Chapter 2
Chapter Two
I t was the day after Rachelle left for Rome. Darcy was not exactly having the time of her life.
It wasn’t just because her best friend, sister, and only real confidant had left for the summer (and maybe forever, but Darcy didn’t like to think about that). It was also because the woman who’d come into the clinic this morning was a piece of work. She accused Darcy’s colleague Barbara of “destroying her face,” when Barbara had only done exactly what the client had asked her to do. It was true that the client’s eyebrows were on the higher side; that her face was stiff. But that was all fixable. The client didn’t need to drag Darcy, Barbara, and the entire clinic down. She didn’t have to threaten them with bad Google reviews and the assurance that she would “never come here again.”
“Good riddance,” Barbara said after the client stomped out the door with her nose in the air.
“You can tell it’s almost summer,” Darcy said as she sterilized her equipment for an upcoming appointment.
“Are you suggesting the people who summer here are rather difficult , Miss Darcy?” Barbara teased. “What gave you that idea?”
Darcy laughed. It was true that some of the non-Nantucketers who occupied their island during the summer were often not on the kinder side. They had money, knew how to use it, and knew how to ridicule those who didn’t have as much.
It wasn’t that Darcy didn’t understand money. Her grandfather Roland and grandma Estelle were marvelously rich; rich in the way of big sailboats and multiple beautiful patios overlooking the lush oasis of their white Nantucket beaches. But Darcy’s mother, Sam, had never wanted their money. Instead, she’d stepped away from them and built a career in social work that Roland struggled for years to approve of. A Coleman shouldn’t work in such a low-grade field! Darcy and her sister, Rachelle, had her mother’s strong will.
Sometimes Darcy struggled with the thought that her grandpa Roland didn’t approve of her career as an aesthetician. Other times, she remembered that he probably didn’t even know about half of the treatments she gave. Botox had been around a while—but everything else? It was practically like witchcraft for a man of his age. And Darcy liked her career. She really did. Mostly.
It was forty minutes before Darcy’s shift was over. Suddenly, a tall, slender woman in her forties or fifties whipped through the door. Most of her face was covered with a silk scarf, but her eyes were black and sparkling, and her thick brown hair gushed down her back and shoulders.
Her accent wasn’t American.
“Hello? Can someone help me? Please?”
Darcy didn’t have another appointment for fifteen minutes. “Please, sit down.”
The woman swept into the chair and pressed her scarf harder to her face. “I don’t know what to do. I really don’t.”
“What happened?” Darcy asked kindly.
“My holiday house is on Martha’s Vineyard. I invited a well-regarded aesthetician to my home for a round of treatments. But I fear she’s ruined my face forever.”
Darcy had heard this all before. She’d been through great dramas with rich women just like her and was confident when she said, “I think I can help you. Let’s see?”
The woman slowly unraveled her scarf. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks.
It was true that the aesthetician had “messed up” the woman’s face. This botch job was far worse than anything Darcy had seen in years, making the previous angry woman’s face look like Angelina Jolie’s. But Darcy was careful not to show how bad she thought it was. She smiled and said, “This is fixable. Don’t worry.”
And it was. That was the beauty of Darcy’s career. She’d been doing this for over five years. She intuitively understood the face, its muscular structures, and how various techniques affected the facial features depending on the bones and tissue beneath. Sometimes she felt like a scientist although her role as an aesthetician didn’t call for such respect. Of this, Rachelle had said, You change people’s lives much more than some scientists. I think you’re a genius.
Barbara took over Darcy’s next client so that Darcy could throw herself into this task.
Before she got started, the woman introduced herself as Carlotta Gionnocaro. She was an Italian-Swiss woman who spent weeks in Martha’s Vineyard each year because she’d met an American man who loved to golf and sail. “This is his heaven.” Fortunately, she explained, the guy was off the island for a business meeting, so he hadn’t seen her face yet.
“I read about your clinic online and knew I had to come,” she said. “And then I remembered you were the same aesthetician who fixed Eddie’s face. The Eddie from that reality restaurant show.”
