A Nantucket Wedding(13)

She lifted her eyes to meet his and they remained holding hands. It was too dark to see much, but she felt something in his gaze that stopped her breathing.

    She pulled her hand away. She inhaled deeply as she resettled in her lounger.

After a moment, Ethan faced the ocean. He took a long drink of his beer. “Okay, friend,” he said. “Tell me about yourself.”

“I’m a lawyer,” Jane said. “My husband, Scott, is, too. We rent an apartment in Manhattan and we’re saving to buy. We usually take a couple of vacations a year, hiking. We like to hike.”

“Wow,” Ethan said softly. “That’s a lot of we’s.”

A spot of anger kicked her in the chest. “Okay, why don’t you tell me about yourself the way you think it should be done.”

“I didn’t mean to criticize,” Ethan told her. “That just sounded like you were filling out a questionnaire. I do know you’re a lawyer. Dad told me. So that might explain why you’re guarded.”

I’m not guarded! Jane thought. She tightened her lips to keep from saying the words out loud. That would be just too childish. “No, really,” she said, putting a little silk in her voice, “tell me about you.” And I’ll be able to tell if you’re lying, because I googled you, she thought.

Ethan gazed out at the ocean. “I’m fortunate. My family’s wealthy—I’m sure you know that. My life is disjointed, all over the place, literally. I have a farm in Vermont, and I’m there most of the time, but I’m divorced, with a daughter, Canny. She’s nine, she lives with me, she’s the center of my world. What else? I like adventure, but I’m also kind of a coward, not a good combination. I like surfing in Australia and hang gliding in Norway and ballooning out in Arizona. I own a red Lamborghini that can hit over two hundred miles an hour, not that I’ve ever gone that fast. I have a Harley, too.”

Jane laughed. “Ah, you’re the rebel in your family, the bad boy.”

“But I’m not bad!” Ethan protested. “All summer and fall, I host a group of inner-city kids from the Bronx. A new group every week. I teach them to ride horses, to dig potatoes, to make bread. Plus, I help the family business by growing flowers, new varieties, for experimental new products.”

“You make bread?”

    “I do. Have you ever made bread?”

Jane laughed. “I hardly have time to make my bed.” Bed? I had to say bed? “I mean,” she rushed on, “we have a wonderful bakery right on our block. We’re both so busy we don’t really have time to cook.”

“Making bread is an experience everyone should have once. It connects you with what’s real. Simple, basic ingredients, the kneading and shaping, the magic of how it rises, and then you take it warm from the oven, crusty outside, you break it open and it’s soft and yielding as the butter melts into it…”

Jane felt like she was having sex. “You make it sound so…physical.” She meant sexual, but no way would she say that.

“It is physical. Spiritual, too.”

“I’ll have to try it sometime.”

“How about tomorrow? I could give you a lesson in making bread.”

Tomorrow, Jane thought. The sun would be shining tomorrow. They’d be in a brightly lit kitchen full of practical objects instead of reclining in the moonlit sea salt air.

“Okay.” She tipped back her beer bottle and chugged the rest down. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She stood, still caught in some kind of spell. “I’ll rinse the bottle and put it in recycling,” she said, sounding like her normal self again. For a moment, she thought her body wouldn’t obey her and move away into the house. Then a strange shiver went through her, and she was okay.

“Good night,” she called as she stepped into the kitchen.

“Sweet dreams,” Ethan told her.





five


Felicity opened her eyes. It was eight-thirty. Sun flooded the room.

“Oh, no!” She sat up straight, her heart racing.

Then she remembered, in a wash of pleasure, that she was here on Nantucket, with her mother and sister, and without Noah and the children. Her heart twinged when she thought of her darling babies tumbling around on her bed while she tried to squeeze in a few more moments of simply lying down. But that particular sadness didn’t last long. She reminded herself that Noah was there to take care of the children, his children, and that would be a marvelous treat for the little ones, to have a full day of special time with Daddy.

She sank back into the pillows. She sort of wanted to go back to sleep. Sleep was so precious to her these days, it was like entering a very exclusive spa. But the sun was so bright, and a delicious silence filled the room. She allowed her eyes to drift from the blue and white chair by the closet to the mirror bordered with seashells over the dresser to the mermaids singing on the Claire Murray rug lying on the shining, polished pine floorboards. It was luxurious.

    Unlike the house she and Jane had grown up in. An elderly Victorian in the Boston suburb of Lexington, the house had been spacious and filled with so much stuff it would often be impossible to say what color the sofa was, not that they’d cared about that. Alison had cared about comfort, so new, fake, deeply plush Oriental rugs were piled on top of threadbare antique Oriental carpets and sagging but soft sofas and armchairs were everywhere, waiting for friends, children, or pets to sink into their animal hair–covered depths.