What are we talking about in 2019? The death of Bernard Slade, playwright; Nancy Pelosi; college admission cheating scandal; Miley and Liam; tamago sando; Lizzo; check your Uber; Jeffrey Epstein; Logan, Kendall, Roman, Shiv, Tom, Gerri, and Greg; Old Town Road; Rob Gronkowski; al-Baghdadi; Notre-Dame; John Legend and Chrissy Teigen; Where the Crawdads Sing; El Paso; Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.
On the fifteenth of April, Link gets acceptance letters from the University of Alabama, the University of Georgia, Auburn, Ole Miss, and the University of South Carolina, and Mallory can’t help herself: she bursts into tears.
She’s so proud of him.
She’s gutted by the thought of him leaving. And yet she knows it’s natural. If he weren’t leaving, he’d be staying, and neither of them wants that.
Link decides on the University of South Carolina. Frazier is excited because U of SC is home to the Darla Moore School of Business, but Link tells Mallory that he has no interest in business. He wants to follow in his uncle’s footsteps—major in political science and shape domestic policy that will make life better, easier, more prosperous for American citizens. This all sounds very lofty to Mallory, but then Link admits that he also wants a school with big football, big school spirit, fraternities, pretty girls, and warm weather. Any school in the Southeastern Conference fits the bill. The University of South Carolina is his favorite, and it also happens to be the closest to home. From Boston, Mallory can fly to Charlotte, then it’s straight down Route 77 to Columbia.
Once Link makes this decision, things move quickly. All of a sudden, Mallory finds herself sitting in the bleachers of his last home baseball game. How is that possible? When Mallory closes her eyes, she’s back in Cooperstown. She’s at the Delta fields, watching him wallop a Wiffle ball off a tee. It’s his first birthday and Senior is tossing Link the squishy ball that he hits with the oversize plastic bat on his first try.
Natural talent here, Mal! Senior cries out.
Link takes Elsa Judd to the prom—Link and Nicole broke up six days into Nicole’s year in Italy—and then he asks Lauren Prestifillipo to the senior ball. He’s casual friends with both girls—friends or friends-with-whatever—because he knows he’s leaving for college and he learned his lesson with Nicole: he doesn’t want to leave with any romantic entanglements.
The last week of class arrives for the seniors, and then the triumvirate of senior ball, baccalaureate, and graduation.
Parents are invited to come to the senior ball after the seniors-only dinner. Mallory goes to R. J. Miller to get her hair blown out and then puts on a new dress, just as she always does the night of the senior ball. Tonight—she has to repeat this to herself several times—she isn’t going just as a teacher; she’s going as a parent. The mother of a senior.
During the reading of the senior-class prophecy, Mallory’s vision starts to get blotchy. At first she thinks it’s just her tears, but she can’t seem to blink or wipe away the amorphous pink blob in the upper left corner of her field of vision.
The senior-class prophecy involves a fictional tale about Gibbs Pond—Oh, boy, good old Gibbs, Mallory thinks—being bought by an evil developer who wants to drain the pond and build a Nantucket-themed amusement park. All the members of the senior class twenty-five years in the future are called on to contribute their particular talents or personality quirks in order to save the pond—but in the end, it’s billionaire Lincoln Dooley who is the hero.
The times that Mallory has asked God to stop time for her and Jake seem quaint compared to how badly Mallory wants to stop time now. Just let these high-school days go on forever, please—the gatherings of boys eating chips and guacamole around the harvest table or playing Fortnite while sitting on Big Hugs; the baseball games in thirty-seven-degree weather; the pep rallies and Spanish-club dinners; the Homecoming floats and SAT prep; even the Bud Light cans stuffed deep in the trash and the empty nip bottles of McGillicuddy’s scattered across the front porch; even the heartbreak of day six of Nicole-in-Italy when she texted to say she needed la libertà, and Link screamed profanities across the ocean, then went into his bedroom and cried.
She’ll take it all on a loop, forever and ever.
