Page 38 of Under the Stars

Audrey

Winthrop Island, New York

In tears, Meredith shakes me awake. “She’s dead,” she says.

I struggle up from my tangle of dreams. “ What? Who’s dead?”

“Eighty-eight. She didn’t make it.”

I fall back on the pillow. The early-morning light hurtles through the crack between the curtains. “The cow ? Oh my God, Meredith. You scared the shit out of me.”

Meredith climbs onto the bed and curls up next to me, holding her phone in one hand.

She’s wearing a nightgown of soft white cotton, trimmed in crochet—an old one of her mother’s, by the look of it.

By the ancient floral smell of it. “I told you the calf died during the delivery. But I thought the mama was okay. They gave her a fucking orphan to foster and everything.”

“Meredith, I don’t know what to say.”

“She fought so hard.” Meredith sniffles. “I left a comment with my condolences.”

“You did what ?”

“From my secret account, obviously. I might donate some money for a memorial. What do you think?”

“Meredith, you don’t have any money.”

“Not right now.” She rolls on her back. “I want a drink so badly. One little drink.”

“Shut the fuck up, Meredith. You can’t just have one little drink. Other people can, but not you. Once you have one, you have another and then the rest of the bottle. So you just shut down that thought right now. Go swim a few laps or something.” I sit upright. “Wait, what time is it?”

She looks at her phone. “Six minutes past seven.”

“Shit! Why didn’t my alarm go off? I’m supposed to be at the inn!”

“Of course you are. Never mind me and my grief .”

I swing my legs out of bed and reach for my phone. “We’re reopening at five o’clock this evening. You could always come over for a club soda with lime.”

“I would rather bathe in battery acid,” she says.

—

“You’re late,” says Mike, when I shoot through the kitchen door at a quarter to eight.

“My alarm didn’t go off, for some reason.” The reason being that I apparently forgot to set it when I crashed into bed last night, but this is not information that Mike needs to know.

“Well, that kid you hired is already in there doing prep,” says Mike, “so you might want to put on a fucking apron before she slices a tendon.”

The kid’s name is Taylor, and she was born the same year I left for boarding school.

Her mother is a teacher at the Winthrop Island School and her dad is a lobsterman, and I have never met anybody in my life who works as hard as she does.

During her interview, she told me her favorite TV show is Top Chef and when she graduates from high school, she wants to do a road trip and visit her favorite Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives locations.

“Hi, Miss Fisher! I’ve chopped up all the mirepoix and I’m almost through cutting the French fries. Do you think that’s going to be enough? The dough’s on its first rise on the shelf over there. This is so exciting! Are you excited?”

I double-tie the apron around my waist. “So excited.”

By eleven o’clock, the bread’s on its second rise and the ingredients are all prepped and tucked inside their containers in the nearly new refrigerator underwritten by Sedge Peabody and his apparently bottomless trust fund.

I tell Taylor she can take a break and be back at two.

I fix sandwiches for Mike and me and carry the plates out to the taproom, where Mike’s wiping the glasses for the third time.

He picks up a sandwich half and sniffs it. “What’s this?”

“Grilled chicken, homemade tahini, and arugula on sourdough.”

“What the fuck is tahini?”

“Just eat it, okay?”

Mike bites small. Frowns, nods. Reaches for a larger bite. I pull up a stool and start mine.

“Everything going according to plan?” I ask.

“There is no plan, pumpkin,” he says. “But I do have an ace up my sleeve, if you can keep a secret.”

“What’s that?”

“Top secret, do you hear me?” He leans an elbow on the counter and speaks in a hush. “Monk’s coming in at nine to play a set.”

I shriek and clap a hand over my mouth. “What? Are you serious? Monk Adams is playing in here ? Live? ”

Mike shrugs. “I gave him his start, all right? He owes me.”

“Monk Adams owes you .”

“He used to play here all the time when he was a kid. Right over there, on that pissant stage in the corner. Still pops up once in a while to try out new stuff. Keeping things real with the old crowd.”

I swivel my head to look at the platform in the corner of the taproom. It’s about ten feet by ten feet and maybe a foot high. “ Stage is kind of a stretch, Mike.”

Mike straightens and points his sandwich at me. “Yeah, fuck you too. Just wait until you see him there.”

“See who?”

We both startle and turn to the front door, where Sedge Peabody has just gusted into the taproom in a coat and tie, carrying a laptop bag.

