Heat Wave Read Free

house with works by island artists. They were involved in politics, and attended town meetings faithfully. The high school plays brought them out for at least one performance and often more. They were right
there
in their lives. They were not trying to get anywhere else; they weren’t competitive or envious; they were that rarest of human creatures: genuinely happy people.
    Of course, they had started off with more than many people ever had. They had each inherited an old Nantucket mansion. Their lives grew out of the island history like a flower from a new dawn rose, climbing, blossoming, part of a thick twisting stem deeply planted in the island’s sandy soil, and proud to be in that sandy soil.
    The Greenwood house that Annabel had grown up in—the house where Carley had made her home for the past thirteen years—was a rambling old wooden structure with a definite summer feeling about it. The redbrick mansion Annabel and Russ lived in was the more formal Winsted home. Behind the house, the large yard was walled with redbrick fifteen feet high, making the garden a private enclosure, a little Eden few people ever saw. Here Annabel grew her vegetables and flowers, and played with shaping privet bushes into whimsical shapes, one of her favorite pastimes. Inside, the rooms were large and high-ceilinged, with fireplaces, most of which worked, silk drapes pooling on the floor, and comfortable sofas and chairs mixed in with antique pieces. Like the ones at Carley’s home, the kitchen and bathrooms were ancient, floored with ceramic tiles, fitted with claw-foot bathtubs that would have been delightful if the porcelain weren’t almost worn through. Bothhouses required endless vigilance and maintenance, and endless amounts of money.
    The first time Carley entered the Winsted house, she didn’t notice the paint peeling from the walls or the faded ancient Oriental rugs. She thought the metal kitchen cabinets with the inset sink, considered “modern” in the 1940s, were charmingly old-fashioned. She didn’t see the cracks in the plaster around the fireplaces or the way the bookshelves, overburdened with books, leaned dangerously sideways. The house had such a quality of excellence and experience and age. It felt like a wise house, a comforting house, a house that had witnessed holiday festivities and political gatherings and the solemnity of birth and death, and had stood at attention, with pride, through it all.
    Carley loved the
idea
of the way the Winsteds lived. She wanted to be casually elegant, too. She yearned for Annabel and Russell to like her. She could imagine spending time with Annabel, learning so very much from her.
    The older Winsteds seemed pleased by Carley that first night Gus brought her home. Certainly they charmed her, asked her questions, laughed at her slightest attempt at whimsy, treated her with gentle warmth.
    As they drove away from his parents’ house, Carley glanced shyly at Gus. “I think they liked me.”
    “Of course they liked you,” Gus replied. “Who wouldn’t?”
    She smiled contentedly.
    Then Gus said, “Although they wouldn’t like it if I got too involved with you.”
    “Really? Why not?”
    “Because you’re not an islander. Not ‘one of us.’ ”
    “Does that really matter?”
    “You’d be surprised how much it matters.”
    Carley chewed on her lip. She was already worried about something that could be a real problem between them. This made her feel even worse. She decided to wait a few days to tell Gus. She wanted to be sure.

3
    • • • • •
    S he hadn’t been on the birth control pill. The truth was, she’d been fairly naïve sexually. She’d had one serious boyfriend during high school, and no one since then. She hadn’t planned to hook up with anyone on the island. She hadn’t planned to get serious. She hadn’t planned.
    Apparently, the first condom Gus used when they were together was old. By the time Carley went to be fitted with a diaphragm, she was