Baccalaureate is held at the Congregational church. Lauren Prestifillipo sings “Brave,” by Sara Bareilles, and that’s all it takes—Mallory dissolves. Her vision still isn’t clear and all this emotion is giving her a headache. This is probably some kind of karmic payback for the many years when Mallory sat in this church watching other parents cry and scoffed, Oh, come on, it’s not like they’re going off to war, they’re graduating, be happy!
Graduation, strangely, is the least emotional day of the week, probably because Mallory has the distraction of guests. Fray, Anna, and Cassie fly in on Fray’s plane late Friday night (they’re staying at the White Elephant), and Cooper and Amy fly to Boston from DC but get stuck at Logan because of early-morning fog on Nantucket.
Amy calls Mallory in a panic. “I’m not sure what’s up with Cape Air,” she says. “The woman at the desk says they’re waiting for the ceiling to lift. What if we miss the ceremony?” Amy is high-strung for a psychologist, Mallory thinks. She and Cooper have been married for just a few years, and yet Amy has donned the role of Auntie Amy like it’s a thirty-thousand-dollar sable coat. It’s sweet, if a bit unsettling. Amy has been reposting all of Mallory’s photos from this week on her personal Facebook page with the tags #nephewLink and #proudauntie.
“The fog usually burns off midmorning,” Mallory says. “It’ll be fine. Deep breath.”
And it is fine. Cooper and Amy arrive in plenty of time to clap and cheer as Link walks across the stage in his white cap and gown to accept his diploma.
That’s it, Mallory thinks. It’s over. Link is a high-school graduate. Her field of vision still has that bright spot in the corner like an incoming alien spaceship, though her headache has subsided somewhat. Or maybe she’s just used to it.
The worst is yet to come, of course. The summer of 2019 might as well be called the Summer Link Pushes the Envelope. He has given up his job at Millie’s general store in favor of a job landscaping. He’s out in the sun all day, mowing, weeding, laying sod, trimming hedges. He’s deeply tan and his hair is bleached platinum blond; he has real muscles, and he grows another two inches. He looks so much like Fray that Mallory sometimes does a double take when she sees him.
Link goes out with his friends every single night. Mallory knows he’s drinking and also probably smoking and sleeping with beautiful, rich summer girls from New Canaan and the Upper East Side. Mallory keeps her rules to a minimum, although the rules she does lay down are ironclad—midnight curfew during the week, no driving at night at all, and no shenanigans at the house. She tries to set up one evening a week when Link eats with her at home and one night when the two of them go out together, but Link cancels and no-shows so much that Mallory gives up.
Apple’s twins are spending a month and a half at sleepaway camp in Maine, so Mallory and Apple resume their nights out once a week. They return to the Summer House. The restaurant has changed—the days of the Hokey Pokey are long gone—but the view is still magnificent.
“It’s like he’s already off to college,” Mallory says. “That’s how little I see him.”
“Kids do this the summer before they leave for college,” Apple says in her guidance-counselor voice. “They separate so that it’s less painful for them when you say goodbye. It’s completely normal.”
“Just wait until it happens to you,” Mallory says. “Then you’ll wish you’d been more sensitive.”
“You’re lucky,” Apple says. “You can reclaim your personhood, become more involved in the outside world. It’s exciting out there, I hear. And it’s an empowering time to be female. I know you don’t pay attention to politics, but there’s this incredible woman running for president.” Apple raises her glass of wine. “Here’s to Ursula de Gournsey. May she save us all.”
Mallory obviously knows that Ursula is running for president; the only good thing about Link leaving is that Mallory is too self-absorbed to think about it.
Southern universities start early, so Mallory throws a goodbye beach bash for Link and all his friends on August 14. The kids have a great time—the music is so loud, it feels like Post Malone is there at the party—but Mallory can’t seem to relax and enjoy the moment. Her thoughts are heavy, maudlin. When the golden hour arrives, making everything look like it’s been dipped in honey, Mallory thinks about how her front porch has served as her church, the ocean as her daily proof that God exists. She has done all her praying out here—she has expressed gratitude and wonder, asked for forgiveness, petitioned for those in need. But today, as Link and his friends dig a hole for the bonfire, Mallory prays for herself. She needs more of everything: strength, clarity, hope, patience, peace.
Please, she thinks. Send it to me. Or let me discover it within myself.
