Izzy stood there staring after the man, her eyes wide, her mouth open. Her phone was still to her ear and Glenn was talking but she wasn’t hearing him.
When Alix reached her, Izzy said in a whisper, “Did you see him?”
“Who?” Alix held out Izzy’s cone to her.
“Him.”
“Him who?” Alix asked with no real interest.
“HIM!!”
From Izzy’s phone came Glenn’s shout, “Isabella!”
“Oh, sorry,” she said into the cell. “I just saw him. Here on Nantucket. I have to go.” She clicked off the phone, took her cone from Alix, and dropped it into a nearby trash bin.
“Hey!” Alix said. “I could have eaten that.”
“You didn’t see him?”
“I didn’t see anyone,” Alix said as she bit into her ice cream. “Who did you see?”
“Montgomery.”
Alix paused, her lips on the piled-high ice cream. Big chocolate chunks stuck out the sides.
“I saw Jared Montgomery walk right past here.”
Alix pulled her mouth away from the ice cream. “The Jared Montgomery? The architect? Designed the Windom building in New York?”
“Who else would I mean? And he looked at you. He almost stopped to speak to you.”
“No,” Alix said, eyes wide. “He couldn’t. He didn’t.”
“He did!” Izzy said. “But you—”
Alix dropped her triple cone in the bin, wiped her mouth, and grabbed Izzy’s arm. “Where did he go?”
“There. Around the corner.”
“And you let him get away?!” Alix dropped her friend’s arm and hurried forward, with Izzy close behind. They arrived just in time to see the bearded man standing on a beautiful white boat, with a cabin below. He was smiling up at some girl on the dock who had on indecently short shorts. That it was a cool day didn’t seem to make any difference to her. He smiled at her, a grin of such warmth that Alix thought it rivaled the sun. He took the bag the girl handed down to him, then sped off alone, leaving dual waves of water behind him.
Alix fell against the weathered shingles of a building. “It was him.”
Izzy leaned back beside her, both of them staring at the boat that was quickly disappearing in the distance. “His office is in New York. So why do you think he’s here? Vacationing? Building something divine?”
Alix was still staring out to sea. “It really was him. Remember when we heard him speak at that hotel?”
“Like it was yesterday,” Izzy said. “When he smiled at that girl just now, I was sure it was him. I’d recognize those eyes anywhere.”
“And that bottom lip,” Alix murmured. “I wrote a poem about it.”
“You’re kidding. I never saw any poem.”
“That’s because I didn’t show it to you. It’s the only poem I’ve ever written.”
They stood there in silence, not sure what to do or say. Jared Montgomery was their hero, a man whose designs were legendary in the architectural world. To them he was the Beatles, all the vampires, and Justin Bieber rolled into one.
Izzy was the first to recover. To her left was a young man tying up his old boat. She stepped over to him. “Do you know the man who just left in that white boat?”