Waiting for the Cunninghams to open the door, Charlotte notes the large potted lemon tree on the front terrace, pointing out the tiny green fruit to Birdie, and then glances beyond the house to the left, where a row of tall Leyland cypress trees outlines the field. The house is barely two miles from their own, and though she’s passed it many times while out walking the dog, she’s never been on the property. Through a separation in the trees, she can just barely make out markings on the grass.
“Are those Tucker’s initials?” Jason says, taking the words out of Charlotte’s mouth. She can’t help but laugh at the ostentatiousness of it—the kid’s monogram on his field—and when her eyes meet her husband’s, she feels a glimpse of their old connection, the first she’s felt in days.
“Oh my God, you guys!” Birdie whines. “Please don’t be weird!” Charlotte can tell she’s nervous. She’s been snippy all afternoon and changed four times, once because Charlotte told her she could not wear ripped jeans to dinner (she realized, as the words were coming out of her mouth, how much she sounded like her mother).
“Best behavior,” Charlotte promises, reaching and pinching for a stray hair that’s caught in Birdie’s lip gloss, and then, hearing the faint tap of approaching footsteps, she glances back at the field, remembering Tucker’s Instagram story. Maybe Jason’s right, she thinks, eyeing the manicured green. Maybe just a bunch of boys hanging out, being silly. Maybe it was nothing. Harmless, she tells herself. Nothing more than that.
Up close, Dayna looks like the kind of woman who knows every corner of every luxury department store in the DC metropolitan area. She is wearing ripped jeans, though quite clearly not homemade like Birdie’s, and a white tank top that shows off her commitment to Orangetheory or CorePower or whatever it is that keeps her lithe and lean. When she hugs Charlotte, air-kissing the space just beyond her ear, Charlotte notices that she smells cosmetic, like a combination of heavy floral perfume, powder, and body cream.
“Come in, come in!” Dayna says, hurrying them inside. “I can’t get these . . .” She turns back toward the long corridor behind her, the marble floor gleaming beneath her leather wedges. “Boys! They’re here!” She turns back to them and rolls her eyes, and then seeing Birdie, she freezes, her ample lips forming a surprised O like she’s just discovered something precious and pleasing, a cupcake on a paper doily, a kitten with a satin bow around its neck.
“You are just . . .” she starts, shaking her head, her eyes passing over Birdie from head to toe and back up again. With Charlotte’s prodding, Birdie had finally settled on a blue gingham top from J.Crew and white jeans, though she’s pushed the top’s elasticized sleeves off her shoulders a little farther than Charlotte would prefer. “I mean, I know we’ve met at school, Birdie, but look at you! You are adorable!” She shakes her head. “I am so not surprised that my son fell for you!”
Birdie dips her head down, her cheeks turning a deep red, and Charlotte winces inside. Her daughter is rarely self-conscious or timid. This is new, and Charlotte doesn’t like it. She looks down the hall, wondering where Tucker is, thinking to herself that if he were her kid, she would have made him come to the door to greet them, too.
Finch suddenly emerges from beneath one of the archways, wiping his hands on a striped dish towel. “Hey, hey!” he yells, his voice bellowing. “My apologies, I was just getting the grill going!” He does a little jog toward them, then claps Jason on the back. “Nice to see you, buddy!” When he shakes Charlotte’s hand, stuffing the dish towel under his other arm before he does it so that he can grasp her hand with both of his, she thinks to herself that he’s huskier looking than in the head shot she’d seen on his company website. Shorter, too. Above all, Finch Cunningham believes in the power of home, the copy next to his bio said, a statement so trite and cheesy it felt immediately untrustworthy, like the opening lines in a political ad. He’s sweating along his hairline, and his ruddy complexion matches the orangey red hue of his polo shirt.
Suddenly, Tucker slides into the hallway in his athletic socks, dressed in khaki shorts and an untucked oxford shirt. His dark hair is wet, the comb marks running distinctly through it. “Sorry! Sorry!” he says, a wide smile materializing on a face that resembles his mother’s. His eyes pass over all of them as he approaches but he goes to Jason first, shaking his hand, looking him in the eye. Good move, Charlotte thinks, and then: Too smooth?
“Nice to see you again,” he says, giving Charlotte a faint hug that matches the one that he then gives to Birdie, who giggles a little, and Charlotte wonders how they greet each other at school, that it’s likely kissing but what kind exactly? And how much?
Birdie and Tucker became official after Valentine’s Day, when she came home with an armful of red carnations that he’d sent to her through one of those school fund-raisers, with different colors symbolizing the gift’s significance: yellow for friendship, red for love. Charlotte’s only met Tucker in person twice since then: once, when she picked up Birdie after a basketball game at school this winter, and the second time, just a few weeks ago, when she dropped off Birdie and Hannah to meet Tucker and a group of friends in Westover for pizza and ice cream. Jason had asked why there hadn’t been any official dates yet, why she and her friends only seemed to travel in packs, and Birdie had looked at him like he’d asked whether Tucker was going to give her his letterman’s jacket.
They all move into the kitchen and Charlotte tries not to gawk. She’s been in plenty of nice homes before; at trustees’ dinners for the university, for instance, and her own brother’s house back in Savannah is so gorgeous that Southern Living featured it a couple of years ago. But this is something else, if only in the sense that it seems like the Cunninghams want their home to scream, We have lots and lots and lots of money! She notices the glass-front refrigerator and twelve-burner stove and starts to ask Dayna whether she cooks but her hostess is already speaking.
“So this is a really good Pinot Gris,” she’s saying, lifting the nearly empty crystal glass that Charlotte had noticed the moment they’d walked in the room. “We went to Sonoma over Columbus Day weekend. A miracle we could go anywhere at all, given Tucker’s lacrosse obligations.” She rolls her eyes up to the ceiling like this is a tremendous inconvenience, but Charlotte knows that this is meant to impress her. Parents around Arlington use their kids’ athletic achievements as social currency starting as early as kindergarten, and as much as she’d like to believe otherwise, Charlotte knows she’s done it, too, with Birdie and tennis. “Would you like a glass?”
“Charlotte never met a glass of wine she didn’t like,” Jason pipes in. All of the adults laugh—Tucker and Birdie have already escaped to the periphery of the room, where they’re looking out the French doors toward the pool—and Charlotte manages to smile and make a jokey grimace at her husband’s remark, but the comment annoys her.
“Well, that makes you my kind of girl!” Dayna giggles, handing her a glass.
“That’s for sure!” Finch quips. “Dayna has a tank top that she wears to SoulCycle—What does it say, honey?”