I’m the queen of the North Inn. My drinks are known as love potions. I’ve created a menu of drinks: Infatuation, Irresistible, Unrequited, Forever . . .” Her mouth shaped the cocktail names as if they were juicy pieces of fruit bursting on her tongue.
Mardi was equally attracted to—and equally wary of—both sexes. Her dad, who was rabidly heterosexual, couldn’t understand how she could flow so freely in her appetites. Couldn’t she go definitively one way or the other? Mardi looked down at her boots and snarled just thinking about how binary he was. How limited. Freya was probably the sexiest girl she’d ever met, but she was also sort of like an aunt, or an older sister, so that was, um, weird.
“Love potions, huh?” she asked.
“Mardi, the trick to being a—quote unquote—good witch, here on Middle Earth, is to twist your sense of mischief to spreading the love.”
“I’m not so sure that spreading love is in my nature. Rage is more like it.”
“You’ll see.” Freya winked a feline eye and turned to say hello to a conservatively dressed middle-aged couple.
Mardi took a step toward the front door. There was an odor of roasting meat wafting from the house. Her nostrils flared. She realized she was starving.
But as she took a step toward Fair Haven’s luminous entryway, with its promise of dinner, she was immediately stopped by a silken male voice. “You must be Mardi Overbrook.” Someone was blocking her way.
She couldn’t stand it when people, men in particular, messed with her freedom of movement. It made her blood boil. “Yeah,” she said, pushing around him. “That’s me.”
“What’s the hurry?”
She looked up, annoyed. He was about seventeen, in ripped jeans, a T-shirt, and a beat-up leather jacket. His hair and skin were dark like hers, but his eyes were as brilliant blue as hers were deepest brown. She could see his lean form through his thin T-shirt. His arm muscles rippled in the moonlight; he must be a swimmer like her.
She was taken. But to his face, she said, with all the coldness she could muster, “If you must know, I’m headed to the buffet.”
“Do you want me to show you the fastest way?”
In spite of herself, she cracked a smile. “I’m sure I can find it. I know how to take care of myself.”
“That,” he said, “is perfectly obvious. Just think of me as a means to an end. Your support staff. I know where the kitchen is, and I have friends here on the inside.”
“Do you work here or something?”
“I live here. Or I could live here if I felt like it. It’s my house. I mean, my brothers are the ones who brought it back to life for the family, and my stepmother is really into it now. She gives garden tours and stuff.”
“So how come you don’t live here if it’s your family’s house?”
“I like my brother’s boat better. It’s a fishing yacht called the Dragon. I spend most of my nights there, on the water. I’m Trent Gardiner, by the way.”
“Hi, Trent,” she said.
“Hi, Mardi.”
“How do you know who I am?”
“Freya told me about you and Molly coming to town for the summer.”
“You’re tight with Freya?”
“She’s close to my older brothers, Killian and Bran. Close to both of them, if you know what I mean. She’s got a lot of love to go around.”
“So I gather.”
As they talked, he guided her into the house with a hand on the small of her back. Normally, this would have driven her crazy with the urge to hex him, to web his hands into duck feet or make his gums bleed profusely, but somehow she didn’t mind. There was nothing condescending or controlling in his touch, it was firm, gentle, protective.
The buffet in the crystalline ballroom, with its huge windows open onto fragrant gardens, was lush and bountiful. Jaded as she was from Manhattan excess, Mardi still couldn’t help but be impressed. She wasn’t so much struck by the cost of the food—she knew well from her private school world that there was no limit to what people could spend—as she was touched by the loving attention to detail. There was a suckling pig turning on a spit over an open flame, a perfectly rare prime rib and a glimmering lacquered duck breast. There were duck-fat potatoes; truffle risotto; green beans tossed in an almond pesto; a salad of local tomatoes, grilled peaches, and feta, sprinkled with basil from the Fair Haven garden; and another salad of shaved fennel and fresh fava beans. Even though she knew it had been expensively catered, Mardi could tell that someone had given this meal a lot of thought.
“Is your stepmother a foodie?” she asked over the music as she filled her plate.
Trent laughed. “My stepmother lives on saltines, gin, and Fresca. I’m the foodie. This is my menu,” he gestured to the spread. “What do you think?”
“I’ll let you know when I’ve tasted it.”
“Make sure you get some of the risotto. I stirred it myself.”
“You cook?” She nearly spit out the champagne she was swallowing.
“Why so surprised?” His eyes twinkled mischievously.
She thought about it. “I shouldn’t be. Everyone watches the Food Channel these days.”
“Ah, so now I’m just like everyone?”
“No you’re not, actually. I know lots of people who watch cooking shows, I don’t know anyone who really cooks.”
“Follow me,” he commanded softly.
