Nantucket Nights

Karla

The first thing Kayla did when she stepped into the San Juan airport was to seek out the bank of pay phones. She lifted the receiver and punched in her calling card number. At home, on Nantucket, the answering machine picked up. Of course: The kids were at school, Raoul at work. “I arrived safely,” Kayla said. “I love you all.” Seven words; that was all she allowed herself. She hung up.

Kayla proceeded down the corridor toward baggage claim. She was wearing a new dress, a turquoise sundress with splashy pink flowers. She’d bought it out of a catalog, as a way to get excited about this trip. Six weeks by herself in sunny Puerto Rico, a new the Vineyard the first of dress, a wallet full of cash and traveler’s checks-no price was too high for Raoul to get her off Nantucket. She was being banished. Raoul said no phone calls-except for one letting Mm know she’d arrived safely-no postcards even. Just her alone, with too much time to think. This was her penance.

It had been over two weeks, and there was still no sign of Antoinette’s body. Kayla hadn’t ventured out of the house; she hadn’t answered phone calls, although the phone rang constantly. Some people wanted to express their condolences-We’re sorry you lost your friend-some people wanted an explanation. Raoul’s name appeared in the police blotter for assaulting a police officer, and that instigated yet more calls. And even visits, concerned neighbors tapping on the sliding glass door. Kayla actually went so far as to lock that door and the front door. She stayed out of the kitchen.

Kayla plucked her suitcase off the carousel, extended the handle, and rolled it over to the rental car desks. Ten minutes later, Kayla stood out in the humid tropical weather as a young Puerto Rican man drove up in her car, a bright red LeBaron convertible.

The young man threw her suitcase into the trunk and helped her decipher her map. She was close to the highway, he said. The drive to Guanica was easy.

Kayla clipped her hair back into a barrette, put on her sunglasses, and hit the gas. It was liberating, and if she hadn’t been so sad, she might have enjoyed it.

Three days later, she had a routine. She was staying in a pleasant one-bedroom unit at a place called Mary Lee’s by the Sea. Her unit was decorated with tropical fabrics, plants, rattan furniture, and it looked out over the ocean. Kayla started her day with exercise-she walked past a seafood restaurant and a parking lot where a pack of mangy dogs barked at her from the other side of the chain-link fence, past the opulent Copamarina Beach Resort where wealthy Americans played early morning games of tennis, down to the public beach, and back. At her unit, she showered and made herself a papaya smoothie. Then before it grew too hot, she drove the LeBaron into downtown Guanica, a dingy port town. She shopped at the bodega, cashed traveler’s checks at the bank, visited a souvenir shop, and pawed trinkets and held up T-shirts, thinking, despite her best efforts, of her children. In the afternoons, she lounged on her deck. At five o’clock, Kayla showered again, drank some wine, and either cooked for herself or walked to the seafood restaurant. And every night after dark, she sneaked down to the end of the dock in front of the hotel office, slipped off her sundress, and swam in the lagoon. This was the only time that she allowed herself to think.

The entire situation with Antoinette had opened her eyes to several new ideas. One new idea was that she wasn’t a very good mother. Another new idea was that she wasn’t a very good wife. And a third new idea was that she wasn’t a very good friend. Only weeks earlier, these three words- mother, wife, friend-would have been the exact three words Kayla would have chosen to identify herself. But not anymore. If she wasn’t a mother, wife, and friend, then who was she? She didn’t know.

