28 Summers: The gripping, emotional page turner of summer 2020 by 'the Queen of the Summer Novel' (People) (25 page)

Will any of this bother him once he figures it out?

After their fourth date—they go to see
Love, Actually
at the Dreamland and then to the Pearl for tuna martinis and passionfruit cosmos—Mallory agrees to go back to Scott’s house on Winter Street, and they sleep together. The sex is good—better than good! Scott is the right balance of gentle and firm. He knows what he’s doing.

Later, as Mallory lies in his bed—which is high and wide and, because it’s now October, made up with flannel sheets in a navy plaid——he brings her a glass of ice water and a couple of coconut macaroons on a plate, and after she devours them he says, “Let’s get you home. And no arguing—I’m paying the babysitter.”

Full steam ahead; they become a couple.

They bundle up to watch the Nantucket–Martha’s Vineyard football game; they pick out pumpkins at Bartlett’s Farm and carve jack-o’-lanterns with Link. Mallory starts calling Scott at his office when she gets home from school to tell him about her day. He learns all the kids’ names—Max and Matthew, Katie and Tiffany and Bridget and the two Michaels—and their backstories. He memorizes her schedule.

The first week in November is unusually mild and Scott plays eighteen holes of golf. Mallory and Link go to meet him at the club when he’s finished and Mallory admires how lean and strong he looks in his golf clothes. Even his spikes look good on him. He finds a child-size putter and takes Link over to the practice green. He bends over and wraps his arms around Link to show him how to hold the club. They tap the ball into the cup again and again; Link loves pulling the ball out and starting over.

The towel bar in Mallory’s bathroom falls off and Scott asks if it’s okay if he comes over while Mallory is at school to fix it. She hesitates. She never let JD fix anything in the cottage and she certainly would never have let JD prowl around when she wasn’t home. However, she surprises herself by saying,
Sure, that would be great
. The towel bar has been lying on the floor for over a week; she’s been too busy to pull out her drill.

The towel bar is fixed the same day he offers and he leaves her a cute little cartoon of the two of them kissing. The cartoon is
good
—he’s a real artist, like his father must have been; Mallory tapes the cartoon to the fridge.

Mallory starts taking Roxanne running with her. She lets Roxanne sleep on the green tweed sofa.

As Mallory is teaching her senior creative-writing class at the end of the day—it’s the first year for this; Mallory lobbied to make it an elective—there’s a knock on the classroom door. Mallory opens it to find Apple holding the most beautiful bouquet of flowers Mallory has ever seen.

“These arrived for you,” Apple says. “Guess who sent them.”

The card says:
Just because. Love, Scott.

Mallory decides to do something nice and unexpected for Scott. The next day, she leaves school during her lunch period, picks up a Turkey Terrific sandwich from Provisions, and takes it to the office at the storage center.

Scott has an administrative assistant named Lori Spaulding; Mallory knows her slightly. She’s a single mom like Mallory and has a daughter a year older than Link. The two of them used to cross paths at Small Friends, dropping the kids off and picking them up. “Hey, Lori,” Mallory says. “I brought lunch for the boss. Is he in?”

Lori takes a beat. “He is. Let me get him.”

“Or if he’s busy, I can just drop it?” Mallory says.

“I’m sure he’ll want to see you,” Lori says. There’s an edge to her gravelly voice. “I hear you two are having quite the whirlwind romance.”

That night on the phone, Mallory says, “Were you and Lori ever involved romantically?”

Scott laughs. “Not at all. Why?”

Mallory isn’t sure what to say. She got a vibe. Lori likes Scott; she’s jealous of Mallory.
Why Mallory and not me?
she probably thinks. Why indeed? Lori is pretty; she has blond hair that’s always in an impeccable French braid. Mallory admired this long before Scott was in the picture and wondered how a single working mother could have such good hair. Did she get up an hour early to do it? Did she use two mirrors? And was it just a natural talent? Mallory would never in a million years acquire the skill because French braiding is one of the many mysteries of being a woman that has eluded her. She puts her hair up in an elastic, and even then, her ponytails are off-center.

“She’s attractive. She has that sexy voice. She’s single.”

“She does nothing for me,” Scott says.

The holidays approach. Mallory goes home to Baltimore for Thanksgiving; Scott stays on Nantucket. He cooks for all the guys who are working for him, many of whom are single and don’t have anywhere else to go but the bar.

