Page 9 of The Sixth Wedding
“Get your hands off her, Porter,” Fray says.
Leland jumps to her feet. “We weren’t doing anything,” she says. She’s so drunk her words are slurred, and Mallory is slumped over on the green velvet sofa, eyes at half-mast. Fray storms out of the library. Leland wants to chase after him but she can’t leave Mallory drunk and alone with two senior boys; that’s how date rape happens.
She appeals to Penn Porter. “Can you help me get her to her feet? She’s Cooper Blessing’s sister.”
Penn rolls his eyes but obliges. He and Leland ease Mallory up. “Are you dating Frazier Dooley? That guy has issues. Seems to me you can do better.”
Leland leads Mallory through the house. She finds Fray in the kitchen, swilling from a bottle of Jim Beam.
“We’re ready to go,” Leland says.
“Great,” Fray says, his eyes flashing with what Leland understands then are his “issues”—rage, jealousy, alcohol. “Ask your buddy Penn to get you home.”
“Fray,” Leland says. “We weren’t doing anything.”
“He had his arm around you,” Fray says, swigging from the bottle again. Just the smell is enough to make the room spin. “I didn’t see you fighting him off.”
“Youleftme bymyselffor over anhour!” Leland says. “What did youthinkwould happen?”
He shrugs. “Just goes to show I can’t trust you.”
Leland would like to say that this is an isolated incident, but the entire three years that Leland and Fray date are marked with similar explosions, like firecrackers on a string. She becomes only too used to what she comes to think of as Fray’s “white-hot sulk.”
But there is love too, real love, desperate love, Frazier clinging to Leland, pressing his face into her neck and murmuring,Please, baby, don’t ever leave me.
Now, as Cooper turns down the no-name road that leads to Mallory’s cottage and she sees the ocean glittering in the distance, Leland marvels at how much time has passed—and how much hashappened. Leland went on to have a decade-long relationship with a woman. Fray became a billionaire. (Abillionaire!What must Penn Porter think aboutthat?) Leland’s father, Steve Gladstone, went on to divorce Leland’s mother and marry Fray’s mother, Sloane Dooley. Technically, now Leland and Fray are step-siblings! These are the kinds of things that only happen in novels. In fact, Fifi wanted to write about it—but Leland put her foot down.
“Where’s Jake?” Leland asks when they pull up to the cottage.
“Inside,” Coop says. “He wanted some time to himself.”
No doubt, Leland thinks. If what happened between her and Frazier is one novel, then what happened between Jake McCloud and Mallory is another. Oh boy, is it.
When they walk in, there’s music playing—Cat Stevens singing “Hard-Headed Woman”—and Jake McCloud is standing at Mallory’s bookshelves, running a finger over the spines.
“I’m glad you’re listening to this song now,” Frazier says. “Get it out of your system so we don’t have to hear it again.”
Jake turns, smiles, and the men shake hands. Leland follows up, hugging Jake and kissing him on the cheek. “Don’t listen to him,” she says.
“Leland, you’re in Mal’s room,” Cooper says.
“You can have Mal’s room,” Leland says to Jake.
“I’m in the guest room,” Jake says. “That’s where I was the first summer.”
“Fray, you can take Link’s room,” Coop says. “I’ll take the sofa.”
Leland carries her bag into Mallory’s room and shuts the door behind her. The room is lovely, with its huge white canopy bed and peach and green attached bath. Leland kicks off her shoes, sits on the bed, and stares at the ceiling. “Can you see us, Mal?” she whispers. “I hope so. I very dearly hope so.”
Jake
He reminds himself that this weekend is for Cooper, not for him.
He also reminds himself that, although it’s Labor Day weekend, it won’t be like any other Labor Day weekend that Jake has spent on this island. Mallory isn’t here, and nobody knows about their rituals but her.
Friday night, they eat at home, just like Jake and Mallory always did—only instead of simple burgers, corn, and sliced tomatoes, Cooper goes to the Nantucket Meat and Fish Market and returns with thick, marbled rib-eyes, blocks of ruby-red tuna, half a dozen twice-baked potatoes, colorful vegetable skewers, a container of Caesar salad, two pies (peach and blueberry), and a container of vanilla Häagen-Dazs.
“And a charcuterie and cheese platter,” Coop says. “In honor of my mother and her penchant for hors d’oeuvres. I also got a case of wine.”