The lagoon frightened her-it was bordered by the thick, gnarled roots of mangroves. She was afraid to put her feet on die bottom because there might be crabs, or snakes. And yet, being afraid cleared her mind-she spent the dark hours replaying moments from her children’s early lives, especially Theo’s, replayed them like she was a coach watching a game tape-searching for things that might have been done differently. Theo was her first baby. She hadn’t known what she was doing. Did she breast-feed him too long or wean him too soon? Did she tell him she loved him too often or too infrequently? What had she done to make him sleep with her best friend? Somehow, she suspected, it was her fault. And how had she not realized what was going on with Antoinette? Now that Kayla looked back, she saw clues: Theo out on mysterious errands all the time, the way his shirts smelled when Kayla collected them for the laundry, the time he was so curious about Antoinette’s past. But Kayla had been too busy, too blind, too naive to see the clues. Antoinette was in one part of her life, and Theo in another. Even now, Kayla had a hard time believing in the affair. She couldn’t bring herself to imagine their intertwining bodies.

Thinking about Raoul was even more painful. In the nineteen years of their marriage, Kayla and Raoul had only spent a handful of nights apart-the nights Kayla had slept on the beach at Great Point for Night Swimmers. Saying good-bye was difficult: Raoul took her to the airport while the kids were at school, so it was just the two of them in the near-empty terminal. Kayla had never said good-bye to Raoul before, and she didn’t know how to act. Raoul tried to make light of her leaving by humming “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” and when Kayla grew angry at him for this-saying he couldn’t carry a tune, so please save her ears-Raoul grew angry at her. They’d ended up sitting side by side, arms crossed, staring at the woman who worked the Cape Air counter as she helped another customer with a fouled-up ticket. Then, when Kayla’s plane was called, Raoul took her elbow and walked her to the gate and kissed her as sweetly as he had ever kissed her, and Kayla cried.

Kayla missed the sound of Raoul’s voice, the feel of his scruffy face when he didn’t shave for a day or two, the way he touched her in the middle of the night as if making sure she was still there. She missed hearing him talk to the kids, she missed his smell of fresh lumber and plaster and paint, she missed pulling crumpled pink receipts from Marine Home Center out of his pockets when she put his clothes into the hamper at night. But she hadn’t been a good wife. She’d suspected him of adultery for years-she admitted this now-and so she harbored old anger about being deceived along with this new anger about being deceived. And then Jacob. God, Jacob. Every minute of this vacation was a struggle not to fall into a pit of self-loathing.

While there was a chance that her marriage would survive, Kayla understood that her friendships with Val and Antoinette were over. Val had turned Kayla in to the police, and Kayla slept with Jacob. Both actions were unthinkable. Or rather, what was unthinkable was that after twenty years a friendship as strong as theirs could be so violently destroyed. Tom apart in a matter of twenty-four hours. Kayla had packed up all of Val’s things and sent Theo to drop them off at her house.

At the end of her evening swim, as Kayla climbed out of the water, dried off, and walked back to her unit, she asked the question that became her mantra, her raison d’etre: What had happened to Antoinette?Was she alive? Dead? Here, Kayla was flummoxed. She’d asked Raoul to leave a message at the office of Mary Lee’s as soon as a body was found, but she’d heard nothing. And as far as she knew, the police were conducting what they called a limited missing-persons investigation, but again, she’d had no news. Everyone thought, or had grown to accept, that Antoinette drowned during Night Swimmers. She’d been drinking, true; the water was tricky, the riptide fierce and unpredictable. But something nagged at Kayla, and that something was Antoinette herself. She was too capable, too strong, too clever to let herself get swept away. It sounded stupid, but it wasn’t Antoinette’s style. She was a survivor. So where was she? Hanging out with the Jim Morrison groupies at Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, or trekking on the back of an elephant in the teak forests of northern Thailand? Mostly, Kayla thought of Antoinette as vanished. Not alive, not dead, just gone. Meaning, she could turn up again somewhere. Resurface.

Kayla had been dreading this vacation from the beginning, and yet, when the six weeks were over, she panicked at the thought of returning to Nantucket. She thought back to the words she once heard Antoinette say: “I’m lonely all the time, every day. But there are far worse things than being lonely. Like being betrayed.”

Kayla didn’t want to relinquish her solitude, her simple routine, her ocean view or her solitary night swims. She thought brashly of writing a forbidden postcard, Decided to stay here for the rest of my life. Love, Kayla.