“Jesus, bro. Who died?” asks Mike.

Sedge lays the laptop bag on the bar counter. “Breakfast meeting in the Back Bay. Got here as soon as I could. Everything set for the big day? Audrey? How are you feeling?”

“Good,” I say. “The new girl is working out great.”

Mike says, “Can I get you something? Beer?”

“I’ll have a beer, thanks. What’s on tap? Thimble Island lager?”

Mike draws him a pint. We observe the flow of beer in awkward silence.

Mike sets the glass on the counter, atop one of the new Taproom At The Mo paper coasters we ordered from VistaPrint, and says, “I’m just going to head upstairs and pay some bills before the bar staff gets here.

Don’t burn the place down again, all right? ”

I watch my father disappear through the doorway to the stairs. “He’s so funny.”

“Audrey. Hey. Are we okay?”

I take a deep breath and stare at the remains of my sandwich. “I’m sorry. I should have answered your text.”

“I shouldn’t have sent it in the first place. It was out of line.”

“It was not out of line. It was very—it was sweet. And I had a great time with you on the beach. I was just—you know, I just exited this terrible situation, and—”

“Audrey, I get it, okay?”

“—like, six months ago, if you can believe it, even though it feels like—”

“Hey. You don’t have to explain. Audrey. Look at me, all right?”

I turn my head. He’s sitting two stools down from me, so there is a respectful distance between us, a comfortable wedge of space.

In his navy suit and white shirt and his tie the color of ripe watermelon, hair brushed tidily from his forehead, he looks about ten years older.

Sleek. A different league of gentleman. He offers me this affable smile and sips his beer.

“So, as promised, I did a little digging on our guy Irving,” he says.

“Oh, wow. Thanks. It’s been so crazy the past few days, getting the menu ready, I haven’t had much time to think about the whole—you know, the painting thing.”

“Yeah, I figured. I have to say, it was a cool research dive. I printed out a few screenshots for you, if you’re interested.

” He pats the laptop bag and takes another drink of his beer.

“It’s kind of a tragic story, to be honest. He was devoted to his wife—it was this great love story, the bios all say—and then he lost her suddenly in 1844.

Gruesome accident. Her…um…sorry, you have a thing—”

He motions to the right side of his mouth. I make an awning over my lips with one hand and pull out a clip of arugula from between my first and second molars.

“Her dress caught fire,” Sedge continues. “And I guess dresses back then were made of flammable materials—all those crinolines and stuff—and the poor woman, she basically went up in flames.”

“Oh my God. That’s terrible.”

“Yeah, he was not doing good after that. She lingered for a week, apparently, in a delirium. I just—I can’t imagine, you know?

Watching your wife suffer like that? And according to the internet, he was so devastated, he didn’t paint again, right up until his own death a couple of years later.

Not a single painting survives from those last years of his life, when he should have been in his prime. ”

“That’s crazy. I had no idea. I mean, I’m sure I read about it at some point, but I don’t remember the story being so tragic. Wow. So where does Mike’s great-whatever-grandmother come in? If Irving was supposed to be so devoted to his wife?”

Sedge sets down his beer and loosens his necktie.

“Well, my dear. That’s where it gets interesting.

A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving 1846, the maid raises the alarm.

At this point, Irving’s living by himself, his kids are all grown up and moved out, one son still at Harvard, and the only person left in the house with him is this one servant.

Her name is Providence Dare. Awesome Puritan name, if you ask me.

Like I said, she raises the alarm in the early hours of the morning.

Found him dead at the bottom of the back stairs.

Broke his neck, I guess, but there’s also a massive impact wound on the side of his head. ”

“Are you saying she pushed him? Or hit him on the head and he fell?”

Sedge shrugs. “Nobody knows for sure except her, right? And at first the newspapers all seem to run on the assumption that he’s killed himself, because he can’t get over his grief for his wife.

But there’s about a hundred dailies in Boston at the time, and pretty soon they’re sniffing scandal.

Why was the maid alone with him, what were they up to, was she milking him in his grief.

But Irving’s kids stand by her, for some reason, and it’s only the day before Thanksgiving that a judge issues a warrant for Providence Dare’s arrest for murder.

By the time the police get to the house where she’s staying, she’s gone. Fled.”

“Fled where? Did they ever find her?”