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Just as tradition called for, the five Sisters of Edgartown crashed together in a sleepover reminiscent of their middle school days. Each slept heavily, their stomachs filled to the brim with mozzarella sticks and pizza slices and gummy bears and wine.
Jennifer awoke just past seven to find Amelia already up and at-em in the kitchen. She sliced strawberries and listened to a podcast on her headphones, one about preparation for childbirth and the first months of her baby’s life. When she spotted Jennifer in the doorway, she leaped with surprise.
“You thought you were the only early riser around here?” Jennifer teased.
Amelia placed her headphones across the counter. “I couldn’t sleep past six. This baby of mine would not stop dancing in my stomach. It also doesn’t help that she or he is pressing right on my bladder.”
“Oh, God. I don’t miss those days of constantly peeing and not finding a comfortable position to sleep at night.” Jennifer stepped toward the coffee maker to brew up a pot. As the black liquid flicked into the glass container, she lifted her arms to stretch.
“I want to kill Liam for what he did to Mila,” Amelia confessed as she blew out the remaining breath in her mouth.
Jennifer grimaced. “In all my years, I never imagined someone treating Mila like that.”
“Not our Mila,” Amelia added.
Jennifer’s nostrils flared. She reached for her phone, which had remained on its charger since the previous afternoon. When she turned it on, she found several texts, all from Derek and all after one a.m. Her heart pumped with fear.
“What’s wrong, Jen?” Amelia demanded. “I don’t like the expression you’re wearing.”
DEREK: Hey! Nick just got here.
DEREK: He looked upset. I don’t know what is going on.
DEREK: I told him he could sleep in the guest room for the night.
DEREK: Anyway - I love you so much. I can’t wait to celebrate your birthday a little bit more, just the two of us.
Jennifer furrowed her brow. “Nick came back to Derek and I’s place last night...”
“Really? That’s bizarre. Is Stacy out of town?”
“Not that I know of.” Jennifer glanced back toward Mila’s living room, where Camilla was all stretched out on the couch and Olivia slept on a blow-up mattress, just like old times. Mila remained in her bed while Amelia had slept in Zane’s room and Jennifer in Isabelle’s.
“If you need to head home and figure this out, I’ll explain it to the others,” Amelia offered.
“Yes. I think that is probably a good idea. I’m just... He’s not normally like this.”
Jennifer did her best to tend to her face and makeup, her motions blurry with panic. When she jumped back in her vehicle, the radio spat out news of a robbery over in Oak Bluffs. Two criminals had broken into an older couple’s home with the mind to steal their silverware and jewelry. They’d been captured in the midst of the act, as their neighbor had been out with his dog. Jennifer shivered at the story. Cruelty hit them everywhere — even on Martha’s Vineyard, a supposedly fairytale of a place.
Jennifer tried to explain the facts to herself en route to the condo if only to calm her racing mind. Nick was safe. Probably, he was still asleep, as he’d never gotten over that pubescent desire to sleep the hours away. Stacy had laughed about this recently, saying he would sleep till noon every day if he could.
Nick wasn’t just safe, in fact. He’d headed straight for her place, rather than Joel’s, when times had gotten tough.
Jennifer burst through the front door to find Derek at the breakfast table with a bowl of cereal and a spread-out newspaper before him. He wore only a t-shirt and a pair of boxers, and he’d obviously ran his fingers through his hair many times as he’d struggled through the crossword. Jen’s heart brewed with love at the sight of him. She dropped down and kissed him tenderly on the cheek, then glanced toward the shadows of the hall.
“Any sign of him?”
“Not yet.” Derek folded up his newspaper to give Jennifer his full attention. “I might have heard him crying earlier. Don’t tell him I said that.”
“Gosh.” Jennifer pressed her teeth into her lower lip. It was only eight. She had to be patient. If he’d arrived so late to the house, he needed his sleep. Sorrow made a person sleepier anyway.
Jennifer poured herself a bowl of cereal and perched next to Derek to help him with the crossword. It was a way to pass the time, although it barely helped at all. Minutes dragged.
Around nine-thirty, after listening to a podcast and very nearly closing out the (admittedly difficult) crossword, a rustling came from the guest room. Jennifer froze as Nick bucked out to head for the bathroom. When he reappeared, his eyes locked onto hers. She knew this look — it was devastation.
Jennifer leaped up from her chair and walked to the bedroom, where he’d just disappeared. He sat at the edge of the bed in the darkness with his hands folded between his knees.
“Nick...” Jennifer stepped inside and hovered. “Do you mind if we talk?”
Nick shook his head. Jennifer closed the door softly behind her, conscious that Nick probably didn’t want his mother’s boyfriend to hear his secrets.
A beat passed, then another. Jennifer’s throat tightened.
“Whatever it is, we can get through it together,” Jennifer told him. “You aren’t alone.”
Again, silence. Nick exhaled all the air from his lungs. He still didn’t have the strength to look her way.
“She lost the baby,” Nick murmured finally.
Jennifer draped her hand over her heart. Her knees threatened to kick out beneath her. “When did it happen?”
“Yesterday morning,” Nick whispered. “I rushed her to the hospital. She was three and a half months pregnant, Mom. We thought we were in the clear.”
Jennifer dropped onto the bed alongside her son. Although they were incredibly common, Jennifer had never had a miscarriage and struggled not to find it one of the hardest-possible things imaginable. All this hope around a beautiful idea of a future, suddenly shattered, usually for unexplainable reasons.
