Chapter 6
Chapter Six
T he ferry from Hyannis to Nantucket Harbor lasted just as long as it had twenty years ago; it required about an hour on the tremulous ocean. After she parked in the below-deck lot, Margot got out of her car and went up to the indoor coffee shop, where she bought a cappuccino and sat to watch the water surge by. It occurred to her that when she left in 2005, she might have assumed that by 2025, a form of super technology had replaced the old ferry services—that it might have taken ten minutes to reach the island, tops, and involved flying or teleporting. But the newer ferries were similar to the old ones. Life kept going in much the same way—with similar pains.
She was older. The world was the same.
She couldn’t believe she was going back to Nantucket.
It had taken her only a few days to arrange for her departure. She’d needed February 15 and 16 to prepare Gabby for the flower shop, and she’d needed February 17 and 18 to pack and clean her apartment. She’d never left her apartment for so long, and she didn’t like the idea of it staying slightly messy in her absence, disorderly as she dove back into her previously very disorderly life in Nantucket. Now, it was February 19th, a Wednesday. For some reason, the sun was shining over the Nantucket Sound, bright enough that she wished she had her sunglasses. At the neighboring table sat a man who looked like a fisherman, his head lifted, his eyes closed as he took in the sunlight through the window. To Margot, he looked like a painting.
Although he looked nothing like him, the man reminded Margot of her father. It was something about his expression and the appreciation he had for soft, beautiful moments.
When Nantucket came into view on the horizon, a shiver went through Margot’s entire body. She hurried down to her car and sat with her hands wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. All she could think about was the person she’d been on the day she’d left Nantucket: eighteen, nervous, and prone to crying. She hadn’t had a car back then, but she’d taken the ferry and grabbed a bus to Boston. Very suddenly, she was out of her life and thrown into a new one. Her initial plan had been to go farther than Boston, maybe Los Angeles or Denver, but she’d gotten a job at a bar and decided to stick around until she had enough money to travel more comfortably. But in Boston, it was difficult to have enough money. What was “enough” anyway? Suddenly, she’d grown so accustomed to Boston and so comfortable in her new “lonely” life that she hadn’t wanted to leave. And anyway, nobody from Nantucket ever came to look for her. It was like they knew she wanted it that way.
Why was she coming back?
The logical thing was not to come back. The logical thing was to call the hospital and hire a nurse to take care of her mother. The logical thing was to keep a great distance between herself and Lillian Earnheart.
Yet when Sam had called to explain that Lillian had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, something in Margot had broken down. She’d started sobbing uncontrollably.
Margot hadn’t cried like that in twenty years.
Imagining her mother lost and confused in the house where Margot had been raised, she’d heard herself telling Sam she would be there soon. She’d heard herself say, “Thank you, Sam. Really. It means a lot that you would reach out, even though you’re not…” A member of the family anymore , she’d wanted to say. But she’d stopped herself.
Sam had understood. “I can’t wait to see you, Margot. You’ve been missed around here.”
Margot wasn’t sure she believed Sam. She’d said it because it was something you were supposed to say.
All too soon, it was time for Margot to drive off the ferry and onto that brightly lit rock in the middle of the ocean, the island she’d once known as home. Slowly, she inched down the ramp and felt her wheels bounce gently on the concrete. A man in an orange vest waved her through the harbor parking lot toward a stop sign, where she waited no fewer than two seconds before pressing the gas and shooting herself toward Cisco Beach. She felt sure her mother awaited her, probably with her eyes watching out the window, her heart opening for her daughter, the only one who cared enough to change her life and come home to care for her.
Don’t get your hopes up, Margot , she thought as she drove. This is Lillian Earnheart we’re talking about.
Sure enough, when Margot pulled into the driveway, nobody was at the window, watching for her. For a full minute, she sat in the front seat of her car, breathless, looking up at the big white house on the edge of the shore. It was weather-beaten and ill-cared for, still more proof that her brothers and sister had done very little to help out over the years. Not that she could blame them for not doing what she hadn’t had the energy to do.
Once upon a time, the Earnhearts had been a family that cared for each other. They’d cared for their property, for their future, for their island home. Now, the shutters were either crooked or missing. There were three busted windows. The door hung strangely, as though someone or something had tried to break it down.
Samantha Coleman’s reason for calling was becoming clearer. Lillian Earnheart needed somebody, anybody.
Margot got out and crept up the porch steps, frightened they might give out beneath her. Although she had better insurance than she ever had—she was a thirty-eight-year-old entrepreneur and full-fledged adult, after all—she couldn’t afford the time required to heal a broken leg. At the door, she knocked and rang a doorbell that seemed broken.
