Evelyn opened the door to Sag Neck, a decaf skinny gingerbread latte in one hand, noticing her parents hadn’t even put a wreath up this year. Usually, Barbara Beegan’s forced holiday march started with a Christmas Eve service, Christmas Eve dinner (turkey with oyster stuffing and a side of fried oysters), Christmas-morning coffee cake and stocking opening, followed by presents, then carols, then a late lunch of roast beef, then pie and more carols. Evelyn liked all of it, even the ribbon-wrapped Mason jar of pickled peanuts—slime in brine, as her father called them—that Sally Channing left at their front door every year.
She and Scot had celebrated the night before she left New York. It was just the two of them, and he took her hints and booked a dinner at Daniel and got her the triple-gold Cartier ring she wanted. Throughout the fall, she’d been trying to change the Scot that was into the Scot that could be. She’d sent him to get a bespoke suit, the precise hand stitching visible on the lapel, and made him switch his outlet Polo shirts for Lacoste. He seemed eager for her compliments, and would always wear the selected clothing when they went out, which made her feel weirdly guilty. She worked on his manners, too, trying to lightheartedly correct his knife placement and his revolving-door etiquette. When they were alone, she liked him, liked his slight nerdiness and his sweetness, but when they were in a group, all she could do was note that his shirt still looked off the rack and his laugh was too loud.
When one November Sunday morning Evelyn was leaving 5G and she heard Scot whisper, “I love you,” she pretended she hadn’t heard and kept walking toward the elevator. How, she wondered, were you supposed to know when something was right and when it wasn’t?
It was Camilla’s number that she put at the top of her phone’s favorites list.
The Cartier ring was perfect, though, substantial in its three types of gold, and Evelyn wore it on her middle finger and angled it to catch the light for about half the train ride home. She pulled out Scot’s card every now and then, too: “Dear Evelyn, you have made this year wonderful. Merry Christmas. Love, Scot.” The handwritten card gave her the feeling that a middle-school mash note from a real live boy did: Someone likes me.
She had left at her apartment the gag gift that her friends had given her at the hot-toddy-fueled Christmas party they’d held at Camilla’s. Preston had picked it out: a plastic tiara, as, he said, Evelyn was now queen of New York. By the end of the evening, Camilla was wearing the thing.
At Sag Neck, not only was there no wreath, but there was no tree. (Cleaning up all those pine needles for one day of celebration wasn’t worth the hassle, her mother said.) Her parents no longer hung woolen stockings from the wooden rods of the banister. For Christmas Day, her mother had made a reservation at the Eastern Tennis Club to use up part of their mandatory monthly food minimum, and the Christmas Eve plan was cold sandwiches. There were no Sally Channing pickled peanuts deposited at the door this year. That part, at least, wasn’t a surprise to Evelyn.
Her father was upstairs in his study, and her mother was sitting at the piano, though Barbara was not playing, her hands suspended over the keys as though she were waiting for a marionettist to pull the strings.
Evelyn tossed down her purse in the hallway and walked upstairs, pushing open the door to her father’s office as she knocked. He was sitting at his desk with a glass of bourbon, a thick book open in front of him, excavating dirt from under his nails with a file.
The study had been largely decorated by Barbara, meaning wooden oars and wooden skis and a letter to the secretary of the navy signed by William McKinley and addressed to “My dear Pots.” (Evelyn had long ago deduced that this had nothing to do with her mother’s family at all.) To this Dale had added his own ephemera: a UNC pennant, books on epidemiology and chemistry and biology, and Inside the Jury. One shelf was filled with crystal pyramids and metal paperweights testifying that Dale Beegan was BOARD MEMBER EMERITUS, ATTORNEYS AND AID and TAR HEEL DISTINGUISHED ALUMNUS, 1999, and VICE PRESIDENT, DELMARVA TRIAL LAWYERS, 1995.
He put down his nail file and gestured for Evelyn to have a seat.
“No, that’s okay, Dad. I just wondered if we couldn’t figure out something for a Christmas Eve dinner. The cold sandwiches Mom got are depressing.”
“They’re from a new sandwich shop in Easton. I don’t think they’re too bad.”
“That’s what Mom said. The point is that I don’t want to eat a cold sandwich on Christmas Eve. I mean, you guys aren’t doing stockings, you’re not doing a tree, and we’re not cooking anything. It’s not very festive.”
“If you want a tree, go get a tree.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Bourbon?”
“What?”
“Do you want some bourbon? You like it, don’t you?”
“Not particularly.” She held up her coffee cup.
Her father splashed bourbon into a glass for her anyway, as the voice from his record player crooned, “Goodnight, Irene, goodnight, Irene.”
“I’ve got something to tell you,” he said.
“Is it bad?”
Her father didn’t answer and waited until Evelyn had put down her coffee and stuck her tongue into the bourbon. She made a face and switched it for coffee. “How much have you been reading about this whole thing?” he asked.