Winter Storms (5 page)

After another few seconds, Ava feels like an idiot. She tosses the roses onto the passenger seat and drives home to the inn.

At home, there is a bottle of Veuve Clicquot sitting on ice on the kitchen counter.

For me?
she wonders. That doesn't seem right. Ava's family is wonderful and nurturing, but would anyone have remembered that it was her last day of school and chosen to celebrate it?

Mitzi and Kelley are both in the kitchen. Mitzi is reaching for the champagne flutes and Kelley is pulling the blueberry Brie out of the oven. Kelley never serves his blueberry Brie to the guests; it's strictly a family treat. But what's the occasion?

“Hey,” Ava says, “I'm home.”

“Just in time,” Kelley says. He sets the Brie on the counter and Ava gazes at it longingly.

“What's going on?” she asks, and then her eyes bulge. Have they found Bart?

“Your brother,” Kelley says.

Ava starts to shake. Her chest constricts. She has imagined Bart's return every day since he went missing. She's imagined the instant she hears the news; she's imagined her wondrous relief, the anxiety being lifted off her shoulders by a host of angels. But no, no, she thinks—Mitzi isn't emotional enough. If it were Bart, Mitzi would be on her knees, weeping.

“My brother?” Ava says.

“Patrick,” Kelley says. “He got out of jail this
morning.”

“Right,” Ava says. In a side pocket of her mind, she'd known this. “Is he here?”

“No,” Mitzi says. “He's at home with Jennifer and the kids. But we decided to celebrate anyway.”

Ava nods and accepts a champagne flute. She feels a twinge of irritation. They're celebrating the brother who broke the law and ended up in jail while the brother who set out to defend the country's freedom is—best-case scenario—imprisoned by enemy forces. But… okay? They're the Quinns! Ava supposes she should just drink her champagne, eat the most delicious cheese on earth, and celebrate Patrick's release.

Kevin, Isabelle, and Genevieve stroll into the kitchen. Kevin swings Genevieve between his legs.

“You're going to dislocate her shoulders!” Mitzi cries.

“She's tough,” Kevin says, then he lifts her up and kisses her cheek. “My tough baby girl.”

The time with her family does wonders for Ava's mood. After a glass and a half of champagne and two crostini smothered with the gooey, fruity cheese, Ava repairs to the shower. She'll meet Nathaniel on the Straight Wharf, and she will wear a knockout dress and put her hair in a loose bun the way he likes it.

“Are you going out with Scott or Nathaniel tonight?” Mitzi asks as Ava heads out the back door of the inn.

“Nathaniel,” Ava says. “Scott is going to Tuscany with Roxanne.”

“Oh,” Mitzi says. “Oh my.”

Nathaniel is standing at the start of the Straight Wharf, just in front of the Gazebo. He's holding a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and two champagne flutes.

This time Ava feels certain the champagne is for her.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“Follow me,” he says.

He leads her down the dock to where the fishing boats are lined up and stops at the
Endeavor
. The
Endeavor
is a thirty-one-foot Friendship sloop that does charter harbor cruises, specializing in sunsets; Kelley and Mitzi recommend it for guests of the inn all the time. Ava loves seeing the boat on the horizon; she always imagines how lucky the people on board are. She hasn't been on the boat since Mitzi rented it for Kelley's fiftieth birthday.

“Are we going?” she asks Nathaniel.

“We're going,” he says.

“By ourselves?”

“Just you and me, the captain, and the first mate.”

Ava can't believe it. This is an extravagant gesture. In her mind, it's even better than a villa in Tuscany. Ava removes her shoes and climbs aboard with Nathaniel following. The hot day has turned into a mild evening, and because it's the longest day of the year, there's still an hour of daylight before sunset. Ava stretches out on the bow—they're the only
guests; they have the whole boat to themselves!—and
Nathaniel joins her. He pops the cork on the champagne and pours
two glasses. They putter out of the slip and into the
harbor.

