And once again the evening took on the cadence and rhythm it had before the reminder that Nick defined, for Amy, everything to do with college and jumping and young love, before the still-unanswered question was raised: what happened in Costa Rica?

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

The Scrabble board and jumbled letters covered the oak coffee table with deer-antler legs. The wineglasses scattered across the table looked like red and white jewels that had tumbled off a bracelet; wineglass identifiers with various charms circled the stems. There were a bear, a moose (when was the last time anyone had seen a moose at Lake Hardin?) and other emblems of the woodsy lake house. A pine tree dangled from Amy’s glass and she thought how she would have preferred the canoe, to take her far, far away from here.

The conversation about family and school swirled around her in disjointed sentences. She smiled when appropriate and attempted to concentrate on the wavering letters in front of her. She found words in her head, but couldn’t spell them from the small tiled letters—she’d drunk too much and needed to go to bed, or home for that matter. But she dared not be any ruder than she already felt she’d been.

The conversation—as she’d prayed it would not—turned to her. Eliza had just finished listing the nineteen hundred causes she worked for, including her volunteer work with the Junior League and the Botanical Society.

What was Amy to do? Tell them all she worked part-time at the college and took care of the family and home? It was what she did, but to sum it up that way suddenly seemed feeble. She began to tell Eliza about the island with the Colonial-era house that she was desperate to save.

She just wanted to talk about what she did, about what was important to her. This small thing—this justification of her existence beyond her home and job—began a series of events that she would never have been able to predict; a sense of inevitability took over. Phil had heard her story often enough and never really listened; she always felt her words fell hard and unheard. Here she felt the others were ready and willing to hear all about it.

“Tell me about it,” Eliza said, blinked in an almost flirtatious way.

“It’s a small island called Oystertip Island and a very wealthy, and anonymous, man wants to buy it—develop it into a personal playground,” Amy said.

“A neighborhood—a development?” Nick put down his letter tiles and leaned across the coffee table, his eyes wide.

She stumbled over her hurried words as she attempted to tell him about it-—as if she’d been waiting for someone besides the committee to care.