Secrets in Summer(6)

“My dear,” Penelope said. “Welcome. I do believe you have come home.”

For the first time in her life, Darcy felt warm right down to the bottom of her soul.

After an obligatory hour of drinking tea and talking, Lala went back to Boston. After Lala left, Darcy’s grandmother took her upstairs to the room that was to be her very own. It had a brass bed with an antique quilt and sheets smelling of lavender. It had a cherrywood desk placed beneath the window that looked over the wide backyard where hedges surrounded Penelope’s garden. It had a large mahogany dresser and an amazing piece of furniture like a table with slender drawers and a stool with a needlepoint cushion and mirrors that could be folded in so that Darcy could see how she looked from both sides. Penelope called it a vanity.

The room had a bookcase.

It had books.

“I don’t know what you’ve read,” Penelope told Darcy. “Probably you’ve read all these books, but I thought I’d put them out just in case.”

Darcy knelt before the bookcase and carefully pulled out each volume. Little Women. Jane Eyre. Nancy Drew. The Secret Garden. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. She could live in this room forever!

Penelope took Darcy out the back door to introduce Darcy to Penelope’s own secret garden. She held her hand, urging Darcy to sniff the blossoms and touch the silky petals and learn the name of each flower. She took her around the small, picture-book town to introduce her to the librarians—for Penelope was a steadfast patron—and the shopkeepers. She drove Darcy to the grocery store and pushed a cart down the aisle, asking what Darcy liked for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Darcy hardly knew what to say. She’d never been asked that before.

Little by little, Darcy grew to feel at home in her grandmother’s house. When September came, she started school, and her life fell into a regular pattern. Every afternoon, she returned to the place she had left that morning. She really was at home.

Darcy’s father never came to visit, and Darcy didn’t miss him—how could she miss someone she’d seldom seen? Lala visited once a month, when the weather permitted an easy passage across Nantucket Sound. After she married her architect—without inviting Darcy to the service—she came less often.

It didn’t matter. Darcy’s grandmother invited her to call her Penny, and for her first Christmas on the island, Penny surprised Darcy with a kitten. Nickel, Darcy named her, an odd name for a cat, but a kind of homage to Penny.

For the first few years of her life on the island, Darcy spent a good deal of time with her grandmother. She helped Penny tend her garden. She joined her for long walks on the many beaches or in the extensive inland moors. She accompanied Penny to the library, the local bookstores, and the island’s concerts.

When Darcy made friends at school, she was allowed to bring them over to play in her room, as long as they played quietly, or even in the garden, as long as they stayed away from the flowers. Half of Darcy’s friends had divorced parents with lives much more intrusive and hostile than Darcy’s, which helped Darcy feel better.

Eventually, Darcy’s father married a woman named Jean and moved to Florida. Lala divorced her architect and moved to Santa Fe. When Darcy first saw a picture of the birth of Venus she nodded her head in recognition. That was how she felt she’d arrived on this earth: alone, parentless, in the middle of the sea of life, with all the stability of a shell floating on a rocky sea. But just as there was a nurturing figure in the painting, her grandmother was there to receive her, to welcome her to the security of the island.

When Darcy was around sixteen, things changed. Darcy changed. Her hormones kicked in, her figure hour-glassed, and she wanted to flirt with boys. She wanted to kiss boys. She wanted…what most teenagers wanted.

While Darcy was getting faster, her grandmother was getting slower and a touch crabby and more of a disciplinarian. She gave Darcy a curfew. She took down the names of Darcy’s friends—in case, she explained, something happened to her and she needed to get in touch with her immediately. Darcy knew she was only pretending to be worried that she might fall and hurt herself and the ambulance would come, and she’d be whisked to the hospital, where the nurse would ask for her next of kin, and she’d gasp out, “My granddaughter, Darcy, but I don’t know where she is!” She thought Penny was truly anxious for herself. After all, she was seventy-six, edging toward old age. But she was also energetic and strong and she could still work like a longshoreman in her garden. The truth was, Darcy guessed, that Penny wanted to keep tabs on Darcy.

Secretly, Darcy was grateful for that. It made her feel safe to have Penny watching over her. Possibly it prevented Darcy from doing anything really stupid. She waited until she was older to do that.