No Love Like Nantucket

by Grace Palmer

  Find Sara, and you’ll find the answer for what’s next. That’s what Toni told herself. It seemed, for the moment, if nothing else, to be a plausible thing.

  By now, she’d gone at least three-quarters of a mile down the beach. She was slicked with sweat, some of it her own and some of it belonging to the strangers she’d had to push past.

  She reasoned that there was no way Sara would’ve kept going this far. She must’ve turned up one of the beach walks and left. Now that Toni thought about it, she did remember Sara saying something about going to her friend’s house.

  In her mad dash after her niece, she’d assumed that Sara would be heading to her friend’s spot on the beach first. But maybe that was wrong. Maybe Toni ought to be heading into the neighborhoods to scour front yards for any little blonde girls with attitude beyond their years.

  With nothing else looking promising, she veered in that direction.

  Sand eventually gave way to asphalt as she charted a course off the beach. Toni didn’t stop or slow down, even if an outsized panic was gripping her chest ever tighter like a squeezing fist.

  Find Sara. Find what’s next.

  She didn’t know the friend Sara had mentioned, or else she would’ve probably known where the girl’s house was. So she had to settle for walking right up to the edge of people’s yards and scrutinizing faces.

  She got more than one odd look, but she didn’t have time to stop and explain. What would she tell people, anyway? Ask them if they’d seen any blonde girls with sparklers? That would identify about half of the people on the island on any given Fourth of July. It’d be like asking a school of fish if they’d seen the one with scales. No, it was better to just keep moving, not to bother with explanations. One of these yards would turn up Sara, sooner or later.

  She began to feel more and more desperate as she found nothing, though. Whether each yard was empty or filled with people she didn’t recognize, it didn’t take too long for her to verify that none of them contained Sara. And with each successive failure, that fist of fear squeezed a little tighter.

  The show had begun, so fireworks were bursting overhead in rapid succession now, each louder than the next.

  Boom—red. Boom—blue. Boom—white like orchids, as loud as God clapping.

  The hangover that Toni thought she’d shaken lurched back, proving that she was naive for thinking that she was one of those rare late-thirties women who didn’t get the dreaded two-day hangovers. She felt churning nausea and the vicious stab of a headache behind her eyeballs.

  And then, like the heavens parting and lighting up the chosen one, Toni rounded a corner and saw a gaggle of young girls sprinting in happy circles around a manicured front lawn.

  In the middle of them, waving her sparkler like a wand, was Sara Benson.

  Toni practically fell to her knees. Only twenty minutes or so had passed since she had left Mae behind. But it felt like lifetimes had gone by in that short interval.

  Did finding Sara offer the victory over Toni’s sadness and anger that she thought it would? It was hard to say for sure. But as she ran over, plucked Sara from the knot of girls, and squeezed her in a tight hug, she thought that maybe it had. That, maybe, as she held an invaluable piece of her family in her arms and the fireworks burst overhead, she had forced the grieving into a little box.

  It wasn’t gone, of course. It probably never would be. But as long as it had a shape, she could deal with it. She could confront it or step around it, or at the very least just make something of it. That felt like an essential step if she was to move on with her life.

  The next step felt essential, too, although this one had nothing whatsoever to do with Sara. As she held her squirming niece, she looked over the girl’s blonde head and saw something on the corner of the street, two lots down from the yard in which she was currently kneeling.

  The thing she saw was a dilapidated house. The same one she’d seen on her late-night whiskey walk with Mae, as a matter of fact, with the same bright red FOR SALE sign stuck out front.

  When she saw it, everything clicked into place.

  Toni Benson knew what she was going to do next.

  Sara didn’t say much as she and Toni walked back to the family. She was equal parts chastened and angry. Toni could understand that.

  She’d never been much of a believer in fate, but something about this whole episode had begun to nag at her. It felt—well, “biblical” didn’t seem like the right word. But it felt like it had a purpose. Like there was a reason that Sara was the one who had chosen to jet off after chafing under her mother’s rules.

  Why Sara?

  Toni glanced down at the girl walking next to her. Sara didn’t look back, which Toni also understood. Eleven-year-old girls are forever balancing right on that precipice between needing authority figures and getting ready to renounce them.

  The girl was strong-willed, though—there was no denying that. She’d gotten much of it from her father, Toni suspected. Henry was as stubborn a mule as had ever graced the face of the earth.

  But there was more to Sara than stubbornness. Or at least, that’s how it seemed to Toni just now. Guessing character traits in children as young as her niece was always a risky endeavor. At Sara’s age, the things that would one day come to define their personality were just rough sketches, with the final lines not quite done up in pen just yet.

  So, Toni didn’t think it was fair to determine whether Sara would grow up to be plain obstinate or something a bit different. And yet, she felt certain that there was more than sheer “don’t-tell-me-what-to-do”-ness bubbling up in the girl. There was a sense of something more substantial to her. A willingness to do whatever was necessary to seize the things she thought she deserved. Was there something to be gleaned from that?

  “You shouldn’t have left,” Toni said.

  Sara huffed and blew back a bang that had come loose over her forehead. She said nothing.

