Darcy couldn’t help laughing. “I promise you, we’ve got plenty of dust. And plenty of normal women. Take your boys to the beach every day, let them swim in the ocean, and they’ll be too exhausted to make noise in the evening.”
Susan’s face lit up. “Oh, what a kind thing to say. You’re so nice. You must be a therapist.”
“Um, no,” Darcy gently reminded her. “I’m a children’s librarian.”
“Of course! Forgive me! I’m not a complete idiot, you know.”
With that, Susan hurried back to her house, waving and calling thanks.
Darcy waved back, smiling, and closed the front door. She was immeasurably cheered. Someday maybe she would have a husband and children, but for now, she curled up on the sofa and picked up her current novel, and she felt even a little bit smug.
5
The next afternoon, not even five minutes after Darcy returned home from work, a tow-haired, straight-backed little boy appeared at her door with Darcy’s pitcher in one hand and a gallon carton of milk in the other.
“My name is Henry Brueckner and my mother says thank you very much,” the boy said.
His dignity was touching. “Thank you, Henry,” Darcy told him, accepting the pitcher. “But this is much more than your mother borrowed. Let me pour some into my pitcher and you can take the rest home.”
Henry looked worried by her words. He was a very formal child, one, undoubtedly, who as the oldest was often made responsible for doing the right thing. Darcy’s offer confused and even dismayed him. How to decide? Should he hurry home and ask his mother or go ahead and accept her offer? After all, Darcy was an adult, so he should respect her decision.
“Come in for a moment,” Darcy said.
Henry looked horrified. “My mother said I shouldn’t bother you.”
“Oh. Oh, I see. Well, stay right there.” She hurried to the kitchen, poured some milk into her pitcher, and returned to the front door. “Now. Tell your mother I took exactly what I loaned.”
Henry’s face brightened. What Darcy said made sense.
“And please tell her I’m very happy to meet such a polite and dependable young man.”
Henry turned bright red. “Thank you,” he said, and turned to hurry away.
“Henry,” Darcy called. “We have a wonderful library here with lots of events for kids your age and story hours for your younger brothers.”
He nodded and rushed off, clutching the carton of milk to his chest.
—
The next day was a rainy, windy, blustery day. After a couple of days on the beach with lots of sunshine, the summer people would be happy to use the library for a change of pace. If there were too many rainy days in a row, the adults and their children came in, restless and grumpy, as if the librarians had caused the weather.
Today so many children flocked in for story time that Darcy and Beverly knew from experience it would be impossible to keep order, so they quickly counted heads and split the children into two groups. Beverly took the older children down the stairs to the gallery. Darcy chose the area between two bookcases with the younger children.
“Today I’m going to read The Mousehole Cat,” Darcy announced. She sat on a small wooden chair. The children sat on the floor and some of the parents did the same or perched on the child-size chairs at the perimeter of the group.
As everyone got settled, Darcy recognized Susan and her brood of blond boys. She winked and smiled to them. Susan smiled back. Darcy held the book high as she read; she had the words almost completely memorized. It was a charming story set in a harbor town in Cornwall that was not so different from Nantucket. After she finished the book, she asked the children questions—“Do you have a cat? Do you like stories about dogs? About boats?”—and directed them to books they could take home. It was such a pleasure to see children leaving the library, happily clutching books to their chests. She hoped Susan would come say hello, but by the time the crowd around Darcy had thinned, Susan and her boys were gone.
—
Over the next few days, the sun grew fatter and closer and more intense. After work in the afternoons, Darcy slipped into the restroom and changed into a bathing suit, pulled her sundress back on over it, and walked down to Jetties Beach for a cooling swim. She didn’t go there as often as she should, like a New Yorker never visiting the Empire State Building. Darcy went to different beaches for different reasons. The south shore was good for surf and crashing storms. Darcy preferred the calm waters of the Sound at Steps Beach for swimming, but that was a much longer walk. If she had an afternoon off, she drove out to Quidnet and swam in the sweet waters of Sesachacha Pond or, her favorite, at the end of the harbor at Coskata, a small lonely beach past the Wauwinet Hotel, off a rutted dirt road that required a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Jetties Beach was usually too crowded, but today, by the time she got there, the crowds had thinned out as people left for dinner.
In the late afternoon, wearing a loose cotton dress over her wet bathing suit, her long hair hanging damp and cool down her back, Darcy walked from Jetties Beach over to the narrow cobblestoned lane she called Jelly Bean Road. She climbed the hill and ambled over to Main Street, circling past the crowded downtown area with its shops and crowds and never enough parking spots.
Her pulse quickened as she came to her street. So far she’d stayed away from her garden in the late afternoons, not wanting to be seen by Boyz, not wanting even to think about him. On the other hand, she didn’t want to be a coward, fenced in by her own anxieties. She knew that if, for example, Boyz and his family were playing croquet in their yard, that did not mean she had to hide inside. Her garden was her connection with her grandmother, and more—it was her place. She had to weed and plant and trim. She wanted to have friends over for summer parties, when she strung the trees and bushes with miniature lights so the garden sparkled like a magic land. She had to be able to sit alone on her patio and read until darkness fell, and then let the book drop to her lap and her head fall back on the chaise so she could watch the sky slowly and tenderly transform the sun’s gold into evening’s silver as stars appeared. This was a special time for her, almost a sacred time, and she wouldn’t allow herself to give it up.
At home, Darcy tossed her book bag on a chair and headed for the kitchen. This evening, she was determined to enjoy her backyard. She chose a Pinot Noir from her small wine rack and was uncorking it when she glanced out her kitchen window and saw, in the next yard, something out of place, peculiar, unsettling.
Had someone dumped a bundle of clothes in her neighbor’s yard? But, no, there was movement—and all at once she realized that Mimi, that dear old grandmother, was lying on the ground, unable to rise.
Darcy set the wine down and raced out her front door, squeezed through the narrow passageway between houses, not caring if she broke a few petals off the blue hydrangea, and burst into the backyard.