by Jean Stone
Even though he hadn’t sounded terribly thrilled, Jonas had agreed to have two or three of his paintings shipped for her to hang in the Inn. “I’ll do it for Lucy,” he’d said, “for building my website.”
But when Annie had broached the subject of the woman in Boston, he’d shut down. All he’d said was, “It’s about my mother. And about who my father might or might not have been.”
Which had turned Annie’s thoughts to two things: first, how to stop Jonas from being scammed; second, who her own birth father was, and if she’d have the chance—or the courage—to ask Donna before it was too late.
She realized then that she was not only exhilarated, but also depressed as hell. Yin and yang. Or yang and yin. However that went.
When she pulled into the driveway at the Inn, she wondered when she should stop thinking about it as an Inn and start to face reality. It was Friday—four weeks to the day before their guests were due to arrive. Before their account would have money coming in instead of going out, or, as was the case now, before it would come in instead of inching closer to maxing out Earl and Kevin’s American Express accounts. They didn’t need to share the numbers with her for Annie to know that disaster was imminent.
As she parked the Jeep, she decided to sleep at the cottage again that night, before Donna came back. But first she would do the laundry and give the whole place a good scrubbing, which would be nice for Donna, not to mention that the activity might help boost Annie’s mood.
With renewed purpose, Annie hauled the groceries and the other bags out of the back seat and made her way to the cottage. Just as she reached her front door, her phone rang. Juggling her purchases, she fished in her purse, pulled out her keys with one hand and the phone with the other, assuming that the caller would be John. So she didn’t bother to check caller ID.
“Annie? Larry Hendricks.”
She stopped. She squeezed her eyes shut. Next to Mark, Larry was the last person she wanted to talk to. Ever again. She almost hit the END button, but then remembered the skull and all the people that the outcome would affect.
“What?” Her tone was angry; she could not seem to help it.
“First, I’m sorry Mark was with me. But whatever stupid thing he did to you, he’s still my friend. He’s often mentioned trying to find you, so . . .”
“Is that why you called, Larry? Because if so, I am not interested. Not even a little.”
Silence hung in the late day air. Annie unlocked her door and snapped on the light. The place was tiny, but so homey. It was who she was now. She was no longer the person she had been when she’d been with Mark. Thank God.
“I’m also calling about the skull,” he said. “It’s a man. But really ancient. More than a century old.”
Before her legs could give out, she dropped into the rocking chair, her bags sliding to the floor. A giant sigh escaped her lungs. “Jonas,” she said.
“What?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Thank you for the information. Do they know if it’s Native American?”
“Not yet. I’ll keep you posted. And again, I’m sorry about Mark.” And then Larry hung up as quickly as he’d called.
All Annie could think was: more than a century old. So it wasn’t Derek. Smiling a big smile, she slumped against the backrest. There were others she should call first: John, of course. And Kevin. Earl. Taylor. But instead of them, Annie scanned her phone numbers and dialed Jonas.
“It’s not your father,” she said when he answered. “The skull. It isn’t him.”
He was as silent as Larry had been when Annie said she wasn’t interested in hearing his mea culpa about Mark. Then Jonas said, “So I still won’t know what happened to him.”
“No one will probably ever know for sure, Jonas. Maybe it’s time to trust your mother. Try to focus on the letters you have. The ones between your mother and your father. Believe in them. Because I do. I think your mother was a young girl caught in a terrible trap. I think they were very much in love and that they really did plan to elope to Hawaii. And raise you as their own.”
With every word she spoke, Annie was thinking—and wondering—about Donna.
Jonas said nothing, so she added, “I’m sorry things didn’t work out that way, Jonas. For all of you. But you do have lots of people here who care about you. Good people. People who believe in you and want to help. Instead of shipping me the paintings, won’t you please come home? This is your home now. Chappaquiddick.”
If they’d been in the same room, Annie thought she might have heard his heartbeat. Then he said, “I didn’t mean to hurt my mom.”
