Secrets in Summer

“It could be surpassed only if all of you had whistled like birds for an hour.” Jordan laughed, then drew Darcy close. “Who was that gorgeous man you were talking to?”


“That was Clive Rush and his grandmother Mimi. I’ve told you about them. He’s a musicologist, aka fascinating man next door.”

“He was undressing you with his eyes.”

“Don’t be silly, Jordan. And, anyway, if he was, he probably looks at every woman that way.”

“Are you going to sleep with him?”

“Jordan!”

“Hey. You know you’ll get married again someday, if not to Nash, to someone, and then, honey, the drawbridge slams up and no one else ever enters your castle for the rest of your life.”

Darcy narrowed her eyes. “Are you having an affair?”

“I wish. By the time Lyle gets home from work and I’ve got Kiks in bed, we’re both too tired to even say the word sex.”

“Lyle is a wonderful man,” Darcy stoutly reminded her friend.

“And I’m a wonderful woman. And Kiks is the cutest kid in the world. I still miss romance.”

“Read a novel,” Darcy advised her. “Listen, I’m beat, and I’ve got to work tomorrow. I’m going to slip away.”

“Fine, but you’ve got to promise to tell me if anything happens with you and that Clive guy. I’ll want every detail.”

Darcy laughed. “You are so weird.”

She couldn’t get close to Beth, who was surrounded by admirers, so she caught Beth’s eye, blew her a kiss, waved goodbye, and hurried out the door.

Darcy hummed tunes from the concert as she walked home. Her humming made her think of bees and how they lived together in hives, and she laughed quietly, imagining that the Women’s Chorus was a humming hive with Beth as their queen bee.

She’d never been part of any kind of a group before, except perhaps the waitstaff at Bijoux, and that was different. There they were working for money, for themselves. The women in the chorus came together to make beauty. What they had in common was the desire to sing, because singing was a gift and a pleasure. Pretty Kate Ferguson was a nurse. Ursula Parsons, who stood next to Darcy in the middle row, went around at night clipping back the limbs of any plants whose leaves or flowers dared to protrude even half an inch into her yard, often killing her neighbor’s plants. Marylee MacKenzie kept a kennel of dogs and a stable of horses, and when she came to rehearsals, she reeked of manure and had bits of straw caught in her hair. Andrea Barnes had an eating disorder and draped layers of loose clothing over her skeletal body; she was pale and timid and jittery, but she had a gorgeous soprano voice. She’d been far too shy to sing the solo Darcy had sung tonight, and as Darcy hummed along down the street beneath the summer sky, she realized it was a huge achievement for her, to sing a solo. Tonight she had felt the support and goodwill of all those women, eccentric or not, around her as she sang.

A lamp glowed from her living room window. Muffler raced up to her, mewing his displeasure at her absence.

“Hello, pretty boy.” She picked him up and carried him to the kitchen, loving the warmth of him in her arms, his reverberating purr. “Let’s get you some treats.” She dropped a few catnip tidbits. She ran herself a glass of water and stared out her kitchen window at her garden. Lights were on in all the houses around her. Her blood was still buzzing from the concert, as if she’d just drunk a pot of coffee.

Her phone rang. She picked it up before it had rung twice. “Hey, Nash.”

“Hey, yourself, Adele.”

Darcy laughed. “More like Lady Gaga,” she joked.

“That concert was nice. You were spectacular.”

His compliment took her breath away. “Hardly. And I was so nervous you could probably hear my knees knocking together.”

“You didn’t look nervous. You looked beautiful.”

Darcy carried her water into the living room and curled up on the sofa. “Thank you. What did you think of the chorus?”

“They were fine, I guess. I can’t really judge. Most of the concerts I’ve been to in my life have involved electric guitars and amplifiers and crowds jumping up and down and waving their phones in the air.”

“You’re not going to get much of that on the island. Except maybe for the Boys and Girls Club summer gala.”

“That’s okay. I prefer listening to music alone. Or with you.”

Gosh, Darcy thought, this conversation just gets better and better.

“Did you ever sing? Play an instrument?” she asked.

“Ha. My mother made me take piano lessons when I was a kid. I hated it. Edsel, now, he played the drums. He was a natural drummer. In junior high he put together a band. You never saw such scrawny, zit-faced, jug-eared guys, but they sounded pretty good. They did a concert in May on the high school football field. I was cramming for finals, so I didn’t go. I’ve seen the video. They were awful. Still, I wish like hell I’d gone. Wish I’d shown up for him.”

Darcy asked carefully, not wanting to spook Nash now that he was opening up to her, “Was Edsel scrawny and zit faced?”

She’d said the right thing. Nash laughed.

“Nah, he was cool. He was one of those guys who just was effortlessly cool. Girls all swooned over him. Guys all wanted to be his best friend. He had this attitude like he couldn’t be bothered to take anything seriously. Damn, he used to make my parents angry. They’d bitch him out over something he’d done, and he’d sit there very straight—yes, sir, no, sir, yes, ma’am—and you could tell from his eyes he was secretly laughing his ass off. Yeah, he was a handsome kid. Brilliant, too. Annoying as hell. When he lived with me in Boston, he pretty much trashed the place, left dirty laundry everywhere, dirty dishes, cigarettes stubbed out in coffee cups—oh, yeah, and used condoms on the floor near the sofa where he was sleeping. That was an especially charming touch.”

“He wasn’t in a band when he lived with you?”

“No. He’d gotten bored with that. Bored with school, bored with our quaint little town in the Berkshires. That’s why he came to live with me in Boston. I don’t know when he started using. I met some of the girls he brought home and they didn’t look druggie. They were nice girls….” Nash took a deep breath. “God, Darcy, I’m sorry. I wanted to talk about your concert. I didn’t intend to drag you down like this.”

“You didn’t drag me down, Nash. I like hearing about your brother. I like knowing about your life.”

“Well, okay, but it’s private stuff. I don’t know what got me going on Edsel.”

“I won’t mention him to anyone, Nash. Hey, I wanted to ask you, did you notice any one in the chorus who seemed um, a bit off tune?”

“Not off tune, but that woman, what’s her name, Ursula Parsons? She always sang the words about a millisecond before the rest of the chorus, like it was a contest and she was freakin’ determined to win.”

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