A Nantucket Wedding(99)

Even later, the band filled the tent and the lawn and the air with music. They played a mix of their own gypsy jazz and the traditional favorites, starting with “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys. Alison slipped her shoes on for the first dance with David. Soon other couples joined. The party spilled out on to the grass, almost everyone dancing. The moon was a crescent and the night was brilliant. At midnight, they were still dancing. David danced with his daughter and new stepdaughters and his granddaughters. Alison danced with Ethan and then with Patrick, who surprised her by morphing into a fabulous John Travolta when the band played “Night Fever.” Jane danced with Noah and accidentally trod hard on his foot. Felicity told Scott he was so sweet for letting the children draw flowers and balloons on his cast; weren’t children wonderful! Heather and Cecil sat while surreptitiously slipping Henry and Charlie nibbles of wedding cake. Ethan danced with Canny, Alice, and Daphne all at the same time. Esmeralda danced with Hunter, who came away with stars in his eyes. Luke performed his own hyperactive version of break dancing. Ethan and Esmeralda quietly vanished. Scott and Noah and Patrick sat at a table, talking about real estate prices on the island. Jane and Felicity danced together like wild women under the starry sky, and on an impulse, they each took one of Poppy’s hands and pulled her up to dance with them.

    It was after one in the morning when everyone yawned and kissed goodbye and slowly, some carrying their shoes, left the party. Some drove home, some went up to their rooms in the hotel. The band packed up, the crowd left. Alison and David hugged their daughters and sons and grandchildren and friends. The newlyweds were staying in a special cottage on the hotel grounds, so they stood on the grass waving their loved ones off.

When everyone else had gone, Alison and David lingered for a while, catching their breath, whispering and yawning and blissfully tired but, like children on Christmas night, unable to surrender to their sleepiness and go to bed.

Behind them, the harbor glistened, the waves whispering of seasons of sunshine and sensuality, cool water, warm sun, the busy rush of days, the deep, sweet sleep of night.

In front of them, the future unfolded like a sparkling trail of moonlight on water.





   For Charley

   I want to hold your hand





acknowledgments


Here I sit, once again, in my aerie on Nantucket, all alone (Charley’s downstairs), while the wind howls and the rain falls and for the first time in my thirty-three years here, we have dolphins swimming in our harbor.

I spend so much time alone, writing. When I’m not writing, I’m thinking about fictional people. So I’m enormously grateful to the real people who keep me sane and happy.

Especially in the winter, Nantucket is a small town, and really, it is out of a storybook. Hugs and smooches to Tricia Patterson, Gussie Manville, Sofiya Popova, Alexandra LePaglia, Katie Hemingway, Joann Skokan, Ive Nakova, Curlette Anglin (aka The Orchid Whisperer), Jan Dougherty, Mary and John West, and Deborah and Mark Beale. I’m very grateful to the charming and capable Christina Hall of Nantucket Island Resorts, who helped me envision the wedding in my book.

Special thanks to Jeff Lee, who bid an astonishing amount at the Safe Harbor for Animals auction so I would use the names Charlie and Henry in this book, and then brought his two gorgeous Labradors to meet me. They impressed me so much that they jumped right in as characters.

Nantucket is fortunate to have its own bookstores, and again and always, thanks to Wendy Hudson, Wendy Schmidt, Laura Wasserman, Christina Machiavelli (I really want to use her name in a book!), Dick Burns, and Suzanne Bennett. Many thanks to bookstores everywhere, and of course, to libraries, who make it possible for everyone to hold a book in their hands.

Sometimes I leave the island and go to the big city, and wow! The energy there is inspiring! I’m grateful to my incomparable editor Shauna Summers ,and my dynamite team at Ballantine: Gina Centrello, Kara Welsh, Christine Mykityshyn, Maggie Oberrender, Lexi Batsides, Hanna Gibeau, , and Stephanie Reddaway, and to Madeline Hopkins. I know I’m blessed to work with Kim Hovey. Enormous thanks to Meg Ruley, Michael Conroy, and Christina Hogrebe at the Jane Rotrosen Agency.

    I send my love and thanks to off-islanders Jill Hunter Burrill, Martha Foshee, Toni Massie, Sara Manela, Julie Hensler, Lisa Winika, Tommy Clair, and Sam Wilde and her Fantastic Four.

Finally, but really firstly, because these are friends I communicate with every day, thank you—heart heart heart flowers smiley face—to my Facebook friends. Thank you for being my readers.