Mallory and Link leave for Columbia two days later. The blob in Mallory’s vision seems to be getting bigger. She’s planning on seeing a doctor the second she gets back to Nantucket.
But first, there’s a trip from the suffocating ninety-nine-degree heat to the delicious air-conditioned universe of Target for twin XL sheets, comforter, pillows, a rug, underwear, socks, a case of Gatorade, two cartons of Pepperidge Farm cheddar goldfish, spiral notebooks, pens, phone chargers, ramen, a poster of Dominic West and Idris Elba in The Wire (this is Link’s idea of an homage to his Baltimore roots, just wonderful), shampoo, deodorant, towels, condoms, Band-Aids, a two-hundred-count bottle of Advil, sunscreen.
“What else?” Mallory asks. As long as there’s something more to buy, she can stave off the inevitable.
They move their haul into East Quad. Link meets his suitemates: Eric, Will, Declan. The boys seem nice; the other mothers are busy decorating their sons’ rooms and stocking the cabinets in the communal kitchen as though they’re expecting a nuclear winter. Mallory helps Link get his room set up, and girls keep poking their heads into the suite to introduce themselves. They all have long beautiful hair and syrupy Southern accents and first names like Shelby and Baker. There’s rap music playing, then that song by Lizzo that Mallory loves. This is college, it’s fun, Link’s going to have the time of his life. His RA introduces himself, nice kid; his name is Jake, so Mallory automatically loves him. Jake asks if Mallory has any questions. Well, yes, she does: How is anyone expected to devote eighteen years to raising a child and then, one day, just leave him in an unfamiliar place among strangers twelve hundred miles from home? And also: What is wrong with her eyesight? She made an appointment with her ophthalmologist for the following week.
“Nope,” Mallory says. “No questions.”
“All freshmen in this dorm have a mandatory meeting at three o’clock and then there’s Convocation, where the university president will speak, and after that are First Night activities.” Jake pauses. There’s a vintage turntable in the common room playing Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, which is a reason to love Jake beyond his name. But despite this, Mallory wants him to stop talking. It feels like the next words out of his mouth are going to be So now is probably a good time to say your goodbyes.
Mallory has learned from twenty-six years with Jake that a fast goodbye is better than a long, drawn-out goodbye. She finds Link in his room, putting shirts on hangers.
“I’ve been given my marching orders,” Mallory says. “You have a full docket, so I’m going to go.”
“Okay,” Link says. He shuts the closet door and then takes Mallory by the shoulders and looks at her with his ocean-colored eyes, eyes she knows better than anyone else’s. “I want to thank you for getting me this far, Mama. I’m going to study and exercise good judgment and check my Ubers and be kind to everyone I meet, just like you taught me.” He hugs her tight. It very much feels at that moment like he is the adult and she the child. “I love you. You did a good job.”
A week later, Mallory is out on her beach under an umbrella reading Dani Shapiro’s new memoir when she hears someone knocking on the door of her cottage.
She wants this to be a figment of her imagination—maybe she’s hearing things now as well as seeing things—but there’s no mistaking the rap-rap-rapping. Mallory considers not moving an inch. FedEx and UPS drop packages. Apple doesn’t stop by unannounced, but if she did, she’d just come down to the beach. It’s still two weeks until Jake’s arrival, and he never knocks anyway. There’s no one else Mallory wants to see.
There’s a reprieve, then more rapping.
Mallory heads up to the house. On the front porch, she stops to rinse off her sandy feet with the hose. She’s wearing linen drawstring pants over her bikini and a long-sleeved Gamecocks T-shirt. Ponytail, hat. She looks like a dirt sandwich.
Through the screen of the pond-side door, she sees the form of a woman and, beyond the woman, a black sedan, a car-service car, dusty after a ride down the no-name road. At the same time that Mallory wonders, Who is this? she gets a jolt of incredulous shock because she knows who it is.
The spot in her vision starts to expand and contract like it’s a living, breathing thing.
Mallory wants to go into her bedroom, close and lock the door, and shutter the house as if preparing for a hurricane. But the woman has seen her.
