Elin Hilderbrand - The Island

India then wandered off toward the point in search of whelk shells. That was what she wanted to bring home to everyone as a gift: perfectly spiraled bone white whelk shells with satiny peach insides. She wanted one for the president of the board, Spencer Frost, as well as one for her assistant, Ainslie, and one for a student.

“Are you playing favorites?” Birdie asked.

“Sort of,” India said.

That left Birdie alone with Chess, who was lying facedown on her towel. Birdie suddenly felt the pressure of twenty-nine days. She hadn’t had the talk with her daughter that she’d meant to have. She hadn’t heard the whole story, or any of the story. To force a talk now would be awkward and unfair. Wasn’t that typical of the time on Tuckernuck, or of any summer vacation, for that matter? The hours had stretched out like an endless highway, and then all of a sudden, they were gone. Evaporated. And here was Birdie on the very last day, trying to cram it all in.

She sat down in the sand next to Chess’s towel.

“Chess?” she said.

There was no response. Chess’s breathing was deep and steady. Her sleep seemed peaceful. Birdie didn’t have the heart to wake her.

Everybody was going to get a happy ending but her.

Her parents were reuniting. That was what was happening, right? Her father had come here to Tuckernuck, a place Chess would have said he’d never liked in the past-but now he was liking it. And he was looking at her mother in a way that Chess had never seen him look at her before. He was attentive-doting, even; he carried the chairs and the cooler to the pond; he ran after Birdie’s straw hat when it blew off down the dirt trail. He set up Birdie’s chair and rubbed lotion onto her shoulders. He kissed her on the lips in a way that was very tender, which left Chess embarrassed. She knew her parents had slept in the same bedroom the night before, and when she saw the kiss, she thought, Sex. Her parents had had sex. She felt confused-possibly more confused than she’d felt when they told her they were separating. The divorce had hurt her somewhere deep inside, but it had made sense. This reunion made her happy somewhere deep inside, but she worried. If her father disappointed her mother again, it would be far worse than if some other man disappointed her mother. If her father was coming back, he was going to have to do everything right.

He would; Chess felt this in her bones. Theirs would be an unlikely love story, one to be envied. Chess wished it was Nick who had shown up out of the blue. If it could be her father, why couldn’t it also be Nick?

Tate had Barrett. She told Chess the story of Barrett and Anita Fullin as they walked to the pond.

Chess said, “So what are you going to do? Stay here?”

“I have a job in Pennsylvania on Monday. I’m going to work there, then come back for a few days, then go out to Beaverton to do a job for Nike, then come back. I’m trying not to think too far ahead. Do you know how hard that is?”

Chess did know. She was facing a vacuum. But she’d had one idea, like a spark in a dark room. She wanted to cook. She had a culinary degree, after all. She knew the restaurant life was punishing-the hours, the heat, the chauvinism-but a little punishment would suit her. Cooking was the first thing she had felt a stir of passion about since Michael died. Cooking-somewhere good, somewhere market driven, clean, consistent, uptown, downtown, East Side, West Side. She would have choices.

Choices: it wasn’t true love, but it was something.

Chess stood at the edge of North Pond and threw rocks into the water. Get rid of the heavy stuff. Get rid of it. Then she lay in the warm sand by the pond. She had only one more day to nap in the sun.

She awoke to Birdie staring at her.

Chess thought, She wants to see me smile. She wants to know I’m going to be all right.

Chess smiled.

Birdie smiled. She said, “I love you.”

Chess said, “I love you, too, Bird.”

And what about India? India had been the wild card when they started out on this vacation, an unknown quantity. Chess knew her better now. India was really and truly strong; she had gone through what Chess had gone through, only worse, and she had come out on the other side whole. She would pursue a relationship with the female painter or she wouldn’t, and either way, India would be okay. India was the person Chess was the most envious of. India was the person Chess aspired to be: she was her own happy ending.

Thank God for his sunglasses. No one could see how close he was to tears.

There were logistics to deal with: Emptying the cooler and defrosting the refrigerator, checking and double-checking that the windows were shut and locked, gathering the sheets and towels for the Laundromat, shutting down the generator, storing the propane gas from the camp stove, buttoning up the Scout and hanging the key back on the hook by the front door. Storing the picnic table and, finally, taking down the TATE sign and stowing it away in its place in the kitchen drawer. A cleaning crew would come in after they were gone; later, Barrett would bring the sheets and towels back wrapped in plastic, and he would weatherproof the windows and doors.

Grant had taken a load of luggage down to Barrett’s boat. This left Barrett and the four women staring forlornly at the front of the house.

“Is it going to be another thirteen years before this island sees you again?” Barrett asked.

A sob escaped-from Birdie. Suddenly she was in Barrett’s arms, hugging him.

“I don’t know what we would have done without you,” she said. “I just don’t know what we would have done.”

India was on him now, too, hugging him from the left. “Those days you sent Trey were a complete hell,” she said. “He just wasn’t as cute as you were. I couldn’t even bring myself to whistle at him.”

Chess grabbed his right side. “Thank you for taking me to the hospital,” she said. “You saved my life.”

And from behind, Tate grabbed him. His girl. “I love you,” she said.

The four of them were on him at his cardinal points: north, south, east, and west. They hugged him and squeezed him and someone pinched his butt; he suspected it was India.

Grant came huffing up the stairs. India said, “Grant, take our picture! Quick-the four of us with Barrett!”

India handed Grant her disposable camera, and Barrett and the women arranged themselves into a pose and smiled.

“Life is good!” Tate said.

“Life is good,” Birdie said.

“Life is good,” India said.

There was a pause. Grant was waiting before he took the picture. Barrett himself was too choked up to speak.

“Life is good,” Chess said.

Grant snapped the picture, then another one for backup. He looked at Barrett over the top of the camera.

“You are one lucky guy,” he said.

September 25 marked the day that Mary Francesca Cousins was to have married Michael Kevin Morgan.

Tate was at Fenway Park. She had left her seat to go to the bathroom and pick up popcorn for Tucker and an ice cream for Cameron. The popcorn stand was near the bathroom, but the ice cream-the kind that Cameron wanted, served in a mini batting helmet-was half a stadium away. Tate found the ice cream vendor eventually, but she waited so long in line that she couldn’t remember if she should go left or right to get back. She didn’t have her ticket stub and she had left her cell phone in her purse, which was back at her seat. There were hundreds and hundreds of people streaming past her, all of them different and yet somehow the same in that they were all strangers.