Chapter 24
When Shelby finally picked up the phone and called Columbia University, her baby Vivian was nearly six months old and already sleeping through the night.
Shelby felt strong and mentally agile, ready to attack anything head-on.
So when the woman at the admissions office asked Shelby how she could help her, Shelby said immediately, “I was a student at Columbia for five semesters, and I want to know how many of those credits carry elsewhere.”
The woman didn’t sound judgmental. She didn’t ask why Shelby had dropped out, or what she’d done instead.
Rather, she gave Shelby the step-by-step procedure for transferring her Columbia University credits to another career.
Most, if not all, universities offered online degrees at this point, which meant that just because Shelby wanted to stay on Nantucket Island didn’t mean she couldn’t get a degree from a prestigious university.
Already, she’d applied to the University of Massachusetts, the University of Maine, and Tufts.
Two of them had admitted her, with the affirmation that she could begin in the autumn, if she were ready. Shelby was more than ready.
After she got off the phone, Shelby ran to the veranda to announce the news to her mother and sister.
Lily was overjoyed, bouncing up to hug her, then wincing.
She was pregnant again, and she knew better than to move too quickly, as it brought immediate headaches.
But she still squeezed Shelby hard and said, “It’s going to be great. ”
To celebrate, Shelby and Lily gathered their kids that afternoon for a walk through downtown.
Everyone wanted to go to the playground and get ice cream, so that was what they did, their hands stuffed with napkins as they tried to keep up with the melting.
Frequently, Shelby and Lily caught one another’s eye and laughed, realizing how ridiculous they looked.
With another baby on the way, there would be seven kids by next summer. Could they handle all of that?
After ice cream, they headed to the Sutton Book Club to check in with Grandma Esme.
Recently, Esme announced she wanted to cut back on the hours she worked at the Sutton Book Club, and Lily and Rebecca made plenty of comments to Shelby, suggesting she might want to look into it.
The pay was good, and it would allow her an easy way into Esme’s role at the Sutton Book Club.
Sometimes the thought of this scared Shelby, as she didn’t like the idea of a future wherein Grandma Esme couldn’t do everything she’d always done.
But everyone was allowed to retire, she knew.
And Grandma Esme was way past retirement age.
At the Sutton Book Club, Grandma Esme took her time to hug everyone hello, delivering kisses and wiping the last of the ice cream off their cheeks.
She kept plenty of games and toys at the Book Club, and soon, Billy and Penelope were helping Arianne, Natalia, and Evie learn something that was probably a little too complicated for them.
Vivian remained asleep in her stroller.
For the first time, as they sat in the sunshine on the porch, with one eye each on the kids and another eye on one another, Grandma Esme asked Shelby point-blank if she’d consider taking over part-time at the Sutton Book Club.
“You already know what to do,” she reminded Shelby.
“It’s basically the same job you had all those summers ago, but with much more pay, and a few more responsibilities. I need a break.”
Shelby felt her grandmother’s burning intensity. She knew there was only one answer she could give.
At the beginning of July, Shelby began work at the Sutton Book Club, leaving her children part-time with her mother, part-time with Lily, and part-time with a babysitter everyone on the island used and adored.
Shelby planned to work between twenty-five and thirty hours.
It wasn’t enough for her to look into renting a place, not yet.
But in the meantime, her mother and Ben had agreed to lend her some money.
Already, she and Lily had looked at a handful of places, all of them within walking distance of Lily and Mick’s.
It suddenly became very exciting for Lily to think about the future.
On her first day, Lily stopped in to see Shelby for lunch.
She brought sandwiches and salads, and they sat in the little break room with the door cracked so that Shelby could go out and help whoever came in.
Sometimes it was hard to believe that this was where Jared had entered all those years ago, his head lost in Moby Dick.
She couldn’t believe she was right back where she’d begun.
Lily was telling her about another successful matchmaking summer. “I don’t think people know how to meet each other anymore,” she said. “We’re lost in technology, lost in our phones, and we barely ever look up to see what’s in front of us.”
“The population would die out without people like you,” Shelby teased.
Lily laughed. “I know you’re kidding, but it might be true? Which leads me to my next question…” Lily pulled out her phone and showed a photograph of a guy in his early thirties, with dark blond hair and blue eyes.
A shiver went down Shelby’s spine. “No, Lily,” she said.
