“Who was that? What’s wrong?”
I shake my head without speaking. How do I explain that Jack was a second father to me, that when my parents were going through their divorce, he’d pick me and Connor up every day after school, sometimes in his police cruiser? Jack taught me to make chili and cornbread, and for the months that I lived with them, I spent every Sunday watching football with him, something I didn’t even do with my own father. When I turned twelve, Jack gave me a necklace with a silver starfish, and I still have it in my jewelry box. How do I tell him that the same man who brought home half a gallon of mint Oreo ice cream every Friday murdered a girl and let Ian take the blame, then stuck a gun in his mouth and blew his brains out? I can’t tell Todd any of this, not yet, so I don’t.
“Someone died. A good friend of our family.” And then my legs give out, and I feel myself falling, down toward the icy sidewalk.
“Hey, hey, easy.” Todd catches me before I hit the concrete. I press my face against his sweater as the sobs overtake me. I cling to him and he lets me, smoothing my hair with his hand. I think of Connor, detoxing alone in some treatment center, still unaware that the worst is yet to come. I think of Caroline, her husband dead and her son’s future suspended in no man’s land. My own mother, finally strong enough to kick Ian out, always terrified of being alone. I look through the picture window of the restaurant. Candles glitter on the tables and beautiful young people eat their grass-fed beef and organic roasted vegetables. It’s another world, sparkly and full of promise. I want to go back, but I can’t.
“I need to go home,” I tell Todd.
41
Caroline
April
Spring on Great Rock is a thing to behold. Cautious flowers poke their heads through the ground, sniffing to see if winter is finally gone. The air smells of damp earth and sun. Purple crocuses line driveways, and daffodils fill front yards. Walking Champ one morning I pass a bush of forsythia, the yellow stalks so bright they nearly hurt my eyes. The leaves are back on the Japanese maple in our front yard, and I remember how Daisy and Connor used to sit in it when they were children, dangling from the spindly branches like monkeys.
In the springtime, the island wakes up. On Main Street in downtown Osprey, businesses reopen one by one, their walls repainted, their interiors redone. The carousel is open again, and on weekend nights the music echoes on the street, the twangy notes of the organ carrying out onto the water. Children tug their mothers’ hands, eager to climb onto their favorite horse and try to catch the brass ring. Their pockets bulge with quarters. There will always be another chance.
I sit on the open deck of the Great Rock Ferry and tilt my face to the sky, feeling the sun on my skin. Jack has been dead for six weeks. Since that bleak February night, my kitchen has been filled with a steady stream of women bearing food. Lasagna, pots of chicken soup, enchiladas, green bean casseroles, spinach quiches, and baskets of muffins cover the counters and fill the freezer, an endless supply of food and goodwill. Women I hardly know volunteer their husbands for home repair. The postmaster leaves yellow pickup slips in my box, and each week I retrieve an armful of condolence cards. I read the words of the women on this island, platitudes written in careful script. Time will heal. May God be with you. We’re thinking of you in your time of need. The newspaper has been filled with letters to the editor about what Jack did, but also about the opioid crisis on Great Rock. I read them all and think of Connor and Layla.
I have heard people speak of the strength of this community, but the kindness is unexpected. This desolate strip of land I’ve wanted to escape for so long is suddenly a place filled with people who care about my loss, who clutch my hands and say the right things and the wrong things, but they try, they try to show that they care. Their caring has nearly knocked me over, and though it is not enough, will never be enough, I’m surprised to realize that it has brought some comfort.
It doesn’t surprise Evvy. She just shrugs her shoulders and nods when I point at the day’s offering, a blueberry pie or loaf of homemade bread. “That’s just Great Rock,” she says. “That’s the island.” Evvy has lived here her whole life and the strength of ordinary people coming together to offer support is just as much a part of the island as the papery beach grass or the lady-slipper shells that cover Osprey Beach. It’s just the way Great Rock is.
Evvy comes over nearly every day and picks at whatever dish has been brought by. I don’t eat much myself, but she fixes me a plate anyway and makes me have a few bites. We’re like two old widows shuffling around my kitchen, talking occasionally, mostly just sitting in a companionable silence or watching TV. Though I’m the only one who’s actually a widow. She doesn’t talk about him often, but I know she’s seeing Cyrus again. He moved out of Gina’s house and took over the Feldmans’ sublet. I have a feeling it’s only a matter of months before he moves back in with her. Then again, Evvy is full of surprises.
