Summer Secrets (5 page)

The house wasn’t big—four bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, all under the eaves—but as she always said to Audrey, it was big enough.

*   *   *

The house looked the same. Of course, thought Audrey, as the car pulled to a halt outside. It’s only been five years since I was last here, why would it have changed? The gravel was thin, a few weeds pushing through, the paint on the windows peeling again, but the house was still pretty, with its classic lines and peaked roof, the window boxes still filled with geraniums.

The station wagon was gone, which meant Aunt Judith was out. She had said she was leaving the key under the pot, which Audrey quickly found, as the driver hauled her suitcase up the steps and deposited it on the porch. She thanked him and sent him away.

The door opened, a wave of d
é
j
à
vu washing over Audrey as she stood for a minute, drinking in the smell, the feeling, of being home. Little had changed. The table in the hall was new, fresh-cut peonies in the vase as always. Aunt Judith always had pitchers and vases filled with flowers all over the house; it was one of her signature touches.

The suitcase was heavy, but bumping along every step, Audrey managed to get it up the staircase, breathing heavily, dragging it along the narrow corridor until she reached her room and pushed the door open to find the bed made up with crisp white sheets, an antique dusky rose quilt spread across the foot of the bed, an old wooden blanket chest at the bottom. The armchair she had always loved was in the corner, her old blanket from childhood draped over the back, more peonies in a blue-and-white-spattered pitcher on the dresser.

Crossing the room, Audrey opened the windows, the view so familiar, the trees, the sound of the birds, the smell of salt in the air, and found herself smiling as she turned to unpack, pulling out a pair of shorts and a sheer cotton top, dying to get out of what she thought of as her English clothes, dying to feel the sun on her legs, the wind blowing the fine hairs on her arms. She pulled on the shorts and top, scraped her long dark hair into a messy topknot, and started to put the clothes away in drawers, instantly feeling younger, lighter, almost as if her marriage, the last five years of her life in England, had never, ever happened.

Her clothes were almost all put away, the dresses hung, the tops and shorts in drawers, when she heard the door downstairs and rushed to the stairs, a huge smile on her face in anticipation of seeing her beloved aunt.

“Hello!” She clattered down the stairs and burst into the kitchen, all legs, arms akimbo, bare feet, stopping short at the sight of a man standing at the counter, unpacking two paper grocery bags.

“Hi!” He grinned at her. “You must be Audrey. I’m Brooks Mayhew.” He put the eggs he was holding down and reached over to shake her hand, apologizing for the paint spatters across his fingers.

“It’s fine,” said Audrey, wondering who this man was who seemed completely comfortable in her aunt’s house. Not a boyfriend, he was far too young, and not an advisor, in his loose, paint-spattered shirt, his baggy seersucker shorts and canvas shoes. His hair was almost shoulder length, his skin tanned, his smile easy and wide. He looked almost as if he could be one of the boating boys, yet the paint didn’t make sense.

“I’m working on a new painting. I promised Judith I’d run out and get groceries for her, and time got away from me. She warned me you might be here. She’s had to go off island, by the way. Said she would be home for dinner, that there’s plenty of food in the fridge and pantry if you want to get something ready.”

“I’m sorry,” Audrey found herself saying, a habit she had picked up since living in England, apologizing for everything, even when it quite clearly was not her fault, “but who
are
you?”

He started to laugh. “Are you wondering if I’m Judith’s secret lover?”

“I’d be terribly impressed if you were.”

“I’m the neighbor. I’m renting the house next door, and I’ve got a studio down on the wharf. I’m an artist, in case that wasn’t obvious.” He brandished his shirt and hands as evidence. “Judith has become my best friend in a matter of weeks. She feeds my cats when I’m at the studio, and I … well … I try to help out. I go shopping for her, or fix things around the house.” He gestured at the window. “I’ve replaced the frames in here, slowly working my way around the rest of the house.”

“It needs it.”

“You haven’t been here for a few years?”

“Five. I live in England now.”

“I hear. You’ve got a bit of an English accent.”

“Give me a day or two and the English will be wiped out completely.”

“When in Rome,” they both said at the same time, and started to laugh.

“Can I get you a drink?” he asked.

