by Grace Palmer
She was happy for Dominic. Really. He’d worked hard on his book, and he deserved success. Plus, as the business manager and person in charge of all things marketing for the Inn, Eliza seemed to think the movie would be great for business. She’d been pushing the movie angle all over the Sweet Island Inn’s social media pages.
But what had Joey done to deserve being swept up in the success?
Sara knew she was being petty, but that didn’t stop the thought from blaring through her mind like a bullhorn and drowning out every other thought.
What did it say about her that she couldn’t muster up a little enthusiasm for her boyfriend’s exciting new opportunity?
And what did it say about their relationship that this opportunity had immediately made Joey too important to pay any attention to Sara and her problems?
Nothing pleasant. Nothing good.
She groaned and pressed her forehead against the cool front of the double-wide refrigerator.
“Tough day, sis?”
The sound of Brent’s voice sent Sara jerking upright. She pulled open the fridge as though that had been her intention all along. “Just tired.”
“Apparently. You left a smudge on the stainless steel. Better wipe that before Mom kills you.”
She closed the door halfway and used the hem of her shirt to wipe the grease smear. “You’re only here because you want first dibs on the new tray of shrimp. But I gotta tell you, they don’t taste as good cold.”
“That was part of it,” Brent laughed. “But Rose also told me to come help.”
“That was nice of her.”
He hesitated. “She noticed your boyfriend was a bit… preoccupied.”
“Perceptive, that one. Keep her close,” Sara said, putting as much brevity into her voice as she could.
Sara hoped Rose was the only one who had noticed.
Brent’s girlfriend was sweet and quiet—and the woman was observant. At times, she made Sara feel like a fish being filleted. She could see straight to her insides.
“He’s pretty excited about his big break,” Brent said.
Without meaning to, Sara snorted.
“Ouch.” Brent winced. “I sense you aren’t as excited?”
“That’s why you and Rose go well together,” Sara said, hefting the tray out of the fridge. “You’re perceptive, too. Well, when you choose to be.”
She kicked the refrigerator door closed with her foot and dropped the tray of shrimp on the counter.
Suddenly, the thought of grilling shrimp was wildly unpleasant.
She didn’t want to be in any kitchen right now. She wanted to be at the beach. Somewhere quiet and warm and far away from the pounding headache taking up residence in her temples.
Maybe she’d ditch the party for a few minutes and take a walk along the private beach behind the inn. Joey certainly wouldn’t notice her absence.
She always felt an odd simpatico with the ocean. She didn’t make it out there often enough, though. Work kept her at the restaurant and tourists kept her away from the beach.
But when she did find the time, it was cocoa butter for the soul.
No one shamed the ocean for being tumultuous. For throwing a fit if it felt like it. They simply accepted it as it was.
Sara was a lot like that.
She wasn’t cool under pressure like Eliza or steady like Holly. And she couldn’t hide her feelings behind a smile like Brent.
Maybe the ocean was the only one who would understand her right now.
It knew what it was like to feel stormy.
Brent leaned his elbows on the countertop, his chin in his hand. “Well, if you don’t want to date an actor, speak now or forever hold your peace. It sounds like your beau is seconds away from calling an agent.”
“I think I’m done with confrontations for today, thank you,” Sara said icily. “Besides, between you and me, I don’t think exactly think the front cover of People magazine is Joey’s next stop.”
She peeled off the aluminum cover and gave the shrimp a good mix with the metal tongs. Brent made no effort to help.
“Something else going on, sis?”
Sara sighed. She didn’t want to talk about the theft at the restaurant.
Number one, it made her look like an incompetent businesswoman who couldn’t keep her own employees in line.
Number two, she might have been wrong to confront Casey in the first place.
The whole debacle was embarrassing. But Sara was ready to burst. She had to release a little pressure or she’d go insane.
“Something shady was going on with the books at work, and I had a… talk with the person I thought was responsible. It didn’t go well,” she said, stabbing a shrimp with the poky end of the tong. “To put it mildly.”
“Did they quit?”
“No.”
“Did you fire them?”
She shook her head.
Brent frowned. “So what happened then?”
“I think I messed up,” she admitted, hating how bitter the words tasted on her tongue. “I’m not sure the person actually did it. And they were really angry I suspected them. Felt like I accused my own family member of stealing from me.”
“Oof. That sucks.”
“Yeah.” Sara sagged forward. “It really does.”
“But you were right to ask them, no? Family shouldn’t keep secrets from each other.”
Brent seemed more serious than usual, but Sara couldn’t help but laugh. “Tell that to every family in the world.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means families keep a ton of secrets!” she said. “Maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I treat my staff too much like family. Now, they’re comfortable enough that they’re stealing money from the register the way I used to filch twenties from Mom’s purse.”
Brent’s eyebrows shot upwards. “You stole from Mom?”
Oops. Sara hadn’t meant to say that.
“Didn’t you?” she asked like it was nothing.
“Absolutely not.”
Sara blanched. “It was only a few times,” she muttered. “Dad caught me once and I stopped after that.”
