Page 36

Three days after Charlie left, Virgie finished typing “Flying Lessons” while Aggie and Betsy were at sailing, reading it over to check for errors.

It needed a second set of eyes, and while she planned to ask India Knight to read it—she and the woman had talked on the phone yesterday about forming a women’s political group on the island—Virgie wanted her eldest daughter to read it first. If the words resonated with Louisa, then the article would resonate with other young women.

Virgie couldn’t help but fantasize that her daughter would admire her for not being afraid to educate young women on the realities of their burgeoning selves.

Because it wasn’t enough to help women like Pamela Sunday by giving her a job; Virgie wanted to help as many women as possible see that it wasn’t just their lives that mattered, but the ways in which they lived them.

Each decision—to attend college or not, to quit a job or not, to persevere in a man’s field or not, to have a child or not—added up to a belief system.

It seemed too many women put the car in drive and accepted whatever they drove past. Herself included.

This morning, with puddles still lining the streets from last night’s rain, Virgie decided she would surprise her eldest daughter at the bookshop with her article—and mint-flavored iced tea.

A small treat she could enjoy on her twenty-minute break.

Stirring in a lemon slice and sealing the mason jar with a wax cover and elastic, Virgie glanced in the mirror on her way out.

Her hair was pulled back in a low ponytail too casual for Washington, her black clamdiggers and Keds giving her a youthful edge.

The lace dress she wore the night they hosted the Knights had been put in a bag with other dresses she thought Pamela Sunday might like for church or a future job.

One never knew what direction life would take you.

Stepping outside to the sun, Virgie inhaled the salt air.

A flashbulb popped in her face. She blinked twice, holding her hand up for a moment while trying to figure out who was taking her picture.

As her eyes adjusted, she noted a young man facing her.

He swam in a suit much too big for his narrow shoulders, and he wore glasses, round spectacles with wire rims.

“Mrs. Whiting, I’m Jay Clancy, a reporter with the New York Sun .” He tucked the camera into a case, opening a crossbody satchel and pulling out a pen and notebook.

There was so much she could get angry about: that he’d surprised her at her front door, that she’d nearly spilled Louisa’s iced tea.

It was how his lip curled up as he said his title that got her most; he was arrogant.

“Yes, sir. How are you?” She held out her hand to shake his, and he glanced at it, his eye going back to his notepad.

“I want to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Whiting.”

She continued to hold out her hand, her tone turning stern at his inexperience.

“Okay, young man, but you can shake my hand first.” He raised his clammy fingers to hers, and she smiled.

“You should have contacted my husband’s press office if you wanted to talk.

This is our private home, and I don’t do interviews on the street. ”

“Your husband’s office has been stonewalling us, so my editor sent me here.”

“Well, you can tell your editor that you do not have permission to use the photograph you just took, and if you would like to schedule an interview with me, call my husband’s office.

At some point, his press secretary will call you back.

” She repositioned her purse on her shoulder. “Good luck, Jay Clancy.”

At the corner of Field and Main, he caught up to her. “Are you aware that your husband has gone to Nantucket three times in the last few months?”

She stopped, turning her clipped face at him. “Why would that matter? He has dinners, fundraising events. He’s always off somewhere doing the work of the nation, so why are you so interested?”

The man had hazel eyes with gold flecks, and he was having trouble looking at her. “We think he might be going there for something other than political business.”

The New York Sun . That paper was one of Wiley’s papers. Did he know that one of his cub reporters was standing here and harassing her? She retained her composure. No, her husband hadn’t told her he was going to Nantucket—he hadn’t even been to the Vineyard.

Virgie clicked open her purse and popped a breath mint.

“Are you aware that Wiley Prescott is one of my closest friends?” She let the news settle into the reporter’s sinking stature.

“I am going to deliver this iced tea to my daughter, then I will return home and I will call Wiley. I’m going to ask him why he has a reporter following me down the road with so little respect for my privacy. ”

The reporter quickly nodded, apologizing, saliva pooling in the corners of his mouth. “I had no idea you were a friend of Wiley’s. My editor doesn’t know I’m here. I came on a hunch, and now…”

Virgie grimaced. “I will repeat myself once more. If you want an interview, you will need to call my husband’s press secretary.”

