Elin Hilderbrand - Winter Storms

Norah pulls out her wallet and makes a show of flipping through a wad of cash. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars, it seems. So the drug-dealing part is probably true.

“Hey, Kev, I’ll take over here.” Ava is back, thank God! She squeezes his arm. “Hello, Norah.”

“Ava,” Norah says. “I was just asking after your family. Everyone good?”

“Good,” Ava confirms. She takes twenty-five dollars from Norah and gives her change, which Norah stuffs into the tip jar.

“That’ll be eight to ten minutes,” Ava says.

“How’s Jennifer?” Norah asks.

Kevin freezes.

“Jennifer?” Ava says.

“Norah,” Kevin says. “Come on, we’re busy.”

Norah shrugs. “I was just wondering,” she says.

Nathaniel has been away on Block Island since July 5, and quite frankly, Ava is too busy with her new job at Quinns’ on the Beach to miss him too much. And she certainly doesn’t wish she’d gone with him. Block Island is one-tenth the size of Nantucket; it wouldn’t have provided Ava with the stimulation she requires. If things with her family ever settle down to where Ava feels like she can leave Nantucket, she will go someplace bigger, not smaller. She was right to let Nathaniel go. She had had the world’s shortest engagement.

When Scott got back from Tuscany, he called Ava almost immediately. “When can I see you?”

Apparently, a week in Tuscany with Roxanne hadn’t been as romantic as Ava had feared.

“I was sick of her before the plane landed in Florence,” Scott said. “It was a very long week. I missed you like crazy. Did you miss me?”

“Nathaniel proposed to me on the Endeavor, ” Ava said.

Silence from Scott, which Ava savored.

“What did you say?” Scott asked.

“I said yes,” Ava said.

Silence from Scott. The silence was delicious-like vanilla ice cream with hot caramel sauce, like the feel of silk sheets on her skin, like the first ocean swim of the year.

“So you’re getting married?” Scott said. “Really?”

“No,” Ava said. “He asked me to move to Block Island with him because he accepted a long-term job there. I said no. We broke up.”

“Wow,” Scott said. “For a second there, I thought I’d lost you forever.”

Is Ava any closer to solving her quandary? Yes, much. She and Scott see each other nearly every night, although Ava is aware that when Scott isn’t with her, he’s with Roxanne. Roxanne is fragile, Scott says. And especially lately. He can’t break it off completely; he’s afraid of what she’ll do.

Ava rolls her eyes.

She has created her finest playlist yet: a new 1980s mix-“Modern Love,” by Bowie, “Tainted Love,” “Life in a Northern Town.” She and Kevin dance and sing into imaginary microphones as they feed the masses. Men at Work, Wham!, Loverboy. It’s a good day, a very good day.

It’s made even better when Ava sees Shelby in line with her baby, Xavier, strapped to her chest in a BabyBjörn. Shelby gives Ava wide eyes and she mouths something, but Ava is bopping around to Cyndi Lauper and can’t make out what Shelby is saying. When it’s her turn to order, Shelby says, “I have to talk to you.”

“After work?”

“No,” Shelby says. “Right now. This instant.”

There is an expression of extreme urgency on her best friend’s face.

Bart? she thinks. Her stomach drops. But would Shelby be the one to deliver news about Bart? No.

“It can’t wait?” Ava asks.

“It can’t wait,” Shelby says. “I’m not even hungry. I just stood in this line so I could talk to you. I’ve texted you ten times already.”

“Okay, meet me out back,” Ava says. She grabs Kevin. “Watch the register for a minute?”

“Wha-” he says.

“Please,” Ava says.

Out behind the shack, Shelby reaches out to hold both of Ava’s hands. Xavier is fast asleep against her chest; his tiny lips make a sucking motion.

“Roxanne Oliveria…” Shelby says.

“Roxanne?” Ava says. “Did something happen?”

“She’s pregnant,” Shelby says.

That night, Ava is supposed to meet Scott at the Boarding House. They have plans to eat at the bar and then go to the Chicken Box to see Scott’s favorite band, Maxxtone. An hour before they’re supposed to meet, Scott calls.

He says, “I have to cancel.”

Ava has been thinking about how to handle this. She has decided to play dumb and let Scott lead the way. She says, “Really? How come?”

“Ava?” Scott exhales a long breath. “I’m going to be a father.”

I’m going to be a father . This statement tells Ava everything she needs to know. It doesn’t matter that Scott is in love with Ava; it doesn’t matter that he was planning on breaking up with Roxanne. Scott has a set of values made from solid gold. He always does the upstanding, honorable thing. Plus, he has always wanted a child, three children, ten children. He’s going to marry Roxanne and he is going to be a father. Ava can’t stand in his way.

“I’m sorry, Ava,” he says. They have to stop, cold turkey, he says. He can’t see her one-on-one ever again.

Devastation. Heartbreak. Loneliness.

Ava calls Shelby and cries over the phone. She tells Kevin the news and he gives her the next day off work. She drives out to the beach at Ram Pasture with a bottle of wine and a bag of peanut butter-filled pretzels. The beach is deserted-it’s the best-kept secret on the island-and this gives Ava the freedom to scream at the ocean and throw her pretzels to the seagulls. Roxanne is pregnant. Scott is going to marry her. Nathaniel is in Block Island, by now probably dating somebody else, some lucky Block Island girl that he met at the Oar, the bar that’s apparently the place everybody goes. Nathaniel has asked Ava to come visit, but she has declined. Until yesterday, she had been happy with Scott. She had chosen Scott, and Scott had chosen her.

That’s over now.

Scott will marry Roxanne, a woman he couldn’t tolerate for seven days even in the picturesque countryside of Italy, a woman who wears high-heeled, fur-lined boots and requests “Brown-Eyed Girl” everywhere there’s music playing. Ava pours herself a plastic cup of wine even though it’s only three o’clock in the afternoon. She used to have two boyfriends; now she has none. It serves her right. She toasts that old bitch Karma and drinks. There is today’s pain, which is bad, but she understands that today’s pain will pale in comparison to the pain she will feel when she bumps into Roxanne at the grocery store and is confronted with Roxanne’s burgeoning belly or when she sees the birth announcement in the Inquirer and Mirror or when, years from now, she sees Scott and his son or daughter having an ice cream at the soda counter of Nantucket Pharmacy.

There are emotional landmines everywhere, but there are also pragmatic landmines. It’s three days before Margaret and Drake’s wedding, and now Ava doesn’t have a date. All of the wedding-guest numbers include Scott; without him, the event will be lopsided, off balance, or so Ava convinces herself. She is so desperate that she considers asking Scott if he will break his cold-turkey rule and escort her to the wedding and reception out of mercy; he can tell Roxanne he was grandfathered in. Next, she considers calling Nathaniel and begging him to come from Block Island, but she immediately realizes this is unfair, bordering on cruel. She could always suck it up and go alone.

When she walks out of Flowers on Chestnut carrying the box that holds her mother’s bridal bouquet as well as the bouquet that she, Ava, will be carrying as maid of honor, she hears someone call her name.

She turns but can’t identify the source of the voice. Town is packed. There are people everywhere-parents, children, grandparents, dogs, college kids, and couples, couples, couples.