“He didn’t tell her?”
“He said it could be our little secret.”
Brent turned his blue eyes on Sara, brows pinched. “Did you and Dad have any other little secrets?”
“None that come to mind. Why?”
“No reason,” Brent answered quickly. A bit too quickly.
On a normal day, Sara would have pressed him. But she was tired of talking, and she couldn’t handle anyone else’s drama right now. Especially if they weren’t keen to share it.
She slid the aluminum tray across the counter to him. “Take this outside.”
Brent grabbed it and rolled his eyes. “Sir, yes, sir.”
“Please!” she shouted after him as he marched through the kitchen like a soldier on patrol.
When she was alone again, she pressed her forehead to the cool granite countertop and closed her eyes.
It’ll be okay, Sara girl, she urged herself. It’ll all be okay.
Joey was still gabbing on about the movie when she returned outside. Dominic had escaped across the party to sit with Mom. Pete, however, had wound up fully entrapped in Joey’s orbit, the poor guy.
“…The casting director said I had the exact right look, so I’m supposed to show up in the same outfit I had on in the store and have it approved.”
Pete hummed feigned interest and then turned to Sara, seeking a reprieve. “The food was a hit at the luncheon. Hopefully, you’ll see some business out of it.”
“Really? That’s great.”
“Oh yeah, it was delicious. And it was nice to eat your cooking again,” he said. “Alice has been going through a picky eating phase, so we haven’t been in for a while. The cod you delivered last week warmed up amazingly, though. I loved the salsa.”
Joey groaned. “I’ve eaten so much cod and salsa, I’ll probably bleed lime and tomat
o juice if you cut me. Being a tester for Sara’s meals has its downsides.”
“If you’re sick of it, feel free to let me tap in,” Pete offered.
“We may have to take you up on that. I’ll want to get in better shape for the movie,” Joey said, patting his perfectly flat stomach. “I may have to skip Sara’s cooking for the next two weeks to keep my diet clean.”
“Cod fish is really healthy,” Sara grumbled, stabbing at a chunk of her mom’s potato salad—her third helping.
“Not when it’s slathered in butter, babe.”
Even after the release in the kitchen, Sara’s steam level was rising again. The events of the day were compounding on her temper and her patience. She opened her mouth to respond, a flurry of arguments and accusations ripe and ready on her tongue, when Holly whistled.
Sara looked up to see her older sister was waving her over to the cake table, eyes wide and panicked.
Swallowing her frustration, Sara excused herself from the table. She couldn’t help but notice the way Pete’s shoulders sank in disappointment as Joey picked up right where he left off. “So apparently there’s free catering on set…”
She felt bad for him, but not bad enough to stick around and say something she’d almost certainly regret.
Holly was half-hiding behind the four-tiered cake when Sara made it over to her.
“What’s up?”
Holly beckoned with a jerk of her head. “Come over here.”
“I am over here,” Sara said.
“Over. Here,” Holly hissed, her eyes darting down to the cake.
The side of the cake facing the party was bland. Just four tiers of alternating red and green-iced layers. No decoration. No flourishes.
Sara had watched Grady notice the cake and then sag in disappointment.
What he didn’t know, though, was that the back of the cake would blow his ten-year-old mind.
Sara had hidden blood-covered fondant zombies on the back of the cake to be revealed during the cake cutting. Just like she’d promised him.
Well, technically, Little Bull’s talented pastry chef had made the zombies, but what Grady didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. And after the day she’d had, Sara needed this win.
Except, when she walked around the back of the cake, one of the zombies in question was more mutilated than he’d been an hour earlier.
Holly had the upper half of his body cradled gingerly in her palm. “I came back here to get a picture and a bug landed on the cake. I tried to swat it away, but I misjudged the distance and took out the zombie. He landed on the table and split in half.”
“That explains the dent in his skull,” Sara said, bending down to study the zombie’s corpse.
Holly sighed. “I’m so sorry, Sara.”
Sara plucked the zombie out of Holly’s hand and tried balancing it on top of his legs, but the whole thing began to deteriorate at the slightest touch.
“I tried that,” Holly admitted. “I was about to use the toothpicks from the bacon-wrapped dates to hold him together, but I thought I might just make a bigger mess of things. Can you fix it?”
Sara laid a hand on her sister’s arm. “For the first time today, you’ve given me a problem I am more than equipped to fix. I should be thanking you.”
Holly was too relieved to be concerned by Sara’s statement. “Good. Grady would have been so disappointed.”
“Actually, I think he’ll like this better,” Sara said. “So long as you don’t mind your son’s birthday cake being a little heavy on the gore?”
“Better the zombie be bloodied than me,” Holly grimaced. “Grady has been talking about this cake for a month.”
Sara hid the zombie in her palms and hustled across the lawn and back into the kitchen, the solution fully formed in her mind.
If every problem could be fixed in the kitchen and every person could be as easy to please as her nephew, Sara’s life would be a dream.
12
Mae
String lights draped from the house to the branches of the black-and-white oaks, setting the backyard party aglow as the sun dipped behind the water. The orange sherbet sky turned to a rainbow of pastels.
