Page 53 of A Nantucket Wedding

“But remember, Poppy is young. She knows stuff you don’t know. She has ideas you don’t have. You need to share the work—and the glory. And you need to start taking a couple of days a week away from work. We can go to the island. We can go to museums and concerts in Boston. You can lead a more balanced life.”

“What about you?” David asked. “No honeymoon?”

Alison ran her hand down his beloved face. “Whenever we’re together, that’s all the honeymoon I need.”

sixteen

Felicity understood that she possessed an unrealistic view of marriage. Her parents had been happy together, and Felicity had assumed her marriage would be happy, too.

Or, wait, she thought. She didn’t mean happy or even easy. She’d thought marriage between two people would be a joint effort. Fifty-fifty. Maybe sixty-forty.

Now she knew she’d been naïve.

Her situation was compounded by the fact that in the group of mothers Felicity saw on a regular basis, usually at someplace like the park or the school with the kids, no other mother seemed as conflicted about her own marriage as Felicity was about hers. She knew, of course, they couldn’t all be floating on rosy clouds of matrimonial bliss, but while they all complained—with laughter—about their husbands, no one expressed the doubts and the downright anger Felicity felt.

She spent three days muttering to herself, and finally, in the middle of the week, she called Jane.

“I was just going to phone you!” Jane said.

“You were?” Felicity couldn’t help smiling.

“What’s going on?” Jane asked.

“Do you have a moment?”

“Of course. Where are you?”

“I’m in the attic.”

Jane laughed. “Isn’t it hot up there?”

“Sweltering. But this way the kids can’t hear me.”

“Wow. Tell me everything.”

“You first,” Felicity said.

“No, you first,” Jane said. “Please. I need to get out of my Slough of Despond.”

“Your what?”

“It’s fromThe Pilgrim’s Progress…never mind. Tell me.”

“All right, well, the coming weekend is the Fourth of July. Fireworks, cookouts, the All-American day, right? Mom has invited us all down for the long weekend and it’s going to be wicked hot those days. Plus, I’ve been to the island twice and Noah hasn’t deigned to come even once.”

“And he doesn’t want to come for the Fourth?” Jane asked.

“He doesn’t! He won’t! And do you know why? Because Ingrid, his ‘office wife,’ is having a huge cookout for everyone who works for Green Food.”

“But the Fourth is a family holiday, isn’t it?”

“Exactly! That’s what I told Noah and he said children are invited, too, and get this, the astonishing Ingrid has aswimming pool!”

“Um, Mom’s got the ocean…”

“Noah says the salt in the ocean bothers his eyes.”

“And the chorine in a pool doesn’t?”

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