Mallory misses him while she’s away. She calls him from behind the closed door of her childhood bedroom because she doesn’t want her mother or Coop to overhear her. She loves the sound of his voice. She loves how he’s deep-frying a turkey in the backyard for the guys and making cornbread dressing and brussels sprouts that he saw Tyler Florence make on the Food Network. He tells her he’s going into town the next night to see the tree lighting—at five o’clock, all the Christmas trees on Main and Centre will light up at once—and Mallory gets jealous, wondering who he’s going with, wondering if maybe he’s going with Lori and her daughter, wondering if they’ll go get a drink at the Brotherhood afterward.

Missing him and feeling jealous are good signs, she thinks. They’re on the right track.

Around Christmas, Link goes up to Vermont to spend the holiday with Fray and Anna, and Mallory and Scott become inseparable. They alternate between spending the night in town at his house, which Mallory likes because the Winter Street Inn across the street is all decked out for the holidays, and at Mallory’s cottage, which she likes because Scott “planted” a small Christmas tree on the beach and rigged it with white lights and it gives Mallory such joy to look out her kitchen window and see it. They attend the annual Christmas pageant at the Congregational church; they shop in town and get hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows at the Even Keel Café. Two days before Christmas, it snows, and they put on boots and walk Roxanne into town early in the morning to take pictures of Main Street, silent and shrouded in pure white. Then they let Roxanne off her leash and she skids down the street like a kid on skates.

On Christmas Eve, they go to the annual party at the Winter Street Inn and hang out with Kelley and Mitzi and the police chief, Ed Kapenash, and Dabney Kimball Beech from the Chamber of Commerce and Dr. Major and Apple and Hugo. Ava Quinn sits down at the piano and plays carols and Mallory nearly chokes up as they sing “O Come, All Ye Faithful” because she has now lived on this island for ten years and look at the community she has built. It was an act of faith, moving here. Aunt Greta had told Mallory long ago that Nantucket chose people and that it had chosen Mallory, but she feels this with absolute certainty only right in this instant.

Scott must notice her moment of introspection because he squeezes her hand.

They drink Mitzi’s mulled cider (it’s strong; Mallory can handle only a few sips before she switches to wine) and they eat the pine-cone cheese ball and stuffed dates, and by the time Mallory and Scott stumble across the street, it’s after midnight and already Christmas.

On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, they take a long beach walk with Roxanne. The sun is low in the white sky; it’s cold. The waves pummel the shore like they’re trying to make a point. This is winter on Nantucket, and it’s only just beginning.

As they are about to go back up to the cottage to prepare for their New Year’s Eve festivities—Apple and Hugo are coming over for fondue and a bottle of Krug that Scott insisted on splurging on—Scott says, “Hey, I want to tell you something.”

The tone of his voice sets off an alarm. A confession is coming: He
is
married after all; he does have a child, or children, who are living overseas in Dubai. The project on Old South Road isn’t affordable housing but a front for the Mob. Scott has a gambling problem. He’s a cocaine addict. He’s sleeping with Lori.

“What is it?” she says.

“I love you,” he says.

Mallory closes her eyes. She is seized by panic. She isn’t sure what to do. Why is she not prepared for this? Any idiot could have seen this was where things were headed.

“I love you too,” she says, then immediately hates herself. She
is
suggestible and easily swayed, just like Leland told Fifi so many years earlier.

She’s lying to Scott. She doesn’t love him. She really, really likes him. She thinks he’s a wonderful person. He’s smart and kind and sexy and funny and absolutely wonderful with Link. She’s happy every time he walks in the door; she feels a ping of pleasure every time he calls. He has filled a void for her and for Link that she didn’t even realize was there. Her relationship with Scott has been a joyride. It has been heady infatuation. She loves having a partner in crime. And it has been luxurious, all the ways big and small that he’s made life on this island easier for her with his companionship, his ardor for her. She has spent the past three and a half months being adored. Flowers delivered to her classroom! A house in town and one at the beach! The little cartoons he leaves for her all the time now that he knows how much she enjoys them. This is the stuff other women dream of. Mallory and Scott can get married at the Sconset Chapel; Roxanne will wear a wreath of white roses around her neck, and Link a tiny tux. There is still plenty of time for Mallory to have another baby.