“I was going to offer you the same thing.” She walked to the counter and pulled a six-pack of beer from one paper bag. “Not that I knew if we had anything to offer you, but I’m the one who should be the hostess.”

“That sounds very formal. I’ve forgotten about gracious hosting since living here.”

She cracked open a beer and handed it to him, then opened one for herself, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Where are you from?” she asked. “Here?”

“No. New York. Well, Long Island, to be precise. Locust Valley. Lattingtown.”

“Fancy!” Audrey said, proferring her can. “I suppose I should say cheers.”

“Cheers.” He grinned, clinking cans. “It is fancy, and, as you can see, I am not, which is why I am now living in Nantucket, which is about as unfancy as you can get.”

Are you married? Audrey found herself thinking, swiftly followed by wondering why it should matter, why she should even want to know.

“I also broke off an engagement,” he said, as if reading her mind. “We were going to be living in a big house in Mill Neck, gifted to us by my father, and I knew I would die out there.”

“Did you leave her standing at the altar?” Audrey is intrigued.

“Not quite, but almost. A week before. I knew it was wrong from the beginning, but she was the girl I was expected to marry, from the right family, and it became a freight train, gathering steam. There was no way to stop it.”

“But you managed.”

“I took the coward’s way out.” He stopped smiling then, a glimmer of shame in his eyes. “I left a note. Horrible. I still can’t quite believe that’s how I did it, but I knew if I tried to do it in person, Clarissa would convince me to stay, and I knew that if I stayed, I would die.”

“Clarissa.” Audrey turned the name over in her mind, picturing a slim, elegant blonde, steel blue eyes, hair in a tight chignon, immaculately dressed in Galanos or Balenciaga, purse matching her pumps, the quintessential Waspy American wife.

“She does look exactly as you would expect a girl called Clarissa to look,” he said, as if reading her mind again.

“Tall, slim, beautiful? Blond with blue eyes? In Balenciaga?”

“Galanos. But yes. The rest. I don’t even want to think about what I did to her.”

“Is there any possibility that just as you knew it wasn’t the right match, on some level she might have known too?”

“I would like to think that’s true. In many ways, I do believe that she may realize that it was never me she was in love with, but what I represented. I could never be the man she needed me to be. Wow.” He shook his head with an embarrassed laugh. “I don’t usually reveal this much to anyone, let alone someone I just met.”

“I’m a good listener.”

“So it seems.”

They smiled at each other, the mutual gaze lasting a second longer than was altogether comfortable, Audrey looking away, confused. It wasn’t done, surely, to reveal so much about oneself to a stranger. Where was the small talk? Where was the polite conversation? How did they get to such big, important stuff so quickly?

And what did it mean?

Don’t be silly, she told herself. It certainly doesn’t mean what you think it means. This isn’t attraction. I am very happily married. Just because a single man who happens to be attractive is standing feet away from me and makes me feel instantly comfortable doesn’t mean I have to start acting like a giddy schoolgirl. Grow up, Audrey. Don’t be so childish.

“You must be busy. Please don’t let me keep you.” She snapped into more formal mode to hide her embarrassment at that gaze, that look that held a hint of something more.

“Okay,” he said with an easy shrug, draining the rest of the can. “It was good to meet you. I’m next door if you need anything.” And with a wave, he was gone.

*   *   *

In the fridge Audrey found a packet of ground beef. She grated an onion, mixed eggs into the beef, added crushed saltines and some dried herbs she pulled from the spice rack. She sang as she used her hands to mix the meatloaf together, as carefree and happy as a young girl.

She found the loaf pan—there was always a loaf pan—and placed the meatloaf on the middle shelf of the oven. She was not an expert cook but had developed a range of recipes to keep Richard happy: meatloaf, creamed chicken, meatballs. She had learned how to make a traditional Sunday roast, complete with Yorkshire pudding, and had delighted him with American-style fried chicken.

Today, for the salad, she arranged large leaves of iceberg lettuce on a plate, carefully peeling a pear and placing the pear halves on top, dousing them with lemon juice to stop them from turning brown. In the cavity she placed a spoonful of mayonnaise, adding grated cheese over the top, before putting it in the fridge.

