Elin Hilderbrand - 28 Summers

The man stops. His weight makes the deck boards creak.

“Mallory?” he says.

Mallory turns. “Oh!” she cries as though someone goosed her. “Bayer?” She moves tentatively in the man’s direction but then seems to think better of it and offers half a wave. “Hello there. Good to see you.” She has clearly decided against a big reunion with Bayer—talk about an appropriate name; the guy is huge and hairy—and Jake is relieved.

Onward, he thinks. But he’s aware that the moment hasn’t quite ended. Bayer is staring at them—at Jake now—while the woman, a slim brunette with an armful of gold bangles, is focused on her phone.

“You,” Bayer says to Jake. “Do I know you?”

Jake isn’t going to risk looking this guy in the eye, so he checks out the boat the two just came off of: Dee Dee . “No, I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure? ” Bayer’s voice presses.

“He always thinks he knows people,” the brunette says. She slips her phone into her bag. When she reaches for Bayer’s hand, her bracelets jingle. “Let’s go, honey. Reservation at nine thirty.”

Jake says, “Have a good night.”

“Yes,” Bayer says. “You too.”

Mallory shoots forward like a nervous three-year-old filly out of the gates at the Derby. She practically runs down the dock to slip 106 and leaps onto the boat like it’s about to sail away. Jake can’t help himself; he laughs.

Clearly, she’s spooked. She takes a key out of the back pocket of her white capris, unlocks the padlock, and pulls open the door to the cabin. She descends into the dark.

Jake hears her setting the wine bottle down, then rummaging through a drawer. By the time he’s beside her, she has yanked out the cork.

“Who was that?”

“Bayer,” she says. “Bayer Burkhart.” She takes a deep drink straight from the bottle.

Bayer Burkhart; the name rings a bell. Or is he imagining this? “Who is he?”

“Somebody that I used to know,” Mallory says. “Wow, that was weird. Freaky, even. I haven’t seen him in twenty years.”

“Do you know who the woman was?”

“No, but I have a guess.” Mallory goes to the little cabinet for glasses. “When I knew him, he lived in Newport.”

Newport. Something is definitely familiar about the name and Newport, but Jake can’t quite grasp it.

“Were you and Bayer Burkhart involved?” Jake asks. He’s suddenly aflame with jealousy.

“I suppose,” Mallory says. “Briefly. One summer. Though it’s funny—when I was looking at him just now, I couldn’t dredge up one pleasant memory.”

“Good,” Jake says, and Mallory hands him a glass of wine.

It’s Sunday night, post–Chinese food, post-movie, post–fortune cookies, post-lovemaking. These are bittersweet hours—the last eight or ten before he heads back to the airport. It feels worse this year, but why?

Mallory has fallen asleep and Jake resents her for it, though over the years, he knows, he’s usually the one who falls asleep first while she lies awake contemplating the torturous nature of their relationship.

Mallory is breathing into the soft down of her pillow. The new mattress is yielding but firm; it feels like it’s made of fondant icing. Jake runs his hands down Mallory’s back. She has such soft skin that he makes it a point to touch her any chance he gets. This time tomorrow he’ll be back in Washington. Bess and Ursula won’t return to DC for another couple of days so he’ll have some time to decompress, shake the sand out of his shoes, get his head back where it needs to be—family, work, raising money for the CFRF. This all sounds fine and it will be fine. The goring pain he feels right now at the thought of leaving Mallory will subside, bit by bit, until at last it’s bearable—and then, in April or May, the dull melancholy that settles like a blanket of dust over his heart will turn, almost instantly, into anticipation.

There’s moonlight flooding through the window from the pond side, so when Jake’s finger runs across a rough spot on Mallory’s lower back, he squints at it in the ghostly light. A bite, a scrape? A spot of some sort, he sees. He reaches for his reading glasses and his phone and shines a light on it. An irregularly shaped black mark on her back. It looks nefarious, but is it? Jake snaps a picture of it. Is he overstepping his bounds?

Maybe—but in the morning, he’s going to show her the picture and insist that she get it checked out.

Summer #25: 2017

What are we talking about in 2017? What aren’t we talking about? The New England Patriots over the Atlanta Falcons; Moonlight over La La Land; Floyd Mayweather Jr. over Conor McGregor; North Korea; Justin Verlander; Becky with the good hair; Charlottesville; Jeff Bezos; the Tappan Zee Bridge; the Paris Agreement; Steph Curry; avocado toast; CrossFit; Meryl Streep; the eclipse; the Las Vegas shootings; the Women’s March; Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose, Maria; #metoo: Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Mario Batali, Louis C.K.; “I want something just like this.”

Mallory has melanoma. Skin cancer. The words are scary, but she refuses to panic. She has to maintain for Link.

He has grown six inches in the past year, he has his learner’s permit, and he’s been dating a girl named Nicole DaPra, and by dating, Mallory means that they are Siamese twins. She suspects they’re having sex so she buys a large box of condoms from Amazon (no point having someone see her doing so at the Stop and Shop and starting gossip) and puts them on his dresser while he’s lying in bed, watching some YouTube video on his phone.

He looks up, sees the box, and says, “I don’t need those, Mom. Nicole is on the pill.”

Suspicions confirmed, then. Mallory feels herself tearing up even though Link’s comfort in telling Mallory this indicates that she has done a good job parenting. They have an open line of communication on even the most sensitive of topics. It’s a beautiful thing, so why is Mallory crying?

She slips out of his room without his noticing and stands on the front porch where she can watch the ocean. The ocean has been her counsel for all these years, she realizes. The ocean has been her spouse.

She says to the ocean: I’m crying because he’s growing up. He and Nicole—a girl I like very much, a girl I love, I couldn’t have picked a sweeter, smarter girl—are sleeping together, which means his childhood is over. I am not his best girl anymore and I never will be again.

Or maybe she’s wrong. Maybe a mother is always her son’s best girl. She can hope.

She tells Link about the spot and the diagnosis. She tells him not to worry; they caught it early. Her surgeon, Dr. McCoy, excises the spot and does a sentinel-lymph-node biopsy. The margins are clear; her lymph nodes come back clean. She has a medical oncologist, Dr. Symon, who orders thirty days of radiation at Cape Cod Hospital. That will take care of it, Dr. Symon says.

The devastating news is that Mallory can’t go back in the sun. She has to cover up; SPF 70 won’t do. She buys four beach umbrellas. She buys wide-brimmed hats, Jackie O. sunglasses. Her skin remains winter pale. She can swim if she wears a surf shirt but even so, she has to hurry back to the shade. The sun is a sniper, it’s the Grim Reaper, and yet she longs for it. She has lived a life free of vices except for Jake, white wine, and…the sun. The sun has been her drug of choice. She is now in rehab, headed for recovery.

Link and Nicole go to prom together. They are the best-dressed couple; Nicole wears pink satin, a gown that reminds Mallory of the bridesmaid dress she wore to Coop’s second wedding, the night she conceived Link, and Link wears pink seersucker pants and a navy blazer. Mallory takes ten thousand pictures. She stands with Nicole’s mother, Terri, who is a nutritionist at the hospital and a single mother like Mallory; they would probably be friends if Mallory had the energy to start a friendship from scratch.