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Present Day
The fact that Rose still ran forty-five miles a week at the age of fifty-two was nothing the Salt Sisters let her forget.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Hilary said during a yoga class in early August, flinging her head back as she spread her fingers across the mat. “My bones ache in the middle of the night if I walk too far on the beach. You’re only three years younger than me!”
“It’s just what I like to do.” Rose laughed. “Trust me. If I could stay sane and not run, I would. But it’s better than therapy. I swear.”
The Nantucket Historic Society Yoga Center teacher gave them a look that meantshush.Rose giggled and re-focused on her stretch, drawing her arms out on either side and adjusting the way her weight sat on her hips. Beside her, Hilary was long and slender, evoking the elegance of her mother, the famous actress Isabella Helin. Rose’s heart swelled with love for her. It had been twentyyears since Rose had accidentally met Stella and Hilary. Twenty years since the narrative of her life had staggered off a cliff.
But Hilary had invited Rose into her home that summer. Rose had regrouped. She’d discovered her breath.
Not long after that, Hilary founded the Salt Sisters—a group of women who came together in grief; women who came together to support one another with open hearts and open minds.No matter what happens.By then, Rose had nobody. She ran to the Salt Sisters with her arms outstretched.
So many years later, Rose was dizzy with gratitude and had so many best friends in the Salt Sisters to call her own. Never could she have imagined her life going so well, especially after everything that happened.
Thirty minutes later, the yoga teacher said, “Namaste,” and opened the doors to let them free. Rose and Hilary rolled up their mats and padded into the clear blue day. Rose had needed the stretch and strength-training. She’d been running herself ragged lately, stretching out her legs for farther and farther miles, opening her heart.What are you running from?she sometimes caught herself asking. But she didn’t know. She just liked to put distance between herself and her home. She just liked to dig into the depths of her thoughts and figure things out.
Not that I’m any closer to understanding who I am or what I want, even at fifty-two.
Maybe that will be the journey of the rest of my life.
Hilary and Rose decided to grab lunch at a little Italian restaurant with to-die-for Mediterranean salads. It was just past one thirty, and the sun towered in the summer sky. Hilary was talking about her new boyfriend—a man she’d met when she’d worked as a costume designer for an indie film. They had plans to cook tonight and watch a film, apparently. Rose felt her heart bruise. It was a consistent reminder of the fact of her life: she was doomed to live out the rest of it alone.
Not that Rose hadn’t tried to date over the years.
Hilary poured her a glass of ice water and gave her a look that meant she could read Rose’s mind. “What happened with that guy? What was his name? Roger?”
Rose snorted and raised the glass of water in a salute. “After some very light internet stalking, I figured out Roger has a wife and no fewer thansixchildren.”
Hilary winced. “That’s the third guy this summer, isn’t it?”
“The thing is, men used to be craftier about cheating,” Rose said. “Now, it’s insulting that he wanted to cheat on his wife with me,andhe was unwilling to hide it. We’re in the age of social media. We’re in the age of Google. It took me ten seconds to figure out where he went to college, where he and his wife got married, and the names of his six kids.”
Hilary sighed and rubbed her temples. Like many of the other Salt Sisters, both of them had been cheated on in the past. They agreed it was a perpetual metaphorical splinter, a pain they always felt in their big toe that they couldn’t quite get out.
“Don’t feel bad for me,” Rose ordered Hilary. “You know how awful it feels to be on the receiving end of that.”
“I know. I do.” Hilary winced. “I just can’t help but feel that somebody special is going to come sweep you offyour feet.”
“Unfortunately, he won’t be able to catch me. I run too fast,” Rose quipped.
After lunch, Rose said goodbye to Hilary and dipped into a local woodworker shop to chat with the owner about a potential sale. Charlie, the woodworker, knew Rose well and always stocked spare odds and ends for her, knowing she was apt to poke her head in and see what he couldn’t use. Together, they piled fifteen pounds of wood into the back of her truck and secured it with pink bungee cords. Rose paid in cash at the register and chatted with Charlie about his recent sale—a gorgeous secretary desk he’d hand detailed for a very rich client.
“Can I take a peek?” Rose begged.
Charlie led her into the back so she could investigate “his pride and joy.” Rose knew he’d charged the client eighty-five thousand dollars for it.
“She’s coming to pick it up this afternoon,” Charlie said sadly, walking a circle around the piece. “It’s like somebody taking a piece of my soul out of my body and taking it home.”
Rose puffed out her cheeks and tried to engage with every little unique detail on the staggering secretary's desk. Although she’d been among the Nantucket elite—and a dear friend of the wealthy Hilary Salt for twenty years—it was often still difficult for her to take herself out of her small-town Mississippi mindset and make peace with the fact that the wealthy threw their money around like that.
“Did she show you where in the house she’s going to put it?” Rose asked.
Charlie nodded and placed his hands on his hips. “It’s a gorgeous room. Soulless, though.”
“It won’t be soulless once this finds its home there,” Rose assured him.
Something in the corner of Rose’s eye caught her attention. She twisted back toward a bulletin board stretched across the wall in Charlie’s woodworking room. Yellowed papers hung with photographs of some of Charlie’s tremendous work over the years, plus photographs of Charlie and his new wife, Julia Copperfield, his high school sweetheart. On the far right was a larger pamphlet on which a picture of an old and crumbling house was printed.
