Chapter 10
Genevieve was ten days old when she went to the Sheridan House for the first time. Amanda wrapped her up against her chest and walked her down the beach, listening for the first sounds of her family’s laughter. Sam said he planned to meet her there after taking care of a few things at the Sunrise Cove, and dinner wasn’t set till seven—three hours from now. But Amanda had a hunch that such a beautiful day meant most of the Sheridans would gather earlier to enjoy the sun. And when she turned to look up at the gorgeous house, she saw a heap of them across the porch—
Audrey, Max, Christine, Mia, Lola, Susan, Claire, Rita, and Steve. Steve was the odd man out, drinking a beer off to the side while the others listened with rapt attention as Rita recounted her recent case. She was a private investigator. It was how she and Steve met.
And now, they were finally giving their romance a real shot.
Earlier this year, Rita had been instrumental in bringing Claire’s daughter back home after she disappeared. The story had exploded to reveal that Claire’s longtime husband, Russel, was having an affair. He was now gone, and Claire was left to pick up the pieces of her life. “At least I’ll always have the flower shop,” she said so often it broke Amanda’s heart.
Sometimes she wondered if Claire and Russel had truly been in love when they’d married. Maybe they’d been just the same as Amanda and Sam. Perhaps life had twisted up their love, contorting it into something they no longer recognized. Was there any way to avoid that heartache?
“There she is!” Audrey scampered down the porch with Max hot on her heels. “Come on, buddy.” It was nearly May, and Audrey already had a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and upper arms. When she got closer, she picked Max up so he could see Genevieve up close.
“This is your cousin, Max,” Audrey said. “You want to say hi?”
“Hi!” Max called a little too loud.
Audrey and Amanda chuckled.
“She’s still just a little thing,” Audrey breathed, placing her hand over Genevieve’s head. “How do you stand it?”
“My heart breaks every day,” Amanda said.
Up on the porch, Lola grabbed Amanda a chair and ordered her to sit.
“We’re going to need more chairs,” Susan said. “Dad and Beatrice are on their way.”
“Andy and Beth, too,” Steve said.
“What about Aunt Kerry? Uncle Trevor?” Christine asked. “Are they still in Florida?”
“They get back tomorrow,” Steve said. “We’re headed to Boston to pick them up.”
“Can’t believe they cheated on the island with all that tropical water,” Lola said.
“Mom sent a picture of herself carrying a coconut filled with rum on the beach,” Steve said with a laugh. “I think they’re acting like teenagers.”
“That’s what can happen after your kids grow up.” Lola caught Amanda’s eye. “You stop worrying all the time and become a kid again.”
“Amanda has never acted like a teenager,” Audrey teased. She poked around a big bag of Doritos to select the ones with all three of their points.
“It’s true.” Susan giggled. “She vacuumed her room once a week. She did Jake’s room, too.”
Amanda rolled her eyes. “I was terrified of lice.” She’d read in a science textbook that they could lurk anywhere—in your bed or your carpet or in her hair—and the idea had tormented her so much that she’d instigated a cleaning strategy that was borderline obsessive.
These days she was just clean in a normal way. Mostly.
Everyone wanted to take a turn holding Genevieve. A thickness went up her throat and threatened her breath as she watched so many others dote on her. She felt incomplete without her in her arms. It happened so quickly.
The screen door screamed open to bring Grandpa Wes and Beatrice. Amanda popped up and hugged her grandfather and filled her nose with his woodsy smell. She hugged Beatrice, too, but not as close. A small, childish part of her blamed Beatrice for taking Grandpa away from the Sheridan House. At her place was where he wanted to be now. But it still meant the end of an era.
Sam arrived a few minutes later with news. “I just got off the phone with the historian. He has time Wednesday afternoon to swing by the Sunrise Cove.”
Everyone talked at once with excitement.
“I can’t believe you haven’t torn down the wall yourself,” Lola suggested. “I’m dying of curiosity! What is back there?”
“Plenty of theories are circling the inn,” Wes said with a laugh, then opened his ledger to read one. “A reporter came in to ask if it was true we had Mormon gold back there.”
“Mormon gold?” Susan cackled. “People are so creative.”
“Don’t let anyone take our Mormon gold, Sam,” Christine warned.
“Whatever it is, I’m hoping it’ll make the inn a historical site,” Sam said.
“The Sunrise Cove has been around so long that it should be called a historical site in and of itself,” Christine declared.
“It hasn’t been around as long as whatever’s in that room,” Sam said.
