Nicola
On the last Saturday in June, rides her bike by the land that Buchanan Enterprises is developing in the heart of the
island, with Great Salt Pond to the north, the airport due east, and undeveloped woods to the west. She did her research online:
Buchanan purchased fifteen acres, including a former equestrian facility and a home (demolished to make space for the new
construction), for around six million dollars; when finished, each of the four homes the land is now zoned for will sell for
at least five million. Each home is going to be 4,500 square feet with the option to add more: finished basement, finished
attic, finished bonus room over the garage.
isn’t the only Peeping Tom on location that day, as it turns out. An older gentleman whom she first mistakes for a
member of the construction crew pulls up in and heaves himself out of a pickup truck not too far from where she stops her
bike. The site is a beehive of activity, with equipment—cranes and bulldozers and, she doesn’t know, maybe a backhoe? She’s
no expert—lined up in an orderly row alongside the driveway. Men (maybe they aren’t all men, she can’t tell from where she
is) in hard hats are calling to each other or standing in line for one of the porta-potties or carrying long pieces of lumber
over their shoulders, two men to a piece, like a builder’s version of Noah’s ark. The four houses are partially framed.
“My buddy used to own this place,” the pickup truck guy says. “Fact, I helped build one of those stone walls right over there.” He points in a general westerly direction.
“No kidding,” she says respectfully, even though whatever stone wall he’s referencing is out of her line of sight.
“You shoulda seen this place in its prime,” he goes on. “The barn had a tack room, a farrier station, the whole deal.”
“What’s a farrier?”
“Guy who puts the shoes on the horses.” He looks at , appraising. “Or gal,” he adds eventually. “My granddaughters tell
me not to assume the gals can’t do the same jobs the gents can do these days.” guesses his granddaughters would also
tell him to go easy on his use of the words gals and gents , but he seems like a man who’s just trying to get along in a world he finds occasionally bewildering, with new rules and admonitions
cropping up every day, so she keeps the thought to herself. He’s probably a wonderful grandfather. He probably keeps a cupboard
full of packaged snacks he offers on an unlimited basis when the parents aren’t looking. “They live in Wellesley, Massachusetts,”
he says, as though that explains everything.
“Ah,” says , because maybe, in fact, it does.
“I don’t know who’s going to buy these houses,” he says.
“The kind of people who have a lot of money to burn, I guess,” she says. “It’s not a group of people I’m familiar with.” She’s
not about to mention her connection to David and Taylor, not to this guy!
“Probably for some third house they’ll only use two weeks out of the year,” he says gloomily. “I grew up here. Married my
wife here. Raised my kids here. Ran my business here. But in the last, oh, ten years, seems like every time I turn around
this island is changing into something I don’t recognize.”
tries to find the bright side, even though, looking at the skeletons of these massive houses on land where horses had once freely grazed, she’s having trouble locating it. “Maybe change isn’t all bad?” she ventures. “My father always says, ‘We can have no progress without change.’”
“No offense, my dear, but that quote’s got nothing to do with this.” ’s companion grimaces and motions toward the not-quite-houses.
“No,” she agrees. “No, maybe it doesn’t.”
“Nothing against your father. I’m sure he’s a great man.”
“He is,” she confirms. “But when he talked about change and progress I’m pretty sure at least fifty percent of the time he’s
referring to La-Z-Boy’s introduction of nanobionic fabric to its recliners.”
“I love a La-Z-Boy.”
“He sells them more than he sits in them,” says, in case she’s giving the wrong impression. “Though he sits in them
sometimes too.”
“‘No progress without change,’” he repeats thoughtfully. “Yeah, I can see where that’s sometimes true.” He pauses and gives
the impression of puffing on a cigar even though his hands and his mouth are all empty. “But that doesn’t mean that change
is always progress. Sometimes change means you’re sliding back.”
She thinks about this. “You’re probably right.”
“Damn straight I am.”
The morning is bright and clear. There’s humidity on call for later in the day, but it hasn’t arrived yet, and even though they’re smack in the middle of the island, about as far as you can get from the beaches on either side, and way more than a stone’s throw from Great Salt Pond, can sense the salt in the air; it feels like a chewiness. She imagines what the island might have been like all those years ago, before ice cream cones and espresso shots and weather cams and mopeds, when only the Narragansett tribe inhabited it, before the Dutch came to rename it and take it over. It had once been called Manisses, which translated to “Island of the Little God.” She imag ines the Narragansett watching these homes rise from their sacred ground, shaking their heads regretfully.
