The Cottage on Nantucket

Chapter 5

Tessa woke with a start, her head pounding and the remnants of a distinct sound still ringing in her ear. Her tongue felt like a thick sock in her mouth, and she groaned as she sat up. Darkness covered everything, the deep, thick kind that spoke of a time when no one should be awake, let alone out on a porch by themselves.

She stood, a chill covering her skin and making her shiver. She stepped on a piece of broken glass, and she cried out as she jerked her foot back.

The glass. That was what she’d heard. The wine glass she’d drunk from last night had fallen and broken, the shattering sound waking her.

Her stomach sloshed as she squinted at the deck, trying to navigate around any other broken shards. In the end, she made a big leap and got past the wreckage. She limped around the corner, awake enough now to realize she was leaving b****y footprints behind her.

She simply couldn’t take care of it right now. In fact, she’d really like someone else to take care of something, for once. Just one time, she wanted someone else to do the dishes. Put in the laundry. Vacuum the straight lines into the carpet and pay all the bills.

Tessa was simply tired of taking care of everything.

She should go clean up her foot, but her head hurt so badly, and she was so tired, that she simply went into the bedroom she’d used for years and collapsed onto the mattress. Hopefully, she wouldn’t bleed too much before morning.

The next time she woke, the first rays of dawn fell across her face. A low pain echoed from Tessa’s foot, and the events of the previous evening ran through her head. She took her time opening her eyes, as they suffered the most when she drank too much.

Finally, she got them open enough to adjust to the light, which was thankfully still fairly weak. With a groan and a sigh, she sat up and let her legs hang over the edge of the bed.

The mattress on this bed still caused a pinch in her back, and Tessa reached up and pushed her hair out of her face as she arched to get the pain stretched out. She didn’t think for a moment Janey would be awake already, as her sister was notorious for sleeping very late, especially when she went on vacation.

Sure, she’d brought work to the cottage and they had plenty to do here, but Tessa knew she still viewed it as vacation.

Tessa went into the bathroom and drank two glasses of clear, cool water. She knew the best way to get rid of all signs of drinking was to hydrate, clean up, and get some food in her. Then the alcohol would dilute enough for her to function.

She got in the shower, dressed in clothes she could go to town in and go through closets in, and made herself a couple of fried eggs and a single piece of toast. After eating, she cleaned up the dishes, as well as the porch where the bottle had broken. If Janey asked about the wine—and she likely would—Tessa could simply say she’d brought it out here to have a glass and accidentally dropped it.

In fact, she’d mention the wine for sure before they went to town. Then they could get more.

Janey still hadn’t made an appearance, and Tessa stood in the front part of the house, in the intersection that led to all other parts. To her right lay the living room and front door. To the left, the dining room and kitchen. Behind her, the hall that led to the bedrooms on this level, and the stairs that led up to the second floor.

The cottage had an attic too, and Tessa couldn’t remember the last time she’d been up there. As children, she and Janey had loved the attic, because Mom and Dad had filled it with tiny, child-sized furniture just for them. A little couch and a little chair. A desk, and a table and chairs. When it rained on Nantucket, they’d happily have tea parties with all their stuffed animals or plan big birthday celebrations with plenty of cake and chocolate milk.

Tessa smiled at the memories, because she had so enjoyed coming to the cottage as a child. She hadn’t even minded it as a teenager, though Janey had thrown a fit or two about leaving her friends for “months on end” in the summertime. Once she got old enough, she’d gotten a job, and she hadn’t come to the cottage for longer than a week in the summertime.

The whole house needed to be aired out, wiped down, and opened up. The job would take one person a few weeks; Tessa knew. She’d done the apartment in the city by herself, and she wondered if Ron had even missed her. She’d stayed there, and while he worked in the city, he hadn’t come to her mother’s apartment after work. He’d gone back to his. She hadn’t contacted Ryan, because she hadn’t wanted to bother him.

“No,” she muttered to herself. “You didn’t want to hear whatever excuse he’d come up with for why he couldn’t see you.” Somehow, not asking her son to get together for a quick lunch was easier to digest than getting rejected if she did ask.

Pushing her husband and son from her mind, Tessa faced the living room. She could open blinds and doors, tear sheets off furniture and wave them out in the breeze to get the dust out, and sweep up anything that remained.

As she worked, she wished rooting out the dirty, hidden things in her life was as easy as taking a storage cover from a sofa. She wished she could beat her relationships against the porch railing and have them come out clean and ready to be used in the future. As the pile of sand, leaves, and a bit of other debris got swept into a pile, Tessa could identify each piece of her life she’d like to group together, pick up, and toss out.

With sunlight streaming through the front windows of the cottage and the living room clean, Tessa finally found a smile. It wobbled on her face, and she didn’t know what to do with the swirling feelings inside her.

She fumbled with her phone but got it out of her pocket. She never called Ron during the week. Truth be told, she hardly texted. They lived two different lives, especially now that Ryan was grown and gone, and she honestly didn’t have anything to tell him.

She tried, as evidenced by the string of pictures she’d sent in the past couple of months. The garden before and after. The new rose bushes she’d put in. The first bloom of the azaleas she’d planted especially for him. Other than that, she might tell him about a neighbor they’d known for a while who’d fallen ill, or something particularly unique that had happened at the library.

Whenever she asked him what was happening at work, he said, “The same old thing,” with a sigh. She’d asked him if he ever explored the city, and he’d dryly said it was just a city, and no, he had no interest in exploring it.

He didn’t use social media, and by all accounts and purposes, he went to work every day at a prestigious and very competitive law firm, put in eighty hours in five days, and came home on the weekends. Sometimes, when he had a high-profile case, he didn’t return to Pennsylvania for Saturday and Sunday.

He’d made partner two years ago, and Tessa had thrown a huge party for him—in the city. All of his friends lived there, and she was the only one who had to commute to celebrate all of his hard work. She was proud of him, and if she thought about him for very long at all, she realized she did love him.

She simply wondered if what she and Ron called their life together was truly any way to live. Today, she went out onto the front porch and took a picture of the sun hanging over the water. The sky didn’t hold a single cloud, and after snapping the photo to send to her husband, Tessa took a moment to close her eyes and breathe in the sunshine, the air, the life this new day promised to bring her.

She sent the picture to Ron with the message, Wish you were here. This place is beautiful, and we need a vacation.

Wish you were here. This place is beautiful, and we need a vacation.He responded instantly. We sure do. I do love Nantucket. Let me look at my schedule and see what I can do.

We sure do. I do love Nantucket. Let me look at my schedule and see what I can do.Hope filled Tessa’s heart, though she pushed against it. Ron had made such promises before, and sometimes his schedule simply didn’t have any openings in it. Still, she leaned against the porch and whispered into the morning breeze, “Please keep him well, and bless us that we’ll find a time to reconnect soon.”

She could say the same prayer for Janey, so she did. Then she turned to go wake her sister. After all, Tessa wanted doughnuts, and Janey had promised they could get some that morning.