Ava has lived on Nantucket since she was nine years old, but she is still dazzled every time she gets out on the water. It doesn't happen as often as one might think. She takes the ferry, of course, and on the occasional summer Sunday, she will join Shelby and Zack in their whaler for a trip to Coatue or Great Point. But given that Ava's usually at school or the inn, most of her Nantucket experience takes place on land.

The sails go up as the boat rounds Brant Point Light. There are a couple of kids on the beach collecting horseshoe crabs. Ava waves at them. The
Endeavor
sails around the jetty and out into Nantucket Sound. Ava sees the Cliffside Beach Club and the Galley restaurant. Piano music and the clink of glasses drift over the water. The sun lowers on the horizon, a ball of pink fire.

Nathaniel is wearing a white linen shirt and the faded madras shorts that are her favorite. Nathaniel's a builder and works outside, so he's already very tan, and he's let the scruff on his face grow for three days. Ava loves it this way.

He is so handsome,
she thinks.
And talented and funny. He can have any girl he wants.
She looks at the water.

“This is…” Ava says. She's worried that by choosing a word, any word, she will be limiting the magnificence and beauty of the night. “It's…”

“Ava,” Nathaniel says.

She turns. He's holding a black box.

He opens the box. Diamond ring.

“I want you to be my wife,” he says. “Will you marry me?”

Ava blinks. She looks at the ring sparkle; she looks into Nathaniel's green eyes, notices the slightly nervous set of his smile, and then casts her gaze up. Across the darkening sky are the contrails of an airplane. Ava imagines it's Scott and Roxanne's plane, heading to Tuscany.

“Yes,” she says.

Nathaniel stands up on the bow and raises his arms in a V. “She said yes!” he shouts. “She! Said! Yes!”

Ava laughs. She gets to her feet and kisses him.

From behind the wheel, the captain calls out, “Congratulations!”

“Thank you!” Ava says. Her eyes follow the trajectory of the contrails until they fade away.

Later, over a dinner of oyster sliders and lobster rolls at Cru, Nathaniel says, “I signed on for a new job today.”

“Yeah,” Ava says. “As Mr. Ava Quinn.” She can't stop looking at the ring on her finger. She feels like a completely different person—a person who has been proposed to, and in the most romantic way possible.

“Well, yeah,” Nathaniel says. “And I also got a new building job. It's a compound like nothing I've ever seen—a six-thousand-square-foot main house, a pool house, a four-car garage, and three guest cottages for the kids.”

“Wow,” Ava says. She greatly respects Nathaniel's skills
as a carpenter—he is held in very high esteem professionally—
but where work is concerned, she has more in common with Scott.

She has to stop comparing them, she thinks. She's made her decision, right? Nathaniel. She looks at the ring. She hates herself for imagining what Scott will do when she tells him, but the shocked, incredulous expression that will appear on his face keeps looping through her mind.
Please
don't tell me you only said yes to Nathaniel in order to one-up the trip to Tuscany,
she scolds herself.

“Where is it?” Ava asks. “The job?”

She's expecting him to say Shimmo or Madaket, Quaise
or Madequecham. Or, maybe… Sconset. (Like a true islander,
she thinks:
Please not Sconset. It's so far away!
)

“Block Island,” he says.

She gapes. Her jaw drops, her eyes pop, her mind races.
Block Island?

Last year, Nathaniel did an enormous project on Martha's Vineyard. Chappaquiddick, to be specific. At least Ava has reference points for the Vineyard—it's got seven towns to Nantucket's one and it's fifteen miles closer to the mainland. Ava has been to the Vineyard at least a dozen times. She has shopped at Nell's in Edgartown, jogged down the bike path to Katama Bay, seen the requisite sunset from the bluffs of Aquinnah, and eaten ice cream at Mad Martha's. But the only thing she knows about Block Island is that it's part of Rhode Island.

“I'd like to get married before we move there,” Nathaniel says.

“We?” Ava says.

