Elin Hilderbrand - Winter Storms

“I’d love to,” George says. He can’t believe how happy the offer makes him. He dresses as Santa for a variety of Lions Club events in Lenox but nothing gives him more pleasure than playing Santa on Nantucket.

“With your new svelte physique, you’ll have to get the suit altered,” Kelley says.

“Or I could fatten him up by Christmas,” Mary Rose says, and she and Mitzi laugh.

As Kelley and Mitzi drive away, Mary Rose and George wave good-bye, then George leads Mary Rose by the hand up the stairs of the Castle. He imagines his hats being featured in the windows of Bergdorf Goodman.

“They’re such a nice couple,” Mary Rose says. “I can’t believe you nearly broke them up. Shame on you, George.”

At eight o’clock the morning after Margaret and Drake’s wedding, despite a tremendous hangover, Jennifer laces up her running shoes.

Patrick rolls over in bed and tugs on her shirt. “Don’t go,” he says. “Come back to bed.”

She turns around and smiles, but even that small effort feels like it’s enough to crack her face in half. After Ava saw Scott at the Bar, she and Jennifer ordered Fireball shots. What a rotten idea! And it had been Jennifer’s. “I’ll be back between nine thirty and ten.”

“Not only a run, but a long run,” Patrick says. “You go, girl.”

Jennifer hopes to slip out of the inn unnoticed, but she bumps into Kevin on the back stairs.

Kevin. Of all people.

“Hey!” he says. He checks his watch. “Where are you off to?”

Jennifer tugs on her tank top. “Going for a run,” she says. She wonders if Kevin remembers the conversation they had the evening before. Did he tuck away the particulars? He’s looking at her strangely, with his head cocked, as if he’s trying to see her from another angle. He thinks she’s having an affair; Jennifer would bet her life on it. Well, let him think that. In some ways, it’s preferable to the truth. “I’m off,” she says.

“Enjoy!” Kevin says.

She goes out the back door of the inn and heads down Liberty Street to Gardner. She figures it’ll take her forty minutes to run to Norah Vale’s house, ten minutes to do the deal, and forty minutes to run home.

She needs more drugs. She has been trying to wean herself off the oxy and at one point, when Patrick was first home, she had made it through an entire day with only one pill. But after that, she felt moody and headachy and sick and she deeply craved the high of the oxy, the sense of order and focus it brought her. She couldn’t live without it. Could not, would not. She had met Norah once in July at their usual spot on Route 3, thinking that would be it. But now that she’s on Nantucket where Norah lives, the temptation is too great to resist. She’s going to buy sixty pills. These sixty will be the end, she tells herself. But she has to get these sixty. The mere thought of so many pills puts her at peace.

Norah had been surprised to hear from Jennifer, or possibly she had only been acting surprised. She knows Jennifer is an addict, and as much as Jennifer would like to blame Norah and think her evil, Jennifer can’t blame anyone but herself. She wishes she had found a dealer who didn’t know her; the connection between her and Norah makes her very uneasy. When Jennifer called two days ago to say she would be on the island, Norah said, “Family vacation?”

Without thinking, Jennifer said, “Margaret is getting married, actually.”

“Really?” Norah said. She then pressed Jennifer for details, and what could Jennifer do but comply? Dr. Drake Carroll, pediatric neurosurgeon, ceremony on the beach at Eel Point, Kelley giving Margaret away. It was confidential information-no one wanted the paparazzi to show up-but Margaret had once been Norah’s mother-in-law, and if Jennifer remembered correctly, Norah had been fond of Margaret. And Margaret had been kind and gracious with Norah because Margaret was kind and gracious with everyone.

“Wow,” Norah said wistfully. “I bet it will be a beautiful wedding.”

Jennifer actually felt bad that Norah hadn’t been invited-which was crazy. The only thing that could confuse and frustrate you more than family was… former family.

Jennifer jogs into the driveway of the Vale family compound at five minutes to nine. Jennifer has been here only once, years and years earlier, when Kevin and Norah were still married. The compound is off Hooper Farm Road-it’s mid-island, where the island businesses are and where the locals live. There are four vehicles in the driveway: Norah’s black truck; an old Jeep Wagoneer, its bumper plastered with beach stickers; and two old taxis, one of which is on blocks, that Jennifer knows used to belong to Norah’s parents. Also in the driveway are two rusted-out bikes, a sun-bleached Big Wheel, half of a brass bed, a pile of scallop shells that stinks to high heaven, and a deflated kiddie pool.

A German shepherd fights its chain in the backyard, barking an announcement of Jennifer Barrett Quinn’s arrival at the low point in her life. She puts her hands on her hips and bends in half to catch her breath. She closes her eyes, but even the black is splotched blood red. Turn around, she thinks. You don’t need the drugs.

She does need the drugs.

Norah comes bouncing out of the house wearing… here, Jennifer blinks. Norah is wearing a Lilly Pulitzer shift dress. It’s light pink patterned with hot-pink flamingos playing croquet and it has white curlicue appliqué down the front that looks like icing on a birthday cake. The neckline is high enough to cover Norah’s terrifying python tattoo. Norah’s hair is in a French braid and she’s wearing pearl earrings and white Jack Rogers sandals. The transformation of Norah Vale is complete; she is indistinguishable from any of the women who lean over the railing of the party yacht Belle holding gin and tonics.

“You look great,” Jennifer says.

“Thanks,” Norah says. She gives Jennifer a shy smile. “I’m having lunch with one of my clients at the Wauwinet today.”

This statement pulls Jennifer up short. The Wauwinet! Even Jennifer and Patrick don’t splurge on lunch at the Wauwinet. And when Norah says “client,” she means… another woman she sells drugs to, right? It seems wrong somehow. Jennifer is an interior designer; she has clients. Then Jennifer realizes that, in some ways, she and Norah are doing the same thing. Jennifer is selling women Persian rugs and nautical prints, antique chests and silk drapes-things they don’t need but that they buy for the high, she supposes, the high of owning beautiful things.

Jennifer can’t dwell on this. She is not a drug dealer. And yet, any favorable comparison of herself with Norah fails at this moment. Norah looks successful and put together, whereas Jennifer looks like a sweating, jonesing junkie.

She pulls a wad of cash out of the back zipped pocket of her Lululemon shorts. “Here you go.”

Norah hands over the pills, this time in a jar of multivitamins. Smart girl; she knows Jennifer is going back to the inn.

Jennifer takes the pills and feels a wave of relief and elation and all-is-right-with-the-world. Sixty pills.

Norah’s eyes float over Jennifer’s right shoulder and before Jennifer can do anything more than blink, Norah turns and runs.

Jennifer swivels her head to see Kevin’s white pickup pull into the driveway.

Did he follow her here? Jennifer wonders. Instinctively, she tucks the vitamins into her waistband. She will come up with an explanation.

Kevin gets out of the pickup. And then… so does Patrick.

No, Jennifer thinks. No, this isn’t happening.

“Jennifer?” Patrick says.