Madison knew, though, that her father had assumed this year would be different. The house was now legally Isabel’s. This gave him an opening, though he would never ask her outright to sell. Isabel’s grandfather had won the land out here in a poker game in D.C. almost a century earlier. He’d basically built the house so he had an excuse to tell that story, as a shrine to the Berkeley men, and it was of course only natural that Isabel should love it for these very reasons. But Bob had his own ideas of the right sorts of beach vacations for a man in his position: private beaches in Mexico, the Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas. At the very, very least, a beach house of their own. Anywhere but East Hampton, really.
And so when her father dropped, nearly threw, his phone to the breakfast table that morning, Madison could have told herself that any one of these displeasures was the culprit. All month he’d been walking down the beach to take phone calls, standing at the water’s edge with his khakis rolled up just below his knees. But that morning was such a departure from the normal vacation rules that it insisted upon its own novelty. Madison couldn’t set it aside, though she tried all the rest of the gloomy, humid day at the beach. The only thing her mother had done, in the end, was remind her father of his own promises. And that had never infuriated him before.
The next morning, he was gone. He did not say good-bye to Madison, or, so far as she knew, to the twins.
Isabel kept them there for two more weeks. Antoinette’s grandson, the part-time fisherman, took the twins out on his boat. Madison took a book to the beach each morning and dozed through the afternoons. She missed her own bedroom, where she fell asleep not to the sounds of water but to the rustlings of the false wilderness of Greenwich, the birdcalls her father claimed had so unnerved her when they first moved out from the city to live in the old house. Every so often her door would creak, an hour or four after she’d clicked off her bedside lamp, and her father’s smells—the sweet bite of Maker’s Mark, the choking staleness of nighttime sweat mixed with the morning’s once-fresh cologne—would fill the room, and his coarse cheek would brush against hers. He’d be gone so quickly that by the time she was awake, she’d no longer remember what he’d said.
He had not done this in weeks, maybe months, maybe not all year. She couldn’t remember.
It still felt strange being out on the island without Gran, walking along her stretch of beach without her there to fret aloud over the looming estate across the water, the one the fame-coarsened country singer had bought and immediately accessorized with his own helicopter pad. A few times Madison considered impersonating her grandmother, making the joke to Isabel. Shaking her head and putting the tip of her index finger to her lips, pressing on them, the way Gran had once done as she looked across the bay. But she wasn’t sure this would be funny.
At night, they ate whatever Antoinette brought from town—scallops or lobster, a dessert tart from the French woman who had taken over the local bakery. Without her father there, meals were so quiet that Madison could hear herself chewing each bite of her food, could hear the obtrusive gulp as she tried to swallow. When they left, they flew home from the small airport on Long Island, which was unusual, and they took the plane her father had sent for them, which was unheard of. Her mother never flew the company jet unless he was with them, and then only if he insisted.
The car was waiting when they landed at Westchester County. The boys were carried from the plane to the backseat without waking, and when they pulled in at home, Lily was waiting at the front door, backlit by the lamps in the otherwise darkened foyer. And still no one had said a word to Madison that could serve as any sort of explanation.
She told herself this was just her parents: the electric weather of her father’s moods and her mother’s silences. And those were both harbingers of a sort she’d long ago learned to follow obsessively and to ignore blithely, in equal measure.
THREE WEEKS LATER, Madison came into the kitchen on a morning like any other and found not only the familiar sight of Lily preparing breakfast for the boys, but also the decidedly unfamiliar sight of her mother waiting for the toaster to pop.
Madison remained in the doorway while Lily moved with jerking motions between the sink, the stainless steel center island, and the boys at the breakfast nook. She poured milk over their deep bowls of cereal, smiled down at them as they began to eat. They moved the food from their bowls to their mouths with remarkable efficiency, like battery-powered toys. Madison had always envied them this, the incredible ease with which they approached mealtimes, that single-mindedness that allowed them to put aside every earthly concern that wasn’t related to breakfast.
Lily bent at the waist to kiss each boy, brushing her lips to the very tops of their heads where, Madison knew, their hair was the softest. When Lily stood, she pulled a chair from the table for Madison, letting it scrape the floor. Madison’s eye went immediately to her mother, to her tanned shoulders, her sleeveless linen top, but Isabel didn’t flinch. Madison swallowed, and sat.
“Sit down,” Lily said. “Eat.”
Only then did Isabel turn to the table, her children. Her smooth blond ponytail grazed the place between her shoulder blades. The toast announced itself.
“Good morning,” Madison said. She knew, now, what would happen. Her mother would spread peanut butter across five slices of toast. One slice for Madison, two each for the boys. She would then cut Madison’s slice in half, and the two of them would share it. This was familiar—this was a weekend breakfast, what the D’Amico children ate on those rare days Lily was permitted to sleep in or catch the early train to New York, leaving Isabel at the helm. School days were left to Lily—goat cheese frittatas, fruit salad with out-of-season kiwi, red flannel hash with kale. Bagels for the boys, if they wanted them. Her father brought them home from H&H with great fanfare, though Madison knew for a fact they were delivered to the office with no effort at all on his part; even the order itself was placed by one of his secretaries.
Her mother always prompted her not to use that word, to say “executive assistants” instead.
“More milk, please,” Matteo said, reaching out one plaintive hand. Lily rushed back to the table. She knew, just like Madison—who had often done this for him herself—that Matteo preferred to eat all but the final few pieces of cereal and then drown them in fresh milk, picking them out with his spoon. He was more placid than Luke, less easily frightened, but also by far the more finicky twin.
“Lily,” Madison said. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Eat something.”
“I’m waiting for my toast.” She permitted herself a tart spin on the very end of the sentence, but even this didn’t get her any eye contact from her mother. Lily placed a halved grapefruit in front of her.
“Eat that, then.”
Isabel brought over the plates of toast, then crossed to the boys and sat down beside them.
Madison looked at the food, looked at her mother, gave up on looking at Lily. Everything in the room felt unbearably slow; the edges of everything shimmered.