Page 24 of Summer Light on Nantucket

For now, she focused on her first child, who had eaten only a few bites of cinnamon toast.

“Thanks, Mom. I’m not hungry. I’m just so excited to see Brooks. I don’t want anything to go wrong.”

Blythe was swept through with love and sympathy. First love was so hard. “It will be fine.”

Miranda said, “Sorry, Mom. I’ll try to be better.”

“Good. Here. Take the keys. Why don’t you drive there and I’ll drive home?”

“Cool. Thanks.” Miranda took the keys with the blue whale key chain. “Oh, wait. He’s coming on the Hy-Line. I want to be on the dock when the ferry arrives and there’s never any place to park.”

Would they stand in the kitchen all day, unable to decide who would drive? Blythe felt like she was caught in a television comedy.

Blythe said, “I’ll drive.”

They rushed to the car. Blythe drove while Miranda, in the passenger seat, took a call from Brooks, who said the high-speed passenger ferry had arrived and the crew were putting out the landing ramps.

“Oh, I won’t be there when he gets off the boat!” Miranda cried.

Blythe concentrated on weaving through the traffic. The Hy-Line docked at Straight Wharf, which was always crowded in the summer, when the Stop & Shop parking lot and Lower Main Street were jammed bumper to bumper with cars and trucks and taxis making their way along the narrow streets to pick up or drop off passengers.

They reached Main Street.

“I’ll go meet him there, Mom!” Miranda tried to jump out of the car but had forgotten to unhitch her seatbelt and was jerked back against the seat. Struggling, she unfastened it.

“I’ll be somewhere in this chaos,” Blythe said. “You can have Brooks load his luggage in the car and then show him the town.”

“Thanks, Mom. Iloveyou, Mom!” Miranda freed herself from the seatbelt and raced away.

Miranda ran off. Blythe joined the line of cars snaking into the Stop & Shop parking lot—in the summer, no vehicles were allowed on the pier. She was in front of Jewel of the Sea, ready to do another pass, when she saw a blur of color.

“Open the trunk, Mom!” Miranda yelled.

“Hello, Mrs. Benedict!” Brooks yelled, and shoved his luggage into the minivan before being tugged away into the crowd by Miranda.

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As she drove home, Blythe did a mental checklist of where each child would be today.

Miranda would be prowling the town with Brooks.

Holly had biked over to Carolyn’s, sent a shot of her friend’s new puppy, and texted that now she was at Celeste’s. She’d be coming home later with Carolyn, and Carolyn’s mother had agreed to let Carolyn sleep over at the Benedicts’ that night. Holly had hidden her sea gerbil books because she didn’t want Carolyn to think she was weird.

Daphne had biked over to the Maria Mitchell aquarium, where she was volunteering for the summer.

Teddy would go to the yacht club with his friends.

And Aaden was coming to lunch.

As she entered her house, Blythe felt all bubbly and excited, like a bottle of champagne shaken up. She was going to see Aaden again.

This morning, she’d made a chicken salad from two of the packets of cooked white meat chicken she’d brought down, with crisp cuts ofcelery and onion mixed with mayonnaise, salt, and pepper. She seldom drank wine at lunch, but she put a bottle of Whispering Angel in to chill because she thought she might need a glass of wine so she didn’t have a heart attack simply from being near Aaden.

Yesterday at the yacht club, he had looked reallygood.He’d always looked really good, but now he wasn’t a teenager, he was a man.

He’d been kind to Holly. Many adults simply ignored children as they spoke with the parents. But Aaden had been kind. He had always been kind.

He was divorced. She was divorced.

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