But…Mallory doesn’t love him.

January passes. February passes.

Mallory doesn’t understand what’s wrong with her. Scott checks all the boxes.

She tries to break it down. She loves the way he smells. He has no annoying habits. He doesn’t overstay his welcome; he respects her time with Link, her time by herself. His taste in music is good; there’s a lot of overlap with hers, although his favorite band is the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a group Mallory can take or leave.

Her not-loving him has nothing to do with the Chili Peppers.

There’s no issue with the sex. The sex is amazing.

March passes.

Shall we use a golf metaphor? Why not, since at the end of March there’s a string of days when it’s nice enough for Scott to play and he asks Mallory and Link to meet him afterward so he and Link can continue to practice Link’s putting. Mallory’s feelings for Scott are the ball that glides toward the hole but stops
just
short, resting on the lip of the cup, eliciting a shout of disbelief and frustration.
Drop in already!
she thinks.

Mallory begins to fear that this isn’t something that “just needs more time.” What did Kitty say? Love is love—or not-love is not-love, as the case may be—and, really, there’s no explaining it.

But that feels like a cop-out. Mallory can explain it just fine.

Scott doesn’t read fiction, but Mallory once noticed him standing in front of the shelf that held the novels Jake sent her each Christmas. She’s not sure what she would have done if he’d picked one of the books up. Would she have asked him to put it down, like she did with Fifi? Tucked inside the newest book,
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,
is the envelope where Mallory keeps all of her fortunes from their weekends. What would she say if Scott saw them? Sand dollars that she and Jake found at Great Point are lined up in front of the books, and Scott did pick one of those up and Mallory felt anxious and sick during the seconds it took him to replace it.

Her Cat Stevens CDs and World Party’s
Bang!
are hidden in her underwear drawer. She can’t risk Scott playing them. Back in January, Scott asked if she wanted to drive up to Great Point, since she had the sticker, and she said no, she’d rather not.

Mallory loves Jake. Her heart is not transferrable. It has belonged to Jake since the first time he answered the phone in Coop’s room, since the afternoon he stepped off the ferry and onto the dock, since the moment he slid an omelet onto her plate.

What can she do about this? Anything? Is she simply being stubborn? Has she been, effectively, brainwashed? No; Mallory anticipated that she would someday meet a man who would eclipse Jake. She has even
welcomed
this, because although loving Jake is the sweetest kind of agony, it’s agony nonetheless.

The end of April brings the Daffodil Festival. This is the first big weekend of the year, the official start of the season on Nantucket. There’s a classic-car parade out to Sconset where everyone gathers to tailgate. Scott enters the Blazer in the parade and says he’ll decorate the car if Mallory will handle the theme and the picnic. Mallory and Apple come up with
The Official Preppy Handbook
as the theme—“Look, Muffy, a book for us”—and Mallory pulls out the Baltimore Junior League cookbook that Kitty gave her several Christmases ago to find recipes for their preppy picnic.

Mallory can’t believe how great the Blazer looks when Scott is finished with it. It has a blanket of daffodils on the hood and a cute daffodil wreath on the grille. It’s a sunny day, though chilly, but they decide to drive out to Sconset with the top down. Scott and Hugo sit up front in their navy blazers and pink oxford shirts and Mallory and Apple and Link and Roxanne sit in the back. Apple is wearing a white turtleneck and a navy cardigan, and Mallory has on a yellow Fair Isle sweater and the Bean Blucher moccasins she’s owned since high school. Link is in a polo shirt with the collar popped. They wave at the spectators on the side of Milestone Road, and Roxanne barks; she has on a collar printed with navy whales.

They get to Sconset and set up their picnic: gin and tonics, tea sandwiches, boiled asparagus spears, deviled eggs, tiny weenies in barbecue sauce. The judges come by and spend a long time admiring the fine detail on the sandwiches; they take note of the outfits, Apple’s grosgrain watchband, Scott’s tortoiseshell Jack Kennedy sunglasses. Mallory catches a glimpse of herself in the side-view mirror. In her sweater and pearl earrings, she looks alarmingly like Kitty. A photographer from the
Inquirer and Mirror
snaps a picture of Mallory and Scott in front of the Blazer. Scott tells the reporter the story about how he sold Mallory the Blazer back in the summer of 1993 and how they met ten years later and are now dating.