“The kind of people who have a lot of money to burn, I guess,” she says. “It’s not a group of people I’m familiar with.” She’s not about to mention her connection to David and Taylor, not to this guy!
“Probably for some third house they’ll only use two weeks out of the year,” he says gloomily. “I grew up here. Married my wife here. Raised my kids here. Ran my business here. But in the last, oh, ten years, seems like every time I turn around this island is changing into something I don’t recognize.”
Nicola tries to find the bright side, even though, looking at the skeletons of these massive houses on land where horses had oncefreely grazed, she’s having trouble locating it. “Maybe change isn’t all bad?” she ventures. “My father always says, ‘We can have no progress without change.’”
“No offense, my dear, but that quote’s got nothing to do with this.” Nicola’s companion grimaces and motions toward the not-quite-houses.
“No,” she agrees. “No, maybe it doesn’t.”
“Nothing against your father. I’m sure he’s a great man.”
“He is,” she confirms. “But when he talked about change and progress I’m pretty sure at least fifty percent of the time he’s referring to La-Z-Boy’s introduction of nanobionic fabric to its recliners.”
“I love a La-Z-Boy.”
“He sells them more than he sits in them,” Nicola says, in case she’s giving the wrong impression. “Though he sits in them sometimes too.”
“‘No progress without change,’” he repeats thoughtfully. “Yeah, I can see where that’s sometimes true.” He pauses and gives the impression of puffing on a cigar even though his hands and his mouth are all empty. “But that doesn’t mean that change is always progress. Sometimes change means you’re sliding back.”
She thinks about this. “You’re probably right.”
“Damn straight I am.”
The morning is bright and clear. There’s humidity on call for later in the day, but it hasn’t arrived yet, and even though they’re smack in the middle of the island, about as far as you can get from the beaches on either side, and way more than a stone’s throw from Great Salt Pond, Nicola can sense the salt in the air; it feels like a chewiness. She imagines what the island might have been like all those years ago, before ice cream cones and espresso shots and weather cams and mopeds, when only the Narragansett tribe inhabited it, before the Dutch came to rename it and take it over. It had once been called Manisses, which translated to “Island of the Little God.” She imagines the Narragansett watching these homes rise from their sacred ground, shaking their heads regretfully.
“I can’t see much from back here,” she says. “It’s hard to be a Peeping Tom from a distance. Do you think I’d get in trouble if I went a little closer?”
“I’ll do you one better. Stay here.” He walks to his truck—he has the very particular walk of a man with a hip replacement in his not-too-distant future—and returns with a pair of binoculars. “The wife got into bird-watching in a big way these last couple of years,” he says. “She recently saw a king rail. Pretty rare, she tells me.” Nicola makes a noise that she hopes conveys being impressed, even though she wouldn’t recognize a king rail if it served her a Mudslide. He hands her the binoculars. “Here, take a look.”
She begins by training the binoculars on the houses, but then her eye catches on a midnight-blue Mercedes that has stopped close to the construction vehicles. She recognizes the car, and she recognizes the person who emerges from the driver’s seat too. Tall and blond. She sucks in her breath. If this is a beehive of activity, here comes the Queen Bee. Taylor’s hair is such a bright, bright blond, and so long, like fairy-tale princess hair, it’s unmistakable, especially when coupled with her height and her slim build. Of course it makes sense that she’d be here; this is a Buchanan project, and she is one of the chief Buchanans.
“See it now?” asks Nicola’s companion. “The way these houses are going to mar the landscape? How they’re set against the tree line there...” He cluck-clucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
“Terrible,” she agrees (and shedoesagree!), but her gaze is still fixed on Taylor. She even feels herself shrinking back a little, as though Taylor has binoculars too, and is looking straight at her. And then something happens that makes her take in her breath even more. Taylor is leaning against her Mercedes, looking at her phone, when a man in a hard hat approaches.
They speak for a minute. Mostly it looks like Taylor is talking, gesturing as she talks, and the man is nodding a lot. Nicola watches as he removes his hard hat and leans against the car next to her, so they’re both facing out. It’s an odd stance on both of their parts for a work-related conversation; there’s something too casual and intimate about the body language. Then she sees him take her hand and squeeze it.
What. Is. Happening.
Thenhe puts his arm around her, the way you do when you’re comforting someone.
And then.
And then!
They turn toward each other, and theykiss. Not just a peck either. It’s a long, searching, actual kiss—a kiss that makes Nicola feel like she’s walked in on a couple in bed. Truly it isquite a kiss.She can’t help it: she gasps.
“Makes you wonder what’s going on with the permit approval,” says her buddy, misreading the gasp as a reaction to a closer look at the construction. “All that progress on the houses, and none on the hotel.”
“Right?” she says. She lowers the binoculars. She thinks of Taylor getting a phone call at the dinner table; she thinks of Felicity’s plump little cheeks. She thinks of Taylor calling her Country Cousin. She thinks of the story Jack Baker told her about David the night before his wedding. She thinks of Juliana sitting alone in the library of her vast house.
She hands the binoculars back to the man, and she thanks him and says goodbye, then she gets on her bike and pedals as fast as she can, all the way home. She doesn’t even make it all the way into the house before she pulls out her phone and texts Jack Baker.
I’LL DO IT.
Immediately he texts back:?
I’LL HOST THE HAPPY HOUR.
