by Nancy Thayer
“All right.” She spoke aloud. “Calm down. I’m going to get you some food.” Where was her purse? Not on the screened-in porch. She went up the stairs. It wasn’t in her bedroom. It was in her dressing room. Living in a big house could be complicated, she could tell already. She hurried back down and out the front door.
The Snows’ red pickup was parked next to her Jeep. Doug was sitting with his back against the side of the truck, one leg stretched out onto the tailgate and the other angled up so that his arm hung lazily over it, elbow resting on knee. Sunlight flecked his blond hair and beard and mustache with gold lights.
“I’m going into town,” she told the men. “Groceries.”
“Give us a yell when you get back. We’ll carry them in for you,” Doug said, and he smiled a lazy smile.
“All right. Thanks.” Joanna returned his smile, feeling slightly flushed as she did, and with a rush of completely unanticipated pleasure she remembered a day years ago when she was a freshman at a new high school and a cute boy wearing a letter jacket told her he’d meet her after school and carry her books home. Mystified by the power of this memory—for the boy had walked her home only once, and never talked to her again—she climbed into her Jeep, started her engine, and headed down the driveway for town.
She went to Finast, where she filled the back of the Jeep with groceries, including an array of microwavable food. As she drove home, she gobbled her makeshift lunch—a hunk of cheddar, some breadsticks, an apple. Now she’d be able to get right back to work. You could waste a lot of time on this island if you weren’t carefully organized. She was glad she was finding this out early. She had a lot to learn.
When she returned to her house, the Snowmen thumped back and forth across the wooden floors, carrying in the groceries, and Joanna unpacked them and put them away in her cupboards. As she worked in their company, she felt blithely domestic. Doug whistled a sweet, clear, slightly melancholy tune, and the sound played over Joanna’s senses like a spring breeze, alluring, tempting. Something within her lifted its head. It would be very easy, she realized, to indulge in a fantasy about Doug Snow.
The day grew more and more overcast, and she was grateful, because it didn’t coax her out to the beach, away from her piles of paper. She worked steadily, organizing her materials, stopping occasionally to take phone calls and schedule interviews with prospective housekeepers.
At five o’clock, she went up the wide staircase to the two large rooms on the right, where the Snows were breaking through a wall that separated two bedrooms. All afternoon the house had resounded with blows from sledgehammers and screams from saws, and now most of the wall was down. The air of the room was still gritty with plaster dust and a few floor studs stood, but Joanna could see how the room would look. A middle bedroom caught between front and back, with only two windows on one side, had now been opened up to the bedroom that looked out over the ocean. She was pleased. She would eventually have a spacious study.
Leaning against the doorway, she gazed around the room, surreptitiously studying her workers as well. Todd was sweeping up nails and plaster dust and bits of wood. Around his forehead he’d tied a batik bandanna, which served to hold his shoulder-length blond hair in place. He was taller than his father, and larger, bulkier, but his father looked the more powerful of the two. There was an air of restraint in each of the older man’s movements, a sense of suppressed strength. As if he felt her eyes upon him, Doug looked up, smiling his slow smile.
“You got a lot accomplished!” Joanna said.
Todd only nodded in reply, but Doug, pulling an orange extension cord into a tidy loop in his rough, tanned hands as he talked, said, “Yeah, we got further than I thought. We had to do it carefully. You never know with these old walls. This one wasn’t load-bearing.”
Simply for the sake of conversation, Joanna asked lightly, “Did you find any treasure?”
Todd kept sweeping but his eyes went to his father and then to Joanna. His father cocked an eyebrow at Joanna. “How did you hear about the treasure?”
“Bob Hoover told me.”
“Wouldn’t find it in this wall,” Doug said. “This wall’s only about fifty years old. The treasure was here with the original house.”
“So you know about it.”
“Everybody who lives here any length of time has heard about it. I was born on Nantucket, and I expect to die without ever seeing it found.”
“Don’t you think it exists?”
Doug shrugged. “It’s all the same to me.”
As Todd emptied a dustpan full of debris into a large plastic trash barrel, he casually volunteered, “I saw Madaket Brown out here this morning.”
“That’s right. She came out to apply for the job of housekeeper. Do you know her?”
Todd hesitated. “Sort of.”
Joanna waited for some elaboration, but the young man only went back to his sweeping. His father said, “Madaket’s an island girl. She’s all right. She’s had a tough life. Her parents caused a lot of trouble in their time.”
“Oh?”
“They were both pretty wild. And her grandmother’s a little on the odd side. Or was. She just died. Madaket’s living alone with a dog and a cat out in a shack. They call her Mad Kate, you know.”
“Why?”
“Oh, well. She’s different. She keeps to herself. She got the name about three years ago when we had a hurricane, or almost a hurricane. Winds of one hundred miles an hour, and rain, and Madaket went out walking in it. She certainly looked mad, her hair loose and flipping around her in that wind. She could have been killed by a flying branch. And she shows up barefoot in the middle of the night on the beach in the winter, that sort of thing.”
“Would she be a good housekeeper?” Joanna asked.
“Far as I know. She’s hardworking.”
