“If you change your mind about the beach, the invitation is open.”
But Emily wouldn’t change her mind. She could feel her heart slipping even now. What she needed was not more time with Hollis. She couldn’t let her guard down, not even with him. Especially not with him. The risk far outweighed any potential reward.
Like her mother said, in matters of the heart, caution first.
Caution always first.
CHAPTER 24
TUESDAY MORNING, GLADYS SHOWED EMILY to a small office in the back corner of the theatre’s second floor.
“Forgive the mess,” she said. “We haven’t had anyone in this office in a while.”
Emily scanned the room quietly, noting that it was perfectly fine for her needs. A small desk jutted out from one wall, a functional chair positioned behind it. She turned to her left and saw two tall, overflowing bookshelves.
“What’s all this?” she asked.
“This shelf is all scripts,” Gladys said. “And this one is all memory books from past shows. We had a mom who was really into scrapbooking years ago.”
Laura Delancey’s mom. Emily remembered. Laura often won the leading role in whatever show they were doing. Her last summer there, Emily had been cast as Fern to Laura’s Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web. After the accident, Emily had left Nantucket before the show date, and she’d always wondered what had happened to her role. Maybe these books would tell her.
“If you need to call out, press nine first. If you need to reach the front desk, press three.”
Emily didn’t anticipate calling anyone. Her plan had been to make a decision about what show they were doing, choose scenes for the kids to read at the audition, and do some dreaming about the set, the costumes, the details.
Now that she thought about it, it was a lofty plan. She’d be lucky to get the show chosen.
“Okay.” Emily sat behind the desk. “I think I have everything I need.”
“Very good,” Gladys said with a quick nod. “I’m going out for a bit. Good luck.” She closed the door behind her as she walked away, the clicking of her thick heels growing more and more faint as the woman left the building.
Emily had just gotten her things situated when there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” she called out.
The door opened and a young woman with dark hair poked her head in. “Look how official you are.” She grinned.
“Don’t be fooled,” Emily said.
“I’m Marisol. I’m your intern–slash–assistant director–slash–professional coffee getter.”
“I didn’t realize I had one of those.”
“I was already interning at the arts center, so Gladys reassigned me to you,” Marisol said. “Truthfully, I don’t think she knew what to do with me. I’m a theatre major at Boston University, but I’m a lot more interested in writing and directing than I was a few years ago when I thought I wanted to be a star.”
Emily forced herself not to tell the girl that writing and directing was a lot harder than it seemed. Instead she smiled and said, “Well, I’m glad to have your help.”
“I already started our social media campaign, but the sooner we can land on a show, the better.” She handed Emily a stack of binders. “I pulled some scripts for you to consider.”
“Thanks, Marisol,” Emily said, truly grateful for the girl’s thoughtfulness.
“Need anything else?”
“Not right now,” Emily said.
“Okay. Everyone else is hard at work, so just holler if you need me. We already have twenty-five kids signed up.”
Emily practically gasped. “Really? How? We don’t even know what show we’re doing.”
“People don’t care. They just want to be involved,” Marisol said. “I’ve got Hillary organizing auditions.” Then, quietly—“It’ll keep her from talking your ear off.”
Emily laughed. “Great, thank you. I’ll let you know if there’s anything else.”
Marisol nodded and started for the door, but before she walked out, she turned back. “Hey, I’m really glad you’re doing this. I think it’s going to be so great for these kids. Especially the ones like me, who have trouble fitting in.”
There were more years between now and high school for Emily than there were for Marisol, but she still remembered that feeling well. Transitioning away from private on-set tutors back to middle school, then high school had been difficult for Emily. Even harder to navigate without her mom.
For a while, she stayed away from theatre altogether, but in eighth grade, the English teacher asked her to audition for the school’s production of Once Upon a Mattress.
She’d been cast as Winnifred, the lead, thereby reuniting her with her first love once again.
From then on, the stage became her safe haven. It gave her what she craved—a community, a family, that feeling of belonging.
It stung, knowing she’d lost that now, the one constant in her life. There was no coming back after her dismal failure. Her bad reviews. Her poor judgment. Her lack of talent. Her . . .
Stop, Emily.
“Also, I rewatched a ton of old Dottie’s World episodes last night,” Marisol said.
Emily’s heart dropped. Did that mean Marisol had also looked her up online? And if so, did that mean her new intern–slash–assistant director–slash–coffee getter knew about her catastrophic attempt to step out of her lane?
“I just have to say, you rocked those gaucho pants.” Marisol laughed.
If she knew about it, she wasn’t saying anything. That made Emily love this girl a little.
“That’ll be all, Marisol,” Emily said in mock annoyance.
“And the butterfly clips all over your hair was quite the style.”
Emily shot her a look and the girl ducked out of the office, the closed door doing a poor job of drowning out her laughter. She shook her head, giggling to herself over Marisol’s teasing.
Once the office was quiet, Emily found it difficult to concentrate. She leafed through a number of scripts, but her eyes scanned the same pages over and over. She glanced at the bookshelf with the scrapbooks on it.
