Page 84 of A Nantucket Wedding

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Felicity said. “We’ll all miss you.”

She stood up, set her empty glass on the coffee table, and left the room.

twenty-four

As the British Airways plane began its descent, dread gripped Jane. She was almost there. She had dozed, off and on, as they crossed the Atlantic, and now it was only one-thirty at home, but here it was seven-thirty, and the sky was full of light. It disoriented her. It made her head hurt.

Looking out the window, she saw nothing but clouds. She could not see land or sky, she couldn’t even see the plane’s wing. So this was what Scott saw before he fell. Only white. No way to tell where to put his foot, no way to guess at direction. No wonder he fell. How frightening for him! She was so sorry, she feltanguished,not just that Scott had gone off alone to hike an unpredictable path over a craggy, complicated mountain, but that he might have gotten lost in the fog on the mountain and taken the wrong way, and she had not been with him.

What kind of wife was she?

She wanted to wail with anger, but she didn’t want to frighten the man next to her, so she went to the tiny restroom and combed her hair and said to her reflection in the mirror, “You’re a terrible wife.”

When she returned to her seat, the landing process had begun, and before she knew it, the plane touched down with a reassuring thud. Then, the endless wait as the plane taxied toward the terminal. Keeping calm while passengers ahead of her filed off. The tortoise-slow line through Customs. She claimed her suitcase at the baggage terminal, got cash from the ATM, read signs, inquired at Visitor Services, and found the connection to the train to Bangor.

She boarded the train and found a seat with a table and room to stretch her legs.

Jane had placed her cellphone faceup on the table in front of her. For an hour or so, she gazed at the scenery the train passed through: farmlands giving way to evergreens, rolling hills becoming mountains with glimpses of streams running far below. Gradually, the train was enclosed in thick evergreens so that light flickered down through the trees. Even though she was tired and jittery with nerves, she tried to rest. She leaned against the seat and closed her eyes.

And saw Scott’s face.

She’d first seen him during a class on torts at Harvard Law. He was handsome, but that wasn’t why she kept looking at him. Something about him was so steady, so calm. He was a big guy, tall and broad-shouldered with big hands and feet. She thought he must have played football in high school or college, but later she discovered he’d been a rower. His movements were deliberate, economical. He didn’t doodle on the edge of his notebook, although if ever there were a course that inspired doodling, this was it. He didn’t shift in his seat, didn’t squirm or jiggle his foot. He kept his eyes on the lecturing professor and seemed unaware of anything else in the room.

When class ended and everyone stood up, gathering their books and laptop computers and backpacks, Scott’s first movement was to turn his head and meet Jane’s eyes. His look was so intense, and he had a crooked smile on his face, as if all during that hour he’d been aware of her scrutiny. Jane had blushed.

She’d been twenty-four then, no giggling girl, and she’d known from the moment she first saw him that she wanted to connect with him somehow. So she waited, pretending to organize her papers, while the classroom emptied and only she and Scott were left. He came across the room and said, “Hey. I’m Scott.”

“I’m Jane,” she said, and for some reason she laughed. “I sound like I’m in a Tarzan movie.”

“Tarzan. I always loved those movies. I always wanted tobeTarzan, swinging from vine to vine, free of social constraints.”

“Free of taxation,” she said.

“Free of clothes. Most of my clothes.”

“I don’t know.” Jane cocked her head thoughtfully. “If you actually were in a jungle swinging from vine to vine, wouldn’t you want some clothes? Especially some briefs? I mean, think of the bugs in the jungle, the snakes, the poisonous plants.”

“You sound like someone who’s traveled,” Scott said.

“Um, yeah, to Paris and Quebec. No poisonous plants there.”

“So you speak French.” His eyes were hazel, streaked with green and gold, with a strong edge of dark blue around the circumference.

“Not really. I can get by when I have to, but I wouldn’t say I’m fluent.”

“I can get by in Spanish and some Mandarin,” Scott told her. “So together, we could take on the world.”

“Mandarin? Wow. Have you been to China?”

“No, but I want to go there. I want to travel everywhere,” Scott said.

If that very moment he’d asked her to go with him to China or Rio or Russia, Jane would have gone. As it happened, he’d asked her to go with him for coffee. Coffee turned into a lazy dinner at an Italian restaurant, and then to bed at his apartment.

As a lover, Scott was unhurried and gentle, responsive to Jane’s body, tender and sweet. They were very good together, and as they spent the next day talking and walking and reading, it seemed as if they’d always been together. Were meant to be together. They spent every possible moment with each other after that first meeting, and Jane knew they were going to marry, even though Scott, deliberate and responsible as always, waited a full year to propose. And then Jane did follow him everywhere—to Death Valley for their honeymoon. She was the only person she knew who had ever been to Death Valley.

Scott thought Jane was beautiful. She had never told him how jealous she was of her younger sister, Felicity, who was always surrounded by guys. She’d even been anxious about Scott meeting Felicity—he’d see that he’d chosen the least lovely sister. But Scott had been unaffected by Felicity’s charms. He thought she was good-looking, but maybe—he didn’t want to make Jane mad, he’d said—maybe she wore too much makeup, maybe she was just a bit silly, and obviously Felicity was jealous of Jane’s good looks. Jane had laughed until she had a stitch in her side, and Scott had been puzzled by her reaction.

They were both ambitious, both hard workers who felt most in the zone when they were struggling with some legal document. Jane was hired by Mercer and Klein, and Scott was quickly snapped up by an equally prestigious firm, in the tax code law department. Their titles and salaries were commensurate, and they could schedule their vacation days together. Most years they didn’t go to Boston to share Christmas with Alison and Felicity and Noah and their children. They did go the year Alice was a newborn, because Jane knew her sister would take offense if Jane didn’t come to adore the baby and wait hand and foot on Felicity. That year Alison had put on the full Christmas extravaganza, with a tree so high it bent over at the ceiling, and so many presents they spilled out into the hallway. Carols on the CD player, gingerbread cookies and eggnog, pumpkin and apple pies. Roast goose—geese, three of them—because Alison knew how little meat was on a goose. Alice and Scott had gone to the Christmas Eve midnight church service with Alison and Mark, mostly, as they agreed later in the privacy of the bedroom, to get away from the baby, whose cries were ear-piercing. After that year, they’d felt free of family obligations, for a while.

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