Winter Solstice Read online

  “Amen,” Bart says.

  “Amen,” Jennifer whispers.

  Ava wipes tears away with her napkin. “No maudlin toasts,” she says. “Weren’t you on the group text?”

  And everyone laughs.

  The meal passes pleasantly, and Jennifer’s sense of unrest fades a bit. Isabelle is up and down and in and out of the kitchen until Kevin makes her sit down to eat. Everyone praises Jennifer’s salads, and Jennifer, in turn, raves about the sweet potatoes and Mitzi’s fiesta cranberry sauce, but mostly she praises Isabelle’s turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy.

  It’s like Isabelle doesn’t hear her. She doesn’t respond.

  But no one at the table notices! Everyone is talking about next weekend, Christmas Stroll, and how Eddie Pancik, Allegra’s father, has people lined up to look at the inn. Apparently, there are already a few interested buyers.

  Patrick raises the question that Jennifer knows has been plaguing him. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do with the sale proceeds, Mitzi? Buy another house here?”

  “Actually, I’ve been thinking about the Caribbean,” Mitzi says.

  The table grows quiet and then Kelley speaks up. His voice is strong and clear, and for one second it’s like he’s perfectly healthy. “Mitzi doesn’t have to decide right now. Let’s just enjoy.”

  “Hear, hear,” Drake says.

  Jennifer offers to help clear the table and wrap leftovers. She supposes she should be grateful that Isabelle is the way she is—proud, reserved, French. Certainly there are other sisters-in-law out there who would have seen Jennifer with Norah Vale and then talked about it with everyone else in the family behind Jennifer’s back. But Isabelle doesn’t seem to have told even Kevin. Kevin is his same old self, a bartender at heart, pouring drinks and cracking jokes.

  Drake and Margaret are also helping out in the kitchen, but then Margaret says, “I’d love to take a walk through town before dessert.”

  Jennifer says, “Please, go right ahead. Isabelle and I have things handled here.”

  Drake and Margaret disappear out the door, holding hands. Jennifer returns to the dining room—ostensibly to see if there are any other plates or glasses that need clearing, but really to double-check that the rest of the family is safely in the living room.

  Jennifer hears Mitzi say, “Only five hours until midnight. I’m going to get the nutcrackers out of storage. Allegra, why don’t you come with me?”

  Ava passes by the dining room on her way down the hall. She has her phone in her hand. She sees Jennifer and says, “I can’t hear myself think with all these people. I’m going to my room.”

  Jennifer closes the swinging door between the kitchen and the dining room and secures it with a latch that nobody ever uses. Then she approaches Isabelle at the dishwasher.

  “I know you’re angry with me,” she says. “And I want to explain.”

  “No need to explain,” Isabelle says. Her English is surprisingly fluent, confirming Jennifer’s suspicions that Isabelle pretends there’s a language barrier only when it’s convenient for her. “Norah Vale is like poison. She was poison to Kevin and she was poison to you. She sold you the pills. Kevin tells me this.”

  “Right, I know,” Jennifer says. “But see, the thing is, Norah has changed. She’s going to business school, she has cleaned up her act, she dresses nicely now—”

  “How you dress does not change who you are,” Isabelle says.

  “No, I realize this, but—”

  “When I saw you, you were buying drugs from her, yes?”

  “I was not buying drugs from her,” Jennifer says firmly.

  “Buying drugs from whom?” Patrick says.

  Jennifer whips around. Paddy is looking at her and Isabelle curiously—but not accusingly, she tells herself. He holds up a butter knife. “I flipped the latch. Sorry about that. I just wanted to see if you needed any help.”

  “I did not buy drugs from Norah Vale,” Jennifer says. She knows she has some explaining to do. “A few weeks ago when we were here for Bart’s party, I bumped into Norah… do you remember when I went to the sewing center to get that fabric?”

  Patrick nods, but Jennifer knows he doesn’t remember.

  “Well, I bumped into Norah and her brother Danko on Main Street, and we ended up getting coffee at the Hub.”