Somehow, she carried herself with composure all the way to the bookshop. The nerve , she thought. Is this what society had come to? No sense of privacy, an ambush at her home, all because he had a hunch. Her mind reeled. What on earth could that possibly mean, anyway?

The bookshop had always been one of the sweetest stores in the tiny village.

Set in a house with a front porch, Island Books carried a variety of titles, from literature to nonfiction biographies.

It was owned by a longtime family on the island, who passed it down like a treasured jewel.

These days the middle-aged son, Gordon Pendleton, was running it with his wife, Sophia.

Charlie and the husband were friends, which was how Louisa had gotten the job stocking shelves and working the cash register.

“Hello, Virgie.” Sophia beamed, reaching over the counter to give her a hug. She glanced at the mason jar. “Is that for me?”

“There’s enough to split.” Virgie pretended it was her intention all along.

They made a few minutes of small talk about the shop and Louisa’s role, how she’d hung colorful posters in the children’s room and read for kids at their Tuesday story hour.

Virgie picked up the latest Flannery O’Connor off the shelf. “Is she here?”

Sophia waved to an incoming customer. “She left early today. Didn’t she tell you?”

A child will break your heart again and again , Virgie thought, and it’s still within a mother’s ability to think the best . “She didn’t.”

“I believe she was meeting Aggie, maybe in Oak Bluffs?”

Virgie returned the novel back on the bookshelf. “Agatha is at sailing.” She turned to go, realizing her girls were up to something.

She marched down the dock of the yacht club.

The Opti boats drew lines in the sea, and she strained to see her daughter’s head.

Her eye found Betsy as she pulled her boat alongside James—the two of them side by side with orange life vests around their necks and laughing about something she couldn’t hear from here.

Waving her arms, Virgie hollered: “Betsy! Betsy!”

Betsy turned around, elated to see her mother on the dock. “What are you doing here?”

“Have you seen Agatha? I need to talk to her?”

“What?” Betsy hollered back. She and James drew back with hysterical laughter every time she heaved her voice over the sail.

“Aggie. Where is Agatha?”

Betsy shrugged. “Home? She said she wasn’t feeling well.”

Virgie pursed her lips, walking home at a clip, hoping that nosy reporter didn’t have the gall to approach her again.

Inside the house, she yelled for Louisa, then Aggie.

The cuckoo clock in the kitchen ticked. Not here.

In the garage, two bikes were missing. Nothing had seemed amiss these last few days, everyone falling back into a steady rhythm since Charlie left.

She was thinking the worst because of the flashbulb, the reporter, the mention of her husband on Nantucket.

She would have to bring it up to him. Her stomach flip-flopped.

Oak Bluffs. Maybe the girls had ridden to Aggie’s friend’s house?

They could be meeting up with boys. They wouldn’t take the ferry to the mainland, would they?

She imagined reporting to Charlie that she’d lost two of her children, heat flushing up her neck.

Snatching her keys, Virgie rushed into the station wagon.

The streets of Oak Bluffs traveled in unpredictable patterns, like someone had thrown a pile of sticks down and made roads of them.

The bikes weren’t outside Aggie’s friend Junie’s house with its freshly painted white porch.

She drove up busy Circuit Avenue, creeping along so she could check the thin alleyways. Nothing.

I’m going to kill these girls , she thought, turning into a neighborhood of gingerbread cottages.

There was a playground with a seesaw and swings.

That’s when she saw the bikes, parked against the chain-link fence lining the baseball dugout.

She trained a watchful eye. A few women with kids at the playground.

A trash truck emptying a garbage can. A dozen people on a makeshift basketball court.

She watched the players a moment, and when a hulking boy jumped up to score, Virgie saw her.

Lanky and tall and crouched in a defender stance, there was Aggie, her daughter’s navy shorts riding up her slender thighs, sweat stains rounding in her armpits.

She dribbled the ball, then spun away from a guard and passed to another boy.

Her tennis shoes screeched as she yelled, “Here, Junie. I’m open. ”