Annie laughed. “We always hurt the ones we love. Never mind, those were lyrics from an old song that you’ve probably never heard. Come home, Jonas. Your mother loves you. And so do we.” The last line had popped out unexpectedly, but she realized it was how she felt about a lonely young man, with a solitary life, reeling from having been abandoned—again—that time by his girlfriend, seeking an answer where there simply was none.
But the best response was yet to come when Jonas simply said, “Okay.”
In less than thirty minutes, Annie had gone from tired-but-happy to depressed to angry to peaceful. Her next call was to Taylor, because she deserved to know. Then she would call Kevin, because she was relieved for him, too.
* * *
John came to Chappy straight from the boat. Annie was asleep. “I wanted to return your text in person,” he whispered as he crawled into bed beside her. “In case you were wondering, I love you. Very much.”
* * *
In the morning, Earl didn’t seem surprised to find them having coffee, sharing a cinnamon roll that he’d often said he thought she made only for him. He helped himself to coffee, took another roll—the last—out of the freezer, and stuck it in the microwave as if they were at his house instead of hers. Annie promised that she’d make more before Donna came home. Home. Yes, the cottage now was Donna’s home, as well as Annie’s.
She and John had talked most of the night; or rather, Annie had talked and he had listened. He’d held her close when she’d cried about Donna’s situation; Annie had finally fallen asleep in his arms. It did not surprise her that she felt better now.
“What time is Kevin picking Donna up?” Earl asked.
“Around noon.”
He nodded. “They must want her out of there before they have to serve her another meal. It’s all about the insurance company’s bottom line.”
John laughed and stood up. “I’d better get home to my daughter.”
“You tell her you had an emergency last night?”
John’s face turned a little pink, the way Earl’s had when Annie had walked into the hospital room and seen Earl holding Donna’s hand. “She tell you that?”
Earl nodded. “She did. She also figured out it was not a police emergency. I’m only telling you that so you don’t think your daughter’s stupid.”
“Believe me, I know full well that Lucy is anything but.” John kissed Annie’s cheek, fist-bumped his father, and went out the door.
“So,” Earl said, “Kevin gave me the good news about your skull.”
“It’s not my skull,” she corrected him for the thousandth time. “But, yes, as John said when I told him, ‘at least it’s one less hurdle.’ The only obstacle left is the most important one.”
“Yep. I also heard a rumor from my granddaughter that Jonas is coming back.”
Annie wasn’t surprised that Jonas had called Lucy. “Yes. I’m happy for Taylor.”
“You did a good thing, Annie.”
“I only told him the truth.”
“Nonetheless, a good thing. Now, what about your mother?”
There was that word again, tossed at her from out of nowhere. By now she should be used it. Still, it made her feel a little bad for Ellen Sutton. “I was surprised to learn the truth about her yesterday.”
“Go easy on her. She’s dying, Annie.”
Annie closed her eyes. “
I know that, Earl. But it’s hard to believe she wants me to be her daughter—to be with her until the end—when she didn’t feel close enough to me to tell me what was really going on.”
“Maybe she was afraid if she said the words out loud it might make it too real for her. Maybe it had nothing to do with you. Or with Kevin.”
Tears welled; Annie brushed them away. “No more emotion right now, okay? I’ve had enough in the past two days to fill my quota for a year.”
He laughed, grabbed the bun from the microwave, and took a hearty bite. “If Claire and I had ever been blessed with a daughter, I would have wished that she was just like you.”
Annie’s mouth tipped up in a smile. “Eat your breakfast, then please get out of here. I want to clean this place from top to bottom so Donna will be comfortable.”
“Didn’t you just do that a week ago?”
“Dear God, was that only a week ago? It feels more like a month.”
Earl chewed, swallowed, and gave Annie a rare hug. Then he left the cottage, chuckling as he went. And Annie got to work. She began by stripping the sheets off the bed—sheets that still held the scent of the man who loved her. Life, she knew, could be better, but some parts could be much worse. She intended to always try to remember that.