Darcy smiled at the memory. “That’s right. Rachelle is my sister.”
“I knew that, too,” Carlotta said.
It took a little more than an hour to return Carlotta’s face to half normal. It required another twenty-four hours to come down. After that, Carlotta needed to massage it and perform facial exercises at home. “Call me tomorrow afternoon,” Darcy said, “and if it doesn’t look any different from right now, I’ll come to you. My boyfriend can sail me over.”
Carlotta looked at herself in the mirror for a long time, touching her cheeks, her forehead, and her nose. “It’s already one hundred times better,” she croaked, clearly very emotional. With her eyes locked on Darcy’s, she took her hand and breathed, “You really change people’s lives here, don’t you?”
It wasn’t every day Darcy felt like that. But she supposed it was true. It was nice to be reminded of it—even if the woman doing the reminding was a very rich vacationing islander. At least she was on Martha’s Vineyard and not Nantucket.
Darcy got off work around four thirty and went to the grocery store, where she had to stop herself from buying some of the things Rachelle and only Rachelle liked. Now that Darcy was living alone, she could shop with herself in mind. And it made her startlingly sad. With her basket half full, she called Steven. Maybe he wanted to swing by for dinner. The phone rang and rang. After that, he texted her to say he was out on a boat with his father and would call her later.
Darcy smiled. No matter what, Steven always made a point to ensure she was okay; she knew where he was; she knew she mattered to him. After just a couple of months of dating, Darcy had butterflies in her stomach about him and the beautiful future she felt sure they were building. In the beginning, it had terrified her. She’d told Rachelle time after time that Steven didn’t matter to her; that she couldn’t foresee herself “building a life with a guy in a band.” They’d been lies. Darcy had already fantasized about their wedding. Maybe that was what all women did by the age of twenty-five. But Darcy had never really imagined her own wedding before. It felt special.
Darcy went home alone, made a salad, watched some reality television, and waited to get tired. In one of the episodes, a young woman started her own company and said a lot of things like, “If not now, when?” It reminded Darcy of Rachelle’s wild dash toward her own dreams. It reminded her of how proud she was.
But what about you? What are your dreams? Darcy asked herself.
At ten that night, Darcy’s phone blared with a call from Rachelle. She answered it in a panic. What if something is wrong? What if she’s hurt or lost or homesick?
“Are you okay?” Darcy demanded.
Rachelle laughed sleepily into the phone. “Hello to you too.”
Darcy collapsed on the couch and rubbed her eye. “I’m sorry. I sounded crazy.”
“Not crazy. How are you?”
“What time is it there?”
“Why did you ignore the question?” Rachelle asked.
“Why did you?”
Rachelle groaned. “It’s four in the morning. I have to be at the restaurant in an hour to start prepping. You know how the culinary world is. Never a dull moment.”
“And never enough sleep,” Darcy said.
Rachelle yawned again.
“How is your apartment? How is Rome!”
Darcy grinned madly into the phone. She’d known Rachelle was going to go and had truly tried to prepare for it. But their apartment felt echoey and empty without her. Their apartment no longer felt like it belonged to Darcy without Rachelle. It was as though it had turned its back on her.
“It’s crazy,” Rachelle answered. “I don’t know what to make of it. I think it’s the prettiest place I’ve ever seen.”
“Don’t turn your back on Nantucket like that.”
Rachelle giggled. “When you visit, you’ll see.”
Darcy and Rachelle chatted for a few minutes before Rachelle admitted she had to jump in the shower and head to work. Darcy felt her heartstrings breaking and popping as they said goodbye. She hated the emptiness in her ears after the call was cut.
Darcy took the next afternoon off and walked to her grandparents’ Coleman House in the sun. Her mother was already there when she arrived, pouring herself a glass of white wine on the back porch. Estelle was in the kitchen on the phone with someone; it sounded like it was her editor or agent. “I don’t know about another book tour,” Estelle was saying. “You know how much I like to be home.”