“I can’t see much from back here,” she says. “It’s hard to be a Peeping Tom from a distance. Do you think I’d get in trouble
if I went a little closer?”
“I’ll do you one better. Stay here.” He walks to his truck—he has the very particular walk of a man with a hip replacement
in his not-too-distant future—and returns with a pair of binoculars. “The wife got into bird-watching in a big way these last
couple of years,” he says. “She recently saw a king rail. Pretty rare, she tells me.” makes a noise that she hopes
conveys being impressed, even though she wouldn’t recognize a king rail if it served her a Mudslide. He hands her the binoculars.
“Here, take a look.”
She begins by training the binoculars on the houses, but then her eye catches on a midnight-blue Mercedes that has stopped
close to the construction vehicles. She recognizes the car, and she recognizes the person who emerges from the driver’s seat
too. Tall and blond. She sucks in her breath. If this is a beehive of activity, here comes the Queen Bee. Taylor’s hair is
such a bright, bright blond, and so long, like fairy-tale princess hair, it’s unmistakable, especially when coupled with her
height and her slim build. Of course it makes sense that she’d be here; this is a Buchanan project, and she is one of the
chief Buchanans.
“See it now?” asks ’s companion. “The way these houses are going to mar the landscape? How they’re set against the tree
line there...” He cluck-clucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
“Terrible,” she agrees (and she does agree!), but her gaze is still fixed on Taylor. She even feels herself shrinking back a little, as though Taylor has binoculars
too, and is looking straight at her. And then something happens that makes her take in her breath even more. Taylor is leaning
against her Mercedes, looking at her phone, when a man in a hard hat approaches.
They speak for a minute. Mostly it looks like Taylor is talking, gesturing as she talks, and the man is nodding a lot. watches as he removes his hard hat and leans against the car next to her, so they’re both facing out. It’s an odd stance on both of their parts for a work-related conversation; there’s something too casual and intimate about the body language. Then she sees him take her hand and squeeze it.
What. Is. Happening.
Then he puts his arm around her, the way you do when you’re comforting someone.
And then.
And then!
They turn toward each other, and they kiss . Not just a peck either. It’s a long, searching, actual kiss—a kiss that makes feel like she’s walked in on a couple
in bed. Truly it is quite a kiss. She can’t help it: she gasps.
“Makes you wonder what’s going on with the permit approval,” says her buddy, misreading the gasp as a reaction to a closer
look at the construction. “All that progress on the houses, and none on the hotel.”
“Right?” she says. She lowers the binoculars. She thinks of Taylor getting a phone call at the dinner table; she thinks of
Felicity’s plump little cheeks. She thinks of Taylor calling her Country Cousin. She thinks of the story Jack Baker told her
about David the night before his wedding. She thinks of Juliana sitting alone in the library of her vast house.
She hands the binoculars back to the man, and she thanks him and says goodbye, then she gets on her bike and pedals as fast
as she can, all the way home. She doesn’t even make it all the way into the house before she pulls out her phone and texts
Jack Baker.
I’LL DO IT.
Immediately he texts back: ?
I’LL HOST THE HAPPY HOUR.
The reply comes at once, with this emoji:
And then: I’LL brING THE DRINKS.
Feeling very clandestine, calls David a few hours later to see if he wants to come by for a drink soon.
“Sure,” he says. “What’s the occasion?”
“No occasion. Casual drink, that’s all. You had me over, now I’m having you over.”
is such a terrible liar that even though she’s alone in her kitchen she blushes and her palms start to sweat.
“When?”
“How’s, let’s see—” She makes a big show of checking her busy calendar. “Six o’clock Monday?”
“Drinks on a Monday! You’re turning into a summer person.”
“But just you, okay? No Taylor.”
There’s a long, pregnant pause. Not too long: a pause in early pregnancy. Then comes David’s voice, smooth and affable.
“Taylor who?” he says.
Partway through Monday morning, it starts to rain. And not a gentle, forgiving rain either: angry dark sheets. After the string of perfect summer days they’ve had, it feels offensive to , or at least inauspicious. What is she supposed to do with her star-crossed not-lovers later, plop them on her wet patio furniture? She worries her way through her morning interning. Will Jack remember to show? It’s slow at the Institute, because of the rain, but it’s also chaotic, because the visitors they do have cram themselves into the inside space. Everything smells a little bit like wet dog, even though there are no dogs present. The rain continues through lunch. At two o’clock she texts Jack to see if they should cancel.
