Secrets in Summer

by Nancy Thayer

  She staggered to her blanket and collapsed facedown, grateful for the umbrella’s shade. Sounds drifted toward her—laughter, a baby crying, a seagull squawking as he scanned their group for food to swoop down and steal.

  “It’s too hot,” a woman complained. Darcy thought it was pregnant Dee-Dee Folger.

  “I agree,” Angelica said. “Packer’s getting cranky, and so am I.”

  Darcy opened one eye and looked. Packer, a toddler, was stuffing sand into his mouth with both hands. Angelica tried to distract him with sand toys, the sifter, the molds, the shovel and bucket, but he threw himself backward, wailing, when she took his hands away from his face.

  “Come to our house,” Jordan offered. “It’s air-conditioned.”

  Someone said, “The three most beautiful words in the English language.” It was a man’s voice, of course it was. A woman would think the three most beautiful words were I love you.

  By the time the group had lugged all their stuff back to their vehicles, everyone was grumpy. Nash set the truck’s air-conditioning to high. Darcy leaned her head back against the seat.

  “I think I’m going to have a red nose,” she said.

  “Probably.”

  “I’m glad we’re not staying there all day,” Darcy continued. “It’s muggy today as well as hot. It was like a sauna.”

  “Yup.”

  Darcy gave Nash a questioning look. “Is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Nash told her. “I’m just hot and tired.”

  They parked in front of the Morrises’ house and carried their coolers around to the back door where they rinsed their feet in the outdoor shower before going into the kitchen. Jordan was there, holding Kiks’s feet under the running water in the sink.

  “One grain of sand,” Jordan said. “Kiks can spot one grain of sand on a clean field of tile and put it in her mouth. Or her ear.”

  Laughing, Darcy helped the others set out the food, utensils, paper napkins. The gang wasted no time loading their paper plates with food and snagging beers. They all went into the den to watch the Red Sox game on TV. After a while, Jordan put Kiks down for a nap and Packer fell asleep on the carpet.

  The women sat in the living room, looking at sleeping Packer.

  “He looks like an angel,” Missy said wistfully.

  “Babies do that, when they’re asleep,” Jordan replied. “It’s a trick to keep you adoring them even after they’ve been acting like little devils.”

  “Want to know something?” Dee-Dee asked. “I am having a seriously difficult time. There has been no decent celebrity gossip for weeks!”

  Darcy laughed. “Right. Kate Middleton hasn’t fought with the queen and Jennifer Aniston isn’t pregnant with twins.”

  “I know!” Missy agreed. She shot an evil grin at Darcy. “You just wait, when you have toddlers, you won’t have time or brain power to read a book. You’ll live for the tabloids at the grocery store.”

  “I’m much more intellectual than that,” Jordan joked. “I read People.”

  “Ice cream,” Dee-Dee said. “We need ice cream.”

  “Yes!” Angelica rose. “Darcy, I’ll dish out the ice cream if you’ll take the plates of brownies and cookies in to the guys.”

  “Don’t they get ice cream?”

  “I don’t know. Depends on how much we women eat.” Laughing, Angelica led the way into the kitchen.

  Darcy headed toward the den with plates of cookies and brownies. She paused in the doorway to keep one plate from tilting, and in that moment, she overheard Nash’s voice.

  “Yeah, the house is kind of crummy, but I’m tired of throwing my money away on rent. This way I’ll have my own place and a kind of investment.”

  “Smart move, Nash,” Lyle said. “Anything on this island is worth gold.”

  Darcy froze. Nash was buying a house?

  Why did that make her feel so—anxious? Because he hadn’t told her first? Because he was buying his own place?

  Because he didn’t foresee a future with Darcy, living in her gorgeous old home?

  “What are you doing? Hurry up!” Dee-Dee appeared behind Darcy, carrying bowls of ice cream. “Let’s give the guys their treats and go back to enjoy our own!” She nudged Darcy with her elbow.

  Darcy forced a smile on her face and entered the den. Dee-Dee followed with the ice cream, and Jordan showed up with spoons and forks.

  The rest of the afternoon passed in a fog for Darcy. She was curious and hurt and impatient. She wanted to be alone with Nash, to hear him talk about his plan for the future.