“Mom?” Margot muttered.
On the internet, she’d read that Alzheimer’s patients could be paranoid and anxious. Maybe Lillian was hiding in the kitchen, thinking Margot was trying to break in. Margot’s heartbeat quickened. She hoped her mother didn’t have her father Frank’s gun somewhere back there. She imagined Lillian as she’d been twenty years ago: slender with glossy hair and a mean streak. She imagined her hiding in the shadows of the kitchen, the shotgun slung up on her shoulder, waiting.
Margot shivered and took a step back. She couldn’t trust this place.
Slowly, she left the porch and peeked through the garage window. No car. Maybe her mother was out—with friends or at the doctor or at the store. It was Margot’s fault for not calling first. But what could she say? Her mother was too proud to accept help.
Her mother hadn’t reached out—not once—in twenty years.
Margot went back to her car, fighting tears. She called Sam, her hands shaking. Sam answered on the third ring.
“Are you here?” There was a smile in her voice.
“I am!” Margot, on the other hand, sounded on the brink of losing it. “I’m at the house.”
“How’s it going?” Sam’s tone was darker.
“Not great. My mom isn’t home, or she’s not answering, or…” She trailed off. “My parents were always too paranoid to keep a spare key anywhere. But I don’t want to break in, anyway. I feel strange. Like I never really belonged here.”
“But you did,” Sam reminded her. “And you do. You’re still an Earnheart. You’re still Lillian’s daughter.”
Margot knew these words were meant to calm her down, but all they did was ramp up her anxiety. She inhaled sharply and pulled her phone away from her ear, eager to check the ferry timetable and see when she could return to Hyannis and her normal life.
“Why don’t you come over?” Sam suggested. “I’m at my parents’ place with Darcy and the baby, and a few other Colemans are headed here for dinner. Oh! You’re a florist, aren’t you? My sister’s getting married soon. We might need your help.”
Sam was throwing information at Margot faster than she could catch it. Margot swallowed the lump in her throat.
“Sorry. Too much?” Sam laughed. “I’ll text you the address. We don’t bite. I promise. And we have plenty of wine—and a spare bedroom.”
Margot closed her eyes. Exhaustion had fallen over her like a shadow. “I’ll be there soon.”
Samantha’s parents were Roland and Estelle Coleman, one of the wealthier couples on an already mega-wealthy island, who lived, naturally, in one of the more beautiful and expansive properties. This site had been featured more than once on a reality television show called Nantucket Lives and Nantucket Dreams . Margot wasn’t clear what Roland did, exactly—something boring that made him a lot of money—but she was well-versed in Estelle’s career. Estelle was a harlequin romance novelist, a beloved one frequently featured for readings and book signings at a bookshop Margot loved in Beacon Hill. Once, Margot had poked her head into the shop to see Estelle wearing a gorgeous velvet dress, her hair cascading to her shoulders, her head lifted as she read aloud from her novel. Margot had watched long enough to realize that Estelle had the text memorized. Margot could tell because Estelle looked up at the audience so often that it felt more like a performance on a stage. Her fans adored her. She recognized a few of the fans as frequent visitors of Margot’s Blooms. It made her feel closer to Estelle and closer to Nantucket, even if she hadn’t felt comfortable coming in and re-introducing herself.
But right now, Margot didn’t know what else to do, so she drove to the “Coleman Estate,” hoping Samantha would guide her.
Proof of the goodness of her heart, Samantha was out of the house just as soon as Margot cut the engine. It looked as though time had hardly touched Sam’s beautiful face, and her hair was blond and shining in the February light. When she reached Margot, she didn’t hesitate to hug her. “My girl! How wonderful to see you!”
Margot couldn’t help but laugh. It was a surreal feeling. She wanted to get through the weirdness and out the other side.
Samantha ushered her inside. “Darcy?” she called as they entered the foyer, then twisted her head around to look at Margot. “Did I tell you Darcy just had a baby?”
Margot’s heart thumped. “You didn’t.”
Darcy! My beloved niece! She was already a mother?
It felt impossible. How old was she? Margot did a brief and incorrect calculation in her head. But the numbers fell out of her mind when, suddenly, Darcy appeared in the foyer.
Darcy looked much like other brand-new mothers: exhausted but brimming with happiness. She also looked to be about twenty-five years old. Later, she’d tell Margot she was twenty-six, which felt impossible. In the foyer, she tucked a curl behind her ear and smiled nervously at Margot.
“Honey, you remember your aunt Margot, don’t you?” Sam asked.
