by Jean Stone
And she would call Brady back, thank him for his advice, and tell him that if he was serious about coming to the island, she would help him find work. Then she would ask him for one favor before he left New York: to please make sure the billboard in Times Square had been taken down.
She wished her father well and hung up the phone.
Then Katie was distracted by movement outside the window. A tall, unfamiliar guy who wore a white shirt and a tan was walking up the back walk. He carried a foil package and a nosegay of beach roses.
“Evan’s gone to rehab,” Rita explained to Doc when she finally found the courage to go to the hospital. It was nearly dusk: the melon-colored Vineyard sunset crept into the tiny private room. Good news had awaited: Doc’s heart attack had been mild, more scary than damaging.
Still, he looked smaller than normal in the narrow hospital bed—smaller and somehow more fragile. Rita wondered if she would have noticed, had it not been for what she’d learned. But despite his reduced stature, his eyes still held their sparkle. She did not realize until that moment that his eyes resembled Kyle’s.
She wished Hazel had told him. She wished that Hazel had told her. Still, Rita reminded herself that she hadn’t told Charlie that Kyle was his until it was almost too late. The apple, once again, had not fallen far from the stubborn tree.
A supper tray arrived. Doc lifted the dome, revealing pot roast and lima beans. He peeled back the corner of a chocolate-milk container.
Kyle had loved chocolate milk. Was that a coincidence?
“Hannah’s surgery is soon,” Rita continued. “It’s so sad that Evan won’t be there.” It was small talk, of course, but her other thoughts kept bumping, one against another, and could not make it to the surface.
“I guess I’ll go to Hannah’s after I leave here,” she said.
Doc nodded. “Good idea.”
The only other thing she could think of to talk about was whether or not Faye was really going to die. But Rita knew that Doc would never tell her, any more than he would tell her who was dangling the money for the Wellness Center.
She walked to the window and looked out at the streaks of tangerine now etched across the sky. She was afraid to ask him—what if it hurt his heart?
But if he died …
… like Kyle had died …
She closed her eyes as if the darkness might cushion the shock for him, for her. And then she squared her small but sturdy shoulders.
“Doc,” she told him quietly, her back still turned from him, “my mother told me something about me and about you.”
She heard him set down his fork. She heard him give a small, familiar chuckle. Then he said, “Well for godssake, it’s taken Hazel long enough.”
THIRTY
He knew she was his daughter; he’d known from day one.
His daughter!
Her father!
Rita sat down on a small chair beside Doc’s bed. She folded her hands and tried to decide if she was happy or if she was pissed off. “Why didn’t my mother tell us?”
“She didn’t have to tell me. You have my mother’s big, red hair. There’s no doubt about it.”
Rita touched the Brillo pad atop her head. She felt an odd feeling—longing?—to know about the woman who now must be dead, the woman whose big, red hair Rita seemed to have, the big, red hair that Rita suddenly no longer hated so much.
Doc smiled, then lifted his bifocals. He slowly rubbed his eyes. “Don’t blame Hazel,” he said.
“You were married,” she said, and he nodded.
“I told my wife I was in love with someone else, but she wouldn’t divorce me. Her family didn’t do that sort of thing.” He put his glasses back in place. He peered above the rim. “Divorce wasn’t so easy fifty years ago. But my wife couldn’t stop me from coming to the Vineyard.”
To be with my mother, Rita wanted to add, but for once kept her big mouth shut.
His gaze moved to the pot roast that sat idle on his tray table. “They came down every summer to torment me, I guess. And, I suppose, to keep me from living with your mother. Despite what it must look like, I’m a moral man, Rita. My reputation was important to me. It was important to my work. I couldn’t commit myself to Hazel. So I committed myself to this hospital. I’ll do that until I take my last breath.”
Rita lowered her eyes to her hands, to her fingers that were knotted together like a clump of beach plum vines. “What happened to your wife?”
“She died. But by then Hazel was married and living in Coral Gables.”
