way of sensing when he was going to be there—and she would stay in the tent, or give the whole thing to Carter. It wasn’t that she was avoiding Edward Melior; she just didn’t want to have to offer him a canapé.
“Hi,” she said. “What’s up?”
“How are you?” He said this the way he always said it: How are you? As if he really wanted to know. He really did want to know; he had a zealous interest in other people. He remembered their names, their children’s names, their situations—if they were thinking of buying a new car, or if they were caring for an elderly parent, or if their dog had just died. This was stuff he cataloged in his brain. It was unusual how much he remembered, how much he genuinely cared. It was feminine. But that was why he was a great (and wealthy) real estate agent. People lapped it up.
“Oh, I’m fine,” Siobhan said breezily. She recalled the flowers Edward had sent to the house when Liam broke his arm. They were pink calla lilies, Siobhan’s favorite, about fifty of them, fantastically expensive. She got rid of them before Liam and Carter came home from Boston. She hadn’t sent a note for the flowers, which was monstrous, but dealing with Edward was tricky. He loved her still. He took every communication from her as a sign that they would reunite.
They had been together during Siobhan’s first four years on the island. When she was scooping ice cream and making sandwiches at Congdon’s Pharmacy, he was handling rentals at the real estate office upstairs. Edward was charmed by Siobhan’s accent (which she found ludicrous); he fell in love immediately. Because Edward had far more money and knew far more people than Siobhan did, he assumed the role of Henry Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle. He believed he’d “discovered” her. Looking back, Siobhan was annoyed at how she’d played along with this notion. She became the pantry girl at the Galley and then the garde-manger, and then a line cook at lunch. Edward always referred to her as a chef, which wasn’t accurate, but she never corrected him. He, meanwhile, had acquired a broker’s license and was thinking of going out on his own, which sounded to Siobhan like a reckless idea. The Nantucket real estate market was a gold mine, a diamond mine; brokers were printing their own money, yes, but Edward was such a good, sweet, accommodating guy that Siobhan feared he would get swallowed up. (She came by this doomsday attitude honestly—she was Irish!) Before Edward set up shop, they got engaged—on a perfect autumn afternoon at Altar Rock. Edward had champagne and berries and melon and pink calla lilies, and he got down on one knee and presented a whopper of a ring. Will you be my wife? Siobhan laughed, covering her mouth, and nodded, because who would say no to such a beautiful, well-orchestrated proposal? It was only after the engagement was a publicly known fact, after it had been in the newspaper, after Edward’s parents had thrown a party at their house on Cliff Road, that Siobhan began to falter. She didn’t believe in Edward, and she realized that Edward didn’t believe in her. Why else would he tell people she was a chef, when in fact she stood at a sauté pan for twelve hours a day making goat cheese omelets and lobster eggs Benedict? She grew less fond of the idea that she was a piece of Irish white trash that Edward had picked from the rubbish bin, and she became increasingly annoyed by Edward’s interest in her every thought and mood. She had grown up in a family of eight children; no one had paid attention that closely to Siobhan, ever. She yearned to be left alone with her interior life rather than to explain it.
And, too, there was a new sous-chef at work, a cute guy who had come from Balthazar in New York, whose knife skills put even the head chef’s to shame. And—funny thing!—his last name was Crispin. Siobhan called him Crispy; he called her Trouble. How’re you doing there, Trouble? His first name was Carter, which made him sound rich, though clearly he wasn’t, and Siobhan liked that. She was growing sick of Edward and his discretionary income and the way he bought things just because he could. This kind of waste offended her Irish sensibilities.
“How are the kids?” Edward asked. Siobhan smelled the garlic