She didn’t say anything for a moment, and then she rolled over on her side, faced me. Her eyes were darker, her expression more serious now. “Jordie,” she said, “Tom did something awful in Santa Barbara.”
Something awful? Her words hit me like a punch, and I reacted with a surprised, strangled cry. Daisy seemed so happy here. She’d been so happy when I last saw her then. There was money and a doll-baby, and the Mediterranean! “I don’t understand, Daise.”
She sighed and rolled back over on her back. “I’m not sure I do either.”
“Well… what happened?” I asked carefully.
She was quiet for a moment, and I propped myself up on my elbow and twirled a lock of her hair around my finger. It was just as soft and silky as it had always been in Louisville. I assumed she still bathed it in six egg yolks, once a week. Well, why not? She certainly had the money now.
“There was an… incident. With Tom and a chambermaid,” she finally spoke, her voice flat, her affect matter-of-fact. “They were off together doing god knows what, and all of Santa Barbara found out when they had a bang-up with their car.” All of Santa Barbara found out, and yet, she hadn’t told me. How was I just learning about this now? “We’ve put it all behind us,” she said. “But sometimes I lie awake in the middle of the night, and I wonder… What did she have that I don’t, Jordie?”
I tried to take in what she was saying, an incident with Tom and a chambermaid. Tom had cheated on Daisy? On their honeymoon.
“I shouldn’t have even said anything now.” Daisy was rambling, her voice taking on a higher pitch. “I don’t even know why I told you. It’s over. It’s all in the past.”
“Daise,” I murmured softly. “Of course you should’ve said something. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“You weren’t here,” she said meekly. “I was too ashamed to write it in a letter. But then yesterday you brought up Santa Barbara, and I was up half the night thinking about it again.”
Her eyes welled up with tears, and I stroked her hair back. “I’m sorry. I’ll never mention Santa Barbara again, okay?”
“Don’t be sorry.” She sat up and wiped at her cheeks. “It’s not your fault, Jordie.”
“But what can I do?” I asked her. “You want me to murder Tom for you when I see him next?”
She laughed, and then I laughed a little too. We both knew I was joking. Sort of. “He promised me he’d never do it again. That everything would be different here in France.”
“And is it?” I asked her.
She nodded. “But it’s just hard to forget the past, you know?”
I nodded. I did know.
I lay back and took her hand again. We both stared off at the water for a while. I thought about telling her my own truth, and the words were poised right there on the very tip of my tongue. I could tell her about the way Mary Margaret’s hand felt when it traced my hip as she got into my bed in the middle of the night. About the way my lips felt when I’d kissed her that one time in the dark on the golf course.
But then I thought about Daddy, and how his face had turned that night when Blocks had come into my room and I’d tried to tell him the truth afterward. And instead of letting my words escape now with Daisy, I bit my lip and said nothing at all.
* * *
WE SPENT THE next few days at the beach, intoxicated by the sun and the salt of the water drying on our skin. And everything else slowly and wonderfully melted away. There was the nurse to care for the baby—I don’t think I ever even heard little Pamela cry after our first introduction. Tom played a lot of polo and only joined us in the evenings for supper, where I was happy to see him act overly devoted and loving with Daisy.
I tried to compose a letter to Mary Margaret but had only gotten as far as the first sentence, unable to put into words exactly what I wanted to write to her. I missed her desperately, and yet, I felt quite happy here in France with Daisy again. My arms longed to swing my clubs and reach for Mary Margaret in the middle of the night. But I couldn’t bring myself to write any of that down, and so I wrote nothing at all.
Still, I woke up in the middle of the night, a week after I’d first gotten to France, hot and restless. I’d gotten overheated on the beach, and then I’d fallen into a fast, early sleep and had dreamed Mary Margaret here, in my bed. When I’d awoken, and remembered again where I was, I tossed and turned and couldn’t fall back to sleep. I finally decided that drastic times called for drastic measures. I put on my robe and tiptoed downstairs with the intent to steal some of Tom’s whiskey.
I got to the bottom of the stairs, and I heard movement in the parlor. I wrapped my robe tighter around my chest and began to retreat back up the stairs, but then I heard the unmistakable sound of a woman’s giggle. Daisy.
The giggle came again, and I continued slowly on toward the parlor. But when I turned the corner, I realized it wasn’t Daisy giggling at all, but little Pamela’s nurse, Yvette. She was lying back against the sofa, her skirt hiked up above her knees, her eyes closed. A man knelt in front of her on the floor, his head buried in between her legs. I suddenly understood what was happening, and I gasped before I could stop myself. Yvette heard me, hurriedly pulled her skirt down and pushed Tom’s head away. And he turned and saw me watching.
Everybody froze for a second, the three of us all so completely still that I could hear the ticking of the grandfather clock down the hall, the sound of my own breath escaping my chest.
Finally, Tom moved first. “Yvette, you should be checking on the baby before bed,” he said. His voice was steady and calm, as it had been over supper when he’d been discussing the score of his latest polo match.
Yvette looked at him, hesitated for only another second before pulling her dress all the way down. She stood, quickly smoothed her appearance with her hands, and rushed off.
Then Tom turned to me and had the gall to give me a little half smile as if nothing untoward had just happened. A denial of what I’d just seen with my very own eyes. I imagined how he would explain it all away, in that smooth, moneyed voice of his if I pressed him. There was nothing going on, Jordan, he would say with an easy laugh. I felt an anger boiling up inside of me.
It was that same blinding rage I felt when Blocks came into my room. And lucky for Tom, I didn’t have my aluminum putter in France. I rushed toward him now and slapped him hard across the face. It made a shockingly loud sound, and I worried for a moment it had echoed through the whole entire chateau, that somehow it had woken Daisy two stories above us. But the only sound that came in response was the ticking of that grandfather clock down the hall.
Tom reached his hand up to his face and rotated his jaw. “Have you lost your mind?” he said quietly. He rubbed his cheek gingerly. “That’s going to leave a mark.”