Free Nantucket Blue by Leila Howland

you weren’t coming. I thought you had a babysitting job in Providence. When did you get here? Are you staying with us?”
    “No, remember what Dad said?” Jules said, standing several feet behind us. Zack looked confused.
    “I got here tonight. I got a job at the Cranberry Inn, and I’m staying there.”
    “Oh, I’ve seen that place. Don’t they have famous muffins?”
    “I don’t know,” I said, smiling at the thought of Zack keeping up with the Nantucket muffin gossip.
    “What?” he asked.
    “Nothing.”
    “Are you coming to the party in ’Sconset tomorrow?”
    “What party?”
    “It’s not a party,” Jules said. She was now silhouetted in the doorway, and I could see Nina in her shape so well that I felt a light pressure on my chest. “Just a few kids who come every summer, getting together.” I wondered if this meant that Jay would be there. I had a feeling it did.
    “Fine. We’ll call it a mixer,” Zack said to Jules. “I didn’t know you had such a penchant for precision.”
    “Don’t be a dick,” she said.
    “Penchant?” I asked with raised eyebrows.
    “I’m a Word Warrior,” he said. That was the SAT vocabulary-building program everyone had. Zack took a pen from his pocket. Then he took my hand, uncurled it, smoothed it, and wrote on my palm: 15 Sand Dollar Lane.
    “I don’t know where that is,” I said.
    “Just take Milestone Road.”
    “Can I walk?”
    “No. I’m getting a ride from work. But text Jules. She’ll take you.” We turned to her, but she was gone.

Nine
    “EVERYONE EATS BREAKFAST in the garden, except when it rains,” Liz said as she expertly pulled silverware from the dishwasher and wiped it with a checkered dishrag. “Then we put them in the dining room.”
    “Got it,” I said, and sipped my coffee, the first cup from the percolator I’d just been shown how to set up and get started (fill with water, twenty scoops in the filter, plug it in, flip the switch). I sipped some more, hoping I’d start to feel more alert soon. Liz pulled a stack of little bowls from the dishwasher and handed them to me. “There’s some jam in the fridge. Put it in these ramekins.”
    “Okay, no problem,” I said, noting the new word ramekins , which sounded like a species of rambunctious munchkins, and took another gulp of coffee.
    Gavin took a fresh batch of blueberry corn muffins out of the oven, and their scent made my cheeks pucker with desire and my stomach growl so loud that he and Liz laughed. Gavin gingerly plied a muffin from the tin, placed it on a saucer, and slid it down the counter with just enough force that it landed right in front of me. “You might want to let it cool,” he said. But I couldn’t wait. I tore off the crusty top, smeared it with butter, and stuffed it in my mouth. I hadn’t finished the last bite before I took another.
    “Come on, piglet,” Liz said, “we have to wipe down the chairs in the garden.”
    I ate another bite, grabbed a clean rag from the stack under the sink, and followed Liz outside. Eight wrought-iron tables with matching chairs sat nestled in dewy green grass, awaiting sweethearts. They were surrounded by hedges, roses, and bushes that looked like they had blue pom-poms on them. A gray rabbit hopped across the lawn and into a bush with pink berries, right next to the window I’d propped open with the Emily Dickinson book.
    “You didn’t have any visitors last night, did you?” Liz asked as she wiped off the tables.
    “No,” I said. Gavin emerged with some clippers from the back door and was headed down the brick path, past the gurgling fountain, to the rosebushes, no doubt to make an arrangement for the buffet table. “What do you mean?”
    “Don’t scare her,” Gavin said as he passed, smelling faintly of patchouli oil.
    “It’s only fair that I warn her about Mr. Whiskers,” she said.
    “Do you have a cat here?” I asked.
    “Better. A ghost,” Liz said. “An old sea captain with a great, bushy