Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
It was the first week of January, and a bone-chilling twelve degrees, when Ada agreed to the coffee date.
Walking tentatively across the frozen sidewalk, Ada reached the little shop, opened the door, and scanned the few hunkered inside, laptop-tapping workers and a mother with a sleeping baby.
She entered, ordered a cappuccino from the twenty-something behind the counter, and assessed the chalky-looking scones under the glass dome.
After all those Christmas treats, she needed to abstain from sweets, maybe, in order to feel like herself again.
Her teeth ached from one too many Christmas sweets.
But fear about who she was meeting made her itch for something to distract her, like a bad scone.
Ada grabbed a seat in the corner and searched for her phone, only to discover that she’d left it in her car. Shoot. If she ran back out to get it, she might slip and fall on the sidewalk. Maybe it was better for her to sit quietly and wait. Perhaps she could meditate.
Yeah, right, Ada thought, laughing to herself. She wished she wasn’t nervous. But how couldn’t she be?
Katrina entered the coffee shop three minutes later.
It was the first time Ada had seen her since the September afternoon when Ada had told her that Peter was her husband.
Ada bolted to her feet, unsure how to say hello.
A part of her wanted to hug Katrina, as though they were old friends, but she knew that was inappropriate.
She left her hands hanging at her sides and said, “Hello.”
Katrina looked okay. She wasn’t as bright and glossy as she’d been last summer, during the months when she and Peter had been falling in love, and it almost looked as though she’d shrunk a few inches.
But she offered a smile to Ada, a brief, “Hi! Thanks for meeting me,” before she went to order a coffee for herself. She also avoided the scones.
Katrina sat across from Ada, unraveling all her winter clothing to reveal a lavender sweater and a pair of jeans underneath.
Ada wondered what she’d been doing to keep herself busy.
But more than that, she wondered why Katrina had wanted this meeting in the first place.
In the email Katrina had written, she’d said, “I want to meet—casually and not professionally. I have something to say. I hope you’ll say yes.
Katrina.” It had been succinct and mysterious. Ada had said okay.
Now, Katrina tore up her napkin and looked out the window. “I’m starting to think that we shouldn’t have met in a public place,” she said quietly, nervously. “I don’t know your situation. I don’t want to embarrass you or Peter or anyone.”
Ada told herself to be strong. Katrina couldn’t hurt her anymore.
Now that she’d gotten back into singing, now that she’d embraced her own future, people like Katrina and Peter and Quinn couldn’t get under her skin.
Not even her mother could hurt her these days.
(Although it had to be said, Kathy had gotten softer since summertime and had begun to embrace everything that Ada was.)
“You can say whatever you want to say,” Ada said to Katrina now. “Please. Do.”
Katrina took a breath and flared her nostrils. She really was a beauty, Ada thought. No wonder Peter had fallen for her.
“I want to say, before I chicken out,” Katrina began, “that I feel awful about what happened. You know absolutely everything about me. You know about my husband, about his affair, about how I feel about the other woman. I can’t believe that this time around I was the other woman.
I can’t believe I let myself fall so far and so deep for someone like that.
But I’m so sorry, Ada. That’s why I wanted to see you. To apologize.”
Ada considered whether what Katrina was saying hurt her and decided it didn’t. Not too much, anyway.
“It’s okay, Katrina,” Ada said softly. “Thank you for the apology. I appreciate it. But it’s all for the best, in a way. It forced me to see what kind of marriage I was in. It forced me to ask myself a lot of questions.”
Ada thought, I was fixated on my patients and all their problems, so much so that I ignored my own. But she didn’t want to say that to Katrina.
Katrina sipped her coffee and studied the table between them. Ada couldn’t help but find her way back to the therapist-patient rhythm they’d had before. She asked Katrina, “And how have things been for you?” But she was genuinely curious, too.
Katrina grimaced. “I left the island for a while. I couldn’t take it.
I didn’t want to break down and see Peter after all that had happened, and I knew he didn’t want to see me anyway.
He told me as much back in September. I assumed that you two would get back together.
I guess I was wrong about that.” But she didn’t look up at Ada for confirmation.
“You were,” Ada said. “We aren’t getting back together.”
Katrina’s face crumpled. Ada could practically read her mind: I broke up a marriage, a family.
But Katrina hadn’t broken up a family. Not really.
If it were any of Katrina’s business, which it wasn’t, Ada might have told her.
At the start of November, she and Peter packed up his things and moved him out of the house they’d shared for decades.
He rented a house down the road—a five-minute walk, in fact—and was involved in almost every single aspect of the kids’ lives.