Mallory stops to look around. Without Link here, her house is spotless. Which is a good thing, because she fears the woman she’s about to invite inside is Ursula de Gournsey.
Yes; when Mallory reaches the door, she can see it’s Ursula. “Hello?” Mallory says. Her voice sounds bright, chipper, wholly unconcerned. She couldn’t have done any better if she’d been practicing how to nonchalantly greet Ursula de Gournsey surprising her at the door daily for the past twenty-six years. Meanwhile, inside of Mallory, a woman is releasing a high-pitched horror-film scream.
Mallory checks the car. Is Jake inside? No, it’s a driver. The screaming ratchets down one notch.
“Mallory?” Ursula says. “Hello. I’m Ursula de Gournsey.”
“Ursula?” Mallory says, still maintaining her cool. “Hello.”
“Do you mind if I come in?” Ursula says. “I was hoping we could talk.”
Now’s not a good time, Mallory thinks. I’m having a psychotic episode.
This is it, then—the reckoning. Mallory has long wondered if this day would ever come or if that was the kind of thing that happened only in movies. It notably does not happen in Same Time, Next Year. George and Doris roll merrily along right into their old age—and their respective spouses, Helen and Harry, remain none the wiser.
“Of course,” Mallory says. She pushes the screen door open and Ursula de Gournsey steps inside. She’s wearing a blue chambray linen sheath with matching pumps (also now dusty). Her hair is long and thick and luxuriously dark. There are lines around her eyes and mouth that don’t show up on television. “Would you like some iced tea? And I made chicken salad this morning if you’d like a sandwich.”
“Iced tea would be lovely, thank you,” Ursula says.
It gives Mallory something to do. She pours iced tea into two of her brand-new tumblers—to cheer herself up, she went on a nice-things-I-couldn’t-have-while-Link-was-around spending spree—puts some pita chips into a bowl, and gets out her silken, luscious homemade baba ghanouj. The other thing she has done to boost her spirits is cook.
“Baba ghanouj,” she says to Ursula as she brings everything into the living room on a wicker tray. “The eggplants from Bartlett’s Farm are like nothing you’ve ever tasted.”
Ursula murmurs something. She won’t touch the food, Mallory knows, because she doesn’t eat. She doesn’t read fiction either, and yet she’s drawing one finger across the spines of the books that Jake has sent Mallory over the years, from The English Patient to Less. Does she know they’re from Jake? Then Ursula picks up one of the sand dollars on that shelf, and Mallory has to suppress the hysterical laugh that’s gathering at the back of her throat.
“Let’s sit,” Mallory says. She places the tray on the coffee table and settles into Big Hugs while Ursula perches on the edge of one of the club chairs.
Ursula de Gournsey is here. In the cottage. In that chair.
Mallory hands Ursula an iced tea garnished with a wheel of lemon and a wheel of lime side by side on the rim, a hundred percent Instagram-able.
Ursula doesn’t seem inclined to speak, so Mallory says, “I didn’t realize you were on Nantucket.”
“I have a fund-raising dinner tonight,” Ursula says. “Private.” She takes a tiny sip of tea. “I’m running for president.”
“Yes, I know,” Mallory says. “Your vote on Judge Cavendish—I was proud of you. Every woman in America was proud of you.”
Ursula’s perfectly shaped eyebrows shoot up; maybe she’s surprised at the compliment. “Well, the election is still a long way off,” she says. “Anything can happen. Issues arise unexpectedly. Parts of your past come up, incidents you thought were long forgotten—hell, things you don’t remember…or even know about. When you’re running for president of the United States”—she sets her tea down—“your life has to be transparent. A clean window.”
And you’ve come with the squeegee, Mallory thinks.
“You and Jake see each other?” Ursula says. “Every year?”
She’s asking Mallory rather than telling her. She seems uncertain, which Mallory didn’t expect. Ursula has a hunch but not proof, maybe? Jake hasn’t told her. Jake doesn’t know Ursula is here. This whole thing, Mallory understands suddenly, has very little to do with Jake.
“What makes you think that?” Mallory asks. The spot in her vision has quieted, but it’s still there, watchful.