Instead of bristling, she happily trailed him, sensing that he was taking her somewhere she would have chosen to go on her own. Balancing their laden plates, she and Trent meandered through a labyrinth of passageways and down a pine staircase into a vast basement kitchen with large French doors framing a sunken herb garden. There were so many copper pots hanging from the ceiling that Mardi had the urge to take a soft mallet and play them like gongs.
The staff smiled at Trent fondly. No one skipped a beat when he opened a double-wide Sub-Zero—another part of the renovation, he explained—and pulled out a stash of foie gras terrine. He said he had made it himself. “And you have to have some of this cherry compote with the foie gras. I did it with cherries from our orchard.”
Was this gorgeous boy really talking to her about compote? About how he didn’t use a cherry pitter because he preferred the sensation of pitting the cherries with his fingers?
“Why are you looking at me funny?” he finally asked.
“I’ve never met a domestic person
before.” She almost added, especially one who looks like you, but she figured he could read this aside in her eyes if he was paying attention.
“North Hampton will do that to you,” he replied. “I wasn’t into this stuff when I got here either. I always liked good food, but I thought you bought it. I guess there’s some kind of connection to nature here. Or to the past. It’s kind of a wormhole that way. You know, Freya’s an awesome cook.”
“Really?” It was hard to picture Freya in an apron. “I can’t see Freya over a hot stove. But her sister, Ingrid, makes great strawberry rhubarb pie. Too bad she’s so uptight.”
Trent walked Mardi through the herb garden around the side of the mansion to a restored eighteenth-century greenhouse. He unlatched the door and led her inside, where he gave her a quick tour of the twisting palm trees, Agave ferox, African violets, Swiss cheese plants with bright lacy fronds. There was a reflecting pool where pink and white water lilies floated in harmony. Interspersed with the larger plants were the herbs Freya used for her potions at the North Inn: damiana, burdock, feverfew, valerian, catnip, and angelica root, to name a few. Trent told Mardi that his brother Killian had planted them for Freya. “Ten years ago, this place was a ruin. Killian brought it back to life for her.”
They sat on a bench, and Mardi attacked her plate.
He watched her and smiled, amused. “You don’t eat like a girl, do you? I’m sorry, was that sexist?”
“Sort of,” she said, “but I agree. I hate the way most girls eat. Like my sister, for example. It’s either tiny bites of caviar and sips of champagne or nonfat frozen yogurt and Diet Coke. The only time she actually eats is when she sees I have something I really like and she insists on taking ‘her’ half just so I don’t get it all.”
“Sounds like you guys have a really healthy relationship.” He grinned. “Do you want ‘your’ half of my foie gras?”
Without waiting for her to say yes, he popped a piece of brioche toast, slivered over with foie gras and drizzled with cherry compote, into her mouth. From someone else, it could have been a forceful, annoying gesture. But it was exactly what she wanted from Trent.
“Wow. Thanks for sharing. And by the way, you said Freya had told you about Molly and me coming to North Hampton. But how did you know which sister I was when you saw me?”
Trent searched her face with his sea-deep eyes. “Freya had the lowdown on you both from your dad. She said you were the cool one.”
Without giving her time to respond, he leapt to his feet and pulled a metal box out from among the stalks of some long green plant whose leaves were clamped shut like smirking mouths. He opened the box, pulled out a pair of long metal tweezers, extracted a writhing worm, and held it up to one of the bulbous leaves. The tight green lips suddenly parted wide. Trent dropped the worm into the heart of it, and the leaves snapped shut on its prey.
“Venus flytrap,” he said. “We’re not the only carnivores around here. I promised Killian I would feed them while he’s gone.”
“Can I have one of those to take home?” Mardi asked breathlessly, fantasizing about how much fun it would be to feed Molly to it piece by piece, first her fingers, then her toes, then her wicked tongue, all the way down to her black, black heart.
“Sorry to interrupt, guys, but I’m low on catnip for the bar,” Freya said, appearing in the moonlight carrying a small wicker basket and pair of gardening scissors.
As Freya kneeled to clip, Mardi saw that she was not only a glamorous goddess but a nurturing one. If Mardi hadn’t happened to like Freya so much, she would have hated her for being so perfect.
“As long as I’m here, I’m also going to grab a little angelica root.”
“Go nuts,” said Trent. “It’s your greenhouse.”
Once Freya had gathered her ingredients, she told Mardi they should probably take off. “We don’t want Ingrid on our case,” she said.
Trent walked them to their car and gave them each a good-night kiss on the cheek. His faint stubble set Mardi’s skin aglow. He squeezed her hand, pressing her ring softly into his palm.
“See you around?” she asked.
“It’s a small town,” he replied with a smile.
• • •
As Mardi shifted the old Ferrari from first gear into second, heading away from Fair Haven toward the bridge to the mainland, she checked her rearview mirror to see Trent’s strong dark figure silhouetted against the starlit sky. He was smoldering, yes, with those soul-melting eyes and that hard body, but he was also sweet. Something about him felt like home. A home she had never had.
