Dune Road (2 page)

She has taken up yoga, joining the new yoga center that has opened on the outskirts of town, and is finding not only is she calmer, more centerd, but she has found new friends, women like her—grounded, down-to-earth women—not to mention Tracy, the charismatic owner of the yoga center, who has swiftly become one of Kit’s favorite newer friends in town.

Kit has been avoiding the charity circuit, choosing instead to focus on the handful of friends she trusts and adores. Getting divorced in a small town, she discovered, was no walk in the park. For a while there, she and Adam were the subject of various gossipy lunches. The rumors shocked and upset her. In the course of one week she heard the following different reasons for their divorce:

1. That Adam had been unfaithful

2. That she had been unfaithful

3. They had run out of money, so now she was leaving him

None of it was true. The truth, that they had simply grown apart, was far more prosaic, and didn’t seem to make sense to people, hence the need to embellish. The rumors had hurt Kit far more than she let on, and it was only when she met Tracy at the yoga center that she became willing to expand her social circle again, beyond Charlie, her oldest friend in Highfield.

For a long time after the divorce, she had stopped being invited to things. She doubted Adam was being invited either, but that was largely because he was rarely in Highfield these days. She realized that however much people liked her while she was married, even though she was effectively single in those days because Adam was hardly ever around, it was different now that she was actually
divorced
. People seemed to become frightened of being around her too much, as if, she sometimes thought, some of her bad karma might rub off on them.

Not that she felt as if she had bad karma. Not anymore. She felt as if she had had bad karma during her marriage, when she would go to bed at night and feel that she was drowning in loneliness. Since the dust settled, and once the children were fine again, she has woken up every morning looking forward to the day, trusting that it will be good, knowing that she has finally discovered who she is, and with a sense of peace.

 

When Kit first saw the house she bought for herself and the kids after the divorce, she fell in love. Instantly. White clapboard with sea-green shutters that had little starfish cut-outs, the window boxes bursting with impatiens that tumbled over the sides, it was the prettiest house she had ever seen.

She recognized that she was falling in love with a lifestyle rather than with a house, but she didn’t care. She wanted that lifestyle. She saw herself swinging on the porch swing, hosting dinners around that kitchen table, kneading dough on those marble countertops.

The kids would curl up on the huge, squishy, mushroom-colored sofas as a fire blazed in the grate and she merrily made dinner while sipping a glass of ice-cold pinot grigio, and the three of them would all live happily ever after.

It was something of a shock to do the walk-through on the day of closing, to realize that without the smells of cinnamon buns rising gently in the oven, the sounds of soft jazz filling the air, without the mushroom-colored sofas, softly lit table lamps and fresh blue and white curtains, the house was just . . . a house. A nice house, admittedly, but Kit couldn’t help but feel a swell of disappointment.

She knew the sellers were taking the furniture, of course, but she didn’t think it would make the house feel so . . . different.

By the next morning, she had forgotten that. She had forgotten it because she woke up after their first night in the house, the sun streaming through the curtainless windows, and realized that it was hers. All hers. And more than that, her
life
was hers.

There was something so different about living in a small, manageable house, living a life that felt
real
, rather than a pretense. Never again would she have to squeeze into high heels and dresses because that’s what her husband liked. Never again would she have to sit through boring dinners with people she didn’t understand, people with whom she had nothing in common, because Adam was doing a deal with them, or needed to befriend them, or impress them.

She didn’t have to take the kids on vacation to only the smartest and best hotels, hotels that always intimidated her, where she never felt she belonged. For the first time in a long time—fifteen years to be exact—Kit didn’t have to please anyone other than herself.

Of course there were the children too—dramatic, strong-willed Tory, and easy, easygoing Buckley, and she always had to consider them, but she didn’t have to change her way of living, change her life for them.

And while she knew there would be times when she would feel vulnerable and lonely and scared, she also knew that the more time that passed, the less she would feel those things, and when she did, she would breathe through the feeling and remind herself it always passed.

So she woke up, made coffee and climbed back into bed, sipping slowly and looking out of the window at the tree tops, refusing to be daunted by the boxes all over the house, relishing the feeling of being free.

They spent the day unpacking, Tory miserably until Kit promised her a cool daybed from PB Teen, and then, toward dusk, there was a banging on the door and it was flung open before anyone had a chance to even get up. A small, wiry, very tanned old woman with long white hair in a ponytail came striding into the living room holding a stack of plates with a pie balanced precariously on the top.

“I’m Edie,” she said. “I live next door in the purple house.” Tory caught Buckley’s eye and suppressed a grin—they had been wondering who lived in the bright purple eyesore next door. “And before you ask, no, I won’t paint it. I love the color purple and you’ll get used to it.”

“I . . . I hadn’t noticed,” Kit lied.

“I’ve brought you a homemade rhubarb and cherry pie”—Edie put the plates down on the counter—“and some plates for us to eat it off as I figured you wouldn’t have unpacked yet.”

 

“You need a job,” she said, half an hour later, after the group had swapped small talk and licked their plates clean. She peered at Kit as Kit pretended not to be disconcerted by this tiny, white- haired bundle of energy who had made herself instantly at home.

“I do? ” Kit said, wondering how Edie had known; for it was true, it was just that Kit hadn’t got around to telling anyone.

