I follow it down a sandy path that weaves between two enormous, sprawling summer houses: “Summersweet” on my right and “Beach Glass” on my left, both closed up tight for winter. Pretentious, I think. No one in Ventura names their house. Though it’s hard to argue with the beauty of the houses themselves.
The path cuts through brambles before leading me to a rocky drop and onto the beach. The sand isn’t wide here, but the turn in the cove forms a barrier, causing the waves to break far offshore. The water is very still and clear. It would be a great place for little kids to swim. There’s a ring of blackened stones where people have built fires before, and I wish I had one now.
I could have been a kid swimming here, if my father is Jay, I think, if Hannah hadn’t run away from this life. On the other hand, I could see how Great-Aunt Helen might make anyone feel like running was the only reasonable option.
But what if it is Jay? Will that mean summers here? Sunbathing at this beach? Sitting around this fire at night?
There are initials carved all over the giant logs, old ones and new ones. I don’t see an “HV + JN” or even just an “HV.” I search until I’m too cold, and the sun has sunk down too far to warm my little patch of sand. I give up on the lighthouse expedition.
I’m hungry again, so I decide to stop in at the place Eliza recommended, the Picnic Basket. It’s a cozy, wood-paneled cottage that looks warm even from the outside. The door shuts behind me with a cheerful jangle. It almost feels hot after wandering around the island for so long.
“Welcome,” says a lady in a denim shirtdress and apron. “Boy, your cheeks are pink. Wind blowin’ out there?”
“Yes,” I say, rubbing my hands together. My mouth waters at the list of delicious sandwiches. They all have names like Irene, Hugo and Gloria. “Are those famous people from the island?” I ask.
“No, they’re named after storms. The Ida’s my favorite. Roast turkey with cranberry chutney. She was an almost Thanksgiving hurricane.” She eyes me curiously, as Jay and Eliza did. “This your first visit?”
“It’s that obvious, huh?” I answer with a laugh. I contemplate ordering the Ida until I realize I only have five dollars left from breakfast. I didn’t think to bring much money from school, so I go with Eliza’s recommendation. It looks like a muffin-only diet today. “Do you have any blueberry muffins?”
She smiles back. “You’re in luck. Three left. Usually they’re gone by ten, but this time of year, weekends are slow. It’s the best season to see the island, though, in my opinion. You’re a little late for the foliage, but you got the place to yourself. Just the rocks and the ocean and the salt air and the sky.”
And all the stuff nobody wants to talk about, like money, I think. But I let her talk on, which she seems to enjoy, as I spend two of my last five dollars on my muffin.
Back outside, I start the climb to Great-Aunt Helen’s house. On the bluff road, two girls whiz past me on bikes, and one waves. Eliza. This island really is small. I already feel like I know half the people who live here.
Over dinner, I try asking Great-Aunt Helen about Hannah’s island friends, about who she hung out with the summers she came here. I mention Jay a few times, and Hannah’s summer job writing for the newspaper. Great-Aunt Helen has nothing to say, other than that Hannah “did not always comport herself like a Verlaine.” She gives me a pointed look, making it clear that for all she knows, the other side of my family is made up of South American chinchillas. She’s not going to provide any clues to my father’s identity, but at the same time, if she has no idea who he is, maybe I can rule out Stone Cove Islanders or any old family friends in Boston.
“I don’t know what your mother was thinking,” concludes Great-Aunt Helen at the end of the dinner, apropos of nothing but another long silence.
“Having me, you mean?” I can’t help it.
“Of course not,” she snaps, but has enough grace to look a little embarrassed. “What I mean is, she could have had a lovely life here. She had her family, she had nice friends and she knew everyone . . .”
Everyone, meaning everyone worth knowing.
“Maybe she was looking for an adventure. Somewhere she could make her own rules.”
“She certainly did that,” says Great-Aunt Helen, pursing her lips. “She certainly did.”
