Page 105 of The Book of Summer

“Finding a new engineer is more important,” Cissy said as Bess settled on a cashmere white-and-navy sweater. “As for the party? It was a courtesy invite. No one really wants a sixty-year-old woman there. How come Yelp won’t let you expand the search to ‘entire eastern seaboard’?”

“Of course people want you there, Cis. And it’s rude to bail. You can’t say you’re coming and then not show up.”

“Felicia only invited me to be nice,” Cissy said. “Listen, my back is against a wall. You heard Mike. This predicament is time-sensitive. I’ll attend the wedding. That’s the main event. No one will miss me tonight.”

“Mom, people always miss you. You add a unique dimension to any gathering of two or more.”

Cissy peered out over her glasses.

“Don’t be fresh.”

And so Bess sits alone, on a boat, in a fog so thick she can’t even pretend to gaze wistfully out toward sea. At thirty-plus she should be okay with the solitude, and she is, for the most part. But it’d be nice to not feel so out of place.

Bess takes a sip of Chardonnay: the teensiest, tiniest, most minuscule bubble of a taste. It burns on the way down—more than it should, as Flick surely bought the good stuff. A punishment, Bess decides, though she isn’t sure for what. God, she is pregnant. Pregnant! Thirteen weeks almost. It’s inexcusable to be that far along.

She sets down her glass (glass, on a boat, for the love of all that’s logical) and glances around. Little groups of people wander up and down Old South Wharf, and Bess finds herself scanning the crowd for any meanderers of the male persuasion, approximately six foot two in height. After all, she didn’t request a response, she simply asked him to show up. But people around here only walk in packs.

As Bess returns her focus to the party, she accidentally provokes eye contact with a girl standing a few feet away. The stranger offers a small wave and makes a move in her direction. Bess flinches, but it’s too late to disappear.

The girl, a woman really, is in her mid-thirties, too, give or take. She wears skinny jeans and a gray cashmere sweater. Her hair is pulled back, thick and straight and blond like a horse’s tail. As she approaches, Bess recognizes her from somewhere. Choate? Boston College? Definitely not Nantucket High. She’s too shiny for that. Bess smiles, trying to dredge up a name, but can’t get it anywhere close to the tip of her tongue.

“Hi!” Bess says brightly, too brightly.

“Bess Codman in the flesh!” she says, right out of the gate, showing off her superior facial recognition skills. “So great to see you! You look fabulous.”

The woman leans down for a hug and then plants herself beside Bess.

“Gosh, thanks,” Bess says. “You, too.”

The woman is beautiful, though Bess doesn’t know whether it’s more or less so than before.

“I almost didn’t recognize you,” the woman says. “Did you get glasses?”

“It’s not so much that I ‘got glasses.’ I’m just not wearing my contacts.”

“Oh, weird.” She makes a face. “Anyway, what have you been up to?”

The woman sips some reddish-pink concoction through a straw so as not to muddle her lip gloss.

“Uh, er, um…” Bess stutters. “What have I been up to?”

Choate. The woman has to be from Choate, since Flick went to Penn. Although maybe they took sailing lessons together at the club umpteen summers ago.

“Do you work?” the woman asks. “Stay at home? What?”

“Oh. Right. I work in an ED?”

The woman crinkles her nose.

“The Education Department?” she asks. “Is that in Washington?”

“No… no… the emergency… I work in the ER, in San Francisco.”

“Oh! A doctor!” The woman claps. “That makes sense. You were a total brainiac.”

“I was?”

“I work in publishing, which everyone thinks isso coolandso glamorous.People just mob me at parties, peppering me with questions, trying to tell me about some half-baked book idea.” She rolls her eyes. “Everyone thinks they can write a book. It’s so annoying.”

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