by Grace Palmer
“You never know, Mae,” prodded Lola. “Maybe your luck is turning!”
Mae doubted that very strongly. She’d never thought of herself as very lucky. At least, not in the little ways, like winning raffles or catching all green lights on her drive somewhere. She was lucky in the ways that mattered—like finding Henry, like being gifted the Sweet Island Inn. The problem was that those things seemed to exist only on borrowed time. Toni’s call seemed like just the latest iteration of that pattern. Giveth and taketh away, or something like that.
“Anyway,” Dominic said, straightening up and fixing his glasses higher on his nose. “I am sure I am disrupting you ladies from your work. I think I’ll take a turn around the room and see what might be up for purchase. Have a wonderful evening, Debra, Lola, Mae.” He looked at each of them in turn and nodded politely, saving a warm smile and Mae for last. Then he turned and meandered slowly away, hands clasped behind his back.
As soon as Dominic was out of earshot, Debra turned to Mae and seized her by the wrist. “He loves you!”
“I couldn’t agree more,” said Lola, nodding.
“Oh, that’s just Dominic,” Mae protested. “He’s like that with everyone. He’s really a very courteous man. They don’t teach manners here like they do over in Ireland.”
“No way,” Lola insisted. She was shaking her head decisively. “That’s not manners. That’s real.”
Debra nodded. “Very real.”
The heat in Mae’s cheeks intensified. She turned her attention to the table to pour some more cups of punch, though that was hardly necessary, given the rows and rows of already filled cups that were arranged neatly before them.
She could sense Lola and Debra exchanging meaningful glances over her head, but she kept her eyes down. She and Dominic were just good friends. She’d been telling herself that since he first showed up on her doorstep, and she really did believe it. Or at least, she once did.
But maybe that wasn’t completely true anymore. Maybe something really had been blossoming between them when Mae wasn’t paying attention. Was that such a bad thing?
Perhaps not, thought Mae. Perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing at all.
16
Brent
Saturday morning.
It had been a whirlwind two weeks. Someone must have alerted the tourists to Nantucket’s unseasonal spell of amazing weather, because they had come flocking in record numbers for this early in the spring. Marshall kept joking that they’d just heard that Triple B had started working charter trips and that’s why they were arriving in droves.
Brent had worked a trip with Marshall at least every other day. It was exhausting work, but it was as honest as it came. He finished his days sunburnt and tired all the way down to the bone. Most nights, he was asleep by the time his head hit the pillow. He hardly had the energy to keep taking Henrietta for their jogs, though he knew that she’d never forgive him if he didn’t, so he made the extra effort for her sake alone.
At least the money was good. Either this wave of tourists was unusually generous or Brent really did have a knack for this job, because the tips that were pressed into his hand at the end of each day still managed to take him by surprise. In just a couple weeks, he’d managed to pay the back rent that was due on his apartment, as well as get a new couch, throwing away an old one that had long outlived its usefulness. It felt good not to be concerned that his debit card would get declined while buying groceries at the Stop ’n Shop.
It felt especially good not to have quasi-panic attacks every time he so much as glanced at the water, too. Honestly, his anxieties had been few and far between. As long as he kept his head down and focused on his work, he didn’t pay much mind to the fear that still lurked in the back of his head. He might never again be fully at peace while out on the water, but as long as he could keep his wits about him enough to hook bait and chat idly with customers, he’d managed to find a fragile coexistence between himself and the ocean.
Until today.
When Marshall texted him first thing and told him that they were headed out to the Garden of Eden this morning by special request, Brent felt a geyser of panic in his chest. They’d managed to avoid it thus far, but it was one of the more popular spots within reach, so it had been bound to crop up sooner or later.
Brent knew that Marshall was only texting him this heads-up out of courtesy. Being his lifelong best friend, Marshall was well aware of how Brent felt about the Garden of Eden. As Brent strode up morosely to where Marshall had the boat idling next to the marina dock, he knew that his friend could see the discomfort written all over his face. To his credit, Marshall kept things subdued in place of his normal over-the-top bombast.
