Page 30 of Unspoken Tides

Hilary invited Stella to her home later that week for dinner. It was incredible how different times flowed when she had something to look forward to. Something that re-oriented her days. Even some of her appetite returned. In the hours before Stella arrived, Hilary made a salad, cooked fish on the grilled, and chilled a bottle of wine, wondering what she and Stella would say to one another outside of the context of two strangers meeting on a beach. It had been a long time since Hilary had hung out with someone who wasn’t completely Hollywood. It was hard to imagine someone without the ego required to “make your career work.”

Stella arrived a few minutes early. She’d made an apple pie, which felt very quaint and un-LA, and she wore a simple white dress. Her cheeks were bright red.

“This place? This is your place?” Stella sputtered as she entered the foyer and removed her shoes. “I’ve driven by hundreds of times, wondering what was on the other side of that gate.”

Hilary took the pie and led Stella down the hall. She wasn’t sure what to say. To her, the place wasn’t so ostentatious. It was just home. It still smelled like her mother.

“I always thought someone really famous lived here,” Stella went on tentatively.

Hilary put the pie on the counter and poured them both glasses of wine. She could feel Stella’s eyes on her.

“My mother bought it,” Hilary said.

Stella’s eyes were slits. She was trying to put the puzzle together.

“My mother was Isabella Helin.” It was the first time Hilary had used the past tense, and it felt like killing her mother all over again. She took a large sip of wine.

“Oh! Huh. I think I’ve seen some of her movies.” Stella pondered for a moment, then raised her shoulders.

Relief flooded Hilary’s chest. Stella wasn’t a super fan. She hardly knew Isabella Helin at all.

“She died this summer,” Hilary offered. “I came here to regroup.”

Stella furrowed her brow and touched Hilary’s arm tenderly. Empathy echoed from her eyes. “I’m so sorry that happened, Hilary.”

Hilary was immediately taken aback. In Los Angeles, plenty of people had offered her their sympathy after her mother’s death. They’d said all the right things; they’d honored Isabella and her incredible memory and her wonderful films. But each time they’d spoken to Hilary about her mother, Hilary had had the sense they felt an ownership over Isabella. It was as though because they’d seen her on screen so many times, they thought they knew her just as well, or perhaps better, than Hilary. It was disconcerting.

But Stella hardly knew who Isabella was. All she knew was that Hilary had lost her mother. And losing a mother was a devastating thing.

Hilary led Stella to the veranda for dinner. She took pleasure in serving the salmon and salad, amazed at how flavorful it tasted. It had been a while since she’d bothered to cook. Stella gushed about it, saying, “I’ve been eating frozen dinners all week. And yogurt. It’s so hard to cook for one person.”

Hilary had had the same thought. “It’s miserable,” she agreed. “I don’t want to make a recipe for six people. I want to make a dinner for one person using a single pan or skillet. And I don’t want to waste ingredients!” She chewed her lip. “It’s sad, sometimes. Eating alone.”

She had a flashing image of herself and Rodrick with ten different fast foods spread out across the bed before them. She remembered her greasy fingers and Rodrick’s eager kisses. Her heart panged.

“I usually turn on the television while I eat,” Stella confessed. “Which makes it even sadder sometimes.”

“You’re always welcome for dinner here,” Hilary said, surprising herself. “There’s no reason we can’t cook for each other. Good food is like medicine. Some philosopher said that. I can’t remember which one.”

Stella’s smile lit up her face. Again, Hilary wondered how this wonderful and beautiful creature, who’d grown up here, seemed to have nobody to call her own. No friends? No family? Of course, she had Jasper. But a dog wasn’t enough. Isabella had tried to fill the void in her heart with a tiny dog once but had ultimately given him away to one of her maids. She couldn’t take the barking.

“I’ll invite you to my place, too. It’s much, much smaller and covered in dog hair. But it’s home.”

“I’d like that.” Hilary smiled.

By August, Hilary and Stella had fallen into an easy routine. They saw each other almost every day for a beach walk, lunch or dinner, a hike along the cliffs, or a beach day of reading and sipping sparkling water or wine. Although they knew it was terrible for their skin, they adored how glistening and brown they’d gotten.

In some ways, hanging around a girlfriend like this took Hilary back to her teenage years. Nothing really mattered. There were plenty of books and magazines to read; there was makeup and clothes to try on. It was like slipping back into an old skin.

One morning, Stella went with Hilary to the Nantucket Harbor to discuss the purchase of a brand-new sailboat, which Hilary decided to buy and call the Tigerlily. She hired a professional artist to paint the name on the side. After that, Hilary took Stella out on the boat several afternoons, teaching her how to operate the ropes and flow with the wind. Stella was a natural learner. Sometimes they took Jasper with them, and he stood with his paws on the edge of the boat and gazed out across the water, rapt and amazed. They were never afraid he would jump over, as it seemed all creatures understood the terrors of the open sea.

By the third week of August, Hilary couldn’t take it anymore. She had to tell Stella her biggest secret or it would eat her up.

“Rodrick hasn’t called me in more than two weeks,” she said, her tone flat. They were out on the Tigerlily, sprawled beneath the sun alongside a Nantucket cliff. They hadn’t seen another person in hours. Hilary was pretty sure she was getting a sunburn.

Stella picked herself up and gazed down upon Hilary, worry in her eyes. Her blond hair flailed around her. “Two weeks?”

Hilary nodded and told herself not to cry. Her eyes filled anyway.

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