My Dearest Friend

by Nancy Thayer

  My Dearest Friend is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  2014 Ballantine Books eBook Edition

  Copyright © 1989 by Nancy Thayer

  Introduction copyright © 2014 by Nancy Thayer

  Excerpt from Nantucket Sisters by Nancy Thayer copyright © 2014 by Nancy Thayer

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Charles Scribners’ Sons in 1989.

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Nantucket Sisters by Nancy Thayer.

  This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-553-39101-5

  Author photograph: copyright © Jessica Hills Photography

  Cover design: Eileen Carey

  Cover image: © Flickr Open/Getty Images

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  An Introduction from the Author

  Fall

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Winter

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Spring

  Chapter 13

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  Excerpt from Nantucket Sisters

  About the Author

  An Introduction from the Author

  In My Dearest Friend, Daphne Miller loses much that is safe and beloved, and is forced to plunge into a new life.

  I wrote this book after a divorce, several relocations, and at last, a wonderful new marriage. Everything was rosy—except that my darling children had become teenagers. Once they adored me. Suddenly they thought I was clueless. Or so it seemed.

  As with all my books, I used the emotions from my own life to fuel the creation of this story about a woman experiencing changes in her family, loves, and friendships.

  I’m delighted that my early novels are being made available to my readers as ebooks. My style has changed slightly, as the world has grown faster, but my subject, family life, remains as mysterious and fascinating to me now as it was in these early books: falling in love, raising children, friendships and betrayals and forgiveness.

  Looking back at all my books, I note one other consistency: most books are set somewhere near water. Stepping begins on an island in Finland where I lived for a few months. My other books take place in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the Pacific Ocean, in Milwaukee on Lake Michigan, and finally on my beloved Nantucket. I’ve always found the blue immensity of water inspirational, and of course the storms and sunny beachside days provide wonderful settings and metaphors for novels.

  I hope you enjoy these early novels and discover some new friends there.

  Nancy Thayer

  Fall

  1

  Hudson’s Brown Volvo took the last curve in the rutted Vermont dirt road, and within a few yards the public road narrowed to a private lane overgrown with sumac, grasses, laurel bushes, and maple saplings. The little trees, their trunks as slender and silver as flutes, shivered as the car passed among them. The dirt lane ended abruptly in front of a clapboard cottage that had once been painted white but that had become with age so streaked with dirt and weathered and peeled that it was now at an interesting tortoiseshell stage.

  Hudson stopped the car, turned off the engine. For a moment the silence was complete. The cottage stood before them, its every flaw blazing at them through the clarity of the fine early-September day. It was shabby, asymmetrical, crooked, humble. Never grand, it had been worn down by age.

  “This is it?” Hudson asked.

  “This is it!” Daphne answered enthusiastically, and got out of the car. “A small thing, but mine own.”

  Hudson still sat in the car.

  “Hudson, you are such a stick!” Daphne said to him calmly. She walked around to the other side of the car and stuck her head in the window. “It’s better inside. It’s really cute.”

  “Cute,” Hudson said.

  “Yes, cute!” Daphne grinned. “Now, come on!”

  She yanked the door open and Hudson reluctantly unfolded himself from the car. Daphne watched, and a helpless smile of pleasure spread across her face. Really, Hudson was such a thoroughbred, with his very long lean limbs, and he looked so fine in his clothes, that pink oxford-cloth button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, khakis, leather loafers on his long skinny feet. Daphne was wearing rubber thongs and a wraparound strapless sundress she had made from some flowered material she had found on sale for eighty-nine cents at Zayre’s. She didn’t dare think about the responsibility she’d given to the three little black snaps that were holding the dress on her body.

  “Come on inside,” Daphne said, taking Hudson’s arm. Now, this was a different thing: Hudson looked great, so skinny, elegant in his clothes, but she hated the feeling of his thinness, it worried her. His arm felt skeletal to her hand, too frail to bear all its burdens. Instinctively she pulled him against her affectionately.

  “Do you know, this is the first house I have ever owned? Forty-six years old, and a homeowner for the very first time.” She caught Hudson’s glance. “Well, of course you could say I owned a house when I was married to Joe. My name was on the deed, but I never really owned it. Joe owned it.” She felt the bitterness, like a sleeping snake inside her—always such a quick thing, always on the alert!—ready to uncoil and strike, releasing its poison throughout her body. She shook her head, she kept walking, she pulled Hudson to the first concrete step that led to the front door. “But this is mine,” she said triumphantly, and the snake lay back down. “It might have taken me a long time, it might not be a mansion, but it’s mine.”

  After all the years of their friendship, Daphne could read Hudson’s mind. Just at this instant, as his courteous hand reached out to open the door for her, his fastidious mind was thinking with dismay: The screen door is made from aluminum instead of wood.

  “The floors are all hardwood!” she cried, offsetting his silent criticism. “Look, aren’t they beautiful? Now, Hudson, you have at least to agree that the floors are beautiful.”

