Nantucket Sisters (24 page)

So she won’t tell him. My God, what if Cameron demanded rights to her baby? What if he demanded joint custody? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

And Ben would be maddened, wounded,
broken
by the knowledge that his sister was bearing the child of the man for whom Emily
had left Ben. It was too much of a mess. Ben wouldn’t be able to love Maggie’s baby.

These are not the Middle Ages. Maggie is not some hapless waif wandering pitifully through a blizzard with a shawl clutched over her bosom. She has a family who loves her, a place to live, a community to support her, and a new life inside her that she never asked for or expected, but which daily increases her happiness, her confidence, and her sense that this world is more complicated than she ever imagined.

She only wishes she could share this with Emily, this entire bizarre coincidence. How they would laugh. But of course, Maggie can never tell Emily. She will never tell anyone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

That August, the heat in the city becomes unbearable for Emily, who is almost eight months pregnant. She tells Cameron she’s going to Nantucket for the month, to live with her parents in the bluff house. He’ll fly up on weekends.

She’s on Main Street on the island, standing by the farmer’s truck, filling her recyclable bag with lettuces, carrots, and fresh, fat red tomatoes, when she hears a familiar voice.

“Emily?”

She turns. For a moment, the woman lumbering toward her seems only barely familiar. Then she gasps.

“Maggie?”

Clad in a loose sleeveless dress, shod in those clunky rubber Crocs everyone seems to wear, Maggie is almost unrecognizable. She’s cut her long black hair short and let it have its own natural, rambunctious way, falling in ringlets from the crown of her head to the nape of her neck.

Maggie stops a moment to return Emily’s assessment. Emily wears
black maternity running pants, a white, sleeveless, tight-fitting tee that expands over her pumpkin-size belly, and white running shoes. Her long blond hair is pulled back in a high ponytail. She glitters with diamonds, big studs in her ears, rings on her fingers.

“Wow.” Maggie shakes her head in wonder. “Look at you.”

“Look at you,” Emily shoots back. “You’re pregnant, too? How did that happen?”

Maggie widens her eyes innocently and jokes, “The usual way, I guess.”

“Oh, Maggie!” Emily throws her arms around Maggie, which is not an easy accomplishment, given their two bellies.

“I didn’t know you were on the island,” Maggie says.

“I just arrived. It’s unbearably hot in New York.”

“It’s hot here, too,” Maggie counters.

Other people nudge them in their attempts to reach the vegetable truck. “Do you want to grab something to eat?” Emily asks.

“Sure. We can take it down to the harbor.”

Emily winces. “Can’t we sit on a bench right here? My feet are swollen and walking kills me.”

Linking arms, they cross the street and ask to be seated in the garden at Met on Main. The walled-in area, with its overhanging trees, is shady and cool and, at this hour, after breakfast and before lunch, occupied by only a few other people.

“Let’s order something deliciously fattening,” Emily suggests, “to celebrate seeing each other again.”

“Why not? It’s for the babies, right?”

As the waiter takes their orders, they shuffle around, settling their purses on other chairs, getting comfortable, and then they stare at each other for a long time, smiling.

“All right. You go first,” Emily says.

Maggie grins. “Okay. Well, first of all—I’m pregnant.”

Emily laughs. “You don’t say. Who’s the father? I’m not seeing a
wedding ring. What’s the deal, Lucille?” When Maggie hesitates, Emily worries that she’s been too cavalier about her question. But Maggie seems happy …

Finally, Maggie shrugs and admits, “It was a one-night stand.”

“With …” Emily prompts.

“An awesomely hunky guy.” Maggie pushes her hair back from her flushed face. “Damn, it’s hot.”

“Go on.” Emily’s not going to let Maggie off that easily.

“He’s not from the island, he’s no one special, he could scarcely remember my name. He doesn’t matter.” Maggie shakes her head as if shaking away unpleasant thoughts.

Emily hesitates, waiting for more. Okay, she thinks, if Maggie wants to keep her secrets, there’s nothing Emily can do about it. She asks, “How’s Ben?”

