Santorini Sunsets (6 page)

“You did the best you could,” Brigit murmured.

“I slept and breathed that book for two years and ended up with three lousy chapters and a permanent crick in my neck.” Nathaniel's blue eyes flickered. “But I want you to know I'm not going to ruin your wedding. If Blake makes you happy, then something good came out of it.”

“He makes me very happy.” Brigit nodded. “He's honest and hardworking and cares about other people.”

“Sounds like an ad for life insurance.” Nathaniel rustled in his backpack. “I brought you a gift.”

“You didn't have to bring a present.” Brigit glanced at the tall box wrapped in silver tissue paper.

“I do remember the rules of etiquette,” Nathaniel protested. “Technically I have a year to give a gift but some marriages don't make it to the paper anniversary.”

“Blake and I will last fifty years,” Brigit said hotly. “If you'll excuse me, I have to say thank you to the caterers.”

“Take it.” Nathaniel pressed the box into her hand. “It's not much but the Tiffany's soup tureens on your gift registry were out of my price range.”

Brigit accepted the box and looked up at Nathaniel's short blond hair and clear blue eyes. She was about to say something and then she hurried up the stone steps and entered the kitchen.

*   *   *

She gazed at the smooth marble counters and dark oak floors and beamed ceilings. There was a silver teapot and porcelain demitasses and pitchers of cream and sugar. She thought it would be lovely to drink a cup of tea with Blake and discuss the delicious seafood and the warm toasts and their friends. But she heard muffled laughter in the library and knew they could play backgammon for hours. She poured a cup of tea and sat at the round wooden table.

She tore the silver tissue paper and opened the box. She took out a yellow plastic bucket and two orange shovels. She gasped and remembered the summer after she graduated from law school. She had just accepted an offer from Bingham and Stoll, and Nathaniel had sold his short story collection. She pictured sharing platters of oysters at the East Hampton Grill and browsing in White's Pharmacy and BookHampton on Main Street.

She and Nathaniel had spent whole days on the beach, reading magazines and licking Good Humor bars. Sometimes he had to drag her into the water because it felt so wonderful to lie in the sun without worrying about torts and rebuttals. At dusk they would wrap themselves in a blanket and eat a picnic of roast beef sandwiches and potato chips and watermelon.

*   *   *

“Who would have imagined that at twenty-four, I'd be a corporate attorney and you would be a serious author,” Brigit mused.

It was the last day of summer and they sat on the back porch at Summerhill. She gazed at the house with its gabled roof and thick stone walls and thought she had never been anywhere so lovely. She loved the pond filled with bright orange goldfish and the rose garden with her mother's Princess Diana roses and the sloping lawn with its wide view of the sound.

“I knew you'd be an attorney when we were seven years old and you convinced the woman who sold apples on the roadside to give you everything for a dollar,” Nathaniel replied. “You ran back to the house and begged your mother to bake three apple pies. You wrapped them in plastic wrap and put them in a wagon and made me pull it all the way back to the stand. Then you handed the woman the pies and said she could have them for free.”

“I was afraid her apples would be rotten and she wouldn't make any money.” Brigit frowned. “I thought she'd have a better chance of selling them if they were made into pies.”

“You could convince anyone to do anything, you'll be the best associate they ever had.” Nathaniel leaned on his elbows. “We don't know if I'm a real author yet. Macmillan may publish my stories and realize they are nothing but smoke and mirrors. I'll be another young writer with glowing potential whose book stinks like old fish.”

“I've read your stories and they're wonderful,” Brigit insisted. “You're going to be our generation's E. M. Forster or F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

“If I sell a single book it's because of you. What would have happened if I hadn't drank too many Irish coffees at winter carnival and confessed I've been in love with you since your tenth birthday party? It had a cowboys and Indians theme and you let me shoot an apple off your head.”

“You had great aim and it was a rubber bow and arrow.” Brigit smiled.

“I remember thinking you were the bravest girl I'd ever met.” Nathaniel reached behind himself and handed her a tall box wrapped in gold paper.

