by Grace Palmer
Maybe they wouldn’t have brought it up if Jill had just come out and told them she’d been fired. Maybe they even would have been nice about it. Because it was all so unfair.
Jill had certainly taken a lot of time away from work on short notice, but she'd saved up the days. She'd earned them fair and square, mostly by never once taking a vacation or calling in sick for years.
In the end, though, it was her boss's wandering eye that got her fired. She just knew it.
"There have been some complaints about workplace relationships,” he’d said, his tone all business when he’d called her ten minutes before the close of business last Friday. “Now, I don't want this meeting to give space to rumors, and I don’t need to know who you may or may not have dated. The fact is, you haven't been here for three weeks. I can't sort this matter out unless you're here."
"I'll come back," Jill had said, somewhat pathetically. “I never dated anyone at work. And I thought my days off were approved. I’ll come back and—”
He’d sighed with a sort of faux regret that left a bad taste in her mouth. “Jill, you’ve been an asset here for a long time. But recently, you’ve seemed distracted. You aren’t as welcoming as you once were. People have started lodging complaints.”
More like he had complaints. Ever since he’d gotten married, Jill had nipped their flirtatious banter in the bud. Clearly, Jeff had taken it personally.
Ultimately, nothing Jill said could change his mind. She’d been fired. And now, like Leslie and Michelle, everything for her hinged on the Wayfarer Inn.
“I’m just not sure we’ll be able to come back from this,” Jill said.
“There are stairs right up there,” her mom said, completely misunderstanding her. “If you don’t want to walk in the sand, we can walk in the road.”
“No, Mom, it’s okay,” Jill said softly. “We can stay on the beach.”
They followed the beach back to the inn, then Jill helped her mom lay down for a nap. After three walks, she was exhausted. Jill felt a bit exhausted, too.
Michelle’s car wasn’t parked along the curb and Leslie wasn’t anywhere in the inn. It seemed they’d both left while she’d been out with her mom. Probably for the same reason Jill had escaped: to cool off, clear her head.
Except her head still didn’t feel clear. And when her phone rang and she saw her twin brother’s face on the screen, things became even murkier.
She’d been dodging Grayson’s calls. Which hadn’t been difficult, considering how infrequently he normally rang. Usually, he was the one dodging her. But today, Jill was weak and confused enough to answer, hoping her brother might say something insightful. Helpful, even.
“Hello?”
“‘Grand reopening,’” he read in a vicious tone, skipping a greeting altogether. “According to my search results, the Wayfarer Inn is reopening its doors tomorrow after a remodel. And oh, there it is: ‘Under the same management.’”
“I’m glad to hear the word is getting out. Hopefully, that means we’ll stay booked up all summer.”
“We?” he scoffed, disdain obvious in his voice. “Since when are ‘you’ and ‘them’ a ‘we’?”
“Since we became co-owners of the inn together. You could be involved, too, if you made an effort.”
“I’m not in the habit of wasting my time and setting my money on fire,” he snapped back. “I told you to sell. What happened?”
Fair question. What had happened?
A lot. More than Jill could or cared to explain to her brother. He wouldn’t understand, anyway. He’d written off their dad and everything to do with him years ago. Decades ago, really. But Jill had never been able to do it. And now that she knew Leslie and Michelle, it felt like they were the reason.
“Destiny” seemed like a corny word, but there it was. Maybe their coming together, joining forces, becoming family was precisely that.
“I lost my job,” Jill said instead. “I don’t have a lot of other options. And right now, there’s room for me and Mom to live in the inn.”
“So I’m paying her rent every month for what?” he yelled. “Have I just been throwing away my money?”
“It’s only been a few weeks. Don’t be dramatic.”
He huffed out a humorless laugh. “Wow, this is rich. You stop calling me, you yank our mom out of her home and ship her over to some island, and decide to throw away your job in favor of running an inn with a couple strangers, yet somehow I’m the one being dramatic.”
