Heat Wave

• • • • •

While writing this book, I consulted the superlative Diane Pearl, M.D., and her excellent office staff: Diane Cabral, Julie Reinemo, and Janet Chaffee. Also, Greg Hinson, M.D., was kind enough to talk with me. I based most of my medical information on what my sister Martha Foshee, R.N., told me, and I want to thank them all. Any medical mistakes are entirely my sister’s.

Thanks to Ann Balas of The Anchor Inn. Any mistakes about innkeeping are completely mine.

I also want to thank my talented, irrepressible friends Susan McGinnis, Laura Gallagher Byrne, Charlotte Kastner, Pam Diem, and Melissa Philbrick for being there when I needed them. Also thanks to Pam Pindell, who let us use her studio, and Jill Burrill, Laura Simon, Jean Mallinson, Tricia Patterson, and Deborah Beale, my literate, literary buddies. Mimi Beman, you’re with me every day.

Thanks to Josh Thayer and David Gillum for consistent patient support with the mysteries of computers.

Thanks to Emmett St. John Tutfield Forbes, for making me fall in love again, and to Sam Wilde Forbes and her husband Neil Forbes, wonderful parents to my darling Ellias, Adeline, and Emmett. And Sam, thanks for your brilliant response to my emergency phone call from New York!

Thanks to Jan Dougherty for keeping me literally in line. Great thanks to Anne Kronenberg, who has helped me believe, and trust, that fiction and reality are different.

Thanks to Jean Gordon for her help and especially for keeping me supplied with that wonderful health food, Jamaican rum cake.

Thanks to Karen White of Tantor Media for her excellent reading and careful questions for the
Beachcombers
CD.

I’m grateful to the entire team at Ballantine, especially Libby McGuire and Gina Centrello, as well as Junessa Viloria, Kim Hovey, Katie Rudkin, Quinne Rogers, Jean Lisa, and Penelope Haynes. Special thanks to Kate Collins. Lasting thanks to Dana Isaacson.

My editor, Linda Marrow, has a riding-crop mind and an angelic heart, an amazing combination, which fills me with admiration and gratitude.

Thanks, too, to Christina Hogrebe and Peggy Gordijn of the Jane Rotrosen Agency, and to my agent, the unique and fabulous Meg Ruley.

—Edith H. West

• • • • •

S
ome days recently, Carley Winsted had experienced moments of actual happiness, when her heart gave her a break. She’d forget Gus’s death and focus on the sight of her daughters or the sparkle of sunlight on the ocean—and lightning-fast, guilt zapped her. How could she be happy even for a moment?

She
had
to be happy, because she needed to be a role model for her daughters. She wanted to show them how to get through the dark times, to relish the good in each and every day.

Today she just needed not to be a coward.

It was the end of December, the end of the year. The end of the worst year in Carley’s life. High on a cliff overlooking the deep blue waters of Nantucket Sound, Carley stood in her bedroom, her heart racing with anxiety.

Thank heavens her girls were with friends this morning. She couldn’t let them see her like this. They had enough to deal with. Their beloved father, Carley’s dear Gus, had died a month ago. His death had been unexpected, unpredictable,
wrong
, caused by an un-diagnosed heart defect that had been lying stealthily in wait for years. Gus had been only thirty-seven. Carley was only thirty-two.

Cisco was twelve.

Margaret was five.

It was unbearable. Yet it had to be borne.

She’d been doing pretty well, she thought, but this morning her
grief was overridden by a gripping panic, which was ridiculous, really.

After all, it wasn’t as if she were a peasant being thrown into the lion’s den. She was only going to her father-in-law’s office to discuss finances with him. Okay, fine, finances had never been her strong suit. She’d gotten married at twenty, she’d never had a real job, Gus had handled the money, she had taken care of the house, the children, food and clothing, their lives. But she was not a financial
idiot
, and Gus knew that. Gus had left this house entirely to her. It had no mortgage. It was completely, legally, hers.

