Page 43 of The Book of Summer

She curtsied, though Ruby suspected it was a gag.

“Miss Harriet Rutter at your service.” The woman extended a hand. “You can call me Hattie. Pleased to meet ya.”

Mary’s own hand quivered as she returned the gesture. Trousers. Casual greetings. Oh the humanity. Ruby stood to rescue them both.

“Hello there, Hattie,” she said. “My name is Ruby. Ruby Packard. Welcome to Cliff House.”

“Charmed, Miss Packard.”

“That’s, um, Mrs. Packard,” Ruby said, then cringed.

What did she care, Miss or Missus? This Hattie Rutter would figure it out soon enough. Anyway Ruby still felt like a Miss. She felt like a Young.

“All righty then,” Hattie said with a wink, already in on the joke. She took a seat on the green metal glider. “Missus.”

“So, Miss Rutter?” Mary began.

“Please. Hattie.”

“Are your parents Charles and Edwina Rutter? They’ve a place on Hulbert?”

“That’s them.” Hattie pushed off from a table with one foot, sending her chair ricocheting front to back. “Well, it’s my father. Edwina’s my stepmum. Nice lady but a bit of a snore.”

As her glider continued to rock, Hattie glanced around sharply, deliberately, like a gopher poking its head from a hole. Then she closed her eyes and smiled. Her mouth somehow, impossibly, stretched wider. Hattie Rutter should’ve been in films. She’d light up the whole screen.

“What a perfect afternoon.” She popped her eyes back open. “I haven’t been to Nantucket in years. And Sconset even longer. It’s beautiful here. So peaceful. I’ve missed it and only just realized.”

“Yes, it’s grand,” Mary said, befuddled. She smoothed the front of her dress, pressing the area breasts would go if she had any to speak of. “So, uh, where do you summer?”

What Mary did not say:You’re a Hulbert Avenue sort, so why not there?It was a posh address, smack in Nantucket Town, the pinnacle of swanky summer fun. Though but seven miles separated the two, Hattie’s type deemed Sconset certifiable backcountry, nothing but fishermen and artist colonies.

“The majority of my schooling has been in Europe,” Hattie explained. “Paris mostly, so usually I summer on the Continent. But Europe, you know, not so fashionable these days.”

She gave a small hummingbird of a snort.

“When I do visit the U.S.,” she went on, “it’s usually the Cape. Mother has a house in Osterville with her new husband. Shabby place but with beaches for miles. Nothing like this outfit, though. You know how divorces are. They spread the green too thin.”

“Er, um,” Mary stuttered. “I hear Osterville is grand. And thank you for the compliment on my home.”

Ruby’s head snapped in her sister-in-law’s direction. Since when was Mary the Cliff House emissary? Its mistress? “Her” home? Didn’t that just beat it all. The last Ruby checked, both of her parents were still around.

“This place is a beauty,” Hattie said. “Massive! It keeps going and going!”

“Yes, well, Mother Young has a grand imagination,” Mary said. “And my father-in-law gives her whatever she pleases.”

“The right kind of marriage, if you can get it.”

“I suppose. Either way, they built the place from scratch, entirely at her direction. It’s a nit overdone, but we enjoy it quite nicely.”

Ruby rolled her eyes. Mary had spent all of three summers at Cliff House and was acting like she’d been there all along. Of course, she did have greater claim to it than Ruby, what with being married to Philip Junior and possessing the uterus that would harvest the heir to the family fortune. Whatever “fortune” might remain, that is, after the transition to gas masks.

“The house is snazzy as all get-out,” Hattie said. “But what gets to me are these cliffs. So beautiful. Dramatic. At Points North we have a boring flat beach.”

“I can see how that would be dull,” Mary said.

“Tell me, though. How’s the shopping around here? In Sconset or Nantucket Town? Since coming back from France I’m having a fiend of a time finding decent togs.”

“You’re worried about your clothing?” Mary said, her eyebrows spiked.