An Act of Love (39 page)

In January
, when he returned from Argentina, Jorge had called Emily, and then he called her every night, and then they began to meet on Saturdays for lunch at the
Basingstoke Café. She had liked that, sitting across the booth from him, drinking coffee; she’d felt grown-up. And day was a good time for her, full of light, even if it was only the thin January light. She felt less threatened.

One day when the snow was falling in wet smacks against the café window, Emily had confided in Jorge. Looking at the plastic red geraniums, she had told him about Bruce raping her. Asked him to keep it a secret. He promised he would and as the days and weeks passed, she knew he’d kept his promise, for Zodiac or Cordelia would have called her in a fit if they’d heard any kind of rumor.

“That’s terrible,” Jorge had said when she told him. “I’m very sorry.”

“I wanted you to know,” Emily had said. “So you’ll understand if I act weird.”

“You don’t act weird.”

“Well, I did. When I freaked out at you in the woods.”

“That wasn’t so bad.”

“Sometimes I still get scared. Mostly of guys. It comes up inside me without my control, just all at once, for no reason, like a cough or something.”

“I can understand that.”

“I’m taking aikido. To learn to be brave.”

“I think you’re already brave.”

“You probably think …” She hadn’t known how to say it. All the things she felt, still felt, although the doctors said she shouldn’t, her mother said she shouldn’t, still she felt them: soiled, sullied, damaged, not just by the rape but also by the fact that she had been in a mental institution. She wanted him to know he didn’t have to hang around with her now that he knew. She was strong. She wouldn’t fall apart. “You probably think …”

“I think I like you,” Jorge had said. “A lot.” He was leaning on the table between them, his arms crossed behind his plate.

“Doesn’t it make a difference that …?”

“It only makes me sorry that it happened. It only makes me wish that I could help.”

He’d asked her to go to the movies with him the next Saturday night. He’d call a cab, he said, since Hedden students weren’t allowed to keep cars at school. That appealed to her. It seemed adult, plus she wouldn’t be alone with him in the dark, not with a cab driver present.

That first evening when he arrived at their apartment, he presented himself with
an old-fashioned, almost geeky courtliness that, Emily could tell, amused her mother as much as it pleased Emily. He brought a box of Godiva chocolates for “Mrs. McFarland,” and a sheaf of pink roses for Emily, who felt her cheeks flush with pleasure in spite of herself.

The movie had been
Phenomenon
, starring John Travolta, who was a guy with sudden special mental gifts and aberrations, and halfway through the movie, Jorge leaned over to whisper to her, “I didn’t know this was what the movie was about. Do you want to leave?”

“No,” she’d whispered back. “It’s fine. I like it.” And to her own surprise, she’d patted his hand, reassuringly, and somehow he took her hand in his and held it for the rest of the movie.

And she had liked that. A lot. She had not been at all afraid.

Now, at the end of February, they had gone to the movies three times, and for the past two Sundays she and Jorge had gone ice skating at the local pond, and then he had come over to the apartment for a pizza dinner with her and her mom. They had watched television together. Her mom had gone into her bedroom to read, coming out now and then for a cup of coffee, not really coming out to check on them, like Emily knew other moms would constantly, checking on two people sitting side by side on the sofa.

Jorge did not try to kiss her. Did not try to get his arm around her. He only held her hand. That was enough, that was like honey in her blood, when he held her hand.

“Mom,” she’d said one night, “I need to talk to you.” It was night and Linda had come in to kiss Emily good night. She sat on the side of Emily’s bed and waited. “Mom. Jorge says he likes me.”

Linda had smiled. “Well, of course he does. How can he not? Look at you. You’re perfectly adorable!”

“Mom. Get serious.”

“I am serious. You
are
adorable. You’re smart, and witty, and you listen to people when they talk, and you are turning into a beautiful young woman, especially now that your hair is growing out.”

“But I feel so … confused.”

“Is Jorge rushing you?”

“No. Not at all.”

“So you don’t feel that he’s pressuring you.”

“No. No, it’s not him, it’s me.” She felt like she was made of a pack of cards, a pile of leaves, a lump of snowflakes, and sometimes any old wind would come up and blow her thoughts and feelings into a blizzard.

“That’s understandable. After all you’ve been through. Good Lord, a new school, new friends, not to mention your old friends at Hedden, and at the hospital, and in Ebradour. Cut yourself some slack, Em. Give yourself time.”

“But do you think he means it?” Emily had asked.

“That he likes you?”

“
Really
likes me.”

Linda had reached over and softly smoothed Emily’s hair. “Jorge seems … reliable. Steady. He certainly
acts
as if he likes you. He looks at you so fondly. He
treats you well. I think you can trust him. I think you should trust him
.”

She was trying. She was trying to trust him, and their new and growing intimacy was both delicious and frightening, like skating on a pond when she wasn’t quite sure the ice would hold.

