Read Beautiful Day for Free Online Page B

school adored her. As the youngest by such a large span of years—there were eight
     plus years between Jenna and Nick—Jenna had been raised in the warm bath of their
     parents’ love. Her childhood and adolescence had involved little conflict. The downside
     to this was that Jenna wasn’t great with crises.
    “Think,” Margot said. “Stop and think. Did you have it on the boat?”
    “No,” Jenna said. “I haven’t seen it at all today. I had it last night at… Locanda
     Verde.” Her face dissolved.
    “Whoa, whoa,” Margot said. “No big deal. We can
call
Locanda Verde.”
    “Then Stuart and I got into a cab!” Jenna said. “What if I left it in a cab?”
    Margot’s heart sank. What if Jenna had left it in a cab? Margot would go through the
     motions of calling the dispatcher’s office, but they wouldn’t have it. Once you left
     something in a New York City cab, it was gone forever. How many pairs of sunglasses
     lost each day? Margot wondered. How many cell phones? How many copies of
Fifty Shades of Grey
? A massive redistribution of personal belongings took place every day across the
     five boroughs because of what people left behind in cabs. The Notebook! Like Jenna,
     Margot had read the Notebook front to back and back to front, focusing most intently
     on the passages that mentioned her; she felt a piercing loss at the thought of never
     seeing it again.
    Jenna was on her phone.
    Margot said, “Who are you calling?”
    “Stuart!” Jenna said.
    Stuart, of course. Margot thought, with a glimmer of hope,that maybe Stuart had the Notebook. If he didn’t, he would fly out the door of his
     office and drive to godforsaken who-knows-where-Brooklyn-or-Queens to personally dig
     through the lost and found at the dispatcher’s office. Stuart would be able to offer
     Jenna comfort; he was the only one who mattered.
    Margot didn’t have anyone like that. She could never call Edge about something like
     the Notebook. Instead she called her father. No answer. She called again and left
     a voice mail.
    “Hey, Dad, it’s Margot. Jenna has misplaced the Notebook. She had it last night at
     dinner, she said? She thinks maybe she left it in the cab? Any thoughts? Call me back.”
    Margot then sent her father a text:
Jenna lost Notebook.
    And another:
Please call me.
    Jenna, meanwhile, was still on the phone with Stuart. In the Notebook, their mother
     had referred to Jenna’s future husband, whoever he may be, as her Intelligent, Sensitive
     Groom-to-Be—and Stuart fit the bill. Jenna had already calmed down; she had stopped
     crying.
    Margot marched upstairs. Jenna’s luggage was in the hallway, and Margot started to
     look through it, thinking,
Please appear, please appear.
    What appeared were a pair of shapely, tanned legs. Finn’s legs. Margot used to have
     legs like that, back in her surfing days, before she worked sixty-five hours a week
     trying to support three kids and an ex-husband.
    Finn said, “Why are you going through Jenna’s things?”
    Her voice was accusatory, but Margot didn’t even both looking up.
    Finn said, “Oh, shit.”
    “Exactly,” Margot said. A second later, her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. Involuntarily,
     she thought:
Edge.
    But it was her father.
    “I have it,” he said.
    Margot filled with giddy relief, and Jenna sobbed with tears of joy. One of the best
     feelings in the world was finding something you were sure you’d lost forever.
    A little while later, a white van pulled into the driveway behind Margot’s LR3. She
     poked her head out the side door. The Sperry Tent Company. She hoped she didn’t have
     to sign anything or decide anything. She hoped the four guys who hopped out of the
     truck knew exactly what they were doing. She hoped that Roger, the wedding planner,
     had reminded the tent guys about her mother’s perennial bed.
    Beth had been a fanatical gardener, and some of those perennials were over forty years
     old, which made them heirloom. Or