Page 40 of Summer Light on Nantucket
“Daphne. Sweetie. Come snuggle with me.” Blythe patted the wicker swing.
“I’m already dressed.” She wore a bathing suit with shorts and a long T-shirt.
“Come on.” Blythe held out her arm.
“Mom.” Daphne was a very serious fifteen. Obviously snuggling with her mother was out of her range of acceptable activities. Oh, Lord, was Blythe infantilizing this child? Was she holding Daphne back from being the person she could be? Daphne could cure cancer or bring world peace!
“We’re on vacation,” Blythe reminded herself and Daphne. Didn’t even the smartest person need a vacation?
Daphne trudged across the porch, kicked off her flip-flops, and sat on the swing.
Blythe pulled her second-oldest child close to her. Daphne snuggled into her arm.
“You smell good,” Blythe told Daphne.
“It’s soap. Just Ivory soap.” Daphne rejected all perfumes and most cosmetics, worried that testing on animals was part of the process of production.
Blythe smoothed Daphne’s uncombed hair. “Do you have plans for today?”
“Yeah. Lincoln and I are going to bike out to Cisco and pick up plastic and stuff.”
“Oh, sweetie, we just got here. Can’t you take a day or two to enjoy yourself?”
Daphne bristled. “I could if people recycled or at least picked up their trash and stuffed it in a bin. How can I enjoy myself if I know some poor baby seal out in the ocean is choking on the plastic bread wrapper some family let wash out to sea?”
“I’m sure you know that there’s an official Nantucket Clean Team that goes out every morning to pick up trash.”
“I do know that. But they can’t be everywhere.”
Blythe said, “Well, I am proud of you.” She tried to earn one more minute with her daughter. “Want me to pack up a lunch for the two of you?”
“Thanks, no. I’ve got bananas and water and there are food trucks at the parking lot.”
“Do you need some money?”
“Please. Can I get some out of your purse?”
“Of course. Take a twenty.” Blythe could sense Daphne’s eagerness to get started. “Be sure to take your phone.”
“Mom. I’m fifteen.” Daphne sat up, slipping her feet back into her flip-flops.
Blythe said, “Daphne. You do know you don’t have to fix the world all by yourself.”
Daphne gave her mother a very grown-up look. “Someone does.”
As her daughter went out the door, Blythe called, “Take a sweater in case it rains.”
No answer. After a few minutes, the front door slammed.
Blythe sometimes thought that her children were breaking away from her like rocks in a landslide. Of course they had to leave, to grow up, to be their own people. Now the question was: What would she do with herself? Go to Ireland for two weeks? Teach full-time?
Her morning calm was gone. Blythe went upstairs and into the en suite bathroom for a quick shower. It was a luxury to have all the hotwater she wanted because Miranda, who could shower for hours, was still asleep.
Dressed in capris and a blue-and-white striped rugby shirt, she headed downstairs. She heard voices coming from the family room.
Ah,she thought.Miranda has come down to wake Brooks.
She hoped that was why Miranda was in the family room.