  “Your mom was really worried.”

  “I’m fine. I know my way around. We’ve lived here forever. Everyone knows us.”

  “There are a lot of strangers here, Sara. You never know what kind of people are around.”

  Sara huffed again. “I’m fine.”

  It took a lot of willpower for Toni to keep herself from reaching out and tucking away Sara’s unruly lock of hair. Just like with the fear of losing a child to something horrible that Toni suspected every woman retains deep in her bones, she felt this soul-deep urge to reach out and touch this fragile child to let her know that she was loved.

  But at the same time, she knew that that was exactly the kind of gesture that would throw up a permanent roadblock between them. Sara didn’t want to be consoled or fussed over. She wanted—well, that was a good question now, wasn’t it?

  What did Sara want?

  What did Toni want?

  What did anyone want?

  The more she thought about it, the more she thought the question was long overdue. When was the last time Toni had asked herself what she wanted—not in relation to her husband or to her job or to her friends or family, but just that question, alone and untethered by the sense of obligation she felt pulsing in her temples all the time?

  She’d spent a lifetime doing things for others, or because of others, or on behalf of others. But what did she want?

  Toni stopped, turned, and knelt on the edge of a yard. She grabbed Sara’s arms and made her stop to face her, too, even though she knew her niece wouldn’t like to be pushed and pulled so.

  But this was important.

  “I want to say something, and I want you to think about it before you answer, okay, Sara?” Toni said. “And you don’t have to tell your mom if you don’t want to, because this is just a thing for me to say and you to hear, all right? Does that make sense?”

  She feared that it wouldn’t make sense or that Sara would be too irritated to take her psychotic aunt seriously.

  But, thankfully, Sara tilted her head to the side and nodded
with a solemn expression on her face. “Okay,” she said.

  “A lot of people like to tell other people what to do. And a lot of people think that they’re supposed to listen to that, and just do whatever they’re told. And you sort of just learn to live your life like that.”

  Toni swallowed, wondering if she was making some horrific parenting error that would require decades of therapy to fix. But it seemed so important that she get this message through to Sara, even if she herself didn’t understand it yet.

  “So what I want you to remember is this: You do what you want, okay? You should do it for the right reasons, and you should listen to other people and think about what they’re telling you to do, and you should remember that your mom loves you very much and she wants what’s best for you, so most of the time you should do what she tells you even if you don’t understand it or don’t like it. But at the end of the day, you have to be in charge of yourself, okay? It’s really easy to give that up to other people. You do it without even realizing that you’re doing it. And it’s way harder to get back than it is to give away.”

  The fireworks show had reached its crescendo overhead, so her words were punctuated with the roaring rat-a-tat-tat of pyrotechnics exploding in the Nantucket night sky. They lit up Sara’s face in alternating colors, sparkling in the irises of her eyes. She hadn’t blinked once or looked away from Toni. And, though it could’ve just as well been her buzz making her think this, Toni felt that the things she was saying were sinking in somewhere deep in Sara, finding root like seeds that wouldn’t bloom for years.

  “Do you understand, Sara?”

  Sara waited a long moment before she nodded. “I think so.”

  Toni nodded back. Boom-boom-boom, faster and faster went the fireworks until the final conflagration went up, and then silence stole over the island in its wake. The lights faded from Sara’s eyes.

  “You’re crying, Aunt Toni,” the girl said suddenly. Concern knotted in her voice.

  Toni touched her cheeks and found them damp. “It’s okay, honey,” she whispered. “I’ll be okay.”

  She wiped away her tears with the back of her hand and squeezed Sara’s fingers tight in her hand.

  “What do you want to do now?” she asked.

  Sara thought about it. “Let’s go back to Mom,” she said.

  Toni nodded, stood up, and then the two of them went back down the road and onto the beach, swimming upstream against the flowing crowd that had begun to disperse back to their hotels and vacation rentals.

  Neither of them said much as they walked towards Mae’s umbrella. The moon was full and bright. Toni admired how it lit up the foam that capped each wave. It looked ethereal and glowing, like something from another world.

  They came up to the spot on the beach. Mae, Eliza, Holly, and Brent had packed everything away and stood waiting. As soon as Mae saw that it was Toni and Sara who were approaching them, she rushed over and scooped up Sara in her arms.

  “Oh my goodness, honey—please don’t ever do that again!”

  Toni watched, saying nothing. Mae was such sweetness and light, maybe enough so that she had a difficult time seeing that Sara was made of grittier things. The two of them would have some tough years ahead, Toni predicted. She could see them butting heads even now.

  But she felt a strange new kinship with her niece. It was a classic case of learning more from our children than we teach them, she thought. Wisdom from the mouth of babes—that sort of thing.

  So when Mae finally set Sara down and switched gears from being grateful that she was safe, to being furious that she’d left in the first place, Toni caught Sara’s eye. And she smiled—just once, quickly, maybe not even distinctly enough for the girl to notice the gesture.

  She tried to say everything that she couldn’t say to her niece just yet, the things she’d hinted at in her impromptu monologue. There was no telling whether it landed, whether she understood. She was still so young, after all, and there were many years of heartbreak and struggle ahead for a young woman.