She returned on the sixth of November, and as her plane flew over the island, Kayla was filled with trepidation. The first landmark she spotted was Great Point lighthouse, which from the plane looked like nothing more than a white stake planted in the ground. A stake marking the site of her sadness. Then Kayla took in the cranberry color of the moors, the dark blue ponds, the amber and green plots of Bartlett’s farm. Autumn had come while she was away.

She didn’t know what to expect when she entered the airport. She almost walked past Raoul-he was sitting on a bench reading the newspaper-but he reached out and caught the skirt of her dress. He looked the same, the most beautiful man she had ever known, but his face had changed, too. He looked sad; he looked scared. Both her fault.

She didn’t cry. She just stood and ate him up with her eyes, and when he said, “Do you need help with your bags?” she let him come to her rescue.

Kayla stifled all the questions that had been running through her mind for the previous six weeks: Do you still love me, can we make this work, will you ever trust me again? She reminded herself that Raoul was a builder; he believed in process. The relationship would have to be restored one brick at a time. There was no quick fix, and there were no easy answers.

Still, she felt she had to be the first to say something. As they stood at the baggage claim waiting for her suitcase, she spoke up. “I missed you.”

“Oh, yeah?” he said.

She swallowed. “Yeah. Did you miss me?”

He turned and took her in his arms, and she pressed her face into the side of his neck and wondered how she’d made it through six weeks without him.

“Oh, yeah,” he said.

By Thanksgiving, things appeared, on the outside, to be back to normal. Kayla ventured out of the house again, although she spoke to no one about what had happened Labor Day weekend. When people asked about Theo, she told them he was attending Boston Hill to improve his chances of getting into a good college.

Raoul went to court and was fined five hundred dollars and sentenced to fifty hours of community service. He offered to build a new jungle gym for the elementary school playground, and he let Luke help him design it. He and his crew started work on a house on Eel Point Road. The client bought the sixty-five-acre parcel of land for almost twenty million dollars and he told Raoul he wanted a house that would make the Tings’ look like a scallop shanty.

The kids-Jennifer, Cassidy B., and Luke-still didn’t know the whole story. They became absorbed with school and friends and pretended to forget all about it.

Raoul and Kayla called Sabrina to find out how Theo was doing. He was hurt, Sabrina said, but healing. Kayla wanted to talk to him, she wanted to see him, but he wasn’t ready. He needed space, he needed time. Kayla, more than anyone else in the family, understood.

In the Inquirer and Mirror in the middle of November, Kayla saw that John and Val’s house had sold for over a million dollars. A few weeks later, the Nantucket Bar Association placed an ad wishing Valerie Gluckstern “lots of luck in her new practice in Annapolis, Maryland.” Kayla felt a sense of loss, but more than anything, she was relieved.

On the outside, everything appeared to be back to normal.

And then, December. The day that Kayla went Christmas shopping in town, the day when everything seemed so festive, so right. The day the phone call came that nearly stopped her heart.

“Kayla,” the voice on die answering machine said. “This is Paul Henry. I have news. Please call me.”

I have news. Kayla walked aimlessly through the house, trying to control her breathing. She entered Theo’s room. It was pristine-dusted, vacuumed, bed made. The way Kayla always imagined it would look once Theo went to college, until she and Raoul bought a large piece of exercise equipment, or decided to redecorate and make it a guest room.

I have news.

What was she afraid of? The reality of Antoinette’s death-perhaps even the physical reality of it, the remains of Antoinette’s body. What would that look like now, after so many months? A skeleton? A blue, bloated corpse? Once Kayla saw the body, the body that contained her grandchild, it would haunt her forever. She would see it in her sleep, she would become afraid of the dark. The finality of it: a dead body. Not to mention the possible criminal charges, the word murder silently attached to Kayla’s name. Or not so silently: If the detective drummed up enough evidence, there would be an indictment, a trial.