He was even more involved than he was pre-affair, if that was possible.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, she and Peter took off work and drove to Vassar to pick Hannah up.
They laughed the entire way, telling stories and learning how to be friends with one another.
When Hannah saw them together, she was pleased but guarded.
Ada reminded her (when Peter was out of the car getting gas) that she and her father weren’t getting back together.
Hannah breathed a sigh of relief and said she was grateful that they weren’t going to feud throughout their divorce.
Ada said, “We genuinely respect each other. We love the family we built. Why would we do that to our children, to each other?”
For Thanksgiving, they all ate together at the house: Peter and his parents, plus Ada’s mother and the kids. She and Peter no longer wore wedding rings, and their parents talked about their divorce like it was the weather: just something to mention, but nothing they could change.
For Christmas, they celebrated twice, once at Ada’s place and once at his.
It was funny to see what he’d done with the space and how he’d decorated it.
It felt more like a bachelor pad, although Olivia insisted on giving it a “womanly touch.” She was fourteen now and very, very bossy. We loved this about her.
Katrina broke Ada’s reverie when she spilled her coffee. She jumped up from the table and brought back a stack of napkins. “I’m so clumsy these days,” she murmured.
Ada got up to help, gliding the napkins through the wet mess. As they worked quietly, Ada found herself with one question after another, all about how Peter had been with Katrina and what their relationship had been like. But did she really want to know? She knew she didn’t.
“Why did you come back to Nantucket?” Ada asked, finally.
Katrina threw the napkins in the trash and sat back down, eyeing her mostly empty cup of coffee.
“I came back for the Salt Sisters,” she admitted finally.
“They’re the only real friends I have in the world.
And I came back for my book. I abandoned it for months, but I decided I don’t want to let my silly heartbreak destroy what I really want to do with my time. ”
Ada smiled a genuine smile. “That’s beautiful, Katrina.”
Katrina blinked back tears. Ada wondered how much longer she was required to remain at the coffee shop with the woman who’d stolen Peter’s heart. Then again, she was surprised by how much she was enjoying herself.
“Do you think you’ll date again?” Katrina asked suddenly. “I mean, when you’re ready.”
Ada considered this and was surprised to see an image of Nick flash past her mind’s eye.
Since her birthday, Nick Willis had sent her ten postcards from all over the world: Japan, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand.
He was making his way around the globe, yet taking the time to think of Ada.
He’d written: I don’t understand why I keep sending these to you.
I must seem crazy. But Ada didn’t think he was crazy.
She looked forward to reading his poetic letters.
She looked forward to learning where he’d gone next and following his trek.
“Oh,” Katrina said, leaning back. “You’ve already met someone, haven’t you?”
Ada laughed. “No. Not really. I doubt I’ll date for a long time.”
Right now, music lessons took up the majority of Ada’s time.
During the hazy time between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, she’d performed at the jazz club, just as Marilyn had suggested.
She’d brought down the house. Already, the jazz club owners were hounding her for more.
It was a level of artistic excitement that she hadn’t enjoyed in decades. It fed her soul.
“And you?” Ada asked. “Are you dating anyone?”
Katrina snorted. “I’m not ready for that.”
Ada bowed her head. “We have to focus on ourselves.”
“Yes.” Katrina rubbed her chest thoughtfully.
Ada reached for her purse, ready to leave.
But before Ada could find a way to say goodbye, Katrina burst with, “I want to invite you to join the Salt Sisters.”
Ada raised her eyebrows in surprise. She was speechless.
“I know. It probably sounds odd,” Katrina said.
“But hear me out. Many of the other Salt Sisters and I know what it’s like when a husband cheats.
We understand the pain in our very bones, in fact.
And as a wise woman once told me, nobody ever really knows what to say to someone with a broken heart.
But sometimes all we need is someone to sit with us and listen to us talk.
Sometimes all we need is a glass of wine and a bit of conversation. ”
Ada was genuinely touched by Katrina’s offer.
Katrina probably felt just as complicated about Ada as Ada felt about her.
But maybe Katrina recognized that Ada didn’t have friends to speak of.
Well, she had Marilyn these days. But Marilyn was a hermit, either playing piano at the jazz club or at home.
“I’ll think about it,” Ada said to Katrina. “But I should tell you. Ours is a strange relationship. I don’t want to cross any boundaries with you. I don’t want us to have a strange dynamic, if only because we started out as therapist and patient.”
Katrina raised her hand. “I’ll be open to communication of all kinds,” she said. “Tell me how I can be a better friend to you. Tell me how we can make this work.”