Page 101 of Summer Light on Nantucket

“Kate is driving Teri to the boat,” Celeste said.

“Dad!” Daphne spoke as if she were cursing.

Celeste was pale, and Blythe noticed how she tucked her hands into her pockets as soon as she had set the tea in front of Bob.

“Celeste, sit down, here.” She pulled out the chair at the head of the table.

Several times in her life, Blythe had found herself in this sort of situation, where everything was a mess and there really was no easy solution. It was part of life. Inescapable. It made her heart hurt to see her family this way, and she had no magic answers.

But she loved them. She loved them all, her daughters and her son, her ex-mother-in-law, even her ex-husband, who was the cause of all this turbulence. Why hadn’t he told Teri he’d had a vasectomy? Was he afraid he’d lose her? Right now, he absolutely sagged in his chair, hiding his face in his hands, his shoulders slumped. As if he thought he’d lost Teri.

Blythe pulled a chair up next to him. She put her hand on his shoulder.

“Bob. I get it. It’s so hard, raising children. But you are a wonderful father. You made it through all the tears and tantrums of seventeen years—and those were only the onesIhad.” She smiled, pleased with herself for being funny.

Behind her, Miranda snorted appreciatively.

“You’ve been with Teri for three years. Your children have come to feel safe with her, to enjoy her, and you have been happier because of her. I know that. I can assure you of that. Maybe you haven’t been perfect, like I am, but you’ve been pretty darn good.”

As she spoke, freewheeling it, in that rare space she’d found herself in so many times over the years, speaking without knowing what she was going to say next, and talking honestly, almost helplessly, from the heart, she sensed how the mood in the room was lightening.

Bob dropped his hands. He sighed enormously. “I don’t know, Blythe. Really. I don’t know.”

She kept her eyes on Bob, but she knew her children were watching her as if mesmerized, waiting to hear what she would say next. Andwhat could she say? What should she say? She wasn’t a priest or a psychiatrist. She was only an ordinary person.

What did she care about? What would she want her children to know?

She would want them to know about love.

First love, young love, lost love, family love.

“You say you don’t know, Bob, but let me ask you this. Do you love Teri?”

Bob shot her a sideways look.

“I think you do,” Blythe told him. “I think you love her and she loves you.”

He nodded. With a scratchy voice, he whispered, “I do love Teri.”

“Then go get her. Apologize to her. And then you two decide, because the decision belongs to both of you, about the whole vasectomy matter.”

“God, Mom,” Daphne said, “you should come with a soundtrack.”

Bob looked around the table at his four children. “You guys like her, right?”

“We do,” Miranda replied, glaring at her siblings in case they dared to disagree.

Bob stood up. “I guess I’ll go see if I can catch her before she leaves.”

“Yay, Dad!” Holly cheered.

Bob went to the door. Everyone followed, the children elbowing one another out of the way.

Bob opened the door. Fresh air and the fragrance of newly mown grass rushed in at them. Across the street, someone was mowing his lawn. Next door, a woman knelt to pick flowers.

A Volvo came down the street.

Holly whimpered. “Aw. There’s Kate’s Volvo turning into the drive. The boat must have gone.”

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