I can’t do it, she thought, longing for her one-bedroom unit at Mary Lee’s by the Sea. I can’t call him back.

What was more terrifying was the thought that Antoinette might be alive.

She tried to forget about the message. After all, it was Christmastime. Kayla convinced Raoul to take the next day off of work and they flew to the Cape to do some Christmas shopping while the kids were in school. They bought Luke a North Face jacket and a Razor scooter, Cassidy B. a complete set of grown-up art supplies: oil paints, watercolors, pastels, charcoal pencils, sculpting clay. They bought Jennifer a leather skirt and Rollerblades. They bought Theo a computer and arranged to have it sent to Boston. Then, exhausted, they ate lunch in the noisy, crowded food court, where kids too young for school screamed and smashed French fries into their hair.

There, amid the din, Kayla heard Paul Henry’s voice. I have news.

Kayla listened to the piped-in Christmas music, Karen Carpenter singing, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” She wanted to disappear into the glitter and tinsel and spun sugar of Christmas at the Cape Cod Mall. Forget about drownings and love affairs and detectives. But the specter of Paul Henry crunched into her Christmas spirit like the Grinch. Kayla tried to smile at Raoul across the dinky Formica table.

“Is something wrong?” he asked her. “You seem preoccupied.”

“I have to make a phone call,” she said. “Where are the pay phones?”

“Who do you have to call?” Raoul asked.

“Your mother,” Kayla lied. “There was something else she said Theo wanted, something for school, but I can’t remember what.”

Raoul nodded and Kayla ran around the perimeter of the food court until she found the corridor with the rest rooms and the pay phones.

“Come in,” Paul Henry said.

“I can’t,” Kayla said. “I’m in Hyannis. Christmas shopping. Just tell me what the news is, Paul. Did you find a body?”

“I’ll tell you when you come in,” he said. “This isn’t something I’m willing to tell you over the phone. Tomorrow morning?”

“Fine,” Kayla said. She slammed down the phone.

“What did mom say?” Raoul asked when she returned. He was busy finishing her chicken teriyaki and didn’t notice her agitation.

“Sabrina wasn’t home,” Kayla said.

“Probably out shopping for dinner,” Raoul said.

The police station was decorated for Christmas-a row of garlands across the front desk, blinking white lights in the window. The officer behind the glass shield was wearing a Santa hat. He took one look at Kayla and picked up a phone. Paul Henry emerged from the hallway ten seconds later. He reached for Kayla’s hand and, incredibly, kissed her on the cheek. Kayla hadn’t slept at all the night before. She lay next to Raoul counting his breaths, imagining possible scenarios. Kayla realized she was grateful for one reason. She wanted an end; as gruesome or as scary as it might be, she wanted closure.

She followed Paul Henry down the dim hallway to his office. Paul Henry sat down behind a kidney-shaped desk. Kayla collapsed in a needlepoint chair while Paul Henry opened a manila file folder. He read. Kayla studied the photographs on his desk- his wife, Carla, their kids, a grandchild. Kayla studied his hands-he wore a gold wedding band. Raoul never wore his wedding ring because when he built houses it could catch on something. Instead, he kept it in a plain white box in his sock drawer. A lonely gold band with her name inscribed inside and their wedding date, June 1, 1981.

Kayla looked expectantly at Paul Henry.

“I have to tell you, Kayla, I called the woman’s daughter yesterday. Told her who I was. She hung up on me, and I haven’t had any luck reaching her again.”

“Okay.”

Paul Henry took a small notepad and copied something from the file. Like a doctor writing down the diagnosis of a terminal disease, Kayla thought. He slid the paper across the desk. Kayla was afraid to look at it. “Can’t you just tell me?”

Paul Henry put down his pen. “Ms. Riley is living on Martha’s Vineyard.”

