No Home Like Nantucket

by Grace Palmer

  She wanted so badly to reach out to him and kiss the sadness off his face. He was a good man; he didn’t deserve to be so sad. But she’d made a promise to herself to try this separation out, and she knew deep down that it was necessary. She needed time to reevaluate everything. This was a careful decision, and no matter where they landed on things at the end of it, she needed to stick to her guns.

  24

  Mae

  Mae woke up on Saturday morning with a dry mouth and a little bit of a headache. She knew what was to blame—one too many glasses of Pinot Noir the night before. But it had been necessary. Medicine, in its own way. The wine and the friends who’d brought it over, Lola and Debra, had gone a long way towards making her feel a whole lot better than she had before they’d arrived.

  It had been a bad night. Quite possibly the toughest night she’d had since losing Henry. After sharing breakfast with Dominic at the inn, she’d busied herself with a long-overdue deep clean of a section of the basement she’d had her eye on since moving in. That had taken up most of the afternoon. By the time she was finished, guests were starting to return home from their daytime excursions. They all needed her for one thing or another—extra towels, restaurant recommendations for dinner, and so on and so forth. She was more than happy to accommodate. After all, that was her job now. But, little by little, she’d felt some rain clouds moving in over her heart. She wasn’t quite sure where they came from. All she knew was that, once they were there, she was in for a sad night indeed.

  It seemed like Henry was waiting for her around every corner. Each time she bustled into an empty room, she half expected to find him in there, fixing something or other.

  She’d stepped outside for a breath of fresh air just as Debra happened to be passing by on an evening stroll. Debra had noticed Mae’s sadness right away. That was what good friends were for, she thought. They could tell at the drop of a hat when she was down. And Debra was certainly a good friend. They’d known each other for almost three decades now and had shared plenty of laughs and tears along the way. Mae had been there for Debra when her brother was in a tragic car accident down in Boston. He’d made it, fortunately, but it was touch-and-go for a long time, and Debra had needed the support. Now, it seemed, it was Debra’s turn to repay the favor.

  “Oh, darling, come here,” she’d said, pulling Mae into a hug.

  Mae had dabbed at the tears threatening to spill from the corners of her eyes. “I’ve been keeping myself so busy,” she murmured, “but sometimes that’s not enough.”

  “You’re as busy as they come, Mae Benson,” Debra had said confidently. “But sometimes, you need to do the exact opposite. I know just the trick. I’ll be back in half an hour. Clear your calendar!”

  Mae had smiled through her tears as Debra set off towards home with a purpose. Sure enough, she’d come back exactly thirty minutes later, with Lola in tow and two bottles of Pinot Noir between them. The ladies had sat out on the front porch of the inn. After one glass of wine, Mae felt her sadness start to lose its edge. After two, she could smile again and really mean it. She wasn’t going to have a third, but Debra was an insistent pourer, and so Mae had reluctantly obliged and eventually found herself hooting and hollering with her friends as Lola told a story about chasing after her house cat while still on crutches after her ankle injury. Tears were streaming down her face, but these were happy tears now. She hadn’t realized before how much she needed her friends. Debra was right: being busy was all well and good, but sometimes, the cure for sadness was a bottle of wine shared between friends.

  Long after the sun had set, Lola said her goodbyes and walked back home. Debra did the same a few minutes after that. That left Mae by herself, which was fine. It felt good to sit and look out at the night sky. It was a clear, pretty night, and she could hear the waves even from her seat on the porch. She was halfway to dozing off when she heard someone opening the door behind her.

  She sat bolt upright and twisted around in her seat. Dominic was standing there with a guilty smile on his face. “I’m sorry for interrupting you,” he said. “It seems I have a knack for catching you when you’re not expecting it.”

  “That you do,” Mae said, grinning back.

  “I just got back from a long walk on the beach and thought I heard someone out here. Would it be rude if I joined you?”

  “Oh, of course not!” Mae said. “Please, have a seat. There’s even a little wine here, if you’re keen on that.”