“Kind of,” Jill said. “And I didn’t yank Mom anywhere. She wanted to come.”
“She doesn’t even know what she wants.”
Jill squeezed her eyes shut. What did Grayson know about their mom and her situation, really? Not much. He hadn’t spent more than a day or two at a time with her in years. He didn’t know how complex her disease could be. How she could have good days and bad days, good minutes and bad minutes. He wouldn’t be able to see how much better she was doing on the island.
Because to him, she would always be broken. Certainly not worth his time.
Jill was starting to think Grayson wasn’t worth hers.
“Anything else you want to add?” she asked. “I have to go.”
“Sell the inn,” he ordered. “You’ve spruced it up. Maybe someone will be dumb enough to think it’s worth the investment. Pay off the debt, split the money, and go home. This is your life, not a vacation.”
He hung up before Jill could say anything. That was good, because she had nothing to say.
Not to him. Not anymore.
She loved Grayson. It was hard not to, considering they’d shared a womb. But the days of him being her best friend, the person she trusted most in the world, were over. His priorities had shifted. Maybe it was time for Jill’s to shift, too.
She’d spent years devoting herself to a dead-end job, maintaining a routine for the sake of her mom, locking them both away inside a crummy apartment with television re-runs and glorified frozen dinners.
But now, they had the opportunity for more. More time together. More adventures. More family.
So long as Jill could do what she did best and make peace with her sisters, she was more confident than ever that what they’d been working towards was worth it.
An ocean of possibilities was sitting right outside her door. She wasn’t going to give up on it that easily.
21
Leslie
Evening Walk Around Oak Bluffs
After her sisters stormed off in the wake of their fight, Leslie couldn’t stomach the quiet.
She was used to the creaks and groans of the old house, to Warren’s throat clearing and sniffling. When her dad opened and closed the drawers of his desk, the one on the right—where he kept his cigars—always squeaked.
But now, there was only silence. Just a quiet, empty house and the echoes of all the horrible things she’d said to her sisters.
So when it all became too much, she slipped on her shoes, pulled on her coat, and headed out the front door without a destination in mind.
It was early April and the days were growing warmer, but the early evenings still bit something fierce. Especially so close to the water. Instead of heading down to the beach per usual, Leslie pulled her coat tightly around her and took a right at the corner, heading further inland.
The Wayfarer Inn sat at the corner of a residential neighborhood. The surrounding houses were similar sizes with wood shingles and short picket fences that closed in tidy little lawns. A lot of the neighbors were older couples. Retirees, mostly, who hosted large family gatherings over the summers but kept quiet throughout most of the rest of the year.
There was no sidewalk, just a thin strip of curbless grass that separated the road from the fences. The roads were empty, so there wasn’t any fear of being mowed down by passing cars, but she’d never been the type to traipse down the center of the road, anyway. Leslie stuck to the edges, kept her head down, did what she was supposed to do.
Or what she t
hought she was supposed to do.
And yet here she was on the wrong side of forty, barely scraping by.
Leslie stopped at the next corner she came to. She was a good mile from the inn now and the nearest streetlight had just flickered on as dusk began to settle firmly into place. If she kept going, the walk back would be brutal on her already aching feet. However, she wasn’t ready to turn around just yet.
Then, as if there to answer her prayers, a very familiar police cruiser pulled up along the curb in front of Leslie and rolled down the passenger window.
“You looking for a ride, ma’am?” Shane asked with a smile.
Without answering, Leslie opened the passenger door and slid inside.
The cab of the car was warm and smelled like him—like woodchips and spice. Leslie sunk gratefully into the seat.
“Where to?” he asked. “You headed home?”
Leslie shook her head. “I don’t have a plan. I could go anywhere.”
Shane’s eyes lit up. “Perfect. I’ve got just the place.”
