“So how areyou?How’s everything?”
“Good! Busy, you know. But good.” Nicola kept up on news about the IPO, one of the biggest of the past few years. The numbers she read were so big they mean almost nothing to Nicola; Juliana now has unfathomable, untouchable wealth.
After that come several seconds of things they do not say. Juliana does not ask after David. Nicola does not ask about Juliana’s personal life. Neither mentions Block Island or the summer before, Shelly, Great Salt, Jack Baker, any of it.
“Listen, Nicola? I have to go, okay? I have to go.” A pause. “But I’m glad you called. I’m really glad. I think about you a lot. I really do. And hey—stay in touch, okay?”
“Okay,” says Nicola. “Of course. You too.”
“I will,” promises Juliana. But she’d bet that her path and Juliana’s will never cross again. Like a summer romance, like a sunset, like a snowflake, that’s all in the past now.
People move differently in the world when they are loved by a lot of people. Nicola gave Juliana the gift of saving her life, sure. But Juliana gave Nicola something too: the gift of understanding this.
Travis is in the kitchen, making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before his shift, so she tells him about her acceptance.
“Cool!” says Travis. She watches him spread a layer of potato chips on the peanut butter side, then lay the jelly side on top, gently pressing down, enough to crack some of the potato chips but not enough to break them in pieces. “I didn’t even know you were into that stuff.”
Nicola rolls her eyes. “Travis. I work at the Save the Bay Exploration Center and Aquarium. I go there three days a week.”
He squints at her. “I thought you worked at Coast Guard House. I thought you knew my buddy Rob who also works at The Tavern with me. Want a sandwich?”
“Ialsowork at Coast Guard House and know your buddy Rob who works at The Tavern with you. But the marine stuff is my passion.”
“Cool,” Travis says again, nodding and chewing. “Passion is good.”
For some reason, it is exactly the thing she needed to hear. She says, “You know what, Travis? Idowant a sandwich.”
In May she gives notice to her landlord. A room close to the beach won’t be hard to fill for the summer, and she knows that when she comes back she wants to live alone, even if it means returning to the Coast Guard House one night a week to help cover the rent. She says goodbye to Travis, piles four of Maeve’s socks outside Maeve’s bedroom door, and packs up the Subaru to drive back to Minnesota.
One hot day in August, the doggiest of the dog days of summer, Shauna is napping while Nicola and her mom pass Shauna’s newborn, Jasmine, back and forth between them. They’re in the screened-in porch facing the dock and the lake. Kristin and Kate were there when Jasmine was born but went back to the Cities for work. A couple of pontoons move lazily, and Nicola is alternating between watching them and marveling at Jasmine. “Look at her eyelashes,” says Nicola. “I mean, comeon.”
“They’re perfect,” Linda confirms. After a moment she says, “You know, you look pretty natural holding that baby.”
Nicola rolls her eyes. “I sweartogod, Mom.”
Jasmine opens the blue saucers she has for eyes and looks at them. She’s the best baby in the world, so calm and quiet, soserene,so wise, that Nicola worries she’s ruining the reputation of babies the world over who will never live up to her example. It’s actually unfair to all those other babies.
“I just don’t understand,” says Nicola’s mother, “how this calm grandchild came from the least calm daughter.” Her mother says that 76 percent of her gray hairs came from the years Shauna was fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen.
Nicola snorts, and when Jasmine looks startled at the way the snort makes Nicola’s arms jump, Nicola says, “Sorry, honey,” and tries to stay very still as Jasmine settles.
“Nature’s correction, I guess,” says Linda. Then the phone rings—their cottage is one of the last places on the planet with a landline. And they actually answer it!
“I’ll get it,” says Linda. In a minute she comes back and says, “You’ll never believe it. That was David! He’s on his way here.”
“Our David?”
“Our very own David. And Felicity! Last-minute trip.”
“Who takes a last-minute trip to Minnesota?” Linda shrugs. “No Taylor?” asks Nicola.
“He didn’t mention Taylor. Can you do me a favor, Nic? Can you run up to Aldi and get a box of Popsicles for Felicity, and maybe a bottle of white wine? Do you think you can find something fancy enough for David?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“About buying it, or about the fancy?”
“The fancy!”