This Sunday afternoon they skated together at the pond across from the Basingstoke high school. It was exhilarating, the movement, the brisk air, the bright scarves and mufflers, the comedy of novice skaters, the chatter and giggles of children. Jorge held her hand sometimes when they skated. He was not particularly confident on his skates and Emily liked it that he didn’t mind trying, learning, in front of her.

As the lavender sky turned dark, they sat together on the bench, undoing their laces and tugging on their boots, their breath billowing into the air around them like steam.

“Ready to go?” Jorge asked.

“Yup.”

But they stayed there, looking at each other.

“Could I kiss you?” Jorge asked.

The night air was soft and sparkling with cold. Nearby in the distance children shrieked and giggled as they made their way from the pond up the hill to the street.

Emily nodded. Slowly Jorge stretched his hand toward her, softly he put the palms of his hands against her cheeks. His skin was warm. Instinctively Emily turned her head just slightly so that her lips touched his hand and she could inhale the scent of his skin. What caused this sudden elixir of happiness to flow through her veins? As he bent
to her, his dark eyes were so serious it nearly stopped her heart.

He tilted her head just slightly, and bent to put his mouth on hers. It was the softest of kisses. It was an exhalation. He pulled away.

“So.”

She had never been so happy in her life. “So.”

“That was okay? That didn’t scare you?”

“No. I liked it.” She put her hands to his face. “Do it again.”

This time she kissed him back.

For Mimsi Harbach

My Calliope

With love

Acknowledgments

Many people helped me with this book, and I would like to thank them:

Katie de Hertogh at Nantucket Cottage Hospital; Tim Thompson, who directed me to A Safe Place; Sheila Coffin, for help with police procedure; attorney Kevin Dale; the members of the Wednesday Night Study Group, especially Marilyn Whitney; psychologist, family counselor, and brother-in-law
par excellence
Chuck Foshee. I would also like to express my gratitude to my agent, Emma Sweeney, and my editor, Jennifer Weis, who kept me turning the kaleidoscope until the pattern came clear.

And Charley,

Thanks for making me happy,

All day, all night.

B
Y
N
ANCY
T
HAYER

Nantucket Sisters

A Nantucket Christmas

Island Girls

Summer Breeze

Heat Wave

Beachcombers

Summer House

Moon Shell Beach

The Hot Flash Club Chills Out

Hot Flash Holidays

The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again

The Hot Flash Club

Custody

Between Husbands and Friends

An Act of Love

Family Secrets

Everlasting

My Dearest Friend

Spirit Lost

Morning

Nell

Bodies and Souls

Three Women at the Water’s Edge

Stepping

Nancy Thayer
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
Island Girls
,
Summer Breeze
,
Heat Wave
,
Beachcombers
,
Summer House
,
Moon Shell Beach
, and
The Hot Flash Club
. She lives in Nantucket.

nancythayer.com/
Facebook.com/NancyThayerAuthor

Read on for an excerpt from Nancy Thayer’s

Nantucket Sisters

Ballantine Books

It’s like a morning in Heaven. From a blue sky, the sun, fat and buttery as one a child would draw in school, shines down on a sapphire ocean. Eleven-year-old Emily Porter stands at the edge of a cliff high above the beach, her blond hair rippled by a light breeze.

The edge of the cliff is an abrupt, jagged border, into which a small landing is built, with railings you can lean against, looking out at the sea. Before her, weathered wooden steps cut back and forth down the steep bluff to the beach.

Behind her lies the grassy lawn and their large gray summer house, so different from their apartment on East 86th in New York City.

Last night, as the Porters flew away from Manhattan, Emily looked down on the familiar fantastic panorama of sparkling lights, urging the plane onward with her excitement, with her longing to see the darkness and then, in the distance, the flash and flare of the lighthouse beacons.

Nantucket begins today.

Today, while her father plays golf and her beautiful mother, Cara, organizes the house, Emily is free to do as she pleases. And what she’s waited for all winter is to run down the street into the small village of ’Sconset and along the narrow path to the cottages in Codfish Park, where she’ll knock on Maggie’s door.

First, she waves back at the ocean. Next, she turns and runs, half skipping, waving her arms, singing. She exults in the soft grass under her feet instead of hard sidewalk, salt air in her lungs instead of soot, the laughter of gulls instead of the blare of car horns, and the sweet perfume of new dawn roses.

She flies along past the old town water pump, past the Sconset Market, past the
post office, past Claudette’s Box Lunches. Down the steep cobblestoned hill to Codfish Park. Here, the houses used to be shacks where fishermen spread their nets to dry, so the roofs are low and the walls are ramshackle. Maggie’s house is a crooked, funny little place, but roses curl over the roof, morning glories climb up a trellis, and pansy faces smile from window boxes.

Before she can knock, the door flies open.

“Emily!” Maggie’s hair’s been cut into an elf’s cap and she’s taller than Emily now, and she has more freckles over her nose and cheeks.

Behind Maggie stands Maggie’s mother, Frances, wearing a red sundress with an apron over it. Emily’s never seen anyone but caterers and cooks wear an apron. It has lots of pockets. It makes Maggie’s mother look like someone from a book.