  “You didn’t tell me you saw Norah,” Patrick says.

  “I must have forgotten to tell you that part,” Jennifer says. What this means is that she left out Norah’s involvement on purpose because Patrick had already digested so much and Jennifer didn’t want him to short-circuit. And does it really matter who the producer of the show is? “Norah and Danko are the ones who approached me about doing the show.”

  “What?” Patrick says.

  “Danko is the producer,” Jennifer says. She can suddenly see that the real problem with the show isn’t going to be that she’s announcing she’s a recovering addict, but rather that Norah Vale is tangentially involved. She appeals to Patrick. “You remember Danko? He pulled us out of the sand up at Great Point that one time…”

  “Yes, yes,” Patrick says. “The tattoo artist.”

  “He’s a television producer now and has been for years. Norah has nothing to do with it. She was simply making the introduction.”

  “You are now involved with some other… project with Norah?” Isabelle asks. “You are keeping her in our lives, when all I wish is for her to be gone?”

  “Norah isn’t a threat to you,” Jennifer says. “Kevin loves you. You have a family and a business and a future.”

  “She hurt Kevin very badly,” Isabelle says. “I’m sure he will agree it’s better if she has nothing more to do with anyone in this family.”

  “I’m sure he will agree with that,” Patrick echoes. He looks at Jennifer. “Sometimes I just don’t understand what you’re thinking.”

  Jennifer stares at Patrick, dumbfounded. She would like to point out the following:

  1. This show has nothing to do with Norah Vale. Danko is the producer.

  2. Sometimes Jennifer doesn’t understand what Patrick is thinking. Such as when he decided it would be a good idea to take the privileged information that Bucky Larimer gave him at his Colgate reunion and use it to illegally make twenty-five million dollars. He broke the law, he lost his job, and he went to jail. As a direct result of this, Jennifer got hooked on pills, and now they find themselves in a precarious financial situation. Needless to say, they wouldn’t be having this conversation if not for the poor choices that Patrick himself made.

  Possibly, he gets to point two on his own, because his expression and his voice soften.

  To Isabelle he says, “Jennifer is going to be working with Norah’s brother on a TV show. It’s a very big, very exciting opportunity for her, and I support her. I’m sorry this has any tie to Norah Vale. But Norah isn’t directly involved.”

  “And even if she were, she has changed,” Jennifer says. “She’s nice. I like her. I like her far more now than I ever did when I was related to her. And she is no threat to you or Kevin.”

  Isabelle shakes her head. “Please leave the kitchen,” she says. “I will finish this myself.”

  “So you’re still mad?” Jennifer says. “You’re going to stay mad unless I renounce any association with Norah? I think you need to grow up, Isabelle.”

  “Get out,” Isabelle says.

  “What’s going on in here?”

  Jennifer turns to see Mitzi walk into the kitchen with Allegra in her wake. Jennifer offers Allegra a smile. If you marry Bart, she thinks, this will be your family too!

  “Nothing,” Jennifer says. “I was just helping Isabelle clean up.”

  Isabelle sniffs as only an indignant French woman can and runs the water in the sink. Jennifer refills her wineglass at the fridge. Mitzi shifts her gaze between Isabelle and Jennifer, but they are the model of obedient daughters-in-law. There will be no family squabbles.

  AVA
r />   So much for being her own fulfilled, independent person!

  She misses Potter more than she ever dreamed possible. He’s in Palo Alto, staying at the Westin; the hotel is less than a mile from the bungalow where Trish, Harrison, and PJ live. He arrived on Wednesday afternoon. The plan was that Potter would take PJ out for pizza because Trish had a meeting. But when Potter arrived at the house, PJ refused to go with Potter unless Harrison came as well.

  “So it was like an alternate version of Heather Has Two Mommies called PJ Has Two Daddies. I’m sure everyone at Patxi’s thought we were gay.”

  “What do you care?” Ava asks.

  “I don’t,” Potter says. “But I do care that I seem to have been replaced by a thirty-year-old Brit. Did you know that Harrison is only thirty?”