  Hudson walked through the house. It didn’t take long. The front door opened into the living room, without even a pretense of an entrance hall. The living room was generously proportioned, with a large flagstone fireplace in the middle of one wall, and two windows on either side of the fireplace, giving views of the seedy grass and deep forest that ranged at the side of the house. Immediately to the right was a door leading into a bedroom, and Hudson circled the house through the bedroom, into the bathroom, which (he shuddered) had been tiled in pink plastic and papered with swans playing with bubbles, out the other side to the kitchen, which was spacious and bright (but had metal cabinets). From the kitchen he peeked in at what seemed to be an afterthought built on as a back bedroom, and at a small concrete-floored shed with a disconcerting step down to it, and at a stairway hidden behind another door.

  “That leads to the attic,” Daphne told him. “It’s the best room in the hous
e. Really. Go on up and see.”

  The stairway was narrow, the only railing a thick twisted rope attached to the wall. But the attic room was charming, because of its slanted ceiling and the windows, one at either end of the room, which were oval and paned with diamond-shaped glass set in lead.

  “Nice,” Hudson admitted.

  “It will be hell getting furniture and boxes up there,” Daphne said. “I might use the little back bedroom as a storage room and make this attic the guest bedroom. I’d like to sleep up here some nights—to see how the moonlight falls through those panes.”

  “Where will Cynthia sleep?” Hudson asked.

  “I don’t know, really,” Daphne said. “Up here when she comes to visit, I suppose. I’m not counting on having her here permanently again.” The snake struck. Bitter pain shot through her stomach on its way to her heart. She counterattacked by digging her nails into the flesh of her hand. She hurried down the stairs, thinking: Action. Movement. That’s how you deal with the pain. You just keep moving right on over it. That way you still have the pain, but sometimes you get somewhere.

  They were back in the living room. Now Hudson could take a long look at the oak floors, which had been sanded and polished until they gleamed like bronzed satin.

  “Good floors,” he said. “Where will you put the piano?”

  “I’ve sold the grand,” she said, moving away from him, keeping her back to him. “But that’s fine! I’ve found a darling old baby grand. Not a Steinway, but …”

  Hudson was looking at her. She could feel his eyes on her back. “I’ve always told you, if you needed money—”

  “I know. And I’m grateful. But this isn’t an emergency, Hudson. This is just life. Come on, come out back. There’s a place for a garden there, and a sweet little stream running just inside the woods.”

  They went out through the door leading off the kitchen. The backyard was largely taken up by a garden fenced off by chicken wire. Orange marigolds and multicolored zinnias bobbed along the edges; discouraged potato plants and obstinate zucchini grew among the weedy rows.

  “The chicken wire’s ugly, I know,” Daphne said. “But the former owners, the Wests, say it’s absolutely necessary out here. Otherwise raccoons, skunks, even deer get in and eat the entire garden. Well, they couldn’t do much this year. They’re old and ill. But next year I plan to plant the entire area. And look over there—raspberries! The Wests said they’re called ‘ever-bearing’ and they bloom from June into September. Here, Hudson, taste!”

  Daphne came to the bushes before Hudson and, squatting down, reached in through the thick green leaves and pulled off several fat ripe beaded red raspberries. She stood up, picked the best berry, and put it in Hudson’s mouth. Her fingers touched his soft lips, his white teeth. He bit down and she felt the gentle tug of his mouth as she pulled the green hull back. She stood, the sun hot on her back, the unruly grass tickling her bare legs, Hudson looking at her through his wire-rimmed glasses, his brown eyes huge through the distorting lens. She crushed the green hull between her two fingers and turned away. It was possible Hudson loved her. It was certain that he wanted her. But he was married, to a woman who had a chronically bad back, and he was of New England Puritan stock; he could not leave that wife, and he could not betray her by sleeping with Daphne. Though they had wanted to for many years now. Well, perhaps it was for the best: they certainly had stayed good friends. And Daphne had had David. In a way. For a while.

  “Delicious,” he said, at the same time she said, turning away from him and the sensations he caused inside her, “Let’s go unload the car!”

  They brought in laundry baskets filled with clean sheets, clean clothes, blankets, pillows and a sleeping bag for tonight, boxes of kitchen staples, paper cups and plates.

  “This is a nice kitchen, isn’t it?” Daphne said.

  The floor was brick-red tile-patterned linoleum, the walls colonial blue, the metal cabinets and appliances all old-fashioned white.

  “It’s patriotic, at least,” Hudson said. He walked off into the living room, came back to stand just inside the kitchen door. “Daphne, I can’t see you living here. It’s so isolated. It’s so much of a change.”

  “Well, my dearest friend,” Daphne said, “there’s not much I can do about change, is there? I mean, change seems to be the order of the day for me recently. We’ve been over this all, Hudson. I had no choice, what choice was there, some dreadful rented box of an apartment? Besides, with Cynthia leaving, I had to do something special. Something different. You know that.”