* * *
By the time Kevin and Donna appeared, Annie had finished cleaning and clipped daffodils from the garden, arranging the flowers in a pretty vase that had belonged to her mother Ellen, and setting them in the center of the table. Then she’d made cinnamon rolls, followed by chicken sandwiches on warm wheat-berry bread from Orange Peel Bakery. She’d also made tomato and basil soup that simmered on the stove. The tomatoes had come from Chappy’s own Slip Away Farm; Claire had showed Annie how to can last fall—a word that still befuddled Annie, as glass jars, not cans, were used. As for the basil, Annie had grown and dried it by herself. She hoped if Donna wasn’t hungry, maybe the aroma in the cottage would feel welcoming.
Looking smaller, thinner, and tired, at least Donna was smiling as she stepped inside without Kevin’s assistance. “My goodness,” she said. “It looks lovely in here. And smells wonderful.”
Annie returned the smile and hugged her. “Welcome home,” she said. She hung up Donna’s coat on a peg inside the closet door.
“Nice flowers,” Kevin said. “You steal them from Earl’s?”
“No. You must have been too busy to notice that ours have bloomed,” she said with a note of pride. “I suppose you’ll stay for lunch?”
“Me too?” came Earl’s voice as he stepped in the doorway behind Kevin. “Then Kevin and I can go get your bed.”
Except for the furniture in the room at the Inn where Annie had been sleeping, they’d told East Chop Sleep Shop in Vineyard Haven to hold the rest until the interior work was complete. The room that they were going to permanently reserve for Francine and Bella would have twin beds; Earl had arranged to pick one of those up that afternoon.
“Makes no sense to buy or rent one when we already bought one,” Earl said. “We’ll figure out something else, once we need it for the Inn.” He not only spoke as if the Inn were going to open, but also as if Donna would still be there. In the nearly two years Annie had known him, she would not have thought that Earl would wind up being the optimist. No one, however, mentioned that, once they picked up the bed, the cost would show up on one of their credit cards. Unless the Louis Vuitton was filled with gold bricks after all.
Donna said she’d have a bowl of soup but would pass on the sandwich. Earl said he’d have the one that Annie had made for Donna. The four of them then squeezed around the cottage-sized table and shared a pleasant meal, the conversation brimming with hope.
“In case Annie’s attorney friend is right, I made some housing inquiries,” Earl said. “If the yahoos up in Boston can’t give us an answer before Memorial Day, that doesn’t have to mean our Canada goose is cooked. Hard as it might be to believe, I have a few friends here on the Vineyard. Even some on Chappaquiddick. And I’ve been asking around.”
Kevin leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “Asking around for what?”
Then Donna piped up, “Don’t lean back in the chair that way, honey. You’ll fall over and split your head wide open.”
Annie and Earl laughed, but Kevin resumed a straight-up position. “She’s only saying it because I did it once. Well, I didn’t exactly split my head wide open, but I did get a nice gash. Seven stitches.”
“Eight,” Donna corrected him. “Not to mention that it scared me half to death.” No one acknowledged that she’d used the word “death.”
Earl cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he continued, “I’ve lined up a couple of places where our tenants can stay until we can officially open. They’re only temporary, and they’re not very special, but they’re clean and, more important, they’re available if we need them. I still need to find one more—I’d hoped Taylor would let us use Jonas’s apartment, but now that he’s coming back, that idea’s out the window.”
“But we’re happy that he’s coming back,” Annie said firmly.
“Yup,” Earl replied. “We’re going to need his extra pair of hands once we get the go-ahead to finish.”
“If we get the go-ahead,” Kevin said.
“We will,” Earl said, then winked at Donna. “Donna and I discussed it, and she insists we should stay positive, so that’s what I’m doing. As soon as I did, then like that”—he snapped his fingers—“two solutions out of the three appeared under our noses. Or rather, under my nose, I suppose.”