  “That’s not so young,” Ava says. “I’m thirty-two.”

  “Harrison is very fond of you, by the way,” Potter says. “He made a point at dinner to ask about ‘our friend Ava.’”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him Ava was my friend and he’d better stay away from her,” Potter says.

  “How was PJ?” Ava asks. “Did he behave?”

  “He was terrific,” Potter says morosely. “He told us about school, he ate his pizza, he put his napkin in his lap, he was polite with the server.”

  “Wonderful!” Ava says.

  “But I think it was because Harrison was there,” Potter says. “I really messed up, letting Trish take him so far away.”

  Ava steels herself for the announcement that Potter is moving to California. “It is far away,” she says. “I miss you.”

  “Not half as much as I miss you,” Potter says.

  On Thursday, Ava tries to throw herself into the Thanksgiving spirit. Potter is with his family and Ava is with hers, and who knows how much longer her family will remain intact? Mitzi has let it be known that this will be the final Thanksgiving at the inn, and they all realize but do not outwardly acknowledge that it will be their last Thanksgiving with Kelley.

  If Ava lets herself think about it, she’ll dissolve. She planned to spend hours of quality time with Kelley, but his condition has deteriorated so rapidly—even since Halloween—that all he does is sleep and listen to Danielle Steel novels on his phone. Ava offered to buy the same novel down at Mitchell’s Book Corner and read it aloud, but Kelley said he enjoys the narrator’s voice. He finds it soothing.

  He seems very attached to his hospice nurses, Lara and Jocelyn; they are the only ones other than Mitzi who feed him, give him his medicine, and get him in and out of his wheelchair.

  There are a few moments on Thanksgiving that make Ave especially upset.

  1. In the morning she goes over to visit her best friend, Shelby, and Shelby’s husband, Zack, and their baby, Xavier, who is now a toddler. Shelby announces that she is pregnant again, with a girl, and Zack, who has a penchant for arcane knowledge, informs Ava that a family of a boy followed by a girl is known as the king’s choice. There is the son to carry on the family name, and the daughter to marry off and create a dynasty. Ava congratulates Shelby and Zack on getting the king’s choice, but secretly she feels left behind. She and Shelby are the same age, but Shelby is married, with a child and a baby on the way. When will Ava’s life start moving in that direction? She’s happy in New York, but she has nothing permanent.

  2. She loves Margaret and Drake, but she sees them all the time in New York. She loves Paddy and Jennifer and Kevin and Isabelle and Bart, but she saw everybody three weeks earlier. She wonders why she didn’t go to California with Potter.

  3. Bart has started dating Allegra Pancik—in a big way. Allegra comes over to the inn at three o’clock, and she and Bart are joined at the hip. Or, rather, the lips. All they do is kiss! This could have been true when they were in New York at Margaret’s retirement party, but Ava didn’t notice because she was with Potter. Now that she is missing Potter so badly, she can’t even look at Bart and Allegra. She wants to tell them to keep their hands off each other while they’re in public—but she will, no doubt, sound like a lonely, bitter old maid.

  4. Mitzi assigns Ava the sweet potatoes. Ava despises sweet potatoes. She wants to replace them with a roasted butternut squash dish, but Mitzi shoots that idea down.

  After dinner Ava gets a FaceTime call from Potter. She takes the call in her old room, which is buffered from the noise of the living room.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “You’re so beautiful,” Potter says.

  “Are you with PJ?” she asks.

  “No,” Potter says. “Why?”

  “Since you’re FaceTiming, I thought maybe you’d have PJ there too.”

  “That’s Harrison’s thing,” Potter says. “Not mine.”

  Ava nods. She doesn’t say that she thinks the FaceTiming is an effective strategy. “What time are you headed over there?”

  “In a few minutes,” Potter says. “That’s why I called now.”

  “Is Trish a good cook?” Ava asks.

  “Terrible,” Potter says. “Harrison does all the cooking, apparently. He invites the friends, he sets the table, he parents the child… he does all the domestic duties while Trish reads and writes and critiques and lectures.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have a good time,” Ava says.

