“All right, ladies. Let’s dig in,” Amelia told them both as she set her phone off to the side.
“Finally,” Camilla grumbled. She lifted her burger and bit down solidly, just as Amelia’s phone buzzed again. “Don’t you dare,” Camilla said through a mouth full of burger.
But Amelia didn’t listen. She lifted her phone and said, “Did he agree to the meeting? What do you mean, he’s on lunch? He shouldn’t be on lunch at this time—”
Camilla and Mila again locked eyes. Finally, Amelia managed to get off the phone. She grumbled that “nobody knows what they’re doing,” then took another large bite of her fry.
“Anyway,” Camilla continued as she rolled her eyes. “I think we agreed to meet because you have some news to share, Mila?”
Mila’s eyes widened at Cam’s words. “It’s been a really crazy time.”
“The orientation?” Amelia asked.
“Not only that. But the cop from last week came to the salon yesterday. He told me they found the guy who stole the car?”
“Yeah?” Camilla and Amelia were in total unison. Mila had their full attention.
“Apparently, he was one of Peter’s super fans. He matched with me on that app on purpose, it seems like.”
Amelia’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”
“That’s so creepy!” Camilla cried.
“I know. I don’t know what to make of it,” Mila said with a sigh. “Peter’s writing career never really took off the way he wanted it to. I knew he had fans — they wrote emails to him and stuff, but I never imagined it would be this obsessive. Especially two years after he died.”
“A real stalker,” Camilla breathed. She then yanked her head around to glare at Amelia. “And you’re the one who arranged the date with him!”
“It’s not like you could tell from the description or the photos that he was after Mila,” Amelia returned. “He just looked like a regular guy.”
Mila nodded. “I looked at the profile again the other day and there was nothing out of the ordinary. I guess he had me pegged, though. He knew what to put in the profile to make me think he would be a good match.”
They held the silence for a moment. Camilla opened her lips and then closed them again.
“What?” Mila asked. “You were going to say something. I hate when you do that.”
“It’s just — urgh. I hate the idea of you going out on these stupid dates with guys from the internet. With people you don’t know,” Camilla confessed.
“Me too. I hate it so much,” Mila admitted. She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, then added, “And maybe I’m just done with the whole dating thing for a while. It’s just, the concept of being an empty-nester is really freaking me out. I feel like I won’t know what to live for when my kids are gone. I already feel it coming like a storm.”
“There’s this new doctor at the hospital,” Camilla said then. “Really handsome and he’s very kind. He replaced that scumbag from before. You remember him.”
Mila and Amelia nodded. Camilla had gone out on one date with a doctor who’d been very good friends with a serious scammer on the island, a man who had attempted to rob Camilla and her family of all their life savings. The whole thing had been terribly dramatic — a bad nightmare, Camilla now called it.
“We laugh and joke all through the shift when we can, that is,” Camilla offered. “I’ve really sussed him out. He went to Yale like your parents and he’s just been working in Providence for a number of years. He just arrived to Martha’s Vineyard, and he really loves it.”
“Let me guess. He spends all his free time sailing,” Mila said.
“All sailors are not bad,” Camilla interjected.
“Graham sailed. And he was stalking my husband. So... that’s just math,” Mila argued.
“Yeah. And we all know how good at math you were,” Amelia replied sarcastically.
“Jeesh. I got a D one time! Just one time! And I swear, you and my mother want to bury me with that grade,” Mila said.
“I just remember what you were up to the night we were all studying for it,” Amelia said as she wagged her eyebrows. “And it wasn’t exactly studious.”
Mila remembered it well. She’d been making out with the high school quarterback behind the bleachers. So what? At the time, she’d been one of the hottest girls in school. The concept of “making good grades in order to go to a good school” had been pretty far from her mind. She thanked God above every day that Isabelle was a bit different.
“I swear. Having lifelong friends gets old sometimes,” Mila said. “I can’t ever shake the bad memories.”
“We’ll always be there to remind you. Lucky you,” Camilla said with a grin.
“But why wouldn’t you go out with this doctor guy?” Amelia asked as she lifted another French fry. “He sounds perfect.”
“It’s because Mila doesn’t actually want to be happy,” Camilla offered.
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Mila said.
“No. I think that’s sometimes true,” Amelia interjected. “I think I was like that for a long time. I always told myself that someday, I would figure myself out. I would find someone. I would build a family. But it took all of the craziness of this year for it to really happen. I had to welcome it, you know?”
Mila gaped out the window. She was suddenly not hungry at all. Still, she nibbled at the end of her fry.
“You said he went to Yale?” Mila asked finally.
“Wouldn’t your parents do backflips if it worked out?” Camilla asked.
“Probably, but I’m not sure how much I want to please Jamie and Diana Ellis,” Mila told them.
“You sound like a teenager,” Amelia pointed out.
Mila took a large bite of her burger and chewed contemplatively. Both of her friends ogled her as though she was on the verge of some kind of breakdown. Finally, Camilla said, “Are you going to say yes to this set-up? Or should I let the doctor date another eligible and beautiful woman on this island?”
“Fine. Set it up!” Mila said, exasperated.
