Elin Hilderbrand - Silver Girl

“That’s right,” Meredith said. “In fact, I don’t want any news of Freddy at all, from this point on. Unless, well, unless he dies. You can call me when he dies.” Meredith fidgeted with her grandmother’s engagement ring. This was the ring that she had given Freddy to give to her, a strange transaction in its own right, but now, more than anything, Meredith wanted it off her finger.

Dev said, “Okay, Meredith, are you sure? You want me to call the people at Butner back and tell them to forget about it?”

Was that what she wanted? She imagined prison officials saying to Fred, You know what? Your wife doesn’t want to talk to you, after all. What would Freddy think? Meredith didn’t care what he thought. She was going to save herself. She was going to swim to shore.

“I’m sure,” Meredith said.

“Fine,” Dev said. He paused, and then he added. “Good for you.”

“Thanks, Dev,” Meredith said, and she hung up. Downstairs, she heard Ashlyn and Connie and Dan and Toby talking about taking a picture before they all left. Who had a camera? It was one more thing, and Meredith was grateful.

She hurried downstairs to join them.

Autumn on Nantucket was serene and shockingly beautiful. Meredith was able to swim until the twenty-fifth of September. She kept hoping for the company of another seal-a brother of Harold’s, perhaps, or a son or daughter, or a friend or lover-but none came.

Dan Flynn, whose real job it was to know everyone on Nantucket and everything that was happening, found Meredith a beat-up Jeep for $2,000 cash.

“The thing will probably leave a trail of sand all the way down the Milestone Road,” he said. “But at least you’ll be able to get around.”

Meredith loved the Jeep much more than she had loved any of her other, fancier vehicles. It made her feel younger, wilder, freer; it made her feel like a person she had never been. She had taken taxis until she was twenty-eight; then, she and Freddy bought a Volvo wagon, which was quickly traded in for a BMW and so on and so on.

The Jeep already had a beach sticker, so Meredith packed herself a lunch-chicken salad that she’d made herself, a ripe, juicy pear, and a whole-wheat baguette from the Sconset Market-and she headed up to Great Point on a sparkling Thursday afternoon. The foliage on the Wauwinet Road was burnt orange and brilliant yellow. Meredith wanted to internalize the colors of the leaves, much like the flower fields of Bartlett’s Farm. She wanted to keep the beauty, even as she knew that it was, and only could be, ephemeral. Time would pass, the leaves would fall, children would grow up. Thinking this made Meredith feel unspeakably lonely.

But there, at the gatehouse, was Bud Attatash. He peered at Meredith and the derelict Jeep suspiciously. Then, once he recognized her, he saluted.

Meredith slowed to a stop and shifted into first gear. “Hello, Mr. Attatash.”

“Bud, please. You make me feel like I’m a million years old.”

Meredith smiled at him. He was checking out the car.

“You’re sure that’s going to make it?” he said.

“If you don’t see me by sundown, you’ll come out and get me?”

“That I will,” Bud said. He cleared his throat. “Young Flynn tells me that you’re staying on island through the winter, and that you’re looking for a job. Something out of the public eye?”

“That’s right,” Meredith said. She needed a job-for the money, certainly, but also as a reason to get out of the house.

“Well, my wife is looking for someone to shelve books after-hours at the Atheneum. They had plenty of help this summer, but everyone has gone back to school.”

“Really?” Meredith said. “I’d love to do it.”

“It doesn’t pay a fortune,” Bud said.

Meredith blushed. “Oh,” she said. “I don’t need a fortune.”

And so, Meredith worked Tuesday through Saturday from 5 to 9 p.m., shelving books at the Nantucket Atheneum. She worked alone; most times, the only other person in the echoing historic building was the Salvadoran janitor.

Louisa, Meredith’s housekeeper and cook, had been from El Salvador. Flashes of Meredith’s previous life surprised her like this.

One day, she read a collection of Gwendolyn Brooks poems before she shelved it. My God, she thought.

Her favorite thing about the job was everything. She liked the quiet hush of the building; she liked its dusty museum smell. She loved the Great Hall upstairs-its volumes of Nantucket whaling history, its old New England cookery books. She loved handling books, putting them back where they belonged, in their indisputable proper place. When her workload was light, she would sit and read a chapter or two of books she’d read years before, and they seemed brand-new to her. She always poked her head into the children’s section, which was dark and calm, the wooden trucks put away in their garages, the picture books fanned open on display. Children still read Goodnight Moon, they still read Carver’s favorite, Lyle Lyle Crocodile. There was a colorful area rug and huge, plush chairs in the shape of zoo animals. Meredith wondered if she would have grandchildren someday.

Those grandchildren would never know Freddy. Thoughts like this haunted her.

She talked to Leo and Carver several times a week. Meredith asked Leo if he wanted Annabeth Martin’s diamond ring, and he said yes. He was planning to propose to Anais sometime in the spring. The house that Meredith had been imagining them in had been sold for profit, and the boys had put a bid on a dilapidated Victorian in Saratoga Springs. They had promised they would come to Nantucket to see Meredith at Thanksgiving.

Meredith bought butternut squash at Bartlett’s Farm and made soup, with Connie on the phone as a consultant. Meredith froze what she couldn’t eat. She met Dan every Monday night at A.K. Diamond’s, and he introduced her to his year-round friends, the carpenters and firemen and insurance agents, and whereas Meredith imagined that his friends would be interested in her lurid back story, most of them just wanted to know how she liked driving that funky Jeep.

The larger world began to open its doors to her once again. Notes arrived at Dev’s office from people who had received their restitution checks, and Dev forwarded these letters to Meredith, though Meredith would sometimes let them sit for as long as a week without opening them. It was difficult to accept praise or thanks when so many people had lost so much. Meredith received a letter from an elderly woman in Sioux City, Iowa, who had received a check for a quarter of a million dollars, only 60 percent of what she’d invested-but still the woman was grateful to Meredith, and at the end of the note, told her to hold her head high. You did the right thing, she said.

What right thing was that? Meredith wondered.

A letter came from Michael Arrow in Broome, Australia, saying that the US government had promised him restitution of $1.3 million. It wouldn’t be enough to buy back his family’s pearl farm, but with the favorable exchange rate, it would be plenty to buy a holiday home somewhere in the south-maybe in Geraldton, maybe in Margaret River. The letter was friendly and informative; at the end of the letter, he invited Meredith to come visit him in Western Australia “anytime.”

She folded the letter back up, baffled. Where had Michael Arrow been before the restitution was promised, when Meredith was living in the dark and didn’t have a friend in the world?

There was no communication from Amy Rivers.

Through Dev, Meredith was informed of interview requests from Diane Sawyer and Meredith Vieira. The manager who had once handled Oliver North wanted to put Meredith on the lecture circuit. Big bucks to be made there, this manager told Dev.