Elsa rushed down the hall then and headed for Janine’s office. After all, wasn’t the woman her stepsister, someone she was meant to eventually rely on? But when she arrived at Janine’s door, she heard a patient within; her voice was muffled as she described whatever current trauma she found herself in. “I feel so broken,” the patient whimpered. “I just don’t know what to do.”
The sides of the letter crumpled in Elsa’s hand. Her knees clacked together as she continued down the hallway. She wasn’t sure where she was headed; she no longer felt minutes passing, nor her feet on the ground. She eventually burst out onto one of the porches that overlooked Katama Bay. This was where she fell to her knees as her head spun round and round in circles.
She was totally alone in this world. Everything had fallen upon her shoulders and there was nothing she could do.
Suddenly, there was a hand on her back. There was a calming, soothing voice. There were eyes before her as a beautiful woman crouched down and whispered, “Elsa? Hey? Hon? Are you okay?”
Elsa dropped her teeth over her lower lip as she fell into Carmella’s eyes. It was remarkable, really, how much Carmella looked like their mother, Tina, who had passed away when Elsa had been sixteen-years-old. Tina had been about Carmella’s age at the time. Their eyes flickered with similar versions of loss and sorrow.
“Can you stand?” Carmella asked as she drew a strand of hair behind Elsa’s ear.
Elsa swallowed the lump in her throat. “I don’t know.”
“Okay. We can just stay here for a minute, then. Nobody else is here. It’s just us.”
It had been so long since Carmella had spoken so kindly to Elsa. Still, Elsa felt herself building a wall. She and Carmella had been through too much; it was akin to the story of the scorpion and the frog. How often had Carmella reared her ugly head and stung her?
Elsa’s eyes hardened. In return, Carmellas did as well. Carmella shifted back and removed her hand from Elsa’s shoulder.
“Have you eaten something today?” Carmella asked finally.
Elsa shrugged as she folded up the letter from the Canterbury lawyers. “I just wanted to get some fresh air.”
Carmella’s smirk was only slightly unkind. “Come on. Come to my office.”
Elsa resisted at first. Slowly, Carmella lifted her back to her feet and she draped her arm along Elsa’s waist to ensure she remained standing. Elsa longed to compliment Carmella on her perfume. It was simmering sandalwood and jasmine. She imagined Carmella’s acupuncture patients adored it for its personality and the calm it brought.
But she wasn’t necessarily in the habit of complimenting Carmella. Neither of them had bothered much in the way of such niceties in, oh, thirty-years.
“I’m really okay,” Elsa forced herself to say, even as her voice quivered.
“I’ve known you my whole life, Elsa. You don’t look okay. Not even in the slightest.”
Elsa bristled again. They were at the end of a long hallway, headed straight for Carmella’s office. But she yanked herself back hard so that Carmella jumped away from her and glared.
“Just let me help you,” Carmella said.
Elsa swept the letter into her back pocket and lifted her chin. “It’s really nothing.”
“What is that paper? You’re hiding it.”
“I’m not hiding anything,” Elsa returned.
“Is there something going on with the Lodge?” Carmella demanded. “Are we in some kind of trouble? Was Dad keeping something from us?”
Elsa’s eyes widened with anger. “Are you kidding me? Dad would never do anything wrong. He would never leave us in a lurch.”
Carmella flipped her hair behind her shoulder. “Whatever.”
“What do you mean, whatever?”
“It’s just that, even if Dad had done something wrong, you would probably do everything in your power to hide it from me.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Elsa blurted.
“It’s not. You were always his golden child. In your eyes, he could do no wrong. And even if he did do wrong, you always turned yourself away.”
“This isn’t about Dad!”
Carmella scoffed again. She crossed her arms over her chest as she continued to assess Elsa. “There’s something really wrong about you. I’ve noticed it the past few weeks. Not that you’d let me get close enough to you to ask you about it until now. Apparently, I’m the only one available to pick you up off the ground.”
