What are we talking about in 2003? Homeland Security; space shuttle Columbia; Mr. Rogers; the Atkins Diet; Saddam Hussein and the Iraq war; pumpkin-spice latte; Lost in Translation; P90X; Martha Stewart insider trading; “Shake it like a Polaroid picture”; New York City power outage; Arnold Schwarzenegger; weapons of mass destruction; Everybody Loves Raymond.
Mallory has lived on Nantucket for ten years and she’s learned that the best month here is…September. The days are filled with golden sunshine and mild breezes. All of the shops, galleries, and restaurants are still open but the crowds are gone. It’s heaven!
The Saturday after Labor Day, Mallory’s heart is still recovering from Jake’s departure. The best thing for her is to get outside, and, thankfully, the weather is glorious—it’s seventy-four degrees with a cloudless, cerulean-blue sky. God doesn’t make days any finer than this one, so Mallory packs a picnic, her beach blanket, a basket of toys. She slathers Link with sunscreen and straps him into his car seat in the back of the Blazer.
They’re off to the beach!
This is funny, right, because they live at the beach? However, Link is still so little and the south shore’s waves so unpredictable that Mallory prefers to take him to the north shore on Nantucket Sound, where the water is flat and calm.
She can drive the Blazer right onto the sand at Fortieth Pole. Mallory lets some air out of her tires and they sail up over the whoop-de-dos in the dunes to the beach.
They have the golden crescent of sand almost entirely to themselves; it’s just them and one guy with a silver pickup who’s surf-casting a couple hundred yards away while a chocolate Lab sniffs the seaweed at the waterline.
“This is the life,” Mallory says to Link as she frees him from his car seat. “September is still summer, buddy.”
“Summer!” Link calls out as he kicks his feet. He can’t wait to get into the water.
What does the best beach day ever look like? Well, to Mallory, it looks like hours of warm sunshine, dips into cool clear water, reading on a blanket while Link digs a hole and then throws one rock after another into the ocean because he likes the sound of the splash. They share lunch—a chicken salad sandwich, celery and carrots with hummus, cold slices of watermelon, lime-sugar cookies. Then Mallory sets up a spot for Link under the umbrella and he lies down for his nap. Mallory curls up next to him and closes her eyes.
She jolts awake when she feels something cold and alive touching her foot. It’s the chocolate Lab, sniffing her. She tries to gently shoo it off the blanket as the owner comes jogging down the beach. Mallory puts her finger to her lips. It’s okay that the dog woke her up but if the dog or its owner wakes Link up, she will not be amused.
Mallory stands as the guy grabs the dog by the collar. “Come on, Rox,” he whispers. “Sorry about that.”
Mallory follows them a few steps toward the water so their conversation doesn’t wake up Link. “No problem,” she says. The guy is cute—tall, with a crew cut and friendly eyes. “Did you catch anything?”
“Nah,” he said. “I’ve had crappy luck.”
“Well,” she says, “there’s always East Coast Seafood.”
“I wanted to come over here anyway,” the guy says, “because I sold you that car.”
It takes a minute for Mallory to figure out what he’s talking about. “The Blazer?”
“It was mine,” he says. “I sold it to you. I got your name from Oliver, the bartender at the Summer House—”
“Yes!” Mallory says. She takes another look at the guy. He does seem sort of familiar now that he’s told her this, though she never would have recognized him in a million years. “You’re…”
“Scott,” he says. “Scott Fulton.”
“Scotty Fulton, yes, I remember you!” Mallory says. “I have to thank you. I’ve had her ten years and she’s been a total rock star.”
“I can see you’ve taken good care of her,” Scott says. “It broke my heart to sell her but I remember how happy you looked behind the wheel and that made it easier. Good home and all that.”
“Didn’t you leave island?” Mallory says. “Weren’t you going to…”
“Business school,” he says. “Yep, I moved to Philadelphia, bought a Jetta, got married, got my MBA, went into commercial real estate, got divorced, poured all my time and energy into work, had a health scare at thirty-three, and decided I needed a lifestyle change. So I moved back here this summer, bought the storage center out on Old South Road as well as the six commercial lots right next door, and now I’m building affordable housing units.”
“Wow,” Mallory says. “Well, I’m Mallory Blessing, I teach English at the high school, I’m a single mom of one, Lincoln—Link—who’s two and a half.”
“You’re single?” Scott says. “Forget what I said about crappy luck.”
