“I understand.” Lexi confessed, “I was married before. I was young, naïve, and reckless. It ended disastrously. I want to take my time with Tris before getting married again. He’s divorced, too, so we’re in no hurry.”
“It sounds like right now you have it all,” Arden said.
Lexi smiled. “You know, maybe I do.”
For Meg, seeking refuge in books had started in boarding school, after she understood that not only had her father abandoned her for Justine and Jenny, but her mother had come to look at her with a kind of gentle regret, as if Meg were a tattoo she’d foolishly collected long ago.
Meg had found solace in the results of her intellect and hard work. She won praise from her teachers, and she became part of a gang of friends equally industrious and academic. Early on, she had decided that she wanted to be a teacher.
It was second nature for Meg to immerse herself in her work. Here on the island, she established a working routine and stuck to it, and gradually it encompassed her like a comfortable old quilt.
She rose every morning at six, crept out of the house in shorts and a tee shirt, and went for a half hour’s run while the air was still sweet and cool. Back home, she prepared a cup of coffee, a piece of toast, and some fruit and took them up to her haven at
the back of the house, where she opened her laptop, spread out her notes, and began to work.
The more she wrote, the more she became engrossed in her subject and even infatuated with it. May and Louisa May were sisters, talented, affectionate, competitive. The words flowed from her mind as she tapped away on her laptop, and real time ceased to exist as she lost herself in the past.
By three in the afternoon, she was flat with exhaustion. It was an effort to raise her body off her chair, to slip out of her shorts and tee, wet with perspiration from the heat and humidity of the little back room. She’d shower, put on one of her fabulous new sundresses, clip back her hair, and go out into the day, which filled her with a sense of sympathetic kinship, for much of Nantucket remained as it had in the nineteenth century when the Alcotts lived. Meg strolled the cobblestone streets and brick sidewalks, toured the historic houses, or sat in the library garden reading.
She couldn’t resist being in touch with Liam. He had become so much a part of her life and her work. His voice brought her back to her real world, full of eager students, self-absorbed professors, worried administrators, and books—books online, on e-readers, on the shelves of libraries. But Meg made it clear when they talked that she couldn’t deal with what had happened between them, that she didn’t want to discuss anything as personal as a relationship, and he honored her request, as she’d known he would. So nearly every day she phoned Liam, or he phoned her. They e-mailed constantly, exchanging news about their work. Meg did not allow herself to think of him as anyone other than a colleague.
In the evenings, she, Arden, and Jenny took turns cooking dinner. Somehow this time of day had acquired a gentle feel of camaraderie. The sisters fell into the habit of enjoying a glass of
wine out in the garden, or if the weather was rainy, in the living room, a more formal room than the den. They spoke about their work, but not in vague monosyllables. They each tried to explain to the others what it was they were doing, why they were excited about it, what the challenges were, what had been accomplished that day.
One stormy night, after a gloomy, chilly day, Jenny made a fire, Arden concocted hot chocolate from scratch, and they curled up in the living room to listen to Meg read the page she had written that day.
Meg read, “Love and work. For most of us, our lives are defined by love and work. It is a fortunate woman who loves her work and a blessed woman who does not find herself torn between them.”
“Whoa!” Arden spoke first. “That’s intense.”
Jenny cocked her head. “Can you take some criticism? I think your writing sounds a bit old-fashioned, maybe stuffy. I wouldn’t get through it.”
Meg chewed the end of her pencil. “Yeah. I can see that. I guess I’m picking up the style of the times when Louisa May Alcott wrote.”
“What you need is some newfangled media training. Or at least an attitude adjustment,” Arden told her, shifting to straighten a pillow behind her back. “No one knows about May Alcott, but everyone’s familiar with Louisa May Alcott and will be fascinated to learn more about her. Also, you’re delving into the topic of sisterhood, and God knows the world is full of sisters with complicated relationships.”
“Arden’s right,” Jenny agreed. “Lighten it up a bit; make May’s story more—what’s the word?—
accessible
to the normal person.” Seeing Meg’s quiet retreat into reflection, she added, “I’m not trying to be harsh.”
“I know,” Meg said thoughtfully. “I’m thinking about what you’ve said.”