“Yes,” Nathaniel says. “We.”

Ava gulps and slides the ring off her finger.

 

K
elley and Mitzi are hosting Margaret and Drake's wedding on August 20. Margaret calls the inn, and both Kelley and Mitzi get on the phone to discuss the details. Margaret wants to keep it
simple, simple, simple.
Just family and a few close friends, she says—but where to draw the line? Margaret and Drake; Kelley and Mitzi; Patrick, Jennifer, and the kids; Kevin, Isabelle, and Genevieve; Ava and Scott; Margaret's assistant, Darcy; Drake's nephew, Liam; Ava's friends Shelby and Zack; Jennifer's mother, Beverly, from San Francisco; Drake's colleague Jim Hahn and his wife, but not their five children. Margaret has to invite Lee Kramer, the head of the network, and his wife, Ginny, who is the editor of
Vogue
,
but Margaret is pretty sure they'll decline. They're Hamptons people.

Mitzi says, “Would it be too off-the-wall to invite George and Mary Rose?”

“Yes,” Kelley says.

“If you want to invite George, it's fine with me,” Margaret says. “He has been a part of our larger story this past year.”

You can say that again!
Kelley thinks. He knows that Mitzi and George Umbrau—the man Mitzi had been conducting an affair with for twelve straight Christmases when he came to the Winter Street Inn to play Santa Claus—parted on good terms. He also knows that George is now hot and heavy with Mary Rose Garth, a woman he met here on Nantucket last Stroll weekend during the Holiday House Tour. Who knew George was such a player? Kelley doesn't feel threatened by George, not really; the attraction between him and Mitzi has run its course. And Mitzi is being very gracious in hosting Kelley's ex-wife's wedding.

“Sure, let's invite George and Mary Rose,” Kelley says. George is fun at parties. And Kelley would basically do anything to keep Mitzi's mind off Bart.

A few days earlier, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center finally issued a press release about the status of Private William Burke. The soldier had regained consciousness but was still unable to speak. He could answer simple questions by blinking his eyes. Kelley and Mitzi had hugged each other in celebration, although they soon realized they weren't any closer to getting answers about Bart.

What kind of simple questions are the doctors asking the private? Kelley wonders. Is he alert enough to answer questions about what happened? About his fellow troops, still held captive? And what if…

The next thought is too difficult to articulate, even in his mind. What if William Burke says that he's the sole survivor? What if William Burke's regaining consciousness is the end of hope?

Again, Kelley considers driving ten hours south to Bethesda—but that won't solve anything. He and Mitzi simply have to wait. They have to live their lives and concentrate on the family they do have.

Margaret and Drake's wedding will be held on the beach out at Eel Point. Catherine, the town clerk, will marry Margaret and Drake, and there will be a harp player, a trumpet player, and a cellist. But Margaret keeps adding surprises. At the beginning of August, Margaret and Drake had dinner at the Club Car. When they visited the piano bar in the back, Margaret met Gordon Russell, a man with a deep, resonant, nearly professional-sounding singing voice. He had been belting out “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'” from
Okla
homa!
Margaret (a lifelong sucker for show tunes) approached
Mr. Russell afterward and asked him to sing at her wedding. And, because Margaret is an investigative reporter, she learned that Mr. Russell owned the Lilly Pulitzer store In the Pink, here on Nantucket, and that he was a twelfth-generation islander, descended from the Folgers and the Gardners. In all ways, Gordon Russell is a valuable, interesting addition to the group.

“What song is he singing?” Kelley asks.

“‘The Wedding Song,'” Margaret says casually.

This gives Kelley pause. “The Wedding Song”? The old chestnut sung by Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary that was so in vogue forty years earlier when Margaret and Kelley
got married? Hadn't he and Margaret wanted Kelley's
brother, Avery, to sing “The Wedding Song” at
their
wedding? Yes, Kelley is pretty sure they had, but then the priest wouldn't allow it, so one of the choir members had sung the Ave Maria instead.