“Barefoot” Excerpt

Elin Hilderbrand’s sixth novel, “Barefoot“, is in stores. In a Mahon About Town exclusive, here’s part two of a two part excerpt from “Barefoot.” Thanks Elin.

Inviting Brenda to come along had been the obvious choice. Vicki needed help with the kids and getting back and forth to chemo, and Brenda had been fired from Champion in a blaze of scandal with attendant legal trouble and she was desperate for a free way out of the city. It was summer, salvaged, for both of them. In the harrowing days following Vicki’s diagnosis, they talked about reliving their memories from childhood: long beach days, catching fireflies, bike rides to Sesachacha Pond, corn on the cob, games of Monopoly and badminton, picking blackberries, twilight walks up to Sankaty Head Lighthouse which spun its beacon like a cowboy with a wild lasso, picnics of bologna-and-potato-chip sandwiches, spending every day barefoot. It would be just the two of them creating memories for Vicki’s own kids. It was a chance for Vicki to heal, for Brenda to regroup. They would follow their mother’s advice: Nantucket sand between the toes. It might cure anything: cancer, ruined careers, badly-ended love affairs. Just the two of us, they said - as they sat under the harsh hospital lights awaiting a second opinion. It would be a sister summer.

But how, really, could Vicki leave her best friend behind in Darien - especially with Melanie’s pregnancy, and then the monstrous news of Peter’s affair? Vicki had never given Melanie a chance to say no; she’d all but kidnapped her. You’re joining us, Vicki said. And that’s final. Though now Vicki feared she’d made a mistake. The house was smaller than Vicki remembered, a lot smaller. It was a shoebox; Blaine had friends with playhouses bigger than this. Had it shrunk? Vicki wondered. Because she remembered whole summers with her parents and Brenda and Aunt Liv and the house had seemed, if not palatial, than at least comfortable.

“It’s darling,” Melanie said, as she stepped out of the cab. “Oh, Vicki, it’s all that I imagined.”

Vicki unhinged the front gate. The landscapers had come, thank God. Melanie loved flowers. Pale pink New Dawn roses cascaded down a trellis on the front of the house and the front beds had been planted with cosmos and blue delphiniums and fat, happy-faced zinnias. There were butterflies. There was a postage stamp lawn that had been recently mowed.

“Where’s the sandbox?” Blaine said. “Where’s the curly slide?”

Vicki produced a key from her purse and opened the front door, which was made from three rough-hewn planks and sported a brass scallop shell doorknocker. The doorway was low. As Vicki stepped through, she thought of her husband, Ted, a hale and hearty six foot five. He had told her from the beginning that he was vehemently against her coming to Nantucket. Did she really want to spend all summer with her sister, with whom her relationship was spotty at best? And Melanie Patchen, who would be as needy as Vicki, if not more so? And did she really want her chemotherapy - the chemo that she was asking to save her life - to be administered at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital? Wasn’t that the equivalent of being treated in the Third World? What the hell are you thinking? he asked. He sounded confused and defeated. Ted was a hedge fund manager in Manhattan; he liked problems he could fell like trees, problems he could solve with brute strength and keen intelligence. The horrifying diagnosis, the wing-and-a-prayer treatment plan, and then Vicki’s wacko decision to flee for the summer left him confounded. Vicki had looked her husband right in the eye. She locked him into a gaze and prayed he’d understand.

It was, quite possibly, the last summer of her life, and she didn’t want to spend it in stifling hot Darien under the sympathetic scrutiny of her friends and peers. Already, Vicki was a hot topic: Did you hear? Vicki Stowe has lung cancer. They’re going to try chemo first and then they’ll decide if it’s worth operating. They don’t know if she’ll make it. A steady stream of food and flowers arrived on the second post-diagnosis day, along with the offer of playdates. Let us take Blaine. Let us take the baby. So you can rest. Vicki was the new Darien charity. She couldn’t stand the casseroles or the calla lilies; she couldn’t stand her children already being farmed out like they were orphans. The women circled her like buzzards - some close friends, some friends of friends, some of whom she barely knew. Ted didn’t get it; he saw it as outreach by a caring community. That’s why we moved here, he said. These are our neighbors, our friends. But Vicki’s desire to get away grew every time the phone rang, every time a Volvo station wagon pulled into the driveway.

Vicki’s mother was the one who had suggested Nantucket, and while it was true that Ellen Lyndon’s solutions ran towards the whimsical rather than the practical, Vicki latched on to the idea. Aunt Liv’s estate had settled in April; the house was theirs now. It felt like a sign. Brenda, being in dire straits herself, was all for it. Even Vicki’s oncologist, Dr. Garcia, gave his blessing; he assured her that chemo was chemo. The treatment would be the same on Nantucket as it would be in Connecticut, or in the city. The people in Vicki’s cancer support group, all of whom embraced holistic as well as medical treatment understood. Enjoy yourself, they said. Relax. Play with your kids. Be outside. Talk with your sister, your friend. Look at the stars. Eat organic vegetables. Try to forget about fine needle aspirations, CT scans, metastases. Fight the good fight, on your own terms, in your own space. Have a lovely summer.

Vicki had held Ted hostage with her eyes. Since her diagnosis, she’d watched him constantly - tying his necktie, removing change from his suit pocket, stirring sugar into his coffee - hoping to memorize him, to take him with her, wherever she went.

“I’ll miss you,” she said.