Foster Prentice sat alone in his office, contemplating his first marriage. It was a forbidden topic between him and Aubrey. The only reason he brought it up to Aubrey while they were dating was that it was something she needed to know about his past before he proposed.
If Aubery ever heard the story of Carolyn’s accident, she never let on.
His first wife was dead, and her family thought it was Foster’s fault. Legally speaking, the District Attorney labeled it as an accident, but her family and friends didn’t think so. After the trial, he never saw them again. And he didn’t feel guilty so much as he wanted Carolyn back. Aubrey was a fine wife, but she was no substitute for Carolyn.
His first wife, Carolyn, came from old money like Foster. They had dated since prep school and married after earning their bachelor’s degrees. However, Carolyn’s family never forgave Foster for her death. So, while the death was horrifying, the aftermath was even worse. Foster was banned from social events in Westchester for several years. Eventually, though, people moved away, died, or stopped caring.
Then Aubrey came along; she was no Carolyn, but she was acceptable in his old-money circles, and she delighted everyone at the Orchard Park Country Club. Aubrey reinstated him to his former status as a loving husband in Westchester society, redeeming him for the accidental loss of Carolyn.
Foster thought about the fatal day when he and Carolyn went sailing.
They had rented a boat to sail Long Island Sound. They were both avid sailors since birth, and they knew the waters well, including the weather, the whales, and every lobster pot line. It was a perfect day for boating. Not a cloud in sight. But when they were out in the eastern "Race" near Plum Island, the weather changed quickly.
Sudden gale-force winds and heavy rains came out of nowhere. The boat hit a large wake head-on, and Carolyn was thrown into the water. She didn’t survive.
The last thing Foster saw of Carolyn as she fell into the water was her long, ash-blonde hair, her pride and joy. It was her hair that made her Foster’s ‘darling angel.’
This left Foster fixated on blonde hair, something Aubrey didn’t have.
Thank God for Hollis, Carolyn’s replacement, his new ‘darling angel.’
Hollis didn’t know it, but her hair color was the reason she was hired.
Foster sat in his leather chair, lost in thought. The hum of the building lulled him into a trance-like state. He gazed at the framed nautical chart on the wall, depicting Long Island Sound, as memories of the day he lost everything flooded back. He could hear the crashing of the rising waves. The saltwater taste was still in his mouth. Carolyn was yelling something he couldn’t understand.
People always described Carolyn’s death as a tragedy. But they meant for her. Her life was over. But Foster didn’t see it that way. For him, it was an unacceptable inconvenience.
He had loved Carolyn, yes. But love, in his world, was measured by possession, by who belonged to whom at dinner parties, on holiday cards, on deck in matching navy windbreakers. Carolyn had been perfect for those roles. Perfectly bred, perfectly coiffed, perfectly mannered.
And perfectly easy to lose in the bad weather.
He closed his eyes and saw the moment again, not with guilt, but with a strange, familiar ache. The sound of wind whipping the canvas, the violent snap of a line breaking loose, Carolyn’s startled cry swallowed by the storm.
Then the water.
Cold, black, infinite.
In his mind, that last flash of her hair was his downfall. Who would he find to replace the perfect accessory for his social life?
He remembered imagining how absurdly beautiful her hair looked underwater.
When the Coast Guard found her, they saw her hair first.
Everyone did.
It had become her shroud.
After the memorial, Carolyn’s mother had slapped him across the face in front of half of Westchester. Her father refused to shake his hand. The yacht club quietly asked him to “refrain from attending functions until a suitable period of grief has passed.”
Grief.
As if that were what he felt.
Aubrey had never asked too many questions about that chapter of his life. Sensible girl. Eager to please. Eager to belong. She knew just enough about Carolyn to put her mind at ease. To put Foster in the category of a widower who was ready to move on. Leave the past in the past. “How healthy,” she thought at the time.
Aubrey was practical, brilliant, and socially acceptable.
But she wasn’t Carolyn.
Not in her upbringing, not in the sound of her laughter, and certainly not in her hair color.
Foster unlocked the top drawer of his desk and pulled out Carolyn’s photo. He kept it face down in the desk drawer so no one would see it.
Underneath it was a photograph of Hollis.
His new darling angel.
Her hair was the same ash-blonde shade Carolyn had prized, the same thickness, with full body and shine. That hair was what had caught Foster’s attention the first time he saw Hollis in the interview. He couldn’t believe he had found his new darling angel sitting right in front of him.
The interview was quick.
Some things were destiny.
Or improvement.
Foster stood and walked to the window, looking out over the city lights. Aubrey was useful, credible, respectable, his reentry ticket into all the rooms that had once quietly closed their doors on him.
But Hollis?
Hollis was Carolyn’s resurrection.