  Dominic settled himself into the rocking chair across from Mae with a pleasant sigh. “How could I say no to the lady of the house?” He grabbed one of the empty glasses that Mae had brought out earlier and handed it to her. She filled it for him and passed it back. They sat in a comfortable silence together as Dominic sampled the wine and let out a long, pleased Mmm. “You have a beautiful home here,” he said, gesturing with his hand to encompass the whole island. “Quite different from the home I know.”

  “I can only imagine,” Mae sighed. “What is Ireland like?”

  “Damp,” Dominic answered at once.

  She giggled. “Oh come on. There’s gotta be more to it than that.”

  “Yes, of course,” Dominic said with a roguish grin. “It’s as green as everyone says it is. Quite beautiful when it’s not frigid. Beautiful hills with lush grass and breezes flowing through them.”

  “I can see why you’re a novelist!” she exclaimed. “You’ve got such a way with words.”

  “I might just be showing off for you.”

  He winked, and she giggled again. Was she drunk? No, of course not. Tipsy at the most. Mae Benson would never get drunk.

  She looked down at the wineglass she was fiddling with in her lap. “I would love to visit someday,” she said softly.

  “Have you ever been to Europe?”

  “No, never. Henry didn’t want—” She fell silent at once. She hadn’t said his name out loud in quite some time now. It felt strange on her lips. Like a favorite word in a language she once knew well but had long since forgotten.

  Dominic tilted his head. “Who is Henry?”

  Mae stammered, “Henry is … or rather, was … um …” Her tongue didn’t seem to want to cooperate with her brain.

  Dominic turned white. “I’m dreadfully sorry. I’ve said something wrong. Please forgive me; I’ll go now.” He made to stand and leave, but Mae put a hand on his forearm and urged him back to his seat.

  “No, please don’t. I enjoy your company, and you haven’t said anything wrong,” she insisted. Dominic settled back down, but warily, like he was ready to spring away at any moment if she showed any signs that he should do so. “Henry was my husband,” she continued with a little more resolve now. “He passed away four months ago in a boating accident.”

  Dominic bowed his head solemnly. “I am very sorry to hear of your loss,” he said in that rolling brogue that prickled her skin like a cool breeze. “The death of a loved one is a difficult thing to bear.”

  “Yes, it is,” Mae said. “But don’t you go getting all dark on me. I’ve had a sad night, yes, but my friends came over and put a smile on my face, and I’d like to keep that going, if you’d be so kind as to indulge me.”

  Dominic looked up at her and smiled cautiously. “I can arrange that.”

  “Tell me about this book you’re dreaming up,” she said when she saw that he’d finally relaxed into his chair.

  Dominic spent the rest of the evening telling her about the world he was envisioning and the characters he foresaw walking through it. They wandered from there to other topics, like favorite books they’d read, movies they’d seen, trips they’d taken.

  Only when she saw him futilely try to hide a yawn did she call it a night and usher him up to bed. She did the same herself, still buzzing pleasantly from the wine. Dominic was a good man, she decided as she lay under the covers falling asleep. She liked that he was solemn and very respectful of her, but not overly grim. She found his manner somehow reassuring. And she like
d his smile a lot.

  The warm glow that the alcohol had given her was still lingering when she woke up in the morning, despite the mild hangover. She got ready and went downstairs to brew some coffee and pop a couple aspirin. But before she could take the pills, she heard a knocking on the front door of the inn. Again? At such an early hour?

  The first unexpected knocking of late had been terrible.

  The second had been unexpectedly nice.

  What would this third one bring?

  When she opened the door, she got her answer. It was Brent on her doorstep again. This time, he was with a police officer.