“There’s my girl,” Darcy’s mother said. She popped up and hugged her, then pulled back and frowned as she assessed her face. “How are you?”
It was a loaded question. Sam was frightened of how Darcy would handle Rachelle going away.
“She called me last night,” Darcy said. “At ten our time, four in the morning her time.”
“Phew!” Sam laughed.
Grandma Estelle came out onto the back porch with her glass of wine. Her long cardigan swept out behind her like a cape. She came over to hug Darcy and pepper her with more questions about Rachelle, as though Darcy knew anything more than they did. They were all just waiting for news from Europe.
“Your grandfather is upstairs arguing with his father on the phone about sports.” Estelle settled onto the couch between Sam and Darcy and put her toes with nails perfectly painted on the edge of the table in front of them. “Their relationship is so strong these days that they feel free to argue about just about everything. Mostly sports. Sometimes food. It’s never about anything serious. One of them usually hangs up on the other one, and then the other one calls back, and the argument continues. Sometimes Grant gets in on it.”
Sam giggled. “Like father, like sons.”
“You’ve got that right,” Estelle said. “I forgot to mention. I think Oriana is going to come by. She’s on the island for one reason or another. An art thing. I can never keep up with her schedule.”
Just a few minutes later, Oriana walked around the edge of the grounds and waved. “I was ringing your doorbell!”
“I’m sorry! Roland must not have heard,” Estelle said as she hurried to hug her. “He’s upstairs arguing with your father again.”
“Dad loves a worthy adversary,” Oriana said.
Darcy hurried to pour Oriana a glass of wine. Oriana launched into a brief but passionate diatribe about an art client here on Nantucket, someone she’d grown to detest the art taste of. “I show him gorgeous pieces. Pieces I would kill to hang on my wall. Pieces he can afford easily. And he sniffs at them. Today, he told me he wants a sculpture of a hot pepper the size of an elephant to put in his foyer. I don’t even know where I’ll find something like that. I’ll have to have it commissioned. And even then, who would want to make something like that?”
Estelle shook her head. “If Roland ever came up with a design idea like that, I’d lose it.”
“I think you’re safe. Roland seems to have respectable taste,” Oriana said.
“He just lets me do everything for him,” Estelle teased. “His fashion would be lost without me.”
“He doesn’t know how lucky he is!” Oriana said.
Darcy felt very quiet and demure, her thoughts often elsewhere (and often with Rachelle, wondering how she was, what she was seeing, and who she was talking to). But she sipped her wine and answered Oriana’s questions when she asked them; she tried to stay involved. Like the others, Oriana wanted to know all about Rachelle’s glamorous life in Rome. Also like the others, she didn’t ask once about Darcy’s own career. Is it because they don’t respect you? Darcy shoved that thought away and smiled and kept talking.
There was a brief lull in the conversation. A pregnant pause.
“I’m just so excited,” Oriana suddenly announced. “I can hardly stand it.”
Estelle laughed. “What’s up, honey?”
“My son,” Oriana said. “Joel. He’s coming home.”
Sam and Estelle burst in unison, “What!?”
“This is a surprise,” Sam offered. “Did something happen in Providence?”
“I thought he just bought that house!” Estelle said.
Oriana raised her eyebrows and her shoulders. “He wants to partner up with Reese this summer and make apps. It was a surprise for me, too.” She hesitated. “I don’t know if it’s clear from the outside, but Reese and Joel don’t have the strongest relationship.”
Sam glanced at Grandma Estelle. “Neither did we till last year. Things can change.”
Estelle took Sam’s hand and squeezed it. She squeezed Darcy’s, too. Darcy’s heart pumped. It was true that so much had happened in the Coleman family over the past year; so much of it had given them family-wide whiplash. But it had brought them together, and they were stronger than ever.
“Do you mind if I ask if something happened?” Sam asked quietly. “Something that pulled them apart?”
A shadow passed over Oriana’s face. That’s a yes, Darcy thought.
