Nantucket Sisters

by Nancy Thayer

  Maggie’s jaw drops. For a moment she’s speechless, then she cries, “Wait. I don’t understand! He can’t leave me that house, that’s Clarice’s house!”

  Clarice speaks up. “No, Maggie. The house belongs—belonged—to Thaddeus.”

  “But—”

  “Let Kevin continue,” Frances suggests to her children.

  “ ‘All the Ramsdale property has been passed down through the Ramsdale line for eight generations,’ ” Kevin Thatcher reads. “ ‘With me, Thaddeus Ramsdale, the Ramsdale line dies out, and for years this has been a source of distress for me. I have no natural children. When I married Frances McIntyre, I did not assume that I would automatically love her children. As you are all aware, I do not love easily, and I have usually thought land more lovable than people. But over the years, as I watched Ben and Maggie McIntyre grow up, I realized that I had influenced them, perhaps more than blood can influence, and I was proud of that, and proud of them. I came to believe that I had been fortunate enough to find my children, and so I leave my worldly possessions to these two fine young people, knowing they will take care of my mother, Clarice, and my beloved wife, Frances.’ Signed, ‘Thaddeus Ramsdale.’ ”

  “My God,” Maggie says, and bursts into tears. “Mom, why didn’t he tell us? Why didn’t you?”

  Frances smiles and weeps at the same time. “Darling, you know Thaddeus. He was concerned that if you knew, you might feel obligated to act differently toward him.”

  Ben says, “He probably was terrified that we’d start hugging him or something.”

  “He was a private person,” Frances agrees.

  “I always thought he was like a big red baboon,” Maggie murmurs, then catches herself. “Sorry, Clarice.”

  “It’s all right,” Clarice tells her. “I’ve often had that very thought myself.”

  “Emily.” Cameron’s already at the downtown municipal building, drop dead handsome in a gorgeous black suit with a camel vest and white shirt and red tie.

  Behind him stands the justice of the peace, an older woman in a simple dove gray suit wearing a benevolent expression. What she must have seen, Emily thinks. Cameron’s best friend, Aiden, stands next to him in a navy blazer. Tiffany squeezes Emily’s hand and steps back as Emily takes her place next to Cameron.

  The justice of the peace clears her throat.

  “Well,” Cameron says to Emily, “last chance to change your mind.”

  “I’m not changing my mind,” Emily assures him. Her eyes meet his, and wow, there it is, the connection between them. Cameron is handsome, but more than that, he really is a stand-up, responsible man.

  Cameron takes Emily’s hand in his and leads her to stand in front of the justice of the peace. Tiffany and Aiden stand behind clasping their hands in front of them. The justice of the peace begins to pronounce the simple, familiar words. Cameron looks at Emily with a smile, and she smiles back. A few minutes later, he leans forward to place a circumspect but firm kiss on Emily’s mouth, and they are married.

  For Maggie, the next few days pass in a blur. She finds within herself a surprising quality of tolerance, kindness, and emotional generosity as she subtly tends to the needs of her mother and grandmother. They all stay at the farm, and Ben helps, too, buying groceries, listening to the guests who drop by to pay their respects, washing up endless teacups and cake plates. Maggie’s pregnancy makes her sleepy all the time. When each day is finally over, she falls helplessly in bed, not having a moment to think about Thaddeus’s legacy and what it means. But the knowledge of it is like a golden net beneath her, to catch her if she falls, not only the security that she has a house to live in, but the surprising news that Thaddeus cared for her that much.

  Thursday, the local weekly newspaper comes out. Maggie drives into town to buy several copies. The obituary she wrote for Thaddeus will be in it. Returning, she carries the papers into the living room, where Frances and Clarice sit watching Ben build a fire. She hands a paper to the other women and joins them, perched on the sofa, opening the newspaper wide.

  “It’s on page five A,” Frances says. “With a large photograph.”

  After a moment, Clarice says, “Well done, Maggie. They didn’t cut a word.”

  “They shouldn’t have,” Frances says. “Thaddeus was an important member of the community.”