In the morning, it takes about three minutes to pack the few items I brought with me. When I hear the wind chimes next door, I go out back and find Jay crossing the yard in my direction. I’m so jittery, wondering what he wants to show me. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I woke up. An old baby photo? A letter? A page torn from my mother’s old diary? A copy of my birth certificate?
He hands me a typed sheet. “Here it is.”
It’s a yellowed sheet of newspaper. I read the headline: “The Future of the Piping Plover.”
Piping Plovers have made their home on Stone Cove Island for hundreds of years. But their nesting habits make them vulnerable to predators as well as humans . . .
“What do you think of that?” asks Jay. I glance up, baffled. He is beaming. “Your mom’s first story in the Gazette. She wrote that when the Migratory Birds Convention Act Amendment was passed in 1994.”
Yes. That’s my mom. Once the environmentalist, always the environmentalist. “And you’ve kept it all this time,” I say. That could mean something, couldn’t it? I picture Chazzy, snickering at me for being a fool again.
“I keep everything. Charlie is half right about that. The Gazette has an incredible archive, should anyone ever be interested. Which I highly doubt, of course. I’ve got no illusions. There were a few patchy years there while I was on leave—”
“On leave?” I ask. To California? Or New York? About seventeen years ago?
“I took a little sabbatical. I was in the Peace Corps in Mali for about five years. Then I came back, and no one else seemed to want to step in at the Gazette, so I took up right where I left off. And here I am today. Not what I expected from life, but I’ve had a good run. No complaints.”
“Wow,” I say. He and Hannah definitely have a lot of things in common, but geography is not one of them. “That must have been amazing. When were you there?”
“Oh, let’s see. Ninety-eight to two thousand three or four. It was quite an experience. But it was also nice to come home.”
“Uh-huh. I bet,” I say, watching my hunch flame out.
When it’s time for me to go, my great-aunt does not say goodbye. Instead she leaves a note. (As a kid, my mother taught me to say goodbye to people in person, but whatever.) Her penmanship is excellent. Apparently Great-Aunt Helen had errands to run. She’s got to be the busiest lady on this almost-deserted island.
I don’t understand why she had me come all the way here if she’d already decided not to help me—unless it was to make the point that it was her decision. Sparkler gives me a lick before I take off though, so that’s nice.
As I climb into the Lincoln, I almost feel like asking Bernard what it’s like working for my great-aunt. But there’s no point. He’d never tell me.
Chapter Fourteen
Yearbook
It’s almost check-in by the time Bernard finally pulls the car up to Hardwick Hall. When we crunch onto the long gravel drive, I don’t think I have ever been so relieved to arrive anywhere in my life. Two days on Stone Cove Island have made me see Hannah’s world through her eyes, at least more than I think I did before. It’s both beautiful and ugly, tiny and frozen in time—frozen so as not to let anyone in or anyone out. I can see how hard it was for her to leave and how impossible it was to stay. I wish so much I could talk to her about summers there, about writing for the Gazette, exploring those craggy coves, and whether Great-Aunt Helen’s house creeped her out the way it did me.
I picture her as she appears in her Last Year class portrait, poised and self-assured, looking like she belongs. She spent a lif
etime saying how different she was from her parents, how she never felt at ease in their world, how she couldn’t wait to get away once she was old enough. But in that photo, at least, she looks completely at home. Hardwick wasn’t uncomfortable for her the way it is for me.
I wonder what Stone Cove Island was like for her. Was she at home there? What I am pretty sure of is, if she’d stayed, that island would have been pretty uncomfortable with some of her choices.
Later that night, in bed, I can’t sleep. From the moment I shamble into the suite, I make it clear that I don’t want to talk about the weekend. Eloise and India leave me alone, thankfully. Honor, of course, is no issue. She barely notices I’ve returned.
I see my mother, frozen in some hospital in Greenland, and my heart races. She can’t die. She can’t just die. Especially now. We’ve always been so close; now she’s like some stranger. Not like my actual mother. I need to understand her, who she is now and who she used to be. I can’t let her go, not knowing.
