“We were wild that night,” Nancy says, breaking into my reverie.
“Wild,” I echo, disoriented. I’ve forgotten what she was talking about.
“Van and I. At the party. And for a while after that, too. When you’re young, you don’t think about the consequences. Hormones rule.”
“And the consequences were . . .”
She rests her hand on her belly. “A bun in the oven.”
“You were pregnant?”
“I was so scared,” she says. “I thought I might like to not be pregnant. It wasn’t in my plans. I almost got rid of the baby. I wasn’t sure.”
I’m not sure of anything, I say to Jacob in Café Presse. When I think of being a mother, I can’t catch my breath. I cup my hands around the mug, a life raft. Jacob closes his hands around mine. I take comfort in the warmth of his touch.
It’s natural to be scared, he says. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t.
I’m afraid I won’t be a good mother. I’ll snap at the kids. I’ll expect too much of them.
You’ll be perfect, he says, looking deep into my eyes. I’m certain.
“Nothing was certain,” Nancy is saying. “We were messing around. But Van had a sense of duty. We got married at city hall with only a few witnesses.”
“You didn’t invite family?” I say. A freighter appears on the horizon, gliding east toward the distant mainland.
“My mom was there, and his parents. And our best friends. We didn’t tell anyone else. We got married fast.”
Is this too fast, too soon? Jacob says in the dressing room. He slipped in before the wedding. He leans down to look at me in the mirror, so handsome in his tailored tuxedo, and my heart falters. Maybe he’s right. Maybe everything is happening too quickly.
You shouldn’t be in here, I say to him.
You can talk to me about anything, Kyra, I hope you know that. Are you having second thoughts?
No second thoughts, I say. He backs away into a mist. What happened before that moment? What happened after? There is something wrong about the encounter, the way the details come back to me. It seemed like afternoon, but maybe it was late morning. Maybe I only imagined him coming into the dressing room. Linny rushed in soon afterward, her face flushed. Everyone’s here, she said. Are you ready?
I turned to her and said, Do you think it’s too soon? Maybe Jacob didn’t come into the dressing room at all.
She hugged me. It’s your life. Seize the day.
I’m impulsive . . . but we’re in love. Love is all that matters.
She kissed my cheek. Then I give you my blessing.
Nancy zips up her jacket, the sound grating through my memory. “My mom got sick pretty soon after Van and I got married. We came back to the island to take care of her until she passed away.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“She died right after my son was born,” she says, her voice breaking. “She got to see him, but he never got to know his grandma.”
“So you have a son.”
“Tristan, yes. I told you about him. He’s in college.”
“I’m sorry, I forgot.”
“My mom left us the house, so Tristan grew up here.”
“Was it what you wanted, to move back here?”
She hunches against the wind, which has changed direction, coming from the north now. “I didn’t think about what I wanted. I did what was practical. Times were tough. Van started the salvage business, I stayed home with the baby. I took over teaching at the school, and the rest is history.”
“Are you happy now?” I say.
“I’m happy enough.” She looks at me. “What’s happiness anyway? We make the decisions we have to make, under the circumstances. I had my son. He became my joy.”
“But your marriage . . .”
“Would I have married Van if I hadn’t been pregnant? I don’t ask myself those questions anymore. They can’t be answered. The past can’t be changed.” She sighs, picks up a large white clamshell, chipped at the corner. I step around a stranded, dead crab, turned upside down, the meat picked clean by seagulls.
“You two love each other, though,” I say.
“You could call it love.” She stops to sit on a dry, weathered log, driftwood long ago washed up to its sandy grave. “What we had grew into love, I suppose.”
I sit beside her, the cold breeze in my hair. Frothy waves ripple across the sea. There is nobody else on the beach. The island often feels this way, I realize—devoid of human habitation.
“But you weren’t in love when you got married,” I say. “It really was only about the baby?”
“We liked each other well enough. Anyway, love is a verb, isn’t it? It’s the way you treat someone. What we actually feel about people can be . . . complicated. Don’t you think? Couples get married for all kinds of reasons. But you and Jake married for love. You’re lucky.”
Did I marry Jacob for love? I must have. I can’t imagine marrying for any other reason.
“You have a son,” I say, “and Van seems like a solid, decent man. You’re lucky, too.”