No Beach Like Nantucket

by Grace Palmer

  But those things would always be here. She had a chance to go on an adventure. She had enough money saved up to go comfortably. And maybe the goodness of her life wasn’t a factor of being on Nantucket, but just being with Oliver. Maybe she could take that goodness on the road. See the world and show it to Winter at the same time.

  Maybe she could make this work.

  Her thoughts ran in circles like that, like a carousel spinning faster and faster, as she eventually extricated herself from Oliver’s arms and went to brush her teeth and get ready for bed. She could feel his eyes on her the whole time. He was trying to suss out what she was thinking, she could tell. But he didn’t say anything. He just gave her space. She appreciated him for that.

  A few minutes later, they were curled up together in bed. He nestled her from behind, one arm draped over her midsection. It didn’t take long before he was snoring very softly in her ear. But Eliza couldn’t sleep. Again and again, she pored over the same set of facts.

  An eight-month-long tour versus a three-month-old baby.

  “Take a chance” versus “Stay in place.”

  Nantucket versus who knows where.

  Oliver versus who knows what.

  It was so wrong and so right, so unexpected and so perfect all at once. This was his big break, the stroke of luck he deserved. She wanted so badly to see him share his talent with the world. She wanted so badly to see him lose himself in music he loved, music he played for his own sake, not for the benefit of some rich old guys murmuring about stocks and real estate over expensive martinis in an expensive beachside house they used once a year at best. She wanted to support Oliver like he’d supported her when she needed it most.

  But was bringing her baby on tour a wise thing to do? Babies needed so much—milk and clothes and diapers and a crib and on and on and on. A mountain of things wildly out of proportion to their size. Was it irresponsible to take Winter around the country? She knew Oliver wouldn’t even be considering this plan if he hadn’t already thought all this through. He wouldn’t have invited her along if he didn’t truly mean it. He was a careful thinker, an inveterate planner. She trusted his judgment ninety-nine times out of one hundred. But was there a chance that his excitement was overruling his decision-making? Was feeding into that the smart thing for her daughter?

  She didn’t know. The man she loved wanted to take her and her daughter on an adventure. Nantucket would always be here for them to return to. Life here was good. Life out there could be even better.

  In the end, what made up her mind was this: Old Eliza would never, ever have gone.

  So she rolled over and brushed Oliver’s face with her fingers. “Oliver,” she whispered. His eyelids fluttered open.

  “Mmf?” he said sleepily.

  “I want to come,” she said.

  He smiled and kissed her forehead.

  9

  Sara

  Friday night.

  The dishes were washed, the kitchen was empty, and Sara was finally alone.

  That sucked.

  Every Friday went like this. She’d wake up thinking of food. Dreaming of it, almost. She’d see recipes taking shape behind her eyelids, she’d taste the food on her tongue, sense the flavors mingling and transforming one another. For all her hard-eyed cynicism, Sara knew she was a romantic at heart. She wasn’t pretentious enough to call herself an “artist,” like some of her classmates at the Culinary Institute of America had done, but there was no denying that there was absolutely an element of art in what she did for her passion and profession. You could write out all the steps of a recipe in as much detail as you wanted, but every chef would make it differently. The steps might be the same, but the rhythm, the flow—that was unique, that was hers and hers alone.

  So when she opened her eyes every morning, she’d hear—or feel, taste, sense—that flow already building up inside of her. Her fingers would be tap-dancing on the bedsheets, eager to get started. She’d spent her whole life fighting the alarm clock—Sara Benson had never, ever been a morning person—but on the dawn of a Friday Night Feast, she inevitably popped out of bed with fire in her footsteps.

  The day would rage like that. Hotter and hotter the fire would grow. She began the mornings by prepping, maybe with a little foot tap here and there to the jazz music her mother liked to play on the inn’s record player. By noon she was humming. By the early evenings, she’d be singing under her breath, and by the time dinner drew within an hour, she was in full force, pirouetting from fridge to sink to cutting board and back, inhaling deeply the pearls of steam rising from pots boiling on the stove, dipping tasting spoons into this and that to get the balance just right. She loved it. She immersed herself in it.