  “I would have given you the down payment for a house in town. I still would. I could easily, just a gift. You would never have to pay it back.”

  Daphne looked at Hudson and knew that as much as he loved her, and for as long as he had known her—seventeen years now—he would never understand that she could not take a gift of money from him. Life must be lived by certain rules.

  “Hudson,” she said. “Don’t. Just don’t. We’ve been over this all before, too many times.” She looked at her watch. “Anyway, you have to go.”

  It was five-thirty. Claire worried if Hudson didn’t get home in time for drinks at six. Claire relied on order in her life, and she relied on Hudson.

  “You are sure you want to stay out here all alone tonight?” Hudson asked as he headed for the door.

  “I’m sure,” Daphne said.

  “No car, no phone. Dickens isn’t here. Won’t you be frightened?” Hudson turned to look back at her.

  “Oh, Hudson, what should I be frightened of?” Daphne said, thinking: What else can be taken from me?, sighing. Then, seeing his face, she made herself brighten. “Don’t be silly!” she said. “This is just what I want! I’ve told you that. I’ve been looking forward to it all week. The movers come tomorrow with all my stuff, and then this house will be transformed, taken over by me and mine. But tonight it’s bare, just itself, and I want to get the feel of it. Well, think, Hudson, it’s like me being alone. Without Joe or Cyn or my friends or you. Or it’s like what you might be, if you suddenly were alone somewhere and you weren’t a college professor or a husband. Elemental.”

  “I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hudson said.

  Daphne crossed the living room and leaned up to kiss his cheek. It was the most they permitted themselves. “Thanks for bringing me out.”

  “Shall I fetch you in the morning and take you to your Jeep?”

  “Yes. Please.” Daphne smiled. Their eyes met, held.

  “All right, then,” Hudson said, turning to go.

  Daphne watched as the brown Volvo turned around and moved down the lane. Her own car, a “new” car for her, for this place, was a 1979 red Jeep, scarred and bouncy, but with four-wheel drive for the winter. She had traded her Citation in on it, and the automobile salesmen were just finishing up what they called the “prep” job. The Jeep would be hers tomorrow; until then Hudson had offered to chauffeur her around. He always did what he could to help.

  Her old home, the house she had rented for fourteen years, was down in Westhampton, just over the Massachusetts border, on a pleasant residential street lined with trees, near the college where she worked, within calling distance of other houses, other people, within walking distance of friends. The same week that her daughter had decided to go live with her father, the father Cynthia had not seen, had not received a birthday card from for fourteen years, Daphne had been told by the owners of the house that they were going to raise the rent by four hundred dollars a month, the exact amount of child support Daphne had been receiving all those years from Cynthia’s father. The exact amount that, now that Cynthia was going to live with him, he would not be sending any longer. Daphne could not afford to stay in the rented house that had become home to her and her daughter. And she didn’t know if Cynthia would ever live with her again.

  Life often did things like that, hit you twice in the very same place—Daphne didn’t know why people believed that lightning wouldn’
t strike twice in the same place. Of course it would.

  Frantic, in shock, Daphne had wanted to run, to move, to change her luck, her life, and the most she could do was this wild thing: she had rushed out and discovered and made a down payment on this inexpensive and ugly little cottage set off a dead-end road partway up a rolling mountain in Plover, Vermont.

  She was seriously thinking of naming the house Dead End. Her life had, after all, come to a dead end, had it not?

  No. She would not dwell with bitterness.

  Daphne went back through her house, which at least now without furniture seemed quite spacious, and into the kitchen. She opened a bottle of inexpensive champagne, which made a lovely celebratory pop, and poured it into a paper cup, then took it outside. She sat on the top step and surveyed her property. The sky was still a bright blue bowl overhead, but evening was on its way, in the blue air, and in the long sea-green shadows that floated on the heavy grass.

  I have a house, Daphne thought. This house is mine. She liked those words, that thought. She rose, and slowly sipping her champagne, she circled her house.

  God, what a place. It was crooked, angled, lopsided, it needed sanding and caulking and filling, and especially it needed painting. She would not be able to get that job done this year, not with fall and winter approaching.

  Well, this would not be the biggest house she had ever lived in, nor the most expensive or elaborately decorated. But it would be the best. She would see to that.

  She raised her glass and toasted her house. Her ramshackle house. As if in response, a cardinal called out and flew past, its passage reflected in the kitchen windows. Daphne turned in time to see the bird swerve off into the trees behind the garden.

  She loved cardinals. They were perhaps her favorite bird. She thought of them as omens of good luck. Or once had. That was when she was a believer: in the luck of houses, in wishes coming true, in fortune-cookie fortunes, the I Ching, shooting stars, and God. And love. It was a relief to give up all that, and yet it left her strangely limitless; it was odd to have nothing left to pray to in a crisis, nothing superstitious to do when in agony.