Almost immediately, Leslie knew where Shane was going, but she didn’t want to ruin his surprise. She also didn’t want to ruin the easy quiet they’d found in the car. Back at the inn, the quiet had nearly driven her mad. But here, it felt safe and comfortable. Different, somehow.
Shane drove them down narrow roads, past the tidy houses glowing on either side of the road as the sun went down and more lights flickered to life. An old sailboat sat out by a mailbox, filled with dirt and greenery hearty enough to survive the winter. The homes spread further and further apart and sat farther back away from the road as they drove, many of them hidden behind sprawling trees.
Leslie watched the island stream past her window in a blur, not bothering to pick out specific details. She didn’t need to. She’d lived here her entire life. She knew these streets and these houses.
Just as she knew that the dirt road Shane turned his patrol car down would lead to an old wooden dock reaching out from a rundown farmhouse.
He’d brought Leslie here plenty of times before when they were young and in love. His grandpa’s name was on the deed back then, but the extended family each took their turn on the property over the course of the summers. A few times, Shane brought Leslie out for a cookout and swimming. Not having much family of her own around, Leslie enjoyed the atmosphere.
But in the off-seasons, when the house sat mostly empty, Leslie enjoyed being there even more. Because then it belonged to Shane and Leslie alone.
She used to lay on the porch swing with a blanket and a thermos of hot chocolate, reading a book, while Shane chopped up and hauled away tree branches that had fallen during storms. They’d pull the drop cloths off of the furniture and cuddle on the couch in front of a roaring fire. And in the last weeks before summer began, before the house was once again invaded with screaming kids slathered in sunscreen and vacationing cousins who drank a little too much beer and spoke a little too loudly, they’d go and lounge out on the dock. The last of the chill would dissipate from the air and fireflies would start to meander about, flickering yellow lights dancing across the water.
It was a magical place Leslie remembered well.
But when Shane’s car crested the final hill in the driveway and his headlights washed over the familiar property, there wasn’t much familiar about it.
The wraparound porch had been ripped out and rebuilt, the lumber still clean and fresh. The old, drafty windows had been replaced with bright panes and tidy trim. And the large tree that had sat on the other side of the gravel driveway, a rotted-out tire swing hanging from the branch, was gone. In its place was a young maple with green leaves just beginning to sprout.
“A lot has changed since I’ve been here last,” Leslie murmured.
“You should have seen it a year ago. It was a wreck.”
Leslie turned to him. “You fixed it up?”
“Isn’t that my job?” he asked with a smile. Then he sighed. “When I left, no one really took care of the house anymore. And once my cousins grew up, my aunts and uncles stopped making the yearly trip up. The house kind of wasted away.”
Leslie clicked her tongue. “What a shame.”
“That’s what I thought,” Shane said, shifting his cruiser into park. “Which is why I bought it.”
“You bought this house? From your grandpa? You own it now?”
“Technically, I had to buy it from my Uncle Mike. It was left to him when my grandpa passed. But he’d been sitting on it for a few years and was eager to get rid of it, so…” Shane shrugged.
When Shane had said he’d moved back to Martha’s Vineyard, Leslie hadn’t even thought about where he lived. But thinking about it now, she couldn’t imagine him living in an apartment or renting a little house someplace. He was too big for that. He needed room to run, tasks to complete. The old farmhouse was perfect for him.
When they got out of the cruiser, Shane didn’t even bother asking where Leslie wanted to go first. He knew her well enough. Instead, they wordlessly walked straight to the dock.
A few boards had been replaced since Leslie had seen it last, but surprisingly, most of the wood looked like it hadn’t been touched in the last twenty-four years. It was a silvery gray color, spots of moss growing between the planks from the dampness.
At the end of the dock, Leslie sat down. Her feet dangled in the air. In the summers, the water would reach high enough to kiss her toes.
Shane settled in next to her. “So are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“What do you mean?” Leslie kept her eyes on the water.
