Page 87 of Summer Light on Nantucket
A door slammed in the upstairs hall. Footsteps padded down thestairs. Blythe and Brooks froze as they saw Miranda enter the room. She looked like a Victorian consumptive, pale and weak, with tangled hair and stained pajamas. She had dark rings under her eyes.
“Miranda.” Blythe crossed the space between them, intending to hug her daughter, but Miranda lurched backward, as if seeing a monster.
“What ishedoing here?”
“You know that Brooks is staying with us for the rest of the summer. I’m sure I told you that.” Blythe kept her voice level, not harsh, not soft. Factual.
Miranda’s eyes narrowed. “If he’s staying here, I’m leaving. I’ll go sleep at Grandmother’s house.” Miranda’s lips trembled. “Then I’ll be with people who love me.”
Blythe flinched. “Come on, Miranda, don’t be that way. You know I love you.”
“Oh, really? You love me? Not when you let that jerk stay here even though he’s a total douche and still you choose him over me!” Miranda was shaking with anger.
Desperately, Blythe said, “Miranda, please. Let’s go in the living room and talk about all this.”
Miranda stepped back. “You think you’re such a great mom! You even think that Daphne goes to Maria Mitchell every day.”
“What?”
“Mom, she’s smoking pot with Lincoln. She’s a total pothead. And you are soclueless.You make me sick.” Miranda turned her back on Blythe and raced up the stairs. Her door slammed shut.
Blythe glared at Brooks. “Is Daphne really smoking pot?”
Brooks had gone white. “Maybe?”
“Maybe? What kind of answer is that!” Even as she spoke—shouted?—she knew she was taking her worry out on him, and before he could speak, Blythe said, “I’m sorry, Brooks. Please, go to the library. You can come back anytime. I just need a minute.”
“Sure, yeah, of course.” Brooks jumped up, put his plate and coffeecup in the dishwasher, grabbed his phone, and hurried out into the rain, as if afraid Blythe was going to detonate.
Blythe sank onto a kitchen chair and buried her face in her hands. It wasn’t so much that Daphne had been smoking pot as the fact that she had lied to Blythe every single day of the summer.
Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs.
Blythe looked up to see Miranda there, fully dressed, with her backpack bulging.
“I’m going to go live with Grandmother,” she announced.
“Oh, honey.” Blythe rose. “Please sit down and talk to me.”
“Why? You chose Brooks over me! Teddy has Dad and Daphne has you and Holly has Grandmother. I don’t have anyone. But at least I can live someplace where Brooks can’t be!”
“Miranda, you can’t upset your grandmother. She just had a heart attack.”
Miranda skidded around to face Blythe. “I won’t upset her at all. I’ll be happy and fun and helpful. Because I’ll be away from you.”
Blythe watched her oldest child walk to the front door and leave.
Leaning against the refrigerator door, she cried quietly, overwhelmed and confused. Bob and Teri would return soon to stay with Celeste for their two-week vacation. They’d have the four children live with them then.
Blythe could leave. She could run away, fly to Ireland, or just go back to her Boston house and lie in bed eating ice cream for two weeks. Let Bob handle Daphne and her lies. Let Miranda escape from her terrible mother. Let Bob deal with everything.
But Blythe couldn’t leave. She needed to talk to Daphne, to find out what in the world was going on with her. She needed to make peace with Miranda. She needed to help Miranda deal with a broken heart.
Blythe understood so well what it meant to have a broken heart.
Raindrops were pattering against the windows. Gray clouds obscured the sunlight.
Dante had said, “In the middle of the journey of my life, I came to myself within a dark wood, where the straight way was lost.”