It’s a meet-cute, and for that reason, Mallory is wary. It feels like a setup—the beautiful day, the empty beach, the dog making the introduction, the beyond-bizarre fact that Scotty Fulton sold her the Blazer and therefore can hardly be considered a random stranger. He’s single, he owns a business on the island, and he’s committed to living on Nantucket year-round. He’s renting a house in town, on Winter Street, across from the inn that’s owned by the Quinn family (Ava Quinn is one of Mallory’s best students). He sounds too good to be true. Is he too good to be true?
Mallory is going to find out.
She can’t go on a date during the week—it’s too much with school and Link—but she agrees to go to dinner with Scott at the Company of the Cauldron the following weekend.
There is no restaurant on the island more romantic than the Cauldron. It’s tiny, rustic, candlelit, tucked away on cobblestoned India Street. The dining room is decorated with copper pots and dried flowers, and there’s a harp player. A harp player! This is, to be honest, Mallory’s first time eating at the Cauldron, because going there requires a date and who would Mallory have gone with? It was out of JD’s comfort zone, and she and Bayer never went anywhere. (Mallory doesn’t want to bring JD and Bayer with her on this date, though what were her past relationships for if not to teach her a lesson?)
There is one set menu at the Cauldron each night. Tonight, it’s a Bartlett’s Farm baby greens salad topped with a lemon-thyme poached lobster tail followed by a wood-grilled sirloin followed by an apricot tarte tatin with buttermilk ice cream. Scott picks a white wine to go with the first course and a red wine to go with their steaks. Mallory admires how confident and at ease he is and how down-to-earth when talking to their server. She imagines this is how Jake would act if he were across the table from her right now. She doesn’t want to bring Jake with her on this date either, but because Jake was on Nantucket a scant two weeks earlier, he’s still fresh in Mallory’s mind—everything he said and did, every time he touched her, every time he kissed her, every time he looked at her with smoldering desire. What would he say if he could see her now with Scott? Would he be jealous? Yes, of course. Mallory knows there’s no reason for her to feel guilty—after all, at that moment, Jake is probably attending some fancy political fund-raiser with Ursula. He will climb into bed with Ursula that night; he might even make love to her. (Mallory tries never to think about this.)
Across the table, Scott is shaking his head. She’s been caught loving Jake in her mind.
“I can’t believe you’re single,” he says.
“I can’t believe you’re single,” she says. She leans in. They’re seated at the best table, by the front window—or at least, it’s the best unless one of Mallory’s students strolls by. “You are single, right? I know you said you’re divorced, but are you officially divorced?”
“Officially divorced for six years,” he says. “Lisa stayed in Philly, married one of my Wharton classmates, and they have a baby now.”
Wharton; Kitty would be thrilled to hear this. But no, sorry, Kitty isn’t welcome at the table tonight. “But you don’t have any children? Now is the time to tell me.”
“No children,” Scott says. He reaches for her hand. They are holding hands. Does it feel okay? Yes, it feels nice. “But I’d like to have children someday.”
“Did you just say that on a first date?” Mallory asks.
“Was that a goof?”
“Um…” Mallory says. She isn’t sure how she feels about having more children; she’s never had a reason to consider it. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Our first course hasn’t even arrived.”
What does Mallory learn about Scott Fulton on this date?
He’s thirty-four years old, turning thirty-five in May. He grew up in Orlando, Florida; his father was an animator for Disney and died of a heart attack when Scott was a sophomore at Florida State. His mother got married again, to a man who works for the State Department and lives in Dubai, so that is where she now lives. No siblings. He met his future ex-wife at FSU; she was in hotel management and brought Scott to Nantucket when she got a job at the White Elephant. He fell in love with Nantucket. He worked at the Lobster Trap six nights a week, which was how he met Oliver (yes, Oliver used to hang out at the Trap; Mallory remembers this), and he drove the Blazer to Nobadeer during the day.
The health scare was a mild heart attack, caused by stress and coffee and cigarettes—and cocaine, he admits. He quit the stress, the cigarettes, and the cocaine. “But not the coffee,” he says.
“But you did quit the cocaine?” Mallory asks. She knows she sounds like a federal prosecutor, but that’s because suddenly Krystel is at the table.
“Yes,” he says.
He likes to surf-cast and walk in the moors with Roxanne, his Lab, who’s six years old; he bought her right after the divorce. He plays golf and recently joined the club at Miacomet. He’s going to stay in his rental on Winter Street through next spring, though he’s looking to buy a house in town.
