Page 82 of The Book of Summer

“You’re going to New York? How come you didn’t say anything?”

Hattie shrugged.

“Wasn’t sure I’d go,” she said. “But I was offered a position at a magazine in the city.Mademoiselle.You might have come across it.”

“Mademoiselle?!” Ruby said, exploding into a smile, letting genuine joy lift her onto her feet. “That’s amazing! The absolute tops!”

She smothered Hattie in a hug.

“Now, now, you don’t want to strangle me dead before I even start,” her friend said, laughing.

“Oh, Hattie, I’m so thrilled. And you’d better show me the city when I visit… once a month at least!”

“I’ll always have a spot for you.”

Just like that, any doubts Ruby had, any question as to Topper’s “we had a helluva summer” proclamation, these things rolled away like they’d never been there at all. What did she care about European liberties? Ruby wasn’t one to bother with others’ private matters. Live and let live, she believed. Ruby had a lifelong chum in Hattie, a sister of the mind. A good thing, what with all the brothers.

In the end, those waning summer of ’41 moments would be the last time Ruby and Hattie would speak face-to-face. By the next summer, Mr. Rutter would sell his island home and Hattie would morph into a New Yorker, exactly as promised.

Ruby followed her friend over the years as Hattie climbed the ranks, both professional and social. She’d see her, in a sense, years later and then not again for another twenty-five, when Ruby was in New York with her grown daughter. On that afternoon, she’d spot Hattie smack in the middle of the Rainbow Room. After catching her breath, Ruby would grab Cissy’s hand and haul her onto the street.

“Geez, Mom,” Cissy would gripe. “I’m getting awfully tired of being literally dragged all over this city. I don’t even like shopping. I’m hardly going to need miniskirts at business school.”

Ruby never explained herself. She never admitted that she’d seen an old friend, her best friend, from the last truly blissful summer at Cliff House. Cissy wouldn’t have understood Ruby’s reluctance to approach. Of course it wasn’t the person Ruby feared, but the conversation the two women might have about the decades that had passed.

They used to say that on Nantucket every house had its tragedy, most borne of the sea. It was a ghost story, a fable, a warning to Summer People that sunshine and parties and croquet on the lawn were not the natural ways of the land.

When Ruby was young, a local boy told her about the curse of the sea. Mother scoffed at the legend as she cuddled a sobbing, shaky daughter in her pink-walled room. Those stories were for the whalers, Sarah said, and the fishermen. Her daddy dealt in rubbers and plastics. There’d be no curse with them.

The sea carried with it many misfortunes, that much was true. But man himself caused a few tragedies as well. Yes, Topper, it was a helluva summer. The parties. The sunshine. The golf. All that, and the last days of peace.

33

Thursday Morning

It’s hazy, blustery. Bess again has sand in her teeth and on her skin, a sign she’s at Cliff House all right. In ranking cold and windswept places, San Francisco has nothing on Sconset.

And as far as being at Cliff House goes, this morning Bess is all alone. Cissy is off rabble-rousing and pot-stirring in anticipation of the town meeting tonight. Where she is and when she might be home Bess doesn’t bother to speculate. When she staggered out of bed at seven, Cissy had long since flown the coop.

After two hours boxing and bagging and tossing, Bess needed a break. Which is why she is now tromping down Baxter Road in the gloom as her face stings, her teeth chatter, and drizzle collects in a damp sheen on her windbreaker.

It’s about a mile to the post office, a brisk walk, a bit of exercise, a chance to clear her mind as well as the dust from her lungs. Bess will grab a muffin at the market, or some coffee, or a breakfast sandwich from Claudette’s. The weird thing about pregnancy, and residing on a cliff, is that constant sense of being simultaneously nauseated and outright famished. Half the time Bess can’t decide if she’s hungry or about to puke.

Despite the weather, Bess isn’t the only one walking Baxter Road—she never is—and between the admiring of homes and exchanging hellos with other pedestrians, her mind stays if not fixed on Evan, at least flirting with him greatly. Never has a person been so wound up by a kiss that didn’t happen on the lips.

She’s thinking so much about the guy, that when Bess sees him get out of a car in front of the market, it’s as though she’s conjured him from the mist.

“Ev—!” she starts to yell.

A woman exits the driver’s side. Bess lets out an involuntary gasp and then trips over a curb. Three quick strides later, she finds herself squatting behind a rack crammed with bikes. Bess Codman, the world’s least stealthy spy. Within seconds even little kids are clucking about her behavior.

No matter. Evan and his companion haven’t noticed, and so Bess retains her stakeout.

This woman, she’s in a pair of skinny jeans, a red baseball cap, and a navy and gray Nantucket High School sweatshirt. A Whalers hoodie isn’t exactly early-in-a-relationship attire, Bess notes with irritation. She looks to be about Bess’s age, or older, and is attractive though not alarmingly so.

At first the woman’s reasonable appearance is a relief. This is not the sexy Costa Rican. On the other hand—what the hell? Bess can compete with that—absent the pregnancy and Evan’s stance on “repeating mistakes,” of course. Why can’t he be with some twenty-two-year-old scientist-model hybrid? Out of Bess’s league would be much easier to take. There is exactly no justice in this world, she decides.

Not that Bess has any romantic interest in Evan Mayhew. It’s all just “in theory.” Another chapter for her fake Nantucket novel, her extremely fictional fiction.