“I mean, you’re quiet and serious and you let me pick you up on a street corner a mile and a half from home.”
Leslie elbowed him. “You make that sound bad.”
“It’s not bad. Well, I take it back—it’s not great, public-safety-wise. But it’s just unusual for you,” he said. “Typically, you have a plan. The fact that you let me pick you up means you were wandering. I’m just wondering what made you wander.”
“Say that five times fast,” Leslie teased.
Shane smiled at her and then nudged her knee with his. “Well?”
“It’s nothing,” she sighed. “Just a dumb fight with Michelle and Leslie. Things are a little… tense around the inn.”
“That’s understandable. With the grand reopening tomorrow and everything.”
She nodded. “Yeah, but it’s more than that, too. This is a desperate plan we threw together in a few weeks and now, everything is resting on it. Despite how you seem to view me, I don’t have a plan, Shane. At all. I barely know what I’m doing.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“See? That’s what I’m talking about. You see the best in me and I’m not sure why.”
“Because you’ve never given me a reason not to.”
When Leslie looked over, Shane’s green eyes were peering at her, as clear and certain as the Atlantic at their feet. He genuinely believed what he was saying.
“You’ve been through a lot,” he continued. “We’ve been through a lot. But you handled it all so much better than I did.”
Leslie blinked at him. “Excuse me?”
“I left,” he said. “We had a plan that you and the baby would come with me. We’d be a military family. We’d make it work. But when you got in the accident and lost the baby, I didn’t know what to do.”
The face of the contractor rose up in Leslie’s mind. Not the mugshot she’d seen in the paper, but the new image she had of him from the Vineyard Remodeling office. Older, free, smiling. Did he realize how much hurt he’d caused? How much damage he’d done? If he did, Leslie didn’t know if he could be smiling like he had been.
“Neither did I,” Leslie said. “Why do you think I stayed here? Why do you think I moved back in with my dad and hid? I was lost.”
Shane shook his head. “You made the best of a bad situation.”
“We broke up,” Leslie said softly.
; That didn’t feel like “making the best of a bad situation” to her. In one blinding, crushing moment, she’d lost Shane, their baby, and their future together. Everything she’d known and depended on, except her dad and the inn, had disappeared.
So she’d retreated to what was familiar. Stable. Safe.
Leslie had buried her head in the sand. Just like Michelle had accused her of doing.
Shane blew out a harsh breath. “It’s my fault. I should have stayed here with you.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.” Leslie shook her head. “I was burying myself. When you left, I was so jealous. I wanted to be as resilient as you were. I wanted to get off of the island, see the world. Be with you.” Her face flushed, but she kept talking. She was afraid if she stopped, she’d never start again. “But I was too afraid. I didn’t want to lose anything or anyone else, so I hedged my risks. I cut everyone else off and spent my life working at my dad’s inn.”
“Resilient?” Shane scoffed. “Do you know I hardly even remember the time after the accident? There are a few months there that are just, poof, gone. Like they never happened. My mind was so twisted, I didn’t even know which way was up. That’s why I left. Because it was the plan I had before, and it was all I could think to do. I enlisted and left everything behind.”
“And now you’re a police officer. And you made enough money to buy and renovate this house.” Leslie shrugged. “It seems like you’re doing okay for yourself.”
Shane turned and gave her a small smile. “You could call it my way of making the best out of a bad situation.”
“No.” Leslie refused to believe that. She’d spent the last two decades regretting not going with Shane, hating herself for being such a coward. To find out he had regrets of his own was more than she could take. “You went out and you lived.”
“I could have done my living here.”
“This is a nice view,” Leslie said, gesturing out to the water. “But you can’t see the world from Martha’s Vineyard.”
“I think that whole idea is overrated. Seeing the world. What does any of it mean without someone to see it with? Without someone to share it with?” He sat up and his arm brushed across Leslie’s. Warmth moved through her, slow and steady and most of all, familiar.