Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Present Day
Two days after Max and Nora’s reunion, Nora, Hilary, and Stella painted the orange bathroom a yellowish-cream.
As the horrendous orange hid itself behind the cool, balmy paint, as they laughed, told stories, and worked, Nora found she could breathe more deeply than she had since she’d moved in.
They finished painting in a little less than two hours, then had celebratory croissants on the back porch, smearing them with salted butter and jam.
It was a chilly late afternoon, and clouds brewed on the horizon.
Nora couldn’t stop thanking her new friends for their help.
It had been Stella who’d gone and picked up the paint color at a warehouse on the mainland, texting Nora.
Stella: Do you think this will do?
Nora hadn’t been able to believe that Stella had thought of her, despite being on the mainland for personal reasons.
“It was our pleasure,” Stella said now. “Really.”
“I hope I can repay all this help one day,” Nora said.
“You already are,” Hilary said. “Just getting to know you has been a gift enough.”
Nora smiled, yet felt at a distance from them both, heavy with secrets. She both wanted and didn’t want to tell them about her evening with Max. Did she owe it to them, just because they were new friends? Probably not. Yet maybe it was better to rehash it, if only to get the story out of her head.
“I know it’s too much to ask,” Nora began tentatively. “But do you mind if I run a story past you and see what you think?”
“We love stories,” Hilary declared. “You should know that by now!”
Tentatively, Nora explained what had happened. How she’d gone to the harbor and seen Max sailing out into the wide open blue, away from her. “I called him, and he came back,” she said, blushing.
“It sounds like a scene in a movie!” Hilary cried.
“It sort of was,” Nora said. “I couldn’t believe he came back.
I couldn’t believe I was sitting there at that bar, talking to him about his life, his twin daughters and his twenty years in Paris.
I mean, we’re strangers to each other in almost every way.
But we shared something enormous all those years ago.
I don’t think either of us has ever gotten over that summer. ”
Nora went on to tell her friends that, although she and Max had been hot and heavy during the summer of ’84, they’d had plenty of arguments, too.
“There was a time when I never thought we would talk again. And then I’d run into him a few days later, and it was like electricity went through my body. ”
Stella swooned. “To be young and in love!”
“It’s truly unforgettable,” Hilary agreed.
What Nora didn’t want to tell them was that their love had been all the more complicated because of the people who’d surrounded them.
Sinister people who saw everyone else as easily manipulated.
She remembered how eager she’d been to love her Aunt Cynthia and Uncle Everett, all because they’d invited her to eat dinner with them a few times.
They’d given her wine and treated her like an adult, sort of.
She knew she shouldn’t be hard on her sixteen-year-old self.
But come on, past-Nora. It had been right there, happening before her eyes.
“What do you think?” Nora asked the pair of them when she’d finished her retelling of the other night. Her pulse fluttered.
“It sounds like a lot to carry,” Hilary said. “Although you still haven’t mentioned what split you two apart back in ’84?”
Stella nodded. “That’s a piece of the puzzle I’m missing. It sounds like you were really in love.”
Nora blushed. “We were kids, you know? Most teenagers don’t go on to marry each other, no matter how passionate it was in the beginning.”
“Sure. But there’s always a reason,” Stella said, giving Nora a knowing look.
But it was then that, per their invite, several more Salt Sisters reached Nora’s, distracting them from the topic at hand.
Nora was relieved they were there to take the attention off her.
Together, they sat around the porch, opening bottles of wine and gushing about how beautiful Nora’s house was.
Unlike Hilary, Nora didn’t have a thousand chairs and tables, but they made do, celebrating Nora’s space in a way that made it more home-like and welcoming.
Occasionally, Nora felt Stella or Hilary’s gaze on her, assessing her, waiting to hear the tail-end of her story from the summer of 1984.
She wasn’t sure she had the energy or the will to give it to them. It felt too earnest. Too frightening.
Later that night, after the final Salt Sister had driven away and left Nora alone, she brewed a mug of tea and sat on the porch, allowing her sisters’ generosity of spirit to fall over her.