  But maybe she got it. Maybe she understood. Maybe it mattered.

  Everyone was exhausted from the long day they’d had and the adrenaline dump of the fireworks show, so there was little conversation as they went back to the house. The kids dispersed immediately to shower and get ready for bed. Mae went in to empty the coolers of the remaining snacks and drinks, while Toni offered to drag the umbrella, chairs, and other things to the side yard to rinse off the sand with the hose.

  She did her work quietly by the light of the security lamp affixed to the side of the house. After the cacophony of fireworks and crowds, it was nice to listen to little more than the chirp of insects and the gurgling of the hose.

  When she’d finished, she stacked the things neatly so they could dry overnight. Then she walked back around to the front.

  Mae was opening the door just as Toni mounted the porch steps. She had a curious look on her face.

  “Everything okay?” Toni asked.

  Mae wrinkled her nose. “You have a…phone call,” she said carefully. “It’s Jared.”

  Her words hung in the air like the last of the fireworks.

  Never before had it been so clear to Toni that she was standing at a crossroads in her life. There was, of course, no telling what Jared would say to her if she took that call. The fact that he was calling at all would suggest that there was at least something left between them, some semblance of affection or caring that could maybe be resurrected if they worked at it hard enough.

  But then there was the other choice: What if she didn’t pick up? What if she just said, No? No to Jared, no to reconciling, no to all those thousands of crowding voices in her head that were constantly yelling at her to put what she wanted dead last and worry about everyone else first?

  What if she was more like Sara?

  Toni looked down at Mae’s outstretched hand, holding the cordless phone to her like a baton. She took it gingerly, half afraid that it might explode if she jostled it too much.

  Mae took one more searching glance at Toni’s face before she offered a quick, tight smile—something like a pat on the shoulder—and ducked back inside to leave Toni alone on the porch.

  Toni slid slowly into a rocking chair. She looked out at the night, then down at the phone in her hand. She heard a tinny voice call out, “Hello? Mae? Toni?”

  Only three days had passed since she’d last heard Jared’s voice, but it already felt so foreign. Had he always sounded so reedy and nasally? Had she merely convinced herself otherwise?

  She felt like she was having an out-of-body experience—or rather, the exact opposite, more like an extremely in-body experience. She’d never been so aware of her breathing, of the flutter of her eyelids, the tingling of rising sunburn in her hands and feet. She felt so here that it hurt.

  Then she reached out with her thumb and, without saying anything to the man on the other end of the line, she ended the call.

  Click.

  She let loose a long, heady sigh. She closed her eyes and pictured it again—the dilapidated house, the FOR SALE sign in front. She knew instinctively that she was picturing her future. She was going to do what she wanted, maybe for the first time ever.

  Then she opened her eyes again and dialed the number seared into her mind’s eye. No one answered, of course, given the late hour. But then the answering machine clicked on with its prerecorded message.

  “Hello, you’ve reached Nantucket Realty Co. Please leave your name and number and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.”

  Beep. That breathy silence swallowed her up, like staring into a dark cave. She swallowed, but she faltered for only the briefest of moments before she spoke into it.

  “Hi, my name is Toni Benson. I’d like to buy the property you have listed at…”

  She rattled off her details and intentions, then hung up the phone. She stared out into the night once again.

  It amazed her how all these little things had amassed int
o this big thing, this dream on the verge of becoming a reality. That feeling of a full house, the B&B that had shut down, Kendra and Andy’s baby, the unexpected finding of the rundown property that Mae thought had good bones…It was like someone had laid out all these hidden things for her, and only now was she beginning to see the way they were meant to come together.

  She was going to build an inn on Nantucket.

  Toni Benson had never believed much in fate, but as she breathed quietly to herself and soaked in the clean, beautiful air of the island she loved, she knew one thing for sure: it felt right to be home again.

  THE END

  Thank you for reading No Love Like Nantucket, Book 4 in the Sweet Island Inn series! Next up, check out Just South of Paradise, the first book in my series of a heartbroken woman finding new life and meaning in the wake of divorce.

  JUST SOUTH OF PARADISE

  Georgia Baldwin is just south of paradise, and just shy of a happy ending. Can she find the love she’s looking for?

  Georgia had the perfect life—until her husband of nearly forty years leaves her for their inn’s much younger housekeeper.

  Starting over at fifty-eight is a terrifying prospect. And that’s not all.

  Her oldest child, Melanie, is trying to pick up the pieces of her broken heart after a difficult break-up.

  Georgia’s other daughter, Tasha, left Willow Beach to make it in Hollywood, but she’s having an awfully hard time coping with failure.

  Golden child Drew thought he was headed for the baseball Hall of Fame. But when he’s unexpectedly cut from his minor league team, he is forced to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

  Running the Willow Beach Inn, helping her grown children navigate the choppy waters of life, and rediscovering her own passions is no easy feat. Is there hope for Georgia to find happiness in the wake of heartbreak?

  Taste the salt on the air and feel the warm love of the Baldwin family in Book One of the Willow Beach Inn series from heartwarming women’s fiction author Grace Palmer.