Winter Solstice (Winter #4)(16)

Then Jennifer stops herself. It wasn’t her fault. Coke misinterpreted her body language or her nonverbal cues, maybe even the tone of her voice. Jennifer asked him nicely to stop; she was firm and clear, and still he persisted. He was in the wrong. Jennifer’s only choice was to walk away from Grayson Coker and his fabulous project and all his money.

It’s your loss, Jen.

She can’t help feeling he’s right. She and Paddy needed that money. Needed it badly.

Jennifer arrives home a few minutes before Paddy and the boys, which gives her enough time to change out of the cursed outfit into her yoga pants and Patriots T-shirt. Paddy looks happier than he has in weeks, maybe months; the time alone with the kids cheered him up. He has barbecue sauce on his cheek. Jennifer wipes it off, and he kisses her.

“How was the meeting?” he asks.

She hears the boys happily roughhousing out in the hallway.

“Fine,” she says.

Patrick leans farther in and kisses nearly the exact spot by Jennifer’s ear that Coke bit. Jennifer tries not to cringe. She likes to tell Patrick everything—or nearly everything—but she knows there is no way to share this story without ruining the night and creating a scene. It will be beyond a scene, as two issues are at stake: Jennifer’s honor, for one, and the lost money, for another. Jennifer can easily imagine Patrick deciding to walk over to Millennium Tower with a baseball bat, prepared to threaten Grayson Coker. And what if Jennifer takes partial responsibility? What if she shows Patrick what she was wearing?

“I Googled the guy,” Patrick says. “He’s the sixth-richest man in Boston.”

“I’m not sure it’s the right project for me,” Jennifer says.

“I thought we went over this,” Patrick says. “If you don’t stretch, you won’t grow. It’ll be good for you to try something different.”

Jennifer can’t find the words to refute him, and so she hugs Patrick close and nods against his chest. She’s going to have to tell him the job is gone, but she won’t do it tonight.

“I’m going downstairs,” she says. “I need to make the lunches.”


The next morning, despite a slight hangover from the scotch, Jennifer decides to meet Leanne at barre class. She needs to pulse out her anxiety. She thinks she might even tell Leanne what happened with Grayson Coker and ask her advice about how to handle it with Patrick. What Jennifer needs is a friend, a confidante.

What she needs, she thinks, is an Ativan.

She’s crossing the Public Garden when her phone pings. She gets a funny feeling and thinks: It’s Grayson Coker, apologizing. But when she sees the alert, she stops in her tracks.

It’s a text from Norah Vale.

It’s as if Norah Vale has read her mind or sensed that this morning of all mornings is when Jennifer is at her most vulnerable.

Jennifer plops down on the nearest park bench. She should delete the text without reading it, she thinks. Because what could it possibly say?

Well, Jennifer reasons, it doesn’t automatically have to be about drugs. Jennifer hasn’t seen or heard from Norah since the previous Christmas, when Norah kindly switched ferry tickets with Jennifer so that Jennifer, Paddy, and the boys could get to Nantucket in time for Kevin’s wedding. Kevin’s second wedding—because Kevin’s first wedding had been to Norah herself. Norah Vale should have been the last person to offer to help, but she did so anyway.

Curiosity gets the best of Jennifer. She opens the text. It says: Something I want to talk to u about. Will u be on Nantucket anytime soon?

Jennifer freezes and scans her surroundings, as though she’s worried Norah is somewhere in the Public Garden watching her.

Something I want to talk to u about.

Wait! Jennifer thinks. Norah asked her for a letter of recommendation last year because she was applying to business school. So maybe Norah wants to use Jennifer’s interior decorating business as one of her case studies. There’s no reason why Jennifer should automatically assume the worst. Norah is a person who has made authentic changes in her life.

Will u be on Nantucket anytime soon?

This seems odd, right? Because if Norah merely wanted to talk, they could do so over the phone. Very few topics require an in-person conversation… unless it’s something too sensitive for the phone.

Such as the pills.

Jennifer’s legs are shaky when she stands up. She needs to get a grip; she needs to get to barre class. She needs to put her eyes on Leanne’s placid face and hear about Leanne and Derek’s latest heavenly dinner at Giulia.

As Jennifer walks down the footpath in the middle of Comm. Ave., she realizes that she will be on Nantucket soon—next week, for Bart’s birthday party. It’s on a Tuesday and therefore wildly inconvenient, but Patrick’s former secretary, Alyssa, volunteered to stay overnight with the boys and even take Pierce and Jaime trick-or-treating. Both Jennifer and Patrick realize how important it is to Mitzi that they attend.

Has Norah somehow found out about the party? Is this text just her angling for an invite? Jennifer knows that Norah harbors some regret about no longer being a part of the Quinn family. Jennifer doesn’t think she longs for Kevin, exactly; it’s more that she wants to be included in—or perhaps forgiven by—the larger family.

As Jennifer turns left onto Clarendon, she sees Leanne waiting for her outside the barre studio, and her anxiety diminishes just a little. Jennifer waves.