Maggie looks at her hands, folded on her belly. “My mother and Clarice are doing all right. It’s hard for them, but they’re hanging in there. Ben’s a different matter.”

“Maggie—” Emily doesn’t know what to say and sighs with relief when the waiter arrives with their order of iced juice and pastries.

It appears that Maggie’s not eager to talk about her brother, either, because after she takes a sip of juice, she says, brightly, “In a way, it’s all working out well, almost as if this baby was meant to be. You know I moved into the Orange Street house to help Clarice after her operation? Okay, well, now my mom has moved in with us. She cooks dinners for us every night, she takes Clarice out on little jaunts, and she’s knitting, sewing, and embroidering constantly for the baby.”

“You’ll have the best-dressed baby on the island.”

“True.” Maggie’s smile fades. “Mom’s being brave and positive but I know she misses Thaddeus terribly.”

“Ben must miss him, too.” It pierces Emily’s heart to think of Ben losing his beloved stepfather.

“He’s destroyed. Truly. He’s living alone in the big old rattling
house on the farm. Sometimes he comes to Orange Street for dinner. He’s lost weight, he looks miserable …” Maggie takes a deep breath and faces Emily. “Of course he was devastated when you married someone else.”

Tears flood Emily’s eyes. “I never wanted to hurt Ben. I care for him enormously, in a way I’ll never stop loving him, but come on, you must remember
he
broke up with
me
. Anyway, all we did was fight, there at the end. He’s so stubborn, Maggie. He wouldn’t give an inch, there was no compromising with him.”

Maggie doesn’t argue but Emily senses how tense they’ve both become. Desperate to prevent an argument, Emily swerves into a new subject. “Maggie, I have my degree. I’ve been volunteering at a conservation agency in New York. I see my parents all the time …”

“… and your New York friends,” Maggie inserts in a neutral tone.

“Yes, but most of all, Maggie, Cameron is totally a wonderful husband! I can’t wait for you to meet him. He’s gorgeous, not like Ben, but in a blond, sort of Scandinavian way, and he works on Wall Street and he’s loaded with pots of money—let me make that clear, since I know you think I married for money. But he works
hard
for his money. He’s
always
working, or flying somewhere to meet with clients.”

Maggie holds up her hands. “Stop. Enough about Cameron, okay?”

Emily sits back in her chair. She did it all wrong; she didn’t steer their conversation toward happier subjects. Reaching for Maggie’s hand, she says, “I’m honestly truly sorry I hurt Ben.”

Maggie stares steadily at Emily. “I am honestly truly sorry you’re not my sister-in-law.” She withdraws her hand.

For once a waiter appears at the perfect moment. “Can I bring you ladies anything else?”

“God, if only,” Emily says. They both laugh, and their laughter bridges the crack in their relationship.

“No, thanks,” Emily says. The waiter drifts away. “Maggie, we can still stay in touch, can’t we? I want to know about your baby and I want to tell you about mine—it’s a girl.”

Maggie’s face brightens. “So’s mine! If the ultrasound is right—sometimes they make mistakes.”

“Are you going to do Lamaze?” Emily asks, then bites her lip. Who would be Maggie’s partner?

“I am,” Maggie answers, without hesitation. “Mom’s going with me and she’ll be in the labor-delivery room. I’d like to have the baby at home, with a midwife—”

“No,” Emily interrupts, “don’t. Too risky. You can have a midwife with you at the hospital but if the baby is stuck, or something goes wrong, you need a doctor nearby.”

“Are you having a spinal?” Maggie asks.

“You think I’m too much of a princess to endure pain?” Emily arches her eyebrow at her old friend. “No. I’m going the natural way, but at the hospital. I’ll have a midwife, too, Mount Sinai has a great system for women who want midwives.”

“Are you scared?” Maggie asks, then answers her own question. “I am. Excited, too, of course, but this baby is big”—she runs her hands over her great basketball of a belly—“and really, Emily, the, um,
exit
is small. I don’t understand how it’s going to work.”

“I know, right? Who thought of this system?” Emily leans forward. “It’s like squeezing a whale through a bowline knot.”

Maggie throws her head back and laughs. “Now, there’s a Nantucket metaphor!”