“You know how it is with teenagers,” Oriana said with a wave of her hand. “They think they know everything, while at the same time, parents are so sure they know everything. The reality is nobody knows anything, and everyone is making mistakes all the time.”
Clearly, she wasn’t going to share what had happened between Joel and Reese. Darcy could only speculate. Possibly an argument about curfew? But that was too silly for such a long-standing feud. Maybe Joel wrecked the family car? Maybe he put his little sister, Alexis, in danger somehow? Maybe he insulted Reese and his way of life?
“When do they arrive?” Estelle asked.
“The moving trucks get here in two days,” Oriana explained. “Joel is bringing his family to our place tomorrow afternoon, and then we’ll go over to meet the trucks and help them get things in order.”
“It’s happening quickly!” Sam exclaimed.
“We just visited them a week ago,” Oriana explained. “Apparently, the idea just came to Reese and Joel. And the two of them are brilliant thinkers. They’re going to work well together. If they can put the past behind them, that is.”
That night, Darcy went to the Jessabelle House to sleep in the room her mother set up for her. Sam preferred that Darcy and Rachelle call it their “home,” despite the fact that Sam had only moved in last summer and the girls had never known it as home. It was a quirk Rachelle and Darcy had agreed on. With Rachelle gone, Darcy sensed she’d be spending even more time at the Jessabelle House, nursing her slightly broken heart.
Sam and Darcy splayed out on the sofa in their pajamas with bowls of strawberry ice cream in their laps and the television playing a Julia Roberts film neither of them could remember the name of. It would have been simple to figure it out, but they felt too lazy for that too. All they could say was, “She really was an icon,” and, “They don’t make them like Julia anymore,” as the clock ticked closer and closer to midnight. Sam had already said she needed to be in bed by eleven. She’d failed.
“Do you have any gossip about Joel and Reese?” Darcy asked suddenly.
Sam shook her head. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“It’s sort of crazy that they’re going to work together after years of not getting along, right?” Darcy inquired. “I mean, imagine if you and Grandpa had just immediately started a company together after so many years of not talking.”
Sam wrinkled her nose. “I still wouldn’t work with your grandfather. Love him to death, though.”
“Exactly. It’s weird.”
“You think we should get to the bottom of it?” Sam teased.
Darcy laughed and hit her mother with a throw pillow.
“But seriously. There’s still so much we don’t know about that side of the family,” Sam said. “We’re still getting to know each other. Which is fun but also scary. They’re just as complicated as anyone else. Maybe we won’t always like what we find out.” Sam took a bite of ice cream and closed her eyes. “You didn’t talk much about yourself today.”
Darcy was quiet.
“Is everything going okay with Steven?”
Darcy’s smile opened up her face. “Everything is great with Steven.” Just saying his name made her float off the couch. “I’m seeing him tomorrow night.”
“I’m surprised you don’t see each other every day,” her mother said. “You seem wonderful together.”
“We’re still trying to take things slow,” Darcy offered. “I don’t want to jump in headfirst and then figure out I’m with the wrong guy.”
Sam’s eyes sparkled. “Like me with your father?”
“I didn’t mean that! I mean, you and Dad were happy for a while. Right?”
“Yeah. We were.” Sam raised her shoulders. “But I think you’re smart to take it day by day. It’s not a race. There’s no finish line. It’s all about getting to know each other and building a solid foundation.”
“We’re not architects, Mom.”
It was Sam’s turn to whack her with the throw pillow. She held Darcy’s gaze. “I love you, honey. I hope you’re okay now that your sister’s gone.”
Darcy deflated just a bit. “It’s going to be a great summer. Rachelle and I have spent time apart before. It’s not the end of the world.”
“I know. But things are different now. You lived together as adults for an entire year. I still consider my old roommates as family members. And you and Rachelle are actually sisters! I’m not saying this to make you feel worse. I just want you to know I empathize. And I love you.”
Darcy sighed and burrowed her head against her mother’s arm. On-screen, Julia Roberts put on lipstick and smiled enthusiastically in the mirror. She smiled like she knew she ruled the world because she did.