The Blue Bistro (52 page)

“Wonderful,” Marguerite said, taking the mussels.

“Who is it, Margo?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Not the professor?”

“No. God, no.”

“Good. I never liked that guy. He treated you like shit.”

Even after all that had happened, Marguerite didn’t care to hear Porter spoken about this way. “He did the best he could. We both did.”

“What was his name? Parker?”

“Porter.”

Dusty shook his head. “I would have treated you better.”

Marguerite flashed back to that night, years earlier. Dusty with his head on the bar, drooling. “Ah, yes,” she said.

They stood in silence for a moment, then two; then it became awkward. After fourteen years there were a hundred things they could talk about, a hundred people, but she knew he only wanted to talk about her, which she wasn’t willing to do. It was unfair of her to come here, maybe; it was teasing. She shifted the mussels to her other hand and double-checked that her pocketbook was zipped. “Oh, Dusty,” she said, in a voice full of regret and apology that she hoped would stand in for the things she couldn’t say.

“Oh, Margo,” he mimicked, and he grinned. “I want you to know I’m happy you came in. I’m honored.”

Marguerite blushed and made a playful attempt at a curtsy. Dusty watched her, she knew, even as she turned and walked out of his shop, setting the little bell tinkling.

“Have a nice dinner!” he called out.

Thank you,
she thought.

Marguerite had been in the fish store all of ten minutes, but those ten minutes were the difference between a sleepy summer morning and a full-blown August day on Nantucket. One of the ferries had arrived, disgorging two hundred day-trippers onto the Straight Wharf; families who were renting houses in town flooded the street in search of coffee and breakfast; couples staying at B and Bs had finished breakfast and wanted to rent bikes to go to the beach. Was this the real Nantucket now? People everywhere, spending money? Maybe it was, and who was Marguerite to judge? She felt privileged to be out on the street with the masses; it was her own private holiday, the day of her dinner party.

There was a twinge in Marguerite’s heart, like someone tugging on the corner of a blanket, threatening to throw back the covers and expose it all.

Dusty had let her off easy, she thought. But the girl might not. She would want to hear the story. And Marguerite would tell her. The girl deserved more than five thousand dollars. She deserved to hear the truth.