“She’s alive?” Kayla’s stomach dropped; she started to sweat. “For the love of God, Paul, she’s alive? Living on the Vineyard? Are you sure?”

“Detective Simpson was conducting the missing persons, and he subpoenaed pertinent information from Valerie Gluckstern’s office.”

“What kind of information?”

“Information about Ms. Riley’s assets. Back when this whole situation started, John Gluckstern told us that his wife had convinced Ms. Riley to take her assets out of Nantucket Bank and invest them with a broker in London.”

“London,” Kayla repeated.

“We finally tracked down the guy in London, and he refused to answer our questions, so we went to his supervisor and what while found out was that the bank has been sending Ms. Riley money to an address on the Vineyard the first of every month… since, well, since September.”

“You’re kidding.” Kayla nearly swooned. She put a hand on Paul Henry’s desk. “Did Val know? Did Val know this whole time that Antoinette was alive?”

“I called Valerie myself and asked her because I couldn’t believe it. She said she merely put Antoinette in contact with the London broker and that she knew nothing of their arrangements.” Paul Henry smoothed his crew cut. “If Valerie knew all along that Ms. Riley “ran away,’ as it were, we can slap some fraud charges on her. Detective Simpson has big hopes for this. I don’t. This police station isn’t set up to handle big cases. I’m just glad Ms. Riley is alive.”

Kayla looked at the piece of paper. “This is Antoinette’s address?”

“Supposedly.”

“What should I do with it?”

Paul Henry shrugged. “Whatever you want. Go see her. Don’t go see her. I guess Detective Simpson was hoping you could give him a positive ID so that he could close the case.” Paul Henry reddened. “You certainly don’t have to do anything for Simpson’s sake. He was awfully rough with you, Kayla. I’m sorry.”

“Val was rough with me. I really can’t believe this. I can’t believe Antoinette is alive. I thought… really, I don’t know what I thought.”

“Well, again, I’m sorry for what happened. I don’t like to see good people, good Nantucketers, take it on the chin like you and Raoul did. And your son.”

Kayla stuffed the paper into her purse. “Okay,” she said. She knew Paul Henry was looking for some sign of forgiveness, but she couldn’t give it to him. She had to get out of there. “Thanks.”

On the way home, Kayla stopped at Hatch’s and bought a six-pack of beer and a five-dollar scratch ticket. Antoinette was alive, on Martha’s Vineyard. Kayla laughed in the check-out line.

Later, she sat at the breakfast bar and drank two beers with her lunch. A cream cheese and grape jelly sandwich and eight Lay’s potato chips. Val had known the whole time. There wasn’t a doubt in Kayla’s mind. She scraped the silver film off her scratch ticket with her thumbnail. Nothing. She used to find old scratch tickets all over Theo’s room. He’d bought them at the Islander Liquor Store, back when he used to hang out with his friends. Back when he was a normal kid. The word that filled Kayla’s mind was outrageous, because at the center of that word was rage. Antoinette is fucking alive. On the fucking Vineyard. And Valerie knew. Now things started to make sense. Val pretended that Antoinette had drowned so no one would suspect otherwise. She threw Kayla to the police to keep the police from investigating any deeper, but she knew Kayla wouldn’t get into any serious trouble because a body would never be found. Kayla had left Great Point for at least half an hour when she went to call the police. There was plenty of time for Antoinette to crawl out of the water and escape. Maybe she’d left her bike somewhere along the way, maybe she rode to Val’s house and hid out there until morning when the ferry left for Martha’s Vineyard, which on Labor Day weekend would have been filled with tourists. Or Antoinette could have taken a motor boat; she knew how to operate one-Kayla remembered the trip to Tuck-ernuck with Theo years before. It mattered very little at this point how Antoinette got to the Vineyard. Once there, she was safe. The Vineyard was the perfect place to hide. It was too close, too obvious, and for these very reasons it was the last place anyone would have looked.

