Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Present Day
It was the first time Nora had bought property by herself.
Signing the deed, she felt a shudder of apprehension, then swallowed it down and smiled at the real estate agent, the same one with whom she’d looked at more than fifteen properties on Nantucket Island.
“This is the first day of the rest of your life,” the agent said with that bright-white smile.
“Seriously. Nantucket Island is the place for dreamers. It’s the place for second chances. You’ll see.”
“Thank you,” Nora said. She still hadn’t told the agent that she’d once known Nantucket Island very well, that she’d lived here during the most painful era of her life.
But her conversations with the agent were over. It was time to move into her new home.
Last month, Nora moved her belongings to a storage unit on the island, making her transition easier. She hired a few movers and a truck to carry her boxes and a few bits of furniture into the two-bedroom bungalow next to the beach. It all happened in a matter of a few hours.
The house was smaller than any of the others the agent had shown her, and much cheaper, too, but it suited Nora.
It suited her brand-new life as a fifty-seven-year-old divorcée who’d recently retired early and decided to spend the rest of her life alone.
That first night, as early June winds crashed against the glass of her bay windows, she gave the movers hefty tips, then lay on the floor of her living room, surrounded by boxes, and said aloud to herself, “You’re home. You’re safe.”
Starving and unwilling to go to the grocery store, she went online and ordered herself a mushroom-and-black-olive pizza with extra cheese.
She saw the restaurant also offered bottles of red wine, so she opted for one of those, too, before realizing that she’d left her wineglasses with her ex-husband.
Eventually, in a random box of books, she discovered a mug that featured Brown University’s emblem.
When the wine and the pizza came, she used an old technique she’d mastered back in college to open the bottle without a wine opener—a technique with a shoe—and then poured herself a hefty mug, feeling like the college student she’d once been.
Wrapped in a sweatshirt, she took her pizza and her mug of wine onto the back porch and gazed at the sun as it dropped into the water.
She couldn’t believe she’d officially moved back.
That night, Nora stretched her sheets onto her bed and used her phone’s light to read a book until she fell asleep.
When she woke up, it was seven in the morning, and sunlight spilled across the porch and through the big bay windows, illuminating the little house.
Feeling less frightened than she’d been last night, she showered and went to the store to buy a few essentials: coffee, yogurt, cheese, bread, fruits, eggs, and vegetables.
A few times, she flinched to select things she knew her ex-husband, Isaac, would have wanted, before reminding herself that she didn’t need to shop for him any longer.
She wondered if anyone was shopping for him now, then forced the thought out of her mind. Isaac could take care of himself.
Back at home, Nora spent the day unpacking, setting up her bookshelf, and trying and failing to set up the internet router.
But it wasn’t like she needed the internet right now, was it?
Her high-powered career was over. Her stocks and ETFs continued to accrue as they did, without her needing to watch over them every second of every day.
She’d also resolved to spend the time she had left writing and reading and thinking, which were all things she’d neglected through the years.
Just now, she was reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which felt tremendously rich and emotional. She wished she could reach out to someone and talk about it. But she found that journaling about it and unpacking her own mind was nearly as nourishing.
That afternoon, tired of reading old Russian literature, Nora went for a walk on the beach.
Her property wasn’t very large, and she soon found herself walking along the beaches in front of other people’s houses.
This wasn’t the richest area of Nantucket—nowhere near as swanky as where her aunt and uncle had brought her to live back in ’84—but there was a quaint, neighborhood-y feel to it, one that felt like a warm hug.
Bounding over the nearest dune, there appeared a golden retriever, a beautiful and glowing dog that let its pink tongue loll as it approached her.
Nora froze, watching as the dog came closer.
When she realized the dog was not going to harm her, she touched his ears and the top of his head. Happiness flowed through her.
A woman’s voice cried out after the dog, “He likes you!”
Nora raised her head to watch as a beautiful woman with sleek, muscular arms and legs bounded toward them. She was maybe fifteen years younger than Nora, probably newly accustomed to the idea that time was a finite thing, that she wouldn’t be young forever.
“Sorry about that,” Stella said. “He gets excited.”
“It was a wonderful greeting,” Nora said.
The woman continued to smile as the dog lost interest and turned to putter along the edge of the water. “I’m sorry to say this, but you must be new! I know everyone on this stretch of beach. I’ve lived here all my life.”
Nora said she was. “I moved in yesterday.” She gestured toward the house that now belonged to her, and the woman nodded knowingly.
“I wondered if anyone would buy it. Most people looking to buy on Nantucket want something massive and mega-expensive,” the woman said.
“I wanted something simple and easy.” Nora shrugged.
The woman brightened. “You sound like my kind of girl.”
The woman introduced herself as Stella. Nora introduced herself and explained that up until recently, she’d been working in magazines in New York City.
“Magazines!” Stella cried. “How glamorous.”
