“You know about the tattoo?”
Mack was still smiling. “Sure. Lots of girls saw it when they showered in gym. All the boys want to see it, but as far as I can tell, no guys have.”
“Good thing,” Lisa said, rolling her eyes. “It’s on her bum.”
“Do you know what it says?” Mack asked.
“I do. Do you?”
“No. Beth wouldn’t tell me. Is it a heart saying ‘Luke Bryan’?”
“No. It’s a heart saying, ‘Stephen Hawking.’ ”
Mack threw back his head and laughed. Quickly, he quieted. “Well, that was unexpected. And totally inappropriate here.”
Lisa gave him a guilty smile. “Sorry. But I’m sure the Barneses won’t begrudge you a laugh, not even here.”
Mack looked at Lisa, and she met his eyes, and for a few moments, no one said anything. God, Lisa thought, I’m crushing on a man ten years younger than I am.
Forcing herself to drop her eyes, she said, “I should go.”
Mack nodded. “It was nice talking to you.”
Lisa walked away, toward the clutch of kids standing together, all of them sagging with misery. Theo was there, and Beth was by his side, and Theo’s gaze was fixed on Beth as if afraid she’d disappear if he looked away.
From the moment he found out about Atticus’s suicide, Theo mourned his friend and hated himself for not helping him, somehow. Lisa arranged for him to see a therapist—many of the students saw therapists that summer to learn how to deal with their shock and sorrow. One of their own, one of their best, had died. Theo learned to channel his grief and his natural excess of energy into body boarding and surfing. Lisa thought that while surfing Theo felt he had some small control over the incomprehensible world. He left at the end of the summer to attend the University of California at San Diego. Lisa knew he had chosen that college because it was near excellent surfing, and she both loved and hated that Theo surfed. It was dangerous. But plain old life was dangerous, too.
Her parents, only in their early seventies, were increasingly hampered with health problems. They moved to an assisted living facility on the Cape. Lisa visited them as often as she could, but she saw with each visit how they were failing. Her mother had Alzheimer’s and died a year to the day she left the island, and Lisa’s father passed on only a few months later. Much of the money her parents got when they sold their Nantucket home had gone into a down payment at the assisted living facility, but Lisa inherited a healthy chunk of money, and never before had money made her so sad.
Juliet was attending MIT because she was such a natural with math and computers. Theo was in California. Lisa became obsessed with her work. She loved the camaraderie of the shop and the gorgeous college girls who worked in June, July, and August. She enjoyed her customers—most of them—and each day the shop was filled with gossip and laughter. If she suggested a dress or a sweater that someone bought, Lisa was as pleased as if she’d won a game. She started carrying jewelry and accessories.
When she turned fifty, a group of her women friends threw a party for her.
“You lucky duck,” Helen North said. “You look fabulous and your children are off at college. Time for romance!”
Lisa laughed and shook her head. “Oh, Helen, it’s too late for me. All the single men my age, if there are any single men my age, want to date thirty-year-olds.”
“Try a dating site,” Rachel suggested.
“I don’t have the time,” Lisa quickly countered. “Or the interest.”
The weeks and months passed. Lisa discovered she was often exhausted from working all day, all week, for even though she was closed on Sundays except in the summer, she had paperwork to catch up on, stock to unpack or return. Finally, with trepidation, she hired another woman to help her year-round, Betsy Mason, new to the island and with a background in retail. Betsy had just turned thirty, and she was a crisp, practical, savvy young woman, and her cheerful presence brightened Lisa’s life.
Juliet graduated from MIT and immediately took a job with a tech company in Cambridge. She came home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and a week or two in the summer, but she always brought her computer with her. Theo loved San Diego, surfing as often as he could, only coming home once for a few days at Christmas.
Her life had changed again, like a car moving so smoothly onto a different path she’d hardly noticed it happening.
Early one evening she sat at the dining room table scrolling through her home computer, idly reading Facebook and Instagram posts, a glass of wine by her side. It was May, the beginning of the island’s real spring. She was fifty-six years old. And alone.
She admitted to herself that she was lonely for the companionship of a man. She had plenty of women friends, some who were divorced or widowed. She often went out to dinner or to plays with them. She spoke to men at the Rotary or chamber of commerce events, but no one there interested her or showed interest in her.
Well, ha! Who would want her? Ever, or especially now?
“Stop it,” she said to herself—she often spoke aloud to herself, and why not? “Don’t be maudlin. You’re healthy and well-off. You have two healthy happy children, and your life is good. You have nothing to complain about!”
Then the dining room ceiling fell on her head.
three
Not the entire ceiling, just a few fragments of plaster. But more was to come because the previous week Nantucket had experienced one of its gale force storms with whipping rain that went on for hours. Looking up, Lisa saw that rain had slithered from the upper edge of the fireplace chimney into her dining room, making wet spots and entire tunnels as if upside-down moles had burrowed all around the ceiling. It had to be fixed and she knew she couldn’t do it herself.
During the almost thirty years she’d lived here, she’d taken the best care she could of her children. She’d spent time choosing organic vegetables and making “real” meals instead of pizza every day. She’d attended swim meets, school plays, and basketball games. She’d volunteered at the school library. She’d kept the house clean, comfortable, and welcoming. She’d placed flowers on the table and electric candles in the windows during the winter. The furniture was well-polished, she built glowing fires in the living room fireplace, and her beautiful garden was filled with herbs and flowers.
But she hadn’t taken note of the casual, extensive, sneaky deterioration of the house. When part of the ceiling fell on her head, exposing the wooden staves above, she knew she had to pay attention to the house or it would continue to fall apart.
She took up a pad and a pen and, feeling quite industrious, went through the house, looking at what needed doing. All of the “lights,” the rectangular glass panes at the top of most of the ancient interior doors, rattled, not just when the door was opened or closed, but also when wild winds blew and drafts whistled through the house. They’d been that way for years. It was just part of the house. Many things rattled in an old house.