  But Maggie’s eyes have snagged on a small item under “Marriages and Engagements.”

  Before Maggie can comprehend the words, Clarice says, “Why, look. Ben, didn’t you date Emily Porter? She just got married.”

  Ben freezes in position, kneeling with firewood in his hands.

  “To someone named Cameron Chadwick,” Clarice continues. “They were married in New York.”

  “Ben—” Frances begins, but stops at the sight of Ben’s face.

  Clarice reads on. “The bride’s parents are Cara and Peter Porter of Nantucket, New York, and Sarasota. The groom’s parents are Emeline and Charleston Chadwick of …”

  Ben finishes building the fire. When the kindling catches, he rises and stalks out of the room. “Going for a walk.”

  “Oh, dear,” Clarice says.

  “I’ll go with him.” Maggie jumps up and runs after him, pulling on her down coat as she hurries out of the house. “Wait, Ben!” she calls.

  He doesn’t slow down but strides toward the harbor, pausing only to reach into his pocket to yank out his wool cap and pull it on.

  The air is arctic but there’s no wind. The sky is a white sheet, devoid of sun or flecks of color. Brittle fingers of heath plants pluck at their jeans as they pass over the frozen ground. The grass is the color of sand. A few juniper bushes are the only green in sight, their needles browning. At the harbor, the water is flat dead, a mirror with no reflection.

  Ben walks to the end of the wooden dock and stands looking out, hugging himself.

  “Ben?”

  “What?” He stares out at the water, his face haggard.

  “There’s something else.” Perhaps if Maggie tells him now, it will deflect him slightly from his pain.

  Ben turns. “What?” Already his face is hollow-eyed from grieving, but the cold has provoked roses into his cheeks.

  “I’m pregnant. I had a one-night stand with someone, and I’m pregnant.”

  Ben’s face breaks with disbelief. “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true. It’s almost kind of funny, isn’t it?”

  “No, Maggie. Not funny at all.” His voice is hoarse.

  She gazes up at her brother with infinite pity. “Ben, I’m telling you this because my life is going to change. And I’d like to help you, but I don’t know how.” She touches his shoulder. “I don’t understand why you broke off with Emily.”

  Ben croaks out a harsh laugh. “I was always going to lose Emily. I was a fool ever to think otherwise. It’s all about money. It really is all about money.”

  “Ben, let’s do something,” she urges. “Let’s fly down to Mexico for a few days, lie in the sun next to a pool.”

  “Great idea. And how will we pay for it?”

  “Charge cards.”

  “And what will we give up to pay for such a trip?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s not that expensive—”

  “Yes, it is that expensive. Everything’s that expensive! If we go on a trip, that means we can’t pay our car insurance or buy food. Hell, if I have to buy new socks, that means I can’t see a first-run movie. It’s all about money, Maggie, it really is. It really is.”

  “I know it seems that way—”

  “Seems? Is! I have been such an idealistic sucker. I’m going to save the island—bullshit! I’m not going to be able to accomplish one damned thing. I won’t save anything. I won’t have anything. I don’t matter. Because I don’t have any money, I’ll never matter! Everything we’ve been told about how we can be whatever we want to be is a lie. It’s all lies the rich tell the poor to keep us in line so we won’t kill them.” Ben’s sobbing now. His shou
lders shake. He bends his head down and covers his neck with his hands. “People like us can’t do anything. We can’t have anything. It’s all rigged from the start. You and I are disposable people. That’s all we are, and all we ever can be, disposable people.”

  Maggie puts her hand on her brother’s back, trying to offer some comfort. She’s crying, too, for her brother, for herself, for all their shining hope they’ve seen destroyed. “I know,” she agrees quietly. “I know, Ben.” She gestures across the water toward the roofline of the town. “So many people pay five million dollars for a house they live in just two weeks a year. We can’t ever compete with that kind of money. And come on, you and I wouldn’t want to be that way, that vulgar, that careless of the land.” Facing away from her brother, she says, “I’ll bet this Cameron person Emily married is like that, all about money, excess, superficial charm.”