But why, Antoinette? Why run away?

Kayla had to go see for herself.

With the kids at school and Raoul at work on his huge new project, it was easy to slip away the next day. There was one ferry to the Vineyard in the morning, and one ferry home in the afternoon. Kayla was one of three people on the boat. She hunkered down in a window seat and inventoried the damage that Antoinette had caused-Theo’s heart, for starters; Kayla’s good reputation; Kayla and Raoul’s marriage; Kayla and Val’s friendship; Ting. If Kayla did find Antoinette on the Vineyard, what could she possibly say? Only this: You ruined everything. Outrageous.

Martha’s Vineyard was much bigger than Nantucket; it had seven towns to Nantucket’s one. The town of Vineyard Haven, though, had the same slow pace of Nantucket in winter. When Kayla arrived, there was a line of taxis, each with a Christmas wreath tied to the grille, and the drivers were clustered together, warming their hands around cups of coffee. Kayla stood by the passenger door of the first taxi in line until the driver, a man with long, deep lines in his face, tore himself away from the group. He wore jeans, a gray hooded sweatshirt.

“Where you headed?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said. The paper said: 52 Painted Rock Road, between Chilmark and Aquinnah. When they climbed into the car, she handed it to the driver.

His face creased into more lines. “Well, I know where Chilmark and Aquinnah are, but I’ve never heard of Painted Rock Road. You sure that’s the right name?”

“No,” Kayla said. “This is just an address someone gave me. A… a friend of mine lives there.”

“I’ve lived here twenty-six years,” the driver said. “Been driving cab fourteen and I have never heard of any Painted Rock Road.”

That sounds like Antoinette, Kayla thought. She was forever stumping the taxi drivers on Nantucket. Even with the address they couldn’t find her house.

“Can you take me out that way?” Kayla asked. “You can drop me off, maybe, and I’ll look for it?”

The driver shrugged. Kayla saw on his license that his name was Eddie.

“Okay,” Eddie said. He shifted his car into gear. “We’ll give it a whirl.”

They drove out of Vineyard Haven and hopped on the state road. “I’m headed up-island,” Eddie said into his radio. “Don’t know when I’ll be back.” Kayla looked out the window at the acres of open land, farm land, pine forest. It was turning out to be a nice day; the sun came out for brief periods before disappearing behind white puffy clouds.

After a while, they passed a hand-painted sign that said CHILMARK CHOCOLATES.

“So we’re in Chilmark, then?” Kayla asked.

“Yep,” Eddie said.

“We should start looking for signs,” Kayla said.

“If there’s a sign for this Painted Rock Road, I’ve never seen it before.”

“Oh,” Kayla said.

Eddie picked up his radio. “Hey, anybody out there ever heard of Painted Rock Road?”

Static.

“Hey, Norm, you out there? Carrie, doll?”

A woman’s voice. “I’m here, Eddie. Can’t help ya.”

More static.

Kayla watched mailboxes sail by. Eddie was driving pretty fast. “Maybe we should slow down,” she said. “So we can look?”

A man’s voice broke the static. “Painted Rock’s off the left hand side of State, Eddie. Two turns before the Kaiser place.”

“You’re kidding,” Eddie said. “There’s no houses down that turn, though, Norm. There’s no sign.”

“Nope, no sign. Just a rock there at the turn with blue paint. You’ve probably never seen it,” Norm said. “And there is one house back there, Eddie. I know because I dropped off the woman who lives there a week or so ago.”

The woman who lives there.

Eddie nuzzled his radio. “Thanks for the tip, Norm.” He looked back at Kayla and shrugged. “Learn something new, et cetera, et cetera.”

Kayla was suddenly too petrified to speak.

With this information from Norm, Eddie found the road almost instantly.

“No shit,” he said. “A rock with blue paint. There it is.”

