Local Girls

by Jenny O'Connell

  “What?” I asked Shelby as I pushed through the kitchen door.

  “What? What is that you have three Western omelets sitting here getting cold, that’s what.”

  “So where are they?”

  She pointed to the double ovens. “I put them in there to stay warm.”

  “Fine.” I grabbed two pot holders and went to get the omelets.

  When I returned to the dining room, the couple was gone and the table empty.

  “Where’d they go?” I asked Marcus, who was clearing away empty coffee mugs.

  “Who?”

  “The couple who was here, that guy.”

  “They left, and look at this.” He held up a ten-dollar bill. “Not bad.”

  “Which way did they go?”

  Marcus pointed toward the front foyer.

  They couldn’t have gone that far, it had only been a few minutes. “Watch my tables, I’ll be right back.”

  The foyer was empty, and I didn’t hear anyone walking around in the upstairs hallway. They were gone.

  I turned to head back to the dining room when I saw them out on the porch, the backs of their heads resting against the rocking chairs.

  It was probably a coincidence. There was no way that he was the guy. So he had the hair and had crewed in the regatta seventeen years ago. There had to be at least twenty guys working on those twelve-meter boats for the race.

  But I had to know, and there was only one way to find out.

  “Excuse me.” I tapped him on the arm and when he turned toward me I knew. His hair was shorter and his face was fuller, but it was him. It was the boy in Izzy’s painting.

  He had Mona’s dark hair and her watery blue eyes, shot through with pale gray flashes. And the bump across the bridge of his nose was actually noticeable.

  Mona’s father was sitting on the deck of the Willow Inn.

  “Did you leave your wallet in the dining room?” I improvised.

  “I don’t think so.” He stood up and reached into his back pocket. “Nope, it’s there.”

  “Okay, thanks. Our mistake.”

  “No problem.” He sat down again.

  “Um, one more thing. Did I hear you say you’ve been coming to the regatta for seventeen years?”

  “Every year, except three.”

  “It rained those years,” the woman told me, nudging him. “Amazing, huh?”

  “And you actually sailed in one?” I asked him.

  “Just one.”

  “And I’m sure it was sunny,” the woman told me. “All weekend long.”

  I didn’t know what else to ask him, what other pieces of information would help to make sense of this situation. Mona’s father had been coming to the island almost every year since she was born and she never even knew it. How many times had they passed each other on the street, waited behind each other in line? It didn’t seem possible.

  It wasn’t like I could come right out and ask him if he’d met a girl named Izzy, or if he remembered what they did that weekend on the beach. The only thing I could do was say good-bye and try to figure out what I was supposed to do next.

  “Okay, well, enjoy the rest of your stay. Sorry to bother you.”

  “He’s here,” I told Shelby once I reached the kitchen.

  “Who?”

  It just didn’t seem real. How could this be happening now? “Mona’s father. He’s here.”

  “How do you know?”

  I had to think and the only way I could think was to pace around the kitchen, to keep moving, because if I stopped for even a second and realized what was happening, I didn’t know if I could handle it. “I just know, Shelby. It’s him.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  I was on my fourth lap around the butcher block island when I finally decided. “I’m going to call her and tell her to come over and meet him.”

  “Are you insane?” she blurted, and then grabbed me by the shoulders as I started lap five. “And stop pacing! You’re driving me crazy.”

  “Look, I owe it to her. I have to tell her.”

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” Shelby was testing me, but I was sure. One hundred percent.

  “It’s the only way,” I told Shelby, and walked out of the kitchen to call Mona.

  I knew Mona wouldn’t be up yet, and even if she was, it was probably only because she was hungover and feeling like crap. Which was why, instead of calling Malcolm’s home number, I dialed Mona’s cell and hoped it was sitting on her night table.

  With each ring I almost hung up, taking it as some divine sign I wasn’t supposed to tell her. But then, after the fourth ring I heard a click and Mona made some incomprehensible noise into the phone. I figured it was probably her attempt at an early-morning hungover hello.

  I skipped all of the niceties and got right to the point. There wasn’t enough time for me to explain, and the longer I kept her on the phone, the more time she had to hang up on me. “Mona, it’s me. Look, I know things haven’t been good between us, but you have to come over to the inn. Now.”

  “What?” she mumbled. “Kendra, what do you want?”

  “Look, you can hate me later, but right now just trust me. And get over here quick.”

  I hung up and hoped she’d trust me, even if it was for the last time.

  After clearing the last of my tables I went back to the front desk and waited. And waited. Forty minutes later I was still convinced she’d come to the inn. She couldn’t just not show up. Our friendship had to amount to more than just this summer.

  By ten thirty it was time to face reality. It was time to give up on her. Shelby had already come out three times and told me she needed help with the picnic orders. But it wasn’t until Mona’s father showed up at the front desk that I knew the waiting was really over. He was checking out.

  Four feet away from me Mona’s dad placed a black nylon duffel bag with red piping on the ground and pulled out his credit card to pay the bill. In five minutes he’d be gone from the inn. In an hour he’d be on a ferry headed home.

