Elin Hilderbrand - Winter Storms

“Wow,” Potter says.

“I’ve talked too much,” Ava says. They are nearly at the Viceroy; time to turn around. Potter is probably dying to get away.

“Not at all,” Potter says. He reaches for her hand. Ava thinks maybe he hasn’t been listening. She is torn between two other men… and yet Potter is now holding her hand. His hand is large and warm and strong-more like Scott’s hand than Nathaniel’s, although not really like Scott’s hand at all-and holding it feels good. It feels like a fresh perspective.

“Why did you and your wife split?” Ava asks.

“We’re both in academia,” Potter says. “She’s a Shakespeare scholar, which is not an uncrowded field, I’ll tell you, and competition for spots is fierce. She got offered a tenure-track position at Stanford and I had the same at Columbia, but since I’d been working there longer, my salary was nearly double hers. At the time, PJ was two years old and couldn’t be separated from Trish, so he went with her. We both sort of thought we might be able to make a bicoastal marriage work, but it didn’t go that way. She fell in love with one of her teaching assistants.”

“Oh,” Ava says. “Ouch.”

“He’s British,” Potter says. “She loves the accent.”

They’re almost back to the hotel but Ava doesn’t want the walk to end. She says, “Look, there’s our Sunfish!”

Potter says, “Would you like to sit for a minute?”

Potter kisses Ava as she sits on the bow of the Sunfish, just once, an exploratory mission, it seems, then they kiss again. And again.

Potter pulls away. “I’d love to see you the next time you come to the city,” he says. “Or this summer on Nantucket. Can I give you my number?”

“Yes,” Ava says. “And your address. I’m going to send you a new hat.”

She drives to exit 5 on Route 3 South, pulls into the parking lot of the Mayflower Deli, and waits. At a quarter after twelve, the black pickup drives up and parks beside her. Jennifer removes the envelope of cash from her purse and gets out of the car, scanning the lot for police or anyone who might be undercover. She casually walks to the driver’s side. She hands Norah the envelope, and Norah hands Jennifer a Bayer aspirin bottle that contains fifty oxycodone pills.

Norah says, “When does Paddy get out?”

“June first,” Jennifer says.

Norah’s expression is sympathetic and Jennifer softens toward her former sister-in-law. Gone are the days when Jennifer could claim some kind of moral superiority. Now, sadly, Norah is one of the most important people in Jennifer’s life-her dealer. Jennifer had meant to quit the oxy after the holidays, but then she was faced with the quiet, cold weeks of January, and February brought Valentine’s Day and her husband was still incarcerated. Then came March, with its surprisingly beautiful weather. Everyone in Boston had spring fever. The sidewalk cafés were packed; lovers held hands and lay on blankets on the Boston Common. Jennifer could see them from the window of her townhouse on Beacon Street. The sight depressed her. Then in April, Jennifer took the boys away for spring break-to San Francisco to visit her mother. There was no way she could handle a week with her mother without pharmaceutical help. So now she finds herself in May still buying drugs from Norah. Meanwhile, she’s trying to parent three boys and run her interior design business. Today she has two large Kangxi blue-and-white porcelain vases, valued at over twenty-five grand apiece, in the back of her Volvo to deliver to a client in Duxbury.

“So will you be wanting any more, do you think?” Norah asks. Their implicit understanding has been that this new relationship of theirs will end once Patrick gets out of jail. Norah seems to be asking for confirmation of that. Does Norah possibly sense that Jennifer has become an addict? Well, yes, there is dependency, obviously, but is it permanent? Jennifer has blithely chosen to believe that once Patrick is back in the house, once he is back working, making money, helping out with the boys, and sleeping next to Jennifer in bed, there will be no need for the pills. Patrick’s return will be her drug. Most likely, Norah is concerned only for her own welfare. Her lifestyle has certainly improved with this new line of work. Jennifer can hardly be her sole client; Norah is probably supplying pills to half the housewives between Mashpee and Mansfield. Her appearance has changed. She has started wearing Eileen Fisher in an eerie-or perhaps flattering?-echo of Jennifer herself. Norah Vale, once all denim and leather, is now silk and linen. And she’s got on earrings that Jennifer recognizes as Jessica Hicks. Wow. At this rate, Jennifer might soon be Norah’s decorator. The thought isn’t all that outlandish.

Okay, Jennifer thinks, time to leave.

“I have to scoot,” she says. “I have two Chinese vases waiting to meet their new parents.”

“So this is it, then?” Norah says. She eyes the front of the deli. “You don’t want to go in and grab a sandwich real quick, do you?”

Jennifer is touched, but also alarmed, mostly at her own feelings of fear and regret. She has grown to sort of like Norah now that their connection has nothing to do with the Quinn family, and she will miss their weekly meetings, in a way.

“I’ll call you the next time I’m on the island,” Jennifer says.

Norah’s face falls. Both she and Jennifer know Jennifer will never call. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t.

“Okay, then,” Norah says. “See you around.”

The week after his final radiation treatment, Kelley returns to Mass. General for an MRI to determine if his cancer is gone. After a tense five-day wait, Dr. Cherith-a med-school classmate of Margaret’s fiancé, Dr. Drake Carroll, as it turns out-calls to say Kelley appears to be in the clear.

“Cancer gone,” Dr. Cherith says. “No guarantees, of course. But for now, safe to say you beat it.”

After he hangs up, Kelley takes a deep yoga breath, then exhales in an Om, the way Mitzi has taught him. Gratitude to Mother Earth, gratitude to God above. He has beaten it. It wasn’t easy; prostate cancer isn’t glamorous. Kelley spent over a month in adult diapers, a fact he’d like to forget as soon as possible. And the radiation exhausted him. Thank God Mitzi had left George and come back to him. She took complete control of his treatment and made every decision. She brought Kelley breakfast in bed each morning-organic acai bowls with fruit and seeds and nuts-and every night, she read to him. They got through the first three Harry Potters, books Kelley had longed to read-he loved magical fantasy stories-but back when they were published, his kids were far too old for them and his grandchildren not old enough. Mitzi has a wonderful reading voice-clear and expressive-and at one point, Kelley had rolled toward her and said, “Have you ever considered a career in broadcasting?”

She glowered at him. “I’m Mitzi, Kelley. Not Margaret.”

“I know that,” Kelley had said, although he then realized he’d gotten mixed up for a second. That was another side effect of the radiation: mental confusion. Kelley had such intense dreams that he sometimes mistook them for reality. In the most vivid, the U.S. military made contact with members of the Afghan rebel group Bely, the faction that was holding Bart and his comrades prisoner, and asked what they would accept in exchange for the soldiers. The Bely had responded that they wanted Leonardo DiCaprio and a hundred dozen Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookies. The transaction had gone through and Bart had come home, whole and unharmed, unmarred except for a tattoo of a star on his cheek. Mitzi had screamed-her baby’s face!-but Kelley had simply gathered his son into his arms, kissed the star, and thought, I am never letting this kid go. When Kelley woke up, he’d experienced that particular elation one feels when something valuable that has been lost is returned. But then, upon realizing it was just a dream, Kelley fell back into his shallow pool of despair. William Burke, from Bart’s platoon, is still unconscious. Back in February, he had been transported from Landstuhl in Germany to Walter Reed in Bethesda and the whole world is waiting for his condition to improve. Kelley had toyed with the idea of going to Bethesda himself to visit William Burke-Kelley had just enough hubris to believe that his presence might be the very thing to snatch Private Burke from the jaws of darkness. But Mitzi told Kelley the idea was impractical. He had to fight his own battle.