Nantucket Sisters (30 page)

Cameron runs his hand through his tousled blond hair. “Emily, it’s six-thirty in the morning.”

“I don’t think you came to bed until after two.”

He scrubs at his face with his hands, muffling his voice. “I was working.”

Her voice shakes. “With that black-haired intern?”

“Oh, Emily.” Cameron reaches for his coffee and gulps some down.

Emily struggles not to sound antagonistic. “Are you having an affair?”

“Emily …” Closing his eyes, he leans his head back and takes a deep breath. When he opens his eyes, he looks very tired. “Look. You and I are good friends. We have a good family life. But I told you from the beginning that I don’t love you. I care for you, Emily. I appreciate what you’re doing with the wives, all the committee work for those monkeys. It’s helping me with the senior partners, absolutely no doubt about it. I don’t want a divorce.”

She can’t stand the rational way he’s speaking, as if no emotion is involved between them at all.

“Do you love her?” Emily asks, as sensibly as if asking whether it’s raining outside.

“I don’t know.”

Emily stares at him steadily, but her heart is trembling.

Cameron drinks the rest of his coffee and contemplates his next words. Emily waits.

He repeats, “I don’t know. That’s the truth, Emily, I don’t know yet.” A shadow crosses his face. “I don’t want to hurt Serena. I don’t want to hurt you. Give me some more time, okay?”

Emily hears the exasperation straining his voice. She backs off. For the sake of her daughter’s happiness, she says, “Okay, Cameron. But, please, won’t you let me try to make you happy? We could leave Serena with your parents and take a trip somewhere. We could play a bit, enjoy each other again.”

Cameron nods. “Okay, Emily. I’ll try.”

Emily starts to speak again. She can see how exhausted Cameron is, and she wants to be kind to him. She wants to be a good wife. “Thanks, honey. I guess the best way to make you happy right now is to let you go back to sleep.”

She slides off the bed and tiptoes from the room. She can hear Cameron sink back under the duvet.

In the middle of January, Tyler drives Maggie to the farm, kisses her soundly, and promises to phone her the next day. Maggie floats into the house, hoping she’ll find her mother still awake. The light is on in Frances’s bedroom, so Maggie taps lightly on the door, then opens it an few inches, peeking in.

“Mom?”

Frances is propped against pillows, reading, the lamplight casting a gentle glow over her face. She looks cozy in her yellow flannel pajamas.

“Maggie?” She pushes her reading glasses up on her forehead. “Come in.”

“Look, Mom.” Maggie rushes in. Sitting on the bed next to Frances, she holds out her hand to show off the antique emerald and diamond engagement ring on her fourth finger. “It was Tyler’s grandmother’s.”

“Oh, darling!” Frances and Maggie had discussed the possibility of Maggie and Tyler getting married, but Maggie wanted to wait until now, this moment, the ring on her finger. Frances leans forward and wraps Maggie in a warm hug. “Congratulations! Oh, I’m so happy for you. And this ring, my goodness!”

“Tyler had to go to Boston to take it out of a bank safety deposit box.” Maggie tilts her hand this way and that, watching the diamonds spark in the light. “It’s not too big, not gaudy?”

“It’s exquisite. Maggie, I’m over the moon.” Frances takes Maggie’s hand and gazes at the ring. “When will the wedding be?”

“As soon as possible,” Maggie tells her. “We don’t need a big to-do. We want to be married and start our lives together. I thought something small here in the house—”

Frances drops Maggie’s hand. “Margaret Ann McIntyre, you can forget that right now. I’ve been waiting all your life to make you a wedding gown, and I’m not going to miss that opportunity.”

“Mom—”

“And if you think you can deprive Heather of having the prettiest dress a princess ever wore, you can think again. And Clarice? She’ll have an occasion to wear her pearls. Not to mention all your friends, the ones you’ve been bridesmaids for.”

“The money—”

“Oh, stop it. We have enough money for a beautiful wedding and a fabulous reception. You’re my only daughter, after all.”

“I don’t want to wait a long time, Mom,” Maggie almost wails. “I don’t want to wait until June to have a fancy wedding.”

“Can you wait until April? If I set to work right away, I can accomplish
it all easily.” Frances opens a drawer in her bedside table, takes out a notebook and pen, and begins to write. “Church. Reception. Date. Invitations.”