“This is why I can’t turn to you for anything,” Elsa returned. “You just make me feel guilty for showing any weakness.”
“No. I just hate that you won’t ever admit what’s wrong. You brush everything aside. Whatever that letter is — it’s huge. And because of your pride, you won’t let me know what it’s about, even if I could help.”
“Well, you can’t help. So, can we please just drop it already?”
“How do you know? Why are you always thinking that I can’t help?”
Elsa remained silent. Carmella scoffed again.
“This is unbelievable,” Carmella muttered. “You know what? Whatever, Elsa. Next time I find you in a heap on the floor, I’ll just walk right past.”
Carmella turned on her heel after that and made her way back toward her office; her heels clacked across the floor ominously. When her door slammed shut behind her, Elsa again collapsed and leaned heavily against the wall. She willed herself to keep her tears inside. She had to be strong enough for herself and, now, for Aiden’s memory. She had to find a way to fight back.
Chapter Six
THE ONLY ANSWER ELSA had was to drive back to the very house she’d avoided over the previous year. She blew off everything that afternoon, including all meetings, all emails and sped all the way there. Tears stained her blouse; sweat pooled across the back of her neck. The sun felt entirely too close and the world felt like it had shifted off its axis, all because of this horrible man, Carlson Montague who fought to stain Aiden’s reputation, and sue their estate. She wasn’t going to let that happen. It was up to her to fight back and protect her family name—her husband’s name.
Elsa had hired someone to maintain and fix up the property in her absence. A gardener came around once per week to tend to the bushes and the flowers; a maid frequently came to dust and do minor chores. As far as she knew, these were the only people who had gone in and out of the house since she’d closed it up the year prior. Admittedly, she had gone there once, with her father in tow, to retrieve some of her more nostalgic Christmas decorations, as she hadn’t been able to understand a Christmas without them. Neal had been a stronghold for her; he had stood by her side as she’d searched through the big old boxes and crates for the relevant items. When she had burst into tears at the sight of Aiden’s old leather jacket, he had held her until she’d found a way to go on. “I don’t know how I could have done this without you, Daddy,” she’d told him, only a few weeks before he, too, had joined Aiden in heaven.
Elsa’s key fob for the garage door remained on her keychain. She hit the button and just as it always had before, the garage door yanked up from the ground to reveal the old garage with its second refrigerator, its unused bicycles, and all of Aiden’s tools. The place was already a minefield of memories, and she still hadn’t found a way inside, where the real painful memories began.
The kitchen smelled of lemon cleaning supplies and nothing else. This was strange for a kitchen that had once flourished with Elsa’s endless array of cooking concoctions. It had been pleasurable for her to make up new recipes for her husband and children. Even when her children had grown, she’d demanded that they meet at the dining room table once a week to swap stories from their separate lives. “I want us to stay a close-knit family,” she’d told Aiden. “I know it’s possible. We just have to be strict about it.” When Alexie had gone off to NYU, she’d come at least once a month — something that had pleased her, as she’d felt it proof of the strength of the backbone of their family.
Now, she hadn’t
seen Alexie all summer. Probably, she found it too difficult to return. The island hummed with endless memories. She couldn’t blame her. The passing of their father was so hard on all the kids.
Elsa wandered down the hallway. All the bedroom doors had been closed, and she didn’t dare open them. Each room would have been an assault on her senses. Already, she could practically hear the variety of voices that had once purred through the halls. Mallory as a teenager, hollering to Alexie to stay out of her room. Cole, blasting Nirvana from his bedroom. Their cat, who had also passed on, slinking through their legs and meowing. It had all happened. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend it was all still there.
