by Sarah Morgan
She felt like crying, and she wasn’t sure if it was exhaustion after the flight or relief that her mother wasn’t dead.
She wanted to get to The Captain’s House before she broke down and embarrassed herself. She was way past the age when it might be considered okay to cry in public.
Scott, however, didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He worked at his own pace. He leaned across to fasten the seat belt and Mack saw her mom turn her head away, as if she didn’t dare have her face that close to his.
Mack was relieved when Scott opened a door and gestured to the pickup.
She climbed in with a small chin lift of defiance, as if she hadn’t almost thrown up on the pier and died of fear. If first impressions counted, then she’d blown it. He was probably thinking she wouldn’t have been such a wimp if he’d raised her.
Fortunately it was a relatively short drive to her grandmother’s house. Her grandmother started asking Mack about schools, exams and friends—normal stuff. She didn’t mention the fact that Ed had died or that her mom had passed out on the dock.
Hello, can we talk about some real issues here?
The weirdness of it couldn’t be expressed, but her whole life was weird now.
She missed Ed so badly it made her chest ache, and she didn’t understand how it was possible to love someone and be mad at the same time.
Mack stole a glance at her grandmother, trying to work out why she’d brought Scott.
Maybe her grandmother had thought her mom needed a replacement for Ed, although it was a bit quick, wasn’t it? And anyway her mom had said Scott hadn’t wanted responsibility. Unless something had changed radically he wasn’t likely to be interested in taking on a fainting, superskinny broke woman and her messed-up teenage daughter.
Mack didn’t know much about relationships, but she suspected they weren’t much of a catch.
They arrived at the house and her mother insisted on walking from the car.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Mack hovered, trying to prove she wasn’t the heartless teen Scott seemed to think she was. “I don’t want you to faint again. Let him carry you.”
“I don’t need anyone to carry me.”
That had to be a good sign, surely? Her mother had always been strong, calm and capable. Even when Mack had blurted out the truth about her dad at the funeral, Lauren had stayed calm and together. She’d been calm and together right until the moment she’d stepped off the boat and seen Scott.
Right now she looked pale and frail. Scott obviously thought so, too, because he prowled close to her, presumably ready to catch her.
It was a relief when they finally stepped inside the house.
The Captain’s House felt like an old friend and was exactly the way Mack remembered it.
Despite what she’d said to her mother, it gave her a little buzz of excitement to be back. She’d once heard a bunch of tourists talking about its “historic charm,” but that wasn’t why she loved it. She loved it because you could literally smell the sea, not just because the ocean was right there outside the door, but because it seemed to have permeated the walls of the house. The place had nooks, secret doors and balconies, and all the rooms were crammed full of stuff. There were books, old naval charts, objects that had been gathering dust for over a century. Her grandmother never threw anything away, which Mack thought was pretty cool although she knew it drove her mother and Aunt Jenna to despair. There were cracks in the paintwork and character. Like an older person, Mack thought, with plenty of life experience and lots of stories to tell.
On the walls of the entryway there were old black-and-white photographs as well as one of her grandmother’s paintings. Except—the painting was no longer there.
She frowned at the faded wallpaper.
“Where’s the painting, Grams? The pretty blue one?” It was the only one of her grandmother’s paintings that she liked. The rest were gloomy. Looking at them made Mack want to dress in warmer clothes.
Her grandmother looked flustered. “I moved it.”
Scott hauled their bags from the pickup and put them in the entryway.
“You must be exhausted after your journey,” her grandmother said. “I’ve made something to eat.”
Mack’s stomach was still churning. “That’s kind, but I’m not that hungry, Grams.”
“You must eat something before you take a nap.”
Mack opened her mouth to point out that she was sixteen not six, and generally made it through the day without needing a nap, but then it occurred to her that it would give her an excuse to escape from all this stress and be on her own. She could message Phoebe.
Anything to get away from her crazy family. And Scott.
“That would be good, thank you.” She felt Scott’s gaze settle on her. She had a feeling he could read her mind and it was a little unnerving.
She slumped on one of the kitchen chairs, lack of sleep and jet lag catching up with her.
“Toast,” her grandmother said vaguely. “I’ll make toast.”
“Great.” She could probably choke down a couple of mouthfuls to appease her grandmother.
“You’ve never met Scott, so I should introduce him properly.”
“We haven’t met in person.” Mack looked at Scott. “In case you’re wondering, yes, I do know that you’re my real father. And I know you basically resigned from the job years ago, which should make me mad at you, but given that I’m low on family right now and can’t afford to be picky, you needn’t worry about me making trouble.”
“Mackenzie!” Her grandmother dropped the cup on the floor, where it shattered into pieces, splashing tea over the floor and the cabinets. “What are you talking about?” She turned to Lauren. “Is this grief talking? I don’t understand.”
Lauren closed her eyes. “Mom—”
Oh crappity crap. Mack felt a wash of horror as she stared at her mother. “Wait. Are you saying Grams didn’t know? I thought you already told her!”