I take out the blue bandanna Jay gave me and spread it across my pillow. It doesn’t smell like Hannah. It doesn’t smell like anything.
I shift onto my stomach. Dwelling on this is only taking me down a spiral to nowhere. Even if I could get answers from Hannah about any of this in theory, I can’t do it in reality.
Then I remember I have her yearbook. I haven’t looked at it since I unpacked the day I got here. As quietly as I can, I hop down to grab it from my bookshelf and get back under the covers with the little reading light I use when I don’t want to wake India up—not that I’m in any danger of doing so. She’s snoring just as loudly as always.
I open the book and search for Hannah’s page. Each Last Year gets a page with a black-and-white portrait and a smaller collage with pictures of their friends, quotes, interests, summer houses, horses, cryptic lists of past accomplishments, predictions, inside jokes. I pass Nina Taubin’s picture as I page through to my mother’s. She wears the same pinched mouth and unhappy smile she does now. Her collage is minimal: all achievements and no fun. Hannah’s page, on the other hand, is packed—mostly with things other people wrote about her. The first line reads, “Prettiest girl not to care about that kind of thing.” Her prediction is, “Go west, young girl (but we think the Man on the Moon might not let you go).” She’s salutatorian, with an honor medal in English. There are scribbled notes from friends and admirers—lots of boys, judging from the terrible handwriting. “Man on the Moon”—I know that song; it’s by R.E.M., one of my mother’s favorite bands. Another song I’d heard over and over growing up.
I flip to Warren Norwood. Not surprisingly, his page is theater top to bottom: Norwood in Shakespearean bloomers in one shot, an abstracted horse costume in another, a tuxedo with rouged cheeks in a third. A quote from Oscar Wilde: “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
Nearer the front, Honor’s father’s page boasts an impressive list of accolades: “Most likely to succeed without even trying”—as well as favorite quotations and inside jokes with friends: “Gibbous! Never say never!” (The only reason I know the word gibbous is because it’s in the Aimee Mann song “Ghost World,” and I looked it up. It means a waxing moon.) And several quotes from The Catcher in the Rye.
I turn back to Hannah’s page. In cramped boy-freehand is a little drawing that fills the left margin: a gnarled tree, a heart carved into its trunk with the words “Holden loves Franny,” and below the drawing, the initials EG. Initials, like the clue I was looking for in the driftwood on Stone Cove Island.
I just finished reading The Catcher in the Rye, so I know who Holden is. “Franny” must be my mom. I picture Hannah’s bookshelf at home, The Catcher in the Rye filed next to Franny and Zooey. It’s obvious who EG is. Edward Gibson was obsessed with J. D. Salinger, Edward Gibson was in love with my mom. Gibbous. Gibby. The Man in the Moon. My horrible roommate’s dad loved my mom. I sit straight up in bed. My hands feel clammy. The facts tip slowly against each other: tip, tip, tip. And then in a terrible rush of dominoes, they clatter down inside my head.
Honor and I have matching anchor charms, though she swears the design is one of a kind.
Honor’s dad and my mom were close at school, according to Ms. Taubin.
Both spent time on Stone Cove Island.
Before I left for boarding school, Hannah, in a grand gesture, bought me a Gibson guitar. Hannah doesn’t know what kind of guitar Aimee Mann plays. Of course she doesn’t. She was thinking about the name of the guitar. Gibson. Her old love. Her secret.
I drop the yearbook, recalling what Honor said about their house on Stone Cove Island, how her father had sold it when Honor was a baby because he “didn’t like it there anymore.”
Was that because Hannah had moved to California and was never coming back?
Someone from Hannah’s long-ago past. Check.
They live in different worlds. Not from different worlds. Double check.
“Holy shit, Hannah.” I say the words out loud. I feel like I’m dreaming, but I know I’m not. India’s jackhammer snoring reassures me that I am firmly here, now, in reality.
I’m sure I know who my father is. Not Norwood. Not Jay. Edward Gibson. Honor’s father. I confront this idea full-on. It seems both obvious and impossible. Honor is my half-sister. I have a half-sister. And a half-brother! I almost laugh. Ned is good news, at least.