  “I’m sure I’ll have a terrible time,” Potter says. “I never want to celebrate another holiday without you.”

  This makes Ava feel good. “Me either.”

  “Which brings me to the real reason for my call,” Potter says. “I want you to agree to go to Austria with me at Christmastime. We’ll spend time in both Vienna and Salzburg. An old friend of Gibby’s has a son who works for the ambassador, and he has gotten us two tickets to the Hofburg Silvesterball on New Year’s Eve, and I’ve already booked a room at the Grand Hotel Wien.”

  Ava gasps. She has seen photographs of the balls in Vienna; they’re like something out of a fairy tale—men in white tie and tails, women in gowns and tiaras, a full orchestra, endless waltzes.

  “I need a dress!” she says.

  “So I take it that’s a yes?” Potter says. “You’ll go?”

  Ava refrains from biting her lip because Potter can see her and he’ll interpret that as a sign of hesitation. What about her father? Ava decides that she will fly back to the United States on New Year’s Day and come right to Nantucket. She doesn’t start teaching again until January 8, so there will be time for a nice visit.

  “I’ll go,” she says. She gives Potter her brightest smile. The Grand Hotel Wien! A ball at the palace! “Of course I’ll go!”

  EDDIE

  As predicted, Grace wants to start their Thanksgiving dinner with a glass of champagne (Perrier-Jouët, twenty-six dollars per glass), and she orders one for Eddie as well. Then, since she can’t decide between the foie gras appetizer and the Nantucket bay scallops, she orders both and adds the caviar option to the scallops for an additional thirty-five dollars.

  Eddie is sweating. Grace wanted him to look “nice,” so he is wearing a shirt, a V-neck sweater, and a blazer. He removes his blazer and wipes his brow with his napkin. He has two hundred fifty dollars in cash on him, but they are going to exceed that, so Thanksgiving dinner is one more thing that will go on Eddie’s sagging credit card.

  He tries not to panic. He tries to be grateful. He’s grateful he has a credit card. He’s grateful he has a wife and two healthy daughters.

  He needs to sell the Christys a house. He needs to find a different buyer for the Winter Street Inn.

  He should never have gone into real estate in the first place, he thinks. It’s too risky, too uneven; it’s boom or bust. Why did he go into real estate? He has been a broker for over twenty years, but only now, Thanksgiving Day 2017, is he questioning his life’s most basic decision. He should have gone to the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology and learned HVAC. HVAC guys never have to worry about their next paycheck; HVAC guys are buying land on Vieques in Puert
o Rico and building vacation homes.

  Grace raises her glass of Perrier-Jouët. “This is really nice,” she says. “Just the two of us.”

  It is really nice, although Eddie is surprised to hear Grace say so. She doesn’t tend to celebrate being alone with him—and can Eddie blame her? All he does is think about work and obsess about money.

  “How did it feel, seeing Benton today?” Eddie asks. “Was it… weird?” Weird isn’t quite the word he’s looking for, but he doesn’t have a developed emotional vocabulary, as Grace will be the first to point out. What Eddie wants to know is: Does any part of Grace wish that she and Benton were still together? Does she miss him? Did she see his strong, muscular torso today at the Turkey Plunge and feel desire? Did she look into Benton’s soulful brown eyes and feel love?

  “Eddie,” Grace says. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  Here it comes, Eddie thinks. The answer to all of those questions is yes. And didn’t Eddie sense that this morning? There was no way that was the first time Grace had seen Benton Coe. She has been secretly meeting him ever since Benton got back. When Eddie saw Grace on the Polpis bike path, she was riding home from a secret rendezvous. She probably wanted to go to the Turkey Plunge just so she could see Benton do the stupid, pointless, masochistic swim.

  At that moment Grace’s appetizers arrive, and because the table is small, one is placed in front of Eddie—the scallops topped with black, glistening clumps of caviar. Why not add some gold leaf while they’re at it? And yet Eddie would buy every appetizer on the menu if that would make Grace love Eddie instead of Benton.