Page 2 of Summer Light on Nantucket

“Mychildrenare the love of my life,” Blythe countered.

“I know, but I think you still have a soft spot for Aaden. Actually, Blythe, I think you even still have a soft spot for Bob.”

“Maybe.” Blythe thought about this. “Okay, so maybe a person gets more than one love of her life.”

Jill held up her hand like a stop sign. “But only a limited number. Because otherwise it doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe a limited numberromantically,” Blythe qualified.

The waitress returned with their credit cards. Blythe and Jill signed their tabs.

“I do still have a soft spot for Bob,” Blythe confessed. “I often wonder if the divorce was a mistake. Impulsive. Our split was so…pleasant. But maybe that means we were right to get divorced.” She shook her head. “Stop me now. No more overanalyzing. Let’s go look at the sales at Nordstrom.”

The two women gathered their purses and shopping bags and slid from the booth. They stepped out into the mall.

“Which way shall we go?” Jill asked.

Blythe stopped so hard Jill almost slammed into her.

Blythe whispered, “Look.”

Jill asked, “Where?”

“There.”

A plate-glass window separated them from a posh shoe shop. They could see through that window across to the other window where a man stood kissing a woman. He was kissing her passionately, pulling her body against his with one hand, cupping the back of her head with the other as he bent toward her. The woman was short and slender, with thick red hair flowing past her shoulders. Her arms were wrapped tightly around his broad back.

“That looks like Teri,” Jill whispered.

“I know,” Blythe whispered back, and she did know, because her ex-husband, Bob, was now living with Teri Casey, who had that fit body and that long wavy red hair. Blythe’s children spent every other weekend with their father and Teri Casey, and they all had come to feel comfortable with the young woman who called herself the “Bonus Mom.” Blythe was glad Bob had Teri in his life and she trusted Teri with her children.

But here, now, right in front of them, where everyone could see, Teri was kissing,reallykissing, another man.

“That’s not Bob,” Jill whispered.

“I can see that,” Blythe whispered back.

“What are you going to do?” Jill asked.

Blythe shook her head. “I have no idea.”

the drive

As if the drive on crowded Route 3 from Boston to the Cape wasn’t enough of a challenge, most of the way down Miranda, almost seventeen and dramatically in love, begged, pleaded, and wept real tears because Blythe, forty-five and feeling every minute of it, refused to agree that Miranda’s boyfriend, Brooks, seventeen and too handsome for his own good, could sleep with her in her bed in their Nantucket summer house.

“Mom.” As the oldest child, Miranda got to sit in the front passenger seat of the Honda Odyssey, the best spot for irritating the driver. The other three children were playing games on their phones or reading.

“We’ve already talked about this, Miranda.”

Miranda argued, “Mom, if we want to have sex, we can do it anywhere, on the beach, in the bushes,anywhere!”

Blythe stayed firm. “I’m thinking of your brother and sisters. I don’t want them—”

“My brother and sisters know more about what Brooks and I do than you ever will!” When Blythe didn’t respond, Miranda said, “Dadwould let Brooks sleep in the guest room! No! Wait!Dadwould let Brooks sleep withme!In my bed!With the door open!Everyonedoes that now.”

They’d had arguments before about what their dad would let them do, and Blythe had always restrained herself from pointing out that Bob, forty-six with male-pattern baldness, and his girlfriend, Teri, thirty and pretty and sweet, lived in a condo with only two bedrooms, and one was set up as an office. When the four children spent the night with their father, two of them slept on the pullout sofa in the living room. The other two were given sleeping bags to use on the floor. Bob told the kids that someday he’d buy another house with rooms for all the children.

Now Blythe said calmly, “It doesn’t matter to me what other parents do. I have my own standards.”

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