Page 2 of Dead of Summer
“Come with me to the island, Faith,” he’d pleaded one last time, taking her hand in both of his theatrically. “Or I’ll—I’ll have to bring someone else.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” she’d said as she swatted his chest. He’d laughed and shrugged, putting a potato chip topped with caviar into his mouth. Of course, when it came down to it, there was never any real question that she’d go. She’d give up whatever was necessary, jump through whichever hoops were needed to go to the “cottage.” Getting asked to spend the summer on Hadley Island was like winning the lottery. And Faith had the sense that if you are lucky enough to be invited it only happens once.
The shower water goes off and Faith quickly sticks the ring back into its slot.
“Faith?” David calls out from the bathroom.
“Just a sec!” she yells back. Fingers trembling, she slides the box back into its dust bag and reburies it under the blue shirt.
David stands next to the sink with a towel around his waist. Faith goes to him, leaning against the marble vanity and watching as he puts a layer of shaving foam onto his lower face. He’s good-looking to the point she didn’t even trust him when they first met. The swoop of hair, the perfect lips, the body maintained to its maximum potential.
“I can’t wait to show you the island. This was the most important place to me growing up. I could be a regular kid here,” he says. They’d gotten in late last night. When they arrived, David had taken her straight up to the bedroom, pulling her there eagerly, his hands all over her as they climbed the stairs two at a time.
“I can’t wait to see it.” Faith beams, trying to play it cool as she watches him expertly maneuver a gold razor around the contours of his chin. How did she get so lucky that David Clarke is her boyfriend? With a jolt she thinks of the ring. Not boyfriend for much longer, though.Fiancé.How surreal will it feel to call him that? Sometimes Faith’s not even sure any of this new life of hers is real and she is not actually asleep in her childhood bedroom about to wake up to the palmetto bug problem and the drippy faucets, realizing she never made it out of there at all. She puts a hand to his chest, making sure.
“What?” he asks, leaning in to kiss her.
Faith studies him a moment before letting his lips touch hers. He pulls back and looks at her suspiciously. “Nothing! I’m just excited to be here.” She dodges his face, still scattered with bits of shaving foam, worried now that she is going to give his secret away with the dumb smile plastered on her face. To hide it, she ducks out into the bedroom and puts on a pair of low-slung linen pants.
“Where would I find coffee if I were in the market for some?” she asks, pulling a white tank top over her head. He comes into the bedroom, the towel still slung around his waist.
“Why, in the kitchen, naturally, darling,” he says in a pretend posh accent, slipping his hand around her waist and squeezing her in close to him. “Head downstairs and to your left. Someone will be there to make you whatever your heart desires.”
“You’re not coming?” she asks, surprised.
“I’ll be down in a minute,” he says with a wink. “Watch out for Pops. He’s cranky in the morning.”
Faith has yet to meet Geoffrey Clarke. She has only heard the rumors about the famously bullish financial titan of Park Avenue. That he is a charmer and a ruthless businessman who has never lost a deal, gobbling up companies and spitting them out, selling them for parts. And, less flatteringly, that he is a bully in the office, terrorizing his staff and pitting them against one another. The other more scandalous gossip Faith had found online while doing research on her new boyfriend right after they started dating. The stories in thePostalleging that he is a ladies’ man who cheated on David’s mother for years while she suffered from an addiction to pain pills. Faith had waited for David to fill her in on the details, but so far, he hasn’t, mentioning his mother only in passing. It was strange, she thought, but Faith hasn’t wanted to push, afraid of him asking for details of her own parents in return. Those were the sorts of things she wasn’t ready to divulge. Not yet.
Faith wanders downstairs slowly, taking in the grandeur of the place in the daytime. The staircase is wide and marbled ostentatiously. A mahogany table in the very center of the landing holds a model of a ship on a brass stand. It looks old, probably some priceless antique, she thinks, leaning in to look at the miniature wooden hull brushed with gold leaf. Its sails, permanently caught in the wind, catch the sun, sending a shadow across the white floor.
