Edgewater Read online

  “I can see why. It’s beautiful.”

  “I thought we’d eat outside, but we can eat in here if you want.”

  I may have cleaned up back at Oceanfront, but all I’d had to change into was a spare T-shirt and jodhpurs. “Outside is perfect,” I said. “It’s a little too formal in here for me.”

  “My kind of girl.” Charlie picked up a phone on the sideboard. “Annalise, we’re headed to the portico.” When he hung up, he turned to me. “Right this way.”

  I followed him through double doors and onto an expansive terrace, where oversize hunter-green wicker chairs were set up around a glass table. Charlie took the seat next to me, not across from me. The chairs had enormous beige pillows on them, but I wished they were a bit smaller, because it felt like we were each sitting on our own private island.

  “So, I’m guessing you didn’t cook dinner yourself,” I said.

  “Did you honestly think that was a possibility?”

  “I wasn’t going to rule out cooking as a secret Charlie Copeland skill.”

  “It’s true, I have a lot of secret skills,” he said. “But Felipe cooked tonight.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “The chef.”

  “Yup,” Charlie said, “and it’s your good fortune that he’s on staff, because if I cooked for you, I’d likely kill you.”

  Two women in uniform—I assumed one was Annalise, but I wasn’t introduced to either—came out with food on big silver platters: an enormous quiche; a frisée salad with goat cheese, croutons, and pomegranate seeds on top; and a bottle of champagne, which was immediately poured into crystal glasses.

  “You said you liked champagne,” Charlie explained.

  “Lennox said I liked it,” I reminded him.

  “Well, I took her at her word.”

  “I do like it,” I said. “But I have to drive home.”

  “What do you normally drink when you have to drive?”

  “Anything,” I said. “A Coke.”

  “Of course! Annalise?”

  “Oh, no, it’s not necessary,” I said. But Annalise was already scurrying back to the kitchen.

  “I just want you to be comfortable,” Charlie told me.

  I smiled. “I am.”

  A minute later, Annalise came back out with another silver tray, with an ice-cold can of Coke, a bucket of ice, and a small plate of lemon wedges. Charlie served me a bit of salad and a wedge of quiche. I took my first bite and had to hold in the sigh of happiness that welled in my chest. You forget how good food can taste until it’s hard to come by. I could’ve inhaled everything on my plate, but I knew I should pace myself. Charlie was watching me.

  “Tell me something, Lorrie Hall,” he said between bites.

  “What?”

  “What was the best thing about your day?”

  “That’s so strange that you just asked me that,” I said. “My mom used to ask us that.”

  “So did my dad.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, he did a few times. When he was home.”

  “I imagine the man who would be president has a lot of places he has to be,” I said.

  Charlie popped a crouton into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “Something like that.”

  “So, what was the best part of your day?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, I asked you first.”

  “It may be this meal,” I said, polishing off the last bite on my plate. I wanted to wait for Charlie to take a second slice of quiche before I did, but now I couldn’t help myself, and I reached for more.

  “Not the guy eating it with you?”

  “I thought present company was excluded from the question. Otherwise, the food is merely a distant second.”

  “Nice save.”

  I grinned. “Now what about you—best part of the day?”

  “Present company excluded?”

  “Present company excluded.”

  “The drive I took down the coast this afternoon.”

  “In the Porsche?” I asked.

  “Naturally,” he said. “Top down, radio blasting, ocean roaring. Perfection. That is, until I got pulled over.”

  “You got pulled over?”

  “It wasn’t my fault. I mean, you’ve seen that car—that thing is practically begging to be driven over the speed limit.” Charlie smiled.

  “I don’t think that means you’re supposed to.”

  “Ah, come on. Cars like that—they need to get out, show off what they’re made of. And my dad isn’t going to do it.”

  “Maybe he’s worried about getting pulled over.”

  “Nah, he just doesn’t drive anymore. Not since I was a kid. If it wasn’t for me, his cars would just stay cooped up in a garage their whole lives.”

