28 Summers

by Elin Hilderbrand

“Tell her…that I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Jake says. “Tell her to hold on.” He clears his throat. “Please. Tell her I’m coming.”

nothing took precedence over reading; it was considered the holiest activity a person could engage in.

This island chooses people, Aunt Greta said. It chose Bo and me, and I think it’s chosen you as well.

“It’s crazy, right?” Jake says. “That we’ve never met? I remember when Coop first showed me your picture. I said—” “‘Coop, I have to tell you, man, I’m in love with your little sister,’” Coop supplies. Mallory presses the soles of her flip-flops into the dock. He’s just teasing her. “Oh, really?” she deadpans. “You said that?”

“It’s Mal.” “Mal means ‘bad’ in French,” Jake said. “But you must be the good kind of bad.”

Mallory has lived on Nantucket for four years and still she finds the summertime here so beautiful that it hurts. Probably because the summer is fleeting, evanescent. It always ends.

“Protecting the good old Second Amendment”: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The amendment was ratified in 1791, back when a person might have had any number of reasons to own a gun. Now, however, with the new millennium on the horizon, Jake believes there are too many guns, and a lot of them are in the wrong hands.

What do you need to create a life, after all? Food, clothing, shelter, a person to love.

Because it’s June 24, the daylight is never-ending, and even at seven thirty, there’s a foursome—the Deckers and the Whipps—still finishing up at the eighteenth hole.

Me reading this on June 24th👀

“Are you okay?” Mallory asks. Was it Ursula she heard retching? Apparently—they’re the only two people in the ladies’ room. Ursula’s eyes meet Mallory’s in the mirror. Her skin is paste gray. “I think I’m pregnant,” she says. Pregnant.

“The problem is,” Ursula says, “it’s not…it’s not…jayblibberkiz.” “Wait,” Mallory says, because she didn’t catch the second part of Ursula’s sentence. “What? It’s not what?”

KNEW IT

“Ursula is pregnant,” he says. “I know I should have called, but I wanted to tell you in person. I thought you deserved that.” Mallory can’t decide if she should act surprised or not. Not, she decides. She appreciates the effort to get it all out on the table right away so they can talk it through, then enjoy their weekend. “I understand,” she says. “Better than you know.” “What?” he says. “I’m pregnant too,” she says.

Dammit

What on earth do you think you’re going to do in South Bend?” Ursula gently kisses Bess’s forehead, then smiles down at her. “I’m going to run for office.”

The second Mallory became a mother, she felt like she had finally entered a room where she belonged.

Oh I’m sobbing. What a great analogy

“Tell me the truth,” she says. “Is there a tiny part of you that hopes she loses?” “I will tell you the truth,” Jake says. “And only you. There’s a tiny part of me that hopes she wins.”

“Well, I’m Mallory Blessing, I teach English at the high school, I’m a single mom of one, Lincoln—Link—who’s two and a half.” “You’re single?” Scott says. “Forget what I said about crappy luck.”

Just go away, she tells Jake in her mind. Let me see if this works.

What does it take to know a person? Time. It takes time.

Mallory loves Jake. Her heart is not transferrable. It has belonged to Jake since the first time he answered the phone in Coop’s room, since the afternoon he stepped off the ferry and onto the dock, since the moment he slid an omelet onto her plate.

“We had the ultrasound,” Apple says. “It’s twins. Twin boys.”

When Jake sees these women in action in Phoenix, he wonders how it is that men have historically been in charge of the world. Women should be running everything everywhere—and Jake’s not just saying that because he’s married to Ursula de Gournsey.

cystic fibrosis.” The room is absolutely silent. “And, yes, I did say my twin sister. We were—obviously—fraternal twins, though people would ask once in a while if we were identical.” There are a few laughs, probably from parents of twins or people who were twins themselves.

lol yep

He invites her and Jake to Newport over Labor Day weekend. There’s a potential donor, a major donor, who would write checks not only to Vincent but to Ursula as well. This guy—Bayer Burkhart is his name—liked what he saw with the welfare-reform bill.

Uh oh

Jake thinks gun control is a big deal that will keep getting bigger until some laws are passed. It’s feasible that, ten years from now, there will be mass shootings like the one in Mulligan happening every week. Ursula disagrees—maybe. Maybe she is siding with her constituents who hunt. Or maybe she is so blindly ambitious that she takes any cash she can get.

And look where we are

The lead article in Leland’s Letter this week is titled “Same Time Next Year: Can It Save Modern Marriage?”

“This came for me from Auntie Leland and you accidentally threw it away.” Mallory is on the sofa in front of the fire, grading essays. She smiles mildly. “Not an accident,” she says. “Leland is dead to me.”

They kiss. It’s just one kiss, the deepest, sweetest, most heartbreaking, stomach-flipping kiss of Mallory’s life. With only the Atlantic Ocean as their witness, they swear that kiss will hold them through the next two or six or ten years. “I love you, Mal,” Jake says. Mallory closes her eyes, too overcome to say anything back. When she opens her eyes, he’s gone.

“Are you going to leave too?” Mallory asks. “No,” Jake says, and he pulls the chair right up next to her. “If it’s okay with you, I think I’ll stay.”