Authors: Elin Hilderbrand
28 Summers: The gripping, emotional page turner of summer 2020 by 'the Queen of the Summer Novel' (People) (33 page)
“Not really,” Mallory says. “In some ways, there isn’t enough to share. He comes every year, we do the same things, we have a sort of routine—the things we eat, the songs we listen to—and then he leaves.”
“You don’t call him?” Leland says. “You don’t
text
him?”
Mallory shakes her head.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s even harder to do than to believe,” Mallory says.
“And you see him
every
year? What about Link?”
“He’s always with Fray when this person comes,” Mallory says. “It’s at the end of the summer.”
Leland is starting to picture it: A sun-soaked weekend, just Mallory and her mystery dream man in that romantic cottage on the beach. They make love and feed each other fresh figs and sing along to the Carpenters and then he leaves; Mallory stands in the doorway, blowing him kisses. They flip the hourglass over again.
It sounds like a heavenly arrangement, actually.
“Still, it’s amazing, right, that you’ve never missed a year? Does his wife
know?
”
Mallory shakes her head. “His wife…I can’t even get into everything about his wife.” She drops her voice. “She came to the funeral. By herself.”
“She…
what?
” Leland says. And suddenly, she pulls away from Mallory, just a few inches, nothing dramatic, but she needs space. The wife came to the funeral alone. Every year
for a long time now
. How long? Since the beginning, when Mallory inherited the cottage? Leland hadn’t planned on asking the guy’s name because she wanted to respect Mallory’s privacy and also because she’d assumed it was someone she didn’t know.
The end of summer.
Leland racks her brain to remember her visit that first summer. They had surprised Fray, that she remembers, and she and Fray had nearly hooked up. Cooper was there, and his friend from Hopkins, Jake McCloud. What does Leland remember about Jake? Aaaaarrrgh! Very little. If he hadn’t ended up marrying Ursula de Gournsey, he would have been erased from Leland’s memory forever.
But he
had
ended up marrying Ursula de Gournsey.
Who came to the funeral by herself. Why? Why had she been at the funeral without Jake when Jake was the one who was friends with Coop? “Is it Jake McCloud?” Leland whispers.
Mallory releases a breath.
“Oh my God, Mal.”
“I know.”
“Mal.”
“Believe me, I know.”
“In the spirit of full disclosure…” Leland says.
Mallory looks up.
“I sat with Ursula at the service. I was shocked to see her, obviously. And this might sound horrible—no, it definitely
will
sound horrible—but I got her e-mail and her cell phone number. I asked her if she would do an interview for
Leland’s Letter
and she said yes.”
“Oh, Lee.”
“I’m sorry, I had no idea. But yes, I am that friend who took full advantage of your parents’ funeral to further her own career. It’s just…I didn’t know.”
“But you know now,” Mallory says. “So, please…”
Please
what?
Leland wonders. Mallory doesn’t say anything else. Her head falls back against the sofa and her eyes close. Leland considers trying to get Mallory upstairs to her childhood bedroom but it feels like an impossible task. She covers Mallory with the deep red chenille blanket that has lived in this room for as long as Leland can remember and then she succumbs to the allure of the other half of the sofa.
So, please…what?
Leland thinks as she falls asleep.
Leland wants to do an extended interview with Ursula de Gournsey, but because of the situation with Mallory, she decides it’s best not to dive too deeply into Ursula’s life. Instead, she features Ursula in her Dirty Dozen—twelve questions, some rapid-fire and fun, some provocative. Turns out, this suits Ursula better, anyway. She doesn’t have time for Leland to do a detailed profile.
Twelve questions is a lot, Ursula says. She hopes they can blow through them in thirty minutes, forty-five tops.
“Or I could e-mail them to you?” Leland says. “So you have time to mull them over?”
“It’ll go straight into the black hole,” Ursula says. “This isn’t constituent business or legislation, which makes it personal, and my personal business gets triaged last. Let’s do this now. Go ahead.”
Dirty Dozen with Senator Ursula de Gournsey
1. Gadget you can’t live without?
There’s a pause on the other end of the phone.