DEFINITELY NOT, he texts back. I WANT TO SEE YOU.
“What’s so funny?” asks Liam, a fellow intern. “You’re smiling at your phone.”
“Nothing,” she says, dropping the phone into her pocket. “Just a reel.”
An hour later the rain slows, then stops altogether. By the time she bikes home at five, the sun is trying mightily to make
a late appearance. The puddles on Beach Avenue send up surfable waves over her tires, and she has to shower when she gets
home. At 5:40 she’s braiding her hair—no time for a blow-dry—when Jack appears. He knocks once, then comes right in before
she tells him to. Is this kind of confidence obnoxious, or sexy? He puts a brown bag down on her kitchen table and kisses
her on the lips. He smells like limes. Sexy, she decides.
“I brought craft beer, the makings for two different kinds of spritzes, and a bottle of champagne,” he says.
“You think that’s enough for four people?” asks, deadpan. Together they go out the back door and onto the patio. “The
good thing about having basic furniture,” says , “is that it dries quickly.” She and Jack get to work with two dish
towels.
At 5:50 comes another knock, and opens the door to find Juliana. Gone is the person from the library, the person from
Ballard’s, the person who gives the fabulous parties and maneuvers around the fancy people, and in her place is a woman who
suddenly looks very young and very terrified. She’s in a white sundress that makes her skin glow. Her hair is pulled back
into a bun and she’s wearing lip gloss and no other makeup. But she’s almost shaking.
“Thank you for doing this, ,” Juliana says. She squeezes ’s hand. “Sorry I didn’t ask you myself, I just—”
“It’s okay,” says . “It’s no big deal. It’s just a drink.”
“Just a drink,” Juliana repeats. She follows through the living room and into the kitchen, her eyes darting around as though David might be hiding somewhere. “He’s not coming, is he? I don’t think he’s coming.”
“Chill,” says Jack. “He’s coming. Can I get you a drink?” sees that he’s set up a makeshift bar on her small counter;
she has only four glasses, and they don’t match, but he’s lined them all up like very good soldiers awaiting orders. Juliana
shakes her head.
“Well, don’t mind if I get started,” says Jack. He cracks open a porter. “?”
“Not yet, thanks.” Then she says, “Wait. Was I supposed to get snacks?”
“I’m not hungry,” says Juliana in a strangled voice. “Should I go sit on the patio? I’ll sit on the patio.”
“Whatever you want,” Jack says amiably. “The seats have been professionally dried. Please, take a drink out there. You’re
making me nervous.” He opens the champagne and pours Juliana a glass.
When David arrives thinks, Third knock’s the charm! She opens the door and David says, “Hey, cuz. Sorry if I’m late.
Am I late?” She can tell that David has taken care with his appearance; he’s wearing a blue polo that brings out the color
of his eyes, and his face is scruffy in that carefully scruffy way that requires effort. (Zachary had tried this a few times
but never managed to pull it off.)
David has the kind of good looks that require, or at least politely ask for, a second look. There’s something perfectly imperfect
about his face. It’s almost symmetrical, except one eyebrow lifts a tiny bit higher than the other, and only one cheek has
a dimple in it. These small asymmetries somehow make him even more beautiful than he would have been without them. If you
look at the most famously good-looking people in the world you’ll find this to be the truth. Alexander Skarsg?rd’s cleft chin.
Nicole Kidman’s high forehead.
If David was known for anything in high school, it was for making things look easy that were not easy at all. The fact that he got the grades he got and the SAT scores he got and the admission to Yale he got without seeming like he was trying at all drove a lot of people in their high school crazy. The girls who never went out on the weekends because they were doing their APUSH reading and the boys who didn’t have a girlfriend until grad school. The valedictorian rejected from Harvard and Cornell. David was even-tempered and funny and never an asshole to his girlfriends (and there were a lot of girlfriends) and as a result there was a constant line of girls waiting in the wings, as it were—though he drew the line
at high school theater. He probably would have been good at that too. Actually, he does have a decent singing voice. They
used to put on plays when they were kids, that’s how knows, all the cousins with a makeshift stage in one or another
of their basements, an old sheet slung across whatever they could find, to approximate a curtain. Their best show was when
they performed one of the early scenes in A Sound of Music because there were enough of them to pull it off. ( was Marta, if you’re wondering.)