But in actuality, her mind was somewhere far, far away. She had agreed to meet with Graham in several days’ time, at the police station, and the meeting brewed before her like the eye of a storm. Yes, she would go on a date with a handsome doctor; she would allow Isabelle to dress her up; she would play the part of a wanted woman. But in truth, she felt somehow a part of a greater story — a story Peter had written especially for her. For the first time in two years, she felt as though Peter was very close. And she wanted to squeeze this story for all it was worth.
“But after that, I’m going to meet my stalker,” Mila said hurriedly.
Amelia’s jaw dropped. “I don’t think you should do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because! He’s dangerous!” Camilla cried.
“Yes. Maybe. But I’m so fascinated with it all. Like, what was it about Peter’s books that he loved so much? And did he really come all the way to Martha’s Vineyard to meet me? And did he really steal that specific car just because Peter wrote about it in his book? It’s such precision. So much commitment to detail.”
“Probably, he planned to murder you or something,” Camilla said.
Mila had to laugh. It was all so preposterous. She leaned back and placed her half-eaten burger on her plate. Out the window at Peases’s Point, she watched as Oliver pulled his car up alongside the mailbox and strung his hand through the window to grab Amelia’s mail. There was such tenderness to that motion. She remembered well that Peter would frequently grab the mail and place it in a stack near the microwave. They normally went through it together. Theirs had been a unique partnership. She wondered if she would ever be allowed something like that again.
“So, I’ll tell the doctor you’re available?” Camilla finally asked again, exasperated.
“She’s barely even available to us right now,” Amelia said with a laugh. “Look at her. She’s a million years away.”
<
br /> Mila flashed her eyes back toward her friends as Oliver’s voice rang out in greeting. “I don’t know what you girls are talking about,” she said. “You know I love to live in the moment.”
Camilla laughed outright. “We’re all just a bunch of nostalgic grown-up teenagers. That’s all we’ll ever be.”
Chapter Fifteen
Mila and Isabelle sat on the front porch swing and waited for the doctor to arrive. It was eighty-five degrees out, one of the sinister days at the end of July when you just waited and waited for the heat to break; their minds had room for little other thought.
Like before, Isabelle had dressed Mila up beautifully. She wore a white crop-top and a pair of high wasted jeans, which didn’t show a smidge of skin, but there was a youthfulness to the outfit, something that told Mila, “Okay. I’m still out here. I’m still trying. I still have something to live for.”
A white Porsche eased into the driveway and immediately afterward, Isabelle whistled. “I guess he probably didn’t steal that one, right?”
Mila laughed. “Probably not. Although who knows? Can we really trust anyone these days?” Mila hadn’t yet told her children about the more sinister nature of Graham. She wasn’t sure she would. They were adults, or at least, growing into adults, but she still had that itch to protect them. That would never go away.
The doctor’s name was Rudy Pankow. His hair was cropped tight against his head, like a soldier, and his shoulders were broad and masculine, suggesting he frequently worked out. He greeted her warmly with a side-hug and then said, “I have to admit, I almost never let a nurse set me up with one of her friends. But there was something about the way Camilla spoke about you. I couldn’t resist.”
Mila laughed nervously. He opened the passenger door for her as she waved a hand toward Isabelle. Here she went off on another silly dating adventure that she had no idea of how it would end. She had to hope that her sisters knew best, despite evidence to the contrary in the form of Graham from the app.
Rudy asked her polite questions as they drove toward the beach bar. He asked if she’d ever lived off the island, which she replied, a resounding NO, and what her career was and whether or not she’d ever wanted to be anything else. That last question threw her for a loop.
“I always wanted my own salon,” she confessed softly. “My mother couldn’t believe it. But I just wanted this space dedicated wholly to the confidence and beauty of women. I have many theories about what it means to live in the world as a woman. It’s difficult to put into words.”
Rudy stopped the engine and gave her a crooked grin. “You’ll have to try me. I have three sisters, so I might be a bit more understanding than you think.”
The first half-hour went by in a similar fashion. In fact, Mila had to pinch herself because she thought maybe, there was fun to be had. Certainly, Rudy was clever, funny, witty — many of the things that had drawn Mila to Peter, in fact. But by the time they had ordered their second round of drinks, he’d fallen fully into “brag about yourself” mode, which made Mila’s stomach curdled.
“I guess, yeah when I was at Yale, that’s when I really started to ask myself, you know, how can I give back? It’s so important to me to always feel that I’m helping others. I’m a surgeon, which is some of the most invasive stuff you can do to another person, but I know in the motion of that action, I’m also altering people’s lives in ways that other people physically cannot. It’s a strange feeling, really, but I wouldn’t give it up for anything.”
As the conversation trailed on, Mila learned that he’d graduated third in his class at Yale, sang in the choir, could have gone professional in tennis but chose to commit to the medical field, yada yada yada. Throughout, Rudy glanced around him and drew his shoulders back. It occurred to Mila that she wasn’t his ideal partner, either. Yes, he thought she was beautiful, but mostly, he probably thought of her as arm candy — the perfect jewelry piece for his already successful life. She hadn’t gone to Yale; she’d had very little experience with education. She owned a salon, for goodness sakes.
