Nancy Thayer - Heat Wave

ALSO BY NANCY THAYER

Beachcombers

Summer House

Moon Shell Beach

The Hot Flash Club Chills Out

Hot Flash Holidays

The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again

The Hot Flash Club

Custody

Between Husbands and Friends

An Act of Love

Belonging

Family Secrets

Everlasting

My Dearest Friend

Spirit Lost

Morning Nell

Bodies and Souls

Three Women at the Waters Edge

Stepping

Heat Wave is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by Nancy Thayer

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B ALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Epigraph by Edith H. West. Used by permission.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Thayer, Nancy.
Heat wave : a novel / Nancy Thayer.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-51833-0
1. Nantucket Island (Mass.)Fiction. 2. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3570.H3475H43 2011
813.54dc22 010053759

www.ballantinebooks.com

Jacket illustration: Tom Hallman, based on images Image Source/Getty Images (legs) and Christopher Scott/Gallo Images/Getty Images (water)

v3.1

For Charley
My Man

While writing this book, I consulted the superlative Diane Pearl, M.D., and her excellent office staff: Diane Cabral, Julie Reinemo, and Janet Chaffee. Also, Greg Hinson, M.D., was kind enough to talk with me. I based most of my medical information on what my sister Martha Foshee, R.N., told me, and I want to thank them all. Any medical mistakes are entirely my sisters.

Thanks to Ann Balas of The Anchor Inn. Any mistakes about innkeeping are completely mine.

I also want to thank my talented, irrepressible friends Susan McGinnis, Laura Gallagher Byrne, Charlotte Kastner, Pam Diem, and Melissa Philbrick for being there when I needed them. Also thanks to Pam Pindell, who let us use her studio, and Jill Burrill, Laura Simon, Jean Mallinson, Tricia Patterson, and Deborah Beale, my literate, literary buddies. Mimi Beman, youre with me every day.

Thanks to Josh Thayer and David Gillum for consistent patient support with the mysteries of computers.

Thanks to Emmett St. John Tutfield Forbes, for making me fall in love again, and to Sam Wilde Forbes and her husband Neil Forbes, wonderful parents to my darling Ellias, Adeline, and Emmett. And Sam, thanks for your brilliant response to my emergency phone call from New York!

Thanks to Jan Dougherty for keeping me literally in line. Great thanks to Anne Kronenberg, who has helped me believe, and trust, that fiction and reality are different.

Thanks to Jean Gordon for her help and especially for keeping me supplied with that wonderful health food, Jamaican rum cake.

Thanks to Karen White of Tantor Media for her excellent reading and careful questions for the Beachcombers CD.

Im grateful to the entire team at Ballantine, especially Libby McGuire and Gina Centrello, as well as Junessa Viloria, Kim Hovey, Katie Rudkin, Quinne Rogers, Jean Lisa, and Penelope Haynes. Special thanks to Kate Collins. Lasting thanks to Dana Isaacson.

My editor, Linda Marrow, has a riding-crop mind and an angelic heart, an amazing combination, which fills me with admiration and gratitude.

Thanks, too, to Christina Hogrebe and Peggy Gordijn of the Jane Rotrosen Agency, and to my agent, the unique and fabulous Meg Ruley.

The house is good

The beams are strong

The sun streams in

The whole day long

A hundred years

Or more its stood

Swept by sea winds

The house is good

Edith H. West

S ome days recently, Carley Winsted had experienced moments of actual happiness, when her heart gave her a break. Shed forget Guss death and focus on the sight of her daughters or the sparkle of sunlight on the oceanand lightning-fast, guilt zapped her. How could she be happy even for a moment?

She had to be happy, because she needed to be a role model for her daughters. She wanted to show them how to get through the dark times, to relish the good in each and every day.

Today she just needed not to be a coward.

It was the end of December, the end of the year. The end of the worst year in Carleys life. High on a cliff overlooking the deep blue waters of Nantucket Sound, Carley stood in her bedroom, her heart racing with anxiety.

Thank heavens her girls were with friends this morning. She couldnt let them see her like this. They had enough to deal with. Their beloved father, Carleys dear Gus, had died a month ago. His death had been unexpected, unpredictable, wrong, caused by an un-diagnosed heart defect that had been lying stealthily in wait for years. Gus had been only thirty-seven. Carley was only thirty-two.

Cisco was twelve.

Margaret was five.

It was unbearable. Yet it had to be borne.

Shed been doing pretty well, she thought, but this morning her grief was overridden by a gripping panic, which was ridiculous, really.

After all, it wasnt as if she were a peasant being thrown into the lions den. She was only going to her father-in-laws office to discuss finances with him. Okay, fine, finances had never been her strong suit. Shed gotten married at twenty, shed never had a real job, Gus had handled the money, she had taken care of the house, the children, food and clothing, their lives. But she was not a financial idiot, and Gus knew that. Gus had left this house entirely to her. It had no mortgage. It was completely, legally, hers.

So why had Russell asked her to come to the law office to meet with him? Such a cold, businesslike placewhy hadnt he come to her house to talk with her in the living room as he always had? True, Carley had not always been on the same page as Annabel and Russell. They were different in so many ways, and the truth was, her in-laws were difficult to please. But they shared a mutual love for their son, her husband, Gus, and for his and Carleys daughters, Cisco and Margaret.

Carley gave herself a careful, critical once-over in the mirror. Her tailored gray suit was loose on her, but that was to be expected. Shed lost weight since Guss death. So had Russell and Annabel, even Guss best friend, Wyatt. Carley was tall and lanky, and now whip thin. In this suit, she looked elegant, even haughty, although anyone who knew Carley knew elegant and haughty were so not her. Russell had to know that after being around her for thirteen years.

But since Guss death, both Russell and Annabel had been different. More openly judgmental. Carleys only defense was to be prepared. She slipped her feet into her highest heeled boots.

Her appointment with Russell was set for eleven oclock. Her appointment! Gus wouldnt have put up with this formal crap. Come on, Dad, just tell us what you have to say, and well work it out. Thats what Gus would have said.