“Pleasure,” Jack Baker says, and Nicola says it’s a pleasure for her too, trying not to let on just how much of a pleasure it really is.
David says they’re going to eat outside, so Nicola follows him to the patio, where two enormous fans usher the air from Great Salt Pond toward them. David and Taylor take the two ends of the table, and Jack and Nicola sit across from each other. A glass of cold white wine to Nicola’s right, a tender butter lettuce salad set before her by the woman she’d seen in the kitchen. Then, as soon as they’ve eatenthe salads, plates of poached salmon with a cucumber-dill sauce appear.
She leaves the talking to the others—more about the same permit, or a different permit, something about the wedding of a friend Jack and David and Taylor went to college with, something about a sailing trip to somewhere—and digs into her food with gusto. The salmon is phenomenal, but even so, she isn’t sure what lapse of logic causes her to say, “Taylor, this is amazing.”
Taylor stares at Nicola for an instant and says, “I’m glad you like it. I’ll tell Caroline.”
“You didn’t think Taylor cooked this, did you?” asks David.
“No, sorry, of course not,” Nicola says, flustered. She can’t seem to get her footing with her cousin: he’s familiar, and also a stranger. David used to eat gherkins right out the jar at the lake and call it dinner. Nicola feels herself blush for a second time.
“You should see your face, Nicola!” David chortles. “Man oh man. Taylor cooking. I’d like to see that.”
For an instant Taylor looks like she might be hurt, and Nicola wonders if she, Country Cousin or not, should defend her. Then Taylor says, smiling sweetly as can be, “It would be almost as shocking as seeing you mowing the lawn.”
Ah, okay. Taylor can hold her own: she doesn’t need Nicola.
Jack’s laugh is loud, almost a guffaw. Nicola guesses that if this were a book it might be described as infectious, because hearing it makes her laugh too. They’re laughing still when the slider to the house opens and out comes a young woman leading by the hand Taylor and David’s three-year-old daughter.
“Felicity!” says David, and Felicity says, “Daddy,” and launches herself into his arms so fervently that the uneaten portion of his salmon is at risk. David takes her elbow and moves it gently away from the plate. He kisses her on the back of the head, and a look passes between father and daughter that is so tender, so loving, that tears spring unexpectedly to Nicola’s eyes. And she is not, by temperament or habit, a crier. Two of her sisters are, but if you’ve ever lived in a house with four girls, you’d know that not all can be criers. One house can hold only so many tears.
Felicity is stunning in the way of certain children who have an old-fashioned, timeless beauty, the sort you can imagine in long-ago Hollywood stills or in advertisements, in theMadMenera, for laundry soap or ketchup. Golden ringlets, gigantic blue eyes, cherubic cheeks. She pops a thumb in her mouth and regards Nicola from underneath eyelashes so impossibly long most people can achieve them only from a serum or extensions. Neither of which, Nicola supposes, even someone of Taylor’s means is using on a child.
“Say hi to my cousin, sweetie,” says David, “this is Nicola,” and Felicity says, “Hi.”
“Hi, Felicity,” says Nicola. “I can’t believe I’ve never met you.” At one time it would have been unfathomable, absolutely unfathomable, for Nicola and David not to see each other for years. Now he has a whole entire kid who Nicola is just laying eyes on for the first time. “She’s gorgeous,” Nicola says. “I mean, obviously.”
Taylor, who has stood to plant a kiss on the top of Felicity’s head, passes a hand over her daughter’s hair and says, “My beautiful little fool.”
“My favorite book in high school,” says Nicola.
“Mine too,” says Taylor, and for a second Nicola feels the beginnings of a tentative solidarity between them.
David grins and says, “I thought it was Taylor Swift who claimed that.”
Taylor rolls her eyes and looks like she’s about to say something more, but just then her phone, which has been sitting on the table the whole meal, occasionally buzzing with texts, lets out a proper ring, and Taylor looks at the screen and says, “I’m so sorry, I’ve been waiting all day for this call, I have to take it, sorry, sorry.” She grabs the phone and beelines for the slider. Felicity begins to squirm inDavid’s lap, and, as if equipped with sensors, the nanny reappears, announcing, “Bath time, my girl!” and leads her off.
Caroline comes back out then, bringing shortbread and small bowls of gelato for all of them. She disappears and returns with a bourbon for David and one for Jack. She asks Nicola if she wants anything. Nicola has already had two and a half glasses of wine; she says no, but thank you, then changes her mind and asks for coffee, which appears without delay along with a tiny pitcher of cream and a bowl full of sugar cubes. Wow! thinks Nicola. The good life!
David sips his bourbon and looks out at the water, so Nicola sips her coffee and does the same. At the end of the dock, Nicola can see a green light burning.
“What’s that for?” she asks, pointing.
“Keeps the monsters away,” says David, and at the same time Jack says, “Lets the ladies know where to find me.”
Nicola rolls her eyes. It’s impossible to get a straight answer around here. Jack leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. She asks David, “Are you still doing the race car thing?”
“Not so much,” says David.
Jack’s eyes flip open and he says, “The missus doesn’t approve. She thinks it’s lowbrow.”
“I thought you were into the fancy cars, though,” says Nicola.
“I am,” says David.
“Was,” corrects Jack. “But to Taylor it’s all the same.”
“Okay,” says David. “Okay, okay. Can we change the subject?”
