Read Beautiful Day for Free Online Page A

side of Orange Street
     that overlooked the harbor. It had been bought by Margot’s great-great-great-grandfather
     in 1873, onlytwenty-seven years after the Great Fire destroyed most of downtown. The house had
     five bedrooms, plus an attic that Margot’s grandparents had filled with four sets
     of bunk beds and one lazy ceiling fan. It was shambling now, although in its heyday
     it had been quite grand. There were still certain antiques around—an apothecary chest
     with thirty-six tiny drawers, grandfather and grandmother clocks that announced the
     hour in unison, gilded mirrors, Eastlake twin beds and a matching dresser in the boys’
     bedroom upstairs—and there were fine rugs, all of them now faded by the sun and each
     permanently embedded with twenty pounds of sand. There was a formal dining room with
     a table seating sixteen where no one ever ate, although Margot remembered doing decoupage
     projects with her grandmother at that table on rainy days. One year, Nick and Kevin
     found turtles at Miacomet Pond and decided the turtles should race the length of the
     table. Margot remembered one of the turtles veering off the side of the table and
     crashing to the ground, where it lay upside down, its feet pedaling desperately through
     the air.
    In the kitchen hung a set of four original Roy Bailey paintings that might have been
     valuable, but they were coated in bacon grease and splattered oil from their father’s
     famous cornmeal onion rings. At one point, Margot’s mother had said, “Yes, this was
     a lovely house until we got a hold of it. Now it is merely a useful house, and a well-loved
     house.”
    Margot was shocked at how well loved. She felt euphoric at the sight of the dusty
     brick of the kitchen floor, the old wooden countertops scarred by 140 years of knives
     coarsely chopping garden tomatoes, the sound of the screen door slamming as her children
     ran out back to the green lawn, the seventy-foot oak tree named Alfie—after Alfred
     Coates Hamilton, the original owner of the house—and the wooden swing that hung from
     Alfie’s lowest branch.
    Margot had lived in the city all her adult life. She loved Manhattan—but not like
     this. Her adoration of Nantucket was matched only by her adoration of her children.
     She wanted to be buried here, in the shade of Alfie’s leaves, if possible. She would
     have to write that down somewhere.
    No sooner had Margot entered the house and allowed herself those sixty seconds of
     appreciation than crisis struck. Jenna stood in front of Margot, holding open her
     Mielie bag, handmade by a woman in Cape Town, South Africa. Jenna was sobbing.
    “What?” Margot said. She had certainly expected tears from Jenna this weekend. Jenna
     was an idealist, and the world was constantly falling short. But so soon? Ten minutes
     after their arrival? “What is it?”
    “The Notebook!” Jenna said. “It’s
gone!
”
    Margot peered into the depths of Jenna’s bag—there was her wallet made from hemp,
     the handkerchief Jenna used like a character from a Merchant Ivory film because, unlike
     Kleenex, handkerchiefs could be washed and reused, her Aveeno lip balm, the package
     of Dramamine, and her cell phone. There was no Notebook.
    “Maybe you put it somewhere else,” Margot said.
    “I keep it here,” Jenna said. “Right here in my bag. You know I keep it right here.”
    Yes, Margot did know that; she had seen Jenna remove and return the Notebook from
     that bag a hundred times. Jenna was the kind of person who had a place for everything,
     and her place for the Notebook was in that bag.
    Margot laid her hands on Jenna’s shoulders. “Calm down,” she said. “Let’s think. When
     was the last time you remember having it?”
    Instead of this question focusing Jenna, it caused her tobecome more scattered. She cast around the kitchen, her eyes frantic. Jenna was the
     kindest, most nurturing soul Margot knew; the students and parents at the Little Minds