Aiden had frequently worked from home. Elsa had never liked spending time in his office. It was his place of solitude, his place of privacy and important phone calls with clients. Aiden had even been the one to decorate it. He had hung an old painting of a whaling boat on the far wall, and he’d lined the opposite wall with books his father had passed on to him when he had died. She placed her finger along the spines of these books and remembered how she’d marveled at the iconic collection:
Shakespeare
Moby Dick
The Count of Monty Cristo
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Aiden had gotten around to quite a few of them. He always took these thick books to the beach, while Elsa had immersed herself in her style and gossip magazines. “That looks like so much fun,” she’d often teased him sarcastically. “You’re so good at just kicking back and keeping things light.”
Elsa sat in the chair he’d so often sat in and blinked down at the glow of the antique wood of his desk. Probably, there was paperwork regarding this Carlson Montague fellow somewhere. Aiden had kept everything; he’d been religiously organized. Beneath the desk, there were a number of files filled with folders. She leafed through them and discovered a number of accounting papers from the previous twenty years. None of it seemed in any way relevant to any clients. Behind that box, there was another, but the paperwork was foreign to her, just a collection of numbers and pay rates and signatures. Her heart hammered with resentment toward her own failings. If only she understood more of what her husband had done. Sometimes, when he’d tried to explain something to her, she’d batted her eyelashes playfully and said, “I’m glad you understand these things because I certainly don’t.” Obviously, she would have been able to understand it if she’d applied herself; she wasn’t dense. It was just that, with Aiden, she’d always felt like a teenager in love. She hadn’t wanted to dwell on their everyday, humdrum careers. They had both agreed long ago to leave their work at work once finished for the day. When it was time for family time, she’d wanted magic.
Aiden had liked this about her. He’d said that it was so easy to forget about work around her. Their time together had always been special.
Finally, Elsa did find a collection of paperwork that seemed relevant for his work with clients. Still, she couldn’t focus enough to hunt for Carlson Montague’s name. She even recognized a few of the signatures from people Aiden had known on the island, clients he had worked with for years. She bit down on her lower lip as her heart hammered. Nothing about this seemed logical. Mishandling of funds? What kind of proof did these people think they had?
Elsa knew she needed to speak to someone. She’d recently learned that Susan Sheridan, Wes Sheridan’s eldest daughter, had opened a law office in Oak Bluffs. She rushed through her phone, on the hunt for the phone number. After three rings, a young woman answered.
“Good afternoon, this is the law office of Susan Sheridan. Amanda speaking. How can I help you?”
Elsa swallowed the lump in her throat. She had very little idea of what to say next. “Hello. My name is Elsa. Elsa Remington Steel.” Why had she said her entire name? Was she losing her mind? “I was curious if I could speak with someone about a particularly strange situation I’m in.”
Elsa did her best to describe small details of the letter, along with what she knew about her husband’s work. “The complicated thing is, my husband died last year, and I’m terrified that these people don’t only want his money — my money but that they also want to defame him.”
“Of course, I understand, completely.” Amanda paused on the other line for a long moment. “A difficult problem we have, unfortunately, is that my mother, Susan, has quite a packed schedule over the next few weeks. We’ve recently hired a new lawyer who’s moved back to the island after years of working in Boston.”
Elsa didn’t care who she spoke to. She just needed a lifeline.
“His name is Bruce Holland,” Amanda continued. “And he has a slot available as early as this next Tuesday. Are you available at four-thirty?”
Elsa had zero comprehension of what day or time it even was at that moment. “Yes. That works,” Elsa affirmed. “Thank you.”
Amanda then asked for a number of details, including Elsa’s phone number and email address. Elsa delivered everything with a solid voice; she was shocked that it didn’t waver. When Amanda said, “Then we’ll see you next week, Mrs. Steel,” Elsa longed to ask the girl to remain on the phone a little bit longer. She didn’t want to be alone. It was awful to be alone.
Elsa found herself in the darkening shadows of Aiden’s office after that. She drew open several other desk drawers unconsciously, which was how she ultimately discovered the aged scotch, which, apparently, Aiden had saved for a rainy day. Elsa herself had never been particularly fond of scotch. When Aiden had poured himself something like that, she had always gone for white wine.
