Winter Solstice (Winter #4)(73)

She sends a text that says: My father has a day or two left. I have to go to Nantucket tonight. I love you.

And then she sends a second text that says: I’m so sorry.


Ava goes to school to teach. Her mother and Drake are leaving the city at seven o’clock, but Ava doesn’t want to wait that long. She books a five o’clock flight to Boston and squeezes herself onto the last flight from Boston to Nantucket on Cape Air.

Austria will always be there, she thinks. She feels bad about abandoning Potter at Christmastime, but he is a good person; he will think she’s making the right decision. Potter’s parents were killed in a car accident; he never got to say good-bye.


She tries not to think about Potter or Austria or Kelley or a world without Kelley; she doesn’t respond to any of the texts between Patrick, Kevin, and Bart discussing travel plans. She focuses only on logistics: Uber to JFK, the hour-long flight from JFK to Boston, the walk through Terminal C to gate 27, home of Cape Air. Ava has an hour before her flight to Nantucket. She can finally relax.

Wine, she thinks.

She sees an empty chair at the bar right next to gate 27.

“Is anyone sitting here?” she asks the guy on the neighboring stool.

He turns. They lock eyes.

Not happening, she thinks.

“Ava,” he says, and he gives her that familiar wicked grin.

It’s Nathaniel.

“What?” she says. “Are you…?”

“I’m going back to Nantucket for Christmas,” he says. “My parents are taking everyone skiing in Tahoe, but I fell off a ladder this fall and tweaked my back, so I can’t ski. Plus, I can only take four or five days away, so I thought I’d just go back home. Hang at the brewery the whole time, probably. See some friends. In fact, you know who I’m supposed to see tomorrow night is your old friend Scott Skyler.”

“Scott?” Ava says.

“I said I’d help him serve the holiday dinner at Our Island Home, then we’re going out drinking.” Nathaniel arches his eyebrows. “You could come!”

No, thanks, Ava thinks.

“We could surprise Scott. I show up, bring you along. He’ll flip. You know that other chick, the English teacher? She really put him through the wringer. She’s sixteen kinds of crazy.”

“Roxanne,” Ava says.

“I’m meeting him at five tomorrow,” Nathaniel says. “Early bird special and all that. I can pick you up.”

Ava signals the bartender and orders a glass of wine. “I’d love to,” she says. This isn’t remotely true. The last thing she wants to do is climb aboard the same old merry-go-round with Nathaniel and Scott. Ava can’t believe they’re friends now, friends who make plans together! “But I can’t. My father is very, very sick.” Her wine arrives in the nick of time, because Ava feels tears building and the last thing she wants to do is cry in front of Nathaniel, thereby giving him reason to comfort her. She clears her throat. “I’m going home to say good-bye.”

“Good-bye?” Nathaniel says. “Is he that sick?”

Ava nods. “Brain cancer. He’s got… a day or two left, I guess.”

“Oh no, Ava. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Please,” she says. “Let’s change the subject.”

“Okay,” Nathaniel says. “Let’s see… you live in New York now. How do you like it? Are you still dating the ridiculously handsome guy I met last Christmas?”

“Potter,” Ava says. “Yes.” She holds up a finger and rummages through her bag for her phone. There is one missed call from Potter but no voice mail and no text.

At that instant the seven-fifteen flight to Nantucket is called.

“There’s our chariot,” Nathaniel says. He plunks some money down on the bar. “I’ve got your wine.”

“No,” she says.

“Ava,” he says. He touches her cheek. “It’s me.”


Ava spends forty-five minutes in the dark cabin of the Cessna staring at the back of Nathaniel’s head. She thinks about the years they were together, how crazy in love she was. Nathaniel was always just out of her reach in those days. Three years ago at Christmas he went back to Connecticut and got entangled with his high school girlfriend. He broke Ava’s heart. Then, when Ava started dating Scott, Nathaniel came back with a vengeance. He proposed, even.

But it had never been right with Nathaniel. It had never been real.

And Scott… Ava’s relationship with Scott was more viable. She thought they might end up together—but then he flaked out. Scott Skyler was the biggest disappointment of Ava’s life, a far bigger disappointment than Nathaniel because Nathaniel had been so unreliable to begin with.

Ava can’t believe the two of them are now friends. She hopes they’ll be very happy together.

She loves Potter. She misses Potter.


When they land at Nantucket Airport, Nathaniel says, “Do you want to share a taxi?”

“Kevin is picking me up,” Ava says.

Nathaniel says, “I’m sorry about your dad, Ava. Call me if you need me.”

Ava smiles. If there’s one thing she knows for sure, it’s that she won’t need Nathaniel Oscar. “I will,” she says.