“Yes. I’m kidding about the fancy. But maybe stay away from the four-dollar bottles.”
“I’d stay away from those anyway. I have some standards.” She passes the baby to her mother.
Nicola has only talked to David a couple of times since the previous summer. He didn’t come home for Christmas—he and Taylor and Felicity went to St. Barts with Taylor’s father. Nicola knows from her lurking on the website of theBlock Island Timesand the YouTube channel that plays the planning board meetings that her little cottage has been demolished and construction on a new homeis moving forward, and she also knows that the plans for the downtown hotel have been held up in a seemingly endless series of zoning meetings. It might never happen. But, knowing the Buchanans, it probably will.
At Aldi, she finds a decent bottle of Sauvignon Blanc for $22, and a box of organic Popsicles plus one of ice cream sandwiches. She’s in line behind someone whose twenty-one items definitely exceed the fifteen-item limit (not that she’s counting; okay, maybe she’s counting), so she picks up one of the magazines on the endcap display and starts to read while she waits.
“You buying that?” Nicola looks up, startled, to see that her three items have moved ahead of her on the conveyor belt.
“Sorry.” She closes the magazine and hands it to the clerk. She pays for her things, walks to her car, and drives home.
When she gets back, Felicity is sitting in the screened-in porch with Linda and David, quivering over Jasmine, who is sleeping like the superstar baby she is. Felicity is now four. She’s a full quarter of her life older than she was a year ago. Her limbs are longer, and her curls are longer, and some of the baby fat in her cheeks has melted away, revealing a hint of what she might look like one day, as a teen and then as a young adult.
“Want to walk down to the dock, Nicola?” asks David after they all pass hugs around. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“That sounds ominous. Is it ominous?” David doesn’t answer.
“Go ahead,” says Nicola’s mother. “Felicity and I will bake come cookies.”
“Really?”asks Felicity. “Whatkind?”
“Let’s see what we have. Here, I’ll carry the baby but you’re in charge of her seat, okay?” Nicola’s mom is like this, gracious and kind to small people; she’ll bake with them or color with them and listen to their stories.
“You want some of this not-terrible wine?” Nicola asks David.
“You had me atnot-terrible,” he says.
They pour the wine into two plastic tumblers and walk down to the end of the dock. They dangle their feet over the edge, like they used to when they were kids and the tumblers were cans of Coke.
“So,” he said. “I have something to tell you about, and I wanted to do it in person.”
“Is this about Juliana again, David? Because I really don’t want to get in—”
He cuts her off. “No, that’s completely over. Taylor and I are making it work. We’re doing great, actually.”
“Yeah? For real?”
“For real. For absolute real. We got something back that we lost, you know? Trust, I guess. Kindness. We got the kindness back.” He pauses. “It’s something else.” He looksnervous! David doesn’t get nervous. “I want to tell you something about Jack.”
She shakes her head and takes a big sip of wine. “No, thank you,” she says primly. “I really don’t think about Jack anymore.”
His voice is urgent. “No, but Nicola. You have to listen. I have to tell you this story. I’m telling you, okay? So you just need to listen. Please? Just listen.”
She squints out at the water. “Okay. I’ll listen.”
“Remember when Shelly Salazar died last summer?”
“Of course I remember that. Geez, David. Yeah, how could I forget? She’s like the only person my age I’ve known who’s died, basically. She washed up not that far from where I lived, you know?” Nicola, in fact, thinks about Shelly Salazar alot,and how fast she went from being the object of Nicola’s ire to, well, to dead. So fast.
“Okay. Sorry! That’s what I want to talk to you about. Shelly—didn’t drown.”
“Huh? Of course she did. Her body washed up on Dinghy Beach. She was drunk and jumped off a boat. Ofcourseshe drowned.”
“I mean, she did, of course, drown. But she didn’tjustdrown.”
Nicola feels prickles in her palms. Does a cloud pass in front of the sun? She says, “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Jack stayed with us for two nights right around Christmas, in Boston, before we went to St. Barts.” (Taylor and David will return to Block Island in the summers, but their winter residence remains in Boston.)