  25

  Eliza

  Eliza woke up late on Saturday morning. She had never been much for sleeping in, but it felt good to take advantage of the opportunity. Nowhere to be and nothing to do? Might as well snooze the morning away. Besides, she’d been up later than usual last night. Oliver had kept her dancing until well past midnight. He was a good dancer, graceful and dominant. Eliza liked that. She wasn’t much of a dancer in her own right, but she was an athlete through and through, so she just relaxed and followed his lead. His smell had been driving her wild the whole time she was pressed up close against it. It was infuriating that she couldn’t place it. Not quite cologne and not quite musk. Something in between, but intoxicating nonetheless. She shook her head. Pregnancy hormones were really doing a number on her thoughts these days.

  She looked down at her belly. At four months in, she was really starting to show now. Not huge, but very clearly pregnant. She laid a hand on her abdomen. For some bizarre reason, she was afraid to talk to her child. It was like speaking words out loud would make it real. Despite all the doctors’ appointments and things of that nature that had more than sufficiently confirmed that she was in fact pregnant, the baby still didn’t feel wholly real yet. She’d read in one of the waiting room brochures that, at twenty weeks, babies were about the length of bananas. She must definitely be a little sleep-addled, because before she knew what was happening, she was talking to her baby. “My little banana,” she began, then stopped to giggle. What on earth … Who was she? Giggling? Making corny little mom-brain jokes like that? Maybe she wasn’t as prepared for this whole ordeal as she spent most of her daylight hours convincing herself that she was.

  My little banana. Jeez. She cut herself off and made herself get up out of bed at once. She padded down the hall to the bathroom and took a quick shower. Not that quick, actually. With her morning looming wide and unencumbered by things to do, she might as well take her time. Like sleeping in, she had never made much time for long showers. She could probably blame years of frigid locker room showers for that, or maybe it was just her businesslike nature. A little bit of both, most likely.

  When she was done, she blow-dried her hair and braided it. She’d left off from her normal monthly highlights and let her hair fade to its natural platinum blonde. She didn’t like being thought of as a ditz, so she’d taken to darkening it a bit. But between the Benson family blonde genes and the beaming Nantucket sun, it was longer and lighter than usual. She didn’t mind the look. It felt summery.

  She started to leave the bathroom, then turned back. Lately, she hadn’t been bothering with makeup, either. Who did she have to impress? Nobody on Nantucket, that was for sure. But Oliver wasn’t a nobody, was he? She halted that train of thought before it could leave the station. Even at close to eleven a.m., it was still too early in the morning to be daydreaming about a nice guy who’d listened to her babble about her tragic life all night long. Save that for later in the day. Or never. Never might be better.

  She compromised with a quick blot of foundation and a swipe of mascara, then ran downstairs before she could second-guess herself. Downstairs, she put a pot on to boil to make tea. After some initial withdrawal symptoms from cutting off her daily coffee infusion, she was starting to level out. There was something meditative about starting her morning—or, at this rate, her afternoon—with a cup of hot tea anyway. She set out a tea bag and her favorite mug; it said “You Wish You Could Throw Like a Girl,” with a silhouette of a softball pitcher in motion on the side, then wandered into the hallway while the water heated up.

  Holly always used to complain that the hallway was the Eliza Hall of Fame. That wasn’t truly fair—only the first part was dedicated to Eliza. There she was with a high school state champ trophy, Dad smiling at her side. Walking across the stage at her Penn graduation ceremony. With Brent and Dad, holding up a big sailfish they’d spent a whole morning wrestling in.

  Moving farther down the hallway, she got to the Holly section. It was all Holly in dresses—First Communion dress, prom dress, wedding dress. Eliza chuckled and rolled her eyes. The middle Benson daughter was a girly-girl if ever there was one.

  Past Holly Street was Sara Avenue. There was a distinct tone change between the two. From frilly dresses to chef’s regalia. Sara in the full outfit, white hat and everything, holding an eggbeater in one tattooed hand and a knife in the other. Eliza remembered that picture being taken. The whole family had gone to visit Sara at the Culinary Institute of America down in Poughkeepsie. Mae had insisted that Sara pose for a picture holding some kitchen implements. Sara had argued that no chef in their right mind would ever be holding an eggbeater and a knife at the same time. They’d ended up bickering about it and spoiled the mood for everybody else for the rest of the visit. Her mother and sister were just too alike, in Eliza’s opinion. Not on the surface—Mae was a regular Suzy Homemaker, while Sara had always been dead-set on testing the limits of the rules and doing things her own way. But, once you got past those things, they were both emotional—bleeding hearts, really—though neither one liked to show it too much.