Kayla fumbled through her purse for money. “You can just leave me off here,” she said. “I’ll walk to the house. Truth is, I’d like to smoke a cigarette before I get there.”

Eddie pulled over to the side of the road just past the blue rock. “No problem,” he said. “Fifteen bucks.”

Kayla gave him a twenty and told him to keep the change. He smiled. “Have a nice visit with your friend,” he said. “And Merry Christmas.”

It was sunny but cold. Kayla wore jeans, a turtleneck, and a black corduroy jacket. She put on her gloves and began to walk. Painted Rock Road was a dirt road surrounded on both sides by thick trees. It felt eerily familiar. Same setting, different island. Kayla saw other footprints in the dirt. Antoinette’s footprints? Or the footprints of some other woman? Kayla followed the footprints to a clearing, a small yard, a house. The house was long and narrow, a bunch of rooms lined up like boxcars on a train. Cedar shingles, forest green shutters, empty window boxes. A stucco chimney gurgled smoke.

Someone was home, enjoying a fire.

Kayla crunched up the gravel driveway. Fairy tales played through her head: “Hansel and Gretel,” “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” An evil-looking crow cawed from the roof. Kayla knocked on the front door three times. A friendly knock.

No answer.

Kayla knocked again, this time a little more aggressively. She wondered if someone was watching her from behind the curtains.

Still no answer.

Kayla rounded the side of the house with the chimney and stepped into the back yard. She was alarmed to discover the back of the house had huge windows and glass doors. Kayla could see right in- the beautiful cherry cabinets in the kitchen, the bar stools, one with a paperback copy of The Bluest Eye splayed on top. A small Christmas tree glittered with white lights on the kitchen counter. Behind the kitchen was a living room with a huge stone fireplace-and lying on the sofa in front of the fire, Kayla saw Antoinette, fast asleep.

Pregnant.

Kayla gasped. She should leave. Right now, leave. Give the detective his positive ID-Yes, that was Antoinette. Case closed. But Kayla couldn’t help herself. She walked closer to the glass doors; she pressed her face against the glass because she had to be sure.

Antoinette lay on her side, her hands resting on her swollen belly. She wore a pleated white blouse. Antoinette in white-it seemed odd. Her hair was loose, frizzed out on the sofa cushion, her eyes were closed, and her mouth hung open slightly. Kayla stared unabashedly. She remembered the incredible exhaustion of pregnancy, how it had weighed her down. And now here was Antoinette pregnant-tired with Kayla’s grandchild. Kayla reached for the handle of the sliding glass door. It was open. Kayla walked right in and tiptoed over to Antoinette; she stood so close she could hear Antoinette’s breathing. So close she could touch Antoinette’s forehead, which was shiny and dotted with small pimples. After all this time, months of speculation, here she was.You ran away from us, Kayla thought. And in so doing, you ruined everything. But staring at the roundness of Antoinette’s body, Kayla softened. Antoinette had kept the baby, after all.

And then, without warning, Antoinette’s eyes opened, and she looked at Kayla.

Kayla smiled at her. “Hello, old friend.”

A baffled expression crossed Antoinette’s face; her brow wrinkled. “You found me?”

“Apparently so.”

Antoinette blinked, confused. “Apparently so,” she repeated. She put a hand on the sofa beneath her in an attempt to push herself upright.

“Don’t get up,” Kayla said. “I’m not staying.”

“Do you have a gun?” Antoinette asked.

“A gun?”

“Don’t you want to kill me?”

Kayla laughed. “Sort of, yeah. But I don’t want to kill what’s inside you.”

Antoinette relaxed; she rubbed her stomach. “It’s a girl, Kayla.”

Tears sprang to Kayla’s eyes, and she stared into the fire. “A girl, huh?” She began to cry, unsure of how to feel. On the outside, things seemed to have gone back to normal, but inside of Kayla, everything had changed. The things that money couldn’t buy- a happy marriage, good kids, loyal friends-floated in the air around Kayla like snowflakes. At one time, she’d had them all, but now they were gone, and in their place was this news. A baby, after all. A baby girl. Kayla wiped her tears away with the back of her hand and took a deep breath, but when she turned back to Antoinette, she broke down again.