Her mother looked like a ghost. “When would I have told her?”
“On the phone or something! I heard you talking.”
“About travel plans. Not about—anything else. I was waiting to do it face-to-face.”
Her grandmother hadn’t known?
“But why did she bring him to the ferry then?”
This whole situation was starting to drive her insane. It was worse than the Shakespeare play she’d studied, where characters dressed up as different people.
Her grandmother hadn’t moved. Tea dripped off the cabinets. “What were you waiting to tell me? That Scott is Mack’s father? Where would you ever get an idea like that, Mack?”
Mack said nothing. From now on she was keeping her mouth shut.
First the funeral, now this.
She was never talking again.
Instead she grabbed a cloth and kept her head down as she mopped up tea and retrieved shards of china.
“Scott, I must apologize for my granddaughter.” Nancy sounded faint. “I have no idea why she’d say a thing like that. It’s ridiculous.”
Scott stirred. “Does Lauren have other kids?”
Nancy looked perplexed. “Only Mack.”
“In that case, Mack is my daughter.”
Her grandmother was clutching the back of a chair and staring at Scott. “All this time you knew and didn’t tell me? Why?”
“It was Lauren’s decision.”
“But if it’s true that Mack is your daughter, that would mean you and Lauren—”
“Don’t say it!” Mack interrupted. “We get the picture.” She saw her grandmother lift her hand to her throat and felt a flash of alarm.
What now?
She stood up slowly and approached her grandmother as she would someone was poised to jump off a ledge. “Grams—”
“But this is Laure
n we’re talking about. If it were Jenna, I could understand it because she was always a wild one, but Lauren—” Nancy shook her head, bemused. “That’s not the daughter I know!” She looked at Scott and he returned her gaze without flinching.
“Then I guess we know a different person.”
Scott, Mack thought, seemed like the only sane person in the room.
Nancy turned her head to look at Lauren. “But you married Ed, and—why would you keep something like that from me?”
Mack rolled her eyes. “Mom is like a big well of secrets—she’s like MI5 or the CIA or something.”
“Mackenzie.” Her mother’s voice sounded strangled. “Go to your room. You shouldn’t be listening to this discussion.”
“No way. Any discussions are happening right here in front of me, otherwise no doubt something else will emerge that I won’t find out for another ten years and by then I’ll be psychologically damaged for life.” Maybe she already was. Sometimes the stuff going on inside her head scared her. “Whatever happened to telling the truth? Right now I have had enough of my totally fucked-up family.”
Lauren inhaled sharply. “Do not use that language.” She snatched her bag from the table and pulled out her phone. “I’m letting Aunt Jenna know we arrived safely.”
Sending an SOS more like, Mack thought.
Her grandmother seemed to rouse herself. “Aunt Jenna is teaching today.”
Mack shared her mother’s desperation. “She needs to come over as soon as she’s finished. And she needs to bring cookies, or cupcakes—preferably both. And also Uncle Greg because he knows how to fix situations and this situation definitely needs fixing.”
She realized her mother hadn’t spoken to Scott. Nothing. No words had been exchanged. Just that one look so hot that if you stood in the middle of it you would have come away with seared flesh.
The atmosphere was so still and tight it was as if someone had sucked all the air from the room.
“Scott?” Her grandmother’s voice sounded faint. “I wonder if you’d mind leaving us? I think I need to catch up with my family. It seems we have rather a lot to talk about.”
Scott eased away from the counter where he’d been leaning and watching Lauren.
“You know where I am.”
It was Nancy who answered. “Thank you, Scott.”
Mack wondered why her grandmother was thanking Scott when he was, in a way, responsible for this whole mess in the first place.
15
Jenna
Revelation: a surprising or interesting fact
that is made known to people
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to go over to your mother’s again? You’ve been there every day since Lauren and Mack arrived.” Greg locked the front door of the cottage and they walked to the car together. “Maybe they need space.”
“They don’t need space.” Jenna thought about the message Lauren had left on her phone that morning. “Lauren needs backup.”
“And that’s you?”
“Yes. I’m her sister. She keeps telling me she’s fine, but how can she be fine?”
“I guess she’s doing what she can to hold it all together.”
“And that can’t be easy. She told me yesterday that the cause of death was heart disease. Damaged valve or something. Can you imagine that? Ed was forty. The whole thing is terrible for her, and she keeps getting these calls from London from that lawyer guy I met, so it never ends.” Jenna threw her purse on the back seat of the car and slid behind the wheel. “And living with Mom can’t be easy either. She doesn’t talk about the big stuff.”
Greg fastened his seat belt. “We’ve discussed this a million times. We both know your mother finds it hard to show emotion.”
“I know, but I thought she might have tried a little harder with Lauren. Didn’t you see how she was at dinner with Lauren the first night? She barely mentioned Ed.” Jenna waved to one of their neighbors who was walking their dog.
