Spirit Lost by Nancy Thayer Read Free Book Online Page A

enough for firewood. So a good log is worth its weight in gold. It cost us a thousand dollars to bring over all our stuff, including the wood. Can you believe that?”
    “Well,” Anne said, “all your furniture’s so heavy. All these antiques. They must weigh a ton. But they look wonderful here. They look as if they were meant to be here. Much better than they did in your apartment.”
    There was a great puffing noise as the wind hit the chimney just the right way toenter the flue and send a gust of smoke back into the room. For a moment rain splattered the logs.
    “I don’t know,” Anne said. “I don’t think I could live here all year. I mean, this is only November, and the weather’s so wild.”
    “Well, Nantucket’s flat and so far out in the ocean that the wind can really work up some force,” John said. “I’ve heard that it does really blow here. This is nothing.”
    “I think it’s romantic,” Willy said smugly.
    “I think I’m glad I won’t have your heating bill,” Mark said just as smugly.
    “I think we’ve beat you.” Anne laughed, placing her deep-blue stone on a square that gave the women five stones in a row.
    “So much for men being superior at logic!” Willy laughed, pleased at winning. She rose. “I’m going to make us all some Irish coffee.”
    “Oh, great!” Anne said. “I haven’t had Irish coffee for years. I don’t suppose that much alcohol will hurt the baby, do you, Mark?” She moved over to sit next to her husband on the sofa. “I didn’t have any wine with dinner tonight.”
    “My sweet, you drink just enough booze to make our child into a bon vivant and not enough to turn him into a drunk,” Mark said, pulling Anne closer to him and rubbing her stomach.
    John put the colored stones back in their bag, rolled up the Pente mat, and put the game away. He rose and dropped another log on the fire. The friends sat together in silence for a while, relaxing, stretching out, watching the dancing flames. They were familiar enough with one another to be companionable in silence. For a few minutes the whir of the electric mixer as Willy whipped the cream for the Irish coffee joined the other noises of the night. It had a nice controlled mechanical sound about it—a civilized sound—and when she turned it off, the storm outside seemed even more savage by contrast.
    “I’m glad I’m not on the ferry,” Mark said, making seasick noises and faces.
    “It may not be running tonight,” John told him. “I’ve heard it doesn’t go when it’s really bad.”
    Willy entered the room carrying a silver tray with four crystal goblets filled with Irish coffee and four long silver spoons. She was wearing jeans and an old cotton turtleneck and an even older gray-and-heather cable-knit wool sweater she had knit herself years before. She looked enormously comfortable and warming, and with thesilver tray in her hands, she was a bearer of gifts. She set the tray on the coffee table, and everyone looked at the Irish coffees, which she had prepared perfectly, so that the white cream rose in swirls, sweet islands on dark, intoxicating seas.
    Anne clapped her hands together like a child. “Oh,” she cried, “this is such a luxury! The walk and the waves and the wild beach, and now this fire and this rich dessert. Willy, you’re wonderful.”
    Willy smiled. “Well, it’s a luxury for us,” she said. “To have friends in our house. We don’t know anyone here, you know. I mean, we know the Realtor. And there are some people in Boston who come here for the summer, but no one we know stays for the entire year. Imagine, we really don’t know a soul on this island.”
    Anne shivered. “I’d hate it. I’d feel desolate. Willy, I couldn’t stand it.”
    “Well,” Willy said, picking up her coffee, “it’s only been three weeks. I’m sure we’ll be meeting people as time goes along.”
    “I don’t want to,” John announced. “I have no desire whatsoever to meet anyone. I