Rachel never thought she’d miss the days of her unrequited, lusting-from-afar feelings for Luke Duncan. Now, compared to her current hell, they seemed quaint and relatively joyful.
He’d called the house twice, but she refused to talk to him. Here was a guy who spent all summer blowing her off because she was too young for him and therefore couldn’t possibly have her shit together, and then he decides he wants her, sleeps with her, and his ex-girlfriend shows up the next morning? If she even was an ex. Would someone really just show up randomly like that? Did he expect Rachel to believe that? Clearly, he was the one who didn’t have his shit together.
“Have you seen my mother?” Marin walked into the kitchen wearing a decidedly unbeachy, distinctly non-Provincetown outfit of jeans, shoes rather than flip-flops or sneakers, and a button-down shirt.
“No, haven’t seen her.”
“So annoying. She was supposed to go with me to my doctor’s appointment this morning. If I wait any longer, I’m going to be late.”
“I’ll go with you,” Rachel said. She could use the distraction. Besides, they hadn’t talked much since Marin freaked out about the proposed dinner party at the house. It would be good for them to maybe reconnect.
“No, that’s okay. Thanks. I just…”
“I want to. Really. I could use the company. I honestly had the most epic fail with Luke. The night I cooked dinner at his place—”
And then the pieces clicked. Marin overreacting to the idea of her inviting people to the house when Amelia and Kelly got back. Paul asking her at dinner if Kelly was sick. “Marin,” Rachel said slowly. “Is Kelly sick?”
Marin hesitated. And then said, “We’ll talk during the drive.”
Blythe found a quiet spot on the beach, near the dunes. She rested the shoe box on her lap. She’d gambled in asking Kip to send it to her. Gambled, and lost.
We need to be on good terms…for Marin’s sake.
Now she couldn’t bring herself to open the damn box. It had cost her too much.
But no. Kip had been pulling away for a long time. Kip had had an affair. The marriage had ended months ago, and she’d just refused to see it. He had come back to Provincetown to talk to her in person, to make sure she did see it, once and for all. And he might have done that with or without the excuse of bringing her the shoe box.
So why didn’t he just do it the last time he was in town? Maybe he’d tried that day at Pilgrims’ Park but lost his nerve. Maybe he was on the fence, and then after talking to Marin about her paternity, he’d decided. But again—he could have talked to Blythe that night. Instead, he left town.
She ran her thumb over the white-gold wedding band she’d worn for thirty-two years. And she slipped it off her finger and into her bag. The spot was still marked by a thin tan line. A few weeks in the sun, and that would be gone too.
The sun could cure a lot of woes.
Blythe brushed sand off the top of the box, wondering if Nick had sat near that very spot, sketching the ocean, back in the days when he had been happy in this town, when inspiration had come as naturally as breathing.
It all fit together now—why he had left, why he had cut himself off so abruptly from the place he had loved. And when she met him, he was still struggling with losing his muse. Maybe he had been looking for a new muse in Blythe, or in the party scene in Philly, only to leave and find it on a beach halfway around the world. But she did know one thing; there was no way Nadine’s depiction of his mental state in Italy was true. He had not run away distraught from his affair with Blythe. And he had not been unhappy in Italy—and certainly not unhappy enough to kill himself. Because for the first time in years, he had been successfully drawing again.
A part of her wanted to open the box, to hold Nick’s letter, see his drawing and close her eyes and maybe, for a brief moment, see him again. But a stronger part of her did not. She didn’t want to revisit the past. She’d had an impulse to save the letter all those years ago, and now she understood the universe worked in strange ways, as Nick had predicted.
The letter was not for her. It was for Amelia.
But there was something she wanted to see again. Slowly, almost holding her breath, she lifted the lid and pulled out her old Degas journal. How amazing that she’d bought the book maybe an hour before meeting Nick, before her life changed forever. She traced the cover painting with her finger, then opened to the first page and closed it again. The words were written by a lonely and confused young woman she would never recognize today. She didn’t want to revisit that either.
Her phone rang. She reached for her handbag, happy to be called back to the present.
“Blythe? Warren Ames here.”
She smiled. “Hi, Warren. I’m at the beach, so reception might not be great.”
“Gotcha. Just wanted to see if you’re free for dinner tonight?”
Blythe stood up, looking out at the ocean. “Yes. Yes, Warren—I’m free.”
It was a day of dramatic news—good and bad. On the bad side, Marin had to break it to Rachel that Kelly had cancer. This resulted in Rachel crying the entire ride to Hyannis. But then, in the exam room, the teeny-tiny 6.7-centimeter baby waved at them. Well, moved a tiny hand in their general direction. Marin couldn’t quite believe her eyes. She stared and stared, thinking, That’s my baby. My baby. Rachel smiled and squeezed Marin’s arm and squealed that she was going to be an aunt.
The doctor—a Cate Blanchett lookalike wearing on her lab coat a uterus pin that read POLITICS-FREE ZONE—asked Marin if she wanted to know the gender.
Rachel had immediately said, “Yes!” Marin had to shoot her a look to temper her enthusiasm. She needed a minute to think. Did she want to know? It was a moment she would want, ideally, to share with Julian. But Julian was not there, had in fact not called her in days. As far as paternity went, as far as their relationship went, it was wait-and-see. But there was no reason to wait to fall more in love with her baby.
“Yes,” she said. “I want to know.”
“Congratulations. It’s a boy!”
Oh my God, Marin thought. I’m a mother.
“We have to tell Kelly and Amelia,” Rachel said. “It’s such good news and, well, they need good news.” Of course, she was right.
And so, back at the house, armed with a thin paper printout of the sonogram and the news that Amelia had a great-grandson on the way, Marin set off to try to bring her grandmother some measure of happiness. (Honestly, she would have liked to share the news with her mother first, but oddly, she was still nowhere to be found.)
Marin didn’t have to look far to find Kelly and Amelia. They were reading out back, side by side in lounge chairs, a pitcher of iced tea on the small table between them.
“Hey, you guys. Sorry to interrupt,” Marin said. “I wanted to show you something.”
Amelia moved over, giving Marin space to sit on the edge of her lounge chair. She offered her tea. “I’m good, thanks,” Marin said, handing her the thin strip of paper with three images. Amelia straightened out the paper that was already beginning to curl and squinted.
“I need my glasses,” she said.
“It’s the baby,” said Marin. “A boy.”
Amelia looked up. “It’s a boy?”
“Holy shit, Amelia, you’ve got a great-grandson!” Kelly said, lifting up her sunglasses. Her green eyes were bright with happiness.
“We have a great-grandson,” Amelia said, leaning over and reaching for Kelly’s hand. “Exciting, right?”
Marin passed the sonogram pictures to Kelly.
“It’s so fucking amazing,” Kelly said. “Look at that little nose! See, babe—life goes on.”
“Yes. Something for us to look forward to,” she said pointedly.
The two of them locked in a gaze that excluded Marin so completely, all she could do was back silently into the house. She left the sonogram photos behind.