Ursula smiles. “I guess if I’m being honest, I would say I’ve always had a suspicion. Since Cooper’s first wedding, when I saw the two of you dancing together.”
“During Coop’s second wedding, I saw you in the ladies’ room,” Mallory says. “You told me you were pregnant. And I got the feeling you were going to confess the baby wasn’t Jake’s.” It’s Mallory’s turn to use her tea as a prop. She takes a sip. And what the hell, she’s hungry; she drags a pita chip through the baba ghanouj. She’s not afraid of food.
“At Cooper’s third wedding, when I asked Cooper if he and Jake were planning on continuing their Nantucket weekends, it was quite obvious Cooper had no idea what I was talking about. Tish certainly had no idea. Which I found odd.”
“Tish,” Mallory says. “I can’t believe you remember her name.”
“Then I read the article in Leland’s Letter,” Ursula says. “And I called your brother again, only he was ready for me, or at least readier. He told me that, yes, he and Jake went to Nantucket every summer.”
Mallory’s breathing is so shallow, she feels like she’s playing a dead person on television.
“I thought, Okay, maybe he’s lying, protecting his little sister. You two had just lost your parents—”
“Please,” Mallory says, and she shakes her head.
“And then…then, then, then.” Ursula spins first her watch and then a gold Cartier love bracelet around her wrist, and Mallory can’t help but imagine the birthday or Christmas when Jake gave it to her; Ursula’s joy, their kiss. “I have an adviser, a donor, a…friend of sorts named Bayer Burkhart. From Newport, Rhode Island. You know him.”
The You know him is pointedly not a question. Bayer, Mallory thinks. Bayer, of all people, is the one who told Ursula? “I knew him a long time ago,” Mallory says. “In my twenties.”
Ursula nods. “He told me. He was quite taken by you, apparently, during a time when he and Dee Dee were having trouble. He said he considered divorcing her and marrying you.”
“Ha!” Mallory says. The spot in her vision twinkles; it seems to be laughing along. “That’s ridiculous. We were…it was…a summer romance. And he was married, but I didn’t know that until the night we broke up.”
“Which was also the night you told him you had a Same Time Next Year. Whose name was Jake McCloud.”
“That was all so long ago—”
“Bayer forgot about it,” Ursula says. “He met Jake at a donor party years ago and said he thought something rang a bell, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.” Ursula slaps her hands on her knees. “Then, a couple of years ago, he saw the two of you on the docks. Friday of Labor Day weekend.”
Mallory isn’t sure what to say, so she has another pita chip. Her crunching is very loud in her own ears.
“Bayer didn’t tell me then because—well, because I think it took him a while to put it all together. And also, I wasn’t running for president.”
Mallory realizes she doesn’t have to say a word. She hasn’t broken the law. Ursula isn’t the police. Mallory stands up. “I hope your dinner goes well. Thanks for stopping by.”
“Mallory.”
Mallory won’t look at her. She carries the tray back to the kitchen. “Did I tell you my son just left for college? He’s at the University of South Carolina. The house is so quiet without him.”
“Yes, I have a daughter at college as well. Bess. She’s a freshman at Johns Hopkins. As you must know.”
Yes, Mallory knows. “I’m from Baltimore,” Mallory says. “Cooper and I were raised there.” She puts the baba ghanouj back in the fridge without any covering. She is distracted by the pressing need to sweep Ursula out the door. Her driver is waiting. What must he think? What did she tell him? She probably said she was visiting an old friend. The cottage isn’t grand enough to belong to a major donor.
“I need you to stop seeing Jake,” Ursula says. “He can’t come this Labor Day or next Labor Day or—if I win—any of the Labor Days while I’m in office.”
Mallory’s reaction to this statement must give it all away. She recoils like this is a duel and Ursula has drawn first and shot Mallory between the eyes. Or like it’s a swordfight and Ursula has just plunged a saber through Mallory’s ribs. Jake won’t come in two weeks? He won’t come the following year? Or, if Ursula wins, for four—or eight—years? Mallory is fifty years old. She realizes she may be sixty before she feels Jake’s arms around her again.
“Why are you talking to me?” Mallory asks, turning away. “Jake is your husband. If you don’t want him to come to Nantucket, tell him.”