Todd picked up the full trash barrel. “I’m going to take this down to the truck, Dad, then I’m ready to go.”
“I’ll be right with you,” Doug told his son, then turned back to Joanna. “I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the girl.” He paused, studying Joanna, then asked, “I don’t mean to pry, but do you have some friends on this island? People who can advise you? Who’ll help you out? ’Cause I can’t help but notice that you’re alone.”
“A few. Mostly summer people,” Joanna admitted.
“Well, look, if you ever need anything, feel free to call me. Okay?”
Moved by his concern and his simple, genuine offer, Joanna flushed. “Okay. Thank you.”
He nodded, then approached her, and for a moment her breath caught in her throat. Was he going to touch her?
He only walked by her, slipping sideways past her through the doorway. “Anytime. Day or night. I mean it.” She could almost feel his breath on her skin. “See you tomorrow.”
“Yes. See you tomorrow.”
Doug went back down the stairs and out the door, slamming it behind him. Joanna walked slowly to the front of the house and looked out the window at the red pickup truck as it went off down the driveway and out of her sight. Tory had told her to go slow with the island people. She’d warned her that they weren’t an easy bunch to get to know, and they resented newcomers trying to move into their lives. But Doug Snow couldn’t be any nicer.
She went back to the kitchen to put a potato in the oven for dinner. She’d have it with a nice healthy filet mignon, and fresh lettuce and asparagus from a roadside stand. Her taste buds cried out for a glass of wine, but she mixed cranberry juice and seltzer. She was all alone, and it was very pleasant.
Over the next two days, she interviewed six women. Two were college students who could only work until the end of the summer, one was a frail elderly lady, and the other three were middle-aged women with families and worries and no energy left for charm.
Sunday morning, Joanna drifted gently up from sleep to find her room filled with a pearly light. The carpenters wouldn’t come today. Pulling on a robe, she slid her feet into slippers and went down the
stairs, through the long hall, and out the French doors into the warm day. The uncut grass dropped cool beads of water on her feet and against her ankles as she walked through the small yard, down the path through the brambles, and onto the beach.
A white mist rose from the ocean, caused by the warm spring air against water still cold from winter. Just above the horizon, a creamy sun gleamed behind vaporous clouds. The tide lapped calmly against the shore. Except for the occasional cry of a gull, the silence was complete.
So different from morning in the city.
Sinking down on the sand, Joanna stared out at the glittering blue and let her thoughts drift.
She wondered what it was like at CVN these days. She’d been gone two months now. They’d be over the shock. They’d be rallying. It would be business as usual: phones would ring and Jake would do five things at once and Dhon would fret and Gloria would tap, tap, tap on her determined little feet, taking charge. Taking over?
Gloria. Gloria was the most efficient assistant Joanna had ever had, and the most treacherous. Joanna certainly didn’t miss her.
Dhon had really been fond of Joanna, as she was of him. Right now what she missed most about him was his wonderful sense of humor and his talent of mimicry. But he was such a gossip; if he knew where she was, he’d be unable to resist telling everyone else.
Carter, Jake, Bill … oh, they’d all do fine without her, and the network would flourish; Joanna’s disappearance would be only the sudden brief flash of a minuscule star exploding in the network’s spangled cosmos. Her absence would first, briefly, be considered a problem—but quickly it would become an opportunity. Hordes of writers with new ideas and bright young women with perfect skin and limitless energy would crowd in to fill her absence, and in the rush of it all she’d be forgotten.
Her heart knocked and blood surged in her ears at that thought. A cold rose of panic bloomed within her chest.
She didn’t want to be forgotten! She didn’t want to be displaced, replaced. But a year was a long span in network chronology. It would require diligence and imagination to stretch out the new shows she’d taped over the next season, and suddenly Joanna realized how much she was counting on Jake’s faith in her and his own steadfast determination to protect her from both the powers above her and those below her to see that her slot was filled with her own work instead of being preempted.
She had to trust Jake, especially Jake, who would be faced with the task of explaining her absence to the network brass in a way that would make it seem advantageous to them. Jake could do it. Carter would take his lead from Jake; no matter what he personally thought or felt, he would be sure to stay on Jake’s good side.
She pushed herself up off the sand. Perhaps she should phone someone. Gloria or Dhon. Just to remind them that her absence was temporary.
But no. She couldn’t do that. Mustn’t. Her blood surged in her ears. She sank back onto the beach and forced herself to take deep breaths. Until the babies were born, she needed to remain hidden, and quiet. There would be plenty of time after their birth at the end of October for her to get back in touch with the network. There was plenty of time.
She could tell by the way the blood pulsed just beneath her skin that all this worry about the network wasn’t good for her, was causing her blood pressure to rise—exactly what she had to avoid. If she wanted these babies, she had to relax. Now.
Monday morning the carpenters returned. Joanna was glad to see them. There was something reassuringly companionable about the sound of their voices and their footsteps as they moved above her on the second floor. She resolved to buy a CD player and some CDs. Immediately. And when Pat Hoover called to invite her to dinner, she accepted with alacrity.