Emily lowers her voice. “Cameron’s terrified about this. He hates watching the birth videos—I’ve caught him closing his eyes! I don’t know why he’s so squeamish. He’s fabulous in bed, we have the most amazing sex—”

Maggie shifts uncomfortably in her seat and focuses on her plate,
empty of all but crumbs. She wets her fingertip and picks up the crumbs, paying careful attention to them.

Emily shuts up. She could slap herself. Of course Ben’s sister doesn’t want to hear what great sex Emily’s having with another man.

“Stretch marks!” Emily blurts. “Do you have stretch marks?”

Maggie looks ruefully at Emily. She knows exactly why Emily changed the subject. “ ’Course I do.”

“I’ve bought that expensive vitamin E cream to rub on, and I do it twice a day,” says Emily. “I’m diligent about it, but honestly, I don’t think it’s making a bit of difference.”

“Do you pee when you sneeze?”

“I leak like a broken faucet!”

For a while they’re back together, laughing like the little girls they once were.

Then Emily says, “Maggie, Cameron’s going to come here for a few weekends in August. Would you like to meet him? I’d really like you to. He’s awfully nice.”

The air around Maggie seems to shift and chill. “I’m glad he’s so great, Emily,” Maggie says. “I’m happy for you. But I don’t think I could handle meeting Ben’s replacement—”

“He’s not
Ben’s replacement
!” Emily objects.

Maggie takes a few bills from her purse and puts them on the table. “Anyway, no thanks. I’m awfully busy with Clarice and preparing the house for the baby, and I haven’t given up working on my book.”

Emily puts her hand on Maggie’s arm. “Don’t go yet. Tell me about your book!”

Maggie gently shakes off Emily’s arm. “Another time, maybe. I really must go.”

Emily watches Maggie waddle away. She gathers up her own bags
and heads out to her Range Rover. As she drives to ’Sconset, a mood of melancholy surrounds her like a summer mist, and regrets torment her heart. If she’d married Ben, she’d be on beautiful Nantucket all the time, she’d see Maggie every day, they could share every humorous and cranky moment of their pregnancies, and she would go to sleep at night at the side of the man she’s loved all her life. The man she will always love.

It’s ironic—
funny
, in a terrible, bitter way—how things worked out. If Emily had married Ben, and Thaddeus died, she and Ben would live in the house on the farm, and Emily knows Ben would have had to agree to let her refurnish and redecorate with some of her parents’ money. That ramshackle house would become charming. Plus, then she could carry her daughter down to Shipwreck House, tell her the stories she and Maggie invented. She could … Sorrow overcomes her. Emily pulls the vehicle to the side of the road and sobs.

After a while, she regains her poise. Remember, she tells herself, her baby
could
be Cameron’s. She probably is Cameron’s. Their child will be safe, their child will have Emily’s parents’ Nantucket house
and
the fabulous city of New York.

She drives back onto Milestone Road, but instead of going directly to the house, she drives down to the beach at ’Sconset. Kicking off her sandals, Emily slowly trudges over the sand to the ocean’s edge. Clusters of sunbathers and swimmers lie on brightly colored towels in the sun. Children build sand castles. In the warm Atlantic water foaming up to the shore, pockets of light flash and gleam, vibrant as beacons. Awkwardly, Emily kneels, placing her hand in the warm summer water, palm up, to feel the glitter on her skin.
This
will wait for her.
This
will always be here. She puts her hands on her belly and feels her baby move.

When she returns to the house on Orange Street, which she still thinks of as Clarice’s house although, remarkably, it belongs to her, Maggie quietly sets the groceries in the kitchen and makes her way up the back stairs to her bedroom. She doesn’t want to tell anyone yet that she ran into Emily. She needs to think about this. Anything she says about Emily will eventually work its way back to Ben, and he’s unhappy these days—she’s worried. He can’t seem to
move on
. He’s become secretive, hard-eyed, humorless. He used to join them for dinner once a week and stop by for a drink and a good island gossip several evenings, but since Emily married, Ben’s become reclusive and sullen. His bitterness has driven a wedge between Maggie and her brother.