Elin Hilderbrand - Winter Storms

When he crests the dune, he sees Jennifer on her phone. He can tell by her body language that this is a clandestine call, and whereas normally, Kevin would give Jennifer her privacy, today he gets right up on her.

“Okay,” Jennifer says. “I’ll see you tomorrow at nine at your place.”

She hangs up, and when she turns around, Kevin is in her face. She gasps and nearly loses her grip on the phone.

“Kevin!” she says.

“Who was that?” Kevin asks.

“Excuse me?” Jennifer says.

“Who were you on the phone with?”

Jennifer’s expression travels from shocked to indignant with a brief detour through fear. Kevin sees the fear, just a flicker, and knows she’s hiding something.

“Nobody,” she says.

“Nobody,” he says. He stares at her, wondering if she thinks he’s going to accept that answer.

“None of your business, I mean,” she says.

“You’re meeting someone at nine tomorrow,” he says. “Who are you meeting?”

“It’s not what you think,” Jennifer says.

“What do I think?” he says.

“I’m not having an affair,” she says. “I would never.”

Kevin is temporarily stymied. He supposes if he hadn’t heard the rumor about Norah and he’d stumbled across Jennifer having that conversation, he might have thought affair.

“Who was it, then?” he asks.

Before Jennifer can answer, Kevin hears crying and he looks around. About a hundred yards away, on the back side of the next dune, Kevin sees Isabelle sitting by herself, her face buried in her hands. It’s Isabelle who is crying.

Kevin gives Jennifer a stern look. “I’m not finished with you,” he says.

Kevin supposes that every wedding has its drama. Isabelle is crying because her heart is breaking, despite the fact that Margaret and Drake’s wedding is so beautiful and an occasion for celebration, or maybe due to that. Isabelle and Kevin have been engaged a year longer than Margaret and Drake; they have a child who is about to celebrate her first birthday, and they still aren’t married. Isabelle’s parents-devout Catholics-are scandalized. They have been waiting and waiting for Isabelle to tell them the date and send them tickets to America so they can see their grandchild. It is understood that they will come only once-on the occasion of Isabelle’s wedding.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Kevin says. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been such an idiot!” Kevin has noticed how subdued Isabelle is after her weekly call to her parents in Marseille, but he assumed that was because she missed them. He never considered that they might be asking her questions she isn’t comfortable answering, such as When will you be getting married? When will your baby be legitimate? Kevin has been so wrapped up with his own family that he never considered Isabelle’s family.

He hasn’t proposed any dates for the wedding because he has been waiting until Bart comes home. But now he sees that waiting for Bart might mean waiting forever.

“Let’s get married at Christmas,” Kevin says. “Christmas Eve at the inn, two years to the day after I proposed. How does that sound?”

Isabelle gives him a tiny smile. “Vraiment?”

“Yes, really,” Kevin says. “I’ll buy tickets for your parents tomorrow.” He loves that he now has the money to make such an offer. He takes Isabelle’s hand. “Will you marry me, Isabelle? Will you marry me on Christmas Eve?”

“Yes,” she says.

Margaret had described it as an “old person’s wedding” in that the whole event would be over by nine o’clock. Initially, Ava had counted this as a good thing; she’d need to hang with Potter for only four hours. But within minutes, she remembers why she likes this guy. He’s witty and articulate. He listens. And he is thrilled to be here, escorting Ava to her mother’s wedding. He doesn’t mind that Ava picked him up off the street and gave him less than twenty-four hours’ notice. He went right to Murray’s and bought a navy blazer and a Vineyard Vines tie.

“I can’t believe my luck,” Potter says. “I thought about stopping by at the inn when I got on island, but since you never sent my hat, I figured you’d forgotten about me.”

Ava gasps. “I never sent your hat!” She had gotten home from Anguilla and was sucked right back into her real life-Scott/Nathaniel/Nathaniel/Scott-and whatever flirtation she’d engaged in on the vacation evaporated. She had thought of Potter fleetingly a couple of times, but not long enough to remember that she owed him a hat.

Margaret and Drake cut the cake at eight o’clock and by eight thirty, they’re walking hand in hand over the path to where a dune buggy awaits to take them to an undisclosed location for the night.

Potter looks at Ava. “Are we going home, or are we going out?”

“Out,” she says, surprising herself. “Let’s go out.”

Kevin and Isabelle take Genevieve home, and Zack and Shelby do the same with Xavier. Mitzi and Kelley take Paddy’s three boys and they invite George and Mary Rose to join them for a nightcap back at the inn.

“Who’s the woman in the hat?” Potter asks Ava.

“Mary Rose,” Ava says. “George’s girlfriend.”

“And who is George?” Potter asks.

“He’s…” Ava isn’t sure how to explain. “He’s our Santa Claus at the inn every year.”

“Ohhh… kay,” Potter says.

Margaret’s assistant, Darcy, and Drake’s nephew, Liam, are young enough that they want to go to Straight Wharf, but Ava is dressed in a silk sheath and all she can picture is someone spilling a Goombay Smash down the front of it. She lobbies for someplace more adult. She and Potter and Patrick and Jennifer decide to go to the Summer House in Sconset. The Summer House has an old-time-Nantucket feel that Ava loves. There’s a piano player and a log burning in the fireplace and exposed beams and overstuffed chairs.

“I never do this,” Ava says once she settles down to order, “but I’ll have a martini. Dirty.”

“Me too!” Jennifer says, and Ava laughs. She has noticed a huge change in Jennifer since Paddy’s been back. She is joyous; she is loose.

After the first martini, which goes down way too easily, Ava and Jennifer excuse themselves and head to the ladies’ room.

Immediately, Jennifer grabs Ava’s arm. “I love him!” she says.

“Who?” Ava says.

“Potter!” Jennifer says. “He’s the best! He’s so smart! He’s an academic, but he’s not stuffy. He’s funny. And he’s worldly! He’s been everywhere on that sailboat. And he has emotional depth. That story about losing his parents and being raised by his grandparents had me in tears. He loves his grandfather.”

“Gibby,” Ava says. Potter has mentioned Gibby twice that evening. Apparently, Gibby isn’t doing well, and Potter is worried about him. It does give him soul, Ava thinks, the way he is so attached to his grandparents, sailing around in a sloop named after his grandmother. And he is smart, intellectual even-but without making Ava feel stupid. “I don’t know. When I met him, I thought he was too good-looking.”

“So you’re not going to date him because he’s too good-looking?” Jennifer says. “He is so into you! You should have seen the way he watched you when you walked down the aisle.”

Ava blushes. She did catch his eye for an instant, almost by accident.

“You should marry Potter,” Jennifer declares.

They’ve just come from a wedding, so obviously marriage is on everyone’s mind, but for some reason, Jennifer’s comment hits Ava the wrong way. It might be the vodka, or it might be the fact that, right after he delivered Margaret to the altar, Kelley sat down next to Ava and whispered, “I can’t wait to walk you down the aisle.”