  But then came the crash.

  After the crescendo of the dinner itself, after the compliments came pouring in like a tidal wave, there was only a bitter, empty silence waiting for her. It kind of took her by surprise every time, how bad she felt after another Friday Night Feast had ended. Like she’d hoped—without ever consciously realizing that she was hoping for it—that this time would be different. This night, maybe she would return to the kitchen once all the food was gone and the guests had left and she wouldn’t feel sad. This night, maybe the glow of pride would sustain her. Maybe the satisfaction of a job well done would carry her off to bed, happy and fulfilled.

  Tonight was not that night.

  Tonight, she felt hollow. The glow of compliments faded as quickly as it started. By the time she’d finished scrubbing the pans and loading the dishwasher to the bursting point, she felt worse than ever.

  She checked her phone. There was no text from Russell, as expected. There was, however, a text from Gavin.

  What’s up, sport?

  “Sport?” she scoffed out loud into the empty kitchen. “Does he think he’s my dad or something?” She ought to text him back, Not much, slugger. Or Just had dinner, champ. Maybe throw in a “bud” or “pal” or “kiddo.” She started to type it out, then stopped. Started again, then stopped once more. That was childish. She wasn’t going to do that. Gavin already occupied far too much real estate in her mind, and she was determined not to let him annex anymore. She’d spent nearly a year trying to evict him as it was. Somewhat successfully, she had to say. But the man had an infuriating knack for texting her just when she was starting to feel like she’d finally turned a page in her life and was ready for whatever was coming her way next. It had only happened sporadically over the last seven or eight months, but the timing was exquisite every time.

  They hadn’t talked much after the night he surprised her. Russell had come in, seen Sara and Gavin kissing, and then he was gone, taking her hopes of happiness with him. Gavin had tried to hang around, but Sara had been resolute in kicking him out. He’d hung around the island for another couple of days after that, cajoling her via text message to come see him, but she steadfastly refused again and again until he’d given up and gone back to New York. She hadn’t heard from Russell even once.

  Funny how that worked. It was always the guy you wanted so badly to hear from who stayed silent, while the one you couldn’t get away from fast enough kept blowing up your phone.

  Except, “funny” might not be the right word. “Depressing” would be a little more accurate. Sara didn’t really want to consider herself depressed, but she certainly was checking off a lot of the boxes. Outside of Friday Night Feasts, she wandered aimlessly around the island all day every day. She’d helped out at a few catering events with a friend’s family that she knew from back in high school, and she worked shifts at the Club Car whenever they had a chef call in sick. But when she wasn’t doing those things, she mostly just lounged at the beach and wondered what had happened to her life.

  Now, sitting in the empty kitchen, with soap suds still clinging to her forearms, she wondered the same thing. This wasn’t real life. It couldn’t be. This was more like a holding pattern, like purgatory. She was stuck waiting for what would happen next to her. Should she go
travel? Get a job? Start online dating? None of those options sounded appealing in the slightest. That was another reason she knew she was depressed: she hated everything she was doing, and yet she didn’t have the slightest desire to do anything different.

  “Hon?” interrupted a familiar voice. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, Mom,” Sara said, sighing and standing up straight. “I’m fine. Just finished up.”

  Mae put a pot of water on boil to make her regular nighttime tea. When it was going, she turned to look at Sara. “You look tired, darling,” she commented.

  “I just said I’m fine.”

  She reached out a hand towards Sara, saying, “Look at these bags under your eyes. You should get a good night’s sleep, maybe sleep in a little tomorrow, and—”

  Sara slapped her mother’s hands away. It was harder than she meant to, and the sound of skin hitting skin seemed to echo forever in the kitchen. Mae froze. Sara felt bad immediately. She might as well have slapped her mother in the face. She knew that she had gone too far, been too cruel, too cold. Her mom just pushed her buttons sometimes. She hated the way Mae Benson seemed to have this incredible gift for getting Sara to go from zero to one hundred at a moment’s notice. This was one of those moments.

