The Guest Cottage

by Nancy Thayer

  “Thank you,” Trevor said.

  Sophie said, “Mother.”

  A knock sounded at the kitchen door. Hester jumped up to answer it.

  “Hello, everyone,” Connor said, waving. “Are you ready, Hester?”

  Hester looked at her watch. “Goodness, I lost track of the time. Yes, Connor, I’m ready.” She searched the kitchen counter for her purse and found it, then glanced back at Sophie. “We’re going into town to hear a lecture on island farming at the Nantucket Historical Association. Don’t worry about dinner for us. We’ll eat in town.”

  “Great, Mom. Have fun, you two,” Sophie said.

  “Thanks, darling,” Hester replied as she went out the door.

  My mother called me darling, Sophie thought. Miracles really did happen.

  —

  The day before they left the guest cottage, Sophie sat down at the piano. Her mother was at the apartment having lunch with Connor. Trevor was at the beach with the three kids for one last swim. She had remained home to do laundry and pack. Finally, she was organized for their trip back to Boston tomorrow.

  She let her hands drift idly over the keys, gliding from one old favorite melody into another, wondering why it was that here, in this house, on this island, she had discovered her music again. The easy answer was that here she was free of Zack, released from his demands, desires, and ambitions. There was some truth in that, but that was not the entire truth. Maybe she had accepted—even needed—the restraints and aspirations of his way of life because she wanted to escape from her own goals. Yes, Sophie thought, playing a light arpeggio, right: when she had been all about piano, something deep within her had known she also wanted children and family and home and humble homemade zucchini bread. She couldn’t have that and become an international concert pianist as well. Professional musicians worked as hard, in their way, as long-distance truck drivers. They had to practice for hours every day. They had to fly all over the world to perform in countries where they didn’t speak the language on pianos they’d never used before, the ivory keys holding an unfamiliar and unpredictable response. Not much time for zucchini bread.

  She didn’t want to believe she had been ruthless when she met Zack, that she’d only pretended to love him so she could have a family, so she could escape her own obsession. Lightly playing the familiar notes of “Some Enchanted Evening,” she remembered meeting him, being enchanted by him, fascinated by his verve and motivations. If she hadn’t loved him, she certainly had been swept away by him, and for a long time she had enjoyed the ride.

  Somewhere along the way, in the midst of his architectural success and her happiness with her children and home life, she had lost her admiration for him. That was true, and that was sad. It had been a gentle falling off, maybe beginning at a cocktail party when she watched him suck up to some corrupt, unconscionably wealthy banker, in the hopes that the man would ask Zack to design a house for him. Or it might have been other times, all the times Zack didn’t show up to see his children perform in ballet recitals and school plays and Little League games. And what had started as a trickle of unrest had built into a river of dislike. She had tried to keep up the façade of loving him. She had thought she was doing the right thing for her children.

  Arriving here to find the piano, sitting down to discover that she still could play—not well, but well enough for her own pleasure—had been a revelation. She had recovered a deep and significant part of herself. It was not all of who she was, but it was an important part.

  And Trevor and Leo? How could their meeting be explained? Chance, serendipity, fate, the stars in alignment, the universe blessing them…a miracle. Sophie had always believed miracles existed, and now, for the third time in thirty-six years—the first two times had been the births of her son and daughter—a miracle had happened again. It might be as simple, as incomprehensible, as illogical, as marvelous, as that.

  And now she would always have music in her life.

  One Year Later

  “Mom.” Jonah hulked into the bedroom, trying not to look pleased with himself in his tux. Today he was going to walk his grandmother down the aisle to give her away in marriage to Connor, the man who had changed her life.

  “Jonah, sweetheart, you look so handsome! Grandmother will be thrilled.” Sophie crossed the room to inspect her son. She was wearing high heels, and still she had to look up. “Let me straighten your tie. You did an excellent job of tying it.”

  “Yeah, at this rate I’ll be a great butler.”

  “I think I see you more as a soccer star, sweetie,” Sophie told him, reaching up to ruffle his hair.

  Jonah jerked his head back. “Don’t touch my hair.” He had obviously spent some time gelling and arranging it into its ridiculous startled porcupine appearance.

  “Mommy, Mommy,” cried Lacey, running into the room. “Look at me!” She wore a lavender dress with a full skirt that twirled out all around her when she spun.

  “Beautiful,” Sophie said. “Come let me put the circlet of flowers in your hair.”

  Jonah plopped down on the bed, putting his feet in their handsome black shoes right up on the duvet. Sophie didn’t scold him. She was pleased that he was remaining in the room to talk to her and Lacey. Obviously he was becoming comfortable with the entire formal, dressy fussiness of wedding preparations. It would be the third wedding he’d taken part in this year.