“My birthday isn't until February.” Brigit frowned, lifting the lid and seeing a blue velvet jewelry box. She looked at Nathaniel and her hands started shaking.

“I know people will say we're too young but I want to experience everything with you.” Nathaniel drew out the jewelry box. “I want to see the bulls running in Pamplona and trek across the glaciers in Patagonia. I want to watch James Bond marathons on Netflix and share boxes of Thin Mints Girl Scout cookies. There's no point waiting when there is no future without you.” He dropped to his knee. “Brigit Emily Palmer, will you marry me?”

Brigit glanced at the pear-shaped sapphire surrounded by diamonds and gasped. She wanted to tell Nathaniel to wait; they had their whole lives ahead of them. But he had always been in a rush: insisting they apply early decision to Dartmouth, renting a loft in the East Village without meeting his roommates, accepting the first offer on his stories.

Then she thought of her parents who'd married on her mother's twenty-second birthday. She remembered her mother describing the formal ceremony at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and the elegant reception at the Algonquin and the honeymoon in Monte Carlo. She pictured her parents drinking Manhattans on the lawn at Summerhill or curled up in front of the fireplace in their study. She thought of the way her father knew exactly how her mother liked her eggs or that they both loved the style section in the Sunday
New York Times.

She remembered the summer when she was eight years old and she and Daisy and Nathaniel spent lazy afternoons on the lawn making daisy chains. She pictured the crooked chain Nathaniel had slipped on her finger. She remembered not removing it until the petals fell off and her skin turned green. Years later she found it pressed inside a copy of
Little Women.

If they got married, it didn't mean they would stop spending weekends browsing in bookstores in East Hampton. They could still devote whole Sundays to working on the
New York Times
crossword puzzle or seeing Italian movies at the Roxy. She glanced at Nathaniel's bright blue eyes and knew he was right, she couldn't imagine a future without him.

“Yes, I'll marry you.” She nodded.

He slipped the sapphire-and-diamond ring onto her finger and took her in his arms. He kissed her slowly, tasting of roast beef and watermelon. He grabbed her hand and ran to the driveway.

“Where are we going?” she asked as he opened the door of his white BMW.

“To Manhattan to see your parents. They're waiting at their town house with a bottle of French champagne and a platter of Russian caviar.”

“I'm starting work tomorrow, I can't go in with a hangover,” Brigit protested. “And I never understood how anyone could like fish eggs.”

“I can hardly tell my future father-in-law I don't approve of his choice of hors d'oeuvres. When our daughter gets married we'll celebrate with fish tacos.” Nathaniel jumped into the driver's seat. “If you douse caviar in salt and wash it down with enough champagne, it's actually quite delicious.”

Brigit smoothed her hair and suddenly felt a pit in her stomach. She turned to Nathaniel and frowned.

“How do my parents know we're engaged before I do?”

“You're from one of the oldest families in New York.” Nathaniel started the engine. “I couldn't expect your parents to approve if I didn't ask them first. Even if we lived across the lawn from each other since we were five years old, they're giving up their most precious possession.”

Brigit gazed at Nathaniel's straight nose and tan cheeks and her shoulders relaxed. They were perfect for each other and Nathaniel understood everything about her.

“What if I had said no?” she asked.

Nathaniel put the car in gear and drove down the long gravel driveway. He stopped under a wide oak tree and kissed her softly on the mouth.

“I would have done everything I could to change your mind.”

“I'm an attorney.” Brigit was suddenly giddy from the weight of the sapphire and diamond and the feel of Nathaniel's mouth on her lips. “I don't reverse my decision easily.”

“I'd spend the rest of my life convincing you if I had to,” Nathaniel whispered. “There's nothing I want more.”

*   *   *

She remembered the next ten months of black-tie dinners and cocktail receptions. She was so exhausted from her terrifying workload and the never-ending invitations that sometimes she wanted to beg Nathaniel to wait. They needed a couple of years to get settled and then they would plan a wedding.

But he'd bounded into her office with her favorite sesame noodles and brochures of honeymoon destinations and her heart had lifted. She cracked open fortune cookies and thought none of it mattered if they weren't together.