So why had Russell asked her to come to the law office to meet with him? Such a cold, businesslike place—why hadn’t he come to her house to talk with her in the living room as he always had? True, Carley had not always been on the same page as Annabel and Russell. They were different in so many ways, and the truth was, her in-laws were difficult to please. But they shared a mutual love for their son, her husband, Gus, and for his and Carley’s daughters, Cisco and Margaret.

Carley gave herself a careful, critical once-over in the mirror. Her tailored gray suit was loose on her, but that was to be expected. She’d lost weight since Gus’s death. So had Russell and Annabel, even Gus’s best friend, Wyatt. Carley was tall and lanky, and now whip thin. In this suit, she looked elegant, even haughty, although anyone who knew Carley knew elegant and haughty were so not her. Russell had to know that after being around her for thirteen years.

But since Gus’s death, both Russell and Annabel had been … different. More openly judgmental. Carley’s only defense was to be prepared. She slipped her feet into her highest heeled boots.

Her appointment with Russell was set for eleven o’clock. Her
appointment
! Gus wouldn’t have put up with this formal crap. “Come on, Dad, just tell us what you have to say, and we’ll work it out.” That’s what Gus would have said.

• • • • •

C
arley met Gus on Nantucket one summer night when she was nineteen. The air was hot and muggy and she was whipped from waiting tables.

She’d just finished her second year at Syracuse with less than sterling grades. She wasn’t upset about the grades. No one was upset about the grades—her parents were engrossed with their work and all her life Carley had been advised not to compare herself to her older sister, Sarah, who was brilliant at science and a jock as well, so no one was pressuring Carley to perform.

It was just that now, approaching her junior year, Carley felt a little lost. Sarah had always yearned to be a nurse when she grew up, an emergency room nurse. Her father was a much-respected and eternally busy dentist. Her mother and her best friend ran a day care center.

Carley had no idea what she wanted to be.

She thought she should want to be
something
. Rosie, her best childhood friend, wanted to go into the Peace Corps and become an immigration lawyer. Another friend wanted to teach in elementary school. Carley had believed she’d be inspired by some teacher or subject once she got to college, but that hadn’t yet happened. She was listlessly declaring education her major.

One thing was crystal clear to her: she loved being on Nantucket. It was her third summer working here, and it seemed she was
always happy here, no matter what her job was. Of course, it was always
summer
, when the days were drenched with sunshine and the air smelled of salt and roses and she was surrounded by friends. She kind of even liked her wait job. Some of the customers were jerks, but most of them were on vacation, tanned, relaxed, happy, and ready to give a big fat tip.

Still, she couldn’t make a career out of waiting tables. First of all, her restaurant closed for the winter, but more important, island life was staggeringly expensive. She shared an attic room and tiny shower-stall bath with four other women and rent still took up a large chunk of her paycheck.

She wasn’t worried about it, though. Not worried about a thing. Tonight some girlfriends had heard rumors of a party out on Cisco Beach and Carley decided to ride out with them. She smelled like the curried fish stew she’d been serving all evening, so she stripped down to almost nothing—shorts and a halter top, bare feet, her hair skinned back into a ponytail to keep it off her neck. The minute she arrived at the party, she nabbed a bottle of beer and chugged it down.

She was in a restless, devil-may-care kind of mood that summer. She was an accident waiting to happen, and subconsciously, that was probably what she wanted to be.

That night at the beach, she was light and supple, riding the tide of life wherever it would take her, and loving the motion. Bonfires were illegal on the beach, but someone had set up some grills and hibachis that gave off flickering golden lights and filled the air with the rich aroma of roasting hamburgers and hot dogs. Tables sunk into the sand held plastic cups and gallons of wine. Trash barrels stuffed with ice and beer leaned crookedly in the sand. Friends screamed with glee when they saw each other, as if they were reunited after years apart, and as darkness fell, people seemed mysterious, exotic. Music from a CD player had people dancing at the water’s edge, with partners or alone.