The Shadow Box(53)

“A lot of drama here today,” she said, holding up her cup while I poured. “Too much.”

“It was,” I agreed.

“I wish to God that Sallie Benson had never swept into our lives, with all her white paint and white tiles and enchanted white moon gardens. Wrecking a good family.”

“You know about Sallie and Edward?”

“Yes, dear. Word gets around. And Ford didn’t help, dashing about like an old gossip. But he’s in love with her, silly though it may be—and there’s nothing like a Chase man in love. Believe me, I saw it with Griffin, with you.”

“When we got married?”

“No, before. The first time. When you were just out of college. That summer you got together, I told Wade that Griffin was over-the-moon in love with you. I’m just sorry it didn’t last, that it took so long for you to get back together. Margot was a mess.” She sipped her coffee, added another teaspoon of sugar. “Of course, it didn’t help that Victoria didn’t like her.”

“Griffin’s mother?”

“Yes. She was impossible to please. I bet she would have loved you—being an artist, so talented. So good to Griffin. Between you and me, I think Victoria wanted the woman in Griffin’s life to make up for what she couldn’t do. I hate to speak ill of the dead, especially in her own kitchen, but she was a cold fish.”

“That must have been hard on Griffin.”

“It certainly was. She was a woman who never should have had a child. She had her own interests, and she loved her husband, but she neglected Griffin. So did his father. Wade says we were better parents to him than they were. And I’m talking about before his parents died. They were simply not present.”

“He was lucky to have you,” I said.

“We felt that way about him. No children of our own, so Griffin was it. Wade would make him get up at dawn, go surf casting with him off the beach. They would catch blues and stripers—they would clean them, and I’d cook them. Griffin loved it. He wanted to go after bigger game, so when he was a college senior, we gave him an early graduation present. Wade took him deep-sea fishing.”

It warmed my heart to think of Wade giving Griffin something so important—not just a fishing trip but the chance to spend time with a mentor who really cared. Something he had obviously lacked at home.

“He must have loved it,” I said, trying to remember Griffin going—it must have been earlier that summer, before he and I got together, and he had never mentioned a trip with the Lockwoods to me.

“Yes, he did,” Leonora said. “Wade chartered a sixty-foot sportfishing yacht, and springtime in that latitude that time of year was just perfect. There were still sailfish around, with blue marlin just showing up. Wade and Griffin caught a couple of each, along with bluefin tuna and bonitos.”

“Sounds amazing,” I said.

“It was, for all of us. I stayed ashore at the resort along with dear friends—my tennis partner, Jenny, and her stepson, Danny, and Griffin’s little friend. We’d go to the beach and play tennis all day while Wade and Griffin were out on the boat.”

“‘Little friend’?” I asked.

“It was very much about Wade and Griffin,” Leonora said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “He felt very strongly that Griffin needed his full attention—to get him on track for life. Of course, we felt bad that Danny didn’t get to go fishing with the men, but we tried to make it up to him. We rented him a dirt bike. He took up windsurfing, had lots of adventures.”

“That sounds like a good compromise,” I said.

“I think so. At night we’d all have dinner together. The kids would stay out late dancing, and Wade, Jenny, and I would stay in playing backgammon. Nothing like treating three teenagers to a lovely spring break—their last before having to enter the real world and get jobs—and having loads of fun ourselves.”

“Spring break?” I asked.

“Yes, right before graduation,” Leonora said.

“Where did you take them for spring break, Leonora? Where was the resort and the fishing?” I asked, the back of my neck prickling.

“Mexico. The Caribbean. Wade chartered the boat out of Puerto Juárez.”

“Not Cancún?” I asked, feeling relieved.

“Well, just north of there. My husband knows fishing, and he wasn’t going to charter through the resort for top dollar. He went to the ferry dock and paid cash.”

“So you stayed in Puerto Juárez?” I asked.

“Oh, God no,” she said. “It was very, shall we say, ‘rustic’ back then. We stayed in Cancún.”

“Who was Griffin’s ‘little friend’?” I asked. “The one you mentioned a minute ago?”

“Ellen,” she said. “His college girlfriend.”

I couldn’t move or even breathe.

“That poor girl who died,” Leonora said. “You know as well as I—terrible for you, finding her body like that. It nearly destroyed Griffin, dear. He took her death so hard, and I think that is the reason he wasn’t ready to settle down with you back then. It tore him up.”

“I didn’t know he went to Cancún,” I said, barely hearing anything she had said after that. “I only knew that Ellen did.”