Angie blinked tears. “He never told me that story,” Angie said. “He never talked about when I was a baby.”
“He said that every single day after that, it got better. He said when you were five or six, he taught you how to crack an egg. And you loved it so much that you insisted on choosing the egg from the carton, and you would say, ‘I do it myself.’”
Angie laughed and wiped her eyes. She could see young Deacon so clearly in that instant: his dark, shaggy hair, the exact green-brown of his eyes, his three-day scruff, his inked-up arms, his smile, with the one tooth that overlapped his front tooth just a little. She could hear his voice: Okay, Buddy. Do it yourself.
JP said, “And then, by the time you grew up, he said, the two of you were best friends. He said, ‘I would never have guessed that my daughter could be a friend of mine. But, man, there were some days when she was the only person I could handle. She was never too much. She was always just right. My girl Angie has been the finest surprise of my life.’”
Angie blew her nose into the Box shirt again just as JP pulled off the beach, onto the sand road that would take them back to the gatehouse and civilization. She never wanted this ride to end. She could spend all eternity driving around with JP, listening to the things Deacon had said about her.
“He told you a lot,” Angie said.
“It was relevant at the time,” JP said. “In this particular conversation, my girlfriend was pregnant. And your dad was talking about what it was like to have kids.”
“Oh,” Angie said.
“Molly miscarried,” JP said. “And then, shortly after that, she broke up with me.” He laughed a little, in a fairly good-natured way, considering. “She dates my friend Tommy A. now, which is another reason I didn’t want him to fix the board of your porch.”
“Oh,” Angie said. She didn’t know what else to say.
“Now I have to ask you something,” JP said. “You said before that you wanted Joel to call. Who’s Joel?”
Angie looked out her side window as they passed the Wauwinet. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She had only seen her hair look this frizzed and crazy when she got off the Cyclone on Coney Island. Her cheeks were pink, which either meant she had gotten some sun this morning or she was embarrassed. “Joel Tersigni.” God, it felt good to say his name. “He’s this man I’ve been seeing, a married man, who was going to leave his wife for me, he said. But something backfired, or he changed his mind. Anyway, Joel is gone. He bailed out at the exact moment I needed him most.”
JP took a long, steady look at Angie. “Well,” he said, “Joel is a fool.”
She felt herself blushing. “And, listen, that thing I said about the house…”
“I know about the house,” JP said.
“You do?”
“Deacon told me,” JP said. “When he came up here the last time… he wanted to pack some things up. The clamshell his dad gave him, and your dollhouse. I was going to help him after we went fishing.”
“Oh God,” Angie said. The clamshell, the dollhouse, that stupid mirror in Hayes’s room, the old map of Nantucket, the wooden cutting board with the half-moon burn where they always used to slice Bartlett’s Farm tomatoes, the black, speckled enamel lobster pot, the picture frame made from scallop shells that she and Scarlett had hot-glued one rainy afternoon, the deck of naked-lady cards in the side-table drawer under the ugly lamp—Deacon would have wanted all of that. Most of the furniture had originally belonged to the Innsleys, and none of it was special, but there was something about the atmosphere of that house that Deacon would have wanted to bottle up and take with him. The way it smelled of sunblock and wet towels, the sounds it made when it settled at night, the view of the lighthouse as the sun was coming up. “My father didn’t really die of a heart attack, did he? He died of heartbreak.”
“Probably something like that,” JP said.
They drove down the road in silence until JP turned left onto Hoicks Hollow Road, and Angie felt their time together coming to a close. “Thank you for the field trip,” she said.
“You don’t have to thank me,” he said.
“Target practice was probably exactly what I needed,” she said.
“I could come pick you up tomorrow morning, and we could try again?”
Angie was alarmed by how quickly her spirits rose at the invitation. She wasn’t doing the predictable thing and falling for the very next man who showed her any kindness, was she?
“I’d like that,” she said.
JP said, “Great, then, it’s a date. I’ll come get you at eight thirty?”
Date, Angie thought.
Angie was so distracted that it took her a moment to notice the woman in the straw hat strolling down the side of the road.
“Oh God,” she said. “There’s my mother.”
JP pulled up to Belinda. “Can we give you a lift back to the house?”
“No, I’m fine, I’ll walk,” Belinda said. She looked upset. If Angie wasn’t mistaken, there were tears in her voice.
“Mom, what’s wrong?” Angie asked.
“Nothing,” Belinda said. “You kids run along. I’ll see you at home.”
“You’re sure?” Angie said.
Belinda nodded and waved them off.
JP pulled into the driveway. “Looks like you have visitors,” he said.
“What?” Angie looked up to see a strange black car in the driveway. Her first thought was that they had been discovered by the paparazzi, which might explain why Belinda was upset and meandering along the road like a hobo. But the car didn’t seem to be holding a ragtag band of scrappy tabloid photographers. It looked more dignified than that. Maybe it was the president, come to pay his respects? Deacon had cooked for both Bush and Obama. Or was it some elder statesman of the culinary world—Jacques Pépin, perhaps?
The driver of the black car stepped out wearing a black suit. He opened the back door, and Angie watched one long, shapely leg emerge, then another.
She gasped. Scarlett was here.
BELINDA
On Sunday morning, Belinda put on her wide-brimmed straw hat and her Tom Ford sunglasses, and she slipped her feet into Laurel’s truly hideous turquoise flip-flops. She set off down the road in search of cell phone service so that she could call Bob.
She opted to wander toward town, even though the view in the other direction was more picturesque. She needed bars on her phone, not views of the rolling, green golf course and the peppermint-stick lighthouse. She trudged down the road, feeling every pebble and shell beneath the thin foam sole of Laurel’s pathetic shoes.
Belinda’s mind was swarmed with problematic topics, so many that she didn’t know where to start.
Number one: the house. Deacon had gotten himself into a hole he couldn’t climb out of, and they were going to lose the house. No one had come right out and asked her, but obviously they were all thinking the same thing: Belinda should offer to save the house. Angie loved that house, possibly more than everyone else put together. Belinda should save it and restore herself to her daughter’s good graces. But Belinda had a big, fat issue with paying for Laurel’s portion—and never mind that she would not for any reason pay Scarlett’s portion. But Belinda couldn’t leave Angie without a house on Nantucket, so she had to come up with a plan.
Number two: Buck. Belinda had all but forced herself on Buck the day before. Really, what was wrong with her? She had noticed Buck looking at her, and she’d thought, Why not? Her self-esteem needed a boost. It was arduous being in the house with Laurel assuming the throne, even though Laurel was the empress of a nation overthrown long ago. But then again, so was Belinda. Laurel had made the strategic move of arriving first. She had assigned Belinda the least desirable bedroom—saving the “good” guest room for someone who wasn’t even coming! Then she had said that Belinda was beneath her consideration. Well, Belinda wouldn’t stay beneath her consideration now that she’d been intimate with Laurel’s potential boyfriend. Belinda knew she was acting like a vindictive sorority girl, an even worse version than she’d played in her second movie role, Taffy in Sophomore Slump. Belinda had almost told Laurel all about it; she had wanted to prove that she wasn’t so irrelevant after all. But, thank God, the matter dropped. Buck would get over it. Belinda needed to start setting a better example for…