  First, and most extravagant, had been Zack’s marriage to Lila. The ceremony itself was held in Trinity Church in Boston, with no fewer than five bridesmaids for Lila, who was resplendent in a personally designed Vera Wang gown and tiara so covered with sparkling stones and pearls Sophie was amazed the woman could stand. Lacey had been Lila’s flower girl, and both excited and nervous about her performance, but totally enthralled by her own outfit, a black (Lila was nothing if not edgy) sheath, low black heels, and a wide rhinestone headband. The roses Lacey sprinkled on the carpet were blood red.

  Jonah had been his father’s best man. At first, he had balked, complaining that it didn’t even make sense for a guy to be best man at his father’s wedding to someone else. It was Trevor who calmed the boy down, by saying simply, “Yeah, well, Jonah, I want you to be best man at my wedding ceremony when I marry your mother.”

  “Dude,” Jonah had sighed. “Life is so complicated.”

  “Dude,” Trevor had replied, “you have no idea.”

  So Jonah had bit the bullet and been his father’s best man. Later, he confided to Sophie that he’d found the scale of the wedding and the reception at the Boston Harbor Hotel both overwhelming and boring. “Dad’s such a phony,” he grumbled, “and Lila is, too.”

  Lacey, however, idolized Lila, with her fabulous clothes, her coiffed hair and plucked eyebrows, her scarlet lips and heavy gold jewelry. “I want to be just like Lila when I grow up,” Lacey told her mother.

  “Lovely, sweetie,” Sophie responded. “You should try to spend as much time with Lila as possible, don’t you think? To pick up clues on how to dress and wear your hair?”

  Lacey had eyed her mother skeptically. At eleven, she was beginning to achieve a sense of independence and a brewing need to break away from her closeness to Sophie. Sophie understood this. She’d read a lot of books on child rearing lately. Her sadness at Lacey’s changing attitudes was balanced by the surprising knowledge that Lila was nice, and more than nice, caring and willing to be involved with the children. Now when Zack had his children for the weekend, as decreed in the divorce settlement, he actually spent time with them, because of Lila. Zack didn’t claim many of those weekends—he often had important business. But Sophie was grateful for Lila’s willingness to help Zack build a sturdy relationship with his children. She knew it could have been otherwise.

  Sophie, Trevor, and Leo, too, attended Zack and Lila’s zillion-dollar wedding extravaganza so they could see Jonah and Lacey in their finery. But Zack and Lila weren’t invited to Sophie and Trevor’s wedding. That was a much more modest affair, attended
by family and a few close friends: Bess and her husband and Cash and Betsy; Angie; River and his wife, Nestra, and their baby, Plum; and Anne, Kyle, and Gabe Manchester. Jonah was Trevor’s best man, Lacey was Sophie’s bridesmaid, and Leo was the ring bearer. Hester and Connor flew up for the wedding and hosted the wedding celebration—a private dinner cruise on a posh yacht that slowly glided around all the islands in Boston Harbor.

  Today Hester was marrying Connor. She had finally accepted a long-deserved sabbatical from the hospital in order to take a honeymoon with him in Hawaii, where, Sophie hoped, Hester would not spend the time trying to find and cure an obscure disease among rare parrots. Connor’s softening influence on her mother was amazing, but no one could change the woman completely.

  Even so, Hester was going to have a wedding, a real, romantic, sentimental wedding, on Nantucket, in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at eleven o’clock. Susie Swenson had happily given the guest cottage to Sophie and her family for the weekend, and the house was nearly explosive with excited people—not only Lacey, Jonah, Leo, Trevor, and Sophie, but in the other wing, Hester and her friends (Sophie had been startled to learn that her mother had friends), who were now in the process of arraying the bride. In the family room, Connor’s old friends Curt and Marjorie Luber and Sylvia and Donald English were staying. They had flown in from Iowa for the week, and Sophie had been delighted to see how much fun they all had together. Well, she thought, they don’t have to worry about how their children do on their school exams or the future economy. They seemed to have reached the age of freedom—perhaps it wasn’t golden, but it certainly seemed like a lot of fun.

  Trevor stuck his head in the bedroom door. “Time to head out for the church, everyone.”

  Lacey, the flower girl, shrieked, sprinting to the stairs and down to the car. Jonah was going to give his grandmother away and Leo was going to be the ring bearer once again, a position he bore with extreme earnestness.

  “Come on, Leo,” Jonah said, holding out his hand to his stepbrother. “Let’s go on down.”

  Leo was playing with Legos between the bed and the window, but he rose quickly, allowed Sophie to straighten his little blue blazer, and ran to take Jonah’s hand.

