The cookie crumbled slightly under her touch, leaving a spray of dust across the table between them. Adam picked up a second one from the plate, turning it around in his hand. It was thin and flat and as wide as his broad hand with the crinkled look of a very good molasses cookie. It was chewy and crisp at the same time—the slip of paper under the plate read simply miso, brown butter, rice flour. The other lines were equally intriguing: graham flour, rum, thyme and candied fennel, tahini, caramel.
The breakfast room is bright; sunlight streams in through the palladian windows. The air smells of bacon and coffee and the subtle saltiness of sea air drifting in from off the sound. A platter of croissants and slices of lightly toasted Portuguese bread sits on the center of the table, flanked by delicate Royal Delft dishes holding softened butter, marmalade, and beach plum jam. Will saunters in, his hair tousled and his shirt rumpled, testament to the late hour he stumbled home the night before. Despite the gorgeous day unfolding and the leisurely breakfast awaiting them, there’s tension humming in the room.
The cookie crumbled slightly under her touch, leaving a spray of dust across the table between them. Adam picked up a second one from the plate, turning it around in his hand. It was thin and flat and as wide as his broad hand with the crinkled look of a very good molasses cookie. It was chewy and crisp at the same time—the slip of paper under the plate read simply miso, brown butter, rice flour. The other lines were equally intriguing: graham flour, rum, thyme and candied fennel, tahini, caramel.
The breakfast room is bright; sunlight streams in through the palladian windows. The air smells of bacon and coffee and the subtle saltiness of sea air drifting in from off the sound. A platter of croissants and slices of lightly toasted Portuguese bread sits on the center of the table, flanked by delicate Royal Delft dishes holding softened butter, marmalade, and beach plum jam. Will saunters in, his hair tousled and his shirt rumpled, testament to the late hour he stumbled home the night before. Despite the gorgeous day unfolding and the leisurely breakfast awaiting them, there’s tension humming in the room.
It’s the hottest day of the summer so far. It’s so hot that the surface of the pool is turning warm, the first few inches as tepid as bathwater. She doesn’t have the energy to get up and dive into the cool depths of the deep end, but instead stretches out on a chair, her entire body limp from the heat. She can almost feel the sunburn prickling across her skin. Later that night, she’ll step into the outdoor shower and gasp when the water hits her back, as sharp as needles against the angry pink flush of her shoulders where she was too lazy to reapply sunscreen more than twice.
The cookie crumbled slightly under her touch, leaving a spray of dust across the table between them. Adam picked up a second one from the plate, turning it around in his hand. It was thin and flat and as wide as his broad hand with the crinkled look of a very good molasses cookie. It was chewy and crisp at the same time—the slip of paper under the plate read simply miso, brown butter, rice flour. The other lines were equally intriguing: graham flour, rum, thyme and candied fennel, tahini, caramel.
The breakfast room is bright; sunlight streams in through the palladian windows. The air smells of bacon and coffee and the subtle saltiness of sea air drifting in from off the sound. A platter of croissants and slices of lightly toasted Portuguese bread sits on the center of the table, flanked by delicate Royal Delft dishes holding softened butter, marmalade, and beach plum jam. Will saunters in, his hair tousled and his shirt rumpled, testament to the late hour he stumbled home the night before. Despite the gorgeous day unfolding and the leisurely breakfast awaiting them, there’s tension humming in the room.
It’s the hottest day of the summer so far. It’s so hot that the surface of the pool is turning warm, the first few inches as tepid as bathwater. She doesn’t have the energy to get up and dive into the cool depths of the deep end, but instead stretches out on a chair, her entire body limp from the heat. She can almost feel the sunburn prickling across her skin. Later that night, she’ll step into the outdoor shower and gasp when the water hits her back, as sharp as needles against the angry pink flush of her shoulders where she was too lazy to reapply sunscreen more than twice.
The air is cool, the heat of the day diffusing into the canopy of trees overhead. A breeze drifts in from off the river, ruffling the leaves of the quaking aspen that ring the campsite. Jack is stomping through the low bushes in the distance, his arms full of sticks for kindling. He drops the pile next to the fire pit and brushes the dirt from his shorts. His t-shirt is a soft faded navy with the words CHARLIE DON’T SURF emblazoned across the back. (Because she’s never been a fifteen year old boy, she doesn’t get the reference to Apocalypse Now.)
SIX YEARS AGO
“All it does is rain here,” she says gloomily. She kicks at the leg of a wicker chaise lounge and it collapses, flipping onto its side. “This entire house is falling apart. It’s crap.”
“What’s got you in such a foul mood?” Whit asks through a mouthful of cereal.
“That’s repulsive, Whit,” she says. He’s just poured himself a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats and doused it with a stream of heavy cream until the cereal almost disappeared. “You might as well eat a stick of butter for breakfast.”
The market is part farmstand and part gourmet food store: a classic Hamptons dichotomy. The low-slung building is white and pretty, with a forest green awning on one end and large white cotton umbrellas standing sentinel over the picnic tables out front. Inside, strands of tiny globe lights criss-cross from the wooden rafters. The cool cement floor is painted a dusty moss green. Tables hold baskets of produce: shiny purple fairytale eggplant the size of your thumb, knobby heirloom tomatoes striped red and orange, bunches of carrots—still streaked with dirt from the ground—propped up at jaunty angles.
