Secrets in Summer(46)

But what business was it of hers? Plus, why would she even suspect they were cheating? Maybe he was only going to show her the house and she was only going to tour it.

Darcy chuckled softly, remembering the summer a group of parents rented the house next door for five of their college-age sons. The boys went to the beach all day and partied all night. Darcy had never called the cops even as the summer deepened and the parties grew louder. She could have; a town regulation required all loud noise and music to stop at eleven o’clock. But she had kind of enjoyed the boys. Kind of envied their carefree lives, their maniacal laughter, their freedom to revel in the summer. Her only defensive action had been to walk around her garden in the morning, pick up the beer bottles and cans that had been tossed over the hedge, and rather gleefully throw them back in the boys’ yard.

Why had she changed? Why did she care if Otto Brueckner slept with Autumn or if Willow had sex with Logan?

Well…Nash was a new element. Lust was easy; lust felt good, it made her blood pound and her worries disappear behind a fog of desire. But love…she wasn’t sure she had a handle on love yet, not even after having been married.

Darcy knew Lala and Lala’s family had loved her when she was a baby and a little girl. She had photo albums; she had memories. But Lala wasn’t about love, not really, she was about being pursued, being caught, being adored. She was like a seductress with an extremely short attention span. Lala wanted nothing as confining as marriage. She wanted to be gorgeous and naughty and desired. She reveled in the gifts men gave her, the trips she enjoyed with them, the flowers and phone calls and nights out. The seduction, the lure, the intrigue, the catch.

As a young girl, Darcy had been mesmerized by her fabulous mother. She had thrilled to the moment the door opened and Lala swept in, carrying with her a flotilla of fragrance that filled every corner of the room and lasted long after Lala had left.

“Darling child, Mama’s beauty, I’ll see you in the morning. Sweet dreams.” Lala would kiss Darcy’s forehead and drift away.

That bright, twinkling, precarious appearance, that sparkle, had been what Darcy thought was love. No wonder she had married the sparkling Boyz. He and his family were an entire chandelier of sparkle.

Penny had loved Darcy, too, in her own calm, reliable way. She had made Darcy feel safe and cared for.

So maybe that was what love was, part sparkle, part safety.

Autumn, Boyz’s new wife, was definitely sparkle. Who knew what kind of unspoken agreement she had with her husband about fidelity? Certainly fidelity had not been included in Boyz’s definition of marriage with Darcy. But she’d bet it was part of Susan Brueckner’s understanding of marriage. Or maybe not. What did she know? Maybe Susan was meeting her boy toy in Boston while her sons played with their cousins.

Or maybe the Brueckner marriage was one of convenience. This was not the Jane Austen age, yet she knew people who had married for reasons other than true love, whatever that was. She’d never been a romantic fool. She’d dated in high school, but she’d known what the guys really wanted, and she’d remained a virgin. A skeptical virgin. In college she’d finally had sex, and for a year a guy named Sid Byrd with a Lenin-like mustache and beard had sworn everlasting adoration, but she’d grown tired of his seriousness, his dramatic fits of jealousy, his vague, ambitious dreams to save the world. He had been handsome, kind, intelligent, faithful, and good. But he hadn’t been fun, and she knew she was shallow to think less of him for that, but she broke up with him and dated casually for the rest of her college life.

Darcy had often wondered why someone as extroverted and ambitious as Boyz would choose to marry someone as quiet and bookish as Darcy. There was the chemistry, of course, but Boyz had enough electricity for both of them, and Darcy was infatuated and grateful. Then, not long after their marriage, they went to Martha’s Vineyard so Boyz could list a new house that a friend of his from college wanted to sell. Darcy had come along for the pleasure of being with him, seeing the Vineyard, enjoying lunch at the Black Dog. Boyz was elated about this new house. It was gorgeous, and it was expensive. His father was, naturally, the king of their real estate agency, with the right to skim the cream of the real estate market for his own, leaving the less-esteemed properties for his son and daughters. Over a lunch of calamari, Boyz excitedly confided to Darcy how he was going to make the Vineyard market his own.

“And when your grandmother dies, I’ll be the one to handle the sale of her house. That will provide me a head start for a branch of Szwedas Real Estate on Nantucket.”