Winter Solstice (Winter #4)(61)

Proposition. Met with him three times.

“Three times?” Eddie says. Grace is telling him the exact number of times she has been with Benton. Three! Three is a lot! Actually, it’s less than Eddie feared, but he won’t tell her that.

“Try the foie gras,” Grace says. “I’m happy to share.”

How can she be thinking about eating at a time like this? Eddie wonders. Granted, it’s Thanksgiving, but Grace is about to detonate the bomb that will destroy their marriage, their family, their lives.

I am not happy to share! Eddie thinks.

“Eddie?” Grace says. She’s looking at him across the candlelit table. The tables at American Seasons are all hand-painted with different scenes and schemes, and Eddie and Grace are seated at the chessboard table. This seems appropriate. He’s the king and Grace is the queen, but he has been forced into checkmate by their former gardener.

“What?” Eddie says.

“Benton has offered me a job. He wants me to come work for him, working in garden design and implementation. His partner left and Benton has more work than he can handle on his own. We always had the same aesthetic, the same sensibility—that was the attraction, I think, more than anything else. And he’s going to pay me, Eddie…”

Eddie lifts his eyes from the table.

“… twenty-five hundred a week to start. Plus bonuses, when projects reach completion. I told him I’d talk to you before I gave him an answer. But I want to say yes. The girls are growing up and I’m bored. Also, we could use the money.”

Twenty-five hundred a week, so ten thousand a month. With bonuses. A steady income.

But Eddie can’t risk having Grace work for her former beloved. Can he?

“What about… your feelings?” Eddie says. “Your feelings for Benton? If I say yes, you can work for him, and the next thing I know, you’re sleeping with him? How can I trust you, Grace?”

“I know that part will be difficult,” Grace says. “But let me start by saying that my romantic feelings for Benton are dead and gone. I’m fond of him as a friend. And he’s back together with McGuvvy. She’s still in Detroit now, but she’s moving to Nantucket after the holidays and they’re going to live together, and their house is also the office.” She smiles. “You don’t have anything to worry about, although I know my word doesn’t stand for much.”

Eddie takes a deep breath, then a deep drink of his twenty-six-dollar champagne. He feels like it’s Christmas instead of Thanksgiving. Grace is taking a job that will bring in real money! She’ll be doing something she enjoys! Benton is back together with McGuvvy!

“Your word is all I need,” Eddie says. After all, Grace has placed trust in Eddie as well; she believes he is no longer lying to her or breaking the law—and he’s not. He never will again.

Eddie floods with relief, with joy. He picks up his fork and tastes one of the caviared scallops.

“Delicious,” he says, and he flags their server to order another one for himself.





PART THREE


DECEMBER





BART


The first weekend of December on Nantucket is Christmas Stroll. It has been this way Bart’s entire life, but he never cared, barely noticed, and didn’t think to celebrate.

Until this year.

Because this year he’s in love.

He’s in love!


On the Friday of Stroll, Mitzi wants Bart out of the house because there are interested buyers coming to look at the inn. Bart heads down to Main Street, which is as busy and bustling as it is on any summer day—only now the shop windows are all decked out with snowflakes and glass ornaments, wreaths, ribbons, gingerbread houses, candy canes, and reindeer. Main Street is lined with Christmas trees, each one decorated by a class at Nantucket Elementary School. That was probably the last time Bart was excited about Stroll—when his fifth-grade class came downtown during the school day to hang their ornaments on their tree and Ms. Paul took them to Nantucket Pharmacy for hot chocolate.

When Bart steps into Bayberry Properties and sees Allegra’s face, Christmas has a whole new meaning.

She says, “I can take my lunch break now. Want to stroll?”

They hold hands and walk up the street, poking into the bookstore first, then into Murray’s Toggery, and then Bart leads Allegra over to the pharmacy for a nostalgic cup of hot chocolate. She takes a sip and gets a speck of whipped cream on her nose.

“I’m in love with you,” Bart says.

“What?” Allegra says. “You are?”

“I am,” Bart says. He doesn’t care if it’s too soon, he doesn’t care if they’re too young, he doesn’t care that they both still live with their parents at home. He doesn’t even care if Allegra is in love with him in return (okay, maybe he does care, but judging from the glow of her face and the light in her eyes every time she looks at him, he isn’t worried; she’s in love with him, too), because he gets it now. He gets it completely. The world makes sense. It has meaning, and that meaning is love, and love, for him, is Allegra Pancik.


On Saturday, Allegra has agreed to help her mother decorate for Christmas up at Academy Hill. There’s a tree in the lobby that needs trimming, and there is garland to be hung, as well as wreaths for the front door and all of the front windows. The residents of Academy Hill usually come down from their apartments to watch, and Mr. Lazear, who is “seriously ninety years old,” according to Allegra, and who used to be the music teacher back when Academy Hill was a school in the 1950s, leads everyone in carols.