“My dad went to Nantucket with your uncle and your dad,” Bess said. “He just texted to say he landed.”
“That’s crazy,” Link says. He drinks in the sight of Bess McCloud; she’s just as pretty as he remembers. Nerdy-pretty, with glasses and hair that hangs in her face a little.
“Are you…waiting for someone?” Link asks.
Bess rolls her eyes. “I’m supposed to be on a Bumble date, but the guy is stuck on the Metro.” She holds up her phone. “It says he’s sixteen minutes away.”
Link slides down the bar next to her. “I can hang with you for sixteen minutes,” he says. “Then when your boyfriend gets here, I’ll leave quietly.”
Bess laughs. “He’s not my boyfriend,” she says. “I don’t even know him. He’s a lobbyist for the alcohol industry.”
“A lobbyist?” Link says. “Legal bribery.”
“Exactly,” Bess sighs. “I normally stay away, but…”
But the dude is probably good-looking and rolling in cash, Link thinks. “Looks like I have sixteen minutes to try and lure you away from the dark side,” he says. “I’m working for Brookings. Domestic policy. I analyze the impact of policy decisions on the least served among us and suggest ways to make them more effective.”
“I work in nonprofits,” Bess says.
“Sexy!” Link says.
“Yeah, as sexy as being a producer for public television,” Bess says.
“Hey, do you still have that shell?” Link asks. “That quahog shell that you found on the beach on Nantucket?”
Bess sips her wine and nods. “It’s on my dresser, actually.”
“No…seriously?”
“Swear to God.”
“And did you…？”
“Did I what?”
The thing that Link wants to ask might take another drink, but the clock is ticking. The lobbyist will probably show up with his American Express obsidian card in eleven minutes. “Did you ever ask your dad what was going on between him and my mom?”
Bess’s green eyes find Link’s from behind her glasses. Her eyebrows raise. “I did.” She swivels her head to take in the raucous bar scene beyond them. “Do you maybe want to go someplace quieter and I can tell you about it?”
Link laughs. “What about your date?”
Bess checks her phone. “The pin hasn’t moved. He’s stuck on the Metro. I’ll cancel him and we can go over to Lapis for Afghan food. Does that sound okay?”
Link doesn’t care if they go to McDonald’s. There’s no way he’s going to miss a chance to sit across the table from this beautiful nerdy girl and learn something new about his mother. “Sounds great,” he says.
Leland
When Leland’s JetBlue flight from JFK touches down on Nantucket, she looks out the window and takes note of the rows and rows of private planes, including an impressive jet with the Frayed Edge coffee logo on the side. She experiences a childish burst of excitement: Fray is here!
She pulls down the front of her denim cloche hat and puts on oversized sunglasses. There are some young women farther back on the plane who recognized Leland at the gate in New York; they asked for a selfie with her, which she indulged even though she’s more than over it. But Leland’s brand and Leland’s Letter are all about women lifting up other women—so she can hardly refuse anyone.
She hurries down the plane’s stairway and practically runs across the tarmac. Nantucket Island—the name speaks of wealth and entitlement, though to Leland the idea of Nantucket is inextricably tied to memories of the best friend she has ever had in her life, Mallory Blessing. The first time Leland set foot on this island was Labor Day weekend, 1993. She had been so young, only twenty-four years old. In those days, she lived on the Upper East Side and worked as an editorial assistant at Bard & Scribe. Leland had thought she was special. She emulated the lockjaw of the Vassar girls she worked with, she dyed her hair pink, she bought all her clothes from thrift shops in the Village, except for a stiff leather jacket from Trash and Vaudeville that she spent a whopping nine hundred dollars on because Ray Goodman himself said that Leland reminded him of a young Patti Smith.
When Leland came to Nantucket on that first trip, she had behaved…atrociously. She kissed Fray—Frazier Dooley, her first love—in the back seat of Mallory’s car, but then once they got to the bar, she bumped into an acquaintance from New York—Kip Sudbury, whose father was in commercial real estate and who had a yacht at his disposal—and Leland left Mallory and Fray and Cooper without a word of explanation. She’d ditched them; it made her cringe to remember it now. The only excuse she had was youth.