“Why the hell did you… and Val… she didn’t tell me… she accused me…”

“I made Val promise,” Antoinette said. “I swore her to secrecy.”

“But the two of you are supposed to keep secrets with me, not from me.”

“We wanted to protect you.”

“Protect me?”

“Protect Theo,” Antoinette said. “He can’t know about this. It will only set him back, Kayla. He needs to move forward. You know I’m right about that. Please don’t tell him.”

“He’s heartbroken,” Kayla said.

“So am I,” Antoinette said. “At least he has me to blame. I have to blame myself. I do, you know- accept the blame for everything. I will feel guilty for the rest of my life.”

“Good,” Kayla said. If Jacob Anderson had taught her anything, it was that guilt was the worst that life had to deal out. And Antoinette deserved the worst. “You hurt a lot of people. You hurt me.”

“I know, Kayla. I’m sorry.”

Kayla stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. She and Antoinette looked at each other for a long moment-Kayla really looked. Her friend dressed in white for the first time, the frizzy hair, the swollen belly-a woman she’d never understood, but had loved anyway. Kayla wondered what Antoinette saw: A wife? A mother? A friend?

“I have to tell Theo,” Kayla said. “There’s no way I can keep this from him.”

“You can’t tell him,” Antoinette said. “He deserves a second chance-at love, at a family. Once he’s older.”

“Yes, but…”

“Kayla,” Antoinette said. “Twenty years ago we made a promise to keep each other’s secrets safe from the rest of the world. That includes Theo.”

“He’s going to find out sooner or later,” Kayla said.

“Then let it be later. Promise me he won’t hear it from you.”

Kayla nodded and warm tears spilled down her cheeks. “Will you raise her well?” Kayla said. “This little girl of ours?”

“I will,” Antoinette said. “This is my second chance. I waited a long time for this, Kayla.”

“I didn’t know you wanted a second chance,” Kayla said.

“That was my confession,” Antoinette said. “I want a second chance. Please.”

Kayla didn’t know how to respond, and she sensed she never would.

“Merry Christmas,” Kayla said. She walked back to the door and stepped out into the cold, bright day. When she turned around, Antoinette’s eyes had fallen closed once again and Kayla watched her deep breathing resume, her chest rising and falling in a rhythm as perfect and steady as the waves of the ocean.

Kayla walked all the way back to Vineyard Haven; several cars stopped to offer her a ride, but she declined. She was in a trance of sorts. She replayed the conversation over and over and had to quell the desire to return and bombard Antoinette with what remained: her anger, her questions, her remorse. But those things were rapidly losing importance, and in their place, Kayla felt a growing sense of freedom. It was over. Complete. Ending not with a death at all, but with a life. Her granddaughter’s life would be the last Night Swimmers secret, the secret that would bind her to Val and Antoinette even if she never saw them again. The hardest secret to keep.

Forgive me, Theo, Kayla thought. Because I am a mother, too, I understand.

…

As Kayla waited for the ferry to Nantucket, she thought about the little girl who would be entering the world soon, a little girl connected to Kayla’s rife, and to her husband, and to her son, and to her dear friend. This little girl changed things, transformed them. Kayla hoped Antoinette would raise the baby to be strong and wise and yes, sensitive, like her grandmother. Maybe someday Antoinette would tell her the story about Night Swimmers, about three women who shared secrets that they couldn’t share with anyone else. Maybe when this baby grew up, she would have female friends of her own. To be friends with another woman was difficult, Kayla thought, and painful and complicated. But when a friendship between women was good, it had a sacred, shining power. Kayla gathered up memories of this power-and there were many-as she stepped onto the ferry and headed for home.