We’re all so busy these days with our screens, we don’t take time to turn off the electronics and sit with someone and quietly listen.”
“My grandmother is good at listening,” Ari said. “She’s good at being quiet as well. She can sit and think over a problem and not speak until she’s prepared her thoughts.”
“My grandmother was that way, too.” Beck took a deep breath. “Let’s walk.”
The beach was long and golden, the water translucent. Ari picked up some shells and found a rare piece of turquoise sea glass. They didn’t speak, and Ari was glad. Beck was an interesting man with an interesting profession. She’d assumed he’d be lighthearted and fun, so she had to let their talk settle. It was as if she’d thought she’d spend the afternoon laughing as balloons lifted into the air. Instead, she’d discovered solid ground for her thoughts…and her soul. So curious, because he looked like a playboy.
As the sun drifted lower in the sky, they gathered the picnic basket and blanket and returned to the boat. Once again, Ari sat with her face lifted to the sun as Beck sailed them back to his buoy.
“I’ve had a really nice day,” Ari told him as they waited for the launch to pick them up.
“Me, too,” Beck said. “I’d like to do it again.”
“I’d like that,” Ari agreed.
They climbed onto the launch and were delivered back to the dock.
Beck walked Ari to her car. “So I’ll call you,” he said.
Ari smiled. “Or maybe I’ll call you,” she teased, because she knew, she sensed it, it was real—he was enchanted, too. She stood on tiptoe and kissed his mouth quickly.
* * *
—
On the way home, Ari pulled into the Stop & Shop parking lot. She stepped out of the hot sun into the cool store, grabbed a cart, and filled it up with fruits and vegetables. Grapes, strawberries, plums, broccoli, kale, carrots. Next to the grocery store was a liquor store. She bought two bottles of sparkling rosé. Then, walking toward her car, she saw something so strange she almost dropped her bags.
Her father was coming out of the liquor store. Wearing plaid Bermuda shorts, loafers without socks, and a rugby shirt with the collar turned up. Ari started to wave at her father, but he was getting into a convertible with a young woman who was absolutely not her mother. The young woman was driving, and her father said something that made them both laugh as they drove away.
Of course it couldn’t be her father.
Ari leaned against her car and stared as the couple disappeared around the corner.
She must have been dazzled by the sun. It must have been a man who looked like her father.
Still, she took up her phone and called her house in Wellesley.
“Hello?” Her mother always answered as if she never knew who was calling. Ari thought her mother considered caller ID vulgar and never checked before she answered.
“Hi, Mom, just calling to say hello.”
“Did you go sailing with Beck Hathaway today?”
“Yes, and we’re going again next weekend.” Ari could imagine the smile on her mother’s face. Her good deed for the day. She kept chatting for a few minutes before asking, “Is Dad there?”
“No, sorry, darling. He got called in to the hospital early this morning for an emergency surgery. Something complicated, I can’t remember. Don’t worry, I’ll tell him everything tonight when he comes home.”
“Okay, then,” Ari said, sounding too hearty for her own ears. “We’ll talk later.”
Ari got into her car, strapped on her seatbelt, and sat there, trying to think logically. That might have been a man who only looked like her father. Her father was as likely to have an affair with a young woman as he was to grow wings and fly. So, she had been wrong. That had not been her father.
Or, her father flew in to do emergency surgery at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital and the young woman was a nurse? Not likely, in those clothes. Plus, Ari’s mother hadn’t said he’d been called in to the Nantucket hospital. That might make sense if he were on island and listed as a summer emergency surgeon, but although her father had signed up when he was younger, in the past few years he’d decided they needed other younger physicians, and he’d wanted a vacation.
She drove back to her grandmother’s house, chewing on her lip, unable to stop worrying. She could mention it to Eleanor, but Eleanor would laugh. Or worry—and Ari