Then, reaching across the little boy, who was thoughtfully sucking on a plastic dinosaur, Kit had put his smooth hand beneath her chin. He had moved his thumb softly across her cheek. And she had seen that in spite of his age and his competence, he was neither her assistant nor her skipper. That there was no hierarchy involved in their relationship, none at all.
"I'm so lucky," he said. He looked down at Henry's shining hair, then turned his pale eyes back to Miranda. "Always have been." He smiled, a tight, ironic half smile and closed his eyes. "And so grateful," he added. "So fucking grateful."
There was something touching about his declaration, as though he knew all his happiness, even his memories of happiness, could be snatched away.
"Lucky to be lucky," she said, for she suddenly felt lucky, too. Her business was falling apart. Her reputation was ruined. The sky was blue. The wind filled the white sail. A child hummed a tuneless song beside her. She was skimming the water. She was still, motionless, swift.
No, no, bad idea, Miranda, she had forced herself to think then, but of course he had kissed her. He'd opened his eyes, looked into hers and somehow the distance between them, an expanse of sea air and sunlight and decades, had disappeared.
Miranda recalled that first kiss with a private smile. She watched Annie in the kitchen, catching a glimpse of an elbow, an arm, a general bustling beyond the doorway. Annie worried too much. It was very stressful, worry was. Took its toll on your health. Not to mention your skin. She had bought Annie some La Mer cream, which really did work miracles, but all Annie did was work herself up over the cost. Annie needed perspective. Life was not just about material things. She thought of little Henry. That's what life was about, the little Henrys. Annie had her boys, it was true, but they were grown. She needed someone to take their place, if not in her heart, then at least in her life.
"I wonder how Frederick is," she called out to Annie. "You should call him, Annie. Get him to drive down."
Annie yanked the silverware drawer open. One of the unwelcome side effects of her sister's new fascination with Kit Maybank and his little sidekick was a newfound and frequently vocalized interest in Frederick Barrow. She reached in the drawer. "Shit!" she said, pricking her finger on a steak knife someone had put in with the forks.
"Don't be so controlling, dear," her mother said, having no idea what Annie was complaining about but sure it had to do with her totalitarian views of the kitchen. As if Betty had not had a kitchen for over fifty years.
"I cut myself," Annie said, going into the bathroom for a Band-Aid.
"Don't bleed on the napkins. Although that OxiClean is supposed to be wonderful. And use Neosporin. Cuts heal three times faster."
Betty had begun watching daytime TV and found it extraordinarily informative and reassuring. There were so many problems in the world she had never thought of, and so many products to solve them.
In the bathroom, her cut throbbing a little in its bandage, Annie stared at herself in the mirror and wondered, not for the first time, what she really looked like. As other people saw her. It didn't seem to mean anything, the way she saw herself, for it changed with her mood. I'm not bad-looking, she decided, as she so often did. Whatever that meant.
Was that what Frederick had seen? A middle-aged woman, not bad-looking, who took very good care of herself, as she would have taken care of a rare first edition? She plucked her eyebrows and had her lip waxed regularly. She used night cream at night and day cream in the morning and sunscreen even in winter. Her makeup was natural-looking, but she never left the bathroom in the morning without it. She swam almost every morning. Her hair was the same natural-looking brown of every other middle-class middle-aged woman who went once a month to have it colored. She was not exceptional, but she was not exceptionable. She was, she realized with a mixture of pride and self-pity, conscientious.