These two women were paying the ultimate compliment: giving her their full attention, and their considered opinions. What she liked was sitting in this old house with the wind battering the windows, the rain slanting sideways at the walls, the fire flaring on the andirons, and the aroma of hot chocolate in the air; they might be the Brontë sisters.
For a moment, she felt at home.
At the end of July, Meg planned a picnic dinner for the three Lily Street women. When Arden and Jenny were ready in the sandals and swimsuits Meg had insisted they wear, she popped into the driver’s seat of the Jeep and drove them all down to Jetties Beach.
It was six o’clock. The children had been taken home for baths and dinner and bed, leaving the long swath of golden beach relatively peaceful. The evening was still, with drowsy waves sliding against the shore and a few sailboats becalmed in the harbor.
Meg spread the blanket, planting the coolers on two corners, and knelt to open one while she used the top of the other as a table. Shaking a thermos, she poured daiquiris into tall plastic cups and handed them around. She laid out a platter of finger foods—salty wrinkled olives, Brie on crackers, little tomatoes and carrots, marinated artichoke hearts, bluefish pâté.
“What’s this all about?” Jenny asked, slightly suspicious.
“Nothing,” Meg told her. “Everything.” She gestured toward the ocean. “This.”
A ferry was gliding toward the island, as stately as a grand white castle on the calm blue water. In the harbor, golden lights beamed from sailboats and laughter drifted toward the shore. High in the blue sky, a few puffs of cloud drowsed unmoving, as if
they, too, were stilled by the heat. At the edge of the waves, a yellow bucket and a red shovel sat lonely and abandoned.
“Someone will come back for them tomorrow,” Arden said, reading Meg’s mind.
“We could use them. We could build a sand castle,” Meg suggested. “A really enormous one, with lots of turrets and battlements and a moat.”
“Then Arden could simplify it,” Jenny joked.
Meg rose on her knees. “We should do it. Build a fantastic castle for kids to discover when they arrive tomorrow morning.”
Arden snorted. “Please, don’t make me move. This is too blissful.”
Meg sank back down. “You’re right.”
“And you’re high,” Arden told Meg.
“Kind of,” Meg agreed. “My work has been going so well. I’ve gotten a lot done. This place is great for working. I’m cut off from so many distractions.”
“It’s turning out to be helpful to my work, too,” Arden said after taking another sip of her daiquiri. “My contact list is crammed with new names. I’ve got my camera crew coming down in August to do a few shoots. Except for Ariadne Silverstone, the homeowners are young. So take that, Zero Zoey.”
Meg clapped her hands like a girl. “Arden, I just remembered! Your career in journalism started here on this island.”
Arden lifted an inquisitive eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
“Arden. Remember when you were ten? You wrote the
Lily Street News
.”
Arden chuckled. “I’d forgotten all about that.”
“What was the
Lily Street News
?” Jenny asked.
“A newspaper Arden wrote on Dad’s computer,” Meg said. “Arden went up and down the street, interviewing people, asking them if they were summer residents, where they were from, if they
had kids or dogs or cats, and what new things they were doing to their houses or yards.”
“Then I’d print off copies and take them around to the houses. Put them in the mail slot or boxes. It was actually rather professional. I put in the names and times of the new movies and events at the library,” Arden said.
Meg said, “Back then, I thought it was brilliant. Now I think it is adorable. Mr. and Mrs. Edward Jones of Houston, Texas, have a new member of their family with them this year: Poppy, a Jack Russell terrier puppy.”
“But I made a typo and printed ‘Poopy’!” Arden whooped. “I had to print a special edition with the correction.”
“And you made
me
deliver that edition to the Joneses’ house in case they were angry,” Meg added.
“I knew they wouldn’t take it out on a sweet little seven-year-old.” Arden sighed, lost in memories. “I only did it for about a month. Someone in the neighborhood thought it was
inappropriate
for the daughter of a real estate agent to be cruising the area asking questions about houses.”
“You’ve got to admit, they had a point,” Meg said.
“Some people were cool with it,” Arden reminisced. “They invited me into their homes, showed me around. Especially the Wiltons. They were so proud of all the historical stuff that I could scarcely understand back then.”