“And your son?” It occurred to her then that Doc’s son was her half brother. She wondered if that should matter.
Doc was quiet for another moment: Rita wasn’t sure if he’d heard her. Then he lifted his head and scanned the room, as if looking for reassurance, or, perhaps, for ghosts. “David chose to rid himself of me years ago. The last I heard, he was an attorney in the Midwest. He is his mother’s child. I would never force myself on him, because it wouldn’t work.”
It was too much to absorb. So Rita simply sat there, not knowing what to say, not knowing which of them should make the next move, if one needed to be made. And then the words sprang from her: “Kyle was your grandson.”
Doc nodded. Well, of course he would have known that. It was Rita who’d not known.
“And the twins,” she added.
He brought his eyes to her. “They’re wonderful, Rita,” he said. “I’m so glad that you have them. And Charlie.”
If she didn’t know better, Rita would have sworn she’d eaten one of the lima beans on Doc’s tray, which would account for the lump stuck halfway down her throat. “You know, Doc,” she said, standing up, “if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to go now. I need some time to figure out what’s happened.”
He nodded, too, then pushed the rolling table from his bed. “Rita,” he added, his voice hoarse with age, his eyes softly clouded, “there’s another reason I never left the island. It was because of you. Though I couldn’t claim my right as your father, I wanted to keep an eye on you, to make sure you grew up into a happy, healthy, well-adjusted woman.”
She could have laughed or made a sarcastic Rita-joke. Instead, she just stood there with that phantom bean still in her throat. “So what’s the verdict, Doc?”
He sat up a little straighter. His smile widened into the smile of a much younger man. “You will never know, Rita Mae,” he said, “just how proud I am of you.”
She stood and watched him, too stunned to cry.
“Now, please,” he asked with a quick wipe to his eyes, “I know this has been upsetting for you, but please don’t forget about the women of the group. They need you more than ever.”
Rita paused. “That’s why you did it, isn’t it, Doc? You wanted me to lead the support group so you could keep your eye on them. Through me.”
He smiled. “And because you might look like my mother, but you’re a lot like me. You’re my daughter, that’s for sure.”
Just then, Margie poked her head inside Doc’s room. “Doc,” she said, “the path report is in. The one you were waiting for.”
The second that he grimaced only was a second, but Rita recognized it as a grimace. She also knew that, though Margie hadn’t been specific, the pathology report on Katie’s lymph nodes was due back anytime. Rita stopped herself from asking.
Doc regained his composure. “Sorry, Rita,” he said, “but even cardiac infarction can’t stop me from my work.”
She nodded understandingly and left without a word.
“My mother made these this morning,” the tall, tanned young man said to Katie. She’d slipped out of bed to open the door: It had not occurred to her that the stranger might be a threat, another paparazzo, this time bearing gifts. The foil package looked familiar.
“My mother brought a woman to the hospital for a blood test this morning,” he said. “I don’t know why it’s taking so long, but she’d be upset if her scones dried up and went stale.” His eyes
were bright blue, his hair shining black.
He handed Katie the flowers. “These,” he said, “aren’t from her. They’re from me. I’m Greg.”
He was Faye’s son, of course. Katie clasped the front of her pink cotton robe. “Beach roses,” she said, “my favorite.”
“They were my sister’s favorite, too.”
She took the flowers and the foil package and asked him to come in. “Your mother is so nice.”
His smile was gentle, friendly, kind. “She likes you a lot,” he said. “You remind her of my sister.”
“Dana,” Katie replied.
“She was ‘spirited,’ my mother always said. She didn’t like to follow doctor’s orders, either.”
“Excuse me?”
He gestured toward the bed. “From what I understand, you’re not supposed to move around.”
• • •
They’d known each other forever, hadn’t they? Two kids of privilege who spent warm months on the Vineyard, digging for quahogs and searching for wampum, going to the Regatta and Illumination Night and the fireworks in Oak Bluffs at every summer’s end.