“Morning, brother.” He handed Brent a cup of coffee. “Sleep all right?”
“Good enough,” Brent grumbled. He’d slept like a log, actually. No dreams. That was rare, too.
“Ready for the day?”
Brent rubbed some sleep out of his eyes and looked up at Marshall. It was obvious that Marshall was just concerned about him. Brent sighed. His first reaction was to be defensive, but that wouldn’t get either of them anywhere. “Ready as I’ll ever get, I suppose. Had to happen sometime, right?”
Marshall nodded. “Yeah, probably. But if you aren’t ready, I can do it myself.”
Brent shook his head firmly. “No. Can’t leave you on your own like that. Wouldn’t be right.”
“Fair enough,” Marshall said, pleased, though he’d never admit that.
“Besides, you’d be lost without me,” Brent added with a grin.
His buddy chuckled. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I preceded you into this world, my friend, and if you aren’t careful, I’m gonna kick you out of it before me.”
Brent raised his fists. “You’re three days older than me. I’ll end you in three minutes. Let’s go, amigo. Put ’em up.”
Marshall roared and charged at him. The two men mock-wrestled, throwing each other in headlocks and bumping back and forth along the starboard side of the boat, each fighting for the upper hand and laughing all the while.
Only when someone cleared their throat from above did they stop roughhousing and separate.
“Uh, ’scuse me, gentlemen. Sorry to break up the party, but I’m looking for Marshall Cook? Got a charter trip booked with him for the day.”
Marshall was still panting as he smoothed back his hair and straightened out his shirt. “At your service, sir. You must be Roy McNeil, then, right? Welcome aboard.”
“Yessir, that’d be me.” The man squatted and reached out a hand to shake. Marshall and Brent took turns introducing themselves. Then Roy and Marshall started talking. Brent’s attention, though, stayed trained on the girl who was standing a step or two off to the side.
She looked to be around Brent’s age, early twenties, with long, dirty-blonde braids and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were warm hazel, and there was a grin playing at the corners of her lips. She had a mischievous look to her smile that seemed perfectly in keeping with her outfit—well-worn denim overalls, cut off high on her thigh, with a bright red bikini top underneath. Fun, but maybe a little reckless. Dangerous, perhaps. His mother would have called her “full of personality.”
“I’m Brent,” he called up to her somewhat awkwardly.
“Ally,” she replied. She popped her gum, then bent to shake his hand. Brent noticed every minute detail—the rings stacked on her fingers, the tangle of yarn bracelets that looked like they’d been bleached of color by hours in the sun, the constellations of freckles scattered along the underside of her forearms, which were a deep, bronze tan.
Brent cleared his throat and let go of her hand after maybe just a beat too long. Her grin twitched. He wondered if she was laughing at him.
“Come on down, folks!” Marshall called over.
Brent helped Ally into the boat, first taking her backpack from her and then grasping her hand to ease her step down from the
dock. Roy, whom Brent assumed was Ally’s father, hopped down capably. He and Marshall seemed to be getting along like gangbusters already. Marshall always did have a way of conversing amicably with old guys. Normally, that worked out great for their charter trips. But this time around, it meant Brent was left to entertain Ally. That wouldn’t be a problem, except for that he felt strangely mute and bumbling in her presence. She had this way of looking at him, with that flash in her eyes and the grin playing on her lips, that made him feel like he was on display.
“What brings you guys into town?” Brent asked her. Anything to fill the silence. Marshall was clambering behind the controls, firing up the engine, and pulling the boat away from the dock, still chatting with Roy all the while.
“Here until July,” Ally said. She smacked her gum again. “Sort of a quasi-vacation thing. Mom and my sister are at the spa today, but that’s boring, so me and Dad decided to come have a little fun of our own out here.”