8
YOU BETTER WORK, B*TCH
Why on Earth do I have to get a job, Daddy?”
“Because it’s character building.”
“I have plenty of character already.”
“Touché, Miss Molly, but you’re still getting a summer job. There’s got to be something to amuse you in North Hampton. What else are you going to do all day? Shop?”
“Do you realize that doing menial labor for two and a half months will barely net me enough for a new handbag this coming fall?”
“I realize that, yes. But many wealthy families who give their kids everything still have them do low-paying jobs as teenagers. These jobs are a part of their education. They teach the value of work.”
“So you admit that it’s a total pretense.”
“Sweetheart, if you and your sister don’t learn to integrate better, you are going to spark a modern-day Salem witch trial. Did you read the papers after those kids were killed? Did you watch the news? You have got to start ‘pretending,’ if that’s what you want to call it. We need all the pretense we can get right now.”
“But, Daddy, I’m a goddess. Goddesses don’t have paper routes. They don’t waitress. Or pump gas.”
“You’re a goddess who is cut off from her natural world. You can only use your powers if you assimilate into this one. Look at the Beauchamp sisters. Ingrid is a librarian. Freya bartends. They inhabit a disorienting space where nobody quite notices that they never age.”
“Are you suggesting that I live here in this backwater forever to keep the mortals off my trail? Are you banishing me? That is a fate worse than death, Daddy. You must know that.”
“Relax, relax. New York City is a plenty disorienting enough space for you to spend eternity in without anyone batting an eye. I’m not worried about geography. I’m worried about the human authorities accusing and convicting you so that our own higher authorities banish you to the Underworld. I don’t want to lose my babies for all eternity. Can you blame me?”
“Okay, okay, okay, fine, I’ll get a job, but can we make it fun? Can I be a sleazy, jet-setting, sleight-of-hand real estate tycoon like you?”
“Molly, you’re sixteen.” Troy sighed. “And I’m not that sleazy, am I?” he asked, sounding wounded.
“No, of course not. You’re awesome Daddy, you know that. Look, I can dress way older. Totally pass for twenty. And you should see the inventory out here. All these places with fabulous bones screaming to be fixed up. And so, so undervalued. And the land, Daddy, utterly wasted on potato farms and fruit trees. It’s scandalous.”
“Molly—”
“Just listen! I could be the force behind the development and marketing of the next Hampton. We just need to put this place on the map, take down that stupid force field that old Joanna Beauchamp put up a few centuries ago, give North Hampton a train station and a Jitney stop, and we’re golden. We’re the new gem of the East End.”
“Can you try to understand, Molly, that the point of this summer exercise is for us not to draw attention to ourselves? To fly under the radar? To be normal?”
“You call disappearing from the face of social media normal?”
“Please, will you just get a job? The kind of basic job that kids your age do during the summer? As we’ve established, even
trust-fund kids do it. It’s the American way.”
“Maybe.”
“That’s my girl. I knew you’d see reason. Tell your sister I said hi, doll face. I’ve got to run. I have to make a call.”
“What else is new?”
“Don’t sass me, kid. And take care of yourself, okay? Have some chowder for me. Manhattan clam chowder. The tomato-based kind. I swear it’s not fattening.”
Molly put her phone down on her bedside table, opened her window, and leaned out into the bright morning. Her room faced the water. There were sand toys scattered on the beach below, and a couple of kayaks. Matt was out on his paddleboard, moving swiftly across the bay. She supposed he was trying to stay fit as long as he could for his immortal wife, poor guy. Good luck with that.
Molly could see Gardiners Island in the distance, with Fair Haven stately in its lush green grounds, ringed with golden dunes. Somewhere on that island was Tris Gardiner.
Why had she blown it at the party the night before last? She had such power and such strength, yet she had so little control over it. Was it possible that Daddy and Ingrid were right? Did she really need to learn some discipline? She shuddered at the thought.
She supposed she should get ready for the day. She stepped into her small en suite bathroom. It had a Scandinavian feel to it, blond wood, white tile, a single skylight. She showered and dressed in a fitted white sundress and a pair of wraparound cork platform sandals. She wanted something fresh yet beguiling for her job search. She kept her makeup light and chose a pale lipstick.
Downstairs, she found Mardi in an oversized Sigur Rós T-shirt, slumped at the kitchen island over a pile of three steaming blueberry pancakes. Next to Mardi, Jo sat dreamily staring at her rainbow tattoo. The little girl had already finished eating and was absently running a finger in circles through the maple syrup puddled on her plate, lifting it to her mouth and licking it. There was evidence of Henry’s breakfast smeared all over his high chair, but he was thankfully absent. For now, the white dress was safe.