In eighteen years, she hadn’t allowed herself to revisit that summer or those memories, and now here they were, staring her in the face. Not just the scrapbooks, but the house, Hollis, this theatre—all of it. She couldn’t get away.
Oddly, she realized, part of her didn’t want to run from it. Part of her wanted to remember.
Not the day her grandparents forced her to leave her cast in a lurch, ushering her off the island, heartbroken by the loss of her mother, but the rest of it. Finding her name on the cast list. Going to the first rehearsal. Trying on her costume for the first time. Making new friends.
Emily scanned the spines of the scrapbooks until she found the one for that summer eighteen years ago. She pulled it off the shelf and walked it back to the desk.
Slowly she opened the front cover to reveal the full cast photo and the logo for Charlotte’s Web. She ran a finger over the smiling faces—so many friends she thought she’d know for the rest of her life, and now she could hardly remember any of their names.
She turned the page and found the header Rehearsals.
Page after page of fun rehearsal shots stared back at her. The image of her eleven-year-old self caught in character, frozen in time. Oh, the things she wished she could tell that girl now.
It’s about to get really hard for you, little Emily, she’d say, but hold tight. You’ll get to the other side of it someday.
But was that true? Had she gotten to the other side of it? Or was she still out there, floundering?
She’d found a way to put the past so far out of her mind, she rarely thought of Nantucket or the accident or the way her childhood was stolen from her. But here, in this theatre, looking at these photos—or standing anywhere near Hollis—it all felt so fresh.
It was as if she’d been transported back in time, and now she was stuck there with a broken time mach
ine.
She turned the page, surprised to find a scrapbooked tribute to her mom. The obituary of Isabelle Ackerman had been neatly tacked down next to images of Emily in costume.
A short, handwritten explanation of what had happened had been added to the page.
Our very own Fern (Emily Ackerman) suffered a great tragedy when her mother’s car was involved in an accident out on Cliff Road after midnight on July 31.
We were so thankful Emily’s injuries were minor, but the loss of her mother led to the loss of our Fern, and with only two weeks until showtime, Jenna Martin stepped into the role.
There was a cutout from the program, a heart drawn around the words This performance is dedicated to Emily Ackerman with all of our love and prayers.
Emily stared at the words as a lump formed in her throat. She didn’t know they’d dedicated the performance to her. She remembered the flowers they’d sent to the funeral—Emily had taken them home with her. But the rest of this, she’d never seen.
She reread the words Laura’s mother had written about the accident. Great tragedy . . . her mother’s car . . . Cliff Road.
Emily paused. That wasn’t right. Her mother’s accident had been in ’Sconset, not on Cliff. Laura’s mom must’ve mixed up the neighborhoods. Emily turned the page and found an article that had been clipped from the newspaper,. The headline read Local Woman Killed in Late-Night Crash.
Emily’s stomach twisted into a tight knot, but she forced herself to scan the words on the yellowing page.
The newspaper reported that Isabelle Ackerman, twenty-nine, and her daughter, Emily, eleven, were rushed to Nantucket Cottage Hospital, where Isabelle was pronounced dead on arrival and Emily was treated overnight and expected to make a full recovery.
Just like that, she was in the backseat of her mother’s Buick, trying to get her mom to explain.
“Why are we leaving in the middle of the night?” Emily had asked.
Her mom was uncharacteristically worked up. “Are you buckled?” she’d barked over her shoulder.
“Yes, Mom. What’s wrong?”
“I’ll explain it all to you once we get there,” she’d said.
“Get where?”
“Emily, please.” Her mom squinted as the wipers were unable to keep up with the rain covering the windshield. “I can’t see anything.” She reached behind the seat and stretched a hand toward her daughter.
Emily hesitated.
“Em.” Her mom tossed a glance back.
Emily reached up and took her hand.
“You and me, kid,” her mom said.
Emily’s eleven-year-old mind spun through scenarios of what could’ve gone wrong between her mom and her grandparents, but she couldn’t think of anything that would cause her mom to flee the cottage in the middle of the night.
What happened next was still a blur. It was so dark, and the roads were so slick.
Later, in the hospital, she remembered one of the officers telling Grandma and GrandPop that Isabelle had tried to take a turn at too high a speed and slid into a large beech tree. She’d died instantly, the policeman said, as if that was supposed to comfort them.
The impact had thrown Emily sideways, and she hit her head on the window and was knocked unconscious. She remembered nothing after taking her mother’s hand, only waking up in the hospital.
Emily closed her eyes. She hadn’t let herself relive that moment in a very long time. For years after the accident, she’d have nightmares where she had to experience those moments over and over again. But she’d found a way to bury them and had been unwilling to dig them up, even for the sake of her craft.
Some memories were best left buried.
She opened her eyes and reread the words on the page.
The single-car crash, which happened just after midnight on Cliff Road near North Liberty Road, resulted in the death of Isabelle Ackerman, daughter of Alan and Eliza Ackerman.
Cliff Road.