Houses in town start at a million dollars, Mallory thinks. She banishes Kitty from the table once again.
“This has been incredibly one-sided,” he says. “When are we going to talk about you?”
“Next date,” Mallory says.
Scott drives Mallory home to the cottage. There’s no question about inviting him in because Mallory asked Ava Quinn to babysit for Link. It was almost too convenient—Scott brought Ava over when he picked Mallory up, since Ava lives right across the street from him, and he’ll take Ava home.
Mallory lets Scott kiss her good night. The kiss is lovely—warm, sweet. There’s chemistry. Mallory tries not to think about kissing Jake goodbye in nearly the exact same spot two weeks earlier before he climbed into his rental Jeep and drove to the airport.
Just go away, she tells Jake in her mind. Let me see if this works.
Mallory and Scott go on a second date—to Le Languedoc for their famous cheeseburger with garlic fries—and then to the Club Car to sing at the piano bar. Mallory requests “Tiny Dancer,” and Scott throws twenty bucks in the glass jar. It’s a fun night. Scott knows people; the bartender greets him by name and they bump into two of his site foremen at the bar and Scott is gracious, introducing Mallory and buying them a round of drinks.
On their third date, they take both Link and Roxanne out to Sconset. They do the bluff walk with its uninterrupted views of the Atlantic Ocean to the right and magnificent homes to the left. For some reason, Link wants to hold Scott’s hand, so the two of them go up ahead and Mallory takes Roxanne’s leash and follows. This switcheroo is immediately unsettling to Mallory. Link and Scott could too easily be mistaken for father and son, and Mallory is talking to Roxanne like she’s her dog.
They wander around Sconset, peeking into pocket gardens, some of which are still lush with flowers and a second bloom of climbing roses. They peer at the tiny cottages, built in the 1700s, when people were smaller. Scott leads them down New Street toward the Chanticleer with the famous carousel horse out front and then farther down to the quaint, shingled Sconset Chapel.
“Could you ever see getting married here?” Scott asks Mallory.
“Did you just ask that on our third date?” she says. “What’s wrong with you?”
He puts his arm around her shoulders and squeezes. She still has Roxanne’s leash wrapped around her wrist, and Scott has Link’s hand, and they’re like a little family unit—except they’re not. “I like you, Mallory.”
You don’t know me, she wants to say. She’s told him basically her whole life story—Kitty and Senior, Coop and his two failed marriages, Aunt Greta and Ruthie, Leland and Fifi, Apple and Hugo, Dr. Major; she even told him the story about Jeremiah Freehold. They talked at length about Fray and why Mallory decided on single motherhood. Although Scott has learned all this—he’s a very good listener—he still doesn’t know her.
What does it take to know a person?
Time. It takes time.
Will Scott still think she’s so wonderful when she has the stomach flu or he hears her on the phone with the parent of a student who’s underperforming? Will he think she’s a good mother when she snaps at Link for splashing in the bathtub or when she skips reading stories because she’s too tired? Will he find her fun when she informs him that she can never see him on Fridays during the school year because Fridays are for Apple? She doesn’t like lima beans or beans of any kind; she has no sense of direction; she doesn’t care for the theater and last year went home during the intermission of the high-school musical. She has so many flaws, so many areas that need improvement, and yet Mallory lacks the time and energy to work on them. She doesn’t make a charitable donation to Link’s day care because she pays so much in tuition already, even though she could, technically, afford an extra hundred bucks. She never watches the news and doesn’t know who the prime minister of the UK is. Well, yes, she knows it’s Tony Blair, but don’t ask her anything else about Great Britain. The president of France? She would say Mitterrand, though she suspects that’s wrong; Mitterrand might even be dead. She reads the Inquirer and Mirror but only to make sure there’s no one she knows in the police blotter; she has never once attended town meeting. He couldn’t find a less informed person. Well, except she does know about celebrities because she did, this year, get a subscription to People magazine, which was thirty bucks she could have donated to the day care.
Will any of this bother him once he figures it out?
After their fourth date—they go to see Love, Actually at the Dreamland and then to the Pearl for tuna martinis and passionfruit cosmos—Mallory agrees to go back to Scott’s house on Winter Street, and they sleep together. The sex is good—better than good! Scott is the right balance of gentle and firm. He knows what he’s doing.
Later, as Mallory lies in his bed—which is high and wide and, because it’s now October, made up with flannel sheets in a navy plaid——he brings her a glass of ice water and a couple of coconut macaroons on a plate, and after she devours them he says, “Let’s get you home. And no arguing—I’m paying the babysitter.”