“Because she didn’t know what to say. A lot of people don’t know what to say in difficult situations, Jenna. She’s not alone. Not because they don’t care, but because they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. Of making it worse. And she was probably stunned into silence by the revelation about Scott. I know I was.”
“I still can’t believe she took Scott Rhodes to meet Lauren.”
“The part I find harder to understand is how he can be Mack’s father. If you’d asked me to list all the possibilities, he wouldn’t have made the list.”
He would have been top of her list, Jenna thought. Why hadn’t it occurred to her before?
She drove away from the beach, taking a left and then a right.
“Now I think about it, there was something—” she tightened her grip on the wheel “—they noticed each other.”
“Evidently. Can you slow down? It’s not going to help your sister if you land us in a ditch.”
“Sorry.” Jenna eased her foot off the accelerator. “I’m worried about her. Do you think Scott’s the reason she didn’t come home much?”
“I don’t know—slow down!”
Jenna braked hard. “Maybe she was worried she’d run into him.”
“I’m worried we’re going to litter the island with dead bodies. Do you want me to drive?”
“No. Sorry. I’ll slow down. I’m anxious. From what Lauren told me, she’ll have to get a job.” Jenna drove carefully through West Tisbury, where the annual fair and livestock show ran for four days every August. She wondered if her sister was missing the city and decided it was probably the last thing on her mind. “Whenever we spent time together, she and Ed always seemed happy, didn’t you think?”
“You can never tell from the outside what is going on inside a marriage. We probably look happy, too.”
Her heart gave a bump. “We are happy.”
“You haven’t seemed too happy lately.”
Why had she started this conversation when she was driving? “I want a baby, that’s true, but it doesn’t mean I’m not happy.”
Was he saying he wasn’t happy?
She felt a rush of panic. Greg was the one sure thing in her life. Dependable and reliable. She’d built a future with him on solid foundations, and suddenly those foundations had given a warning tremble.
They were silent for the rest of the drive and when Jenna finally pulled up outside The Captain’s House and glanced at Greg, his eyes were closed.
“Greg?”
“Mmm?” He opened his eyes. “Are we here?”
“Yes. Wait—” She put her hand on his arm before he could unfasten the seat belt. “Are you happy? You talk about everyone but yourself. Tell me how you’re feeling.”
“I’m tired. Work is busy.”
She didn’t want to talk about work. She wanted to talk about them.
“You do want a baby, don’t you?”
He hesitated. “Of course.”
“Sometimes I think I want one more than you do.”
“I want a family. But it’s not the only thing I think about.”
Was she that bad?
From now on she was going to stop talking about it all the time, at least to Greg. Now that Lauren was back, she could talk to her.
On impulse she grabbed him and tugged him toward her. “I love you, Greg Sullivan.” She pressed her lips to his, feeling the familiar shape of his mouth.
He slid his hand behind her neck and kissed her back. It started slow, but no one knew how to stoke the heat like Greg. With each slide of his tongue and brush of his fingers, he turned the kiss into a dizzying prelude to a greater intimacy. She knew exactly how that intimacy would feel and raw sensation flashed through her. There was a delicious ache in her pelvis and she wished they were back home.
His hand stroked its way under her sweater and up to her breasts
and she felt her flesh tighten under the skilled brush of his thumb.
“Greg!” She gasped against his mouth and he eased away just enough to speak.
“What?” His voice was thickened, his eyes sleepy and sexy.
“We can’t. Not now.”
“You’d rather talk to your mother than do this?”
“I’d rather not get arrested for conducting an indecent act in public.” But she was tempted. This felt good. It had also felt spontaneous and there had been little of that in their lives lately.
“I guess you’re right.” He let her go and instantly she felt bereft.
“I love you.”
“Love you, too.” The sincerity in his voice soothed her.
There was nothing in the world better than knowing you were loved, and nothing that made you appreciate that gift more than seeing someone who had lost that.
“Let’s rescue my sister.”
She took his hand as they walked into the house, savoring the closeness. How must Lauren have felt marrying Ed when she was in love with Scott? It wasn’t something she could imagine.
As they entered the house, she sniffed the air. “Something smells good.”
The smells might have been hopeful, but as they walked into the kitchen Jenna felt the tension in the atmosphere. Her mother was lifting a casserole out of the oven and Lauren was setting the table. The look she gave Jenna was one of utter relief.
“Hi.”
Jenna walked straight across the kitchen and hugged her, frowning as Lauren’s hip bone jabbed her in the side. She could probably give half her body weight to her sister and Lauren still wouldn’t be fat.
Lauren’s arms tightened around her and Jenna remembered the times they’d done this as children.
When one was in trouble, the other was there.
Jenna noticed Mack slumped at the table. She was focused on her phone as if she was trying to disconnect herself from what was happening in the room. Like her mother, she had dark hollows under her eyes and she looked exhausted.
“How are you doing?” Jenna let go of her sister, checking first that she wasn’t about to keel over.