It was a warmth she’d never known. A term came to her mind, one that she’d read about before but never experienced: chosen family.
She felt sure that this was what it was.
Suddenly, her phone buzzed. She assumed it was Stella or Hilary, asking for follow-up information about her relationship with Max.
Instead, it was Max, sending a photograph of himself on the Nantucket Sound.
There was joy, echoing out of his eyes. Stella’s heart pounded.
Had he taken the photograph especially for her? And then he texted.
Max: I can’t stop thinking about how nice it was to see you. Would you consider going out again?
Nora smiled to herself. It was a kind-hearted message, one that didn’t demand anything from her. It meant that she had to go. She knew she couldn’t say no.
They arranged to go hiking the next day.
They planned to meet on the early side so they could hike for three or four hours before swimming and maybe having a late lunch.
Nora spent a lot of time picking out her outfit.
Eventually, she opted for a pair of loose-fitting sports shorts, high white socks that showed off her shapely legs, and a cute black tank top.
She’d taken her black bikini and a little makeup bag, just in case she wanted to fix her face before they ate.
At one point the following morning, after she’d drunk her coffee and packed her water bottle in her little day pack, she experienced a feeling of absolute shock.
She realized she was going on a date. She sat down at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands.
She was fifty-seven years old and going on a date with a man who wasn’t her husband, Isaac.
Sometimes, this was how she experienced the facts of her life.
Sometimes, it was easy to forget that everything that had been true—even as recently as a year ago—no longer was.
It took her ages to clear her head enough to get in her car and drive away.
But when she reached the entrance to the hike, she smiled to see that Max had beaten her.
He stood in a cool hiking outfit of a black tank top and black swishy sports shorts.
His hair was mussed, maybe because he hadn’t showered, since they were going to sweat anyway.
It was already eighty-three degrees, and it was going to be ninety.
“Morning!” he said, striding toward her. There was a bag of breakfast pastries in his hand. “Do you like loading up on sugar before a workout?” he teased.
Nora laughed. “I can’t resist anything sweet. You know that.”
“I didn’t think something like that could change,” he said.
For a few minutes, they sat on the sand, eating pastries filled with cream and watching the sun climb into the heavens.
They talked about little things, about how Max had brought his mother the same pastries that morning before meeting Nora, and about how Nora’s friends had helped her repaint her bathroom and it had turned into a full-on party.
“How did you make so many friends on the island so quickly?” Max asked. “I was born and raised here, and you have more than I do. How long have you been back?”
“Just a little while. But I lucked out.” Nora explained that she’d met one of them during a morning walk, and that Stella had been gracious enough to invite her to Hilary’s place.
“They’re all women who’ve gone through something, who’ve lost someone.
I guess it’s like a grief support group, but a lot more fun. ”
“There are many phases of grief,” Max said thoughtfully. “There should be plenty of time for life between tears, I think.”
Nora thought back to that summer of 1984, how alienated with grief she’d been after her parents’ death. Max had seen that in her, maybe. He’d bought her and the kids that ice cream. He’d helped her through the darkest shadows.
They started the hike. Loping over the bluffs, they switched topics to brighter days, talking about hikes they’d done on vacations all over the world.
“The French love hiking,” Max said. “My ex and I took the girls all over the South of France and into the Alps. They’re city girls to their core, but they can also climb a mountain in no time flat.”
Nora laughed. “I’ve never seen the Alps!”
“Oh, that needs to be changed immediately,” Max said sternly. “When should we go? I’m free next week.”
Nora swatted him. Although she loved swimming through fantasies with him, she said, “I’m still nesting. I don’t know when I’ll be ready to travel again.”
“It’s a process,” Max said. “We’ll keep doing Nantucket-based adventures till you’re ready to cross the Atlantic.”
Nora tilted her head, unsure how she felt about Max trying to make concrete plans in the future. She knew better than to believe in a future with anyone, save for the Salt Sisters. And even the Salt Sisters were still new.