*   *   *

She fingered the plastic bucket and remembered waking up at Summerhill the morning of the rehearsal dinner. She'd slipped on her white cotton robe and sat at the dormer window. She'd gazed at the dew on the grass and the mist hanging on the sound and felt her heart pound.

She wanted to race across the lawn and climb over the stone fence to Nathaniel's parents' estate. She wanted to pound on the door until Nathaniel shuffled downstairs in his plaid boxers. She wanted to say they were too young to get married; they should be focusing on their careers and planning summer holidays in Spain.

She glanced at Daisy asleep in her white-canopied bed and thought it was all slipping away. Just yesterday they used to fight over who could borrow their mother's cream angora sweater.

She tied the robe around her waist and climbed the narrow staircase to the nursery. She gazed at the child-sized table and chairs and the dollhouse with its pink curtains and smiled. She and Daisy hadn't played up there in decades but her mother refused to remove the Nancy Drew books or take down their crayon self-portraits.

She sat on a pink wooden chair and pulled her knees to her chest. She was always so sure about everything: that Dartmouth was perfect because the academics were excellent but it wasn't a pressure cooker like Harvard. That she wanted to be a lawyer because the best way to help people was to give them information.

She gazed at the sapphire-and-diamond ring and wondered why she was nervous. Was she just wistful their childhood was over or was she afraid they were being hasty?

She heard footsteps and saw a figure in a yellow robe and silk slippers. Daisy's hair was tied in a long ponytail and her face was free of makeup.

“Who gets up at seven a.m. on the day before her wedding?” Daisy yawned. “You're supposed to sleep until noon when your maid of honor pulls you out of bed and drags you to the nail salon.”

“I'm sorry I woke you.” Brigit sighed.

“I like sharing a room,” Daisy replied. “It reminds me of when I was six years old, and I was afraid the tooth fairy wouldn't come. You climbed into my bed and said I should go back to sleep. You'd make sure she wouldn't forget me.”

“I had to ask my bridesmaids to stay at Summerhill,” Brigit said. “It didn't seem right to make them stay at the Hedges Inn.”

“Mom loves having people around.” Daisy grinned. “I think it finally hit her that you're leaving. She keeps wiping her eyes and saying her allergies are terrible.”

“What if this is all wrong?” Brigit looked up. “Nathaniel and I have never even lived together, what if we can't agree on which cereals to stock in the pantry? And we're so competitive, do you remember the summer when we were fourteen and I beat him in tennis?

“The next day he came down with the flu and couldn't leave his bed for a week. I was so worried, I took him chicken soup and his mother said he was at the club. He'd been taking secret tennis lessons because he couldn't face me until he was sure he would win.”

“Do you know why you're competitive?” Daisy asked. “Because when you and Nathaniel are together no one else exists. You might challenge each other but he would defend you against the rest of the world. I hate losing a sister but you are perfect for each other.”

“Do you really think so?” Brigit asked.

Daisy picked up a Barbie doll and stroked its blond hair. She looked at Brigit and her eyes were suddenly bright. “I've known it since I was ten years old.”

*   *   *

Brigit sat at her dressing table, brushing her cheeks with powder. It was almost seven p.m. and in a few minutes she'd walk over to the Cabots' lawn for the rehearsal dinner. She slipped on diamond earrings and fastened a gold necklace around her neck. She gazed at the blue Dior cocktail dress and tried to stop her heart from racing.

She heard the door open and turned around.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “We promised we wouldn't see each other in private until the wedding.”

“I brought you something,” Nathaniel said. He wore a crisp white shirt and tan slacks. His blond hair touched his collar and he wore a yellow silk tie.

“We're not supposed to exchange gifts until just before the ceremony.” Brigit took the square box wrapped in silver tissue paper.

“You know how impatient I am with presents,” Nathaniel replied. “I left a dozen roses on your desk in physics class at Dartmouth because I wanted to surprise you on your birthday. Your professor was allergic to flowers and tossed them in the garbage.”