“Do people ever say their vibrators?” Ursula asks.
“All the time,” Leland says.
“That’s not my answer,” Ursula says. She sounds nearly offended, as though Leland were the one who suggested it. “I was just wondering.”
My BlackBerry.
2. Song you want to hear on your deathbed?
“Let It Be.”
3. Five minutes of perfect happiness?
“Cool-down after a good, hard run on the treadmill,” Ursula says.
“Do you want to think about that answer a little longer?” Leland says. “Maybe mention your husband or your daughter?”
“Oh,” Ursula says.
Sixty-degree day, blue sky, fifty-yard-line seats, cashmere sweater and jeans, sitting between my husband and daughter, Notre Dame versus Boston College.
4. Moment you’d like to do over?
Accepting money from the NRA.
Brave answer,
Leland thinks.
This interview is looking up.
5. Bad habit?
Correcting people’s grammar.
6. Last supper?
“I don’t understand the question,” Ursula says.
“What would you like your final meal to be?” Leland says.
“You mean before I die?”
“Yes.”
“People are interested in this?”
“Very. It’s a little more in depth than just asking your favorite food. You get to pick a meal.”
“Oh,” Ursula says. “Cereal, I guess.”
“Cereal?”
Rice Krispies with sliced banana and skim milk.
7. Most controversial opinion?
“Men are not the enemy,” Ursula says. “I realize that’s going to be
very
controversial for your readership. But what I’ve found in Congress and in my professional life in general is that men want women to succeed. It’s the women who are cloak-and-dagger.”
“Hmmmm,” Leland says. She’s not overjoyed with this answer. The whole basis of
Leland’s Letter
is that women can learn and grow from the experiences of other women.
“I hope that changes by the time my daughter, Bess, is grown,” Ursula says. “When my mother was young, she was focused on helping my father succeed. That was her job. And then in my generation, our generation, women became focused on their own success. The logical next step is that women will become not only supportive of one another but
vested
in one another’s success.” She pauses. “But we aren’t there yet.”
Women have to support each other, be vested in one another’s success. Men are not the enemy.
8. In a box of crayons, what color are you?
“Black,” Ursula says.
“Black?”
“My father used to say I was as serious as a heart attack,” Ursula says. “Plus, you outline everything in black. It’s a hardworking color.”
“Right, but—”
“I’m not going to say yellow or pink or purple. My answer is black.”
Black.
9. Proudest achievement?
“Being elected to the United States Senate is probably too obvious,” Ursula says. “I would bring up the welfare-reform bill, but that would put everyone to sleep.” Ursula pauses. “I guess I’ll say my marriage.”
Leland jumps like she’s been poked in the ribs. “Your marriage?”
“Yes. I’ve been married for sixteen years, but Jake and I have been together for over thirty years. Honestly, I don’t know why he stays with me.”
Leland waits a beat.
Move on to the next question!
she tells herself. But does she? No. “You’re an intelligent, accomplished woman.”
“I’m a witch at home. I’m demanding and ungrateful and I have to schedule in family time, though that’s the first thing I cancel when things get busy. I’m aware that if I don’t start having some fun with my daughter, she’ll grow up either hating me or being just like me or both. And yet I have this idea that if I stop working, even for an hour, the country will fall apart. People throw around the word
workaholic
like it’s no big deal, like it’s maybe even a good thing. But I suffer from the disease. I’m a workaholic. I’m addicted to work. So, yeah, I’m not sure why Jake stays, but I’m grateful.”
My sixteen-year marriage to Jake McCloud.
10. Celebrity crush?
Ted Koppel.
11. Favorite spot in America?
“I should probably pick someplace in the state of Indiana,” Ursula says. “But I already mentioned Notre Dame stadium, and where else is there? Fishers? Carmel?”
“Are those places that inspire you?” Leland asks.
“I wish I could pick someplace magical, like Nantucket,” Ursula says, and Leland flinches again. “Jake loves Nantucket, but I’ve never been. He goes every year for a guys’ trip. I keep telling him I’m going to crash one of these years.”
Oh God, oh God,
Leland thinks.
Please stop talking about Nantucket.
