Elin Hilderbrand - Nantucket Nights

Now it was Jacob giggling. “I don’t understand women.”

“No,” Kayla said. “Me, neither.” Because only one day earlier Kayla had ridden up this beach with her two dear friends, friends of twenty years- friends who it turned out were her enemies. She pointed at Theo’s Jeep in the distance. “There it is. Up there. Good, nothing happened to it.”

As Jacob approached Theo’s Jeep, the sand got softer, deeper. He downshifted and eased the Bronco alongside the Jeep.

“Door-to-door service,” he said.

“Thanks,” Kayla said. “I appreciate the ride, and the smoke. I needed it.”

“My pleasure, madam,” he said. He smiled at her, an incredibly gorgeous smile, and Kayla hesitated. The idea of her and Jacob together was powerful, tempting, and because of all that had happened, maybe even reasonable. Kayla had never intentionally hurt anyone in her life; the feelings she had now were so foreign she didn’t know what to make of them. The best thing, she thought, was to go home and sleep.

“Good night,” she said. She got out of the Bronco and fished Theo’s keys from her purse. She climbed into the Jeep. There was a hatchet on the passenger seat. What had Theo been doing with a hatchet?

In her rearview mirror, Kayla watched Jacob swing the Bronco in a circle. She started the Jeep and lurched forward. When she checked her mirror a moment later, Jacob had stopped. She hit her brakes; he flashed his lights. Are you okay? she thought. Then she saw his tires spin, they bit into the sand. Jacob got out of the Bronco and ran toward her.

Kayla pulled the parking brake, put down her window. “Don’t tell me.”

He grinned. “I’m stuck.”

Kayla slogged through the sand toward the Bronco. Jacob knelt by his front left tire to let out air. She started on the back tire with the key to the Jeep. The air coming out made a sharp, satisfying hiss and smelled of rubber.

Kayla closed her eyes and listened to the waves and the hiss of the air. A cool breeze swept off the water, and Kayla felt rooted to her place in the sand, like she was a heavy, old piece of driftwood. She couldn’t even think about Night Swimmers without feeling hurt and foolish-she believed in the rituals, in the magic of it. But she had believed alone, like the last kid to find out about Santa Claus or the tooth fairy, the last one to realize that the adult world didn’t contain magic of any kind.

Jacob walked over to check on her progress. Kayla tugged on the leg of his jeans.

“Hey,” she said.

“How’s it coming?”

“Sit here with me a minute,” she said. A slow fear spread through her as she spoke the words. She pictured the detective pulling the bottle of Ativan from his shirt pocket. And then Paul Henry: You need to do a better job picking your friends.

Jacob plunked onto the sand next to her, and they watched the waves roll onto the beach.

“Sorry I got stuck,” he said.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Actually, it’s kind of nice out here tonight.” She took a deep breath. “So… Val’s moving in with you, then?”

Jacob rested his arms on his knees, the tire gauge dangled from his fingers. “Looks like it.”

“That’s good. You two are serious.”

“Val’s serious,” he said. “I can’t believe she left her husband.”

“John’s an asshole,” Kayla said. “He deserves to be left.”

“I guess,” Jacob said. “I mean, I was content to let things be, but Val, you know, she wanted to make the whole thing legitimate. Because she’s a lawyer and she doesn’t want to damage her reputation.” Jacob turned to her. He hadn’t shaved, and dark stubble was growing in on his chin. “I’m just a dope-smoking carpenter,” he said. “And I’m still pretty young. Do you think she expects me to marry her?”

“She might,” Kayla said.

He clenched the tire gauge in his fist. He was scared; Kayla could see it. She thought of Val giving the police her pills, letting them stack the clues against her: Ativan, champagne glasses, phone calls. And then pretending like it was no big deal, like it happened every day. Kayla thought of Raoul getting up each morning to work at the Ting house with the knowledge that Theo was sleeping with Antoinette. Her own husband knew and didn’t tell her. Kayla thought of Antoinette holding her arms in a wide circle before she pirouetted into the water. It was clear now what the circle meant-she had been telling Kayla that she was pregnant. Which of these betrayals was the worst? Kayla couldn’t decide. What was clear was that all three people knew how to deceive her.

Kayla looked at Jacob sitting inches from her. She raised her hand to touch the back of his head, but she was too afraid, and she dropped her hand into the sand. Raoul. Oh, God, Raoul. Kayla started to cry.