Emily couldn’t remember where they’d gone. She’d been too upset when they left. She’d been begging her mother to explain, not paying attention to street signs.
But her grandmother had told her the accident was on ’Sconset, at the opposite end of the island. Emily wasn’t a mother, but even she knew that wasn’t the kind of detail a mother forgets.
So why had Grandma lied about the location of the accident?
Emily ran a finger over the words: Cliff Road.
That same curiosity about the past that had led her to open the scrapbook in the first place was back.
“Where were you going that night, Mom?” she whispered. And why so many secrets?
The questions nagged, sparking more questions. How was she supposed to walk away from any of this now, without answers to any of them?
She picked up her phone, found her grandma’s name in her contacts, and pressed Call.
Grandma answered on the first ring. “Well, finally.”
“I know I haven’t been around, Grandma. I’m sorry.”
“How’s the island?”
“It’s good,” she said.
“You’re finding ways to keep busy?”
“Yes, there’s plenty to do.” She knew Grandma would want details, but she didn’t want to share them yet. She didn’t want Grandma to know she was directing a show at the arts center or that she’d reconnected with Hollis.
Or that she was having a really, really hard time here.
“Well, I hope you’re not doing the work in the house yourself. There’s plenty of money to hire it all out. Have you found some good help?”
“Yeah, I have, actually,” Emily said. “Actually, Grandma, I have a question for you.”
“All right.”
Emily took a deep breath and almost chickened out. They didn’t talk about the accident. Ever. It was as if the conversation had been marked “off-limits” years ago and everyone obeyed the silent order.
But didn’t Emily have a right to know?
“I read an old newspaper article today,” she said. “It was about Mom.”
She was met with silence on the other end.
“I just wanted to double-check something.”
“Emily, some things are better left in the past.” Grandma sounded irritated.
“I know, Grandma, but can you just tell me where the accident happened?”
“Where?”
“Like, where on the island?”
Grandma sighed. “I suppose you were bound to ask questions, being back in Nantucket,” she said. “She was on her way to ’Sconset. The accident was there.”
“But why was she going to ’Sconset?”
“She had a friend who lived over there. Her name was Shae something-or-other. She was a few years older than your mother.”
“But why so late at night?” Emily asked. “And why take me with her?”
“Your mother was always impulsive, Emily,” she said. “You know this already.”
“The article said the accident happened on Cliff Road,” Emily said.
A pause went on for several seconds.
“Grandma?”
“That newspaper was notorious for getting details wrong,” Grandma said. “They don’t have the same quality journalists we have here in Boston. It must’ve been a mistake. I remember having a whole conversation with the police officer about this. Now, if there’s nothing else, I should go. I’m hosting bridge club tonight.”
“Right,” Emily said.
“Thanks for the call, dear,” Grandma said.
“Bye.” She hung up the phone, filled with more questions now than she had been before and certain she did not have the whole story about her mother’s accident.
And she wondered if she ever would.
CHAPTER 25
HOLLIS FOUND JOLIE sitting on the back deck, scrolling on her phone. She didn’t look up when he opened the sliding-glass door or when he sat down in the chair next to her.
Tilly lazed at her feet. Both of them were utterly indiffe
rent to his presence.
Emily was right—he’d been overthinking this. He’d imagined perfect conversations, the exact turn of phrase that would show his daughter he wasn’t the jerk she thought he was, but maybe there was no such thing as perfect.
Communicating with Jolie had become more difficult than making contact with a slider, and Hollis knew it was his guilt and not his daughter that was getting in the way.
“Sorry about earlier,” he said, breaking the silence.
Jolie didn’t respond.
He replayed the moment she came racing toward him in Emily’s backyard the day before.
“Dad, do you want to take me to the beach? I want to work on my tan.”
“Can’t right now, JoJo,” he’d said curtly.
“But I’m not a good enough swimmer to go alone,” she’d said.
He hadn’t even stopped what he was doing long enough to give her the attention she deserved. Not even five minutes of his time. His foul mood had led to another short reply, which led to her walking away without another word.
He was taking out his irritation over his argument with Emily on Jolie, and that wasn’t fair. But how did he explain that to her now? How did he explain that one of his oldest friends had walked back into his life and her main observation about him was that he was a bad father?
Emily had a way of saying exactly what she thought, which on normal days he appreciated, but not when her bluntness was directed at him.
But Jolie didn’t need to know that.
Maybe he should try it Emily’s way. He drew in a breath, aware that a rejection from Jolie would sting worse than any woman who’d ever turned him down. But she was worth the risk.
“Have you ever gone paddleboarding?”
She looked up. She claimed to be scared of the water, but he had a feeling she was a lot more daring than she let on. She shook her head.
He stood and held out a hand to her. She stared at it as if it were something foreign.
“Let’s go.”
“I’m not sure I want to,” she said.
“Come on. I’ll teach you.”
Reluctantly she put her hand in his and he helped her stand up with a gentle tug. He turned toward the yard, realizing she hadn’t immediately let go of his hand, and he imagined this was what it was really like to have a daughter.
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