“But, Mom, who will give me away?”

“Ben, of course, who else?”

Maggie hesitates. She doesn’t see much of Ben these days, and she’s not sure she likes him in his new overactive Romeo Realtor persona. But that thought doesn’t dim the delight she feels as she kicks off her shoes, curls up on the bed next to her mother, and plans her wedding.

The next night, before going to Tyler’s for dinner, Maggie stops by the Orange Street house. She’s dreading this moment, but Ben’s car, a Porsche, of course, is in the drive, so she sucks up her courage and knocks on the door, prepared to see some woman half-undressed giggling in the hallway.

Ben opens the door. “Hey, Maggie. This is a surprise.” He’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, and a book dangles from his hand.

Maggie’s wearing her puffy blue down coat, fleece cap, and gloves, but she’s still shivering, from the cold and probably from nerves. “Ben, can I talk to you?”

“No.” Ben shuts the door in her face. Immediately he opens it again, laughing. “Just kidding. Don’t be an idiot. Of course you can talk to me. Come in.”

“You are such a jerk,” Maggie tells him as she enters the warm house and follows him into the living room.

“Sit down. Want a drink?”

The furniture is an odd mixture of Clarice’s antiques and severe modern sofas and chairs. A fire burns in the fireplace, filling the room with the fragrance of apple wood.

“Are you expecting someone?” Maggie asks, sinking onto a sofa and unzipping her coat.

“Nope.” Ben takes the chair he was obviously reading in, with a standing lamp behind him and a cup of coffee on the table next to him.

Ben. Book. Coffee. Not what she’d imagined. For a moment, Maggie’s thoughts derail from her own news.

“No drink, thanks, Ben. I came to tell you something and ask you something.” Happiness floods back as she pulls off her gloves and holds out her hand, diamond ring gleaming.

“Wow! Maggie, I saw Tyler in town the other day, I know he’s opening an office on the island, but I didn’t realize— Wow,” he repeats, his face bright with genuine delight. “This is spectacular news. He’s such a great guy. When’s the wedding?”

“This April,” Maggie tells him. “As you can imagine, Mom’s taken over the entire affair, she’s bustling around like a hen with twelve chicks.”

Ben laughs. “Good for her. She could use something fabulous like this.”

Maggie takes a deep breath. “Ben, will you give me away? Please?”

Ben blinks in surprise. “Maggie, it would be an honor.”

Maggie can’t stop grinning as she drives from Ben’s to Tyler’s. But when she arrives at his rented apartment, a thought clouds her mind. Who will be her maid of honor? She sits in the Bronco for a moment, thinking about this, keeping the engine running for the heat.

Emily? No. Maybe once upon a time, but she and Emily haven’t been in touch, except for Emily’s all-purpose Christmas card, for years. It makes Maggie sad to realize this, that Emily won’t take part
in this most wonderful event—and then she thinks that she certainly wouldn’t want Emily’s husband to come, and all her doubt vanishes. Kaylie will be her maid of honor. Absolutely!

On her wedding day, the first Saturday afternoon in April, Maggie sits in her mother’s bedroom, in front of Frances’s old-fashioned vanity table with the three-sided mirror. She’s wearing only her white undergarments while behind her Kaylie performs miracles on Maggie’s curly black hair.

“I’ve never seen such thick hair,” Kaylie says. “And it’s so
springy
. Are you sure you want to wear it up in a chignon?”

It’s an hour before the ceremony, and Maggie’s nerves are jumping around like popcorn. “It worked when we did the trial fitting.”

“Yeah, well, you must have washed your hair last night. Could we just try it down?”

“Oh, all right,” Maggie relents. “I want a drink. I want a Valium.”

“You’ll be fine.” Kaylie takes about a hundred pins out of Maggie’s hair and brushes it so that it falls down past her shoulders in long, wavy black locks. “Now.” From the table she lifts the white headband, glittering with pearls and small white shells, and sets it in Maggie’s hair, arranging the fingertip, two-layered tulle veil to fall behind. “Maggie, this is way romantic. Please leave your hair down.”

Maggie studies her reflection in the glass. Clarice, Frances, Kerrie, and Alisha wait in the other room with Heather so Maggie can concentrate on dressing, and Maggie’s glad, because she could sit here forever staring at herself. Her makeup is light, almost no eyeliner, and her eyes are huge. Her hair billows around her like a waterfall.