Charges have been brought against Ian, but he’s out on bail, waiting for the slow grind of the legal system to determine his fate. Through some miraculous feat of the ferry union, he’s still working in the ticketing office. I saw him this morning when I bought my ferry ticket, and though I stepped into another line, we met eyes and nodded at each other.
Daisy is still at home, but she’s transferring her credits to UMass Boston after the summer. Todd has said she can move in with him, and though I worry about her becoming financially dependent on a boy she’s known for such a short period of time, I can’t deny the look of love on both their faces when they’re together.
The foghorn lets out its deep blare, and I sip my coffee. It’s the first boat of the day, the six-fifteen, and I could have taken a later one, but I chose this one because I knew it would be the least crowded. Less chance of bumping into anyone. Old habits die hard, and I’ll never be fully comfortable with the way the most personal moments can be made public on an island as small as ours. Today I will pick Connor up at rehab, and I don’t feel like telling anyone where I’m going or mustering up the energy to lie. He’s been there for the recommended thirty days, plus the two more weeks they added after I told him his father was dead. As if two weeks will be enough for him to recover from that. The moment comes back to me in the dark hours of the night, the cataclysmic anguish that altered his face and tore his body down, the sound of his cries like nothing I’d ever heard before. Deep body-shaking sobs filled with rage and guilt and the physical pain of Jack’s absence. I know that pain. It’s a dull ache behind my breastbone, something rotten in the center of my belly that causes my intestines to twist upon each other, coiling together like a restless snake.
Scott Lambert is in the island jail awaiting his trial for drug dealing. Moby Dick’s has closed, and I hear a sushi restaurant will be opening up this summer. Life on Great Rock marches on.
Connor and I will miss spring on the island this year. When I pick him up from the rehab center, we’ll drive south to Alexandria, Virginia to where my sister Shana lives. She has already found an outpatient center where Connor will go for the next few months while I figure out where to go from here. Cyrus will look after the house while I’m gone and perhaps I’ll decide to sell it. I’ve always loved the redbrick downtown of Alexandria, with its vibrant shops and restaurants and cobblestone streets. Maybe I’ll stay, find an apartment of my own and a job in a library, or maybe doing something else entirely.
And yet.
And yet I know Great Rock will call me back. Evvy and Cyrus, the gaggle of retirees with their morning coffee and newspapers, the circle of women with pressed hands and words of comfort, the acquaintances I bump into at the grocery store, the people I’ve known for over twenty years whose presence I’ve taken for granted. The purple sky at sunset on the beach, the ever-present smell of salt and fish in the air. Somehow, without my even realizing it, Great Rock has seeped into my skin and taken root in my heart.
I’m afraid to see Connor. I’m afraid of his grief and his chances of relapse. In my
purse I have a prescription for Narcan, the drug that will reverse an overdose, though I pray I’ll never have to use it. I pray this is a new beginning for Connor, not a stop along the long path of addiction, but I’m no fool, not anymore. I’ve read enough to know how many people use again as soon as they get out.
And yet.
And yet I can’t wait to see him. I want to hold Connor in my arms and take him away from all of the bad things in our lives, even if just for a few months. I want to imagine that we can find our way through the mire that has pulled us down, the tangled vines of death and disease that keep us struggling in place. I want to believe that we can find the other side and emerge, if not whole, if not healthy, not completely broken, either. I want to believe that life is possible for us both.
The foghorn bleats again and the announcement comes over the loudspeaker, reminding passengers to make their way to their cars. The sun is up now and the sky is a pale yellow. Boats bob in the harbor. Across the sound, Great Rock is just a spit of land, a scrap of green and tan. No one would know the life that beats inside. No one would know how full such an empty place can be.
I head downstairs and wait my turn to disembark. I wave to the ferry attendant as I creep from the belly of the boat and out into the bright morning. I feel Great Rock pulsing behind me, but I keep my eyes on the road and don’t look back.
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Books by Emily Cavanagh
Everybody Lies
Her Guilty Secret
This Bright Beauty
The Bloom Girls
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Everybody Lies (Available in the UK and the US)
A Letter from Emily
Dear Reader,
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Her Guilty Secret
Get it here!
Would a true friend lie to you?