The second coming of everything he’d lost. Everything he deserved. Everything Carolyn had taken with her into the storm.
The thought of having Hollis around soothed him. It was a bonus that she allowed him to worship her. To pay homage to what he had lost with Carolyn.
One blonde angel swallowed by the sea.
Another delivered to him by fate.
He touched her photo, caressing it like he did the real thing.
Thank God for Hollis, he thought again.
Not with gratitude.
With certainty.
Could he divorce Aubrey and marry Hollis?
The thought was tempting, but how would he explain it?
A teenager married to old money. His money.
What would that even look like?
Hollis would move into the house like a stray kitten he’d decided to keep, wide-eyed, out of place, compliant because she didn’t yet know she could refuse anything. She’d be dazzled by the house, afraid to move around it, probably spending most of her time sitting in the den watching television. Going to the kitchen to get a snack every so often while she waited for him to come home.
He would take her shopping to buy her all the clothes that used to be in Aubrey’s extensive closet.
Until then, he imagined her barefoot in the morning, wandering the hallways in one of his dress shirts she thought looked ‘cute’ as pajamas. He imagined her asking permission without even realizing she was doing it:
“Can I use the pool?”
“Is it okay if I invite a friend?”
“Are you mad at me?”
Old money men liked women who didn’t challenge them, or so Foster told himself, and Hollis, in her youth, would feel like a clean slate. No history. No baggage. No demands.
But the truth was darker: Hollis wouldn’t be a wife. She’d be an ornament. Something to be trained, shaped, guided. He’d take her to fundraisers where the other wives, women of Aubrey’s age, would look at her as the child bride she was. They’d speak about her the way one might discuss an expensive but impractical purchase.
“Well… she’s very young.”
“She’ll learn.”
“Poor girl.”
And Hollis, naive enough to believe that being chosen by a wealthy older man meant she was special, would cling harder, try harder, alter herself into whatever Foster praised.
Her family would object. Or would they? A teenager married into a dynasty? They might encourage her to ‘get married right away, before he changes his mind.’
Would he give them grandchildren?
Foster would be dictating the terms of the marriage. Children would come after Hollis was schooled in how to raise them.
He pictured Hollis sitting at his dinner table, nervous about which fork to use. He pictured correcting her gently at first, then with irritation when she didn’t catch on quickly enough. He pictured her crying once, maybe twice, then learning not to cry at all.
He pictured the control.
And then, inevitably, he pictured the boredom.
Hollis wouldn’t challenge him. She wouldn’t push him intellectually or professionally. She wouldn’t question why he was angry, or why he drank too much, or how he treated people. She wouldn’t see through him the way Aubrey did.
And the only thing worse than a woman who challenged him was a woman who didn’t matter.
Still, the fantasy lingered.
Because Foster wasn’t imagining marriage.
What he wanted was someone to possess. Someone to protect. He didn’t want to lose another Carolyn. So he would keep her safe. Keep her secluded. Keep her uneducated. Carolyn knew too much of the world to contain. She wanted to go places, see things, meet people.
Foster could never keep up. Carolyn was too smart for him, too worldly. Foster had a degree in architecture, but she had an equal degree in art history. Foster could never impress her with his designs or his dreams. She always had better ones, grander ones.
Foster was always in her shadow, but he didn’t mind so much, as she never took him seriously. Never laughed at his jokes, never went out with his friends. Her friends were always more glamorous, more interesting.
No, he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Hollis wouldn’t know what it would be like to be with a man who knew what he was doing in bed. She would have nothing to compare Foster to because he checked every day.
He knew more about Hollis’s sex organs than she did. Carolyn wasn’t happy in bed with Foster. She never said anything, but he knew. Just like he knew with Aubrey. But Hollis? He could be bad in bed, and she would be happy just to have a man inside her.
And Foster had been grooming Hollis for about a year. He knew how to push her buttons, so he knew how to satisfy her through foreplay. Then anything he did with his penis afterwards would be a bonus.
All he had to do now was get rid of Aubrey. That would be simple. They had a prenup where Aubrey got nothing of his family’s money or the house. His family had thought of that. So an uncontested divorce would be easy. And he wasn’t cheating on Aubry with Hollis, not really. Not by the definition of the law.
And even if she suspected, she could never prove anything. There were no witnesses, and his future wife wasn’t going to say anything.
So now all Foster had to do was get up the nerve to ask Hollister to marry him. After the divorce was final, they could live together until then.
“So my angel, my beautiful angel, we will be together soon,” he thought to himself.
It would be perfect this time. Hollis was everything Carolyn wasn’t and then some. All he had to do was protect her and not let her go out sailing on any boats.
Foster could never forgive Carolyn for leaving him, especially under such dire circumstances. It took too much time and energy to explain her disappearance.
He couldn’t go through that again.