  “I get it,” I said. “You were doing it for the sake of the car.”

  “What can I say? I’m a giver.”

  “Did you explain that to the police officer?”

  “Didn’t have to. I just handed over my license and registration, and he let me go with a warning.”

  “The Copeland name works again.”

  “Have you ever been in a car going over a hundred miles an hour?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, maybe we can remedy that.”

  OUR PLATES WERE CLEARED, AND ANNALISE CAME out with dessert—a freshly baked blackberry crumb cake. But we’d barely tasted it when Brock came onto the terrace with a message for Charlie: “We scheduled a haircut for you tomorrow.”

  “No, thanks,” Charlie said.

  “Sorry,” Brock said. He shifted from one foot to the other, and I could tell this wasn’t exactly a message he wanted to deliver. “Your mother said to tell you it wasn’t a request.”

  “Unfortunately, I’m busy tomorrow,” Charlie said. “But can you give her a message for me?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Tell her not to staff out my hair. I can take care of it myself. Now, if you don’t mind.” He nodded his head toward the sliding glass door. “I’m being a bad host.”

  “My apologies,” Brock said, and he slunk away.

  Charlie stood up and reached out his hand to me. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  We headed down to the beach on a pathway made of old driftwood. Charlie punched a code into the padlock by a gate and pushed it open to his family’s private stretch of ocean. We took off our shoes and walked down to the part where the sand was stiff from recent ocean waves and our feet left footprints.

  “I’ve barely been at the beach so far this summer,” I told Charlie. “When we were kids, Lennox and I practically lived at Crescent.”

  At Crescent, attendants brought over beach chairs and thick towels striped white and gold, and you could order fresh-baked cookies and sweetened lemonade to be delivered to you right on the sand. All the while, money never changed hands. We had an account, and I learned to add a tip when I signed my name to the check, and I barely thought about how Gigi must’ve received bills and paid them.

  “But this year I only set foot on the sand once,” I said. “And that was to run to the barn.”

  The breeze kicked up, and Charlie’s hair fell in front of his face even more than usual. He pushed it back.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “How come you don’t want to get a haircut?”

  “Because my mom wants me to get one,” he said. “She’s pretty particular about the pictures she wants out in the world. If my hair’s long, she’s less inclined to want me next to her on the campaign trail.”

  “Don’t they take pictures of you whether you’re with your mom or not?”

  “You mean the Shelby pictures.”

  “Yeah, those,” I said. I felt myself blush again and I looked down at the sand. “And others, too. You’re in a lot of pictures.”

  “Yeah.” He paused. “You have no idea what it’s like to have people thinking they know all these things about you. But really they just know the magazine v
ersion.”

  I sat down in the sand just above the waterline and patted the ground next to me. “Sit with me. Tell me things I wouldn’t know from the magazines.”

  He sat next to me, so close I could see two pimples rising between the coarse hairs of his left eyebrow, and somehow that made him more appealing to me, because I knew those pimples would be airbrushed out of the magazines. This was real, Charlie beside me.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked.

  I wanted to know if he missed Shelby. And I wanted to know he wouldn’t care if he knew the truth about who I really was. But I didn’t ask those questions, because I was afraid to know the answers.

  “Do you have a best friend?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. His name’s Sebastian Martin.”

  “They say you should never trust a person with two first names,” I said, and immediately I felt bad about saying it. “I’m sure Sebastian’s the exception.”

  “I trust him with everything—almost,” Charlie told me.

  “Like Lennox and me.”

  “You trust her with everything?”

  “Almost.”

  “I told Sebastian about you.”

  Charlie had talked about me—to his best friend? “Really? What did you say?”

  “I said I’d never seen anyone with eyes the color of yours.”

  He was staring at me, and I stared back. His eyes were light brown, and they were like looking into something endless. Or at least something deep enough that the bottom was beyond the limit of my sight. He raised a single eyebrow.