Is she supposed to pretend David doesn’t know why he’s here? Of course Jack has already told him. She jerks her thumb behind
her.
“She’s on the patio. Jack will get you a drink.”
“Cool, cool,” says David, and she sees now (because an unruffled David would never say cool, cool ) that David is just as nervous as Juliana is.
Olivia Rodrigo is 100 percent right. Love is embarrassing.
She hears ice crackle into glasses, then stop. When the door to the patio opens and closes again she decides she’s ready to
brave the kitchen. Jack is alone in there, contemplating the drink choices. “Ready for one now?” he asks. Out the kitchen
window, can see David and Juliana sitting far apart from each other, each holding a drink, each looking toward the
water.
“I don’t know if I can go sit out there with them,” she says. “It feels like, I don’t know, like walking in in the middle
of someone’s dream or something.”
In an instant Jack’s hand is on the small of her back, his lips on her ear. “Then let’s get out of here,” he says.
Don’t melt, she tells herself sternly, as she starts to melt. “Shouldn’t we stay? We’re the hosts.”
“We definitely shouldn’t stay. Let’s go for a drive.”
Jack has David’s Tesla; next to it is David’s Porsche. In Juliana’s driveway can see the Audi. What the exact hell?
she thinks. How am I the only person in this scenario without a luxury car—nay, any car?
“Where to?” Jack asks her.
“Let’s go out Corn Neck, all the way to the end.”
loves this drive, past all the best swimming beaches, Crescent and Scotch and Mansion (where there used to be an actual
mansion, she has learned), then the entrance to Clayhead, then the hidden gems of houses on their right, beautiful and remote,
with Sachem Pond to the left.
They park and walk out on the rocks; points out where the seals sometimes gather and she tells him about the rescues
she’s heard about. “Not that I want a seal to need rescuing,” she explains. “But if one does, I really hope I get to see it.”
She goes on about the seals for what might be a few beats too long, so she checks Jack’s face for signs of boredom.
“Sorry,” she says. “Am I talking too much?”
“Never,” says Jack. “I’m hanging on your every word.” She can’t tell if he’s kidding or not. Zachary told her, two years into
their relationship, that she was overly chatty in the mornings; he’s an only child, and in ’s house you basically woke
up talking if you wanted your voice to be heard. Ever since then she’s been insecure.
She told Jack she’d just come out of a long relationship the night after Payne’s, but does he want to know more? Does Jack want to share anything about his romantic past? It must be extensive—he’s too hot for it not to be. She turns over the question for a while in her mind, looking out at the water, feeling how the ocean calms her, brings her peace.
“Who was the last person you dated?” she ventures eventually. Probably some beautiful golfer who knows how to pull off wearing
a visor and has amazing calves.
His smile is mysterious. “I live in the present, Nicky.” He touches her cheek with two fingers and she shivers. “Only in the
present.”
“Smart,” she says, even though she’s a little stung by the rebuff. A seal’s head appears, then another, then another, and
she points them out to Jack. Does he appreciate the seals as much as she does? Does it matter if he doesn’t?
After a time Jack peers at the sky, then looks at his watch. “Should we get back before the sun sets?”
“I guess,” she says, trying not to sound sulky, though she’s feeling it—sulky that he won’t tell her more, sulky that he can
leave this secluded place so easily, sulky that he has a power over her that he hasn’t earned and she hasn’t asked for.
By the time they get back it’s getting dark, and at first can’t make out the figures on the patio. Then her eyes adjust
to the dim light and she sees that David and Juliana have pulled their chairs close together. They’re talking intently. Every
trace of awkwardness is gone, as though it’s been sucked by a giant vacuum into Great Salt Pond. When David and Juliana hear
Jack and approach they look up, startled, and rise from their chairs.
“Oh, hey. We were waiting to say goodbye. I’m going to show David my house,” says Juliana. “Thank you for having us over.”
David and Jack do a complicated male handshake/fist bump thing, and while they’re doing that Juliana leans toward ,
hugs her, and repeats, in a whisper, “Thank you.”
What have I done? starts to think as she watches them walk across the grass, now almost obscured by darkness. But then
Jack’s lips are on hers again, and she forgets to wonder.