  “What’s up, Buttercup?” Jordan asked as people began to leave.

  Darcy shook her head. No way would she tell Jordan how upset she was, not when the men were so near. “I’m just tired,” she explained, shrugging. “I think it’s the heat.”

  “I’ll jack up the air-conditioning in my truck,” Nash said, coming up behind Darcy.

  Darcy hugged Jordan and walked with Nash to his truck. As they drove toward her house, he was unusually quiet. Darcy didn’t want to ride in silence—that would seem as if she were pouting and, from his point of view, for no reason at all.

  “How are the Red Sox doing?” she asked, for the sake of making conversation.

  “Lost. I’ll get the postgame report.” Nash punched the radio on and spun the dial until he got to the broadcast.

  Okay, Darcy thought. The man doesn’t want to talk to me.

  Fine.

  When they arrived at her house, she opened the door before the truck came to a complete stop. “Thanks, Nash,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the sportscaster’s.

  Nash slammed his foot on the brake and gave her a questioning look.

  “I’ve got so much to do,” Darcy told him. She carefully shut the truck door, did an abrupt about-face, and strode to her front door. She didn’t look back to see his reaction.

  The moment she was inside, she reached into her pocket for her phone and hit Jordan’s number. Then she canceled the call. Jordan would be dealing with Kiks now. She’d be carrying glasses, bottles, and plates into the kitchen, loading the dishwasher, savoring some quiet moments with Lyle. They might be trading news they’d heard that day, Jordan from the women, Lyle from his buddies.

  Lyle might tell Jordan that Nash was buying a property, and Jordan might call Darcy. Or Lyle might not even think to mention Nash to Jordan. Nash wasn’t the center of the world.

  Another woman, braver, stronger in self-confidence, might call Nash right now. She might say, pleasantly, rationally, that she’d overheard Nash telling the men he was buying a house on the island.

  He might say something sensible, even affectionate, about buying the house.

  But Darcy was starting her period, and she felt crampy and bloated and irritable, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to prevent her Most Unperfect Darcy from exploding into a whining, complaining, irrational geyser of accusations— Why did he tell the men first, before telling Darcy? Was Darcy so low on his list of friends— Was that all she was to him, a friend?

  She paced the house, talking out loud, trying to offload her anger and hurt into the air, to use up her emotional craziness now, not on the phone with Nash. Muffler, who’d seen her in this state before, slunk away to hide behind the sofa.

  Was Nash sleeping with her, just hanging with her, until he found a woman he wanted to spend his life with? Did no one under the age of eighty want to be with her? Her mother and father didn’t want her, her relatives in Illinois were too busy with their own lives to do more than send a Christmas card. Boyz had loved her—she believed he truly had, at first, and never mind the reasons. If it had been simply infatuation, it had been sweet. But it had not lasted. He had chosen Autumn.

  The tears were coming now, hot and fast, burning her face as she asked the empty kitchen if anyone would ever love her, really love her. She could not stand it if all she meant to Nash was an easy lay, because—

  Oh, holy hell, because sh
e was in love with Nash. Damn.

  Her hurricane of tears and rage and need slowly calmed, like a storm over the ocean, leaving her sitting on a chair in the kitchen, wiping her nose with a paper napkin because she was too exhausted to get up and go to the box of tissues across the room. It was all she could do to drag herself into the bedroom. She dropped onto the bed like a fallen tree and blanked out into a generous oblivion.

  —

  When she saw herself Monday morning, she shook her head at her reflection in the mirror. She was less bad-tempered now, but still filled with the heavy ache of sadness. No way would she share this pathetic creature with anyone on the island. This was her day off, so she showered, dressed, and caught a plane to the Cape. She spent the day shopping and returned home that evening with bags of new clothes and costume jewelry. If she was doomed to a life alone, she’d look good while she lived it.

  —

  Tuesday, the library was crowded, partly because it was so hot and muggy outside, and air-conditioned inside. That night, Nash called.

  “Good day?” he asked.

  As if everything between them was normal. As if she hadn’t rushed out of his truck on Sunday. As if buying a house on the island—buying a house! An enormous thing to do! Houses here, even shacks, were crazy expensive—as if buying a house was so insignificant he didn’t think to mention it to Darcy.