  It was a shame, too, because they’d been getting along so well lately. Better than ever, actually. Throughout her whole life, Sara had relied on her father to be the mediator between her and her mother. Now, without Henry there to play the role of peacekeeper, she’d had to watch her words and actions more carefully. She owed her mom that much. The woman was a grieving widow, after all. The least she could do was be nice to her, especially since Mom had been so kind to Sara when she needed it.

  But with everything else swirling through her head, she just hadn’t wanted to be touched. So she’d slapped her hands away. That was wrong, though. It didn’t take a genius to look at Mom’s face and see that she was on the verge of tears.

  The two women stood there in silence for a few long moments. “Well, I’ll … I’m sorry, dear. Have a good night.” Mom turned off the burner and left the kitchen without her tea.

  Sara didn’t budge. She stared at the floor. A few drops of water had flown off her hands when she’d slapped at her mother’s touch. She looked at where they’d pooled on the tile like little translucent beads.

  Maybe the peace between them had been a sham. Just a truce in the aftermath of tragedy. Now that time had begun to take some of the sting out of Dad’s loss, maybe they’d just go back to where they had been before. Not enemies, not adversaries, but something like that. As diametrically opposed as a mother and her daughter could be.

  That sucked, too.

  Brent came by a little while later. Sara was seated at the kitchen counter nursing two fingers of bourbon poured in a glass tumbler. She was still staring at the floor like there might be answers written there.

  “Hey, Sara,” Brent mumbled. “I just came to get some stuff I left here. Mom around?”

  Sara shook her head.

  “You all right?”

  Sara shook her head.

  “Wanna talk about it?”

  Sara shook her head.

  “Wanna drink about it?”

  Sara looked up at that. Brent was standing in the kitchen doorway, wringing his hands in front of him. He looked exhausted. She wondered if he was sleeping as badly as she was these days.

  “Not me, I mean. Still sober. But I’ll come sit with you. If you want.”

  She thought about it for a second. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

  They got into his car and drove to the local bar down the street. It was quiet inside, not many patrons tonight. Still too early for tourists, so it was mostly just a handful of locals who wanted to get out of their house for a few hours and pretend to be functional members of society. Sara could certainly understand that desire.

  Brent ordered an iced tea and Sara got a shot of tequila and a beer. She regretted it as soon as she placed the order. Tequila was what Russell had ordered the night of their date, way back when. The memory made her nauseous. As soon as the bartender put the shot glass down in front of her, she threw it back and chased it with the beer. Better to get it over with sooner rather than later.

  Brent raised an eyebrow. “That bad, huh?”

  “Like I said, I don’t wanna talk about it.”

  “Fair enough. Me neither, I was just being nice. You’re always a crab about your problems.”

  Sara laughed cynically and elbowed him in the ribs. “Look who’s talking. Pot, kettle, black.”

  “It’s Sara’s world. We’re all just living in it.”

  “Whatever you say, li’l bro. What about your problems?”

  “Let’s just enjoy our drinks in silence, how ’bout that?”

  Sara groaned. “Not if it means I have to listen to this Bruce Springsteen garbage. You got a dollar? I’m gonna go change the jukebox.” Brent handed her a crumpled dollar bill. Sara took it and slid off her stool, headed for the back.

  This bar was shaped like a long rectangle, with the bar at one end and a bunch of booths lining the wall all the way down to where the jukebox sat at the other end. Sara sidled her way down, subtly eyeing each of the booth’s occupants as she passed. Mostly single older men, a few couples. A family. And then, in the second-to-last booth on the left-hand side …

  Sat Russell Bridges and a petite blonde.

  They were seated on the same side of the booth, laughing together, a few empty bottles of beer and upside-down tequila glasses in front of them.

