Page 13 of A Nantucket Season
“I saw Ella last night,” Barbie explained. “She said you gave an exceptional performance at a dive bar downtown. But that you got overheated and passed out?”
Aurora waved her paintbrush around. “Oh, yeah. It was so hot in there.” She hardly remembered the heat, could only remember how she’d felt outside of herself, softly floating into another realm. “And I have low blood sugar sometimes.” She added this for good measure because she’d heard people talk about that in a TV show, and it had sounded reasonable.
“Oh. That’s rough. Do you keep candy in your purse?”
“I usually do,” Aurora lied.
“I get it,” Barbie said. “I’m so excited about being here. I feel like I’m a little more unorganized than usual. I’m just throwing myself into my work, you know?”
“How’s the writing going?” Aurora asked, her eyes glazing slightly as the conversation brought her back to planet Earth and reminded her of her lack of sleep. She now felt she could sleep for days.
Barbie answered that she was plotting out the next part of her novel, that it was going well, and that she felt very creative and alive. Aurora blinked several times, frightened she would faint again.
“Well, I’d better get to work!” Barbie said. “See you later? Maybe for dinner?”
“Sure,” Aurora said, her voice fuzzy and far away. “Sounds great.”
After Barbie retreated down the hallway, Aurora left her stool to clean her paintbrush and made her way up to her bedroom, where she finally removed her dress, put on that oversized t-shirt again, and fell asleep. Had anyone screamed her name outside the door, she wouldn’t have heard it. She was gone.
ChapterEight
Over the years, Ella and Will’s band had had many bandmate changes, with keyboardists, second-guitarists, bass guitarists, and other random instrumentalists, like the saxophonist they toured with in 2006 and 2007, coming in and out based on their schedules. But during Ella and Will’s biggest and most popular years, they’d more-or-less counted on Audrey on bass, Henry on keyboard, and Nate on second guitar— and just their luck, all three of them had agreed to play the Nantucket Music Festival that June. To Ella, this meant that the band was really back together.
That Friday, Ella and Will waited at the harbor as the ferry steamed toward them. They sipped coffee, talking quietly, expectant and open-hearted for what was sure to be an invigorating week of practices with their team.
“I meant to ask you. Did Aurora say whether or not she wanted to perform at the Nantucket Music Festival?” Will asked.
Ella’s heart dropped incrementally in her chest. “She’s avoiding me, I think. I gave her my number, and I haven’t heard from her at all.”
Will frowned. “Why would she be doing that?”
“I think she’s embarrassed. I don’t know,” Ella said with a sigh. “I can’t begin to tell you how invigorating that performance was at the dive bar.”
“I believe it,” Will said. “You came home and wrote two songs that night.”
Ella nodded, remembering the fire that had come over her after the performance— despite the terror she’d had for Aurora’s health. After Aurora had woken up in the dive bar, Brooks and Ella had walked Aurora slowly to Brooks’ truck, during which time Aurora had looked partially catatonic. Ella had asked Brooks a series of questions about how he knew Aurora and whether she’d been acting strangely. To this, Brooks had just said, “She doesn’t act like other people. I like that about her.” He’d then swallowed and said, “Maybe we just didn’t drink enough water today.” When they’d gotten home, Aurora thanked them both and let Ella walk her up to her bedroom, where she’d fallen asleep immediately. When Ella had scouted for her every other day that week, she hadn’t been in the music room, the art studio, the kitchen, or on the beach.
“Barbie said Aurora has low blood sugar,” Ella said. “Which, I guess, makes sense?”
The ferry sidled up alongside the cement dock, released its ramp, and settled to allow vehicles to roll slowly from the dark exit. Ella and Will had directed their bandmates to drive to the parking lot nearest the ticket box office, and soon, a beautiful woman in a minivan rolled up, waving. When she parked it and leaped out, she threw her arms around both Ella and Will. “I can’t believe this place! It’s paradise.”
It was Audrey, their keyboard player. Her husband, Don, sat in the passenger seat and waved goofily, clearly proud of his wife. Will and Ella had attended their wedding a few years ago and had both laughed at what a “nerd” Audrey had fallen in love with. Then again, they were in their forties, which was old enough to realize that nobody was ever really a nerd or cool and that everyone lived beyond the bounds of those definitions. It was just funny that Audrey had wound up with a guy so obsessed with board games.
“Don brought loads of games for the cabin,” Audrey said excitedly as they waited for the others, who, she assured them, would be coming down the ramp soon.
“Awesome,” Ella said, realizing that maybe, Audrey loved board games just as much as Don did. “I love the minivan.”
Audrey cackled and slid her hand over the top of it, as though it was a free car onThe Price is Right. “Isn’t she a beauty? We got her so we can take the boys and their friends to soccer tournaments.”
“I know mom-life well,” Ella said. “Although my babies are all grown up!”
Audrey winced. “I can’t imagine. I’ll just fall apart when they leave me! Gosh, that reminds me of when you two were raising your babies. I mean, we were pretty famous at the time, if you remember. I don’t know how you managed to juggle everything.”
“Looking back, I have no idea how we did it, either,” Ella said.
“But we have a lot more time to write songs now,” Will said.
“Uh oh. Does that mean you have a whole lot of new material for us?” Audrey asked.