The Island

The Island by Elin Hilderbrand Read Free Book Online

Book: The Island by Elin Hilderbrand Read Free Book Online
Authors: Elin Hilderbrand
Tags: FIC044000
from the street. Was she a complete mess?
    “What are you going to do?” Birdie asked Chess now. “Do you have anything lined up?”
    “No,” Chess said. Her voice was so indifferent that Birdie wondered if this was really her daughter. Maybe this was some kind of prank? “I’m thinking of traveling.”
    “Traveling?” Birdie said. “What does that mean?”
    “I’m thinking about India,” Chess said. “Or maybe Nepal.”
    “India?” Birdie said. She was trying not to become hysterical. “ Nepal? ”
    “Listen, Bird, can we talk about all this when I get home?”
    “Home?” Birdie said.
    “I’ve sublet my apartment for the summer. I’m coming home to you next weekend.”
    “Next weekend” was Memorial Day, and Birdie had plans to go to the North Fork of Long Island with Hank. Reluctantly, she canceled. She said to Hank, “Chess has quit her job and sublet her apartment, and she’s coming home. And I should be there for her. I’m her mother.”
    Hank said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
    Birdie thought for a second. Hank had handled Chess’s broken engagement artfully, convincing Birdie that if Chess was no longer in love with Michael, then breaking the engagement was the only decent and humane thing to do. He might be able to make sense of these new developments. But Birdie held back. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “I’m sure.”
    “Okay, well then, we’ll go to the North Fork another weekend. I promise. Now go take care of your little girl.”
    Birdie changed the sheets in Chess’s room and put roses in a vase by her bed. She made Tuscan lemon chicken, Chess’s favorite dinner, for Friday night. Birdie had half a mind to plan a barbecue for Sunday afternoon, inviting some of Chess’s high school friends, but thought better of it. And how wise! Chess, when she arrived, looked, not like a beautiful thirty-two-year-old newly liberated from fiancé and high-powered job, but wan and puffy eyed and painfully thin. Her long blond hair was greasy and tangled; her shoulders were hunched. She wore a ratty T-shirt featuring the logo of the band Diplomatic Immunity, and a pair of surplus army shorts. She hadn’t bothered with makeup or jewelry; the holes in her pierced ears were red and swollen. She looked like a homeless person.
    Drugs, Birdie thought. Or a cult. India? Nepal?
    Chess pulled her cell phone out of her incongruously elegant Coach purse and dropped it into Birdie’s kitchen trash. “I am done with phone calls,” she said. “I am done with e-mails and done with texting. I don’t want to talk to Michael or to anyone else about Michael. I don’t want to talk to anyone from work about why I left or where I’m going. I am all done talking. Okay?” She looked to Birdie as if for permission, and her eyes filled with tears. “I’m just really confused, Bird. The way this has all played out… the things that have happened… honestly? I’m done with other people. I want to be a hermit and live in a cave.”
    “What’s wrong?” Birdie asked. “What ‘things’ have happened?”
    “Are you not listening?” Chess said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    Birdie, not knowing what else to do, poured Chess a glass of Sancerre and led her to the picnic table, which was set for two overlooking the garden. (Would it make Chess uncomfortable to gaze at the acreage where her wedding reception was to have taken place? Probably, but what could Birdie do? It was her backyard.) She plied Chess with Tuscan lemon chicken and a gratin of potatoes and fennel, and haricots verts sautéed with garlic, and rolls and butter. And a wedge of rhubarb pie for dessert. Under Birdie’s hawklike gaze, Chess ate four bites of chicken, one green bean, a bite of roll, and two bites of pie. She didn’t want to talk, and Birdie—despite four or five really important topics hovering over the table like hummingbirds—wouldn’t make her.
    After dinner, Birdie

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