Page 72 of Summer Light on Nantucket

She pulled Miranda up and gathered her oldest daughter in her arms.

“It’s okay,” Blythe said soothingly.

Miranda twisted around to face Blythe.

“It’s not Grandmother! It’sme! It’s not okay! It will never be okay!” Miranda’s face was wet and swollen from crying. Her mascara streaked down her face like black tears.

“What happened?” Blythe asked.

“Oh, Mommy! I saw Brooks kissing Serena! And they were totally kissing, slobber-kissing.”

Blythe almost couldn’t believe this. She’d seen Brooks a million times, always so crazy in love with Miranda. “Maybe Serena was kissing him and he went along with it?”

“I know what I saw, Mom! Brooks wasn’t justgoing along with it.He had his arms around her. She had her hands in his hair!”

“Where was this?” Blythe’s protective instincts began to stir.

“At Serena’s. We were just swimming and hanging out and I had my period and I went into the house and up to her bathroom and I had to search around for a tampon and I couldn’t find one and I stuck my head out the window to yell to Serena and I saw them. By the swimming pool. Then I knew why Serena wore her sexiest bathing suit today. AndMom,they were kissing.” Miranda collapsed in heart-wrenching sobs.

Blythe held her daughter close, as if sheltering her from a storm. “I’m so sorry. Maybe they were just…playing?”

“I know what I saw! They were totally into each other.”

As her daughter wept, a prehistoric maternal rage uncurled in Blythe’s deepest heart. Nothing hurt as much as her children being hurt. She wanted to transform into a yeti and stomp over Serena and terrorize her with an earth-shaking growl.

But she was civilized. She had to be rational.

“Do they know you saw them?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I didn’t know what to do! I just ran home. Oh, Mommy, it was so terrible! I thought Brooks loved me.”

“Maybe—” Blythe began.

Miranda interrupted, violently pulling herself from Blythe’s arms. “Brooks has toleave! He can’t stay in this house one more minute! He’s a liar and a cheater and he doesn’t deserve to stay here. I’m going to pack his stuff and throw it out in the yard and tell him to take the next boat home! I never want to see him again! I’m never talking to Serena again!”

“Miranda, calm down. Listen to me. Brooks can’t leave. I told youboth the other day that his mother asked if Brooks could stay here all summer because their housekeeper broke her leg and can’t be there for him. We can’t make him leave when he has no place to go.”

Miranda exploded, standing up and throwing her hands in the air. “Fine!Lovely!You’re choosing Brooks over your own daughter!”

“I’m not choosing Brooks over you. I would never do that. I wish I could throw our oldest, grungiest sleeping bag in our backyard and tell him that’s his bedroom now and he can go to Visitor Services to use the bathroom and he can buy his own food because he’s never eating with us again.”

Blythe’s anger made Miranda blink in surprise. She almost smiled as tears streaked her face. “That would be cool.”

“I know. But we can’t do that. I’m responsible for his safety. I can’t simply tell him to get out.”

Miranda paced the room. “Fine. But you don’t have to talk to him. You don’t have to be nice to him. You can tell him he’s no longer welcome at the club to sail or play tennis or eat. Plus—” Her eyes narrowed as she had a new thought. “You really have to move him out of the family room. We all need it to watch television. He has to go sleep in that little room at the end of the hall.”

Blythe had always thought of that little room at the end of the hall as a special place, a magic room. So small, with only one twin bed and one dresser and that half-moon window. It had been perfect for a little girl. But it wouldn’t be magic for a big philandering male. It wouldn’t even be comfortable.

“I see your point, Miranda, but Brooks is a big guy. He’ll feel claustrophobic in there.”

“Good! I hope he has nightmares!” With tears rolling down her flushed cheeks, Miranda laughed an insane, triumphant laugh like the wicked queen inSnow White.“Remember, Mom, how you said he couldn’t sleep on the same floor as our bedrooms because you were so worried we’d have sex? Now hehasto be on this floor. But mybedroom door will belocked.And I’ll tell the sibs what he did and they’ll never speak to him again.” As she spoke, her lip quivered and she stood there, a beautiful young woman, shaking with grief and rage.

Blythe yearned to comfort her child, to make the bad thing go away, but she couldn’t. She had no choice but to let Miranda bear it. She wished that her pain, a mother’s pain, would ease Miranda’s, but she knew that wasn’t how it worked. Blythe remembered the brutal day she lived through after Aaden left for Ireland, and she remembered that it didn’t help at all that he had left for another country instead of another woman.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” Blythe stood up. “I need to eat. Come downstairs with me now. I’ll make grilled cheese sandwiches.” Her grilled cheese sandwiches were a mouth orgy of cheddar and whole wheat fried slowly in butter that soaked into the bread as the cheese melted.

“I’m not hungry,” Miranda said.

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