“Have Jack take you.” She winces. That’s humiliating. (But also, she wants Jack to take her.) “And get the Point Judith calamari appetizer and a Mudslide. You won’t be sorry.”
“Copy that,” she says. She uncrosses her legs and stands, reluctant to leave and go back to her own cottage, where there’s no pool, nostrawberries, no dress-up clothes. She stalls a little, angling for more time, maybe an invitation to stay.
“Come on, Daddy.” Felicity pulls his arm. Nicola sighs. How quickly she’s been replaced.
“Just a sec, sweetie. I need to find money for Nicola.” He pats the pockets of his red shorts. “Sorry, I don’t—I just... my wallet.” He looks perplexed, a little emotionally rumpled. “I wonder if I left it... it’s probably in the... Do you have Venmo?”
“Venmo?” Of course she has Venmo; everyone has Venmo. But does David think she expects to bepaid? They’re each other’s favorite cousin! Cousins do each other favors. Especially cousins from Minnesota. “I’m happy to spend time with Felicity anytime. Please don’t pay me.”
“You sure?”
“One hundred percent.” It all feels a little cheap, suddenly, and she’s irritated with David. The long absence, the slurring, the caginess. He can tell he’s offended her, and he unleashes one of his winning smiles.
“In that case,” he says, “I’ll see you Monday at eight sharp. The nanny costs a fortune.”
It’s a decent recovery, and she gives him credit for it. “Eight sharp it is,” she says. Then Felicity announces, “Bathroom!” and disappears. “Listen, David,” she hisses, once Felicity is out of sight. “What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“What are you doing with Juliana? What are you doing to Taylor?”
His eyebrows shoot up. “What amIdoing toTaylor?”
“I mean, what are you doing in general?”
He clears his throat. “Am I obligated to explain all of that to you?”
Coming from David, this smarts; wow, itreallysmarts. She blinks hard, wondering if she might cry. Then she rebounds andsays, “No. Of course not. But there was a time when you would have wanted to.”
“Yeah, well.” He rubs his temples.
Just like that, Felicity is back.
“Listen, Nic—”
She bends down and opens her arms for a hug. Felicity dives right in, and Nicola says, “Bye, Felicity. I had a great time today.”
“Tell my favorite cousin thank you for hanging out with you,” David says. He’s trying to make it up to her, but Nicola keeps her eyes on Felicity, who says, “Thank you for hanging out with you.”
By the second week in July, Nicola has led two dock expeditions and five tank explorations at BIMI (pronounced “bimmy,” which she always finds funny). She has prepped for and attended two of the weekly talks. She’s going to be in charge of her own Creature Feature; she’s going to focus on starfish, which she knows will be a hit with the younger visitors. She’s hard at work getting ready for the impending arrival of the College Crusade students who will come for a week in August. (The College Crusade helps underrepresented youth get on a college track.) She’s tested water; she’s collected plankton; she’s cleaned tanks. She’s gone along on one harbor cruise.
They celebrate the birth of a baby seahorse. By now most people have read the Eric Carle bookMister Seahorse,so people are typically not surprised by the fact that the female seahorse lays her eggs in the male’s pouch, but it still makes Nicola smile to think about it. She pictures laying her eggs in Zachary’s pouch. She imagines telling him that he is to be responsible for toting the eggs around, and that when the time comes to give birth his body will undergo contractions that straddle the line between vehement and violent. Zachary would 100 percent never go for it. He’s way too finicky for all of that; pregnancy would complicate his career trajectory. He’d never want to wear maternity clothes to the firm.
But she can’t imagine Jack toting around the eggs either. What male that she knowswouldtote the eggs?
David! David would tote the eggs.
She’s never been happier, and even though she worked hard in her previous life, there are days when she feels like she’s never worked harder. As a proud millennial—she barely squeaked in, born on the very tail end of the generation—she’s determined to show the Gen Zers what hard work is all about. If there’s something to volunteer for, she’ll raise her hand. If there’s a tank to clean, she’ll clean it. A Tuesday Talk to set up for? She’ll Tuesday it until the cows come home.
And then there’s Juliana. Nicola has never been friends with a famous entrepreneur before. It’s exciting! But also, it’s like making any new friends, because except for the giant house she’s a regular person; she puts her pants on one leg at a time, etc., even if those pants are typically part of a curated, occasion-appropriate look.
Sometimes Juliana will text Nicola during the workday, and Nicola will text back, maybe sending a photo of the touch tank or the dock. If they happen to be outside their homes at the same time they’ll have a chat, like two dads in the fifties bonding over a garden hedge after mowing the lawn.
Nicola didn’t go to Juliana’s last party, although Juliana had sent a text inviting her (with three emojis—clearly their relationship has reached a new level!) because that night the bimmy interns who are old enough to drink went out to Captain Nick’s. At the bar, one intern, Cherry, a local, told Nicola about the hundreds of glass floats made by a glassblower named Eben Horton on the mainland. The floats, the size of an orange, are hidden around the island at the beginning of each summer, and people go crazy looking for them. Nicola is instantly determined to find one. She’ll look first on Mansion Beach, because, why not?
“You have to be open to it, without looking too hard,” Cherry told Nicola. “Just like love.”
And then, of course, there’s Jack, whose unpredictability stands in direct opposition to Zachary’s unvariedness. Jack (and Taylor too) ping-pong on and off the island like it’s nothing; Taylor for business, and Jack for—who knows what. He has friends to see on Nantucket; he has a party in Boston. Sometimes he texts before he shows up after being away but sometimes he just appears at her door, grinning. She’s on her back foot a lot, but after years of distributing her weight evenly she sort of likes it.
