The tears were coming now, hot and fast, burning her face as she asked the empty kitchen if anyone would ever love her, really love her. She could not stand it if all she meant to Nash was an easy lay, because—
Oh, holy hell, because she was in love with Nash. Damn.
Her hurricane of tears and rage and need slowly calmed, like a storm over the ocean, leaving her sitting on a chair in the kitchen, wiping her nose with a paper napkin because she was too exhausted to get up and go to the box of tissues across the room. It was all she could do to drag herself into the bedroom. She dropped onto the bed like a fallen tree and blanked out into a generous oblivion.
—
When she saw herself Monday morning, she shook her head at her reflection in the mirror. She was less bad-tempered now, but still filled with the heavy ache of sadness. No way would she share this pathetic creature with anyone on the island. This was her day off, so she showered, dressed, and caught a plane to the Cape. She spent the day shopping and returned home that evening with bags of new clothes and costume jewelry. If she was doomed to a life alone, she’d look good while she lived it.
—
Tuesday, the library was crowded, partly because it was so hot and muggy outside, and air-conditioned inside. That night, Nash called.
“Good day?” he asked.
As if everything between them was normal. As if she hadn’t rushed out of his truck on Sunday. As if buying a house on the island—buying a house! An enormous thing to do! Houses here, even shacks, were crazy expensive—as if buying a house was so insignificant he didn’t think to mention it to Darcy.
Or he was trying to keep it a secret from Darcy.
“Good day,” she said briefly. “You?”
“Miserable,” he said.
Darcy swallowed. Was he miserable because she’d been abrupt with him?
“I’ve heard for years that Nantucket’s summers were cooler than the mainland’s, but today’s heat and humidity were brutal. It saps all our energy, you know, this kind of muggy heat.”
Ah. So he wasn’t going to mention her mood. Maybe he hadn’t even noticed—he was, after all, a man. But she was moved to sympathy at the thought of working out in the hot sun all day. She was kind of mad at him, but more than that, she cared that he’d had such a tough day.
“It doesn’t usually last long,” Darcy assured him.
“I’m not going to last long if it keeps up,” Nash joked. “I’d like to see you, but I’m beat. I stood under the shower for about an hour just now. I got some pizza on the way home, I’ve got the air-conditioning jacked up, and the Red Sox are playing tonight. That’s it for me.”
“You are such a guy,” Darcy teased.
She was tired, too, and happy enough to spend the evening with a book and a cold cranberry drink. Wednesday, more of the same.
Thursday evening the library was open late and Darcy was on the roster for that. It was quiet, because the heat had abated and people could enjoy being outside. After closing the library, Darcy strolled home, enjoying the rare clear summer night, replaying certain moments of her day at work. The story hours were her favorite time and that brought her smack-dab right into the rather frightening thought that she was beginning to want children of her own.
When she reached her house, she took a long cool shower, slipped into an airy, billowy caftan, and carried a glass of wine and her cellphone out to her yard. Stretching out in her lounger, she exhaled and relaxed, looking up at the summer sky. Even now, daylight lingered, and as she watched, the sky changed colors like a scarf pulled from a magician’s sleeve, darkness slowly staining black into the blue. The stars came out.
Muffler rustled through the bushes, probably searching for the tiny velvet voles that crept through her garden at night. After a while, he jumped up on the table and began the elegant task of cleaning himself.
The bushes rustled again, more noisily this time. Darcy lifted her head.
“Darcy?” Willow whispered. “Can I come over?”
“Of course.” Before Darcy finished speaking, her cellphone buzzed. She checked, found a number she didn’t know, and answered.
“Darcy?” It was Susan. “I want to stop by a moment. I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Of course,” Darcy told her.
She set her wineglass on the table and walked to her back door. Just inside was a switch for the miniature sparkling white lights she had strung in a loose, scattered web along the hedges. She’d planned to wait until she had a party to use them, but she couldn’t sit and talk to her friends in the total darkness that had fallen.
When the lights went on, pinpoints of brilliance twinkling around the yard, her mood lifted.