“I don’t know, Susie,” Ruth said into the phone. “It isn’t all that comfortable in winter. He works so hard all week and I know he likes to get some rest on the weekends. It is one thing to go there with you and Meg, but—”
“Excuse me? Am I speaking to Ruth Emeraldine? The same woman who told her former fiancé, the boy who every girl in our sorority house was dying to marry, that he needed to accept the limited time she had to spend with him, or find someone else?”
Ruth laughed. It was true. Ruth had never worried about taking care of the needs of a man （other than Harry）。 As she sat on the phone with her best friend, she suddenly felt like she had become her mother. “You make a compelling argument.” Ruth smiled. “Still, I want Robert to love Magnolia Bluff as much as I do. Maybe I should wait until spring to bring him there.”
“Nonsense. You love it there in winter. Meg and I love it in winter because of how much joy it brings you to be there. If the man you are marrying can’t appreciate that, then he isn’t worth your time. Anyway, if Robert passed the Bernard and Helen test, a cold weekend at the beach will be a piece of cake.”
Ruth laughed. “All right, well, I still wish you could join us.”
“We have a rally this weekend that we can’t miss. But I will expect another invitation soon. Much as I adore living like a bohemian, I would never say no to the splendor of your family’s summer estate. Especially in the coldest months of the year!”
“And that, Susie Davenport, is why I will love you forever.”
Magnolia Bluff was one of the original estates on the Westchester waterfront. Built by Ruth’s grandfather, Thomas Emeraldine, after he acquired the Western Railroad, the Tudor mansion was the toast of the summer season. Adorned with striking pitched copper roofs, the elegant main house was ornamented with sturdy but sophisticated herringbone-patterned brick, complemented by accents of wood on the stucco lower walls. It sat on an enviable land outcropping with the sea on three sides, and the property’s expansive lawns and gardens were designed to take full advantage of the cool ocean breeze. In spite of its seeming formality, Magnolia Bluff held the majority of Ruth’s most treasured childhood memories. It was the only place where she and Harry could just be for weeks on end, happily swimming in the sound, sunning on their small stretch of sand, and riding bikes to the confectionery for Mary Janes and Hershey’s bars.
The first few summers after Harry died, Ruth felt that her once joyful retreat had become more of a haunted house. The smell of fresh-cut grass mingling with the mild tang of the sea, the peaceful embrace of the canopy of trees that lined the long drive, the craggy rock stairs leading down to the water, all of it just reminded her of how alone she felt without her brother. How he would have marveled at the transformation of their once-quiet village. With the new D. W. Griffith studio on Mr. Flagler’s old estate, her mother’s parties were now often frequented by Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, and the yacht club had moved, expanding membership to include many insufferable young men that Harry would have loved to dissect and teasingly suggest to Ruth as suitable mates. But without Harry, all the joy of the seaside home was gone.
By the time Robert entered her life, Ruth avoided Magnolia Bluff in summer altogether, preferring to go when the house stood empty. Her parents thought she was mad, but she found it comforting, perhaps because the gloominess of a beach town in winter better matched her mood. The damp, dark rooms and covered furniture, the cold, windy beach and empty streets—she found it peaceful somehow.
Now that she was officially engaged, she knew it was time to clean out the ghosts of Harry and reclaim it as her own.
“Isn’t there anyone at Magnolia Bluff to feed us?” Robert asked, amused when he found Ruth packing a picnic basket of provisions for their first weekend there.
Ruth smiled. “I’m afraid this isn’t like the summers in Newport with your Yalies. Mr. Gilbert will open the house for us and keep the fires going in the bedroom and study, but he is the only staff in the off-season. We will really be on our own.” She looked at him nervously, worried that he might be displeased and unsure how she would handle it if he were. “Is that all right?”