“Gotcha,” Brent replied lamely. He reached down and fiddled with a few things that didn’t really need to be fiddled with. “What do you, uh, do?”
She laughed. Brent’s face immediately turned red. He turned and pretended to scan the water. They were picking up speed, and the island was retreating behind them. “I’m in college,” she explained. “Well, I was. Just graduated. So I’m here now until I figure out what’s next in my life.”
“You and me both,” Brent said.
Ally laughed again. “You a little lost too, sailor boy?”
He chuckled. “I guess you could say that.” Sailor boy. She was so personal, so familiar, right off the bat. Brent wasn’t like that in the slightest. He took a long time to warm up to people before he let his personality shine through. Ally didn’t seem to have any such qualms. They were two minutes into knowing each other and she was already teasing him, laughing at him, poking fun. It was a little unsettling, to be honest. But he didn’t not like it. There was something really appealing about her energy. Like they could cut the BS and get to know each other right away. No veneer, no façade. Just straight-up truth, uncut honesty.
Again, unsettling. Brent had way too many demons rattling around in his head to just lay his cards face-up on the table like that.
Luckily for him, they had gotten out of the no-wake zone that surrounded the marina and made it to open ocean, so Marshall picked up some speed. Ally said something to Brent as they accelerated, but the wind whipped her words away. She laughed, though—he could tell she was laughing without having to hear what joke she’d made.
The next few hours passed quickly. They hit up a couple spots that sat between the marina and the Garden of Eden, which was their ultimate destination. At each one, Brent dutifully set up Ally’s rod and told her about what they might expect to catch. She didn’t have much in the way of fishing experience, but she was a quick learner. By the time they got to their third location, she was comfortable casting out the line herself. No bites as of yet, but they would come eventually. They always did.
He alternated back and forth between chatting easily with Ally and getting flushed with embarrassment. It was something about her laughter that did it. There was a mischievous edge to it, yes, but it was more that he just couldn’t for the life of him figure out if she was laughing with him or at him. She kept calling him “sailor boy,” too, as in, “So are you from Nantucket, sailor boy?”
“Yeah. Born and raised.”
“What’s that like?”
He looked at her oddly. He’d never really thought about that question, honestly. What was Nantucket like? It was like—well, he didn’t know. “It’s home, I guess.”
“Yeah, but what does that mean?”
“It means, uh—well. I suppose it means that … it’s just all I’ve ever known, I guess. What’s it supposed to mean?”
“You’re the one who said it. Have you ever left?”
Brent nodded. “A couple of times. New York, Boston.”
“Do you mean ‘a couple’ as in literally two?” She looked aghast.
He shrugged nonchalantly. “Yeah. Why do you ask?”
She grabbed his forearm. “Because it’s a big freaking world! You gotta get out of here. Nantucket isn’t all that, you know.”
Brent just laughed and shook his head. “I like Nantucket. It’s nice here.”
“How do you know you wouldn’t like somewhere else better?”
“I just know. This is my home.”
She sighed like she was a teacher dealing with a difficult student who just wasn’t getting it. “You’re crazy, sailor boy. You gotta get out. See some stuff.”
But the thought had really never occurred to Brent. Leave Nantucket? Why would he do that? He knew Nantucket. He understood Nantucket. His family was here, his whole life. What would leaving do for him? As far as he could see, not much.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked, if only to change the subject.
Ally cast a hand around. “Not enough places yet! I will, though. Soon.”
One of the rods hit just then, cutting off their conversation before he could ask where she wanted to go and when. She leaped up to grab it from the holster and started reeling in excitedly. Brent stood back and brooded while Ally struggled with the rod, offering advice every now and then. Give him some slack. Now, yank it in! Get that hook set! The fish got away before she could reel him in, but Brent was hardly paying attention.
