She does need the drugs.
Norah comes bouncing out of the house wearing… here, Jennifer blinks. Norah is wearing a Lilly Pulitzer shift dress. It’s light pink patterned with hot-pink flamingos playing croquet and it has white curlicue appliqué down the front that looks like icing on a birthday cake. The neckline is high enough to cover Norah’s terrifying python tattoo. Norah’s hair is in a French braid and she’s wearing pearl earrings and white Jack Rogers sandals. The transformation of Norah Vale is complete; she is indistinguishable from any of the women who lean over the railing of the party yacht Belle holding gin and tonics.
“You look great,” Jennifer says.
“Thanks,” Norah says. She gives Jennifer a shy smile. “I’m having lunch with one of my clients at the Wauwinet today.”
This statement pulls Jennifer up short. The Wauwinet! Even Jennifer and Patrick don’t splurge on lunch at the Wauwinet. And when Norah says “client,” she means… another woman she sells drugs to, right? It seems wrong somehow. Jennifer is an interior designer; she has clients. Then Jennifer realizes that, in some ways, she and Norah are doing the same thing. Jennifer is selling women Persian rugs and nautical prints, antique chests and silk drapes—things they don’t need but that they buy for the high, she supposes, the high of owning beautiful things.
Jennifer can’t dwell on this. She is not a drug dealer. And yet, any favorable comparison of herself with Norah fails at this moment. Norah looks successful and put together, whereas Jennifer looks like a sweating, jonesing junkie.
She pulls a wad of cash out of the back zipped pocket of her Lululemon shorts. “Here you go.”
Norah hands over the pills, this time in a jar of multivitamins. Smart girl; she knows Jennifer is going back to the inn.
Jennifer takes the pills and feels a wave of relief and elation and all-is-right-with-the-world. Sixty pills.
Norah’s eyes float over Jennifer’s right shoulder and before Jennifer can do anything more than blink, Norah turns and runs.
Jennifer swivels her head to see Kevin’s white pickup pull into the driveway.
Did he follow her here? Jennifer wonders. Instinctively, she tucks the vitamins into her waistband. She will come up with an explanation.
Kevin gets out of the pickup. And then… so does Patrick.
No, Jennifer thinks. No, this isn’t happening.
“Jennifer?” Patrick says.
AVA
She and Potter dance in the front row of the Bar until closing. The band plays “Add It Up” by the Violent Femmes as their last song but then the crowd chants, “One more song! One more song!” and the band obliges and plays “Just Like Heaven” by the Cure. Potter spins Ava around and dips her and she is as carefree as she has ever been in her life.
“Let’s go find your brother,” Potter says.
“I’m sure he left,” Ava says. Patrick is the responsible stick-in-the-mud of the family. There’s no way he’s still hanging around the Bar at one thirty in the morning.
As Ava and Potter weave and wend their way through the crowd, someone grabs Ava’s arm.
It’s Scott.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” he asks.
Before Ava can answer, Potter steps in. “Hi there,” he says. “I’m Potter Lyons. Is there a problem?”
“No problem,” Scott says. His lip curls in a way that makes him seem surly. What is wrong with him? Ava is pretty sure Scott has never struck anyone as surly in all his life. “I’d just like a chance to talk to my girlfriend, if you don’t mind.”
Potter holds his palms up and takes a step back.
Ava says, “Your girlfriend? I am no longer your girlfriend, Scott. Your girlfriend is at home, pregnant with your child.”
“Whoa,” Potter says. “I’ll be at the bar. I’m going to grab a glass of water. Come find me.”
He disappears and Ava glances up at Scott. He still doesn’t look like himself. “I can’t do this right now, Scott, I’m sorry.”
“I need to talk to you. I need to tell you something. Something bad.”
“Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it,” Ava says.
“But—” Scott says.
Ava raises a hand like a traffic cop. “This is what cold turkey feels like, Scott. Cold.”
At the bar, Ava finds Potter with Jennifer. Potter hands Ava an ice water.
“You saw Scott?” Jennifer says. “What did he want?”
What did Scott—or Nathaniel, for that matter—always want? They wanted to make Ava’s life tumultuous and confusing. It was as if they waited until Ava was relaxed and actually enjoying herself before they pitched the next curveball.
Ava shrugs. Jennifer signals the bartender. “Two shots of Fireball,” she says.
Patrick offers to drive Ava and Potter home, but Ava says no, thank you. She and Potter will take a cab.
When they are finally alone in the quiet of the backseat, Ava says, “Thank you for a truly wonderful evening. It’s not everybody who could attend an intimate family wedding for a very famous woman at the last minute and rock it like you did.”
Potter laughs. “The pleasure was mine, I assure you.”
The taxi delivers them to Old North Wharf. Potter is staying on his sailboat, Cassandra.
“Would you like a tour?” Potter asks. “Or a nightcap?”
She’s not surprised he’s asking; it’s the natural way to end their night—with some good old-fashioned making out that may or may not turn into rollicking boat sex.
But Ava can’t do it.
She reaches her arms around Potter’s neck and gives him a kiss on each cheek. She still thinks he’s too handsome for her, and now she knows he’s also socially savvy, oodles of fun, and a better dancer than Nathaniel and Scott put together. But she doesn’t have the energy for another relationship or even a one-night stand. The run-in with Scott has left her addled.
“Thank you for tonight,” she says.
He nods slowly, understanding her. “How will you get home?”
“I’ll walk,” she says. “I need to clear my head.”
He holds her face and gives her one soft but insistent kiss on the lips, and immediately Ava remembers the desire she felt when he kissed her on the Sunfish in Anguilla. It is almost enough to flip her.
“Text me when you get home so I know you’re safe,” he says. “And Ava?”
She raises her eyebrows. Those blue eyes. Whoa.
“Come see me in New York.”
MARGARET
She has asked for one thing, discreetly, as a wedding present from her three children, and that is a lunch at Something Natural, just the four of them. She thinks about how selfish it is for her to request this—no Drake, no Isabelle, no Jennifer, no grandchildren, no Kelley or Mitzi—but Margaret doesn’t care. She wants an hour eating sandwiches in the sunshine with her children.
Not on Sunday, when everyone will be hungover and exhausted. Margaret wants to spend Sunday with Drake alone. But on Monday, at noon.
Margaret bikes to Something Natural all the way from her and Drake’s hideaway in Sconset. She wears a hat and sunglasses so as not to be recognized.
Ava is already waiting for Margaret, sitting on the steps in front of the sandwich shop.
“I got us seats,” she says, pointing to a picnic table tucked in the back corner of the property, partially under the shade of a giant elm.
“Shall we wait for the boys before we order?” Margaret asks. She can’t believe how excited she is about this lunch date. It’s the most difficult for Kevin, she knows, who has had to leave Quinns’ on the Beach in the hands of his newly appointed assistant manager, Devon, two of the past three days. Both he and Ava will head to Quinns’ as soon as lunch is over.
“They were right behind me,” Ava says.
And sure enough, a few seconds later, Kevin’s white pickup pulls into the already congested driveway; he squeezes the truck into a spot between two Range Rovers, and then both he and Patrick shimmy out through their open windows.
Patrick has lost a lot of weight in jail; Margaret noticed that on Saturday.
They all get in line and order their sandwiches. Margaret gets the Sheila’s Favorite on oatmeal; Ava gets avocado, cheddar, and chutney; Kevin orders smoked turkey, Swiss, and tomato on herb bread; Patrick gets the lobster salad on pumpernickel.