Margot thought she was going to collapse. She hurried to add, “I’m sure you don’t. You were so little the last time we saw each other.”
“I was nine,” Darcy said with a light shrug. “I remember everything.”
Everything? The word hung between them and became more and more powerful. Margot didn’t want to know exactly what Darcy remembered.
“Nine,” Margot said. “I remember. And Rachelle was, what? Seven?”
“Around that,” Sam said.
Margot wasn’t sure what to do. She suddenly ached with the desire to hug Darcy. At the same time, she had the sense that Darcy was a stranger. You didn’t go around just hugging strangers.
When was the last time she’d hugged someone who wasn’t a boyfriend she was about to break up with?
But then, from upstairs, came the sound of a baby crying. Darcy was there, and then, very suddenly, she was gone. Up she went, hurrying to tend to her baby, a brand-new baby in the Coleman family—a blessing.
“Come on,” Samantha urged.
Margot followed Sam into the kitchen, where a clock on the wall read five fifteen. Nobody else was around yet. Sam explained that her father was on his way home from visiting her grandpa Chuck in Martha’s Vineyard, and her mother was upstairs, finishing her word count for the day. “It’s weird to have the house to myself,” she said, retrieving wineglasses from the top shelf. “Especially because I wasn’t exactly welcome here. Well, you know that, I guess.”
Margot knew it had been difficult for Sam and that her relationship with her parents had always been strained. As a result, Sam had once grown closer to the Earnhearts, inviting Margot, Melissa, Lillian, Henry, and their father, Frank, over for frequent family parties.
“It’s been two years since we sort of mended everything,” Sam explained, pouring them each a glass of wine and leading Margot to the sun-drenched room along the beach, which was glassed in and warm despite the chill outside. “My divorce kick-started the reunion, I think.”
“Daniel helped out for once?” Margot asked.
Sam burst into giggles. “I know. I had the same thought!”
They fell silent and clinked their glasses. Upstairs, the baby was calm.
Sam’s eyes glinted with adoration. “It’s been a beautiful time for the family. But…” She turned her eyes to the ocean. “Rachelle isn’t home, and it still rips me apart to remember it.”
Margot’s first thought was that Rachelle had run away and never looked back like Margot had done.
But Sam explained that Rachelle had taken a job as a chef in Rome, of all places.
“Wow!” Margot cried. “What a daredevil.”
“She scares me,” Sam agreed. “She does whatever she wants whenever she wants.”
“It’s the time for that,” Margot said. “I was reckless when I was her age, too. I was twenty-three when I opened my own flower shop. It didn’t take me long to fall flat on my face.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “What happened?”
“Oh, nothing so dramatic. I didn’t know what I was doing, money-wise. I never knew how many blooms to order or how to prepare for big holidays like Valentine’s Day. But over time, I developed a system.”
“And you’re still open today?”
“Still open!” Margot smiled, remembering the awards that lined the walls. “It’s my happy place.”
“I’ll come visit you one day,” Sam said softly. “I would have had I known.”
“It’s okay. I’ve kept a low profile.”
“Understandably.” Sam looked as though she wanted to say something else.
But suddenly, Estelle breezed down the stairs, bringing the smell of jasmine perfume and the air that she’d just created something brilliant upstairs. Of course, she remembered Margot, although they’d only met a few times, and Estelle was gracious, asking her questions about her life in Boston and her plans for her stay in Nantucket.
“I told her she could stay the night,” Sam informed Estelle.
“But it really isn’t a good idea,” Margot said. “The sooner I bite the bullet and see my mother, the better.”
“Oh! Your mother will be so thrilled to see you.” Estelle’s eyes glinted.
Margot couldn’t help it; she scoffed. This was Lillian Earnheart they were talking about—not Estelle Coleman.
Estelle bowed her head as though remembering just that. There was a strange pause. Margot hated that she’d rebuked Estelle’s niceties.
“Lillian can be difficult,” Estelle said finally. “But she’s been through a lot.”
“You all have,” Sam agreed.
Suddenly, Margot felt like she was walking on the moon and losing oxygen. She got to her feet and went to the bathroom, where she ran the faucet and fought a panic attack. As she cleaned herself up, she listened as the door opened and closed, opened and closed, bringing in more Colemans, more love, more, “Hello, where is everybody?” and more, “I brought wine!” It was a house echoing with excitement, with family, with joy. It was a house that missed Rachelle to its very foundation. It was a house that had accepted Samantha back wholeheartedly.
It was nothing like the Earnheart house.
How was she going to find the strength to go back?