“Let’s sit down,” Diana said, and held the door so that Daisy could precede her inside.
They found a table for two in the back. The restaurant was empty except for them, and a table of four moms with toddlers, whose strollers were lined up against the wall. A waiter handed them menus.
“Anything to drink?”
“Just water for now,” said Daisy. Then she changed her mind. “Actually, can I get an egg cream?” If her marriage was ending and her life going down in flames, if she was seconds away from being replaced as a wife and a mother and exposed as the biggest dope on the entire Main Line, chocolate would help.
Diana said, “That sounds good. One for me, too.”
When the waiter departed, Daisy looked across the table, bracing herself. Diana sighed.
“I don’t know where to start.”
Daisy just stared. Diana pulled a paper napkin out of the dispenser, smoothed it on the table, and said, “My name really is Diana. It’s Diana Scalzi Carmody. And I really am living in Philadelphia, just not at 15 Rittenhouse Place. I’ve got a very nice Airbnb on South Twentieth Street.” She sighed. “The boyfriend I told you about is actually my husband. His name is Michael. And I’m not a consultant. I work at a restaurant on Cape Cod.”
Daisy shook her head, which felt muddy, and her tongue felt thick. “I don’t understand,” she said.
Diana started to talk, then closed her mouth as the waiter approached and set their drinks in front of them. She tore the paper off her straw, then wrapped it around her index finger. “I started to tell you about it, that day we went for a walk.”
For a few seconds, Daisy couldn’t think of what Diana meant. “About being raped?”
Diana nodded. “The summer I was fifteen, I was working as a mother’s helper on Cape Cod, in Truro. At the end of the summer, I went to a party on the beach. That was where it happened.”
Daisy felt her skin go cold. She heard the words tolling like bells: “Truro” and “fifteen” and “raped.”
Diana kept talking. “That summer, there were a lot of boys in town. They had just graduated from prep school, and they were celebrating before they all went off to college.” She looked Daisy in the eye. “They had all gone to the same place. The Emlen Academy.”
Daisy couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She wanted to get up from the table, to walk out of the restaurant, to leave without looking back, but she couldn’t make her legs listen to her brain. Every part of her felt frozen—her lips, her tongue, her hands, her heart. Meanwhile, Diana was looking at her steadily, her words coming, relentlessly, hammering against Daisy like hail. “It was dark, and I’d been drinking. I went off into the dunes, to lie down. I must have passed out, and when I opened my eyes there was one boy on top of me, and one boy holding me down, and another boy watching.”
Daisy found that she was shaking her head, back and forth, back and forth, like that gesture could somehow undo what had happened, or, barring that, make Diana stop talking. “Oh, no.”
“I thought the boys had only been there for the summer. That’s why I was able to go back, and get a job, and make a life there. I never thought I’d see any of them ever again. I had no idea that Hal spent his summers there, that his family had a place, but my husband’s a caretaker…”
A piece of the puzzle clicked into place. “Carmody. Your name—your husband’s Michael Carmody?” Diana nodded, and Daisy, recognizing the name of the caretaker of Vernon’s place in Truro, felt her head begin to throb. This was bad, she realized. This was very, very bad. As awful as it would have been to learn that Hal was cheating on her, she knew that the truth, when she finally heard it, was going to be much, much worse.
“Michael was at your house—or your father-in-law’s house, I guess. And I saw a picture of you and Hal.”
Daisy winced. She could guess which picture Diana had seen, a shot of her and Hal on their wedding day. She’d always loved the picture. Hal looked so handsome in his crisp tuxedo with his dark curls, and she’d felt beautiful, and serene, and so hopeful, a beloved princess with her whole life ahead of her and the biggest hurdle—who will I marry? Will anyone love me enough to want to be with me forever?—already cleared.
“I thought I’d made my peace with it.” Diana’s voice was soft, her tone almost musing. “So much time had passed. I’m not the girl I was that summer. But then I saw that picture, and I found out that Hal had been there, on the Cape, every summer, for all those years.” Diana sighed, and lifted her chin, looking Daisy in the eyes. “I found out about you. And that he had a daughter. And that the boy—the one who was watching—”