Katie and Greg drank tea and ravished Faye’s scones and laughed about the “olden days.” She had not been on the Vineyard that summer when Dana had been killed; but, listening to Greg’s story, she could well imagine the hush that draped West Chop like a giant fishing net, a shroud of grief that one so young had been taken by the sea. Their sea.
“So are you a fan?” Katie asked, grateful she knew that he was gay. There was something reassuring that a man was not there for sex, had not come laden with lust as a stepping-stone to his future.
Greg was sitting backward on a cane-back kitchen chair, his legs wrapping it, his arms resting on top, his hands holding the mug. He seemed to blush. “Not really,” he said with an embarrassed smile. “I know you’re famous,” he said quickly. “I mean, I know who you are. But to be honest, I’m a little busy with my restaurants, and when I listen to music I, well, prefer country.”
His words were the nicest thing he could have said.
“I’m a fan of your mother’s, though,” he added. “I think I know all her songs by heart. My sister and I would play your mother’s albums over and over on the old turntable.”
Just then Joleen walked into the room and Greg stood up, more flustered.
Katie laughed and said, “Mom, I’d like you to meet a fan.”
Joleen said hello, then eyed the plates.
“Any more of those scones?” she asked. “I could smell them in my studio.”
Greg smiled again and nervously said he’d fix her a plate and would she like tea?
They all laughed because it was Joleen’s kitchen and he was the guest and Joleen was not confined to bed, because she was not the one who was pregnant. Katie realized how quickly life could make a U-turn from bad into good when you least expected that it would.
Then the baby kicked again, and the kick was followed by a squeeze and then another pressing cramp. She smiled at Joleen and Greg and turned to him and asked, “If you’re finished with your scone, would you mind driving me to the hospital? I know it’s a little early, but I think the baby’s on the way.”
Shortly after Faye went back to Hannah’s house, R.J. Browne stood on the doorstep.
“Ladies,” he said, “please come with me. I think I have a clue about where Riley has gone.” He did not elaborate.
Tired though she was, Hannah left a note for Casey and Denise to go to Donna Langforth’s in case they got home from school before she returned. Then she climbed into the backseat of R.J.’s truck and the next thing she knew, they were parked in front of the church where she’d spent so many hours and so many nights back when Mother Jackson’s theater was standing-room-only and everything had seemed so right.
It didn’t seem right without Evan there. It didn’t seem right without Mother Jackson. But Hannah was learning that life truly could—and would—go on.
R.J. turned off the ignition and the three of them got out. R.J. took Hannah’s arm. She wanted to protest that she didn’t need his help, but then she figured it didn’t much matter. Nothing much mattered, or had she forgotten?
He led her to the fellowship hall.
“Go backstage,” he instructed, and so Hannah did, leaving R.J. and Faye behind.
She trundled over mounds of pulley ropes, past dusty set designs, through the door on which Mother Jackson had once lettered backstage and added an all-encompassing gold star, because to Mother Jackson, every one of her actors was a star.
And there she was.
Riley.
She sat on a heap of old pillows, stage props from another performance, another time. Her knees were pulled to her chest, tears flowed down her face.
“Mommy,” she said. “Mommy, I’m so sorry.”
On legs that had quickly turned to water, with a heart that swelled so big that it might burst, Hannah made her way to the pillows, made her way to her daughter. She sat down next to Riley, held her close and didn’t mention the pierced earring in her eyebrow or the one under her lower lip. She did not mention the stolen biology book or the yearbook on the floor, from which a yellowed newspaper clipping was sticking slightly out. Time would come to talk about those things later; right now, Riley was coming home.
“She left the island, as the police had learned,” R.J. told Faye when they went outside the church and waited for Hannah and Riley to emerge. “What bothered me was how a kid who knew squat about the mainland could find her way around. So I did a little digging and realized there was only one thing that could make sense: She’d gone as far as Woods Hole, then turned around and had come back. When I found her, she admitted she’d paid someone to buy her return ticket so it couldn’t be traced. She said she had money that she’d taken from an old trunk in the attic.”