Jacob turned to her, his green eyes growing wide with surprise. He put his arm around her shoulders. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, Kayla, don’t cry.”

But she had been waiting to cry all day, waiting to surrender to her sadness. She sobbed into Jacob’s shoulder, and somehow Jacob’s shoulder became Jacob’s mouth, hot and searching against her own. His lips, his tongue. They kissed like a couple of hungry teenagers, Kayla’s heat rising to the surface of her skin, an aching between her thighs. Jacob reached into the front of Kayla’s sundress, and she moaned. A man other than her husband touching her breasts, fingering her, tonguing her nipples. It felt amazing. Was this why people broke the rules, turned the world upside down-because it felt this good, this electric, because it made them feel this alive?

Kayla fumbled with the buttons of Jacob’s jeans. She tore her mouth away from his so that she could see what she was doing. His erection strained through his jeans, long and hard and perfect, and although Kayla wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything that was bad for her-more than a cold beer at the end of the day, more than a cigarette when she was drunk with her girlfriends in a smoky bar, more than hot, liquid butter on her popcorn- although she wanted this thing to happen, she stopped. Rolled away from him.

Raoul. No, thinking about Raoul wasn’t good enough. Her children: Theo, Jennifer, Cassidy B., Luke. She thought about her children.

“I can’t,” she said.

She noticed that he’d torn one of the spaghetti straps of her sundress, and she fruitlessly tried to secure it back into place. Jacob stared at her, confused. Then, slowly, he removed his T-shirt.

“I have wanted you for so long,” he said. “You know that, right?”

Kayla nodded, mute with terror over what she’d set in motion. She thought of him touching her lip the day before at the Tings’.

“Just let me kiss you again,” Jacob said. “I will die if I don’t kiss you one more time.”

It flashed through Kayla’s mind that Jacob knew just how to trick her, too. Because who could turn in the face of those words? Who could resist Jacob, bare-chested, leaning over her for just one more kiss? His curly head blocked the moon as he came toward her. The moon was her only witness. They started kissing again with even more heat, and Kayla surrendered. She undid Jacob’s jeans and guided him inside her.

As they made love, Kayla’s world became nothing more than strokes and skin and lips and tongues. She was nobody’s wife, nobody’s mother, nobody’s friend. Kayla closed her eyes and listened to the water surge and recede, surge and recede. The endless repetition of waves that had carried Antoinette away was now carrying Kayla away.

So this, Kayla thought, this was drowning.

He’d always believed that everything one needed to know in life could be learned by building a house. Start with the basics: sturdy foundation, solid walls, a sound roof. Move on to esthetics: light, air, creativity. And finally, make sure the details are done correctly. Raoul’s workers cursed at him when he complained about cabinets set off an eighth of an inch over six feet, but Raoul wanted every surface in his houses to be plumb, square, level. That was what made him one of the best. Raoul built houses people could actually live in-breathe in, make love in, dream in. He built houses to last.

Following these same rules, he raised his family. He married the most nurturing woman he had ever met, and they produced four children, two boys, two girls. He and Kayla brought up their kids with love and discipline, with respect for each child’s individuality. That was the Montero family: sturdy, solid, plumb, level. Built to last.

Raoul tried to tell Kayla about Theo and Antoinette three times, and three times he failed. The first time was in early July, the very evening Theo confided in him at the Ting site. Raoul raced home from Ting, steaming and incredulous. His son sleeping with a forty-year-old woman. It was perverse, sickening, and he blamed it on Antoinette and her heightened sexual desire. Theo was easy prey for her, Raoul supposed, an easy lay. In some sense, it was a biological match-two people at their sexual peaks. But it was wrong, and even though Theo was eighteen, Raoul was going to put a stop to it. He was going to tell Kayla.

When he got home, he found Kayla in the kitchen hulling strawberries. A platter of hamburger patties rested on the counter next to her. Jennifer sat on a bar stool combing out her long, wet hair, talking to Kayla about how she was saving her baby-sitting money to buy a really expensive pair of shoes from Vanessa Noel. Purple suede sandals, she said, with a three-inch heel.

“They sound pretty exotic,” Kayla said. “Can I see them before you buy them?”

Jennifer shrugged. “Sure,” she said. “You’ll like them. They’re tasteful.”

Raoul surveyed the kitchen. “Jennifer, can I talk to your mom alone for a second?”

“Why?” Jennifer said.

“Why?” Kayla said. “Is something the matter?”