Page 46 of Unspoken Tides

“Maybe I could come to Greece with you,” Hilary suggested.

Ingrid groaned. “I don’t know.”

“Come on, Ingrid. I’ve spent my life on film sets. I know the game. I’ll stay out of your way. Maybe sometimes we can hit the beach or eat together. I can teach you to sail. Finally.”

“I’ve already been taking lessons. My character in the next film knows how to sail.”

Hilary felt this like a final blow. This was perhaps the last skill she could pass on to her daughter, and her daughter had decided to pay someone else to teach her instead.

“Besides,” Ingrid went on, speaking through the silence, “Dad and his girlfriend will be there. We’re all staying together in a big villa on Crete. It would be awkward if you were there.”

Hilary felt like she’d been punched in the gut. She put an egg on her plate and stabbed it with a fork so that the yolk spilled across the porcelain. She panged with guilt, thinking about a documentary she and Rose had watched recently about starvation across America. Why had she wanted to give so much to her daughter when her daughter wanted nothing from her? Was she a fool?

Hilary wrapped her hands over her forehead so that Ingrid couldn’t see the tears spilling from her eyes. After a long moment of silence, she whispered to her egg yolk, “What do you want me to do?”

Ingrid reached across the table to touch her mother’s arm. Electricity went up her arm and directly to her heart.

“Just stop, okay?” Ingrid begged. “I don’t want all this bad press. I just want to work. I want to be truly great. Like Grandma was.”

Hilary’s heart cracked. “When will I see you?”

Ingrid let her hand drop onto the table, between platters of sausages and croissants. “We can text each other sometimes if you want. And maybe after the film is finished, I can visit you in Nantucket.”

Hilary bristled. “I live in Los Angeles now.” She’d moved here to make this work.

But Ingrid shook her head. “You love Nantucket, Mom. Don’t give up on your life there. I think it’s good for you.”

Hilary sat in stunned silence. She wondered how many twelve-year-old girls told their mothers what to do and got away with it. But what could she do? Ingrid Salt made more money than Hilary ever had. She had the backing of a production studio, her famous father, and Janice. She looked at Hilary as though she were used up, wrinkled, and half dead. Once, she’d begged Hilary to read her bedtime stories deep into the night. And now, she was trying to escape brunch after only fifteen minutes of sitting down together.

On cue, Janice knocked on the door and called, “Ingrid? We have to go.”

Hilary snapped to her feet. She wanted to tell Janice to disappear. She wanted to lock the doors and kidnap her own daughter. What insanity was this?

But Ingrid got to her feet and tapped her napkin across her lips. She hadn’t even waited long enough for her coffee.

Helplessly, Hilary said, “I love you, Ingrid.”

Ingrid held her gaze for a long time. “I love you, too.”

And then, she swept toward the foyer, her legs flashing beneath her jean skirt. There was the scream of the front door hinges, followed by the fast prattle of Janice, probably talking about where they were off to next. What appointments awaited them? There was the sound of Ingrid’s laugh, which sounded so much like Hilary’s, which sounded so much like Isabella’s. Hilary collapsed on the kitchen chair and wept.

When she remembered to, she called one of the maids she’d hired to clean the large house and invited her and her entire family over to feast on the brunch. She heated everything up that she could, then disappeared upstairs to pack up her things and call the airlines. When she told Stella over the phone what had happened, Stella said, “This won’t be the last time you see her. She’s only twelve. She doesn’t know what she wants.”

But Hilary had a bad feeling. “She belongs to Hollywood now. She’s just like my mother. She wants to give them everything. She doesn’t care what it takes.”

Chapter Nineteen

Present Day

It was the day after Hilary had read the article in People magazine. She was out on the Tigerlily with all nine of the other Salt Sisters, wearing a black bikini and sipping a glass of sparkling water with lemon. It was an impossibly beautiful day, but she felt at a great distance from it, as though she couldn’t fully feel the sun on her face or the water dripping down her legs as she dried. The Salt Sisters’ laughter echoed overhead, bouncing off the nearby cliff. Quiet and contemplative, Hilary rolled through her feelings about this incredible miracle: Ingrid had stood up for her. Ingrid, the daughter she’d thought never wanted to know her at all. Ingrid, the little girl who’d hated her so much she’d asked her to stop trying to see her.

And then, she remembered something else. That night at Rodrick’s, he’d said, “We need to talk about her.” Hilary had known he meant Ingrid; it was the reason she’d run as quickly away from him as she could, as though he planned to hurt her. But she hadn’t known why he’d brought her up. She hadn’t even known that Rodrick and Ingrid were estranged.

She brought this up with Stella now. “I always thought they were thick as thieves,” Hilary explained nervously. “She rejected her mother and put her entire faith in her father.”

Because she paid attention to the tabloids, Stella had an immediate answer.

“She resented him for making her do a series of films she didn’t want to do,” she explained. “She did an interview ten years ago or so about it. She said that her agent—”

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