Dabney stifled a laugh. What Vaughan didn’t understand was that Dabney would have done her job all those years for half, or a quarter, of her salary. Hell, she would have done it for free.
“I’m not coming back, Vaughan,” she said. “I do have a suggestion for a new director, however.”
True, Celerie was young. But she had energy and enthusiasm and a fresh outlook. She was bright and she learned quickly. She had the fire. She also would have a direct line to Dabney. Dabney would consult with her until…
“Well,” Dabney said. “Until I’m not able to consult anymore.”
Vaughan made some phlegmy, throat-clearing noise that Dabney knew was meant to conceal his relief.
“Okay,” he said. “Have Celerie e-mail me her résumé. Pronto.”
Next, it was out to Celerie’s house-a sad little rental on Hooper Farm Road. As soon as Dabney pulled into the driveway, she realized that this was the house that her friends Moe and Curly used to rent. Moe and Curly had surfed at Madequecham Beach back when Dabney and Clen were in high school and college. Dabney had come to parties at this house; she had thrown up in the backyard after too many vodkas with grape soda.
Dabney chuckled as she walked up to the front door. She was Dabney now and she had been Dabney then, but they were two different people.
Sometimes life seemed very long.
And other times, not.
Dabney knocked, and Celerie opened the door right away. She was holding a paperback copy of Emma, by Jane Austen. She was wearing a short blue terry-cloth robe. And pearls. And the navy headband with the white stars.
Dabney knew she had been right to come.
Celerie’s mouth formed a tiny O of surprise, the way other girls her age might react to a visit from Justin Beiber, or the way Dabney’s grandmother, Agnes Bernadette, would have reacted to a visit from the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II.
“That’s my favorite book, you know,” Dabney said.
“Yes,” Celerie said, and her eyes brimmed with tears. “I know.”
“Can I come in and talk to you for a minute?” Dabney asked.
“Of course.” Celerie indicated the room before her, featuring a gray, tweedy-looking sofa, a large square rag rug, a boxy TV with rabbit-ear antennae, and a rotary phone. “We call this room the museum because nothing actually works.”
Dabney laughed. She could just barely smell the marijuana smoke of thirty years earlier, and see the hazy silhouettes of Moe and Curly and a girl they all called Meg the Drunk Slut, crowded around a red glass bong.
Celerie wiped at her eyes. “I just made a batch of watermelon lemonade. Can I offer you a glass?”
“Yes,” Dabney said. “I would love a glass of watermelon lemonade.”
Celerie vanished into the kitchen, which Dabney could see was outfitted with the same linoleum and Formica of three decades before. That refrigerator used to be filled with Miller beer and the dreaded vodka and Welch’s grape soda. Moe and Curly used to brag that they spent ten dollars a week on groceries, leaving the rest of their disposable income for booze, weed, and Sex Wax.
She was the only person she knew who salvaged such details.
Dabney sat on one end of the sofa; at the other end was a feather pillow that held the soft indentation of Celerie’s head.
Celerie returned with a pink frosty glass.
Dabney tasted the drink. “Delicious perfection!” she said, and Celerie actually smiled. She sat next to Dabney.
Dabney said, “First of all, I owe you an apology.”
“No,” Celerie said. “You don’t. I get it.”
“Well,” Dabney said, “you shouldn’t. You should be madder than hell at me. I skipped out on a lot of hours of work this summer. I cheated not only my husband, but I cheated Nantucket. I cheated you and Riley and I cheated poor Nina, leaving her to hold the office together.”
“You held the office together,” Celerie said. “Because it was like you were there even when you weren’t there.”
“Thank you for saying that,” Dabney said. “But I didn’t come here so you could compliment me. I came here so I could compliment you. You did an incredible job this summer, once again. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better information assistant. Now, that being said, I have a question for you.”
“A question?” Celerie said. “What is it?”
“Would you-please-submit your résumé to Vaughan Oglethorpe? Today, if possible? I want you to apply to be the new executive director of the Nantucket Chamber of Commerce. I will guide and advise you for as long as I’m able.”
Celerie stood very still, and then she broke out in a war whoop and raised her hands in a V over her head.
“Yes!” she said.
Box
There was no reason to continue putting off the inevitable, so he scheduled a dinner at Abe & Louie’s with Michael Ohner, the divorce attorney. Ohner talked all night about depositions, subpoenaing credit cards, tax returns, financial statements, shared assets, and alimony.
Ohner said, “Do you see giving Dabney the Nantucket house in exchange for a lesser payout? Because as unjust as it seems in this case, you are going to have to pay Dabney.”
Box waved his hand. “She can have whatever she wants.”
“I’m not going to let you give away the farm,” Ohner said. “Do you see naming this fellow Hughes as a third party?”
A third party? Box thought. There was a time, decades earlier, when Box would have considered himself a third party.
The next day, Box called Dabney to warn her that legal action was pending. He had a pile of messages from her in his voice mail in-box, including one desperate-sounding message from a week or so earlier. Possibly she’d had a few glasses of wine and was feeling guilty for the way she had publicly embarrassed him. Or she had woken up and realized that Clendenin Hughes wasn’t worthy of her in any respect. Her so-called love for him was little more than a leftover teenage romantic fantasy.
She answered immediately. “Hello?” she said. “Box? Is it you?”
Something in her voice caught his attention. For possibly the first time in twenty-four years, he had a gut feeling where his wife was concerned.
He said, “Dabney? Are you all right?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not.”
When he hung up the phone, he was shaking. He had only just begun to come to terms with the idea of living his life without Dabney by his side. But the news that she was dying, that he would, in a matter of months, be living in a Dabney-less world, pierced his heart like a long, sharp needle and drew out whatever lifeblood had been pumping through it.
He quickly wrote Michael Ohner an e-mail, saying that he would not need his services after all.
PART 3 THE FALL
Agnes
She was staying on Nantucket through the fall and maybe the winter.
She was staying on Nantucket until…
She called Manny Partida and asked for a leave of absence from the Morningside Heights Boys & Girls Club. It was decided that Wilder would take over at the helm while Agnes was gone. Agnes could work at the Island Adventures after-school program twenty hours a week. Dave Patterson was thrilled to have her.
CJ and his attorney pleaded down, as Agnes had known they would. He was sentenced to ninety days in jail and eighteen months’ probation. There was a restraining order in place. CJ wasn’t allowed within a hundred yards of Agnes for the next five years.
What would Agnes’s life be like in five years?
A week after Labor Day, Riley had to head back to dental school at Penn. Agnes drove him and Sadie to the airport. She couldn’t believe how sad she felt. The night she had spent with Riley eating cheeseburgers in his Jeep and then going on a wild-goose chase in search of Dabney seemed like aeons ago, and yet she hadn’t gotten enough of him somehow.