“Okay,” Maggie agrees. “We’ll go with this.”

Kaylie lifts the headpiece off. “Good. Now let’s slip you into your gown.”

“We have to have Mother for this.” Maggie rises and opens the door to the hall. “Come on in!”

Heather skips down the hall, adoring each movement she makes in her fluffy pink dress. She wears a headband of pink roses in her blond hair. Kaylie’s wearing a cocktail length peau de soie dress with bateau neck and cap sleeves in dark pink. The two bridesmaids wear the same style of dress in a paler pink. Frances wears a tea-length chiffon sheath with a sweetheart neckline in a gray-pink, and Clarice wears a sheath with a chiffon tunic-length jacket in gray, with her pearls.

The women crowd into the room, chattering away, peering in the floor-length mirror to adjust their dresses, their hair, except for Clarice, who takes the armchair by the window and coaxes Heather to come twirl for her.

Frances unzips the garment bag hanging on the closet door and takes out the gown she made for Maggie. It is snowy white silk, strapless, close-fitted to the knees where it flares out in a mermaid skirt. Frances has sewn dozens of seed pearls on the silk. Now she holds it for her daughter to step into. She zips up the back and smooths the gown over Maggie’s hips. Tears glimmer in Frances’s eyes.

“Ahhhh,” all the women in the room sigh.

“Mommy, you look pretty,” Heather says, bouncing in her excitement.

Maggie bends to kiss her daughter. For a moment she holds Heather by the shoulders, smoothing her hair, tweaking a rosebud, calming the child. “You look pretty, too, Heather. We’re about ready to go to the church. Do you need to use the bathroom one more time?”

“No, I don’t have to,” Heather insists.

“Let’s give it a try anyway,” says Alisha, who has three children under seven. She holds out her hand and leads Heather away.

Kerrie slides around the room, snapping pictures of everyone as they redo their lipstick and adjust the flowers in their hair. Frances settles the headpiece over Maggie’s long black cloud of hair, and there Maggie is, ethereal, glimmering, sublimely beautiful.

“I can’t stop looking at myself,” Maggie admits in a whisper.

Everyone laughs. “You’d better stop,” Frances tells her daughter. “It’s time to go to the church.”

Their friend Robin, a florist, waits in the kitchen to hand them their bouquets of white roses and to pin a corsage on Frances’s and Clarice’s shoulders before they go out the door to the limo waiting in the drive.

Maggie assumed it would rain, gust, blow, and probably snow, but this early April day blooms clear and fine, with a high, cloudless blue sky and only a gentle breeze that ruffles their hair as they arrive at St. Paul’s Church.

Ben stands by the door, handsome in his Armani suit. “Maggie, you are a total babe,” he whispers, and his irreverence makes her laugh, gentles her nerves.

She hears the crowd inside talking and whispering. She hears the organ sound out Pachelbel’s
Canon
as her mother and grandmother are ushered to their seats, as her bridesmaids walk down the aisle, as Heather tiptoes over the red rug, scattering rose petals from Clarice’s lightship basket. The organ changes to the song Tyler and Maggie chose: Elvis Presley’s “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.” Ben takes her arm, and Maggie slowly walks down the aisle toward Tyler, handsome in his suit and tie, smiling as he sees her come to him. Then she is standing next to him, looking up at him, caught in a spell of love and happiness so powerful, so magical, she knows it will last all her life.

After the excitement of the wedding and the fun of the reception, reality returns in a rush. Tyler and Maggie look at houses, settling on one near the schools and the Polpis Road out to the farm. While Tyler works, Maggie furnishes and decorates the house, being sure to take Heather with her after school to visit Frances and Clarice on the farm. They appear to live quite happily together, grateful for their peaceful time alone, knowing they’ll have Maggie dropping off Heather and her friends most sunny Saturdays so the little girls can play in the barns or Shipwreck House before returning to the main house for cookies and milk. But they have their own lives, too. Clarice belongs to a bridge club and a book club. Frances volunteers for the library, the hospital, and the thrift shop. She also belongs to a book club, a different one from Clarice’s, and she’s sewing for others again, because it’s what she loves to do.