On the plane, in the comfort of her first-class seat, Alexia finally allowed herself to relax.
Tomorrow she would see Lucy. Lucy would know the truth about Arnie. Lucy would tell Alexia. Lucy trusted Alexia.
They trusted each other.
Alexia De Vere smiled as she soared up into the blue.
Chapter Thirty-nine
“The toast is burning.”
Arnie Meyer looked up briefly from the Wall Street Journal. He was in the kitchen of his home on Martha’s Vineyard, sipping the finest Colombian coffee and enjoying the view across his gardens to the harbor, when the unexpected, acrid smell of smoke disturbed him. Unexpected because Lucy never burned anything. Ever. Her meals were always things of beauty, delivered perfect and piping hot on pretty bone-china plates, timed to perfection like miniature military campaigns. It was a precision and attention to detail that Arnie Meyer both appreciated and expected. He was a man used to getting his own way.
“Hmm?” Lucy looked at Arnie, then at the toaster. “Oh my God! Why didn’t you say something?”
“I did.”
Lucy wasn’t listening. Pressing cancel, she ejected the two charred squares, opened the kitchen door, and carried them outside, still smoking.
“Careful, honey,” Arnie called after her. “You’ll burn your fingers. Do you want me to put on some more?”
Outside in the cool morning air, Lucy Meyer took a deep, calming breath. “No, no,” she said cheerfully, the competent housewife once more. “I’ll do it.”
From behind the shield of his newspaper, Arnie watched his wife as she bustled around the room, slicing bread from the fresh baker’s loaf and whisking up the eggs for his smoked-salmon scramble. She’s still beautiful to me, he thought affectionately. He loved Lucy’s slender waist—slim, but not too thin, like her friend Alexia. Mrs. De Vere was looking gaunt these days, in Arnie Meyer’s humble opinion. A woman should have a little meat on her bones. In a cornflower-blue shirtwaist dress, with a floral apron tied over the top, Lucy had an old-fashioned, 1950s look about her this morning that conjured up the wholesome happiness of earlier, simpler times. She reminded Arnie of his mother as a young woman: feminine, nurturing, a soft, welcoming respite from the slings and arrows of the world.
“I love you.”
Lucy turned around, a curious smile on her face. Arnie wasn’t usually big on verbal displays of affection. “Well, that’s good.” She laughed. “Because at this point you’re pretty much stuck with me.”
Arnie finally put down his paper. “Is something the matter, Luce? You seem kind of jumpy this morning.”
“Why, because I burned the toast?” Lucy laughed again, but he sensed there was an edge to it.
“I don’t know. Maybe. You never burn the toast. You never burn anything.”
“Nothing’s the matter, Arnie.” Putting the pan of eggs on a low heat, she came over to the table and kissed him. “If anything, I’m a little excited. I haven’t seen Summer in so long. It’ll be a treat having her here.”
“Oh, shit.” Arnie Meyer put his head in his hands. “It’s today, isn’t it? I totally forgot she was flying in.”
“Arnie!”
“I know. I’m sorry. I arranged to go fishing with Jake McIntyre.”
“Well, you’d better un-arrange it,” said Lucy, returning to the stove, wooden spoon in hand. “You agreed to pick Summer up at the airport. She’s expecting you.”
“Can’t you do it? I promised Jake—”
“No, I cannot do it,” Lucy said, annoyed. “I’m hiking with Alexia, remember? She called from England especially to ask if we could have some time alone today.”
“But you can see Alexia anytime.”
“For God’s sake, Arnie, Teddy’s just been sent to jail! You can see Jake McIntyre anytime. Alexia needs me right now.”
Arnie Meyer held his hands up like a soccer player admitting a foul. After three decades of marriage, he knew when he was fighting a losing battle.
“Okay, okay, I’ll go get Summer. What time’s her flight land anyway?”