  “What’s going on, Kendra?” Mona asked, coming through the screen door. She looked like crap, her eyes all red and swollen, her hair pulled back into a sloppy ponytail.

  I stood there, stunned, unable to move or say anything as I watched Mona standing within arm’s length of the man she’d waited her whole life to meet.

  If she took just one step to her left, she’d bump right into him. And she’d turn around and find he wasn’t too tall or too short. He wasn’t too fat or too skinny. He was just a perfectly normal man. An ordinary guy in navy blue shorts and a white button-down shirt. An ordinary guy who had no idea his daughter was within reach, a mere step away from changing his life. And hers.

  “What? What’s going on?” Mona asked me again.

  I watched as Camille took the man’s credit card and prepared his final bill. All I had to do was tell Mona to turn around.

  “Nothing,” I answered. “I mean, I don’t know.” Even as I answered, I watched Camille out of the corner of my eye, saw her hand the man a pen and wait while he signed the credit card receipt.

  It was my last chance. I had to do it right then and there if Mona was going to meet her father before he left. Only I couldn’t. Maybe last year or the year before I would have rushed to tell her, only now things were different. And it wasn’t my place to make that choice for her.

  “Nothing?” she repeated. “You called me to come down here for nothing?”

  “Not nothing, I meant I just thought we needed to talk.”

  “Now? You want to talk now, at ten o’clock in the morning?” I had to laugh at her, she made it sound like ten o’clock was an entirely unreasonable hour.

  “I didn’t want you to miss breakfast. Come on.” I turned toward the sitting room and motioned for Mona to follow me. “Shelby made some lemon curd squares. They’re the best you’ve ever tasted.”

  But she didn’t move fast enough, and before I could pull her toward me, Mona’s
father turned around and bumped right into her.

  “Excuse me,” he apologized, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I didn’t see you there.”

  Mona looked up at him as he attempted to steady her and she paused, and I knew it was over. I held my breath as Mona and her father locked eyes.

  She stared at him for what felt like a lifetime, and it was so quiet I could hear the second hand on the grandfather clock in the sitting room tick off numbers one by one. She had to recognize him, there was just no way she couldn’t.

  She caught her balance and smiled at him. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”

  “Good,” he answered, and then smiled back and walked out the screen door, holding his wife’s hand on one side and the duffel bag on the other.

  “So that’s all you wanted?” Mona walked toward me, completely oblivious to the fact that she’d just come face-to-face with the man she’d wondered about her entire life. “You wanted me to try some lemon squares?”

  Lemon squares. She thought I wanted her to taste Shelby’s pastry.

  “Yeah, come on.” I turned around and led her toward the kitchen door. “They’re in here.”

  At first I wasn’t sure Mona was going to stay, but when she followed me into the kitchen I figured that was a good sign.

  I’d come so close to telling Mona I’d solved the mystery. So close to giving her the answer she’d sought for so long. Only she didn’t want it anymore, or maybe that wasn’t exactly true. She didn’t need it anymore.

  I thought back to July Fourth on the beach with Henry, the family with the little boy and the kite. Mona and I had been like that, only Mona was the little kid and I was the kite, able to soar as high as I wanted because I knew she’d always be there, a safe place to go back to. And like the boy and the kite, it all worked as long as Mona was content to let me be the one venturing out to test the boundaries, as long as she didn’t relinquish her role. I think Mona felt comfortable in that role, not only with me, but with her dad, too. It was almost as if not knowing who her dad was gave her permission to put off figuring out who she was, as if she wasn’t allowed to discover her own identity until she uncovered his. Only it wasn’t like that anymore. Once she left the island she was able to let go of the string she’d held for so long, to stop defining herself by the people orbiting around her. It was, ultimately, something we both shared, probably what kept us together so long, our tendency to define ourselves by the people around us. It was easier to find your place by putting it in the context of those around you—Lexi was a local girl, Mona had become a summer girl, her Whittier friends were rich tourists. It was probably part of why I liked Henry so much, the fact that he was able to define himself regardless of the people around him.

  But now Mona had finally figured out that she didn’t need to find the missing piece of the puzzle to be complete. And that’s why, if Mona was going to find her dad, it would be up to her. Not me.

  “Shelby, this is Mona.”

  Shelby looked up from the picnic baskets. “Hi, Mona.”

  “Can we take a few of these?” I asked, pointing to the plate of lemon squares.

  “Take them all,” Shelby offered. “I’ve got another batch in the oven.”

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”

  Shelby looked from me to Mona and back to me, probably trying to figure out whether I’d told her. “Take your time, I’m fine here.”

  I took the plate of lemon squares out onto the patio and gestured for Mona to sit down at one of the tables. She stood there deciding which seat to take.

  “It’s okay, they don’t wobble,” I told her, and I thought I heard what sounded like the beginning of a laugh.

  Mona sat down and reached for a square. I just watched her, because I really didn’t even know where to begin. An hour ago I thought she’d come to the inn, find her dad, and realize I’d done it, I’d helped her find the missing piece. Now it wasn’t that easy.

  “So this is supposed to make everything all better?” Mona took a bite of her lemon square, which left a confectioners’ sugar mustache along her upper lip. “It’s good, but I don’t know that it’s that good.”