“They released her from the hospital in the afternoon,” Nick explained. “She wouldn’t talk to me for an hour. After that, she got all ready to go and said she wanted to go to her parents’ place. I told her we needed to sit together and process this together. But she was so devastated, rightfully so, but so am I. The hurt and sorrow that filled her eyes, I’ve never seen that type of pain before.”
Nick wiped his fingers over his face. The images seemed too cruel.
“I told her she could take time at her parents if that’s what she needs— that we can come back to one another this weekend and talk about everything. But she says she isn’t sure about anything right now. Being with me reminds her of this life she dreamed of. And she just wants to be alone. Admittedly, it’s been a whole lot of her and me the past few years. We neglected our other friendships under the belief that we only needed each other. Now, I feel so alone, to be honest with you. And I’m reminding her of one of the worst days of her life, of our life.”
Jennifer rubbed Nick’s upper back as he shook with his sobs. Wasn’t this meant to be a time for everyone to hold one another up? He moved his head toward her shoulder and huddled against her, which was an unusual sight, considering he was much bigger than his mother. It didn’t matter.
“Nick. You know these things happen,” Jennifer breathed. “Miscarriages are common, even at this stage of the game. It’s absolutely awful, but it doesn’t change anything between you and Stacy. She’ll realize she needs your support in this. She’s just taking some time.”
“It just kills me that she won’t let me care for her,” Nick replied. “We only got married a few weeks ago. I pledged to love and support her all the days of my life. And now, here I am in your guest bedroom, waiting for her to call.”
“She will call,” Jennifer affirmed. “And when the time comes, you will get pregnant again. You both are still so young, Nick. I know it probably doesn’t feel that way right now. But when you get as old as me, you realize the length of time. There’s so much of it, with so much set aside for mistakes and screw-ups and natural disasters, like this one. If you want to, you and Stacy still have time to have upwards of ten kids.”
Nick let out an ironic laugh. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Mom. We agreed on three tops.”
“See? You can probably get three in before you turn twenty-seven. I never dared for more than one. Me and your dad always said you were our perfect miracle baby. Besides that, you had this really awful streak at the age of three when we couldn’t get you to stop screaming for hours at a time. That put us off kids as well.”
Nick puffed out his cheeks. Jennifer wasn’t sure if these stories were helping or hurting. Even still, it was better than the silences, which seemed to darken the air.
“Let me make you some breakfast, Nicky,” Jennifer suggested while rubbing his arm in comfort.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I can eat,” Nick told her.
“My son can always eat. It’s a fact of life,” Jennifer stated in a firmer tone. “Plus, you’ll make yourself so upset if you don’t fuel your body. Really, Nick. Just let me make you an omelet.”
Nick feigned annoyance, even as he gave her his first real smile of the morning.
“Okay. Fine. If you insist.”
Back in the kitchen, Jennifer cracked eggs into a glass bowl and muttered the news under her breath so that Derek understood. His eyes were heavy with sorrow.
“He must know that this is common?”
“I don’t think it matters right now. He just wants to be there for Stacy, and all Stacy wants is space,” Jennifer returned.
Jennifer positioned onions and peppers and zucchini across the wooden cutting board and took solace in the repetitive motions and the sharp slice of the knife. Mid way through the onion, she received a text from the group chat, which included a photo of the four of them over breakfast.
MILA: Miss you, girl. I hope everything’s okay.
CAMILLA: And happy birthday! We love you.
OLIVIA: Forever.
AMELIA: And ever!
Jennifer showed Derek the photo of the four of them and their fluffy pancakes and their bright strawberries.
“Not one of you look like you ate your weight in gummy bears last night,” Derek teased gently. “What’s your secret?”
“We’re witches, of course.”
Nick, Jennifer, and Derek sat around the kitchen table in their pajamas and feasted on omelets heaped with sour cream and salsa. Nick stirred them up some mimosa’s mid-way through their meal, even as Derek protested that he “had to do a little bit of work later.”
“It’s a Thursday for some of us around here,” Derek pointed out.
“It’s still kind of my birthday,” Jennifer returned with a funny smirk.
“Oh, great. How long are you going to use that excuse?” Derek laughed outright as Nick placed his drink before him on the table.
“As long as I can get away with it,” Jennifer said with a wink.
Bit-by-bit, as they fueled themselves over breakfast, Nick’s skin brightened. His smile came in, stops and starts. To take his mind off of things, Derek told Nick a number of stories from his early days in New York City.
“Don’t let him get any ideas,” Jennifer scolded. “I won’t make it if my only kid runs off the island.”
“You know I couldn’t make it out there,” Nick told her.
“Make it? You could make it, kid,” Derek affirmed. “The fact is, though, life’s borderline paradise around here. Now that I live here more or less full-time, I don’t want a life anywhere else. Emma’s talked about moving out here, too.”
“It’s funny to think about everything I had growing up that other people just didn’t have,” Nick said thoughtfully. “It was kind of special, wasn’t it? The beaches and the sailboats and the seafood. There’s always magic on the island during those months.”
“And a different kind of magic here around Christmas,” Derek added. “I felt it first thing last year, around the time I met your mom.”
Jennifer blushed. “Someone’s a sap this morning.”
Derek laughed as he lifted another forkful of the omelet to his lips. “So, sue me. I’m a sap. Never advertised myself as anything but a sap.”
“Yeah! Me too!” Nick chimed in brightly. “It’s good we can support each other.”
“Just us saps against the cruel world,” Derek agreed.