“I love Newport, Rhode Island,” Ursula says. “But as bizarre as this sounds, I think I’m going to say Las Vegas is my favorite spot. I worked on a case there when I first went into private practice…” Ursula breaks off and Leland assumes she’s just gotten a text or another call but then she realizes, from her wavering tone, that Ursula is overcome. “Those were happy days. Vegas is…crazytown, right? But it’s unapologetically
itself,
and I appreciated that. I loved it there, for whatever reason.”
Las Vegas.
12. Title of your autobiography?
“Straight up the Fairway,”
Ursula says. “That’s in regard to my politics. I’m centrist. People might not agree with all of my stances, but they won’t disagree with all of them either. I believe in common sense and hard work and American capitalism and the Constitution and the equality under the law of every single American.”
“Okay.” Leland is very liberal, just shy of socialist. She doesn’t want to get into a political debate here; however, she thinks that “straight up the fairway” is a compromise and a cop-out. She had wanted Ursula de Gournsey to come across as some kind of Superwoman. But maybe the takeaway for the readers of
Leland’s Letter
will be this: A woman with real power in Washington is just as self-critical and beleaguered as the rest of us.
Leland also finds herself hobbled by her secret knowledge. Does Ursula de Gournsey have it all? Anyone who reads the Dirty Dozen will see the answer is
no
. But only Leland knows that Ursula de Gournsey has even less than she realizes.
Straight Up the Fairway.
The Dirty Dozen with Ursula de Gournsey goes live on January 20 in advance of the State of the Union, and Leland waits for Mallory to call in a rage. Mallory didn’t explicitly ask Leland
not
to do an interview with Ursula, but her “So, please…” had seemed to indicate that she wanted Leland to exercise some kind of restraint. Which she had, because this
isn’t
an in-depth profile.
No angry call comes. Instead, Leland receives texts and e-mails and Facebook messages and hits on Twitter and Instagram that say:
Loved the piece with UDG! LL is taking it up a notch!!
It takes a few days but eventually, the Dirty Dozen with Ursula de Gournsey goes viral. The answer everyone is talking about is “Men are not the enemy.” That line is the subject of an op-ed in the
New York Times
written by the male governor of Nevada, who agrees that men are not the enemy and that men should not be receiving so much blame for social injustice. (The governor is also thrilled with Ursula’s answer of “Las Vegas” as her favorite spot in the country.)
The Dirty Dozen with UDG and the attendant chatter about it result in a near doubling of Leland’s audience—she’s up to 125,000 readers (one of whom is Ursula de Gournsey herself!) and lures in seventeen new advertisers.
Leland’s Letter
is now making enough money for Leland to quit teaching and focus solely on the blog.
Still, Leland worries that she has cashed in on her longest friendship for this success. A week later, Leland looks down at her phone and sees she’s received two successive texts from Mallory. She thinks,
Here it comes.
Mallory will say Leland is opportunistic (she is), selfish (ditto), and ruthless (well, yes).
Leland starts reading the texts with trepidation. The first says,
Happy birthday, Lee! I love you!
The second text says,
Oops, sorry, I thought today was the 29th not the 27th. I’ll text you on Wednesday!
Okay,
Leland thinks. So Mallory isn’t upset about the Dirty Dozen? This is great news because now that Leland has some momentum, she can take
Leland’s Letter
to the next level. She can lay claim to some cultural influence. She just needs to keep her foot on the gas and not get slowed down by sticky issues like best friends with hurt feelings.
It’s only as Leland is falling asleep that night that she realizes Mallory might not have
seen
the article. It went viral, but that doesn’t mean it reached every person in America. Mallory is a single working mother on an island thirty miles off the coast. She’s immersed in her school day, her students, Link, the painful and painstaking work of dismantling her parents’ financial and business affairs. She might not spend hours online Googling Ursula de Gournsey the way that Leland Googles Fiella Roget and tracks her every move.
Leland opens her laptop (she sleeps with it; she is that pathetic).
Mallory Blessing isn’t a subscriber to
Leland’s Letter
. Leland’s first instinct is to be offended. Her own best friend!