Elin Hilderbrand - The Love Season

Sallie’s mother rushed to the side of the bed and took hold of Sallie’s leaden arm. “You’re awake!” she said. “The nurses told us it sounded like you were awake. They can tell from the way they monitor the machines out there.”

Sallie’s father clapped his hands in a rallying way. He was the head football coach at the University of Rhode Island. “I knew you’d snap out of it.”

Pierre approached next, timidly. He was out of his element, away from the noise and the beer and the grime of the bar, away from his back office with the black leather couches and his computer where he played Tetris while the kids out front got smashed and slam-danced. “Hello, gorgeous,” he said.

Sallie turned her attention back to her mother, her beautiful mother, who taught classical music at Moses Brown, who wore bifocals when she read a grocery list, who had fretted and worried so much over Sallie’s three older brothers that she had been content to just let Sallie be. Bartending? Fine . Surfing? Good for you . A pontoon boat down the Amazon River? You only live once . Sallie’s eyes filled with tears. She’d had a dream that her mother had died. In the dream, Sallie was driving down a dusty road and she spotted a white cross in the brush. She stopped, checked it out. The cross was for her mother. Sallie had screamed when she saw the cross, Wait! Mom, wait! I’m getting married!

“Honey?” Sallie’s mother said. “How do you feel?”

“Confused,” Sallie said. The cross hadn’t been a dream. It was real. But how? Sallie’s mother stood right in front of her. “What am I doing here?”

“You had a surfing accident on Nantucket,” her father said. “You hit your head. They say you were underwater for a while.”

“Just a little while,” her mother said.

“And where am I now?”

“At Mass General. In Boston,” her mother said. “Pierre called us. And your friend…” She nodded at the chair where Miles slept. “…was here when we arrived.”

“Miles,” Sallie said. It all came back to her like something that fell from the sky and landed in her lap. Miles picking her up at the house with the girl, Renata, who was the cutest, sweetest thing Sallie had ever seen. So innocent, so young, so clean. It was her mother the cross was for. She had knelt before it. Kissed it.

“The doctors say they expect you to be fine,” Sallie’s mother said. “You may feel stiff and numb for a while, but there’s been no brain damage.”

“Thank God for that!” Sallie’s father said.

“You’re going to be fine, doll,” Pierre said.

“Did Renata come?” Sallie asked. “Did she come to the hospital with Miles?”

“Who?” Sallie’s mother asked.

Sallie watched Miles snoring in the chair. Wake him up! she wanted to say. Ask him if Renata came! But Sallie knew the answer was no. After all, why would she?

10:25 P.M.

Ethan Arcain couldn’t sleep. His wife, Emily, was dozing heavily beside him, her breathing deep and regular. His boys were asleep in their respective rooms; the house Ethan had built himself was solid and quiet. Out their open bedroom window Ethan could hear the occasional bleat of one of the goats. He and Emily had eaten grilled steaks for dinner with a fresh corn salsa and heirloom tomatoes drizzled with pesto. Such were the feasts when one lived on a vegetable farm. Ethan had drunk too much-he and Emily split a bottle of Shiraz from the Barossa Valley-and then he’d opened a second bottle to drink alone, despite Emily’s warning eyebrows.

He hadn’t been able to tell Emily about Marguerite coming to the farm that afternoon, despite Brandon announcing, “Dad introduced me to an old friend of his today.”

Emily had been pulsing basil and garlic and pine nuts in the Cuisinart. “Oh yeah, who was it?”

Brandon conveniently chose that moment to leave the kitchen. “Nobody,” Ethan said. “Someone who used to come to the farm back in Dolores’s day, when I was just a kid.”

“Someone you had a crush on?” Emily said.

“Oh God, no,” Ethan said. “Nothing like that.”

He hadn’t been able to tell Emily, and then he drank too much and now both things weighed on his mind. He had lived on Nantucket his whole life; lots of people knew his history: his parents’ brutal split, his father’s drinking. And yet no one brought home the guilt and the shame of being Walter Arcain’s son like Marguerite.

You never had to carry his load . Marguerite said. But he did. Despite the fact that he had worked hard to create a decent, peaceful, productive life, he did.

It had happened during the first week of February. Ethan had graduated the year before from Penn State with a degree in agriculture; he had confessed to his mother that he was in love with her new husband’s oldest daughter, Emily; he was working as a waiter at the Jared Coffin House to make money. He had a deal all worked out with Dolores Kimball; he was going to buy the farm from her when she retired. Everything was moving forward-not quickly, maybe, but in the right direction. And then, just before service for the weekly Rotary luncheon, Ethan’s mother came into the dining room to say that Walter had killed someone and not just someone but Candace Harris Knox. She was jogging out in Madequecham; Walter was driving the company truck, drunk out of his mind.

To a young man who had helped put vegetables and flowers on the table at Les Parapluies since he was ten years old, Candace Harris Knox was a living legend. She was much older than Ethan but captivating nonetheless. The blond hair, the way she could run for miles without ever looking tired, the successful husband, the adorable young daughter. Candace was royalty on the island; she was a goddess among women, Ethan knew it just from the way she carried herself, just from the genuine ring of her laugh. And Walter Arcain, Ethan’s father, had run her down like she was a frightened rabbit.

Ethan pulled the quilt up under his chin. He was freezing, and a headache was starting from the wine. When he rolled over, he checked the red numbers of the digital clock. Ten thirty. He figured Marguerite’s dinner with Renata must be nearly over.

10:41 P.M.

Cade Driscoll was nothing if not disciplined. He was nothing if not obedient. And so, in the end, he suffered through the world’s longest dinner-through lobster cracking, corn munching, and people talking just to cover up the obvious awkwardness of Renata’s desertion. Then he endured dessert-blueberry pie with ice cream, coffee, and port. He sent mental pleas to his mother: Let the Robinsons go home! Set them free! But his mother seemed to feel that the longer the Robinsons stayed, the less likely it was that they would remember the night as a disaster. Finally, finally, at nearly eleven o’clock, Kent Robinson stood up and offered to get his wife’s wrap. Good-byes were said. Claire kissed Cade on the mouth and said, “She wasn’t good enough for you, anyway.” As if she knew something Cade didn’t.

As soon as the Robinsons’ car pulled out of the driveway, Joe Driscoll excused himself for bed. When he shook Daniel Knox’s hand he said, “Any chance you’ll be up for sailing tomorrow?”

“Let’s see how things go.”

“Yes, yes,” Joe said. “Let’s.” He grabbed Cade’s elbow before going up, but he said nothing. Suzanne, in a moment of mercy, set her wineglass on the lowboy and said, “I’ll worry about cleaning up in the morning. Good night, all.” And she followed Joe up the stairs.

Once his parents were gone, Cade turned to Daniel Knox. “How about you?”

“I’m a night owl,” Daniel said. “I may sit on the deck for a while.”

“Okay,” Cade said. “Good night, then.” He marched up the stairs, as if dutifully going to bed.