The Sixth Wedding by Elin Hilderbrand

Link

“So it’s okay with you if we invade the cottage?” Uncle Cooper asks.

“Yeah, of course,” Link says. When Uncle Coop said he was planning to head up to Nantucket for the weekend, Link was afraid he’d be expected to go along, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. He’d flown back to the island over the week of the Fourth of July, when he’d hung out with his friends from high school and even hooked up with his ex-girlfriend, Nicole, the one who ditched him on day six of her Italian semester abroad. While it had been fun, it also made Link unbearably sad. Link missed his mother every second of every day, but when he was on Nantucket, the memories were everywhere, especially in the cottage where Mallory had raised him for eighteen years. Mallory was present everywhere he looked—her books were on the shelves, her favorite green pans were in the kitchen cabinets; the quilt she made out of Link’s old T-shirts was smoothed across his bed. Link could see the spot on the front deck where Mallory used to sit when she watched Link and his friends swimming or when she drank her wine as the sun went down. Mallory and Link had their usual seats at the narrow harvest table—Link at the head, Mallory next to him in the seat closest to the kitchen, because she was often up to get extra napkins or more ice or second helpings for Link. They had their designated spots on the sofa—Link would do his homework, Mallory would grade papers. On Sunday, they watched football. His mother was a Baltimore Ravens fan, which he teased her about relentlessly.

Swim in a little, please! Link! Lincoln Dooley, swim in!

Did you brush your teeth?

Where are you with your history project?

Wanna kayak? We’ll be back in an hour, then I’ll drive you to Dylan’s.

Did you put on sunscreen?

Why the long face, handsome? Talk to Mama.

Call your father, please, he’s been texting me and I’m afraid he’s going to send drones next.

There’s a card from your grandparents on the counter. I bet it has money in it!

You know what makes everything better? Guacamole.

I will never be disappointed if you strike out swinging. That means you tried.

My eighth period class was a bitch today—come give your mom a hug.

You will never, ever understand how much I love you…until you have children of your own and then every word I’ve ever said will make perfect sense.

Link is relieved that the weekend Uncle Coop is planning is just for old people. Link’s father is flying in from Seattle, Leland is coming from New York, and…Jake McCloud is traveling to the island from South Bend, Indiana. It’s supposed to be a reunion of some weekend that happened before Link was born. Link doesn’t ask too many questions lest he get roped in.

Jake McCloud, though, has always intrigued him. When Mallory was dying, she asked Link to call Jake, and Jake and his daughter, Bess, had left the Ursula de Gournsey campaign so that Jake could come say goodbye to Mallory. He brought a guitar and sang to her.

Link and Bess McCloud had taken a walk on the beach and Link said, “I feel like something’s going on that I don’t understand.”

Bess said, “My dad told me Mallory is an old friend of his.”

“Oh,” Link said.

Bess had laughed. “Do they think we’re naïve? They’re more than friends.”

“Are they?” Link said. “I’ve never heard my mom mention his name before, and I would have remembered that. Your family is a very big deal.”

“My mother is a very big deal,” Bess said. “My dad and I are just…infantry soldiers.” She picked up a quahog shell. “Look!”

Link smiled. “You don’t get to the beach much?”

Bess examined the inside of the shell, the swirls of blue and purple—wampum, what used to be traded like money. “I’m taking this home.” They kept walking. “I like thinking that my dad had something of his own, a secret friendship or whatever. Or maybe they’re in love. Maybe they’ve been in love all these years.”

“Maybe?” Link said. The thought was, frankly, absurd.

Link won’t lie: He’s psyched to have his uncle’s place in Georgetown to himself for the weekend. It’s a bachelor’s paradise. The townhouse on Q Street is three stories tall with a finished media room in the basement, and it’s decorated like something out of a design magazine. The whole house is done in black and white with pops of color—in the living room, there’s a curvy flame-orange sofa and two electric-lime-green cup chairs. There’s a sweeping staircase with a curved black banister. Coop has huge abstract paintings and modern sculpture on pedestals—it’s real art, he goes to the galleries and gets into complicated negotiations with the owners. And then there are antiques scattered throughout—some of the pieces are from Link’s grandparents’ house in Baltimore and some are from the far-flung countries Coop has visited. There’s a chess set from India that resides permanently in the sunny breakfast nook with windows that overlook the back courtyard, and every morning when there’s time, Coop and Link play. Link has gotten pretty good.

Link is thinking about having a party—just some of the other interns from Brookings and his fraternity brother, Woj, from USC, who’s working on Capitol Hill this summer and who knows a crazy amount of smart and beautiful women. It won’t be a full-blown banger—the last thing he wants is to trash Coop’s space—but he’s thinking about some good people and good whiskey (Coop has a wine and whiskey cellar tucked behind the home gym in the basement) out back in the courtyard. He’ll pick up some tacos and banh mi and play some music and generally flex like the place is his own.