Full steam ahead; they become a couple.
They bundle up to watch the Nantucket–Martha’s Vineyard football game; they pick out pumpkins at Bartlett’s Farm and carve jack-o’-lanterns with Link. Mallory starts calling Scott at his office when she gets home from school to tell him about her day. He learns all the kids’ names—Max and Matthew, Katie and Tiffany and Bridget and the two Michaels—and their backstories. He memorizes her schedule.
The first week in November is unusually mild and Scott plays eighteen holes of golf. Mallory and Link go to meet him at the club when he’s finished and Mallory admires how lean and strong he looks in his golf clothes. Even his spikes look good on him. He finds a child-size putter and takes Link over to the practice green. He bends over and wraps his arms around Link to show him how to hold the club. They tap the ball into the cup again and again; Link loves pulling the ball out and starting over.
The towel bar in Mallory’s bathroom falls off and Scott asks if it’s okay if he comes over while Mallory is at school to fix it. She hesitates. She never let JD fix anything in the cottage and she certainly would never have let JD prowl around when she wasn’t home. However, she surprises herself by saying, Sure, that would be great. The towel bar has been lying on the floor for over a week; she’s been too busy to pull out her drill.
The towel bar is fixed the same day he offers and he leaves her a cute little cartoon of the two of them kissing. The cartoon is good—he’s a real artist, like his father must have been; Mallory tapes the cartoon to the fridge.
Mallory starts taking Roxanne running with her. She lets Roxanne sleep on the green tweed sofa.
As Mallory is teaching her senior creative-writing class at the end of the day—it’s the first year for this; Mallory lobbied to make it an elective—there’s a knock on the classroom door. Mallory opens it to find Apple holding the most beautiful bouquet of flowers Mallory has ever seen.
“These arrived for you,” Apple says. “Guess who sent them.”
The card says: Just because. Love, Scott.
Mallory decides to do something nice and unexpected for Scott. The next day, she leaves school during her lunch period, picks up a Turkey Terrific sandwich from Provisions, and takes it to the office at the storage center.
Scott has an administrative assistant named Lori Spaulding; Mallory knows her slightly. She’s a single mom like Mallory and has a daughter a year older than Link. The two of them used to cross paths at Small Friends, dropping the kids off and picking them up. “Hey, Lori,” Mallory says. “I brought lunch for the boss. Is he in?”
Lori takes a beat. “He is. Let me get him.”
“Or if he’s busy, I can just drop it?” Mallory says.
“I’m sure he’ll want to see you,” Lori says. There’s an edge to her gravelly voice. “I hear you two are having quite the whirlwind romance.”
That night on the phone, Mallory says, “Were you and Lori ever involved romantically?”
Scott laughs. “Not at all. Why?”
Mallory isn’t sure what to say. She got a vibe. Lori likes Scott; she’s jealous of Mallory. Why Mallory and not me? she probably thinks. Why indeed? Lori is pretty; she has blond hair that’s always in an impeccable French braid. Mallory admired this long before Scott was in the picture and wondered how a single working mother could have such good hair. Did she get up an hour early to do it? Did she use two mirrors? And was it just a natural talent? Mallory would never in a million years acquire the skill because French braiding is one of the many mysteries of being a woman that has eluded her. She puts her hair up in an elastic, and even then, her ponytails are off-center.
“She’s attractive. She has that sexy voice. She’s single.”
“She does nothing for me,” Scott says.
The holidays approach. Mallory goes home to Baltimore for Thanksgiving; Scott stays on Nantucket. He cooks for all the guys who are working for him, many of whom are single and don’t have anywhere else to go but the bar.
Mallory misses him while she’s away. She calls him from behind the closed door of her childhood bedroom because she doesn’t want her mother or Coop to overhear her. She loves the sound of his voice. She loves how he’s deep-frying a turkey in the backyard for the guys and making cornbread dressing and brussels sprouts that he saw Tyler Florence make on the Food Network. He tells her he’s going into town the next night to see the tree lighting—at five o’clock, all the Christmas trees on Main and Centre will light up at once—and Mallory gets jealous, wondering who he’s going with, wondering if maybe he’s going with Lori and her daughter, wondering if they’ll go get a drink at the Brotherhood afterward.
Missing him and feeling jealous are good signs, she thinks. They’re on the right track.