“If I tell him that I know—” Ursula stops suddenly. When Mallory looks over, she sees Ursula’s head is bowed. “If I ask him not to come here, I’m afraid he’ll leave me.”
So keep things the way they are! Mallory wants to say. She’s tempted to beg. Mallory has lost her parents and dropped her only child off at college. She’s alone here. Except for Jake three magical days per year, Mallory is alone.
“But…I can’t have the press or my opponent’s camp finding out about this. And trust me, Mallory, you don’t want that either. They’ll drag your name through the mud. You’ll be vilified. You’re a teacher, right? Pretty beloved, from what I understand.”
“You don’t understand the first thing about me.”
“I do, though,” Ursula says. “You love Jake. I understand that better than anyone else. But please, it stops now. He’s my husband.”
Husband.
The bright spot encroaches a little farther into Mallory’s visual field. It’s white-hot, insistent. It is, she realizes, her conscience, inserting itself into the conversation after all these many years.
Jake and Mallory’s relationship is unusual, whimsical, even, like a fairy tale. It has always seemed to exist outside of reality, or so Mallory chose to believe. They weren’t breaking any rules if there were no rules. They weren’t hurting anyone’s feelings if no one knew.
But now.
Now, Mallory has to make a decision. Own up to what she’s been doing and stop. Or deny what she’s been doing and continue.
The spot in her eye is as bright as a flare.
“Okay,” Mallory says.
“Okay what?”
“Okay, I’ll stop,” Mallory says. “I’ll stop.”
“You will?” Ursula says. She narrows her eyes. Her irises are so dark, they’re nearly black, two chips of obsidian.
“Yes. You have my word.”
“Ah.”
“Ursula,” Mallory says. “You have my word.”
Ursula nods. “Thank you.” She inhales and seems to take in her surroundings for the first time, moving her eyes around the cottage. Does she approve? And why does Mallory care? She should feel nothing but disdain, or maybe hatred, toward this woman, her longtime rival, but she doesn’t, not quite. Ursula stands and clicks in her dusty stilettos over to the screen door, and Mallory feels almost sad that she’s leaving. In losing Jake, she loses Ursula too, her shadow opponent, the woman who has been hovering over Mallory’s shoulder, motivating her to be her best self. If Mallory were honest, she would admit that the competition with Ursula was inspiring to her.
At the door Ursula turns around. “You make him happy, you know.”
Tears, a flood of them, press—but Mallory won’t cry in front of Ursula.
“Yes,” Mallory says. “I know.”
Two weeks later, the text comes to Mallory’s phone: I’m here.
She locks up the cottage—the day before, she went hunting for the keys and found them deep in the junk drawer—and heads to the hiding place she’s chosen, forty or fifty yards away, behind a dip in the dunes. It’s childish to play games like this, she knows, but this was the best option among a host of terrible ones. Jake can’t know that Ursula knows. This has to seem like it’s coming from Mallory. If Mallory calls him, she’ll end up confessing about Ursula’s visit. Mallory considered texting Something came up, I have to cancel. Or even I’ve met someone, please don’t come. But she can’t be cruel. And, selfishly, she wants to set eyes on him.
She doesn’t respond to his text and another text follows: You there? Hello?
It’s amazing how seamlessly this relationship has worked on just a simple routine and trust. Nothing has ever trumped their time together—things almost had, several times, but they prevailed.
Until now.
She waits. Will he come or will he sense something is wrong and abort? His radar must be on amber alert anyway, with Ursula running for president. His every move must be monitored.
A little while later, Mallory hears a car. She peers up over the dune to see a Jeep enveloped in the usual cloud of dust. He’s here. Mallory’s heart leaps exactly as it has for the past twenty-six years.
Who cares about Ursula? she thinks.
Except…Mallory gave her word. She knows Ursula was hesitant to trust her, probably figuring that a woman who’d slept with her husband for so long would have no problem lying to her face about stopping.