I know how Honor’s going to feel about this. But what about her father? My father, I mean. What’s his reaction likely to be?
In the Disney version of this, Honor and I become best friends and scheme to get our parents back together. In the real-life version, the news of me being her (half-)sister is likely to be the single stain on Honor’s platinum-plated life. Yes, I’m pretty confident that no one involved is going to be all that happy about this messy revelation. Hannah isn’t going to hop on a plane, thrilled that the secret is finally out, all set for a tasteful wedding ceremony in a cream-colored suit and minimalist bouquet, coma notwithstanding. That leaves me alone with the good news.
I stare up at the underside of India’s bed, and the whole room spins.
•••
The next morning I go to breakfast early, when I’m sure almost no one will be there. I need to think, and I need to be by myself to do it. I also need to get out of our room before Honor is up. I dread seeing her, even though of course for her, nothing has changed. But somehow knowing and being in the same room with her not knowing seems intolerable. How can I say anything? Or not say anything? Thoughts are pounding so loudly in my head it seems strange that people around me—walking by on the path, the few early birds lining up to check in, the kitchen staff spooning out oatmeal—can’t hear them.
I sit at the farthest table and stare into my plate. I don’t know what to do next. I don’t even know what to want to do next. I want to meet my father. I want to understand why my mother did this, because it makes no sense. Of course, only two people can answer those questions—the what and the why—so for now, it’s still a riddle.
I’m so happy when I see Chazzy in the Hale stacks after English that I can barely keep myself to library-level volume. We spend half an hour in the language lab working on the plus-que-parfait and conditionnel passé. I’ve already resolved not to tell him or anyone else about this crazy business until the dust settles internally and I can talk to Hannah. Eventually she’ll wake up, and I need to hear her say I’m right.
She has to wake up. She will wake up. The doctors say she will.
But on the way back to class, Chazzy asks, “So what’s new, Wren?”
It’s a joke we have since we see each other multiple times a day, pretty much every day. Usually we’ll ask it after we’ve already spent hours together. And I suspect it’s also a sort of unspoken joke about the kiss. Because that is something we still haven’t discussed or repeated. But miraculously, nothing has really changed between u
s. He’s still my best friend. I cling to that. I wonder if he does too.
“What’s new?” I say. “Oh, you know. The usual . . .”
Then I stop in the middle of the path and start to bawl. It is ugly, snotty, and loud. Definitely not the answer he was expecting.
“Okay,” Chazzy says, a little stunned, but putting on a brave face. To his credit, he doesn’t even glance around in embarrassment to see if people are watching, which I know they are. “Okay. Why don’t we just sit for a minute?”
We plunk ourselves down on some icy logs to the side of the path, since there’s no bench handy. I’m cold, but it feels good to just stop and let myself fall apart.
Chazzy rests his hand on my back, between my shoulders. “You don’t have to tell me, Wren. But if you want to, you can tell me. Okay?”
“Thank you. I want to. You are the one person I can talk to.”
“Right back at you,” he says, his Southern drawl pronounced.
“Okay,” I begin, leaning into him. “Over fall break, while I was hanging around here by myself, I got on this Nancy Drew kick and started looking into my mother’s past. When she was here in school.”
“Yeah?” Chazzy encourages, his hand still on my back, steady.
“Anyway, when I got back yesterday, I remembered I had her old yearbook. I don’t know why I even packed it. But you know how kids write those secret messages to each other about what they’ll always remember from school? It turns out my mom and Honor’s dad were together. Like, in a big romance. In love. You know, I was so convinced Norwood was my father . . .”
“Right.” Chazzy chuckles lightly. “‘Wren Has Two Daddies.’”
“Anyway, when I thought about it, when I put everything together, it makes total sense. Which makes Honor my sister.”
Chazzy is silent. His hand falls from my back. “You’re kidding, right?”
I sniffle and shake my head, looking up at him.
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