  At the very far end of the hallway was Brent Island. It was almost exclusively fishing pictures out this way, almost all of them featuring Dad with his arm slung around Brent proudly as they brandished some monstrous fish for the camera. There were the other normal boyish pics, too—Brent in his Pee Wee tackle football uniform; Brent getting his yellow belt in karate at age eight—but Eliza found her gaze wandering back to the pictures of Dad and Brent out on the boat together. They both looked so happy. In their element.

  Eliza’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Sara stirring upstairs. It was a little odd being back in their childhood home, but with Mae staying at the inn while she was running it, it made sense to have people at 114 Howard Street to keep things clean and orderly. “You finally getting up, Sleeping Beauty?” Eliza called up the stairs to her sister.

  “Look who’s talking, Rip Van Winkle!” Sara hollered back. “You just got up a few minutes ago!”

  Eliza laughed and went back to the kitchen. Her teapot had just started steaming, so she poured it in her mug to steep the tea as her sister came bumbling down the stairs.

  “Well, you look lovely,” Eliza commented.

  “Bite me,” Sara shot back. She was still in pajamas and her bed head was a mess, but she couldn’t care less. Classic Sara. “Where’s the coffee?”

  “Gotta make it yourself. I’m on tea these days, remember?”

  Sara rolled her eyes. “Little sucker isn’t even born yet and he’s already making demands of you. You’re in for it.”

  “Or she,” corrected Eliza. “We don’t know yet.” Eliza had been determined to keep the sex of the baby under wraps until the birth. She didn’t know and she didn’t want to know. It was better that way. One more thing to let her pretend that her little banana was still not all the way real yet.

  Sara was getting the coffee ground up and set to brewing. When she’d turned the machine on, she spun back around and leaned against the counter to scowl at Eliza. “Something’s different about you,” she said with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

  “Different?”

  “Yeah. Different. Different aura.”

  “I cannot possibly roll my eyes any harder.”

  Eliza and Sara were on opposite ends of the “aura question.” Sara was a firm yes
on all things woo-woo and spiritual like that. Eliza was constitutionally unsuited to believe in anything that couldn’t be measured.

  “Well, roll away, because I’m not wrong. Who’d you talk to last night?”

  Eliza was stunned to find herself blushing. “No one.” She turned away and went to take a seat at the kitchen island.

  Sara lit up and stalked after her with a beaming smile. “Liar! I knew it! Who was he?”

  “I said no one,” Eliza grumbled, but she knew she’d been called out already.

  “If you don’t tell me, I’m gonna do something drastic.”

  “You’re always on the verge of doing something drastic.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s who I am. Are you gonna tell me or not?”

  Eliza sighed and admitted defeat. “His name is Oliver. He’s a pianist at the bar.”

  Sara cooed and leaned on her elbows on the opposite side of the island. “Ooh, tell me more. Tall, dark, and handsome?”

  “Something like that. We danced.”

  “Tall, dark, and handsome, and he can dance?! Lizzy, where do you find guys like this? You’re out here waltzing around with an artistic Prince Charming, and I’m stuck plumbing the scarily shallow depths of my past relationships for love? Unfair.”

  That perked her ears up. Now, it was Eliza’s turn to do the interrogating. “Past relationships? Who are you talking about?”

  “I ran into Russell last night outside the bar,” Sara admitted. “That’s who I got pizza with.”

  Eliza’s jaw fell open. “Russell Bridges?! From high school? You’re joking.”

  Sara shook her head and chuckled. “No, not joking. He’s had a rough go of it. His wife was cheating on him. They just got divorced.”