  “That’s because you’ve only had one bite. Keep eating. And wipe your lip, you have sugar on it.”

  “It can’t hurt, I look like shit.”

  “You don’t look so bad.”

  Mona frowned at me.

  “Okay, you look like shit.”

  “As long as we’re being honest, you suck.”

  “I know.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “I know that, too,” I admitted.

  “You could have just been honest with me.”

  “No, I couldn’t. I know how you feel about Henry and I didn’t want you to think I’d taken him away from you.”

  Mona took another bite, considering what I’d just said.

  “Remember when you told me you didn’t even know me anymore?”

  I nodded, recalling that afternoon in her bedroom.

  “You know me, Kendra, you know me just about better than everyone else. That’s not the problem. The problem is that you don’t like what you know anymore. I’m not the same person I was when I left, but it has nothing to do with being some rich kid from Boston. It doesn’t even have anything to do with who my friends are. I think you used to like that I was the one who would always be here, the one who wouldn’t leave. Only I did, and when I came back you didn’t even give me a chance.”

  “That’s not true, I wanted to spend time with you but you acted like you didn’t even want me around. God, I practically had to force you to even let me come over to your house that day.”

  “That’s not it at all, Kendra. I didn’t want you to come over because you scrutinized everything, my purse, my room, my every move, looking for proof that I’d become just the like the summer girls we used to make fun of. I stopped calling because all of your questions had one point, to help you give me some kind of label to make it easy for you—local Mona, summer Mona. I don’t think it ever occurred to you that I could just be Mona, your best friend who happened to move away.”

  Instead of reacting, I let Mona’s words sink in. On some level, she was probably right. Mona had always been like a sort of compass for me, a grounding point that I could always refer back to. Until she wasn’t.

  “I think that as long as I knew who you were, I knew who I was, and when that all changed I didn’t know anymore,” I said. “You know, Henry said something to me once, but I think he had it wrong. He said that you relied on me too much, but you know what? I think I relied on you.”

  “We relied on each other,” she told me, and smiled.

  “Is it true you’re seeing Kevin again?”

  “I’m not seeing Kevin, we just started hanging out. It just got to be too much. I felt like I was being forced to choose—you or my friends from school. It was like everyone wanted me to decide which Mona I wanted to be, the one from the Vineyard or the one who lives in the city. Kevin didn’t care which one I was. To him I was just Mona.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  Mona nodded.

  “Why’d you save that leaf from that day at Poppy’s house, the one in the Ziploc bag.”

  She thought for a moment. “I guess I wanted one more thing, one last thing to remember from here. The leaf was it, a reminder that summer had to come to end, that eventually, everything has to change in order to keep moving forward.” Mona pushed the plate of lemon squares away and sat back in her chair. “Now it’s my turn to ask the question. Do you love him?”

  I didn’t want to hurt Mona, but I owed her the truth. I owed it to myself.

  “I think so,” I told her. “I really think I do.”

  “You love Henry,” Mona repeated. “Do you have any idea how weird that sounds?”

  For the first time all morning, I laughed. “I do, believe me.”

  “I’m sorry I said that stuff last night.”

  “It was the champagne talki
ng, I know.”

  “God, my head hurts.” Mona rubbed her temples. “Do these lemon squares make miracles happen for hangovers, too?”

  “I don’t know, but have another one and we’ll find out.”

  Chapter 26

  Mona ended up having another square, but then she felt like she was going to throw it up, and judging by the greenish gray tinge to her cheeks, I believed her.

  After giving her a glass of water and two aspirin, I walked Mona outside to the Range Rover and made sure she was feeling well enough to drive before saying good-bye. As I stood there on the sidewalk outside the inn, watching her drive away, I wasn’t quite sure things were back to normal between us, but after this summer I wasn’t even sure I knew what normal was anymore. I just knew that sometimes you have to know when to let someone go, when to loosen your grip and learn to trust that what you had was real enough that they’d come back to you.

  I’d made the choice to let Henry go. Maybe it wasn’t the best choice, or done in the best way, but I didn’t know how to go back and change that. Or if it was too late.

  As soon as the grandfather clock struck four I grabbed my purse and called it a day. But as I was on my way out the front door I noticed a guest sitting at one of my tables, the breakfast menu propped up so I couldn’t see his face.

  The kitchen was clearly closed, so I didn’t know what he was doing there, but he’d be sitting there an awfully long time if he was waiting for a server to show up.

  “Excuse me, sir?” I called from the foyer, but he didn’t answer.

  I went over to him. “Sir, we’re closed.”

  “That’s too bad.” The guest took the menu away from his face, only it wasn’t a guest at all.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked Henry.

  “Mona told me I should come over. She mentioned something about a miracle lemon square.”

  “She did?”

  “Yeah. She said something about it being the cure for all that ails, except, apparently, hangovers.”

  I swallowed hard, trying to stop the lump that had started to form in my throat. “I’m sorry I ran out on you last night, Henry.”

  “I know you are.”

  “I just didn’t know what else to do. Everything’s been so screwed up this summer, I just couldn’t take it anymore.”