“It was nice to meet you, Angie’s mother,” JP said.
“And you…!” Belinda said. Her voice dropped off a cliff, and it became clear that she had already forgotten his name. She disappeared inside, and JP got back to work.
Angie sat behind him on the top step and gazed at the water.
“How are you doing?” JP asked.
She was about to say “fine,” but then she thought, Why lie?
“Been better,” she said.
He hammered the new board into place with such force that the vibration traveled up Angie’s butt and jarred her teeth.
“I’m almost done here,” JP said. “Then, if you’re free, I can take you on a little field trip.”
“Field trip?” Angie said.
“It’ll get your mind off things,” JP said.
“I thought you had ranger duties,” Angie said.
“I do,” JP said. “But this will only take an hour or so, then I’ll bring you back.”
“But no people?” Angie said. “I can’t do people.”
“No people,” JP said.
As soon as they climbed in the Jeep and backed out of the driveway, Angie felt the heady rush of escape.
“I’m sorry about my mother,” she said.
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“We don’t get along,” Angie said. “I was much closer with my father.”
“He used to talk about you all the time,” JP said.
“Did he?” Angie said. She wanted to ask what Deacon had said, but the question got caught in her throat, and before she knew it, she was crying again. She thought it might be embarrassing to break down in front of a near perfect stranger, but she was beyond caring what anyone thought of her. There had been only two people who mattered—Deacon and Joel—and both of them had left her.
“Hey,” JP said. He reached into the backseat of the Jeep and pulled out a clean, folded white T-shirt. The front of the shirt had a black oval with the word BOX written inside. Angie stared at it through her tears.
“The Box,” she said. It was the greatest dive bar in the civilized world, and yet all she could think of were the rainy days that she and Deacon had spent in the dark grottiness shooting pool, drinking really cold beer, and playing songs on the jukebox. As with everything else on Nantucket, there was tradition: Angie always started out playing “Beast of Burden,” and then Deacon played “Fool in the Rain.”
“Yep,” JP said. “You can feel free to blow your nose on the shirt.”
She did just that. The T-shirt was soft and smelled like pine soap.
She said, “I feel bad defiling your T-shirt.”
JP said, “I feel bad I don’t have any tissues. I can wash the shirt.” He took a right onto the Wauwinet Road, and Angie rested her head against the seat and tried to drink in the scenery. The land was a little lusher here than elsewhere on the island, with tall deciduous trees casting leafy shadows over the road. They passed the artist colony’s barn, they passed the sailboats bobbing in Polpis Harbor, they passed Squam Swamp, home to the three-mile nature trail where Angie used to hunt for salamanders and frogs when she was young. Eventually, they cruised past the gatehouse operated by the Trustees of Reservations. JP waved at the woman manning the gatehouse and called out, “Hey, Maggie!”
JP shifted the Jeep into four-wheel drive as they headed out the sandy road that led to Coatue and Great Point. The landscape changed to wild, windswept beach and eel grass, with Coskata Pond on the left and the forever-blue ocean on the right.
“I forgot how unspoiled this place is,” Angie said.
“You live in Manhattan?” JP said.
She nodded. “I have a studio on East Seventy-Third Street. Technically, that’s the Upper East Side, but my apartment is just a square room with a bed and a sofa. My mother threatened to send her decorator, but I managed to hold her off.”
“Good for you,” JP said. “I’m not much of a city person, as I told your mom.”
“It’s about as different from this as a place can get,” Angie said.
JP pulled up to a small, shingled cottage with a covered porch. “Here it is,” he said. “My own square room with a bed and a sofa. Minus the sofa.”
“Yeah, but look at your view,” Angie said. The cottage was set in a sandy clearing that overlooked the slender, five-pointed arm of sand that was Coatue and the placid blue oval of Coskata Pond, which was ringed by tall grass and cattails. In the distance, Angie could pick out the Nantucket skyline—the church steeples and the mansions of Orange Street.
JP hopped out, and Angie followed him, albeit somewhat reluctantly. She wasn’t sure what kind of field trip this was supposed to be. Angie wondered if JP was just one more typical male, preying on a girl who had absolutely no defenses left. He noticed she was lagging behind.
“This isn’t what you’re thinking,” he said. “I swear. We don’t even have to go inside.”
“I’ll take a peek,” she said. She climbed the step to the porch, where JP kept a clam rake leaning against the railing and a wire clam basket filled with shoes—work boots, flip-flops, Chuck Taylors. A pair of board shorts flapped on a makeshift clothesline.
“Would you like some sun tea?” JP asked. “Brewed fresh this morning.”
“You brewed tea and you came out to our house to fix the porch?”
“Sun rises at quarter to five,” JP said. “And a dutiful ranger rises with it. I even had time to cast my fly rod a few times in the pond.” JP stepped into the cottage, and Angie poked her head in. Bed, as promised, table stacked with math textbooks and topped with a copy of Peterson’s Field Guide to Eastern Birds, and a galley kitchen. There was a cast-iron frying pan on the stove and row of mason jars on a shelf over the sink. JP took two glass jars, filled them with ice, then poured in the sun tea and added a fat wedge of lime to each. He noticed Angie checking the place out.
“It’s primitive,” he said. “Sort of like summer camp. There’s a half bath behind that door and an outdoor shower off the back.”
“What else do you need?” Angie asked. She had always envisioned Joel and Dory’s house on Rosebrook Road in New Canaan as grandiose—with a circular driveway and white pillars and a swimming pool out back with a waterfall. Joel and Dory’s bedroom would have a pencil-post bed, she supposed, that was sheathed in ten-thousand-thread-count linens; there would be a sunken Jacuzzi tub in the master bath. Something had to be keeping Joel there, something that was more desirable than Angie’s body and her love.
JP was patiently holding out her jar of tea. She realized she’d gotten lost for a second. She took the jar, and together they stepped out onto the porch.
“I like your father’s house,” JP said. “It’s a real old-school summer cottage. My grandparents’ house was like that. They lived at the end of Massasoit Bridge Road, way out in the hinterlands of Madaket. When I was a kid, I would ride my bike out there in the afternoons to swim in the waves and then play a few hands of euchre. My grandmother used to make an appetizer called the special. It was bacon wrapped around a Club cracker and put under the broiler until it was crispy golden brown. It sounds crazy, but it’s, like, the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten.”
Angie raised her eyebrows. If she ever cooked for JP, she could do better than bacon wrapped around a Club cracker. But maybe not; he looked pretty keen.
“My father’s house is…” Angie trailed off. “Well, Deacon always said it was our home away from home, but I just think of it as home. You know? It’s the one place I feel at peace.”
JP smiled wistfully. “I do know.”
They stood together on the front porch in silence for a second, Angie inhaling the scenery, gorging on it. This insane beauty, which only yesterday would have brought her comfort, now caused pain—because she was going to lose it.
JP said, “Anyway, what I want to show you is out back. Come on.” They walked around the cottage, past the outdoor shower, to a door that revealed a storage closet.
He pulled out a dense foam cube with a picture of a deer painted on it. Then he picked up a black case that looked as if it might hold an electric bass.