“It will be a fine home to come to when I finish school.” My tone was bright, but in truth, even as I said these words, I felt a wave of discomfort wash through me. No, something more than discomfort. Terror. What I never would have dreamed of saying aloud to Ed was that I was terrified. Terrified of living in a town like Greenwich, a rarefied, impenetrable place. A place where I knew nobody, while everybody else here seemed to know one another, and had done so for generations.
And this house, if you could even call it a house, with its palatial sprawl—the house was lovely, to be sure, but what was I going to do with a mansion with a dozen bedrooms and a staff the size of a small army? Papa would come often—I knew that—but that meant that Leila would as well; I had no interest in being a third member of their party. And besides, Papa still traveled regularly to Battle Creek and New York and Washington for business, and many other places for recreation and pleasure. Mother was always off to some medical hospital or spa town seeking treatment for her lengthening list of complaints. I would be alone here more often than not. Perhaps The Boulders would be my home, yes, but what of the family to live with me in it?
It was fortunate that a lady was expected to wear gloves in public because the truth was that I had recently broken out in sores on the tops of my hands and had taken to scratching them to the point of rawness and bleeding. I had sores in my mouth as well. It was the stress—the impending question of where I would be when my final year of boarding school wrapped up. Where, and with whom. I had millions set to come to me when I reached my eighteenth year, but all the money in the world could not buy me answers to those most basic of questions.
In the recent weeks I had taken to spending unhappy hours before the mirror in my beautiful oversized bedroom, scouring my reflection, using tweezers to pluck wisps of silver that kept sprouting up in my honey-colored hair. My hair was going gray, at just sixteen?
I thought back to the previous night, the party at the club, and now I looked at Ed Close as he stood before me. My, how good he looked. But of course he did, for he was a creature of this habitat. He was so at ease here, with his pale linen suit and easy, suntanned smile. So settled, whereas my entire life stretched unresolved whenever I thought about the days past graduation.
Could he sense my sudden agitation? I wondered. It didn’t appear so, because he angled his tall frame toward mine and fixed me with his golden smile as he said, “Well, now that you’ve been kind enough to give me a tour, I hope I might be so bold as to offer the same to you in return?”
This startled me. “Oh? What do you mean by that?”
“What I mean, Marjorie, is an invitation. Come out with me on my sailboat tomorrow. Would you?”
* * *
“I hope your father will forgive me for running away with you.” Ed smiled at me as he pulled gently on the tiller to steer the boat, its mainsail swelling with the breeze, his flaxen hair whipping around his face in a tousled, impossibly attractive way.
“Running away, are we?” I squinted and forced myself to look away from Ed toward the shoreline; to our right sprawled the green and golden coast of the Long Island Sound.
“We’ve crossed state lines,” Ed said, pointing toward the land, where homes and docks, along with anchored sailboats and fishing craft, filled the view. “We are in Rye, New York. Perhaps we should keep going?”
“If we do keep going, where will we end up?” I asked.
He turned his suntanned face toward the water, skimming his hand over the top of its surface and creating five small wakes with his fingers. “New York City. Want to come back with me to law school?”
“I’m afraid I’m more interested in business affairs than law,” I answered, blinking against the bright sunshine. The day was a warm one, but Ed looked cool and crisp in a collared shirt and short-cropped pants of cream and navy blue. I was in a light day dress of ivory and olive-green stripes.
“That’s fine. Let’s bypass New York City altogether, then,” he said with a shrug. “Keep going. We can make it to Ireland if we go light on our rations.”
“Ireland? Goodness. What if I get hungry?” I asked.
He shrugged again. “I’ll fish for us. I don’t need much. As long as I have you for company, I’ll be happy.” He made the comment as a joke, an offhand quip accompanied by a carefree smile, but I noticed how my heart tumbled in my chest as he did so. He’d be leaving for New York City soon, just as I’d be leaving for Washington and my final year at Mount Vernon. Would he write? I wondered. Or were there other girls in Manhattan, sophisticated and elegant socialites who were bound to be much more intriguing than I could hope to be?