Excerpt
Summer Light on Nantucket
It All Begins with a KissBlythe and her best friend Jill were having lunch together at Legal Sea Foods in Boston’s elegant Copley Place mall and they were laughing so hard Blythe worried that the manager would ask them to leave.
Blythe’s oldest child, Miranda, was almost seventeen, and would be a junior at Arlington High. Jill’s oldest son, Zander, was also a rising junior. When their children were babies and toddlers, Blythe and Jill pretend-planned their wedding, but as they grew, Miranda and Zander liked each other fine but showed no romantic interest at all.
“The end of a dream,” Jill said with a sigh.
“It’s a good thing,” Blythe told Jill as they finished their healthy salmon salads. “If our children really were going to marry, I wouldn’t be able to complain about Miranda’s insolence to you and you wouldn’t want to tell me about stuff like that boy gym smell Zander had ever since he turned fourteen.”
“He doesn’t anymore,” Jill said quickly, defensively. “Smell like a boys’ gym.”
“I know, I know. He’s perfect, Jill, I mean it. An Adonis. Plus, his girlfriend is a real sweetheart.”
Jill tipped back her glass to drink the last of her iced tea. “I love Carrie. But they’re still kids. They need to date other people, break a few hearts, get their hearts broken, before they marry.
If they marry. This is just high school love.”
“Hey, Taylor Swift is all about high school love,” Blythe reminded her friend, and then she sat there silently, her mind and her heart full of memories.
“Oh, no, there you go, thinking about Aaden again,” Jill said.
“No, I’m not.” Blythe changed the subject. “Listen, Krebs offered me full-time seventh-grade English next year.”
“Well, that’s great, isn’t it? You taught eighth grade when you were first married, and you’ve been subbing in middle school for years, right?”
“True. But full-time teaching is much more work. And seventh grade is more difficult to teach. Eighth graders have learned how to deal with themselves. Seventh graders are hormonal, insecure bullies.”
“Not all of them, surely. Teddy sailed through seventh grade.”
“True. But that’s another concern. What would happen to
my kids if I teach in their school?”
“The question is, what will happen to
you if you teach full-time?”
“The answer is,” Blythe said, “since Bob and I divorced, he and Teri have been great about their days with the kids. I’ll have free time to do lesson plans.”
Jill thought about this for a moment, then said, “You like Teri.”
Blythe speared one last piece of lettuce and waved it like a pointer. “I do. I don’t
love her. The kids say she clings to Bob like a barnacle, and she always gives them way too much sugar, which makes them like her. And I’m really glad the kids like her, even though I admit she makes me jealous. She’s in such good shape, she can wear crop tops and low riders and show off her belly button ring like Miranda.”
“Not a good mother image.”
“True. But she doesn’t have to be a mother.
I’m the mother. She’s like the cool babysitter. Plus, Bob spends much more time with the kids than he did when we were married. They do things. Go to plays, ballets, the aquarium. Skiing.”
The waitress appeared. “Would you like dessert?”
“No, thanks. Just the bill.” Blythe reached into her purse for her wallet.
Jill brought out her credit card. They always split the bill half and half.
“Blythe, it sounds like you want to teach full-time.”
“Krebs gave me a few weeks to think about it. It will be a good time for me to reevaluate everything. We leave for Nantucket in two days.”
Jill said, “We’ll be up at our cottage in Maine. I’ll float you a message in a bottle.”
“Ha!” Blythe stirred her iced coffee. “Another thing. Jill, you’re right. I
was thinking about Aaden. I’ve been thinking about him a lot. You know he was one of the reasons Bob and I divorced, and the funny thing is that I haven’t seen him in years. Decades. I was simply mooning over old photographs.”
The waitress took the little leather folder holding the bill and their credit cards.
Jill leaned forward, speaking softly. “I think Aaden was the love of your life.”
“My
children are the love of my life,” Blythe countered.
“I know, but I think you still have a soft spot for Aaden. Actually, Blythe, I think you even still have a soft spot for Bob.”
“Maybe.” Blythe thought about this. “Okay, so maybe a person gets more than one love of her life.”
Jill held up her hand like a stop sign. “But only a limited number. Because otherwise it doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe a limited number
romantically,” Blythe qualified.
The waitress returned with their credit cards. Blythe and Jill signed their tabs.
“I do still have a soft spot for Bob,” Blythe confessed. “I often wonder if the divorce was a mistake. Impulsive. Our split was so . . . pleasant. But maybe that means we were right to get divorced.” She shook her head. “Stop me now. No more overanalyzing. Let’s go look at the sales at Nordstrom.”
The two women gathered their purses and shopping bags and slid from the booth. They stepped out into the mall.
“Which way shall we go?” Jill asked.
Blythe stopped so hard Jill almost slammed into her.
Blythe whispered, “
Look.”
Jill asked, “Where?”
“There.”A plate-glass window separated them from a posh shoe shop. They could see through that window across to the other window where a man stood kissing a woman. He was kissing her passionately, pulling her body against his with one hand, cupping the back of her head with the other as he bent toward her. The woman was short and slender, with thick red hair flowing past her shoulders. Her arms were wrapped tightly around his broad back.
“That looks like Teri,” Jill whispered.
“I know,” Blythe whispered back, and she did know, because her ex-husband, Bob, was now living with Teri Casey, who had that fit body and that long wavy red hair. Blythe’s children spent every other weekend with their father and Teri Casey, and they all had come to feel comfortable with the young woman who called herself the “Bonus Mom.” Blythe was glad Bob had Teri in his life and she trusted Teri with her children.
But here, now, right in front of them, where everyone could see, Teri was kissing,
really kissing, another man.
“That’s not Bob,” Jill whispered.
“I can see that,” Blythe whispered back.
“What are you going to do?” Jill asked.
Blythe shook her head. “I have no idea.”