The cookie crumbled slightly under her touch, leaving a spray of dust across the table between them. Adam picked up a second one from the plate, turning it around in his hand. It was thin and flat and as wide as his broad hand with the crinkled look of a very good molasses cookie. It was chewy and crisp at the same time—the slip of paper under the plate read simply miso, brown butter, rice flour. The other lines were equally intriguing: graham flour, rum, thyme and candied fennel, tahini, caramel.
The breakfast room is bright; sunlight streams in through the palladian windows. The air smells of bacon and coffee and the subtle saltiness of sea air drifting in from off the sound. A platter of croissants and slices of lightly toasted Portuguese bread sits on the center of the table, flanked by delicate Royal Delft dishes holding softened butter, marmalade, and beach plum jam. Will saunters in, his hair tousled and his shirt rumpled, testament to the late hour he stumbled home the night before. Despite the gorgeous day unfolding and the leisurely breakfast awaiting them, there’s tension humming in the room.
SIX YEARS AGO
“All it does is rain here,” she says gloomily. She kicks at the leg of a wicker chaise lounge and it collapses, flipping onto its side. “This entire house is falling apart. It’s crap.”
“What’s got you in such a foul mood?” Whit asks through a mouthful of cereal.
“That’s repulsive, Whit,” she says. He’s just poured himself a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats and doused it with a stream of heavy cream until the cereal almost disappeared. “You might as well eat a stick of butter for breakfast.”
The market is part farmstand and part gourmet food store: a classic Hamptons dichotomy. The low-slung building is white and pretty, with a forest green awning on one end and large white cotton umbrellas standing sentinel over the picnic tables out front. Inside, strands of tiny globe lights criss-cross from the wooden rafters. The cool cement floor is painted a dusty moss green. Tables hold baskets of produce: shiny purple fairytale eggplant the size of your thumb, knobby heirloom tomatoes striped red and orange, bunches of carrots—still streaked with dirt from the ground—propped up at jaunty angles.
It’s only 10 AM when she gets back to the apartment, but there’s music coming from the end of the hallway. It’s Martha and the Vandellas, which means Hadley’s in a particularly good mood, because Motown is her happy music (followed by reggaeton and anything by the Rolling Stones). She drops her keys with a clang in the glazed ceramic Astier de Villatte bowl that sits on their entryway table and sits down on the rattan bench to untie her shoes and peel off her socks.
Today she’s eating lunch. Tuna salad again. The breeze is riffling the tops of the trees. Two yards over, the neighbors are painting. Steve, the husband, leans a ladder against the side of the house and it sways and clanks menacingly.
She takes another bite, chewing slowly, and watches out of the corner of her eye as Steve bends over to pick up a paintbrush, then straightens. Steve is a salt-of-the-earth type. He grew up in Harwich, out on the Cape, where his dad ran a boat repair shop and his mom raised him along with three brothers: rowdy, ruddy-cheeked boys who all settled nearby after high school and immediately set about having children. Sometimes they come to visit. She’s met them all separately but still can’t tell them apart in their sameness. They’re all broad-shouldered, with the weatherbeaten skin of someone who grew up on the water.
The sun is watery but strong, filtering down through the canopy of dogwoods that marks the boundary between their lawn and the neighbors’. She sets her laptop down carefully on the patio table. A bowl of sliced plums, ice cold and just on the firm side of ripe, sits next to a glass of fizzy salted lemonade. The lemonade is something she picked up in college: Her sophomore year roommate in college had been dating a chemical engineer named Atid who’d grown up in Thailand.
There are so many different ways to be homesick, she’s discovering. There’s the obvious kind: the textbook definition where you miss your parents and your home This is the kind she felt when she was 12 and spent three weeks at Camp Watama on Lake Wentworth in New Hampshire. Her tentmate was a girl named Cammy Mason from Short Hills who wore sparkly eyeshadow and liked to brag about how she had already watched Dirty Dancing with her older sister’s friends. Cammy’s brash confidence made her feel small and inexperienced and homesick for her two best friends still preferred to play board games and watch old episodes of I Dream of Jeannie when they had sleepovers.
She waits for a long, slow second. It stretches like taffy into another second, then another, until nearly half a minute has elapsed. The silence becomes so meaningful that she can picture it like expanding like a balloon, taking on more air as it swells uncomfortably.
“Okay,” she says stiffly, the word coming out crisp and business-like: the verbal equivalent of rapping sharply on the top of a creme brulee, cracking the sweet candy coating around her heart.
“It’s not…I’m sorry. I tried but I can’t change it,” he stumbles over his words but rather than sounding apologetic, he sounds impatient, like he’s placating a child and wishes to be done with it.
The first time the phone rings, she doesn’t hear it.
The second time it rings, she picks it up on the third ring and says breathlessly, “What happened?”
His voice comes across the line, deep and happy, and she can picture him smiling as he answers. “It worked! We’re celebrating. If, that is, you’re free.”
She glances out of the window where the snow is falling thick and fast, the flakes so fat and heavy it’s as if they can barely stay aloft. The afternoon is tilting rapidly towards dusk, and the curtain of snow obscuring the city only serves to hasten the departure of daylight.
The cookie crumbled slightly under her touch, leaving a spray of dust across the table between them. Adam picked up a second one from the plate, turning it around in his hand. It was thin and flat and as wide as his broad hand with the crinkled look of a very good molasses cookie. It was chewy and crisp at the same time—the slip of paper under the plate read simply miso, brown butter, rice flour. The other lines were equally intriguing: graham flour, rum, thyme and candied fennel, tahini, caramel.