He had a sudden flashback to Eliza calling him a Nantucket hillbilly. That always made him chuckle. If that’s what he was, then so be it. He belonged here. That was the beginning and the end of it.
Brent was so caught up in his thoughts that he barely even noticed when they got to the Garden. Marshall pulled in where he wanted to set up camp, right by the underwater drop-off, and killed the engine. Brent looked around. It was just another patch of empty ocean, like any other. Why had he feared this so much? There was a lot of ocean on this planet. A lot of bare, meaningless water. There was no reason to be scared of this, any more than he’d be scared of the patch of water a quarter mile over from here.
His dad wasn’t here anymore. No part of him was. All the anxiety that had been racing through him since Marshall’s text that morning vanished as suddenly as it had come. What a strange sensation. It was like a little kid who built up this nightmarish fantasy of the boogeyman in the closet, only to be confronted with nothing more than some shirts on hangers when his parents came in to open the door for him. Fear, peaking up to a crescendo that ultimately fell flat and vanished without a trace. He’d been expecting—heck, maybe even hoping—for a big, cathartic moment. But as he gazed around the horizon, he felt nothing. Neither fear nor pleasure. It was weirdly disappointing, as if he’d had nausea that passed without the satisfaction of purging it. Life wasn’t like a movie, as it turned out. No soundtrack in the background telling some hidden audience that this was a big moment for him. It didn’t feel like a big moment at all. It felt like nothing.
Only when he looked at Ally did he feel something. Not much of anything—just a hint. Just a spark. Just kindling, the vague suggestion that a fire could be built here. Maybe. If he played his cards right. Face-up, without fear.
He didn’t know whether he could do that. But as he stood at the site of the accident that had taken his father’s life and looked at this girl—a girl he’d just met this morning and yet someone he felt like he already knew so well—he felt like maybe, just maybe, he had a chance.
17
Mae
The days after the auction passed slowly and strangely. Mae would never admit this out loud, whether to herself or to anyone, but she had made it somewhat of a point to steer clear of Dominic since the conversation at the punch station with Lola and Debra. She still met him on the porch in the mornings for their sunrise coffee ritual, but she often made her excuses and left early to attend to her innkeeper’s tasks.
That was exactly what she did this morning. She hadn’t said much as they’d sat there. After she offered
one or two words to his first couple questions—How did you sleep? Do you have big plans for the day?—he’d seemed to catch the hint and fall silent. She felt guilty. He hadn’t done anything wrong by any stretch of the imagination. It was Mae herself who was the problem.
The issue was that Lola and Debra had stirred up a tangled ball of emotion that Mae had spent a year fussing over and was no closer to figuring out than she had been when she started. The heart of the question went something like this: How was she supposed to live her life now?
It was an impossible question; a recipe that needed every ingredient in the house and was never quite finished cooking. How was she supposed to live her life?
She supposed it was best to start with what she knew for certain: that she loved Henry, she had loved him since the moment she’d met him, and she would continue loving him for the rest of her life. That had never, ever been in doubt. It was as real and as constant as gravity, as the sun rising, as her love for her children. Here or not, alive or gone, it didn’t matter—her love for her husband held true.
She knew also that with that love came sadness. And just like her love, that sadness would also be here forever. She had spent forty-plus years growing old with Henry, and she’d expected that to continue until both of them were confined to their rocking chairs on the front porch. It felt almost as though he’d abandoned her in the middle of a painting they were both working on. They had painted the broad strokes, the outlines of things that were unlikely to change. Four beautiful children, each perfect and yet flawed in their own perfect ways. A home in Nantucket. A daily give-and-take, a set of rituals, a way of moving around and with each other in their kitchen, their bedroom, their little world. He’d built all of that with her, but he’d been taken by fate before they had a chance to finish coloring in the details. There were so many beautiful subtleties to their lives that had not yet had an opportunity to emerge. Now, they never would—at least, not precisely the way they would have were Henry still here. It made her heart ache.