Ivy has been looking forward to seeing her oldest college friends for months. But this reunion couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Her husband has left her and she is struggling to pay the bills. She’s never felt less like sitting around joking and drinking cocktails.
But not wanting to let everyone down, Ivy boards the plane to Boston and makes her way to Elise’s Cape Cod summerhouse, where Ada and Libby are waiting.
She knew Elise’s husband was successful, but the house on the ocean, with floor-to-ceiling windows, is more opulent than she imagined. And there are photographs of Elise’s perfect, happy family in every room. Already struggling to put a brave face on things, Ivy finds herself reaching breaking point.
That evening, as the four friends gather on the sofa along with several bottles of wine, someone suggests they play truth or dare...
As the game goes on, something is said that can’t be taken back. Something that makes Ivy question if these women were ever her friends to begin with.
But this is not the only secret these women have been hiding. As new revelations come to light, will the weekend bring them closer or tear them apart for good?
A gripping, emotional novel about the complexities of friendship and the lengths we will go for the ones we love. Perfect for fans of Big Little Lies, The Family Next Door and The Silent Wife.
Get it now!
Acknowledgments
This novel was started at a time when people were just beginning to talk about opioid abuse. During this period, there were several fatal overdoses on the small island where I live, a few of them by people I’d once known, though none of them close to me. Suddenly, everywhere I looked—in the local and national papers, on the news, in movies and books—people were talking about addiction and pulling the curtain back on an issue that hadn’t been so openly discussed before. I wanted to write a story about the ripple effects of addiction and the shame and denial that is so often associated with it, particularly within the context of a small community. Any time a writer takes on a project with which they don’t have first-hand experience, there is always the worry of not getting it right. This is a work of fiction, but I hope I have done justice to the real people, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, whose lives have been impacted by addiction and its far-reaching effects. Many books, films, and podcasts informed my writing, most notably Heroin: Cape Cod, USA and Dopesick.
Thank you to my early readers: Mathea Morais and Sarah Smith for astute editorial guidance, insights into character development and island life, and our much loved if sporadic writing group; an extra shout-out to Sarah for our ongoing writing retreats, including the last few in your Fairhaven home which provided further inspiration; to my parents, Pam and Tom Cavanagh, for reading both eagerly and critically; to my aunt, Lynda Bernard, for her boundless generosity and support; to Scott Ogden, for reading from the perspective of an island police officer; to Hilary, Isadora, and Ciarda Fitzgerald, my family in Ireland, for their generosity and long-distance encouragement, and for always keeping me supplied with Boost bars and Taytos.
A huge thank you to my editor, Cara Chimirri, for her strong editorial guidance, her excitement over this novel, and her steady hand in shaping it; to the brilliant team at Bookouture for embracing me into the fold and making me feel welcome from day one. To my agent, Marlene Stringer, for being a champion of my writing, for her unflagging wisdom and professionalism, and for encouraging me to take a leap of faith.
Thank you to my group of Vineyard ladies: Holly Thomas, Anna Cotton, Moira Silva, and Skye Sonneborn, for making our real-life Great Rock such a wonderful place to live, even in the middle of winter.
To Marya Cohen, for over thirty years of friendship and support and for always making me laugh, even when nothing is funny.
To Amelia Angella, for a lifetime of friendship and support.
To Reuben Fitzgerald: for the idea that became the first seed of this book and for believing that I could write this story. And to Oliva and Nevah, for everything, always.
We – both author and publisher – hope you enjoyed this book. We believe that you can become a reader at any time in your life, but we’d love your help to give the next generation a head start.
Did you know that 9% of children don’t have a book of their own in their home, rising to 13% in disadvantaged families*? We’d like to try to change that by asking you to consider the role you could play in helping to build readers of the future.
We’d love you to get involved by sharing, borrowing, reading, buying or talking about a book with a child in your life and spreading the love of reading. We want to make sure the next generation continues to have access to books, wherever they come from.
Click HERE for a list of brilliant books to share with a child – as voted by Goodreads readers.
Thank you.
*As reported by the National Literacy Trust
Published by Bookouture in 2020
An imprint of Storyfire Ltd.
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
Lon
don EC4Y 0DZ
www.bookouture.com
Copyright © Emily Cavanagh, 2020
Emily Cavanagh has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-80019-088-7
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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