“But how did you find her at the church?” Faye asked.
“That was the easy part. Her world is small. When I talked to Hannah, she told me about the theater, how much Riley had loved it. I figured she knew she’d be safe and warm here; she knew she could easily find food. But most of all, this was where she’d been happy. If you were in trouble, wouldn’t you want to go where you’d been happy? Where you’d once felt secure and loved?”
Faye looped her arm through his. “I did that,” she said. “When I came back to the Vineyard, that’s exactly what I did.”
“It’s a girl,” Doc said late that night when he shuffled into the waiting room attached to an IV pole, determined to be the one to deliver the news, if not Katie’s baby. Rita and Hannah and Faye and Joleen looked from one to another to another. “The doctor said she’s small—only five pounds—but they’re both doing well.”
Joleen cried, excused herself, and left the room.
“Doc?” Rita asked, because she could no longer stand it, because it was just them, support for one another. “Katie’s pathology report …”
“I don’t think my patient would mind me telling you that her lymph nodes are all clear.” A collective sigh spilled across the room.
“So,” Faye said, “that makes three of us with good news today. After Hannah found Riley, I went back to the hospital to see about having a mammogram.” She laughed. “They did it right away, before I could change my mind.”
Doc nodded. Rita suspected he’d railroaded that.
And then a tear or two stuck in Faye’s words. “It’s fine,” she said. “I’m fine. I’m cancer-free, and I can live my life again.”
“And make that huge donation to the Women’s Wellness Center?” Rita asked it with a smile, before she thought twice about the asking.
Faye, however, only laughed. “I don’t have that kind of money, Rita. It’s not like I’m the daughter of aristocrats.”
“So it isn’t Faye who was putting up the money for the Center,” Rita said to Hazel after she got home. “And I don’t think she’s pissed at me, not that it really matters.”
“Of course it matters, Rita Mae
. And the Center matters, too. But if Faye’s not behind it, what do you think? That singer has money; what about her?”
Rita shook her head. “I don’t think so. Who knows, maybe there is no money at all. Maybe Doc was simply trying to get some interest brewing. He’s like that, you know. Cagey and all that.”
Hazel winked at her. “Or, Doc might know that the benefactor wouldn’t want others to know that she was rich, that when her husband up and died, he left a pile of money. Maybe he wouldn’t want anyone to know that she now wants the only man she ever truly loved, to make the most of it.”
Rita would have thought she’d had enough shocks for one day. Her eyes locked on her mother as the words sunk in. Then she screamed. “Hazel! You? You’re the benefactor?” All that time spent being nosy, Rita could have saved her breath?
Hazel winked again. “Don’t for one minute think this old lady is a has-been.”
“What about me? Am I a has-been?” The screen door burst open and there stood Charlie, the long-lost husband home from the sea, or at least, Nantucket.
Rita stood up and flew into his arms. The twins came scrambling from the other room. Even Hazel had stood up with a smirky old smile that was plastered from one conniving ear over to the other. And Mindy thundered down the stairs as only a twelve-year-old can thunder.
“Well, I guess I’m not a has-been after all,” Charlie said as he regained his balance. “The good news is that Ben and I are finished and I’m home for good. How ‘bout you guys? What’s been going on these last few weeks?”
Rita looked from Mindy to Hazel, then back to her husband. She shook her head. “Oh, you know,” she said at last, “just the same old boring shit.”
EPILOGUE
SEPTEMBER
The summer passed as summers do, and Labor Day arrived. The center of Oak Bluffs was more alive than usual on this end-of-summer night: the stage was set, the fans waited on their beach chairs and their blankets, which were crammed throughout the park. The concert was a first, a benefit performance for the Women’s Wellness Center: Charlie and Ben had broken ground last week. The Center’s spokesperson, Rita Blair Rollins, had announced that a new machine that read mammograms by computer and would make “early detection even earlier,” was now on order and someone had to pay for it.