“Why yes.” Edie got up, opened the fridge, found a carton of orange juice and helped herself. “It’s not good for all you young girls to give up your jobs once you’ve had children. You get bored and have far too much time to worry about things you don’t have to worry about. Everyone should work, in my opinion. We need to exercise our brains just as much as our bodies.”

“Do
you
exercise?” Tory asked, somewhat mesmerized by Edie.

“I most certainly do,” Edie said, flexing her muscles. “I do Pilates twice a week and play tennis every weekend.”

“How old are you? ” Tory said.

“Tory!” Kit instantly admonished. “You can’t ask that! It’s rude.”

“Not at all,” Edie dismissed Kit. “I like people who speak their minds. I’m eighty-three years young.”

“Wow! ” Tory said. “You look amazing.”

“You see? ” Edie beamed with delight. “That’s because I take care of my body and my mind.”

“So what do you do? ” Kit couldn’t help but ask.

“I’m a realtor.” Edie’s chest puffed up with pride. “The star of the Burton Holloway group for the last thirty years.”

“Thirty years! ” Tory, at thirteen, couldn’t fathom doing anything for that long. “That’s a lifetime.”

“Almost!” Edie chuckled. “I’m going to speak to my friend Robert McClore about you. He’s been looking for an assistant for ages, and he keeps trying out these silly young things who haven’t a clue how to use their initiative and don’t have a bone of common sense in their bodies. He needs someone like you. Know how to type? ” She examined Kit with a beady eye.

“I . . . of course.” Robert McClore! The famous writer! Kit grinned, thinking this was the most exciting thing to have happened to her since she once sat in the same restaurant as Ray Liotta.

Kit had realized that knowing she would have to get a job was very different to actually finding one. In the early days, she didn’t have the strength to actively look, being too busy packing up the house, making lists of what was hers and what was Adam’s. Too busy sorting out the books into his and hers piles, wondering what on earth to do with the Duxiana bed, and all the extra furniture that Adam didn’t want, the furniture that wouldn’t fit into a new, smaller house.

Too busy running, so she wouldn’t have to stop and deal with the anxiety, the fear. Could she do this by herself? Was she really that strong?

But once she bought this house, she knew she would have to find something, and Edie’s suggestion was a blessing in disguise.

 

Robert McClore is probably the most famous person to live in Highfield. Neighboring towns have their share of movie stars and rock gods, but Highfield has one of the biggest names in literature today.

He is talked of in the same breath as Clancy, Patterson or Grisham. He is one of the giants in men’s commercial fiction, and the airports stack his small, meaty paperbacks high every summer.

He is read by all the men who profess not to enjoy fiction. The men who read the
New York Times
and the
Wall Street Journal
, who, if they read books at all, read biographies, history books, business tomes, and who only ever pick up a blockbuster when they’re flying to sandy destinations with their wives and families.

His books have been turned into movies, each one more successful than the last, and the script for
The Last Landing
is still studied by film students all over the country, lauded as an example, as
the
example, in fact, of the perfect thriller.

He moved to Highfield thirty-five years previously with his wife, Penelope, a model. They were part of the beautiful crowd, the artists and writers who summered in Highfield, who drove down on Friday nights with the backseats of their sporty little convertibles stuffed with cases of champagne.

They were the golden couple, until Penelope disappeared from their yacht while they were sailing, with friends, in the Greek islands during the summer of 1978. It was the biggest story of the year, and to this day there are people who believe Penelope was murdered, that there was far more to the story than met the eye.

Their friends, it was true, were there. Plum Apostoles, who had made a fortune in shipping, was rumored to have been having an affair with Penelope. Plum’s wife, Ileana, was thought to have been having an affair with Robert. Plum had, it later came out, served time in prison for assault. There was talk of huge rows, drunken parties, but Robert never spoke about it again.

Nor did he remarry. The parties and the high life stopped as soon as Penelope disappeared, and he became something of a recluse.

Hillpoint, the grand old house perched at the top of Dune Road, overlooks the calm waters of Long Island Sound. The house itself is approached by a long, gravel driveway. As the electric gates swing noiselessly open, and you round the corner, you catch a glimpse of the large white columns of the house before it comes into view in its entirety.

Gracious, regal, impressive, it is a house that is often whispered about, for few have actually seen it, few have ventured beyond those intimidating electric gates. Some of the mothers that Kit knows, women who have grown up in Highfield, say they went trick or treating there as children, that Robert and Penelope left the gates open every Halloween, when they threw huge parties for all their New York friends, and they let anyone come, lavishing delicious gourmet candy on all the neighborhood children.

The house was designed by Cameron Clark in 1929, but it is a house that hasn’t been seen for years. Aside from the people who take care of Robert McClore, few are allowed beyond the gates.

Robert McClore spends his time writing a book a year, consulting on the movies, and occasionally, very occasionally, appearing at an event in town to benefit one of the local charities. His name appears far more often than he does, as a generous donor to everything charitable, including being one of the giant supporters behind the rebuilding of Highfield Library.

Kit sat in her kitchen and looked at her new neighbor.

“Of
course
I know how to type,” she said, despite not having typed for many, many years. Still, nothing that a spot of practice wouldn’t cure.

“Know how to read?” Edie peered at Kit with a twinkle in her eye, while Tory burst out laughing.

“Is Robert McClore really looking for an assistant?” Kit asked.

“Yes, and he’d like you.”

“How do you know? You don’t know me.”

“No, but I like you already, and that’s always a good sign.”