“Good idea. While you’re doing that, I’ll go get gas.”
Jack intended to fill his supply of ten-gallon plastic containers with fuel to carry over to Tuckernuck. He kept a second truck parked on the island specifically for house calls, and it didn’t run on air.
He paused, already lost in plans, his right hand rubbing his left bicep.
“Pull something yesterday?” Dionis asked.
He shrugged. “I’ve got all winter to heal.”
Dionis swallowed the last of her coffee. Her laptop was in her bedroom. As the screen door slammed behind her father, she ran upstairs and switched it on.
“What are you doing at your desk?” Howie Seitz demanded. “You’re getting married, girl.”
Merry looked up from her computer screen at the tall, lanky sergeant, who was lounging in her doorway. She could absolutely have taken off the week before her wedding without disturbing the balance of life in the Nantucket Police Department. The crazed demands of summer, with its dense traffic, bicycle and scooter accidents, lost children, occasional drunk, or college kid high on Ecstasy, were hard to recall this last week of September. Nantucket wasn’t quite as dead as it was in, say, January. September was considered one of the most beautiful months for people free of school-age children to visit the island. But it was downright relaxed compared to July. Merry and Peter had planned their wedding for a month after Labor Day for exactly that reason: she had expected to be completely free.
“Nice haircut,” she observed, eyeing Seitz. He’d lost about four inches from his unruly mop of black curls and the strong features of his tanned face were newly visible, newly arresting. But there was a certain grimness to the straight line of his mouth that set off a warning bell in Merry’s mind. Was Howie unhappy? Feeling unwell? Under financial pressure? With a slight shock, she realized that the kid she thought of as just out of college—they had first met when Howie landed on Nantucket as a sophomore in Northeastern University’s Criminal Justice program—was roughly two years shy of thirty. The frustrating sidekick had become her trusted partner. She should find time to sit down with him outside of work and assess how he really was.
Howie glanced over his shoulder and then, satisfied no one could overhear him, leaned further into her room. “The chief informed me that long hair was no credit to the force,” he muttered. “This isn’t a style choice. It’s job security.”
Merry sighed. “Yeah, well, he told me I could only have two weeks off to get married. It’s hard enough to celebrate with friends and see three European capitals in that amount of time, so I’m taking shifts straight through Thursday. I’d be working Friday, if there weren’t the minor matter of a wedding rehearsal to attend. And my toenails to polish. Why don’t you tell Pocock to go to hell and get a job on the mainland, Seitz?”
“Why don’t you quit, Mer? You’re only marrying ten million bucks!”
“At least,” Merry agreed. “But I like my job.”
“So do I,” Howie retorted. “As long as you’re here, I’m staying. Call in sick Thursday.”
“I might. Think the chief would notice?”
Howie grinned. “I think he’d fire you. Which would solve all our problems.”
“Careful what you wish for.” Merry winked at him. “I feel a stomach virus coming on.”
“I intend to ride out this storm, missy,” Honoria Cabott declared, “and Jorie with me, thank you very much.”
She was a white-haired wisp of a nonagenarian with a will like iron, standing firmly at the end of her driveway and refusing passage to Jack Mather’s truck. Her great-grandparents had made the daring decision in 1881 to leave their house on Union Street and build a new home on Tuckernuck. Society on Nantucket, they thought, had become too swollen with interlopers from the Mainland. New-monied upstarts with no Quaker history, forcing their way into the island’s Establishment. The Cabotts had raised eight children, a henhouse full of chickens, and every conceivable vegetable at their homestead on Tuckernuck. Honoria had actually attended the one-room school house that educated Tuckernuck’s children in the Depression years when the small island’s residents braved the winters and lived year-round in their homes. Now, she spent October to April in an assisted-living facility on Nantucket; but from May through Columbus Day Weekend, her paid companion, Jorie Engstrom, kept her safe and kept her company in the Cabotts’ westward-facing saltbox. It was named Vineyard View. On clear days, Honoria insisted she could see Martha.
“I understand, Miss Cabott.” Dionis jumped down from her father’s battered truck and tentatively touched the elderly woman’s shoulder. It felt like a bird’s wing beneath her hand. “It’s hard to say goodbye to summer. I feel it myself. But we’re talking about a hurricane. No one knows how strong it might be, and you’re in danger here with the house unprotected on this bluff.”
“The house has seen worse. I remember the Great New England Hurricane of ’38.” Honoria folded her arms, tanned and wrinkled as aged leather, across her chest. “Nobody cut and ran from that one, and it was fierce! Made the war that came after seem like child’s play.”
“I’m sure you’ve weathered a lot of wind and rain over the years,” Dionis agreed. “But nobody else will be left on Tuckernuck by Wednesday night, ma’am, and it could be frightening all alone out here with no one to help you.”
“I’ve got canned goods,” Honoria countered. “And kerosene.”
“Which could burn your house down, if the wind blows out your windows,” Dionis returned matter-of-factly.
“Board ’em up, then. That’s what I pay your father for!”
“We plan to, ma’am. But the boards will stay up all winter once they go on. You’ll be living in darkness for the rest of the time you stay in the house.”
Honoria’s erect spine sagged slightly and her arms fell to her sides. “Why does the summer always end too soon?”
“It happens faster each year, doesn’t it?” Dionis smiled at her.
Jack Mather stuck his head out the truck window. “We’ll be back Wednesday morning to move you out, Miss Cabott.”
Honoria shook her head. “I never know—once I’m back in that facility for the winter—” she said with distaste, “—if I’ll ever get out again. And I don’t mean in a pine box.”
“I understand,” Dionis repeated. She didn’t, really. She was twenty-nine years old and couldn’t imagine living nearly a century. But she glanced at Jorie Engstrom, Honoria’s companion, who was standing behind the older woman, a few feet further up the drive. She was half Honoria’s age, with a thick plait of Nordic blonde hair sweeping down her back.