“Hear me out,” Lily said. “He’s divorced, no children. But it means he knows how complicated marriage can be.”
“Not as complicated as mine,” Shelby said, trying to make a joke out of it, although it felt inherently true.
How on earth would she ever explain her past to someone normal?
How on earth could they ever regard her as someone dateable?
She’d literally been a prisoner-wife in Montana. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
“Okay, okay. But he’s a big reader. He says his favorite writer is Virginia Woolf, if you can believe it.
And he’s also a journalist. He specializes in legal stuff, trying to make sense of our legal world for the normal reader.
And he’s really kind, Shelby. When we met to talk about who he wanted to date, he made me tea and gave me homemade cookies.
He was soft-spoken and never seemed to know what to say, really, which I know you like, since Jared was so…
charming. Too charming. When I asked this guy if children from a previous relationship were a dealbreaker for him, he asked me why that would matter.
He said, ‘I love kids.’ I mean, come on! ”
Shelby rolled her eyes. “I’m starting school in the fall. I just started a new job. I have four children, and we’re about to move out of Mom’s place,” she said. “Adding a guy to that list is insane.”
Lily shrugged. “Insane is sort of what we do in this family. Why not give it a go?”
Shelby only agreed to meet with the guy—whose name was Anders—because Lily basically insisted and offered to babysit.
During the two hours before Anders was set to pick her up, Shelby changed into seven different outfits and paraded through her old bedroom, demanding answers from Lily.
“Does this make me look frumpy?” “Does this make me look too young?” “Does this make me look like I’m too sporty? ” and so on.
Eventually, Lily got Shelby out the door, telling her, “Remember, just be yourself.”
“That’s the problem,” Shelby told her sister. “What if I don’t know who that is?”
Lily gave her a look that meant, after all the work you’ve done in the past year? Come on. Be serious. You know exactly who Shelby Vance is.
Shelby knew that her sister was right.
Anders picked Shelby up two minutes early. Shelby slid into the passenger seat of his practical car and buckled herself in, taking in the smells of his air freshener and his expensive cologne.
“It’s great to meet you,” Anders said. “I hope I’m not too weird. I haven’t been on a date since my divorce.”
Shelby laughed. “Me neither! We can be weird together, if you want.”
“That sounds like a good plan,” Anders said.
They grabbed drinks at a gorgeous wine bar not far from the beach.
It was buzzing with tourists, but Anders had booked them a table, where they ordered wine and olives.
Shelby had pumped before coming out, but it had been so long since she’d drunk much wine that she reminded herself to be careful. She was a lightweight, especially now.
But it seemed that she and Anders couldn’t shut up long enough for her to focus on her wine.
Almost immediately, Anders launched into conversations about writing and reading, which Shelby was eager to dig into.
He’d recently reread a German author she’d always wanted to check out—a woman named Ingeborg Bachmann—and he told her she absolutely must stop what she was doing and read it immediately.
“You mean, I should get up from our date, go home, and read that book?” she asked, laughing.
“I’ll drive you there right now,” Anders said.
Shelby cackled. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“No way. I’ll sit on your sofa and wait for you to read the whole thing. Then you can tell me what you think of it,” Anders said.
“I used to be a good reader,” Shelby said. “I went to school for literature. But I haven’t dug deep into a text like that in a long time.”
“The muscle is still there,” Anders said. “Once a good reader, always a good reader.”
Shelby smiled. “I hope you’re right.”
“I didn’t read as much when I was married, either,” Anders said. “We fought too much for me to focus on anything for long periods of time. I think I had a stomachache for the better part of five years.”
Shelby winced. Maybe he would understand her marital experiences, after all.
“I’m sorry,” Anders said. “I always share too much when I first meet someone. I always scare people away with my honesty.”
“You can’t scare me with honesty,” Shelby said. “At this stage of my life, it’s all I really want from someone. That, and respect.”
“And humor,” Anders said. “But I already know you’re funny. I can feel it.”
“Is it because we’re talking about the devastation of our first marriages?” Shelby asked.
Anders cackled, and Shelby threw her head back in laughter.
Just then, she caught a glimpse of herself in the window nearest her.
It depicted a startlingly beautiful, youthful-looking woman at the dawn of her life.
If Shelby didn’t know any better, she’d say that woman was happy—really and completely happy.
But at that moment, Shelby realized she really and truly was happy. She’d done it. She’d made it out.