  Or he was trying to keep it a secret from Darcy.

  “Good day,” she said briefly. “You?”

  “Miserable,” he said.

  Darcy swallowed. Was he miserable because she’d been abrupt with him?

  “I’ve heard for years that Nantucket’s summers were cooler than the mainland’s, but today’s heat and humidity were brutal. It saps all our energy, you know, this kind of muggy heat.”

  Ah. So he wasn’t going to mention her mood. Maybe he hadn’t even noticed—he was, after all, a man. But she was moved to sympathy at the thought of working out in the hot sun all day. She was kind of mad at him, but more than that, she cared that he’d had such a tough day.

  “It doesn’t usually last long,” Darcy assured him.

  “I’m not going to last long if it keeps up,” Nash joked. “I’d like to see you, but I’m beat. I stood under the shower for about an hour just now. I got some pizza on the way home, I’ve got the air-conditioning jacked up, and the Red Sox are playing tonight. That’s it for me.”

  “You are such a guy,” Darcy teased.

  She was tired, too, and happy enough to spend the evening with a book and a cold cranberry drink. Wednesday, more of the same.

  Thursday evening the library was open late and Darcy was on the roster for that. It was quiet, because the heat had abated and people could enjoy being outside. After closing the library, Darcy strolled home, enjoying the rare clear summer night, replaying certain moments of her day at work. The story hours were her favorite time and that brought her smack-dab right into the rather frightening thought that she was beginning to want children of her own.

  When she reached her house, she took a long cool shower, slipped into an airy, billowy caftan, and carried a glass of wine and her cellphone out to her yard. Stretching out in her lounger, she exhaled and relaxed, looking up at the summer sky. Even now, daylight lingered, and as she watched, the sky changed colors like a scarf pulled from a magician’s sleeve, darkness slowly staining black into the blue. The stars came out.

  Muffler rustled through the bushes, probably searching for the tiny velvet voles that crept through her garden at night. After a while, he jumped up on the table and began the elegant task of cleaning himself.

  The bushes rustled again, more noisily this time. Darcy lifted her head.

  “Darcy?” Willow whispered. “Can I come over?”

  “Of course.” Before Darcy finished speaking, her cellphone buzzed. She checked, found a number she didn’t know, and answered.

  “Darcy?” It was Susan. “I want to stop by a moment. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “Of course,” Darcy told her.

  She set her wineglass on the table and walked to her back door. Just inside was a switch for the miniature sparkling white lights she had strung in a loose, scattered web along the hedges. She’d planned to wait until she had a party to use them, but she couldn’t sit and talk to her friends in the total darkness that had fallen.

  When the lights went on, pinpoints of brilliance twinkling around the yard, her mood lifted.

  Susan and Willow came down through the arbor and across her yard, both of them whispering and giggling.

  “Hi, Darcy!” Willow cried, flinging her arms around Darcy and hugging her.

  “What’s going on?” Darcy asked.

  Willow pulled Darcy by the hand to the patio. “Sit down. We have something to tell you.” She glanced at Susan. “You first.”

  Illuminated by the gentle lights, Susan’s face was soft, glowing. “I have a job in the yarn shop!”

  Unable to wait for Darcy’s response, Willow blurted, “And I’m babysitting her boys!”

  “Wow!” Darcy had scarcely spoken when her cellphone buzzed again. Looking down, she saw it was Mimi’s number.

  “What are you all doing down there?” Mimi asked, without her usual polite greeting preamble.

  “Come join us,” Darcy replied. To Willow and Susan, she said, “Wait. Mimi’s coming.”

  Willow jumped up. “I’ll go help her.”

  “Where are your boys?” Darcy asked Susan.

  “Asleep. I’ve enrolled them in a summer day camp. They love it, and they’re put in different sections, separated for the day, which is good for them. They fall asleep the moment their heads hit their pillows. I wish I’d thought of this earlier in the summer.”

  “Hello!” Mimi called out. She came across the grass with her arm around Willow’s shoulders for steadiness. In the radiance of the little lights, she looked amazing, like a woman stepping out of the past.