  Tequila. Beer. Laughter. A pretty girl, who had her hand on Russell’s thigh. Sara’s throat tightened. She swallowed hard, turned around, and walked back to Brent before Russell could see her.

  When she got back to the stool, she slapped the dollar onto the bar in front of him. “Bartender?” she called. “Tequila, please. Make it a double.”

  10

  Brent

  His sister’s sour mood was somehow even more sour when she got back from the jukebox. “You all right?” he ventured. “Music didn’t change …”

  “Machine was broken. Keep the buck.” She threw back the tequila double she’d just ordered, then followed it with a very long chug of beer.

  “Uh, okay. You sure you’re all right?”

  Sara whirled to face him. “I thought I was very clear that I didn’t wanna talk about my problems.”

  He held his hands up. “You did. We’ll let it go.”

  They both turned to their drinks. Neither one said a word for a long time.

  Brent knew that he was doing the worst of all the Benson children. But he also knew that Sara wasn’t far behind him. Maybe it was kindred spirits recognizing each other, but it seemed to him like Sara had been seeking him out more and more over the last few months. Like tonight, she never wanted to talk about her issues or the things weighing on her heart. She mostly just wanted to wallow with him in silence.

  Fine. So be it. Talking about his problems wasn’t gonna solve them, so why would talking about Sara’s problems solve hers? As far as he was concerned, they could sit at this bar until closing time and not utter a peep. That was as good a form of therapy as anything else. Sometimes you just had to sit with something for a while until you found a way around or through it.

  Though, to be fair, he’d been sitting with guilt for his father’s death for a year to the day now, and he didn’t feel much nearer to a way around or through it than he had since the moment it had happened. Maybe his theory sucked after all. At least Sara could drink to ignore the things troubling her. He didn’t even have the luxury of masking his problems with alcohol.

  Brent felt a hand clap on his shoulder. He looked up to see the grinning face of the one and only Marshall Cook. He just sighed.

  “There he is!” Marshall declared loudly. He’d always been loud, even when they were little first-graders playing dodgeball on the playground at Nantucket Elementary School, where they’d met. “The man, the myth, the legend. B
rent ‘Triple B’ Benson!” Marshall looked around like he expected the bar to burst into a standing ovation. Brent wouldn’t have been too surprised if they had. Marshall had a way of connecting with people immediately. He just had this natural warmth to him. It made you want to be his best friend from the second you met him. It was a big part of the reason why he was so good at his job.

  “Just what we needed,” Brent remarked to Sara. “The Marshall Show.”

  “Now now, that’s no way to greet your best friend,” Marshall tutted. He pulled up the barstool next to Brent. Leaning over, he greeted Sara. “Hello, Dinosara.”

  “Not the night, Marsh-head.”

  Brent just shook his head and laughed. Marshall gave everybody he encountered a nickname. Sara was Dinosara, Eliza was Frizzy Lizzy, Holly was Showstopper. “Holly” had become “Hollywood,” which eventually evolved into “Showstopper” … Brent had always rolled his eyes at that one. Brent wasn’t aware of a single living person who actually liked the nickname Marshall bestowed on them, but that didn’t stop the guy from doing it anyway. And once you received a Marshall Cook nickname, you were stuck with it for life. Like, for instance, his nickname for Brent—“Triple B”—which made no sense, because Brent’s middle initial was E. for Evan. Logic wasn’t necessarily Marshall’s strong suit, though. At least Triple B was better than Booger, which was what Marshall called their mutual friend Freddy Lopez for reasons Brent thought were best left unexplored.

  Marshall looked back and forth between Brent and Sara. “Boy, you two are a real fun time tonight. What’s got y’all down?”

  “‘Y’all’? Where’d you stumble across the redneck accent, sport? Someone’s been watching too many cowboy movies.” Sara’s tone was sharper than necessary, but Marshall didn’t seem to notice or care.

  “Just embracing my family heritage.” He shrugged.