Around Christmas, Link goes up to Vermont to spend the holiday with Fray and Anna, and Mallory and Scott become inseparable. They alternate between spending the night in town at his house, which Mallory likes because the Winter Street Inn across the street is all decked out for the holidays, and at Mallory’s cottage, which she likes because Scott “planted” a small Christmas tree on the beach and rigged it with white lights and it gives Mallory such joy to look out her kitchen window and see it. They attend the annual Christmas pageant at the Congregational church; they shop in town and get hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows at the Even Keel Café. Two days before Christmas, it snows, and they put on boots and walk Roxanne into town early in the morning to take pictures of Main Street, silent and shrouded in pure white. Then they let Roxanne off her leash and she skids down the street like a kid on skates.
On Christmas Eve, they go to the annual party at the Winter Street Inn and hang out with Kelley and Mitzi and the police chief, Ed Kapenash, and Dabney Kimball Beech from the Chamber of Commerce and Dr. Major and Apple and Hugo. Ava Quinn sits down at the piano and plays carols and Mallory nearly chokes up as they sing “O Come, All Ye Faithful” because she has now lived on this island for ten years and look at the community she has built. It was an act of faith, moving here. Aunt Greta had told Mallory long ago that Nantucket chose people and that it had chosen Mallory, but she feels this with absolute certainty only right in this instant.
Scott must notice her moment of introspection because he squeezes her hand.
They drink Mitzi’s mulled cider (it’s strong; Mallory can handle only a few sips before she switches to wine) and they eat the pine-cone cheese ball and stuffed dates, and by the time Mallory and Scott stumble across the street, it’s after midnight and already Christmas.
On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, they take a long beach walk with Roxanne. The sun is low in the white sky; it’s cold. The waves pummel the shore like they’re trying to make a point. This is winter on Nantucket, and it’s only just beginning.
As they are about to go back up to the cottage to prepare for their New Year’s Eve festivities—Apple and Hugo are coming over for fondue and a bottle of Krug that Scott insisted on splurging on—Scott says, “Hey, I want to tell you something.”
The tone of his voice sets off an alarm. A confession is coming: He is married after all; he does have a child, or children, who are living overseas in Dubai. The project on Old South Road isn’t affordable housing but a front for the Mob. Scott has a gambling problem. He’s a cocaine addict. He’s sleeping with Lori.
“What is it?” she says.
“I love you,” he says.
Mallory closes her eyes. She is seized by panic. She isn’t sure what to do. Why is she not prepared for this? Any idiot could have seen this was where things were headed.
“I love you too,” she says, then immediately hates herself. She is suggestible and easily swayed, just like Leland told Fifi so many years earlier.
She’s lying to Scott. She doesn’t love him. She really, really likes him. She thinks he’s a wonderful person. He’s smart and kind and sexy and funny and absolutely wonderful with Link. She’s happy every time he walks in the door; she feels a ping of pleasure every time he calls. He has filled a void for her and for Link that she didn’t even realize was there. Her relationship with Scott has been a joyride. It has been heady infatuation. She loves having a partner in crime. And it has been luxurious, all the ways big and small that he’s made life on this island easier for her with his companionship, his ardor for her. She has spent the past three and a half months being adored. Flowers delivered to her classroom! A house in town and one at the beach! The little cartoons he leaves for her all the time now that he knows how much she enjoys them. This is the stuff other women dream of. Mallory and Scott can get married at the Sconset Chapel; Roxanne will wear a wreath of white roses around her neck, and Link a tiny tux. There is still plenty of time for Mallory to have another baby.
But…Mallory doesn’t love him.
January passes. February passes.
Mallory doesn’t understand what’s wrong with her. Scott checks all the boxes.
She tries to break it down. She loves the way he smells. He has no annoying habits. He doesn’t overstay his welcome; he respects her time with Link, her time by herself. His taste in music is good; there’s a lot of overlap with hers, although his favorite band is the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a group Mallory can take or leave.
Her not-loving him has nothing to do with the Chili Peppers.
There’s no issue with the sex. The sex is amazing.
March passes.
Shall we use a golf metaphor? Why not, since at the end of March there’s a string of days when it’s nice enough for Scott to play and he asks Mallory and Link to meet him afterward so he and Link can continue to practice Link’s putting. Mallory’s feelings for Scott are the ball that glides toward the hole but stops just short, resting on the lip of the cup, eliciting a shout of disbelief and frustration. Drop in already! she thinks.
Mallory begins to fear that this isn’t something that “just needs more time.” What did Kitty say? Love is love—or not-love is not-love, as the case may be—and, really, there’s no explaining it.