  “Of course he is,” Ben growls.

  “Well, let them be,” Maggie counsels. She’s advising herself as well. “We have our own lives, and we don’t want to ruin what we have with resentment over what we don’t have. We can still be happy, perhaps even—”

  “Oh fuck!” Ben interrupts with a shout. His feet thud against the planks as he stalks off the dock. In a few strides he’s out of sight.

  Shivering in the cold, Maggie picks her way over the frozen sand to Shipwreck House. The lock is painfully cold, but as her fingers remember the combination, it turns and opens. Inside are the desks and chairs, the funny sofa draped with shawls. A memory of summer superimposes itself over the empty space, and Maggie sees herself at the desk drawing, Emily at the other desk, both of them laughing, improvising wild tales.

  Emily.

  She closes the door behind her. Pulling one of the ancient blankets off the back of the sofa, Maggie wraps it around her, ignoring the faint smell of mildew. Snugging up at one end of the sofa, she thinks about the past and wonders about the future until she’s shuddering with cold. Leaving, she locks the door behind her. She returns to the house where her mother mourns the loss of her husband, and her brother grieves for his own lost love.

  Maggie puts her hand on her belly. She has new dreams, new realities to plan for.

  With such a rushed wedding, Emily and Cameron have no time to prepare for a honeymoon. Cameron’s overwhelmed at work, and Emily’s finishing her degree in Amherst, driving down to Manhattan on the weekends to search for an apartment. She finds one on Park Avenue with a doorman and sunny windows in what will be the baby’s bedroom, and then she sets about furnishing it. Being busy feels good. It keeps her from second-guessing herself.

  Not until the end of March does she take a deep breath, sit at her computer, and email Maggie.

  Hey, Maggie, when’s a good time for me to call? I’ve got news. I didn’t want to tell you this way, I wanted to see you face-to-face, but who knows when I’ll get to the island again. Anyway, guess what! I’m pregnant. And very happy.

  The response comes within an hour.

  Wow. Glad you’re happy. Sorry, don’t have much time to write these days.

  Emily writes:

  Hope you’re happy, too. Hope you’re working on The Great American Novel.

  A reply from Maggie never comes.

  Emily is pregnant and married to Cameron Chadwick. Maggie is not married at all, but she’s also pregnant.

  Her child and Emily’s have the same father.

  Maggie can’t wrap her mind around what this means. She recovered from Cameron’s cavalier treatment, from his romantic seduction and unexpected desertion, with an ease that surprised her. Friends told her a term exists for such behavior: Seduce and Abandon. Apparently there are men who enjoy the thrill of the chase, but once the prey is brought down, they find themselves bored, ready to move on.

  No, she sheds no tears at the loss of Cameron in her life. It was a blow to her vanity but it also provided a wake-up call. She has to grow up. Well, she is grown up. She carries a new life inside her, a being she has already come to love and fiercely vows to protect. This is her responsibility. This is her child.

  She has imagined what would happen if she told Cameron she was pregnant by him. If he insisted on a DNA test, he would know for sure that the child is his—and Maggie does not want that. He would be obligated, or believe he was obligated, to give Maggie money to raise her child. She doesn’t want his money. She doesn’t want Cameron to have rights over this child, whom he fathered so frivolously, whom he fathered by lying, if not in words, certainly by insinuating that he was in love with Maggie and that they had a future together.

  So she won’t tell him. My God, what if Cameron demanded rights to her baby? What if he demanded joint custody? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

  And Ben would be maddened, wounded, broken by the knowledge that his sister was bearing the child of the man for whom Emily had left Ben. It was too much of a mess. Ben wouldn’t be able to love Maggie’s baby.

  These are not the Middle Ages. Maggie is not some hapless waif wandering pitifully through a blizzard with a shawl clutched over her bosom. She has a family who loves her, a place to live, a community to support her, and a new life inside her that she never asked for or expected, but which daily increases her happiness, her confidence, and her sense that this world is more complicated than she ever imagined.