  “What are you wearing?” Darcy asked, stunned by the older woman’s plunging silk nightgown and magnificent silk wrapper thickly embroidered with a flamboyance of colorful birds.

  Mimi chortled. “Fabulous, isn’t it? It was my mother’s. She was a clotheshorse, and I always coveted this, and now I have it. I don’t often get a chance to wear it.”

  “Damn,” Susan swore. “I sleep in an old stretched-out T-shirt of Otto’s.”

  “Me, too,” Darcy said. “Well, I don’t mean I sleep in one of Otto’s T-shirts….”

  Laughing, Mimi leveraged herself into a chair. “You young women can make a T-shirt look like a stripper’s costume. At my age, I prefer silk and lots of it. Now. What were you gossiping about? I saw you from my bedroom window.”

  Willow and Susan rapidly repeated their news.

  “But if the boys are in a day camp, when does Willow babysit?”

  “In the late afternoon,” Willow said.

  Susan added, “For three hours. From four to seven. That’s a quiet time for Merry Wicks—she’s the owner—but people do come in from time to time, especially on cloudy days. I give her a chance to do errands and eat a proper meal. She returns and keeps the shop open until nine. It’s amazing, how people find the place, even though it’s not in the center of town.”

  “And I’ll bring the boys to my house,” Willow added. “Because we’ve got the trampoline and the badminton set there. If it’s raining, we’ll play some of the games stored in our cupboards.”

  “But won’t your mother mind?” Mimi asked. “Three rambunctious youngsters—so much noise?”

  “I checked with Mom, and she’s cool about it. Dad’s up in Boston all week, so Mom said she’ll go shopping, that will only take her a hundred hours, or drive out to some beach and have a long walk and enjoy the island.”

  “Of course, she won’t always have the boys at her house,” Susan cut in. “Otto can take his laptop to the library, so if Henry or George or Alfred want to play at home, Willow can watch them there and they won’t be a
bother to him.”

  “We can always walk down to Flock so the guys can say hi to their mom,” Willow said.

  “I’m guessing the shop will be boring to them and frankly, three boys in a yarn shop is not a mix made in heaven,” Susan said.

  “What does Otto think of you working?” Mimi asked.

  “I thought he’d object. It’s not like we need the money. But he understands—who better?—my desire to escape my darlings, and my need to do something adult.”

  Mimi set her eagle eye on Willow. “And what do your parents think of you spending all your time with old ladies and children? They must want you to make some acquaintances of your own age.”

  Willow rolled her eyes. “I met an ‘acquaintance’ my own age when I first got here, Mimi. That didn’t work out so well. Ask Darcy about that sometime. But anyway, I’m happy at the library, and I enjoy the boys. I think they’re the totally right age for me this summer.”

  “You’ve only had them for two afternoons,” Susan reminded Willow. “Wait until you’ve spent a week with them.”

  “If they get bored, I’ll walk them into town for ice cream, or we can go to Children’s Beach,” Willow added.

  “If it rains,” Mimi told her, “bring your tribe over to our house. There’s a Ping-Pong table in the basement.”

  “Awesome!” Willow cried. “I love Ping-Pong!”

  “Alfred is too young for Ping-Pong,” Susan mused. “He isn’t tall enough yet.”

  “I’ll take them shopping,” Willow said. “The Sunken Ship has cool toys….”

  “Alfred likes monster trucks,” Susan told her.

  “But, Mimi!” Willow suddenly looked distressed. “When will I be able to read to you? I forgot, we’re right in the middle of The Age of Innocence!”

  “I don’t work on Mondays or on weekends,” Susan quickly informed them, worried.

  “There you are, then,” Mimi said, soothing them with her easy voice. “You can read to me on Mondays and weekends—if you don’t need the time for yourself.”

  Darcy settled back in her chair, letting the conversation fade into the background, enjoying the moment, the three other women of all ages leaning toward one another, sharing information, making plans, talking of yarn and toys. The pinpoints of light gave an air of mystery and drama to their faces, a kind of depth. It was as if this conversation could be taking place a hundred years ago, or fifty years from now. Women would always plot about childcare and knitting.