Willow in the Wind (The Sutton Book Club #5)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Summer 2020

I t was the summer of the pandemic, the summer everything changed. Stella thought it fitting that she was seated beside her husband, Matt, at the law office with her pen raised. They locked eyes. Across from them sat their bespectacled lawyer, Alan Johnson, who babbled about this and that—how tourism was down this year and how one of his favorite restaurants had had to close. “It looks like nothing will ever be the same again,” he said. Behind him, the windows were thrown open to bring in fresh air. Everyone was very into fresh air right then. It seemed the secret to health and wellness.

Alan Johnson paused and looked at Stella’s pen, still hovering an inch above the page. He gave her a look that meant come on, just get it over with.

Stella was suddenly terrified. Her mind’s eye filled with thousands of images: the white lace of her dress on her wedding day; Matt’s frantic face when she’d gone into labor that first time; Matt’s broken leg during the winter of 2013, a time that had meant Stella took over cooking in the kitchen for the first time in their relationship. Matt and Stella. Matt and Stella, forever.

Matt gave her a soft smile and a firm nod. They’d talked about this for hundreds if not thousands of hours. They’d done their best. But it was over.

Stella filled her lungs.

Here goes nothing.

She signed her name.

Matt didn’t need half as much time as she had. His signature and the date appeared beneath hers.

“I now pronounce you unmarried!” Alan Johnson said.

The words hit Stella like a smack.

Were we too rash? Will we regret this? She didn’t know. But suddenly, Alan Johnson told them he had another meeting after this one. It was time for the unmarried non-couple to go.

Stella and Matt walked into the sunlight outside the law office. It was located in Nantucket’s downtown historic sector on a road lined with thick oaks, their leaves glistening with health. It was true that had this been any other year, that particular street would have been crammed with tourists. But they had plenty of room to glide the sidewalk side by side this year. In the distance was the sound of the carousel.

They hadn’t said anything since they’d left the office. Stella had the sensation they were walking in no direction at all. Their children were older, at friends’ places for the day, and Stella worked online as a copywriter, which meant she wasn’t needed anywhere. Matt was a developer for an internet company based in Manhattan. He worked from home. His new home.

“Well,” Matt said with a funny laugh, “that was one heck of a ride.”

Stella tried to laugh, but she was terrified she would burst into tears instead.

They passed an ice cream place that was generally jam-packed in the summertime and difficult to get into. Today, only a few tourists were lined up.

“You want to grab a cone?” Matt asked.

Stella said okay. She didn’t want to leave him yet. She didn’t want to imagine him driving back to his new house, getting back online, and working as though today hadn’t been one of the biggest and most emotional days of their lives.

Stella and Matt waited in line for ice cream for five minutes. Stella considered mentioning they hadn’t gotten ice cream as a family in a couple of years. Why was that? They’d previously gotten ice cream as a family all the time! They’d sat at that very table in the corner, laughing their heads off when Chloe smeared chocolate ice cream all over her face, so much so that she got it in her hair. Everything had felt funnier then.

Matt got his favorite flavor, butter pecan. But Stella couldn’t figure out what she wanted. It felt like a metaphor. Matt was so clear about his future, but Stella’s felt unwritten. She went with mint chocolate and immediately regretted it.

Maybe she’d regret the divorce, too.

They sat outside beneath a tree to eat their ice cream. Stella wondered what percentage of recently divorced people sat and ate ice cream. But it was really hard for her to imagine another way. Exes who screamed and tore each other to shreds were aliens to her. She’d loved Matt for years. She still loved Matt.

The truth was, something had been off for a long time.

Stella couldn’t say when the trouble had begun. Her friends had asked her plenty of times, and she’d given random answers. Answers she wasn’t sure she believed in. For example, when Matt got a new job in Manhattan and went on more business trips than normal, she felt him drift away from her. But was that really true? She’d been underwater with Chloe’s health problems back then. Chloe had minor brain surgery at the age of six, and Stella hadn’t slept more than two hours at a time for years. Not until she’d known Chloe was out of the woods. Probably, she’d drifted away from Matt during that time, too. But when she mentioned this to her friends, they asked, “But what about Matt? Wasn’t he around for Chloe?” They wanted to be angry with him for something. But Stella shook her head. “Matt tried to be my rock. But I was so scared. I sank to the bottom of the ocean.”

Why does anyone’s marriage end? Stella wondered.

They’d first brought up divorce in mid-April. It was more than a month after the pandemic had begun, and they’d had a beautiful month together with the kids—playing games, going on walks along the beach, and doing minor house projects. On paper, it was a happy marriage. But the truth was, Matt and Stella hadn’t shared a bedroom in over a year. They were more like friends than anything.

And the pandemic put a fire under them.

But they couldn’t bring themselves to say so until they both got COVID-19 themselves.

It wasn’t clear where they’d gotten it. The grocery store? The post office? They’d worn masks, just as they were supposed to. They’d washed their hands. But then, one afternoon, they were both knocked out with coughs rattling their lungs and rasping at their throats.

The kids were spared, thankfully. Chloe was twelve, and Logan was fourteen, and they’d sent them to stay with family until Stella and Matt were healthy again.

It had been the first time Matt and Stella were alone at home—just the two of them—in what felt like years. Matt had cooked them buckets of soup, and they’d watched old movies, some of which they’d loved when they were first dating— Good Will Hunting, The Butterfly Effect, and Reality Bites. Sometimes Stella felt tricked into thinking she was twenty-four again. They laughed a lot during those ten days.

Was it Stella who asked it? Or Matt? She couldn’t remember. But they’d started talking about the future.

“Where do you see yourself in ten years? Twenty?”

It was obvious to both of them they didn’t see one another in the picture anymore. Not in a romantic way, anyway.

Stella had waited until she went upstairs to burst into tears. But she’d rebounded quickly. By the time they were cleared of COVID-19 and the kids were home, they had a plan. They’d called Alan Johnson.

They were modern people. They weren’t in love anymore. They were going to get divorced!

There hadn’t been a scandal.

No lying. No cheating. No disrespect.

Now, Stella was thirty-nine, and Matt was forty-one, and they were finishing their ice cream cones and preparing to move forward with their lives apart.

They got up from the bench, wiped their hands on napkins, and hugged. Stella laughed nervously. Matt had tears in his eyes.

“I’ll pick up the kids on Thursday,” he said although they both had the schedule down pat by now. They’d been doing it since May.

“And I’ll take Chloe to piano Friday afternoon while Logan’s at soccer,” Stella affirmed.

They walked down the sidewalk until they found Matt’s car, but then he insisted on walking Stella to hers first. He wanted to be a gentleman till the very end. He winked before she got in and said, “Drive safe.” After that, he strode back down the sidewalk and disappeared around the corner.

Stella took a jagged breath and gripped the steering wheel as her heart raced. But all the way home, she sang the songs on the radio at the top of her lungs. She wasn’t worried about a thing.