Darcy hadn’t come out here intending to eavesdrop, but Autumn and Otto seemed to be standing right next to the hedge. She wondered where Boyz was. In Boston?
As if her question had wafted into Autumn’s mind, Autumn said, “Boyz’s in the city now. He’ll take a week of vacation in August, but for July, he gets here only on the weekends.”
“How old is your daughter?”
“Willow is fourteen. An extremely young and naïve fourteen and very unhappy with me because I limit the amount of screen time she gets.”
“You are wise,” Otto said warmly. “My sons do not have cellphones or computers yet. The electronics can become an addiction.”
“True. It’s hard, raising a child these days. Fortunately, Willow’s addiction is books.” Autumn waited a beat, then added with a self-deprecating laugh, “I’ll admit, I get lonely here, especially in the evenings when Boyz is in Boston and Willow’s shut away in her room reading.” Her voice dripped with honey.
Hey! Was Autumn doing what Darcy thought she was doing? Was she coming on to him?
A wicked part of Darcy’s psyche hoped so. That would serve Boyz right! But then she thought of Susan Brueckner. She seemed to be having a hard enough time already.
“We should get together some night,” Otto suggested, “for a nightcap. I could drop by—”
“Oh, there you are!” A woman’s voice floated on the air. Susan. “I’ve been looking everywhere.”
“The boys are playing in our neighbor’s yard,” Otto said. With the thwap of the badminton birdie and the squeals from the boys making it all seem so innocent, he continued: “Autumn, this is my wife, Susan.”
The two women greeted each other, and Autumn invited the Brueckners up to her porch for a drink. But Alfred fell off the trampoline and hit his head and cried and the adults rushed to see if he was okay—he was—and Susan announced it was bath and story time. “Goodbye, goodbye,” they called out.
Suddenly, Darcy was surrounded by silence. She could hear voices from the open windows, but no words. With the people gone, the birds cautiously flocked back to the feeder hanging from a low branch on her maple tree. She stayed very still so the birds didn’t seem to know she was there. It was better in the early morning, when Darcy could see their colors, the blush of rose or lemon against the finches’ chests. She simply sat and watched the darkness deepen. The flowers lost their colors, the grass grew dark. She liked seeing the glow of lights from other houses, beacons in the night. She wondered where Mimi was right now. Did she go to bed early, or was she one of the older people who couldn’t sleep much? She wondered where Clive was now. Their kitchen light was on, and one light on the second floor….
Good grief, she was becoming one of those weirdos living her life vicariously through her neighbors. No, Darcy argued with herself, she was not! It wasn’t her fault if people stood next to the hedge to talk!
Gradually, her mind stilled, her breathing slowed, and she relaxed against the soft cushions of the lounge. The birds were quiet. Above her, the Big Dipper twinkled against the vast black sky. Something rustled in a bush—a bird? She hoped it wasn’t a damn rabbit—they ate the leaves off her hostas. This was what refreshed Darcy after a long day being with people, the complete quiet, the sense of living for a few minutes within a hushed but living world. Gradually her eyes adjusted to the darkness and her garden became different shades of gray. Some night she wanted to sleep out here. She was amused by the thought of catching her garden at three in the morning—would tiny velvet voles be skittering through the grass? She’d seen them once, when she rose early. It was often misty in the early mornings before the sun came up over the horizon. Darcy wasn’t aware of thinking any kind of intelligent thoughts when she sat out here, but in a way it was her form of meditation.
And she felt less lonely.
She was thirty. She had lived on the island, in her grandmother’s big house, for three years. Gradually, she’d developed a group of friends, and Jordan had become an intimate friend, her best friend. She’d gone out a few times with island guys and a few times with summer guys, but Nash was the first man to make her wake up and smell the coffee since her divorce from Boyz.
Boyz was charismatic and dramatic, and it had taken her a couple of years to realize he needed to be attractive to other people; it was part of his success in business, and more than that, it was a kind of drug for him. Giving people a look, a smile, a nod, and watching them be swept as if by magic into his web brought Boyz an almost addictive pleasure.