It was really sweet that he’d befriended Donna—for all his yakkety-yak tendencies, Earl was a good person. And Annie was pleased that his presence seemed to keep Donna’s spirits up. Even so, she wasn’t sure that Claire would have approved of her husband’s winking at another woman, or holding her hand, whether she was sick or not.
Then Donna stood. She wobbled a little. Annie, Kevin, and Earl reacted quickly by reaching out, ready to steady her. Donna laughed. “Stop! I’m fine!” They pulled their arms back in unison. “And right now, despite the wonderful news about the rooms, I’m sorry, but I must break up the party because I need to rest.” She turned to Annie. “Thank you for the delicious soup. I hope there will be enough left for dinner.” She then smiled and wobbled into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
“Okay,” Earl said, standing, too. “Let’s get to Vineyard Haven, Kevin. My truck or yours?”
They picked Kevin’s truck because the back was bigger.
Annie sent them off with two baggies of chocolate chip cookies, as if they needed baggies, as if the cookies wouldn’t be devoured before they made it to the On Time. It seemed strangely inappropriate to feel the energy of happiness, given the circumstances with Donna, but Donna had insisted that they all stay positive, so Annie was determined to try to do her part. If only one of Earl’s comments wasn’t niggling at her: “In case Annie’s attorney friend is right . . .”
Enough! she thought. Then she knew that while so much that was happening was out of her control, there might be one thing she could put to rest.
Chapter 28
If she waited long enough, Annie knew she might change her mind.
So she went outside into the shed where the trash barrels were kept. She hadn’t put on gloves because she didn’t want to waste time trying to find some, and, besides, it was her trash, anyway.
Three barrels were full. She thanked God and the universe that Kevin had been so busy that he hadn’t yet gone to the transfer station. She dragged out the first, unhooked the lid, hoisted the barrel, then dumped it upside down. The contents spilled onto the lawn, and Annie started to dig through them.
A couple of beer bottles that Kevin should have recycled; cleaning remnants from Annie’s tear through the cottage before Donna’s arrival; two old towels that she’d tossed; the ferry stub from Donna’s passage. Things that had been thrown out earlier than what Annie was seeking. She stuffed it all back in and replaced
the lid.
Barrel number two held the latest things: latex gloves and medical wrappers that had held who-knew-what and had been torn open when Donna was passed out; miscellaneous bits and pieces; padded packing paper from the Vuitton trunk. Again, not what Annie needed.
As soon as she upended the third barrel, she knew it was the right one: parchment paper and other remnants from the cookies that she’d made for dinner at Earl and Claire’s (she’d been polite and brought her rubbish home from the community center); the random notes Annie had scribbled during Georgia Nelson’s visit; the wrapper from Lucy’s date nut bread that Annie and Donna had enjoyed . . . when? Yes! It was the same night that Mark had showed up at the door. She quickly rifled through the rest and, finally, there it was: the small white business card. MARK LEWISTON. COMMERCIAL PROPERTY CONSULTANT.
She shoved it in her pocket, stuffed the trash back into the barrel, and pushed all three barrels into the shed. Then she marched back to the cottage, willing her stomach to stop tumbling, forcing her brain to focus on Donna’s mantra and stay positive.
Once inside the cottage, she took her phone out of her purse, then went back outside so her voice wouldn’t disturb her mother. Her hand wasn’t even trembling when she tapped in the number, but her throat closed up a little when she heard his voice.
“Mark Lewiston. How may I help you?”
Did she really want to do this? Did she really want to ask if he knew if Larry had told her the truth? Did she really want to pin her hopes—their hopes: hers, Kevin’s, Earl’s, and the rest—on a man who had once nearly destroyed her life?
“Hello?” his voice repeated.
Then Annie heard herself say, “Mark, it’s Annie.”
There was silence on the other end. Perhaps he’d hung up.
But she thought she heard him breathing.
“Annie? Are you going to yell at me? ’Cuz if you are, please get it over with. I deserve everything you have to say.”
She hadn’t expected him to sound as if he’d been the one who’d phoned her, as if he’d been practicing those words and hadn’t been caught off guard.