Page 52 of Drawing Home
She told him to meet her down the street at Wölffer Kitchen. The restaurant was three doors away from the hotel, nestled between a sushi place and a Sotheby’s real estate office. She’d read about it in theTimes. The paper had given a glowing review of the restaurant’s baby lamb chops, though she understood the menu was seasonal.
“They don’t take reservations,” she told Kyle. While that was a policy she found vexing, she had a grudging respect for it. Fortunately, it was early enough that they were seated immediately.
The Wölffer Kitchen dining room had a burnished, elegant feeling. The design touches were fanciful—lots of mirrored surfaces and whimsical hanging light sconces. From her seat on the banquette, Bea had a full view of the bar across the room, the liquor bottles shelved in a wall of textured glass.
“This restaurant is owned by the Wölffer Estate Vineyard family,” she told Kyle. “You should have wine tonight instead of that dreadful whiskey.”
“I like my dreadful whiskey. Thanks, though.”
She ordered a bottle of rosé with the ambitious name of Summer in a Bottle.
“For fifty dollars, it had better be a damned good summer,” she said, turning to the menu. “Do you know what you’re having?” she asked Kyle. His face was sun-kissed, his brown hair tinged with gold. Two young women seated nearby glanced at him appreciatively.They probably think I’m his mother,Bea thought.If they even notice my existence. The invisibility of old age never failed to irk her. At least in New York City, people occasionally recognized her assomebody.
She ordered a watermelon salad with arugula, feta, and pickled onions and a grilled shrimp dinner with farro, artichoke, and baby chard.
“I’ll have the local oysters,” said Kyle, handing his menu to their server.
“So, don’t keep me in suspense,” Bea said. “What is this conversation I need to know about?”
“I was hanging out with Sean and he got a call for a pickup so I rode with him. He had to deliver fuel to a boat that rents a mooring from him—”
“You’re not going to find Henry’s drawings on a water taxi! Honestly, Kyle. If you can’t make yourself useful, you might as well go back to Manhattan.”
“I am trying to help you, Bea. If you would let me talk for one minute. So we get to this yacht and the woman who owns it was going on and on about a fund-raiser to rebuild the movie theater that burned down. You’ve seen that temporary wall around it, right?”
She nodded with impatience.
“Part of the fund-raiser is an art auction. I think you should donate something to the auction. Something big.”
“And why should I do that? To impress your new friends?”
He sighed. “Bea, you’re fighting to take a local house away from a local woman. I think it’s a bad idea, but obviously your mind is made up. So the point is, you can’t just take from this place without giving something in return. Everyone here is going to be against you.”
Bea nodded slowly, thinking about her encounter earlier that day with Emma Mapson.What gossips in New York City think means nothing. The house is in this town, and inthistown, no one will take your side. No one believes you.
Bea looked at Kyle with, she had to admit, a new appreciation. “You are absolutely right,” she said. “In fact, I want to do more than donate some work. I’m going to get on that committee to rebuild that theater. By the end of this summer, Sag Harbor will never want me to leave.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Early morning at Long Wharf was Emma’s favorite time to be by the water. The sun was bright but gentle; the boats were empty and rocked gently on their moorings. The shops and restaurants weren’t yet open, and the primary sounds were the seagulls calling to one another, undisturbed by people.
Cole Hopkins waved to her from the deck of his boat. Everyone in town knew Cole Hopkins and his signature turquoise-blue sixty-three-foot catamaran theLouise. Emma had met Cole and his wife, Louise, their first summer in Sag Harbor, the same year Emma started working at the hotel. Cole had spent thirty-six years as a commercial fisherman on crab boats in the Bering Sea before starting his luxury charter business. He was booked months in advance and did more than a hundred and twenty charters a summer. But Emma was still hoping there was a way he could help her out the night of the Sag Harbor Cinema fund-raiser.
“Thanks for meeting with me,” she said. “I’ve got only a few minutes before I have to get to work.” She had hoped they could just discuss it on the phone but he’d told her, “I’m not much of a phone guy.”
They sat on white beanbag chairs on the stern of the boat. Louise, who worked with her husband on board as hostess and first mate, offered Emma a bottle of sparkling water.
“So, Emma, what can I do for you?” Cole said.
“You know about the cinema fund-raiser and that most of the events that night are here on Long Wharf?”
He nodded. “Great idea. It’s going to be a big night.”
“It is. I’m actually hosting an art auction off-site. At a house on Actors Colony Road.” She still couldn’t bring herself to say “my house,” and anyway, she was trying to be discreet. “One of my committee members had the idea to provide transportation to the house by boat. I was talking to Sean about it and he said you have another boat, a dinner yacht, that you also charter.”
Cole leaned forward. “I’d love to help you out but I have a sunset cruise booked for that night. I could put some feelers out, see who else might be around.”
Emma was disappointed. She wanted to work with someone she knew was a pro, someone who had strong ties to the town.
