Page 101 of These Summer Storms

“Well,” she started, “we’ve always been told he was a polo player.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Roxanne said. “We cover polo now and then, and I’m pretty sure that guy is a polo patron. Which means he’s just a rich dude who pays for all the real players to drink and party while he hangs around the stable in jodhpurs or whatever.”

“Are they called jodhpurs in polo?”

“Whatever.” Roxanne waved a hand. “The point is, that’s not all he does.”

Alice immediately understood. “Oh! No. That’s not. He has a fascinating hobby. One he can’t stop talking about.”

“What is it?” Gabi lowered her voice. “Is it porn? I bet it’s porn.”

“God! No! Why is that the first thing you thought of?” Alice said.

“I don’t know!” Gabi defended herself. “Once again, I don’t know what you people get up to on your private islands and helicopters and shit, but I’ve read some biographies.”

“Tom doesn’t do porn,” Roxanne said. “He collects flags.”

Gabi tilted her head. “Is that a euphemism?”

Roxanne laughed. “It is not.”

“What do you mean, flags?”

“Historical flags,” Alice clarified.

“Like, Betsy Ross?”

“Oh!” Roxanne said as though she’d never been so disappointed. “I should have asked him about Betsy Ross! Anyway, it was very sweet. He was so excited to tell me about his flags! He just bought one from the Roman Empire.”

“Did they even have flags during the Roman Empire?”

“I know someone who will tell you all about it!” Roxanne replied, laughing.

“This place is too much,” Gabi said to Alice. “How did I become friends with someone who knows a flag collector?”

“Just lucky, I guess,” Alice replied.

“There are honest-to-God real problems in the world. And here we are with an island full of people who can solve most of them. And they collect flags and lie about the Beatles.”

“What a country,” Alice added.

“I mean, sure, it seems like a waste,” Claudia replied, dryly. “But at least he’s keeping polo well-funded.”

Everyone laughed, and for a moment, Alice was consumed with an immense sense of gratitude that even in this, the strangest, most unsettling time of her life, she had these women by her side. Eventually, she returned to reality and her sister-in-law. “Okay, but where was Emily during all this?”

Claudia shook her head. “I left her with Mike Haskins—he was telling her some story about when he and your dad were twenty-two and it was the two of them and your mom against the world. It was sweet but felt…private.”

“You’re a good wife.”

“Nah,” Claudia said. “She is.”

Something thrummed through Alice at the words. Something like envy. Maybe it was because Emily was the youngest—the one with the most distance from the intensity of young Franklin and Elisabeth Storm—but there was no question that she’d found love in a healthy, honest, wonderful way. Sure, she and Claudia ran a crystal shop, and they took sound baths, and smudged homegrown sage in hotel rooms, but she couldn’t help but envy their connection. If soulmates existed, Emily and Claudia were it.

Of course Alice was envious. Who wouldn’t be? They had a person. A safe space. Someone who was on their side, no matter what.

Is someone with you?

On the train, before she’d known who he was, Jack had asked that.

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