The sun streamed through the kitchen windows in a way it didn’t seem to in England, fresh and clear. She had got used to the endlessly grey drizzly days, had even grown to love them in a strange way, certainly to love how green everything was, how lush, until this moment, being back in Nantucket, back in the place she had always loved.

She took a glass of wine with her to the driveway, where she busied herself pulling weeds, smiling at passersby, most of whom—the islanders at least—stopped to chat and introduce themselves.

At six o’clock, Brooks pulled up next door in an old F-150 truck, cherry red, giving her a cheery wave and smile as he headed into his house. She tried to quell the vague disappointment that he didn’t come over, didn’t show any signs of wanting to continue their conversation, but as she was mulling it over, Aunt Judith’s familiar old station wagon pulled into the driveway, tooting the horn in welcome, as Audrey flung herself down the steps and into her aunt’s arms.

Home.

Aunt Judith’s solidity had always felt like home to Audrey. Her hair was grey and curly, her eyes a soft blue, her body seeming to be smaller and rounder than it had been before. “I was built for comfort, not for speed,” Aunt Judith had a habit of saying, and it was true; when Audrey imagined her, she was always sitting comfortably somewhere, knitting, reading, or doing something equally cozy.

Her roundness and coziness and warmth had always comforted Audrey, who found herself leaning her head on her aunt’s shoulder, as, without her knowing why, tears started to leak down her cheeks.

*   *   *

“You look unchanged,” Aunt Judith mused over a glass of wine later that evening after they had eaten, cleared up, and were sitting on the porch watching the fireflies buzz around.

“Apart from the English accent?”

“I can’t hear it anymore. You look exactly the same, but you seem … quieter.” She peered closely at Audrey, who said nothing, just looked into her glass and took another sip of wine.

“How is Richard?” Aunt Judith asked next, perceptive as ever.

“He’s fine.” Audrey looked up at her aunt. “He’s charming, handsome, polite, and … distant.”

“Isn’t that how most men are?” her aunt asked, a twinkle in her eye.

“Is it?” Audrey thought about that afternoon in the kitchen, the ease she felt around that man, Brooks, how she felt a connection, a closeness, even though she didn’t know him at all. “Perhaps,” she said. “Richard is very English, I think. But I presumed things would change once we got married. I thought he would let his reserve down, that we would grow closer, he would be more of a partner, but…” Her words trailed off.

Her aunt waited a few seconds. “It sounds lonely, child.”

Audrey, surprised, blinked back tears as she forced a smile. “Sometimes it is. But he is a good man. I am a lucky girl.”

“Who are you trying to convince? Me? Or yourself?”

*   *   *

Upstairs, in her room, getting ready for bed, Audrey thought about her day. She thought about Aunt Judith, all they talked about, the conversation flowing in and out, back and forth, from laughter to seriousness and everything in between.

She thought about Brooks, the charming man from next door who made her feel a slight jolt, the likes of which she hadn’t felt in a very long time, the likes of which she wasn’t expecting to feel again, and certainly not from anyone other than her husband.

It’s just because he’s familiar, she told herself. Of course you felt comfortable with him, you
know
him, if only because you are from the same place, you share the same culture, you understand each other’s backgrounds. She hadn’t realized just how out of place she was in England until this day, coming back home, meeting someone unexpectedly and feeling an instant connection merely because, surely merely because, they were fellow countrymen: they understood how the other thought.

She pushed thoughts of the handsome artist out of her head, remembering her wedding to Richard, how he looked at her with such love and pride, thinking of the life they had built together and how, in his own way, he treated her like a princess.

Thoughts of Richard led her gently to sleep.

*   *   *

Jet lag hit Audrey in the middle of the night. She was wide awake at two in the morning, padding around the house, trying to immerse herself in a book, not worried about the lack of sleep because the next day she had nowhere to be, nothing to do, and if she chose to sleep all day, even though that would be the worst possible thing to do, to give up a moment of her precious time on this island, she knew she could.

She wandered down to the harbor to watch the sun come up, yawning her way back to the cottage as tiredness finally hit, and at 6 a.m. she crawled back into those sweet, white sheets and fell fast asleep.