But always, when she’d kissed him, he had tasted of scotch.
And she wanted to taste that right now.
Elsa grabbed one of his tumbler glasses and poured herself a finger of scotch. The aroma became a cloud over everything else. She lifted the glass toward the ceiling and muttered, “I won’t let them do this to you, Aiden. I promise you that.” She then took a sip and scrunched her nose. Memories flooded over her. Suddenly, all she wanted to do was drink and forget.
She’d never been that kind of drinker before. The thought of it frightened her, even as she poured herself another glass.
What the heck would happen next?
Would this Carlson Montague really drag her and her family through the mud without so much as even batting a lash? She didn’t know if she would survive it?
How could she prove that this was some kind of mistake if she couldn’t make heads or tails of the paperwork she had just discovered in her husband’s office?
One scotch turned to three. The grandfather clock in the study had long since stopped its ticking; it was stuck at two-thirty-three in the morning. The only way Elsa knew that time passed was because of the way the soft yellow light from the windows shifted to an orange hue. Her mind buzzed strangely and she could hear the whooshing of blood in her ears. A long time ago, Cole had discovered some of his father’s whiskey in the upper cabinet in the kitchen; he and his teenage friends had drank maybe three or four glasses and passed out in front of the television. Their hangovers had been so colossal that Aiden and Elsa had agreed not to punish him too terribly. Cole had never been a big drinker after that. Proof, maybe, that you had to make your own mistakes in order to learn from them.
But Elsa wasn’t fully sure of which mistakes had led her to this dark moment. She tried to play out all the events in her mind — from the moment she’d met Aiden as a teenager, to the moment Cole had been born (just about five months before their wedding), to the moment she had walked down the aisle to say her vows. She strained to remember every bad day, every marriage tiff, every time they’d said things they hadn’t meant. Still, only blurred, beautiful memories made their way through.
How grateful she was for all of it.
But now, it seemed like she’d lived out the best days of her life and she was left with whatever the rest of this was— this mess that could potentially destroy her, her family and their good name.
Chapter Seven
/> THE LIGHT SNAPPED ON overhead. Elsa’s eyes popped open, then immediately closed, as the impact of the light created wave after wave of pain and fear through her forehead and then back through the base of her skull. There was a sound— a voice, but Elsa’s head banged so heavily with a headache that she found it difficult to articulate what exactly she heard.
Where was she? The question demanded an answer, even as she realized she hadn’t asked herself anything like this in her life. She had been the eternal responsible one, the one who’d demanded that others drink water before bed — the one who always had her alarm clock set for the proper time, despite usually rising ahead of time and jumping in the shower without pause.
She was on a mattress. This much was clear so far — although the scratchy nature of the fabric beneath her arms and naked legs told her that the mattress had nothing over it, not even a sheet. She’d never slept on a bare mattress before, either. This was something she had always cornered Cole about in his younger days while attending college when she would visit him, before he’d come back to the island. “I just pass out sometimes,” he’d told her somberly, his hand over the base of his neck. “I’ll try to remember to be better.” This had broken her heart still more, that he’d felt so embarrassed in front of his perfectionist mother.
“Look at me now, Cole,” she grumbled now.
“Elsa? Can you hear me?”
Finally, the voice in the room yanked her from her reverie. Elsa turned her head the slightest bit in the direction of the voice as she whispered, “Can you turn the light off, so I can open my eyes?”
In a moment, the light snapped off again and cast everything in a somber grey light. Elsa slowly lifted her eyelids and blinked several times.
“Elsa? You’re scaring me.”
There was pressure off to the right of Elsa’s body as the person sat. After another blink, Elsa recognized Nancy beside her. Her brow furrowed with worry, and her eyes were glossy, as though she had recently been crying. She placed a hand over Elsa’s, there on the mattress, as understanding fell over her.
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