  When the room emptied of children, Trevor stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

  “What a crew,” he said. “If the kids get any more excited, they’ll levitate.”

  Sophie laughed. She rose from the chair and walked over to her husband. “You look stunningly handsome.” Wrapping her arms around him, she leaned against him, allowing them both to share a peaceful moment in their own private world. Her mother had asked her to play the piano for the wedding, and Sophie had happily agreed. She had also made the wedding cake and much of the food for her mother’s reception, which would be held back here at the guest cottage. But for now, for a moment, she pressed against Trevor, indulging her senses in the pleasure of his love.

  Trevor kissed her forehead and held her away. “Stop that. We’d better catch up with the others.” He cocked his head, scrutinizing Sophie. “You look beautiful, Sophie. I mean it. I don’t mean you look nice—you look triumphant.”

  Sophie laughed smugly as she opened the door and stepped out into the hall, where her mother’s friends were gathering like a flock of twittering doves.

  “Thanks, Trevor,” she said over her shoulder. “It must be that pregnant glow.”

  Trevor’s jaw dropped. “What?”

  Sophie nodded, smiling brilliantly. She held out her hand. “Shall we go?”

  For Sofiya Popova, С любов. One day I will read your books. Nazdrave!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I lift a glass of champagne—not just my beloved Prosecco, but real champagne, let’s say Perrier-Jouët—to people I will call “the connectors,” the people whose hard work and special joie de vivre make the connections that make a book possible.

  I send enormous thanks to Hristo, Zarko, Ivan, and Valentina of the River Beatrice on the Uniworld Danube Cruise of August 4, 2013. You truly make it a Uniworld. Thanks also to Deborah Beale, who helped me learn a few words of Bulgarian, and who also helps me remember what a universal language music can be, not to mention how quickly she responded when I asked her for the first five notes of “Greensleeves.”

  Many thanks to Tharon Dunne of the Literacy Volunteers of Nantucket, for all her good work and for her genius instincts in introducing me to a female Bulgarian journalist.

  Thanks to my Facebook friends, who have opened up the world to me, made me laugh, and kept me sane. Okay, as sane as they are. Really, I love you all.

  Thanks to my extremely talkative family—talk about connectors!—my grandchildren, Ellias, Adeline, Emmett, and Anathea Forbes, who attach me to constant joy, and to their parents, Sam and Neil Forbes, who inform me of fascinating spiritual and scientific worlds, and to Josh Thayer and David Gillum, who share their mesmerizing, if occasionally incomprehensible, work with me.

  Thanks to my ebullient and literate friends Jill Hunter Burrill, Jean Mallinson, Charlotte Kastner, Julie Hensler, Toni Massie, Tricia Patterson, Jan Dougherty, and my sister Martha Foshee. Great thanks to Dr. John West, who knows everything—and connects everything—and his wife, Mary West, who cooks the best dinners in the world.

  A deep curtsey of thanks to my agent, Meg Ruley, who has connected me with so much great pleasure through the past decade. Thanks to all at the Jane Rotrosen Agency, especially the invaluable Christina Hogrebe.

  And a forehead-to-the-floor full bow of gratitude to my editor, Linda Marrow, who can connect so well she knows what I meant to say even when I’ve said it incorrectly.

  It takes so much work to put out a beautiful book. I send a bouquet of gratitude to Libby McGuire (I hope you and your husband make many trips to the island!), Gina Centrello, Dana Isaacson, Kim Hovey, Elana Seplow-Jolley, Christine Mitkityshyn, Maggie Oberrender, and Penelope Haynes.

  And thank you again and again, Charley.

  BY NANCY THAYER

  The Guest Cottage

  An Island Christmas

  Nantucket Sisters

  A Nantucket Christmas

  Island Girls

  Summer Breeze

  Heat Wave

  Beachcombers

  Summer House

  Moon Shell Beach

  The Hot Flash Club Chills Out

  Hot Flash Holidays

  The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again

  The Hot Flash Club

  Custody

  Between Husbands and Friends

  An Act of Love

  Belonging

  Family Secrets

  Everlasting

  My Dearest Friend

  Spirit Lost

  Morning

  Nell

  Bodies and Souls

  Three Women at the Water’s Edge

  Stepping

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  NANCY THAYER is the New York Times bestselling author of The Guest Cottage, An Island Christmas, Nantucket Sisters, A Nantucket Christmas, Island Girls, Summer Breeze, Heat Wave, Beachcombers, Summer House, Moon Shell Beach, and The Hot Flash Club. She lives on Nantucket Island.

  nancythayer.com

  Facebook.com/​NancyThayerAuthor