  “I like when you do that,” I said.

  “I know you do.” Charlie cupped my chin in his hands.

  My body tensed. “I’m a little nervous,” I admitted.

  “Why?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that question.

  “You don’t have to be,” Charlie said, moving even closer. I could feel his words as he spoke them, and then his lips were on mine. He slipped his tongue into my mouth, soft and warm.

  “How was that?” Charlie asked. We were cheek to cheek, and his breath grazed my ear. “Okay?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” I said. It was more than okay. It was the best thing I’d ever felt. I could almost forget who I was and why I shouldn’t be with him. If I could’ve paused time right then and there, I would’ve; I would’ve stayed forever on that patch of sand with the waves breaking and my heart pounding in my ears and Charlie so close to me. This time I was the one who pressed my lips against his. He was the one kissing back. I felt out of breath, except instead of needing more air, I needed more of Charlie.

  “Charles,” a deep voice intoned. “I heard you’d come out here.”

  Charlie scooted back from me and stood to face Victor Underhill. I stood, too, and my heartbeat transitioned from throbs of excitement to throbs of panic. I wasn’t sure why; there was just something about Underhill that made me nervous.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” he asked Charlie.

  “Lorrie, this is Mr. Underhill. He’s helping out with my mother’s campaign.”

  I held out a hand, and Victor Underhill gave one brisk, firm shake. “It’s nice to meet you,” I said.

  “Nice to meet you. Lorrie, was it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lorrie what?”

  I glanced toward Charlie. “H-Hall,” I said.

  “Lorrie Hall?”

  “That’s what she said,” Charlie told him.

  “You live in the area?”

  I nodded.

  “Whereabouts?”

  I waved a hand toward the road. “Down a bit on Break Run,” I said.

  “I didn’t know you lived that close,” Charlie said.

  “Break Run’s got the best real estate in eastern Long Island,” Victor Underhill said. “Don’t you think?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “It’s a shame how that one house affects the view.”

  I knew I wasn’t imagining the fact that his gaze had changed and his eyes had narrowed. Charlie was wrong: I did have some idea what it was like to have people thinking they knew things about me.

  “Do you go to school around here?” Underhill asked.

  “She goes to Hillyer,” Charlie answered for me. He reached for my hand. “Are there any other inane questions you need answered, because we were kind of in the middle of something.”

  “I came to tell you that you’re needed inside.”

  “I already talked to Brock about the Riverhead event.”

  “Your father called from DC.”

  DC? I thought Charlie said his father was in New York.

  “He wants you to call him back,” Underhill said.

  I wondered what Lennox would think about this nugget of information: Underhill was fielding phone calls from the senator, who might be in DC, or might be in New York, or might be hiding out somewhere in the Compound again. Anything was possible.

  “Now,” Underhill added.

  “All right,” Charlie said. “Give me a minute.”

  Victor Underhill nodded good-bye, then turned to head back to the house. Charlie and I followed. He was still holding my hand, but it had stopped feeling like a romantic gesture, since I knew he was just leading me someplace to say good-bye.

  We walked around the side of the house to the edge of the path that led to the driveway. I didn’t know I was the kind of girl who expected to at least be walked all the way to her car until I realized our walk was over. He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it. “Good-bye, Lorrie.”

  “Good-bye,” I said.

  I walked away thinking that I’d said good-bye before with the expectation of seeing someone again. But for every person you meet, there will be a last time you’ll say good-bye. And there’s not always a way of knowing when that will be.