The car door slams and Mallory shudders. From her hiding spot, she sees Jake get out. She moans softly. Jake! She can tell just from the way he’s carrying himself that he’s agitated—confused, maybe even angry. He strides up to the pond-side door and tries to open it, but it’s locked. She hears him murmur something, and then he goes around the house. She can’t see him but she imagines him standing on the porch, checking out the beach in each direction. She hears the creak of the door to the outdoor shower and she breathes a sigh of relief; she had considered hiding in there.
“Mallory!” he yells.
She closes her eyes. His voice.
“Mallory! Where are you?” He’s shouting; he must not care who hears him. There’s a messy edge to his voice, not tears, exactly, but maybe some panic. Has something happened to her? Is she okay?
Mallory travels back to the first summer when they yelled for Fray on the beach. Mallory had been so terrified, she remembers, or as terrified as a twenty-four-year-old girl who had never had anything bad happen to her could be. She has often scared herself by imagining how awful it would have been if Fray had drowned. Without Fray, there would be no Link. Mallory wonders if she would have gotten married to someone else and had different children—presumably she would have. She and Jake wouldn’t have bonded, except in crushing guilt.
It’s astonishing how the events of one evening can influence so much. Mallory thinks about her parents. Why did Senior not just stay in the Audi and call AAA? Well, because he was Cooper Blessing Sr. and would have deduced that he could change the tire himself in half the time it would take for AAA to arrive. Kitty had gotten out of the car—well, because she was Kitty and liked to supervise, always.
“Mallory!” Jake yells again. “Mal! Mal, please! Where are you?”
Mallory is forced to face her own disingenuousness. If she’d really wanted this to work, she would have gone away. But she’d wanted to see Jake’s reaction. Watching and hearing him without his knowledge is like reading his mind: he loves her.
She gets another text. The buzzing of her phone is louder than she anticipates.
Where are you? Your cottage is locked but your Jeep is here. Just please, for the love of God, tell me where you are. It’s not fair for you to just leave me hanging like this, you know it’s not.
He’s right; it’s not fair.
“Mallory!”
She imagines this from his point of view. He waits all year, anticipating. Then he makes the necessary arrangements, lies to Ursula and the forty staff members who are now watching his every move, and shows up here, expecting to step through the door of the cottage and find burgers, shucked corn, sliced tomatoes; Cat Stevens, World Party, Lenny Kravitz on the stereo; a new pile of books on “his” side of the bed—and Mallory.
The door is locked. He’s had no warning of this. He’s blindsided.
Mallory wants to run over the dune calling out his name and jump into his arms. She wants to kiss him. It will be like the ending of the movie where Doris and George think it’s over, but then George comes bursting back in and they reunite—to continue, year after year, until our bones are too brittle to risk contact.
But this isn’t a movie—that movie, or any other. It’s their lives, and she’s a human being and can take only so much.
She sends him a text: We can’t do this, Jake. It’s too dangerous now.
I don’t care if it’s dangerous.
Not only for you, Mallory writes. For me as well. And for Link. And for Bess.
Are you here somewhere? he writes. Can you see me?
No, she types. But before she can hit Send, her phone rings. The buzzer is loud, and it’s a still afternoon, the air heavy with mist; she’s certain he can hear the sound floating over the dunes. She declines the call.
You are here, he says.
No, I’m not.
He calls again. She declines the call immediately. She should turn her phone off, she knows, but she doesn’t want to end their communication. She and Jake have spent the past twenty-odd years not using cell phones because that’s how other people get discovered. Now that they have been discovered, she supposes it doesn’t matter.
I want to see you for sixty seconds, he texts. Please. Then I’ll leave.
Jake, no. That won’t work.
One kiss, he texts. Please. Just one kiss, then I promise, I’ll leave.
There might be some among us who would say no to that request, but our girl Mallory isn’t one of them.
Close your eyes, she texts.
She climbs out of the dunes and doesn’t see him, which means he’s moved around to the front porch. And that is indeed where Mallory finds him.
They kiss. It’s just one kiss, the deepest, sweetest, most heartbreaking, stomach-flipping kiss of Mallory’s life. With only the Atlantic Ocean as their witness, they swear that kiss will hold them through the next two or six or ten years.
“I love you, Mal,” Jake says.
Mallory closes her eyes, too overcome to say anything back.
When she opens her eyes, he’s gone.