The Sixth Wedding (28 Summers #1.5)(8)

“A lobbyist?” Link says. “Legal bribery.”

“Exactly,” Bess sighs. “I normally stay away, but…”

But the dude is probably good-looking and rolling in cash, Link thinks. “Looks like I have sixteen minutes to try and lure you away from the dark side,” he says. “I’m working for Brookings. Domestic policy. I analyze the impact of policy decisions on the least served among us and suggest ways to make them more effective.”

“I work in nonprofits,” Bess says.

“Sexy!” Link says.

“Yeah, as sexy as being a producer for public television,” Bess says.

“Hey, do you still have that shell?” Link asks. “That quahog shell that you found on the beach on Nantucket?”

Bess sips her wine and nods. “It’s on my dresser, actually.”

“No…seriously?”

“Swear to God.”

“And did you…?”

“Did I what?”

The thing that Link wants to ask might take another drink, but the clock is ticking. The lobbyist will probably show up with his American Express obsidian card in eleven minutes. “Did you ever ask your dad what was going on between him and my mom?”

Bess’s green eyes find Link’s from behind her glasses. Her eyebrows raise. “I did.” She swivels her head to take in the raucous bar scene beyond them. “Do you maybe want to go someplace quieter and I can tell you about it?”

Link laughs. “What about your date?”

Bess checks her phone. “The pin hasn’t moved. He’s stuck on the Metro. I’ll cancel him and we can go over to Lapis for Afghan food. Does that sound okay?”

Link doesn’t care if they go to McDonald’s. There’s no way he’s going to miss a chance to sit across the table from this beautiful nerdy girl and learn something new about his mother. “Sounds great,” he says.





Leland




When Leland’s JetBlue flight from JFK touches down on Nantucket, she looks out the window and takes note of the rows and rows of private planes, including an impressive jet with the Frayed Edge coffee logo on the side. She experiences a childish burst of excitement: Fray is here!

She pulls down the front of her denim cloche hat and puts on oversized sunglasses. There are some young women farther back on the plane who recognized Leland at the gate in New York; they asked for a selfie with her, which she indulged even though she’s more than over it. But Leland’s brand and Leland’s Letter are all about women lifting up other women—so she can hardly refuse anyone.

She hurries down the plane’s stairway and practically runs across the tarmac. Nantucket Island—the name speaks of wealth and entitlement, though to Leland the idea of Nantucket is inextricably tied to memories of the best friend she has ever had in her life, Mallory Blessing. The first time Leland set foot on this island was Labor Day weekend, 1993. She had been so young, only twenty-four years old. In those days, she lived on the Upper East Side and worked as an editorial assistant at Bard & Scribe. Leland had thought she was special. She emulated the lockjaw of the Vassar girls she worked with, she dyed her hair pink, she bought all her clothes from thrift shops in the Village, except for a stiff leather jacket from Trash and Vaudeville that she spent a whopping nine hundred dollars on because Ray Goodman himself said that Leland reminded him of a young Patti Smith.

When Leland came to Nantucket on that first trip, she had behaved…atrociously. She kissed Fray—Frazier Dooley, her first love—in the back seat of Mallory’s car, but then once they got to the bar, she bumped into an acquaintance from New York—Kip Sudbury, whose father was in commercial real estate and who had a yacht at his disposal—and Leland left Mallory and Fray and Cooper without a word of explanation. She’d ditched them; it made her cringe to remember it now. The only excuse she had was youth.

She returned to Nantucket a few years later with her girlfriend, the novelist Fiella Roget, Fifi, but things hadn’t gone much better. That was early on in Leland and Fifi’s relationship, back when Leland was still threatened by Fifi’s fame and was alternately possessive and bitter. It didn’t help that Fifi shamelessly flirted with Mallory, maybe as a way of reminding her who in the couple had the allure, the power. Leland should have laughed off Fifi’s behavior—Mallory was so hopelessly straight that she would only have seen the sexual overtures as Fifi being “friendly”—but instead, Leland had lashed out by tearing Mallory down. Mallory had overheard Leland insulting her, and the weekend had been ruined.

Leland had once read an interview with Toni Morrison where the author said she regretted a third of her life. Leland’s percentage was running a bit higher than that.

The last time Leland had been on Nantucket was four years earlier, when Mallory was dying. She had skin cancer that she thought she’d successfully treated, but it metastasized to her brain. It wasn’t fair—Mallory was a good person, a mom and a teacher, a reader and a thinker, the most generous friend in what she was willing to accept and forgive. It should have been Leland in the bed. Leland deserved little in the way of mercy from the universe. Her life had been a cakewalk by comparison. She had always been free to be self-absorbed.

She gets a text. It’s Coop: I’m out front in Mal’s Jeep.