“They were nice, the Wiltons,” Meg agreed. “They’d invite us into their house on a rainy day and serve us tea and cookies, in real china cups and saucers, remember?”
“Oh, and remember their grandson? What was his name?”
Meg snapped her fingers. “Josiah. You and I thought it was the most hysterical name, although he told everyone his name was Joe—”
“But his grandparents insisted on calling him the whole horrible
thing. Josiah.” Arden bit into an olive and chewed thoughtfully. “He was really cute, wasn’t he?”
Meg nodded. “I wonder whatever happened to him.”
“I don’t know,” Arden said. “We lost touch with him after we were exiled from the house.”
Jenny shifted uncomfortably on the blanket. After a moment, she said, “The old Wiltons died when I was about fifteen. Whoever inherited the house sold it. No Wiltons live on Lily Street.”
“ ‘The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea,’ ” Meg murmured. Seeing the glances of the others, she gave the quote’s attribution: “Matthew Arnold. Staring out at the water while remembering people who’ve been separated from us made me think of that line.”
“It wasn’t the sea that estranged us from this island,” Arden pointed out, her voice flat, empty of anger. She didn’t need to say that it had been Jenny’s mother.
Jenny pretended to ignore Arden’s remark. “Actually,” she said, “the sea is becoming less and less unplumbed. James Cameron’s already explored the deepest part of the Mariana Trench in a private submarine.”
“I heard about that,” Arden said. “I’d like to do that myself. Think of all the creatures you could see that have never been seen by humans before. Maybe down there, they’ll find intelligent life on this planet,” she joked.
“I’d settle for spotting a whale in the waters around the island,” Meg said.
“We should go on a whale watch sometime,” Jenny said. “They have them all summer.”
“Good idea,” Meg said.
“Whales.” Arden didn’t sound enthusiastic. “I guess I’m not as much of a nature fan as you two. Even this”—she spread her arms
out, indicating the entire beach and sound—“is not really my scene. Those whale watches are expensive. I prefer my fish on a plate, with an endive salad on the side.”
Jenny grinned. “You’d prefer to get laid.”
Meg held up her thermos. “More daiquiris, anyone?”
Arden extended her glass.
“Palmer’s interested in you,” Jenny said. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
“That would be complicated.” Arden shied away from discussing her ambivalence about that particular man. “He’s in the business. I don’t want to reach the top by lying on my back.”
Jenny snickered and looked to Meg. “Isn’t that a mixed metaphor?”
Meg and Arden smiled. They settled in to eat seriously, sharing the various sandwiches Meg had made: cheese, avocado, and chutney; crab salad; BLTs. The blue sky deepened to an indigo hue and a breeze rose, lifting the edges of the blanket and ruffling their hair.
“I got some more movies from the library today,” Meg told them. “Three or four brand-new chick flicks.”
“Just what I’m in the mood for,” Jenny said.
Arden finished her sandwich and dusted crumbs off her hands. “I’m in the mood for a mystery.”
“I’ve got a few of those, too,” Meg told her smugly. “Plus strawberry cheesecake.”
After a while, they gathered up their things and slowly stepped over the sand to the parking lot, where they stopped to put on their sandals. A blonde woman in her late forties walked up behind them, a towel tossed over her shoulder.
“Hello, girls,” she said in a sultry voice as she forked right to her own car.
Politely, they murmured greetings.
In the car on the way home, Arden asked Jenny, “Do you know that woman?”
“No,” Jenny said, “but I think I’ve seen her before, on our street. Maybe she lives on Lily.”
“She only said
hello
,” Meg snorted. “We’re on the island. People are friendly.”
“Something seemed strange about her,” Arden said. “I’m paranoid, right?”
“Only someone paranoid would think that,” Meg teased. The three of them laughed, easily, together.
Jenny and Tim were sitting in Genevieve’s home office, holding their breath while the three of them studied her computer screen.
“Hmm, yeah, I think this is a bull’s-eye, exactly what I was hoping for,” Genevieve decided. Before they could relax, she added, “Now, what if some of the artists want to add something on the site’s blog?”
“We’re e-mailing them all with instructions,” Jenny replied.
“Will they be able to call you if they need help?” Genevieve asked.