Elin Hilderbrand - Summerland

“You did?” Jake said.

“I haven’t heard back from her,” Hobby said. “But I hope she took what I said to heart. We’re the ones who survived. We have to be grateful for that. We have to take care of ourselves.”

Jake finished the half sandwich in silence, and then, wordlessly, Hobby handed him the container of broccoli slaw, and he devoured that as well.

“Do you want a brownie?” Hobby asked. He unwrapped the wax paper. Zoe had packed two.

“I’d be a fool to turn that down,” Jake said.

They ate the brownies side by side, in silence. The convertible red Mini occupied by Winnie Potts and Annabel Wright pulled back into the parking lot, and when the girls got out of the car, they waved to Jake and Hobby, and Jake and Hobby waved back. A few seconds later, as Hobby was consolidating his lunch debris, Claire appeared before them.

She said, “Thanks for saving me some.”

Hobby said, “Sorry, my brother is back.”

Claire smiled at Jake. There was something incandescent about her now. “Ahhhh, yes, he’s back. The school is abuzz.”

Jake smiled despite himself. He said, “You know, I always wanted a brother.”

“You know,” Hobby said, “me too.”

They said this lightly, sidestepping the ghosts of Ernie and Penny, amazed that this could be done. Then the bell rang to announce the start of sixth period. Jake and Hobby stood up, and Hobby took Claire’s arm, and Jake found that he was happy to follow them inside.

The first home football game of the season was contested on the third Friday night in September. The weather on Nantucket had just started to turn; the evenings had a crisp edge to them, and the sunsets were spectacular sherbet swirls of pink and orange. Bartlett’s Farm had harvested its first crop of pumpkins, and on the night of the game, people wore jeans and sweaters.

It might be assumed that no one on Nantucket wanted to see the hot, luxurious days of summer end, but those of us who lived here appreciated the many charms of the fall: crisp apples, cranberries, available parking spots on Main Street, empty and windswept beaches, the leaves of the Bradford pear trees turning flame orange, the air the perfect temperature for a long bike ride or a run over the crimson-colored moors. And football, of course-we all loved our football team, the Nantucket Whalers.

Turnout for that first game was legendary. The high school parking lot overflowed, there were cars parked on the lawn of the school. Across the street, on Vesper Lane, cars were lined up as far as the eye could see.

Dr. Field’s wife, Anne Marie, was walking over from the hospital with Patsy Ernst, the nurse who had been working in the Emergency Room on the night of the crash, and they marveled at the size of the crowd filing in through the gates. It seemed like far more people than usual. They knew why. We all did. The previous school year had ended on such a tragic note, we all wanted to put our eyes on the kids and reassure ourselves that they would be okay.

It was old news that Hobby Alistair was no longer able to be the team’s quarterback, so the excitement of watching him in action and knowing we would win was missing. In Hobby’s place, Coach Jaxon had decided to start a sophomore named Maxx Cunningham, who was broad-shouldered like Hobby and blond like Hobby but who seemed woefully young and inexperienced compared to his predecessor.

Still, we were excited by the bright lights shining down on the green field. We could smell the burgers and hot dogs on the grill, and it was chilly enough to enjoy cups of chowder. The cheerleaders were fresh-faced and peppy. Annabel Wright, the captain, had fashioned her usual long ponytail into three braids that whipped around like ropes. The kids in the stands seemed like just that-kids-though the boys wore flat-top Red Sox hats and baggy jeans low on their hips like rap stars. And the girls looked like nascent supermodels-some in tops that showed off their midriffs and pierced belly buttons, most wearing tight jeans and makeup and perfume-and we felt a mixture of sadness and nostalgia because we remembered these same girls when they were pudgy and freckled and wearing pink sneakers whose soles lit up when they ran under the bleachers chasing their brothers and their brothers’ friends.

The game had yet to begin, so the crowd was still milling around: people greeted one another, found seats in the bleachers, and bought blocks of raffle tickets for the fifty-fifty, which supported the Nantucket Boosters. The Atheneum librarian, Beatrice McKenzie, and her husband, Paul, who had played for the Whalers in 1965, sat in the front row, just off the handicap ramp.

What many of us didn’t know was that Jordan Randolph and his son, Jake, were walking in the back entrance. Word had reached nearly all of us that Jordan Randolph had returned from Australia with Jake but without Ava. No one was surprised by this. We all understood that Ava came from and belonged to a city, a country, and a continent on the other side of the world. A few of us had heard that Ava was adopting a baby girl from China, which we agreed was a wonderful thing.

Jordan and Jake paid their five-dollar entrance fee and walked down the hill to the northwest corner of the playing field. We thought they might make their way over to the bleachers, but they decided to hang on the fence. We remembered that Jordan had always been a fence-hanger. He liked to watch every down of the game, reporter-at-heart that he was, but Jake used to sit in the bleachers with Penny. Penny, unlike her scantily clad counterparts in the stands tonight, always wore her brother’s navy blue away jersey with Alistair printed in white letters across the back, above Hobby’s number, which was 11. It was hard for us to think about Penny in that jersey, and it must have been even harder for Jake to think about it. We understood why he was keeping his distance.

Standing together, Jordan and Jake Randolph looked remarkably alike. We were glad to have Jordan back at the helm of our newspaper, not only because some of us felt that the standards of the newspaper had slipped (the content of lesser quality, perhaps, and the editing not as sharp, a few more corrections appearing in the following week’s editions than we were used to seeing) but also because, for as long as any of us could remember, a Randolph had headed the Standard . We hoped we were right in assuming that Jake Randolph-despite all he’d been through in the past few months-would resume his position as editor of Veritas, the student newspaper, then go on to major in journalism in college, and come back and work alongside his father, and eventually take over the legacy.

But we were all of us finished with trying to predict the future.

The front center bleacher had been roped off as “reserved,” and we had our suspicions about why. Sure enough, a few minutes before the team took to the field, a hush came over the crowd, and Hobby Alistair, Zoe Alistair, and a pregnant Claire Buckley walked in single file in front of the stands, up the stairs, and into those reserved seats. The three of them looked good. Hobby loped along, barely limping, Zoe held her head up; her hair was back to its artful shaggy style, the tips recently having been highlighted cherry-cola red. But it was Claire Buckley who stole the show. For the first time, possibly ever, her hair was down, flowing long over her shoulders, and the front of her sweater was filled out in a becoming way, and below her full breasts was a discreet swell.

We all wanted to comment on the three of them-how strong they looked, how luminous, and most of all, how unified. We wanted to comment on the mysterious aspects of life, those things almost beyond language, such as how it would feel to lose your seventeen-year-old daughter, or what it had been like for Hobby to spend nine days suspended in the netherworld of a coma, or how poetic and right it was that Claire had realized the sanctity inside herself and decided to keep Hobby’s baby. We wanted to explore these topics and more-What happened when we died? How were we to know that death wasn’t as profound an adventure as life was?-but just at that moment, the team stormed the field, and the crowd let out a great roar.