  15

  FOR RICHER, FOR POORER

  LATE IN THE AFTERNOON THE NEXT DAY, ORION arrived back at Oceanfront. It was the first time since I’d owned him that he’d taken a significant journey without me there to prepare him for it—to wrap his legs in shipping boots and to sprinkle some familiar hay along the ramp up to the trailer so he wouldn’t be scared. Equestrian Transport had picked him up from Woodscape and driven him nine hours across five states, which would be frustrating and exhausting for anyone, even under the best of circumstances. I’d been a bundle of nerves until Orion had finally backed down the trailer ramp, but he seemed no worse for the wear as I ran my hands along his sleek, beautiful body. “Welcome home, buddy,” I told him. Orion snorted out what I thought of as an exhale of relief. “That’s right,” I said. “You’re here and I’m here.”

  I led him to the empty stall Naomi had agreed to rent to me at the employee discount. That morning I’d hooked up his nameplate:

  ORION

  LOVED BY LORRIE H.

  The words were spelled out in gleaming gold letters on the stall door. I’d also spread a fresh bed of cedar chips on the ground with a pitchfork, and Orion stepped in as if he owned the joint.

  Since he was a boarder, attending to him was not only my responsibility, it was also my job. At least that’s what I told myself so I wouldn’t feel guilty about spending time with him. Especially since Naomi had taken Jeremy along with her to a show in Stony Brook, so the stable had fewer hands on deck. I brought out the currycomb, moving it in wide, circular motions over my horse’s body to loosen up whatever dirt he’d picked up between Raleigh and New York. I took my time, and Orion leaned into the strokes. After that was the hard brush, quick motions around his coat. The debris rose from him like a mist. Then I used the soft brush and the leg curry. We were back together again, my horse and I. I always felt like we’d taken vows to be together, for better or worse, for richer or poorer. Whatever it was, we’d get through it together.

  I brushed Orion’s face, his mane, his tail. I lifted each of his legs to clean out any dirt from the grooves of his hooves. His front hooves needed new shoes, which shouldn’t have
been a surprise; it had been over a month. I’d have to call the farrier.

  And just like that, I was pulled out of the moment, worrying about the future all over again. The farrier would be a hundred bucks. I couldn’t afford that right now.

  “Things have changed, boy,” I told Orion softly, reaching for the soft patch of white fur on his neck, my favorite spot. “I don’t even understand why, but they have. Gigi moved our money, and she won’t tell me where. I’ve been looking—believe me. I made a list of every bank in the east end of Long Island, and I’m going to check them all. I started cleaning the house out, too. The answer is buried in there somewhere. I’m just taking it room by room, cleaning through the night because I can’t sleep anyway. Last night I did the drawing room. Well, half of it, anyway. It’s so big. And it’s so . . . so suffocating. But if you squint when you’re looking around, you can see a glimmer of what it once was. It’s really hard, though. It’s hard to see anything in Edgewater the way it’s supposed to be.”

  When I paused, Orion nuzzled against me and snorted, as if answering me.

  “And something else changed, too,” I told him. “I think I met someone. Someone I really like. All this time, I told Lennox I didn’t mind being alone, and it was the truth. I really didn’t. It was so much easier not having someone I needed to explain things to.”

  Orion pawed at the floor, the signal that I’d been in there a while and he was wondering where his treat was. I’d found a box of sugar cubes at Edgewater. Gigi added a half dozen cubes to her tea each morning. But since I was sure they’d been purchased with money from my trust, and since she was the reason I didn’t have cash to buy my own, I’d taken the box with me so I’d have treats on hand. Now I produced a cube from my pocket, and Orion’s lips smacked against my palm.

  “I wasn’t lonely until I met this guy—his name is Charlie. Now I want to be with him so much. But the thing is, he’s a Copeland, so that’s a fairly impossible order.”

  Orion pawed the floor again, and I gave him another cube.

  “Everything I want seems so impossible right now, boy. Meeting a guy you like and thinking maybe he likes you back—it’s supposed to be such a great thing. If I were any other girl in Idlewild, my big worry would be figuring out some long-distance thing at the end of the summer when I had to go back to school. But I don’t know if we’ll get back to Hillyer in the fall. I haven’t even told Lennox. I can only tell you. God, Orion. I missed you.”