  She only wishes she could share this with Emily, this entire bizarre coincidence. How they would laugh. But of course, Maggie can never tell Emily. She will never tell anyone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  That August, the heat in the city becomes unbearable for Emily, who is almost eight months pregnant. She tells Cameron she’s going to Nantucket for the month, to live with her parents in the bluff house. He’ll fly up on weekends.

  She’s on Main Street on the island, standing by the farmer’s truck, filling her recyclable bag with lettuces, carrots, and fresh, fat red tomatoes, when she hears a familiar voice.

  “Emily?”

  She turns. For a moment, the woman lumbering toward her seems only barely familiar. Then she gasps.

  “Maggie?”

  Clad in a loose sleeveless dress, shod in those clunky rubber Crocs everyone seems to wear, Maggie is almost unrecognizable. She’s cut her long black hair short and let it have its own natural, rambunctious way, falling in ringlets from the crown of her head to the nape of her neck.

  Maggie stops a moment to return Emily’s assessment. Emily wears black maternity running pants, a white, sleeveless, tight-fitting tee that expands over her pumpkin-size belly, and white running shoes. Her long blond hair is pulled back in a high ponytail. She glitters with diamonds, big studs in her ears, rings on her fingers.

  “Wow.” Maggie shakes her head in wonder. “Look at you.”

  “Look at you,” Emily shoots back. “You’re pregnant, too? How did that happen?”

  Maggie widens her eyes innocently and jokes, “The usual way, I guess.”

  “Oh, Maggie!” Emily throws her arms around Maggie, which is not an easy accomplishment, given their two bellies.

  “I didn’t know you were on the island,” Maggie says.

  “I just arrived. It’s unbearably hot in New York.”

  “It’s hot here, too,” Maggie counters.

  Other people nudge them in their attempts to reach the vegetable truck. “Do you want to grab something to eat?” Emily asks.

  “Sure. We can take it down to the harbor.”

  Emily winces. “Can’t we sit on a bench right here? My feet are swollen and walking kills me.”

  Linking arms, they cross the street and ask to be seated in the garden at Met on Main. The walled-in area, with its overhanging trees, is shady and cool and, at this hour, after breakfast and before lunch, occupied by only a few other people.

  “Let’s order something deliciously fattening,” Emily suggests, “to celebrate seeing each other again.”

  “Why not? It’s for the babies, right?”

  As the waiter takes their orders, they shuffle ar
ound, settling their purses on other chairs, getting comfortable, and then they stare at each other for a long time, smiling.

  “All right. You go first,” Emily says.

  Maggie grins. “Okay. Well, first of all—I’m pregnant.”

  Emily laughs. “You don’t say. Who’s the father? I’m not seeing a wedding ring. What’s the deal, Lucille?” When Maggie hesitates, Emily worries that she’s been too cavalier about her question. But Maggie seems happy …

  Finally, Maggie shrugs and admits, “It was a one-night stand.”

  “With …” Emily prompts.

  “An awesomely hunky guy.” Maggie pushes her hair back from her flushed face. “Damn, it’s hot.”

  “Go on.” Emily’s not going to let Maggie off that easily.

  “He’s not from the island, he’s no one special, he could scarcely remember my name. He doesn’t matter.” Maggie shakes her head as if shaking away unpleasant thoughts.

  Emily hesitates, waiting for more. Okay, she thinks, if Maggie wants to keep her secrets, there’s nothing Emily can do about it. She asks, “How’s Ben?”

  Maggie looks at her hands, folded on her belly. “My mother and Clarice are doing all right. It’s hard for them, but they’re hanging in there. Ben’s a different matter.”

  “Maggie—” Emily doesn’t know what to say and sighs with relief when the waiter arrives with their order of iced juice and pastries.

  It appears that Maggie’s not eager to talk about her brother, either, because after she takes a sip of juice, she says, brightly, “In a way, it’s all working out well, almost as if this baby was meant to be. You know I moved into the Orange Street house to help Clarice after her operation? Okay, well, now my mom has moved in with us. She cooks dinners for us every night, she takes Clarice out on little jaunts, and she’s knitting, sewing, and embroidering constantly for the baby.”