Bright sunlight spills through the wall of tall windows at the back of the house where a large formal dining room has been updated withceiling-height modern glass doors that open onto a sprawling veranda looking out at the water.
She twists the latch and steps outside, breathing in a rush of ocean-scented air. Below the veranda a long infinity pool fed by fountains on either side burbles, one end lined with inviting plush deck chairs in nautical stripes. The pool stands just above the edge of a crisp green lawn that continues all the way to the Clarkes’ private beach with dock.
She continues around the side of the house where the veranda leads to an open-air spa. A white massage table stands inside a pristine white tent, its flaps drawn back to frame views of the ocean. Faith peers through a circular window into a sauna; its salt stone walls glow a welcoming pink. She’ll have to come back later with a book, she thinks, excitement filling her chest. It was worth it to quit her job. Of course, she’d have followed David even if the perks weren’t this good, she muses, looking out over a set of sparkling plunge pools tiled in Mediterranean blues. But they sure don’t hurt.
She finds herself comforted by the somewhat hermetic environment of so much wealth. It’s like being in an airport or the lobby of a skyscraper. It feels safe to her somehow, being somewhere so well kept and distant from the struggles of the real world and the life she used to have. The life she tries very hard not to think about.
She slips back into the house through a wide glass door that leads into a dining area. It has floor-to-ceiling windows with sleek golden hinges that must mean the entire wall can open away on a warm night. A large table stands at the center of the room. It seems to have been carved from a singular gigantic hunk of wood.
Through an archway she finds a sprawling kitchen with vast white marble countertops. A few people bustle around in chef whites cracking eggs into bowls and chopping vegetables. An Italian espresso machine, gleaming and statuesque, is being busily tended to in one corner. A loud hiss of steam comes off it when she walks into the room. No one looks up at Faith as she stands near the edge of the counter. She is trying to decide how best to ask for a coffee when she hears someone behind her.
“I didn’t expect to find an unfamiliar woman wandering the house.” The voice sounds like David’s would if he’d been smoking cigars for many years. “Not that I’m complaining.”
Faith turns to find Geoffrey Clarke standing behind her, a folded newspaper in one hand. Up until this moment Faith has only seen the elder Clarke in the pages of theNew York PostandVanity Fair, wearing dark slightly oversize suits with a young blond woman on his arm.
“Oh, hi. Lovely to meet you,” she says, though there is something about his presence that makes her want to recoil. She steels herself and smiles winningly at him. “David said I should come down. I was just exploring the house. It’s gorgeous.”
“David said he was bringing someone,” Geoffrey says, his tone impenetrable. His hard eyes scan Faith as though looking for defects. “Farrah, was it?”
“Faith.” She tucks her hair behind her ear, trying to calm the sudden buzzing of nerves.
Geoffrey looks down at her with a slightly amused look on his face. Faith swallows and holds his gaze. He’s shorter than she’d expected but no less intimidating with his boxy build and close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard. A series of hard angles, the wide head, the square shoulders. His face above the collar of his polo shirt is slightly pockmarked. She looks for signs of David in him. Maybe there is something around the eyes, the way the skin tugs ever so slightly downward in the outer corners. But even those seem duller, and they are definitely harder for her to read.
“Interesting name,” he says finally, but he doesn’t sound interested. His hand reaches past her and she flinches as he takes a coffee from the counter, giving a curt nod to one of the kitchen staff.
“It was my grandmother’s,” Faith starts to explain, but he is already moving away. As he passes, his body brushes so close to hers that she shrinks back to avoid it. He carries his coffee through the archway into the dining room where he sits heavily at the table and shakes open the paper without another word. Faith wavers in the kitchen, uncertainif she should follow. There is something familiar about his arrogance. She’s met other men like Geoffrey Clarke in her life, though no one quite as rich. She trusts none of them.
