“Off-islander,” he said under his breath and his tone made the term sound vile, maybe even evil.
The big car looked like all the others, so what made him think it wasn’t someone who lived on Nantucket? “How do you know?”
His answer was a look that said “How do you not know?” He put his arm across the back of the seat, reversed, and maneuvered the truck into a tiny space against the curb.
Alix looked with interest as the vehicle passed. Inside was a woman with lots of shiny hair, half a dozen gold bracelets on her arm, a designer linen shirt, and a cell phone plastered to her ear. As she drove past them she didn’t so mu
ch as wave a thanks to Jared for having moved aside so she could get by. In fact, she didn’t even look at them.
“Answer your question?” Jared asked.
In just a few days on the island Alix had become so used to the friendliness and courtesy between inhabitants that the woman’s rudeness was shocking. It was as though the beat-up old pickup didn’t exist to her. “Off-islanders,” Alix said in wonder. “Will there be a lot of them here?”
“Horrific!” Jared said as he pulled out of the temporary parking place. “And not one of them knows how to drive. They think four-way stops mean the other drivers stop to let them go by without so much as slowing down.”
Alix hoped he was making a joke. The rest of the way she looked out the window. She doubted if she’d ever get used to the beauty of the houses of Nantucket.
At last he turned off the paved road and down a dirt path. Around them were scrubby bushes and tall, bent pines that looked like bonsai plants on steroids. “The wind’s done this?” she asked.
“Yes. We’re on the North Shore near where the first English settled.”
“Where your ancestors lived?”
He nodded. “They built houses near here, but the harbor closed up in a big storm so they moved.”
“And the harbor is everything.”
“No, the sea is everything,” he said, then quoted, “Two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer’s. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires. That’s what Melville said about us.”
“Ah, yes. Moby Dick. When they glorified killing the whales.”
“Not my family,” Jared said as he stopped, turned off the engine, and they got out of the truck.
“That’s right. Captain Caleb was in the China trade. Why didn’t that continue? Or did it?”
“Opium Wars,” he said. “I need to talk to you about something. How much—?” He broke off because his cell phone buzzed. He took it out of his pocket and looked at the ID. “Sorry, but I need to take this call. The sea is that way.”
“Sure,” she said. There was a little path ahead of her and she walked down it. The plants around her looked fierce and tough. Kind of like Nantucketers, she thought, and tried to imagine what the first settlers had seen. She really did need to read some Nantucket history.
At the end of the path was one of the many beautiful, sandy beaches that surrounded the island and that she’d seen photos of. She’d never been a “beach person” who longed to sit in the blistering hot sun and do nothing, but on this beach a person could, well, think.
“Like it?”
She looked up to see Jared standing near her, gazing out at the ocean. “Yes, I do. Was there a house here?”
“Come on,” he said, “and I’ll show you.”
She followed him down a narrow path that had been made in between the fierce little shrubs and noticed the sand on the ground. She had an idea that if you dug anywhere on the island you’d hit sand.
He stopped at a large, cleared space that had only an indentation to show that there had once been a building there.
“Was the house moved?”
“Burned,” Jared said.
“Recently?”
“Early 1800s.”