Summer pressed her face to the window of the little, single-engine plane, watching the contours of Martha’s Vineyard take shape below. An almost perfect triangle, with the Atlantic Ocean at its base and the Nantucket and Vineyard sounds along the other two sides, it looked so peaceful and unchanging. As the plane began its descent, she could make out the familiar white clapboard homes, dotted like dollhouses around the island. Swimming pools glinted blue, like tiny square-cut sapphires in the emerald-green yards. Everything was ordered and manicured and unthreatening, mocking the turmoil that Summer felt inside.
As a child, she used to relish these short plane rides from Boston. The first glimpse of the island was always magical and exciting, marking the beginning of a summer of adventures. Summer had been cripplingly shy in those days: overweight, tongue-tied, socially awkward. But her mom had made sure that her childhood was idyllic, despite those disadvantages. Always there to defend her, to hold her hand, comfort her, boost her confidence, Lucy Meyer was the mother that every other kid wanted.
For the hundredth time on her long journey from London, Summer’s eyes welled with tears.
How could she? How could she?
When Summer first realized that the woman on Drake Motors’ CCTV footage was her own mother, her natural response was disbelief. Yes, the walk was Lucy’s, and the body language and the way she moved her arms. (It was that, more than anything, that had triggered Summer’s memory. Picturing her mother handing that birthday present to Alexia, the Chanel jacket.) But the idea that her own mother had had an affair with Michael? That simply didn’t compute. It was like being told the world was square, or the sky green. However many pictures someone showed you, you wouldn’t believe it. Lucy being Michael De Vere’s “sugar mommy” defied all laws of nature, of probability, of reality as Summer knew it.
Unable to trust her own judgment, or even believe her own eyes, Summer had done what every good journalist would do. She’d looked for corroborating evidence. Karen Davies at Drake Motors had given her the details of the anonymous offshore bank account used to pay for Michael’s Ducati. At the time they’d meant nothing to Summer. They were just a string of random numbers: IBAN and SWIFT and routing codes. But when she checked them against the spreadsheet Arnie had made for her years ago, detailing all the Meyer family’s bank holdings, they were a perfect match.
Lucy bought the bike.
Lucy was Michael’s mistress.
Had Lucy tried to kill him too? Had she tampered with the Panigale deliberately?
A sharp bump dragged Summer back to the present.
We’ve landed.
Unfastening her seat belt, she wiped away her tears and tried to focus on her anger, wrapping it around her like a protective cloak. How had her mother dared do this to her? How had Michael! What had they been thinking? Michael’s betrayal hurt Summer deeply, but her mother’s was worse. Didn’t Lucy realize that Summer had now lost everything? Not just Michael, and her hopes for a new family, but her old family as well. All her memories, her childhood happiness, all of it had been tainted, poisoned, destroyed. It would have been less painful if Lucy had cut off her arms or thrown acid in her face. And all the while she’d made herself out to be this perfect mother! That was the worst of it.
Summer thought back to what Roxie had said to her at Fairmont House.
“You have no idea how lucky you are to have Lucy for a mother.
“You can’t imagine what it’s like, realizing that everything you thought you knew about yourself and your family was just smoke and mirrors!”
Summer could imagine it now.
She’d already decided what she was going to do. First, she would tell her father. She would show Arnie the footage, show him the bank transfer, let him know that his wife, the saintly Lucy Meyer, was a liar and an adulteress and a fraud and . . . a killer?
It was at this point that everything started to unravel. Even now, knowing what she knew, Summer couldn’t bring herself to believe that Lucy would have tried to kill Michael by deliberately sabotaging his bike. For one thing, she had no reason to want to hurt him. Apart from everything else, he was her best friend’s son. Lucy had known Michael since boyhood. Besides, the mechanics at the St. Martin’s garage weren’t certain that anyone had tampered with the Ducati’s brakes. It could have been an accident. Summer didn’t know what to believe anymore. The only person who knew the truth was her mother, but did Summer have the strength to confront her? What did one say in these circumstances? She’d had the last twelve hours to think about it, but still had no idea how to begin.
Mom, I know you were fucking my boyfriend.
Mom, did you try to murder Michael?
It was all too surreal.