But that feels like a cop-out. Mallory can explain it just fine.
Scott doesn’t read fiction, but Mallory once noticed him standing in front of the shelf that held the novels Jake sent her each Christmas. She’s not sure what she would have done if he’d picked one of the books up. Would she have asked him to put it down, like she did with Fifi? Tucked inside the newest book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is the envelope where Mallory keeps all of her fortunes from their weekends. What would she say if Scott saw them? Sand dollars that she and Jake found at Great Point are lined up in front of the books, and Scott did pick one of those up and Mallory felt anxious and sick during the seconds it took him to replace it.
Her Cat Stevens CDs and World Party’s Bang! are hidden in her underwear drawer. She can’t risk Scott playing them. Back in January, Scott asked if she wanted to drive up to Great Point, since she had the sticker, and she said no, she’d rather not.
Mallory loves Jake. Her heart is not transferrable. It has belonged to Jake since the first time he answered the phone in Coop’s room, since the afternoon he stepped off the ferry and onto the dock, since the moment he slid an omelet onto her plate.
What can she do about this? Anything? Is she simply being stubborn? Has she been, effectively, brainwashed? No; Mallory anticipated that she would someday meet a man who would eclipse Jake. She has even welcomed this, because although loving Jake is the sweetest kind of agony, it’s agony nonetheless.
The end of April brings the Daffodil Festival. This is the first big weekend of the year, the official start of the season on Nantucket. There’s a classic-car parade out to Sconset where everyone gathers to tailgate. Scott enters the Blazer in the parade and says he’ll decorate the car if Mallory will handle the theme and the picnic. Mallory and Apple come up with The Official Preppy Handbook as the theme—“Look, Muffy, a book for us”—and Mallory pulls out the Baltimore Junior League cookbook that Kitty gave her several Christmases ago to find recipes for their preppy picnic.
Mallory can’t believe how great the Blazer looks when Scott is finished with it. It has a blanket of daffodils on the hood and a cute daffodil wreath on the grille. It’s a sunny day, though chilly, but they decide to drive out to Sconset with the top down. Scott and Hugo sit up front in their navy blazers and pink oxford shirts and Mallory and Apple and Link and Roxanne sit in the back. Apple is wearing a white turtleneck and a navy cardigan, and Mallory has on a yellow Fair Isle sweater and the Bean Blucher moccasins she’s owned since high school. Link is in a polo shirt with the collar popped. They wave at the spectators on the side of Milestone Road, and Roxanne barks; she has on a collar printed with navy whales.
They get to Sconset and set up their picnic: gin and tonics, tea sandwiches, boiled asparagus spears, deviled eggs, tiny weenies in barbecue sauce. The judges come by and spend a long time admiring the fine detail on the sandwiches; they take note of the outfits, Apple’s grosgrain watchband, Scott’s tortoiseshell Jack Kennedy sunglasses. Mallory catches a glimpse of herself in the side-view mirror. In her sweater and pearl earrings, she looks alarmingly like Kitty. A photographer from the Inquirer and Mirror snaps a picture of Mallory and Scott in front of the Blazer. Scott tells the reporter the story about how he sold Mallory the Blazer back in the summer of 1993 and how they met ten years later and are now dating.
They win first prize for their tailgate and an honorable mention for the Blazer.
Mallory and Scott’s picture is on the front page of the newspaper the following Thursday, and if Mallory hears it once, she hears it a thousand times: You guys are so perfect together. You are the perfect couple.
To which Mallory responds, “The perfect couple? There’s no such thing.”
May arrives. When Fray takes Link for the weekend, Scott tells Mallory that he’s planned a getaway to Boston—a suite at the Four Seasons, luxury box at Fenway, dinner reservations at No. 9 Park. They’ve been talking about going to Boston all winter, but something always came up. Now that it’s happening, Scott sounds…nervous.
“The Japanese cherry blossoms are going to be at their peak in the Boston Public Garden,” he says. “We have to ride the Swan Boats; in fact, I may hire one so that we have it all to ourselves.”
Mallory knows she has waited too long. He’s going to propose. She imagines him pulling out a velvet box, opening it as the Swan Boat glides under the cotton-candy-pink blossoms of the Japanese cherry tree, presenting a ring in a way that he’s sure will fulfill her dreams. Mallory wants to shrink to the size of a mouse and scurry under the green tweed sofa. She wants to bury herself in the sand.
“Scott,” she says. “We need to talk.”