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Although Alana talked a pretty big game about her current mental state, the truth of it was this: she felt cast out from the world she’d helped create, totally abandoned, and alienated. In the wake of the “incident” at the gallery, she’d shoved some clothes, shoes, and books in three suitcases and ran off to Bianca’s place to drink white wine in her balcony’s sunlight until she could figure out a way to leave Paris for good. Now that Paris no longer felt like hers, her heart ached all the more. She almost wished she could take what she’d done back.
When she said this to Bianca, Bianca said simply, “You can’t take it back. And why would you want to? You’re an icon. You stood up for women everywhere. That misogynist wanna-be of a man never deserved you.”
It was Julia who begged her to return home. It was true that Alana had nowhere else to go. Asher owned their numerous apartments and homes across the world, and she wanted nothing to do with any of them. She didn’t want to step into the house in Hawaii and remember the kisses they’d shared or the meals they’d eaten on the gorgeous patio, didn’t want to meditate in front of the majestic mountains in China, and didn’t want to eat another stupid baguette.
After years of first-class or private flying, Alana’s flight back to New York City, followed by a short jaunt across the water to Nantucket Memorial Airport, was daunting. The airline food was chewy and tasted of salt, and she allowed herself to watchThe Notebookuntil she fell asleep like a weeping mess. She even allowed herself to daydream that in seven years, she and Asher would find one another again and apologize for the horrors they’d put each other through. “I always loved you, Alana. You were always the one for me. I was just too stupid to treat you right.”
Ten hours after her conversation with Julia, Alana’s plane wheels tickled the runway at Nantucket Memorial. Her eyes burst open to take in the splendor of the island, a world she’d run so quickly away from, latched tightly in Asher’s arms. She hadn’t recognized Asher’s arms as a prison, not yet.
But now, she was nearly forty-five and all alone.
Well, sort of alone.
Alana sat in the air-conditioned luggage room, her toes together and her heels out wide as she waited for her two other suitcases to appear from the belly of the airplane. Around her, high-society New York City types walked in all-beige outfits, chatting on the phone with whoever planned to pick them up.
JULIA: I’m out front. Can’t wait to see you!
Alana stacked her suitcases on a luggage rack and wheeled them sloppily into the humid air outside the airport. As she blinked through the haze, her heart surged with a mix of fear and horror. During April, she’d visited Nantucket of her own accord. She’d felt passionate, wild, powerful, and strong. Now that her marriage was over and she was a laughingstock in the art world, Nantucket was a refuge— the only place she knew that had to welcome her back.
This was probably how Bernard had felt, returning from twenty-five years in prison, back to the only house he could, legally, call “home.”
Julia leaped out from her SUV, a thing she’d called her “mom vehicle,” and raced toward Alana, arms outstretched. Alana dropped the luggage rack and allowed herself to be hugged, really and truly hugged, for the first time since the incident. She wouldn’t allow tears to fall, not now.
Julia whispered softly, “You’re going to be okay.”
Alana didn’t know what to say to that. All she could think to say was, “If you say so.”
Their hug broke, making Alana feel even lonelier than she had before. “Is this everything?” Julia asked, eyeing the luggage rack.
“I left a lot in Paris.”
“I figured,” Julia replied. “But I left almost everything back in Chicago, too. I think I like this more minimalistic lifestyle. It takes me a whole lot less time to decide what to wear.”
Alana eyed Julia’s outfit: her jeans ripped at the knee and rolled up to her ankles, her white t-shirt with the slightest of yellow stains near the hip.Was that mustard?
Julia caught her roaming eye and poked her finger into Alana’s shoulder. “I see you’re still as judgemental as ever.”
Alana laughed, grateful that Julia could see right through her. “No way! I was just about to ask you, where did you get that top? I heard that mustard stains are in this season.”
“Oh, you’re a funny girl.” Julia tugged the first suitcase from the top of the luggage rack and placed it in the back of her SUV. “Hey, Alana? Look at how well my mom's car carries all your stuff? Gonna make fun of it again?”
Alana rolled her eyes, falling into the old tropes of their teenage years. Her heart ballooned with love for this woman, a woman who, like Alana, had recently lost so much. Perhaps together, they could rebuild. One way or another.
Julia sat behind the steering wheel and adjusted her sunglasses, which were at least five seasons too late. “Let’s grab a drink on the way home.”
“I’m in. That was a long trip.”
Julia parked the SUV in the lot behind the winery just north of downtown Nantucket, not far from The Copperfield House. Alana, who’d spent the better part of the past two weeks locked inside of Bianca’s apartment like a felon, eyed the tourists and Nantucket residents who paraded past the SUV, joyous beneath the sun.
“Come on,” Julia instructed. “It’s actually been a lot easier to fit in lately. Nobody really knows who we are anymore, you know? It’s been too long. We look too different.”
“Yeah?”
“When Mom or Dad comes with me somewhere, that’s a different story,” Julia explained. “But if I just go out myself? I’m just a divorced forty-something woman on anEat Pray Lovevacation.”
“Sign me up for that vacation,” Alana joked.
Julia and Alana sat side-by-side at a rickety wooden table with a gorgeous view of the water. A sailboat far across the bay tilted, flashing sunlight across the sails. Julia wore a secret smile as she glanced down at her menu.