Before Coop leaves on Friday morning, he hands Link three hundred bucks—because that’s the kind of awesome uncle he is. Link spends his entire walk to work reminding himself that he has to be a responsible adult and not act like a kid in a movie whose parents are away for the weekend. He’ll cut the party off at fifty people, sixty max.

But when Link gets to the office and starts firing off texts—Party at my house tonight, 8pm—he gets a rude awakening. It’s a holiday weekend, the last before people go back to college, graduate school, etc., and everyone is leaving town. Woj is going to Fenwick Island, the other interns are heading to Dewey, Ocean City, Cape May.

His buddy, Oliver, is going home to his parents’ house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and asks if Link wants to go with him. “My dad has a sailboat,” Oliver says. “And my parents are having a cocktail party on Sunday with a tent and a Dixieland band. It’ll be fun.”

Sailing, cocktails, a Dixieland band. It does sound kind of fun, but it’s not what Link had in mind. If he wanted to be on the water, at the beach, he would have gone with his uncle. He wants city life.

“I think I’ll stay put, thanks, man,” Link says.

His idea for the weekend instantly changes. He’ll just hang out at the house, playing loud music on Coop’s state-of-the-art sound system, he’ll watch movies in the home theater, he’ll sip the whiskey and cognac alone. He was raised an only child; he can entertain himself.

But once Link gets home from work and takes a shower—the city is a smoking griddle, why did he not go to the beach?—he can’t settle down. He feels like a friendless loser, sitting home alone. He should go out. He will go out. He remembers his mother’s story about going to Nantucket when she was his age without knowing a soul.

Honestly?she said. It was liberating. I was in control of my future.

He heads to a place he and Woj sometimes went called Roofers Union in Adams Morgan, and he finds it pumping—there are people his age drinking and laughing at the tables on the street and there’s a line of young, beautiful people snaking out the door. He waits his turn, presents his ID to the bouncer, and heads inside. He goes to the upstairs bar; it’s normally a little less crazy than the one downstairs.

There are three free seats at the far end and beyond those sits a girl with dark hair and glasses, absorbed in her phone. She has a glass of wine in front of her. Is she alone? Link gives her a couple seats as a buffer, orders a Stoli tonic with a twist of lemon, and after his drink arrives and he’s had a sip, he glances over. At the same time, she looks up at him.

He knows her. It’s…

“Oh my God,” she says. “You’re…”

“Yeah!” he says. “Wait, this is weird. I was just thinking about you.” It’s Bess McCloud. This is surreal—although Link has just learned that this phenomenon has a name, where you think about someone and then, out of the blue, they appear.

“My dad went to Nantucket with your uncle and your dad,” Bess said. “He just texted to say he landed.”

“That’s crazy,” Link says. He drinks in the sight of Bess McCloud; she’s just as pretty as he remembers. Nerdy-pretty, with glasses and hair that hangs in her face a little.

“Are you…waiting for someone?” Link asks.

Bess rolls her eyes. “I’m supposed to be on a Bumble date, but the guy is stuck on the Metro.” She holds up her phone. “It says he’s sixteen minutes away.”

Link slides down the bar next to her. “I can hang with you for sixteen minutes,” he says. “Then when your boyfriend gets here, I’ll leave quietly.”

Bess laughs. “He’s not my boyfriend,” she says. “I don’t even know him. He’s a lobbyist for the alcohol industry.”

“A lobbyist?” Link says. “Legal bribery.”

“Exactly,” Bess sighs. “I normally stay away, but…”

But the dude is probably good-looking and rolling in cash, Link thinks. “Looks like I have sixteen minutes to try and lure you away from the dark side,” he says. “I’m working for Brookings. Domestic policy. I analyze the impact of policy decisions on the least served among us and suggest ways to make them more effective.”

“I work in nonprofits,” Bess says.

“Sexy!” Link says.

“Yeah, as sexy as being a producer for public television,” Bess says.

“Hey, do you still have that shell?” Link asks. “That quahog shell that you found on the beach on Nantucket?”

Bess sips her wine and nods. “It’s on my dresser, actually.”

“No…seriously?”

“Swear to God.”

“And did you…?”

“Did I what?”

The thing that Link wants to ask might take another drink, but the clock is ticking. The lobbyist will probably show up with his American Express obsidian card in eleven minutes. “Did you ever ask your dad what was going on between him and my mom?”

Bess’s green eyes find Link’s from behind her glasses. Her eyebrows raise. “I did.” She swivels her head to take in the raucous bar scene beyond them. “Do you maybe want to go someplace quieter and I can tell you about it?”

Link laughs. “What about your date?”

Bess checks her phone. “The pin hasn’t moved. He’s stuck on the Metro. I’ll cancel him and we can go over to Lapis for Afghan food. Does that sound okay?”

Link doesn’t care if they go to McDonald’s. There’s no way he’s going to miss a chance to sit across the table from this beautiful nerdy girl and learn something new about his mother. “Sounds great,” he says.