Ten
Wednesday night Joanna was perfectly content. She’d beavered away and accomplished a lot on the organization of her books this morning, and then she’d spent the afternoon relaxing as she skimmed through the pile of professional newspapers and magazines and journals which had been arriving in the mail. Nothing she came across seemed the slightest threat to her show.
More exciting than that was the movement she’d felt in her belly while she’d sat, feet up, reading. She’d caught her breath, and stared at her stomach, and focused, and yes, there it had been again, a definite stirring of life within her.
“Oh, babies,” she’d said in tones of soft awe, and gently she’d stroked her abdomen. “Hello.”
Just now it had seemed a great luxury and pleasure to step outside her house, lock its door, and stroll at her own leisure to her waiting Jeep. She started the ignition and slipped in an Enya CD. Music of her own choosing filled the air as Joanna drove from the country into the town and along Nantucket’s charming side streets.
The posted speed limit was twenty-five miles an hour, and the roads were narrow and winding, forcing her to drive slowly and giving her the opportunity to appreciate what she passed: houses with their doors and windows open to the summer air, window boxes spilling with flowers, families playing croquet, a boy and girl strolling, arms entwined, a little old lady garbed in a flowered dress, pearls, and sneakers out walking her Jack Russell terrier. How different this was from rushing out to Lexington Avenue, waving for a cab, hoping the driver spoke English and wasn’t stoned, then being tossed around inside the cab like a die in a cup as she was carried at erratic speeds to her destination—and keeping guard at every moment to be sure the driver was headed in the right direction.
Oh, she was headed in the right direction now. She had liked Bob Hoover, so it was possible she’d like his wife; perhaps she’d have a friend on the island, someone who actually lived rather than only vacationed here. She pulled into the drive of the Hoovers’ Main Street residence. A massive brick Federal, it rose foursquare and proud, its windows shining. She knocked on the door, and Bob answered it, looking nautical, as always, with his Nantucket red trousers and navy blazer and ruddy face. The room he ushered her into was impeccably furnished in antiques, the walls covered with glowing oils and watercolors.
His wife crossed the room, heels sinking into the deep pile of her white carpet, to take Joanna’s hand. She was slender, with the erect posture and graceful movements of one who has long studied ballet. She wore a simple black silk dress accented with an emerald brooch which brought out the green of her eyes. Her long hair was elaborately coiled at the back of her head, and the threads of silver among the black glittered.
“Hello, Joanna. I’m so glad you came. Bob has told me so much about you.”
“Thank you for inviting me,” Joanna replied. They smiled at each other with the instant and instinctive sympathy of attractive, confident women.
“You know Morris and June.”
“Oh, yes. Actually, they’re responsible for my being here. Two years ago I was on the way to a party at their house and I accidentally turned on the wrong driveway—and found my house.”
She smiled with affection at the Latherns and was pleased when June rose and kissed her cheek. “Not to mention I was her lawyer when she bought the house.” Both the Latherns were tall and big-boned and athletic, always nearly humming with a kind of eager and barely suppressed energy. They looked more like brother and sister than husband and wife.
Claude Clifford was there, too, wearing a melon-colored Ultrasuede jacket over a rose-colored silk shirt. He greeted Joanna with a theatrical bow: “We meet again!”
Bob asked, “What can I get you to drink? We’re having vodka tonics.”
“Just seltzer, please,” Joanna told him.
They sank into their various chairs and sofas. As Bob handed Joanna her drink, he looked steadily at her face and remarked, “This is the first time I’ve seen you without a wig. Your real hair suits you.”
“A wig?” Claude’s eyes lit up. “You wear a wig?”
“I left my television show rather abruptly,” Joanna explained. “No one in New York knows where I am, and I’d like to keep it that way for a while.”
“How deliciousl
y Gothic!” Claude exclaimed.
“So you mustn’t tell a soul that Joanna’s on the island, Claude. Really.” Pat looked sternly at Claude.
“Darling, cross my heart!”
“Also,” Joanna continued, “I’ve acquired a bit of celebrity because of Fabulous Homes and I’m just very tired of it. I want to be a normal person. I want to walk into a coffee shop or a bookstore without people judging me. Staring.” As she spoke, she covertly checked to be sure the oversized linen jacket she wore covered her bulging middle. No need to explain that yet.
“Then you’re in the right place,” June assured her. “We get all kinds of celebrities here: politicians, millionaires, movie stars.”
“The ones who mean it when they say they don’t want to be photographed or recognized,” her husband added.
“Couldn’t recognize them if you tried,” Claude sniffed. “They all dress like ditchdiggers and cleaning women. No glamour. It’s awful.”
“Now, Claude. You can go somewhere else if you need glamour.” Morris turned to Joanna. “We moved here from New York five years ago because we wanted some tranquillity—”
“—and we haven’t regretted it a minute!” June finished her husband’s sentence and they nodded at each other in perfect synchronicity.
Pat leaned toward Joanna. “How are you settling in?”
“Well, so far. Things are chaotic, but that’s to be expected. It’s so beautiful out there. Every time I look out a window, I’m amazed.”
“If you ever feel lonely, don’t forget we’re nearby,” June told her.
