“Don’t,” he says, “touch me.”
“Oh come on, Kevvy,” she says.
Kevvy. Kevin blinks and shakes his head, trying to make the vision before him disappear. It’s Norah Vale, his ex-wife. She is here, somehow, in person, calling him Kevvy, the reprehensible diminutive she has always used, even though she knows he hates it.
He despises Norah. She broke his heart and ruined his life. And yet, for one second, something inside of him stirs. She is here, in front of him, in person.
No! He will not allow himself to fall prey to her. He was in her grip-which he can only describe as a Vulcan mind meld-from the day he met her in tenth grade until the day she took all his money and left for Miami twelve years ago.
He used to believe that the snake tattoo winding its way up Norah’s arm, and over her shoulder to the collarbone where it lashes out with fangs bared, was sexy and wild-but now he just sees it as a visible sign that Norah is disturbed. It’s her calling card, letting the people she meets know she’s nuts.
Nuts.
He needs to get away from her. God forbid Isabelle sees her. Isabelle is French, and therefore nonchalant about most things. C’est la vie. However, before Kevin and Isabelle were in love, back when they were just friends, Kevin confided the whole long sordid Norah Vale story to Isabelle and quite unfortunately, in retrospect, he uttered the sentence, “A part of me will always be stupidly, irrationally in love with Norah.” Isabelle has reminded him at least half a dozen times that he’s said this, even as he retracted the statement. “I didn’t know what love was until I met you.” This was met with Isabelle’s expression of extreme skepticism.
She would not like seeing Kevin talking to Norah Vale-and oh yes, Isabelle will recognize Norah immediately. Kevin willingly showed Isabelle all his pictures of Norah-from their junior prom to a photo of them drunk as skunks at Sloppy Joe’s in Key West, on a trip Kevin had planned as a surprise for Norah when he was desperately trying to save their marriage.
He had caught Isabelle looking through the photos three or four months ago, just after Genevieve was born, when Isabelle was touchy and strange. She had been sitting on their bed, staring at the photographs, quietly weeping. When Kevin saw what she was looking at, he quasi-freaked out. “What are you doing?” he’d asked.
“You love her,” Isabelle said. “I know you still love her.”
“I do not!” Kevin had roared. “She means nothing to me! You mean everything!” He had gently removed the photographs from Isabelle’s hands, collected the rest into a pile, and made a great show of ripping them to pieces and throwing them away.
He tries to imagine how he would feel if Isabelle bumped into her first love, Jean-Baptiste, who is now a big executive with Hachette publishing in Paris. Kevin would be pretty upset, and jealous.
He needs to get away from Norah.
And yet-he can’t keep from asking what she’s doing there.
“What are you doing here?”
When Norah left Nantucket, she swore she would never return, despite the fact that she had grown up on the island and her entire screwed-up family lives here.
She says, “I’ve moved back.”
Kevin closes his eyes and thinks, No.
“I’m living with my mother,” she says. “You heard that Shang died, right?”
“Right,” Kevin says. He had read in the paper a while ago that Norah’s stepfather died, but he had never liked Shang and so the news registered a big fat Who cares? “So that’s why you came back?”
“My mother needs help, and my brothers are useless,” Norah says.
“Right,” Kevin says. He doesn’t want to get sucked in any further, although he could certainly contribute a few thoughts about just how useless Norah’s five brothers are. He would start with Danko, who had talked Norah into the snake tattoo on her eighteenth birthday. “Do you have a job?” He needs to find out, because he can’t be running into Norah unexpectedly.
“I’m doing some bookkeeping for…” Norah’s voice trails off, and Kevin supposes that’s by design. She’s not doing bookkeeping for anyone. “I got my associate’s degree while I was in Florida.”
“You did?” Kevin says. He can’t believe Norah went back to school. She hated school. And for bookkeeping? She especially hated math. “So wait, how long have you been back, exactly?”
“Two weeks,” she says.
Two weeks. Kevin lets this sink in. On the one hand, he can’t believe nobody told him Norah was back. His best friend, Pierre, who owns the Bar, where Kevin used to work, would have called him immediately. Right? Was it possible Norah has been here two weeks and she hasn’t stopped by the Bar? Maybe she’s just staying home, to help her mother. But that doesn’t sound like Norah. Norah and her mother, Lorraine, have a troubled relationship. Two weeks is probably hitting Norah’s limit. Kevin allows himself a deep, cleansing breath. Norah Vale won’t stay on Nantucket, no way. She’ll get fed up and she’ll leave.
“So, how are you?” Norah asks. “I hear you have a girlfriend. And a baby.”
Kevin frowns. “Who told you that?”
Norah shrugs. “Can’t recall.”
Kevin doesn’t want Norah to know anything about his life. She is such an evil person that he can easily imagine her terrorizing Isabelle in the aisles of the Stop & Shop; he can imagine her kidnapping Genevieve in exchange for the millions she has always believed the Quinn family to have.
Norah says, “I saw Jennifer at the liquor store last night. I think I scared her.”
“You saw whom?” he says. “Jennifer?”
“I saw Jennifer,” Norah says. “I heard Paddy is in jail.”
“Stop,” Kevin says. He’s at such a disadvantage here, and every second he stands here, he puts his family harmony in jeopardy. Isabelle can’t see him talking to Norah. He has to get away.
“And Bart,” Norah says. “Poor Bart! I remember when he was a baby.”
“Stop!” Kevin says. His voice is too loud; he feels the people in the immediate vicinity grow quiet. What Norah says bothers him because it’s true. She has known Bart since he was in diapers.
Kevin has an unfortunate memory of him and Norah babysitting Bart when Bart was ten or eleven months old. They were drunk and stoned, and they flipped Bart over in his stroller. Bart wasn’t hurt, thank God, just scared, but now that Kevin has his own baby, he shudders anew. He wonders how he could ever have been so cavalier with his brother’s young life.
“And I heard Mitzi and your dad split,” Norah says. “But I just saw them together a few minutes ago, so maybe that information was bad? I figured I’d ask you.”
Kevin can’t believe Jennifer saw Norah the night before and didn’t tell him! He had been completely blindsided. Some warning would have been very, very helpful.
“No comment,” Kevin says. “Listen, I have to go.”
“Go where?” Norah asks.
“Go find… people,” Kevin says. “My family.”
“Your girlfriend?” Norah says. “I’ll go with you. I’d like to meet her.”
“No,” Kevin says. “That isn’t going to happen.”
“Why not?” Norah says. “Are you ashamed of me?” She links her arm through his. “Let’s go find her.”
Same old Norah, Kevin thinks, eager to stir things up. She had led him astray so many times and he followed like a little lost lamb. He had first seen Norah in the breezeway of the high school. She had been wearing a black broomstick skirt that touched the ground, a white tank top, and a sequined bolero jacket. Norah had been smoking, and Kevin-brand new to the school, freshly wounded by his parents’ divorce-had been hurrying along with his trumpet case, late for class.