“Are you okay…?”
“It’s so sad,” she says, quickly. “That Hussey House is gone like all the other shacks. Soon there won’t be any left. I hate seeing the new places scattered around, like pockmarks, so overt with their cedar shingles not yet turned to gray.”
Evan nods.
“Sorry,” she says. “I know it’s your job.…”
“It is my job,” he says. “And thank God for people who need more than one home. But I hear you. It used to be that this island was a place for escape. Now it’s a place to be seen and it’s losing more character by the day. Sconset started so modestly—a cluster of huts for the fishermen. They weren’t even homes, really, just shelters to protect against the weather while the men caught their cod and bluefish. They had no floors. No kitchens. At least until the wives came for a visit and decided to stay for good.”
“Really?” Bess turns back toward him. “I never knew Sconset was a down-and-gritty, boys-only kind of place.”
“Of course you didn’t. You’re an off-islander. Feed me,” he says in a first-rate Cookie Monster voice.
Bess thinks that he must have kids. He’s not married, she knows that much. Or, at least, he doesn’t wear a ring, a detail Bess hadn’t realized she’d noticed.
“‘Feed me’? I don’t recall demanding food.”
As soon as she says it, Bess’s stomach growls as if it’s pulverizing gravel. That body of hers, betraying her once again.
“What happened after that?” Bess sputters, pressing into her stomach to shut it up. “With the fishermen and their shacks?”
“Well, like I said, the women showed up and complicated everything,” Evan says with a wink. “As expected.”
“Or, they made life inhabitable.” Bess winks back. “As expected. Well, don’t tell Cissy I didn’t know that tidbit. I’ve worked hard to become the second-favorite child. She’d demote me in a blink.”
“Aw, don’t fret. You can’t be expected to know Nantucket’s rich history. You’re an off-islander, here to rape and pillage.”
“Oh, Christ.” Bess rolls her eyes. “Lest you forget, I graduated from Nantucket High, same as you. And there was never a shack on our land, so my ancestors didn’t contribute to the degradation of fair Sconset.”
“Obviously there wasn’t a shack on your property. Locals aren’t dumb enough to build on that bluff.”
“Wow! That hurt!” Bess says, though he’s not wrong. “At least buy me a drink if you’re going to fuc—Never mind.”
She shakes her head and snickers to herself.
“Come on, you have to finish the joke. Buy you a drink if I’m going to, what?”
“You know what.”
“Rhymes with ‘duck’?”
“You were right about the memories.” Bess shakes her head again, laughing, trying to move on. “Suddenly I’m back in high school getting teased and harassed by you. I’m curious. Did the Husseys ever actually own this land? Or is it something some doofus concocted because it seemed apt?”
“It really was in a Hussey’s hands. Back in the 1800s, Ebenezer Hussey bought the place for thirty pounds of cod.”
“I’d sell Cliff House for less if I had any faith in my ability to get Cissy out of it.”
Bess exhales and sits on a nearby stack of wood. She is suddenly dead tired, bone-dragging spent. Cod or no cod, her head feels like it’s swimming with it.
“Are you okay?” Evan asks. “You look a little peaked.”
“I’m peaked all right.” Bess braces herself against both knees. “It’s been a helluva few months.”
“Oh yeah? Anything specific?”
“I’m getting divorced.”
“I heard something along those lines.”
“That’s why I feel like total shit,” she says. “One of the reasons anyway.”
Evan’s head moves to some imperceptible degree. Bess studies him for a solid twenty seconds, waiting. He gives her nothing, which is exactly what Bess would predict. Evan f’ing Mayhew. Aged sixteen years but hasn’t changed a day.
“Any day it should be finalized,” Bess goes on, suddenly hot and sticky beneath her arms. “We’re just squabbling over investments and furniture now. I’m letting him keep the house. Seems easier that way.”
Still, Evan doesn’t say anything.
“I know what you’re thinking!” she chirps, returning to her schoolgirl self, desperate with the need to fill every gap in conversation. “What fool would let this fox out of his clutches?! Look at me!”
Bess gestures toward her sweatpants, her braless tee. She should’ve gotten a boob job back when Brandon suggested it. She’d been indignant at the time—she’s a doctor, for the love of God!—but the man had a point. Her breasts, they are not so great.
“Bess…” Evan says, and reaches for her hand. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re sorry? Question mark?”
“If you need me to be sorry, that’s what I am.”
“You should write for Hallmark with that level of inherent sympathy. How compassionate.”
She is thoroughly vexed but the comment is so Evan. The very worst of him, as a matter of fact.
“Lizzy C.”
Bess lurches. Lizzy C. His old nickname for her; he was the only person to ever use it. She wishes he’d knock it off.
“I didn’t mean—” Evan starts.
“Thanks but don’t bother with the ‘sorry’s. It’s really for the best and I don’t have a shred of regret. About the divorce, anyway.”
“That’s what I suspected, which is why…” Evan shakes his head. “Here’s the deal. What’s his name? Your ex? Brian?”
“Brandon. You don’t remember his name?”
Then again, why would he?
“Brandon,” Evan repeats. “Yep, sounds like a douchebag all right. Listen, I don’t know much about him. Or you anymore, for that matter. But as for Brandon, I only met him twice. Once at your wedding, and once when you trotted him out to some party at the Yacht Club.”
“Did I really bring him only twice?” Bess says, trying to remember.
Though they never made it to Sconset during their four-year marriage, they had dated for two years before that and met further back still, when they were both at Stanford, Bess for medical school and Brandon for business. No, it must’ve been more than twice.
“Are you sure?” Bess asks, mostly to herself. “Twice?”
“I can’t be sure. It’s not like you kept me apprised of your comings and goings. Plus, I was in Costa Rica for a while. You could’ve visited a hundred times in those years.”
“Probably not a hundred.”
Costa Rica. Bess feels a kick to the gut.
“Look, maybe I’m wrong,” Evan says. “Even if I was around, you’d hardly want to introduce Mr. Fancy-pants to your random townie ex-boyfriend. Best to keep the locals on the down low.”
“Please,” Bess says, and lets her eyes skip away. “I told him plenty about you. Plen-ty.”
Evan doesn’t really think that, does he?