Dominic’s Elvis records still crooned from the record player in the open upstairs window, the gauzy white curtains blowing in the salty breeze. He’d gone up a few times to flip the record, but no one seemed to mind listening to the same songs. They set the right mood.
Mae couldn’t have magicked more ideal weather. She’d run inside to grab a light cotton sweater after her first plate of food, but otherwise, it was the kind of Nantucket summer evening that made her grateful to live here.
Eliza ought to be here. She’d no doubt be running around with her camera, taking pictures for the Sweet Island Inn’s website and social media pages.
But Mae’s worry for Eliza had nothing to do with the business side of things.
It wasn’t like Eliza to be late. Or to be out of reach.
Oliver could run late. He often did. Especially when he was coming to family dinner from a gig. The man was humble and kind, but he could never refuse an encore.
The other kids weren’t worried about their sister. But only because they were all distracted.
Holly and Pete were busy trying to get Alice to eat something—anything. But the strong-willed girl refused.
“I could run inside and make her some cheesy noodles,” Mae offered. “The elbows with shredded cheese. She loves that.”
“She needs to learn a lesson, mom,” Holly grumbled back, running her hands through her blonde hair to smooth it. The summer humidity always made waves in the underside of Holly’s hair, giving it extra volume that Holly hated. “She hasn’t eaten anything but cheese slices and applesauce for a week. It has to end.”
“You went through the same phase. After a week of dry cereal, you got tired of it and ate dinner.”
Pete smirked and wrapped an arm around his wife. “I knew this came from your side of the family. I never once turned down a hot meal.”
Holly glared up at him and then set her jaw, nostrils flared. “I will not be using the appeasement strategy. This is a battle of wills. I intend to win.”
When Mae walked around the side of the house a few minutes later to see if Eliza, Oliver, and Winter had arrived yet, she found Sara hunched behind the four-tiered cake.
“One of Grady’s zombies fell apart,” she said without prompting, squeezing a piping bag of red royal icing all over a prone zombie.
“Looks gruesome.”
Sara grimaced. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Once upon a time, birthday cakes for her grandchildren meant barn animals or race cars. But a zombie-themed cake came with the territory of turning ten, Mae figured. He couldn’t love cartoon bears and tractors forever.
That was the same thing Mae told herself when a teenage Brent hung the first swimsuit model poster on his bedroom wall. She’d wanted to fight it, but Henry had warned her it would only make things worse.
“The harder you push back, the more he’ll want it. Believe me. I’ve been a fourteen-year-old boy,” he’d said, patting her on the arm. “It’s better if we say nothing at all.”
So long as Mae never had to share a bikini model-themed cake with Grady, she could handle a little blood.
“I don’t mind one bit. Grady will love it.”
“I want you to love it, too, though,” Sara said, frowning.
She’d been doing that a lot tonight: frowning. “Everything okay with you?” Mae asked.
Sara let out a long, frustrated breath. “Long day. To say the least.”
She squeezed the piping bag harder than necessary, a stream of shiny red icing pooling on the edge of the cake layer and dripping down the side.
“We can talk about it if you’d—”
Before Mae could even finish the sentence, Sara shook her head. “No. It’s your birthday. I’m not going to ruin it complaining.”
Mae shrugged. “It wouldn’t bother me.
It’s my birthday, and I say it’s fine.”
“No again. It’s a day for being happy. And jolly. And bright.”
“It’s my birthday, dear, not Christmas.”
But Sara set her shoulders and clenched her lips together tightly.
After years of butting heads with Sara, Mae knew better than to push her youngest daughter into talking when she wasn’t ready. It was like icing a cake before it was completely cool. It would save you time in the short-term, but in the long-term, it turned into a melted, goopy mess.
Never worth it to rush the process.
Mae would know when Sara decided to tell her. Until then, nothing to do but wait.
She walked around the table and marveled at the cake. “I really do love it.”
“Really?” Sara asked, sounding surprisingly uncertain. “I know it’s a little plain on the front and a little, y’know… morbid on the back.”
“It’s perfectly on-theme,” Mae insisted. “At sixty-four, the possibility of immortality is growing more and more tempting by the day.”
Sara snorted. “That was not what I was going for, but I’m glad you like it.”
“I love it, honey. Most of all because you made it for me.”
Sara rolled her eyes, but she smiled, and Mae was happy to see it.
The best birthday present she could imagine was all of her children being happy. Though, when she told the kids that in the weeks before her birthday while they were trying to sleuth out what to buy her, they always groaned.
Sara dropped her piping bag on the table and wiped her red-stained hands on a paper towel. “Now, let’s cut this cake before Mr. Zombie decides to decompose further. I’m not sure I’ll be able to patch him together again.”
“But Eliza isn’t here yet.” Mae turned in the direction of the front door, listening for any sign of knocking.
“We’ll save them a slice. They’ll understand. It’s your birthday, after all.”
Mae wasn’t worried about Eliza being upset. She was worried about Eliza. “Has anyone heard from her?”