When there was a lag in the conversation, Rudy brought up the salon again. She now sensed how much the idea of it bothered him.
“Would you ever close it down?” he asked. “You know, so you could pursue something else. Like, your actual dream.”
Mila arched an eyebrow. “What makes you think that the salon wasn’t my dream?”
He was intelligent, but he was a bit too dense to fully comprehend the weight of the mess he had just stepped in. “I don’t know. Didn’t you have some bigger aspirations? I assumed life got you down, or you had kids too early, or...”
Mila laughed outright. He still hadn’t sensed how horrible what he’d said was. He probably never would. She sipped her drink as he waited for her to answer. Toward the waterline, a woman removed her shoes and stepped along the rush of the waves. Mila thought about leaving the table just then, about joining the woman at the sand, looking her in the eye, and saying, “Why do we even put up with men?”
“You know what?” Mila said suddenly.
“What’s that?”
“I just remembered something that I have to do,” Mila said.
Rudy furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I just remembered that I can’t be here with you. At this bar,” Mila returned.
Rudy was flabbergasted. He leaned back in his chair and looked at her as though she had three heads. Mila knocked the rest of her wine back down her throat. She half-considered offering to pay for half of the bottle of wine but soon remembered that he was a surgeon and made more money than God.
“I guess this is goodbye,” she said with a big grin.
“I can drive you? And we could head out to another bar after that?” Rudy tried.
“Oh, no. I wouldn’t want to put you out. I know you have all those people to save tomorrow,” Mila said. “Thank you for a wonderful time, really. It was... enlightening, to say the least.”
Mila grabbed her purse and hustled toward the street, which lined the outer edge of the wine bar and led back toward downtown Edgartown. She suddenly felt about twenty years younger than her forty-one years. Her thoughts screamed with the results of her bravery. What good did it do anyone to stay in conversations that didn’t serve them? The man had belittled her life’s work, just as her parents had, over and over again and she’d had enough.
It was time to cut the fat from her life. It was time to choose herself. It was time to put her needs above everyone else’s.
Mila called an Uber. It pulled up alongside her a few minutes later. After she jumped in, the guy asked, “Are we really going to the police station?”
Mila didn’t answer. Nobody deserved her answer. And it wasn’t like she’d mistyped the address in the Uber app. She wasn’t stupid. Far from it, in fact.
Mila sauntered up the steps of the police station and drew open the door. She was definitely overdressed for a police check-in. The man at the counter gave her a wide-eyed look that suggested he hadn’t been out with a woman in quite some time. Mila appreciated this — that her feminine energy was felt. It gave her unlimited confidence.
“Good evening,” she said. “I wondered if Officer Liam Caldwell is in?”
“He is,” the man at the desk said. He stood, his eyes still focused on hers, and said, “I’ll go grab him.”
In a moment, Liam appeared in the foyer. He looked slightly flustered, as though he’d just run his fingers through his hair over and over again in preparation of seeing her.
“Hello, Officer Caldwell,” she greeted with a smile. “I wondered if I could speak with you for a moment; in regard to what we’d discussed the other day.”
“Yes, of course,” Liam said. “You came at the right time. Boston is retrieving him tomorrow.”
“Good.” Mila cleared her throat. After a pause, she added, “I’ll just wait for your lead.”
Liam asked her to wait for a moment so he could arrange for the man called Graha
m to be stationed in the back interrogation room. Since Edgartown didn’t have much in the way of crimes, the entire system seemed fit for child’s play. When Liam came to retrieve her, she followed him down the dank hallway, all the way to the back room.
“I’ll be in the room with you off to the side and a bit behind you,” Liam explained. “Normally, we don’t allow these types of things, but I’ll make this exception.”
Mila nodded. “Thank you. I appreciate that.” She was grateful not to be in the room with the man alone.
When she stepped inside, her eyes connected with Graham’s sinfully beautiful ones. At this moment, she fully remembered what it had been like that first night, as he’d said and done all the right things and taken her on an emotional journey of light and potential love—what a crock it had been.
“Hello, Graham,” she said brightly. “Good to see you again.”
Graham didn’t speak. His eyes followed hers with curiosity. It was clear he was surprised to see her.
She sat across from him. “Funny place for a second date, though, isn’t it?”
Graham just blinked at her. His eyelashes seemed impossibly long, like a woman’s. She hadn’t noticed that before.
Mila let the silence stretch between them. She hadn’t planned any of this and had almost no idea how to start.
“I heard a rumor that you might be a fan of my husband’s novels,” she said finally.
He nodded. “I guess you could say that.”
“Maybe to a level of obsession?”
He looked uncomfortable with this suggestion. Again, more silence.
“I was wondering if you could tell me something,” Mila said finally. “What was it about my husband’s writing that made you act like this? Was it really so powerful for you to go to this extent?”
Mila hadn’t realized why she’d needed to ask this until she had formed the words. She wanted to know Peter’s lasting effect on the world. She wanted to know how he lived on in people like Graham — people who’d never known him.
How she ached with missing him. How she wanted just one last sliver of him, even if it came through this horrible, disturbed man.
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