“I was sorry to hear the spa is off the cards,” Beatrice said. She put a Tupperware container of banana bread on the big table, and the decadent smell swanned over them. “I was looking forward to some pampering after all this wedding chaos is through!”
“I’ll send you to the Katama Bay Spa any time you want,” Wes said, touching her hand.
Amanda and Audrey locked eyes for a split second. Both were thinking the same thing. Stan Ellis, the man who’d accidentally killed their grandmother, was engaged to the woman in charge of the Katama Wellness Spa. Nancy Remington. The twisty past was never far from anyone’s mind.
Audrey raised her shoulders and smiled as though to say, what can you do? Life is strange.
Dinner was served at seven. By that time, the rest of their crew had arrived: Andy, Beth, and their two children; Lola’s husband, Tommy; Christine’s husband, Zach; Susan’s husband, Scott, and Audrey’s boyfriend, Noah. Fire spat across the grill to cook shish kebabs and chicken burgers, and Amanda’s mouth watered. When she filled her plate, she caught Audrey watching her with a big grin.
“It’s the breastfeeding, isn’t it?” Audrey teased. “I was starved for months.”
“I can’t get enough!” Amanda said.
With the baby fast asleep in the shadows of the living room, Amanda sat with her mother, Lola, and Audrey at the edge of the porch so that their legs swung over the side. The air was fresh and losing its heat, so Audrey threw a blanket over herself and Amanda to keep their legs warm. Amanda took a bite of the chicken burger, and her mouth oozed with mayonnaise and spicy sauce. She sighed and took another. Behind her, she could hear the comfortable rhythm of Sam’s voice as he chatted to Wes about the logistics of meeting the historian this week. She was thrilled that Sam always ran everything by her grandfather and kept him in the loop. He didn’t have to. But nobody wanted Wes Sheridan’s link to the Sunrise Cove to falter. It was his blood.
Lola and Audrey spoke over one another excitedly about Lola’s new magazine article and the pitches Audrey was sending to literary journals across the country. This left Susan and Amanda alone for the first time in a while. Amanda remembered, with a jolt, that she needed to confess.
She set down her chicken burger. “I might have poked the bear.”
Susan raised her eyebrows. “What does that mean?”
Amanda explained the hugely idiotic thing she’d done. She’d written to Hedwig Arnout.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe that telling him I knew what he was up to would embarrass him so much that he’d make a phone call and get this mess out of my hair? But it only made matters worse.”
Susan’s face drained of color. Amanda could read her mind. She thought Amanda was na?ve, and in many ways, she was. She was a brand-new lawyer up against elite Nantucketers with the governor on speed dial. Men like Hedwig could destroy her with the wave of his hand.
“Don’t panic,” Susan said quietly. She squeezed Amanda’s shoulder. “Once you get settled in a bit more with Genevieve, we’ll take action. But don’t do anything without me.”
“I won’t,” Amanda assured her.
Hubris had led her to write that email. Worse is that hubris had made Hedwig call the dogs on her career in the first place. Amanda needed to be tactical. She needed to step away from the situation, analyze the players and the stakes, and leap when the time was right. She wouldn’t give up her career. Not because some rich playboy named Hilton Arnout thought he was beyond the law.
It was true that being a criminal justice lawyer was sometimes morally difficult. Susan and Amanda’s father, Richard, had represented heinous criminals over the years. They’d been featured on the news, speaking about their clients’ rights. During a murder case more than ten years ago, Amanda asked her mother, “Do you think he did it?”
Susan answered, “It doesn’t matter if he did or didn’t do it. It’s up to me to ensure the law treats him just the same as it would anyone else. The verdict is up to the jury.”
This had stuck with Amanda: the fact that criminals had rights. You couldn’t just throw people under the bus based on cultural opinion.
But despite Amanda’s tireless efforts and two appeals, Hilton Arnout had been sentenced to prison. The jury had sent him there. That had nothing to do with Amanda. She should have been able to wash her hands of it by now.
Late that night as she nursed Genevieve and laid her gently in her crib, Amanda thought about the weight of the world and how little Genevieve knew of it after ten days of life. She tried to imagine what it was like to be Mr. and Mrs. Arnout and face the consequences of their son’s actions. They’d done everything to get him through the first twenty-seven years of his life with flying colors. Perhaps their anger came from a sense of failure. Of having hid Hilton from the chaos of the world, only to have him crash-land in prison. Somebody had to take the blame. And right now, it was Amanda.