“It was, for a while,” Nora admitted. She explained that she’d retired “on the early side,” because she’d gotten divorced and realized she was done with the city. “A few things happened in my life,” she said. “I needed to move on and figure out a different way through. I’m not young anymore.”
Stella furrowed her brow. Her dog had begun to flick his paws through the sand, as though he wanted to dig a very big hole.
“I’m guessing you don’t know anyone on the island yet?” Stella asked.
Nora said she didn’t.
“I want to invite you to a little get-together tonight,” Stella said.
“We have a little group here in Nantucket. Women who’ve gone through life’s trials, looking to sit together and drink wine and talk about what gets to us and how we get through it.
It’s a mix of good humor, good conversation, and dang good food.
My best friend Hilary usually hosts because she has one of those enormous houses in Siasconset. ”
“Oh,” Nora said, remembering her aunt and uncle’s place.
“But she’s different from the rest of them.
At least, I think so,” Stella explained.
She went on to say that Hilary was the daughter of a famous Swedish actress and the mother of a famous American actress, but that Hilary had never become famous herself.
“Like the rest of us, she’s lost and lost and lost. But she’s built something alongside all that loss, too.
You should come meet her and the rest of the girls. You’ll love them.”
Nora wanted to decline the offer. She wanted to thank Stella, turn on her heel, and retreat into her house.
But when Stella urged her “not to say no,” Nora thought better of it.
What were her plans, anyway? She needed to meet people.
She needed to broaden her network or at least try to.
Maybe she could get some of the girls to read Tolstoy with her.
Maybe they would recognize how lonely and broken she was—and know just what to do.
An hour before the get-together at Hilary’s, Nora went to a swanky wine store, where she selected a bottle that, she knew, was respected in most media circles in New York.
She guessed that Hilary would have expensive tastes, even if she wasn’t “like the rest of them.” She wanted to impress her hostess.
After paying the exorbitant fee, she drove out to Hilary’s mansion, which was not far at all from her aunt and uncle’s place.
She made sure to avoid that stretch of sand.
After the gate opened and let Nora in to park in the little lot behind the three-car drive, Hilary herself opened the front door to welcome Nora. “I hear you’re interested in becoming a Salt Sister!” she cried, using a term that Stella wasn’t familiar with. “Salt Sister” had a nice ring to it.
Hilary’s house was iconic, truly, but it wasn’t anything Nora hadn’t experienced before.
She was careful to keep her face neutral as they walked to the kitchen toward the back of the house and out onto the veranda, which offered a truly glorious view of the sunset.
Warm orange hues lined the sweeping bluffs.
Stella was already there, as were Rose, Gale, and Tina.
“Not all of us could make it tonight,” Hilary explained, cranking open the bottle of wine that Nora had brought first, before pouring it and showering her with compliments. “Girls, we have a wine connoisseur on our hands!”
Nora blushed. “I really don’t know anything. I just copy what everyone else is drinking.”
Hilary’s eyes were illuminated. “So this is what the magazine people are drinking in the city these days?”
“It was a big deal this past winter and spring,” Nora said. “It’s probably different by now. The city always changes when summer’s around the corner.”
Nora felt a pang of sorrow. She’d lived in Manhattan since she was twenty-two years old. It felt wild to her that that era of her life was over. She filled her mouth with wine.
“The summer in the city,” Stella said. “Sounds humid to me.”
“There’s a magic to it,” Rose affirmed.
“Oh, but it’s nothing like Nantucket,” Hilary said. “Nora, you’ve made a sensational decision to move here. Tell us, why did you decide on Nantucket?”
Nora took a staggered breath. Nobody had asked her that question yet. She’d scarcely been able to ask the question of herself.
Tentatively, she explained that this wasn’t her first time in Nantucket. “I spent some time here when I was a teenager,” she said. “I’ve never been able to get it out of my system.”
The women nodded furiously, as though this was the best response.
“It’s addicting,” Hilary said.
The brief and powerful silence after that suggested to Nora that they wanted her to spill more of the beans on her life, so to speak.
They wanted the intricacies of what she’d left behind in Manhattan and what she hoped to build here.
But Nora was overwhelmed by so many new faces and voices.
She ate a piece of cheese and willed anyone else to speak.
Finally, Rose began, talking about something awful that had happened to her years ago and how she’d recently had a dream about it.
“All that bad feeling came back. It was a rush to wake up and realize that it was over. That I’ve already gone through that. ”
The Salt Sisters spoke to Rose gently, reminding her of all the hard work she’d done to get to this point. Rose’s color returned, and she laughed at herself. But Hilary reminded Rose that laughing at herself was like neglecting her own emotions.
“These feelings are valid,” Hilary said firmly. “Don’t you dare forget that.”
Nora’s chest felt heavy. She’d never heard friends speak to one another this way, with endless compassion and the desire to help the other heal.