Nantucket Red (Nantucket Blue) Read Online Free PDF

think I was going to make it to eight p.m., when Jules had promised to pick me up. At one point, Dad asked Mom’s permission to use the “restroom,” even though it had been his bathroom in his house for fifteen years. He not only knew where it was, he knew what kind of soap would be by the sink and where the towel hanging on the rack had been bought.
    And then, later, when Polly’s parents gave me a set of some top-of-the-line monogrammed sheets as a graduation present, Mom whistled and said, “Wow. Those are nicer than the ones we got for our wedding, right, Jack?” Dad coughed, Rosemary pursed her lips, and I felt like I had to apologize. And then, after that, Brad tried to teach Polly the correct stance for fly-fishing when she clearly didn’t want to learn, at least not in heels in my mom’s backyard. She had to firmly tell him no for him to get the picture, and he’d flushed with such embarrassment he looked like a little boy.
    But now it was seven fifty p.m., the barbecue was wrapping up, and everyone had consumed enough alcohol to at least be able to simulate a normal social gathering. Except for Alexi and me. Alexi was allowed only water to keep his sugar intake down, and I was sticking to lemonade for now, though I could’ve used something to help me forget about Zack’s high five, which was hovering in the air over my head. It was like he’d forgotten who I was.
    I wasn’t the girl he high-fived. I was the one he whispered secrets to in the predawn hours, the one who could make him laugh with a single raised eyebrow. The one who understood what he had lost when he lost his mother. I was the girl he loved, or at least that’s what I thought. When someone stops loving you, I wondered, does that mean they never really even started?
    As this thought crept across my mind, Aunt Phyllis and Uncle Rob put their arms around me and started to tell me again what it was like to go to college in Northampton, Massachusetts, in the 1980s. Lots of plaid shirts, combat boots, and crazy parties that they were hinting involved group sex. Someone needed to cut them off before they got any more concrete with their details.
    Just then Mom stepped up on the big, flat rock in her garden, tapped her wineglass with a plastic fork and announced, a bit tipsily, “I’d like to toast Cricket. I have no doubt she’s going to take over the world. I am so, so proud of you, baby!”
    Everyone lifted glasses in my direction. Dad whistled. Alexi whooped. I took a little bow.
    “That said,” she continued, “I’m glad she’s staying at home. Not just in Providence, but right here in this house.”
    Brown had offered me a great financial package, but it didn’t cover everything. My parents didn’t have a lot of money, and I didn’t want to graduate with student loans, so we’d decided I’d live with Mom. Living in the dorms and eating in the cafeteria would have cost almost twelve thousand dollars a year. That didn’t include student fees or books for classes. At the end of four years, I’d have been lucky to be only fifty thousand dollars in debt, which Dad explained would keep growing over time. Both my parents were still paying off their student loans. It seemed stupid to go into debt when we lived so close to the Brown campus that I could walk to all my classes, watch the marching band pass our porch every Saturday morning, and hear the soccer referee’s whistle from my bedroom window.
    “I can’t deny that I feel so good knowing my daughter is right downstairs if I need her, like I did today when she helped me pick out this outfit.” She curtsied, and Brad whistled. “And if she needs me for girls’ chats or love advice, I’ll be waiting. Who knows, we might even end up going on some double dates. We’ll be double trouble, right, honey?”
    “That’s right,” I said, downing my lemonade to mask my panic.
    “I have something to say here,” Dad said. I’d only heard Dad make one toast. It was at his wedding